Silicon Motion
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP). FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is...
ADATA Introduces Ultimate SU800 SSD: SMI Controller, 3D NAND, SATA Interface
ADATA has formally introduced its first SSDs based on 3D NAND flash memory. The Ultimate SU800 drives are designed for price-conscious market segments and use SATA interface, which means...
11 by Anton Shilov on 8/25/2016Micron Cancels Ballistix TX3 NVMe SSD
At Computex in June, Micron announced that Crucial's Ballistix brand was being promoted to a standalone brand for gaming-oriented products. Their exhibit included three tiers of Ballistix DRAM products...
7 by Billy Tallis on 8/18/2016ADATA Introduces Premier SP550 SSDs in M.2 Form-Factor
ADATA has introduced a new family of SSDs that come in M.2 form-factor and are more affordable than the majority of M.2 drives on the market. The Premier SP550...
8 by Anton Shilov on 7/1/2016The Intel SSD 540s (480GB) Review
With no in-house controller or NAND suitable for an entry level consumer SSD to compete in today's market, Intel has turned to third-party suppliers for the key components of...
77 by Billy Tallis on 6/23/2016AMD Changes SSD Strategy: High-End M.2/NVMe SSDs Incoming, Low-Cost R3 Drives Are Here
Over the past week or so, we noticed other news outlets reporting on the AMD R3 series of SSDs, as if there had been a recent press release circulating...
47 by Anton Shilov on 5/16/2016The ADATA Premier SP550 SSD Review: A Second Look At Silicon Motion's SM2256 Controller
Today we're taking a look at ADATA's Premier SP550 SSD, the company's latest entry-level drive. The Premier SP550 gives us a fresh look at Silicon Motion's SM2256 controller by...
25 by Billy Tallis on 3/23/2016OWC Introduces SSD Upgrade for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air PCIe SSDs
Apple's Retina MacBook Pro and all but the earliest MacBook Air models have relied solely on SSDs for internal storage, as Apple slimmed down the designs to the point...
24 by Billy Tallis on 3/9/2016The Crucial BX200 (480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Crucial's First TLC NAND SSD
The Crucial BX200 is the successor to the very successful BX100 and is Crucial's new value-oriented SSD. The BX200 moves to the newer Silicon Motion SM2256 controller and is...
86 by Billy Tallis on 11/3/2015Strontium Nitro Plus Nano USB 3.0 64GB Flash Drive Capsule Review
Flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, and most of them carry uninteresting specifications. In particular, flash drives advertising smaller physical footprints have tended to carry disappointing...
21 by Ganesh T S on 8/3/2015Silicon Motion SM2256 SSD Controller Preview: TLC for Everyone
The SSD industry has been talking about TLC NAND for over three years now. We published our first post, Understanding TLC NAND, back in early 2012, but in three...
35 by Kristian Vättö on 6/17/2015Silicon Motion Displays Upcoming SM2260 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Controller
Silicon Motion has remained relatively quiet about its plans for a PCIe controller. We have known that the company is working on one (well, it would be a major...
11 by Kristian Vättö on 6/9/2015ADATA Displays XPG SX930 SSD, Two New TLC SSDs, Several PCIe Drives & USB Type-C Products
After a long week of meetings and over a day worth of traveling, I'm finally back from Taipei. Given our hectic schedule (it was just me and Ian at...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 6/8/2015Crucial BX100 (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) SSD Review
Crucial has been doing very well in the client SSD market during the past year. Crucial's/Micron's ability to quickly roll out the 16nm NAND node definitely paid off because...
67 by Kristian Vättö on 4/10/2015Mushkin Reactor 1TB SSD Review
Silicon Motion has practically become the new SandForce. Almost every tier three manufacturer (i.e. one with no controller/firmware IP or NAND fab) has released an SM2246EN based drive in...
69 by Kristian Vättö on 2/9/2015Transcend SSD370 (128GB, 256GB & 512GB) Review
We got the first glimpse of Transcend's SSD370 at Computex last year and now the drive has been in retail for quite some time. The interesting bit about the...
44 by Kristian Vättö on 1/27/2015Mushkin Releases New Striker SSD, Displays an Upcoming M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD
Mushkin had a couple of new and upcoming products in its suite during CES. The first one is a new Striker SSD, which uses Phison's S10 controller coupled with...
15 by Kristian Vättö on 1/13/2015FMS 2014: Silicon Motion Showcases SM2256 SSD Controller with TLC NAND Support
A couple of weeks ago at Flash Memory Summit, Silicon Motion launched their next generation SATA 6Gbps SSD controller. Dubbed simply as SM2256, the new controller is the first...
8 by Kristian Vättö on 8/20/2014ADATA Premier SP610 SSD (256GB & 512GB) Review: Say Hello to an SMI Controller
The ADATA Premier SP610 is the first SSD with a new Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller to enter our test labs. This is a drive going after the lower cost...
24 by Kristian Vättö on 6/27/2014