232L 3D TLC and Phison E25 for the OEM Market

Micron has been on a roll recently with new product introductions regardless of the downturn within the flash market. The corporate is at present the one NAND producer transport merchandise primarily based on 200+L 3D TLC in quantity. Due to the benefit of upper bit density and speedy maturity in yields, Micron has higher leeway in pricing and margins in comparison with its friends. Because of this, we have now had a number of 232L product launches within the enterprise (Micron 6500 ION), OEM (Micron 2550), and client (Crucial T700, Crucial T500) segments during the last 12 months. Along with increased bit density, the 232L 3D TLC NAND additionally delivers significant bandwidth improvements with its 6-plane structure.

Micron is launching the 3500 NVMe SSD sequence at the moment. It’s the first PCIe Gen4 x4 232L 3D TLC NAND OEM drive available in the market. Micron develops SSD platforms for shopper techniques and markets them below the Essential model title for direct buy by end-users. The corporate has additionally been releasing the identical platforms below the Micron model for OEMs and system integrators. Clearly, the validation cycles and OEM qualification necessities dictate a barely totally different strategy to the firmware in contrast to what’s put into the Essential drives. Because of this, the marketed specs might differ barely for a similar {hardware} platform primarily based on the goal market. The 3500 NVMe SSD makes use of the identical {hardware} because the recently-released Crucial T500 – Micron’s 232L 3D TLC NAND behind the Phison E25 controller working in 4-channel mode, with the NAND configured for 2400 MT/s and devoted DRAM on the drive for the flash translation layer (FTL).

Nearly all the key promoting factors of the Essential T500 switch themselves to the Micron 3500 NVMe SSD. These embrace class-leading bandwidth numbers saturating the Gen4 hyperlinks and DirectStorage assist. The height reads are at 7 GBps as an alternative of seven.4 GBps, however that’s because of the nature of the techniques dictated by OEM qualification necessities. Endurance numbers are the identical because the T500’s, however the guarantee interval is simply 3 years (in comparison with the T500’s 5 years). This truly interprets to the next DWPD ranking for the drive, and is a typical demand of the OEMs who qualify these drives to be used of their techniques. The SSD’s energy consumption numbers and wake occasions from sleep are additionally geared for Intel’s Project Athena certification – a facet that’s vital for OEMs delivering high-performance notebooks. The goal marketplace for the 3500 NVMe SSD is high-end workstations and gaming techniques. Because of this, Micron’s advertising and marketing numbers have centered on benchmarks akin to SPECwpc storage (a part of the SPECworkstation suite). We’re wanting ahead to confirming the claims with our personal hands-on analysis within the close to future.

The launch of the Micron 3500 NVMe SSD has enabled the corporate to cater to the complete vary of OEM shopper techniques requiring Gen4 NVMe drives. The entry-level Micron 2400 sequence with 176L QLC NAND is supposed for the cost-sensitive market, whereas the Micron 2550 strikes to 232L 3D TLC with the previous-generation Phison controller. Each drive households can be found in a number of M.2 form-factors. The 3500 NVMe SSD fills up the flagship function. With high-end computing techniques being the goal, the drive shall be accessible solely within the M.2 2280 form-factor. It’s shocking {that a} 4TB drive isn’t accessible at launch, provided that high-end techniques are sometimes hungry for storage capability. Hopefully, that may be a gap within the product stack that Micron will be capable of fill in each the Essential T700 and Micron 3500 NVMe SSD households someday subsequent 12 months.