Product Showcase

Product Showcase

The PCB with its NAND flash ICs and controller are covered by a sticker. We carefully peeled it off to have a closer look at the ICs. There you have it, this M.2 NGFF-2280 1TB SSD has just four 3bit written MLC NAND ICs (commonly referred to as Triple Level Cell (TLC). Samsung refers to this technology as 3-bit MLC). And yes, the biggest benefit of the ability to stack memory cells vertically.
  

The backside is clean/clear from anything, you will not find any components there. 

 
So this is the new Polaris controller, a five-core, eight-channel chip. This updated controller replaces the UBX controller used in the popular PM951/950 series. Just below the controller you can spot the DRAM cache chip. The 250 and 500B model will get a 512MB DRAM cache, the 1TB version a 1 GB cache. 
  

 
And to the lower side, one of the two NAND ICs. 48-layer (3D) Vertical NAND. This is the benefit from vertical stacked Nand flash memory and Triple cell written Nand, you get to do more with less. 
  

 
I'll say it again as it is significant, two NAND ICs responsible for 1 Terabyte of storage. Very impressive to see on that small 8cm long M.2. PCB.