Hands On with Plextor's NGFF SSDs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 8, 2013 12:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Trade Shows
- Plextor
- CES 2013
The Next Generation Form Factor for SSDs is designed to bring standardization to the wild west of Ultrabook SSD form factors. We reported on the standard at IDF, but in our Plextor meeting at CES we got the first look at two NGFF drives.
The drive to the left uses Marvell's PCIe controller 88SS9183, while the smaller drive on the right is still 9187 based. Note that despite the difference in interface, both use the same connector. Both feature the new GC algorithm from the M5 Pro Xtreme.
I also included a comparison to conventional mSATA drives so you can get an idea of the size reduction:
You can expect both drives to be available by June of this year, with the SATA version coming in a couple months earlier.
Gallery: Hands On with Plextor's NGFF SSDs
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DuckieHo - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Is NGFF significantly smaller than half-length mSATA? Enough to warrant yet another standard?CaptainDoug - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
I may be wrong but I think the point of NGFF is to get rid of msata. NGFF would fill msata's roll in small form factor storage quite nicely. I think I read an article about this like a month or 2 ago. I'll try to find it.CaptainDoug - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
There's actually a link to that article at the beginning of this one. Lots of information.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
The purpose behind NGFF is not necessarily a smaller form factor (it's almost the same size as mSATA), but a form factor that can scale across multiple products. The disadvantage of mSATA is the fact that it only supports up to four NAND packages, which limits the performance and capacities (mSATA SSDs are slower than their 2.5" SATA counterparts and you're limited to 256GB with 8GB die).On top of that, NGFF will support PCIe as well, so it's more like an mSATA version of SATA Express.
nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
"On top of that, NGFF will support PCIe as well, so it's more like an mSATA version of SATA Express."Rad.
phy_lbc - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Hi, where did you find out that mSATA only supports up to four NAND packages? Is that an inherent limitation of mSATA, or just current controllers? Also how come mSATA is slower than its 2.5" counterpart? I thought the review of the Crucial Micron C400 showed that they were neck and neck.DuckieHo - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
Ok, makes better sense... the NGFF standard is basically what mSATA should have been.Now.... why such the terrible name of "NGFF"!?
Tech Support: "You need to replace your NGFF drive on your laptop."
Layman: "A Nagghfffffffff drive?"
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - link
NGFF SSDs (like mSATA) will be mostly OEM only, so the naming doesn't really matter. Ultrabooks aren't designed with user-serviceability in mind, hence it's likely that most repairs/upgrades will be done by professionals.I wouldn't be surprised to see a more user friendly name, though. Things tend to have weird names during development phase, mainly because it's in the hand of engineers at that point (marketing people need to make it marketable, using a good name is one way).