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Samsung SSD On a Tiny M.2 Stick Is Capable of Read Speeds Over 2GB/sec
MojoKid writes: Samsung has just announced its new SM951-NVMe SSD, the industry's first NVMe SSD to employ an M.2 form-factor. Samsung says the new gumstick style drive is capable of sequential read and write speeds of 2,260 MB/sec and 1,600 MB/sec respectively. Comparable SATA-based M.2 SSDs typically can only push read/write speeds of 540 MB/sec and 500 MB/sec, while most standard PCIe versions muster just north of 1GB/sec. The Samsung SM951-NVMe's performance is actually very comparable to the Intel SSD 750 Series PCIe x4 card but should help kick notebook performance up a notch in this common platform configuration.
Who do you think MAKES those M.2 SSDs in Apples? Hint: Samsung
Actually, it is not in any sane measurement. This is linear-speed only. For random access, even the original DDR RAM will trash even these disks by a large margin.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm don't think M.2 can handle ESD and hotplugging, but Thunderbolt is essentially the external version of M.2.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
my work computer could really go for one of these; this kind of performance is needed to be able to grind through all the corporate security software.
The (original) fix is available as an ISO and USB stick image for non-Windows machines. I used it on a Macbook Pro last month. http://www.samsung.com/global/...
I suppose one could interpret a press release from January 7th as "Samsung has just announced its new", it was announced during CES on January 7th, here's the press release: http://www.samsung.com/global/... Linked article says model numbers haven't been released either.. here you go: 128GB NVME SSD SM951 - MZVPV128HDGL-00000 256GB NVME SSD SM951 - MZHPV256HDGL-00000 512GB NVME SSD SM951 - MZHPV512HDGL-00000 They've been shipping these in Lenovo and Apple laptops, they are scarce, but available (Amazon, RamCity, Ebay, Etc) at a little more than $1 per GB.
Well, nobody with a laptop is really going to notice much of a difference because frankly there isn't a whole lot of software that actually needs that kind of performance over the ~550 MBytes/sec that can already be obtained with SATA-III. Certainly not that would be run on a laptop anyway.
It's just using the PCI-e lanes on the M.2 connector instead of the SATA-III lanes. This isn't a magical technology. There's a loss of robustness and portability that gets traded off. It does point to SATA needing another few speed bumps, though. The fundamental serial link technology used at the physical level by PCI-e and SATA is almost identical. The main difference is that SATA is designed for cabling while M.2 is not (at least not M.2's PCI-e lanes).
-Matt
Thunderbolt and M.2 are alike in that they both have an implementation of PCI Express. They're otherwise rather dissimilar.
So, they're essentially PCI Express.
Kid-proof tablet..
They don't die randomly. They die on an exact schedule, and about three times sooner than more durable brands.
I come here for the love
Thunderbolt is dead. Apple was the only one to adopt it, and it was for only one generation. It's been replaced, for good or bad, for USB 3.
You could, but the connector is only rated for 60 matings.
60 matings is much better than most of the readers on slashdot will ever hope to achieve!
No, not the same at all.
Thunderbolt has PCI Express and DisplayPort. It is used as an expansion bus for external peripherals.
M.2 has PCI Express and USB and SATA. It is used an an expansion bus for internal peripherals.
They're practically very dissimilar. Of the four electrical interfaces supported amongst them, they share just one in common. These aren't crazy words that only an engineer would understand.
I can't drive a DisplayPort monitor with M.2, and I can't connect a SATA drive to Thunderbolt.
SATA and eSATA are practically the same thing. M.2 and Thunderbolt are not.
In other words, Thunderbolt is NOT to M.2 as eSATA is to SATA.
In other words, both apples and oranges have a few things in common, but a lot more things that are not. At the end of the day, it's still apples and oranges.
(Are we done yet?)
Kid-proof tablet..
...is capable of sequential read and write speeds of 2,260 MB/sec and 1,600 MB/sec respectively. Comparable SATA-based M.2 SSDs typically can only push read/write speeds of 540 MB/sec and 500 MB/sec,
Non-SATA M.2 drives are already on the market. Comparing the newest drive to SATA-based M.2 drives does not help much, I'd rather see it compared to what it supersedes. In this case, I'm more interested in a comparison with a PCIe 3.0 4-lane M.2 SSD drive that doesn't support NVMe. The drive specification for the earlier non-NVMe SM951 is not that far off of that of the new drive. The earlier drive is rated at sequential read and write speeds of 2,150 MB/sec 1,500 MB/sec respectively. Again, not all that far off.
That being said...I'm curious to see the difference that NVMe makes in real-world benchmarks, and where the difference is...especially because I just built a new system with a non-NVMe SM951 SSD. :)
-Turkey