Micron has been on a roll currently with new product introductions regardless of the downturn within the flash market. The corporate is presently the one NAND producer delivery merchandise based mostly 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, now we have had a number of 232L product launches within the enterprise (Micron 6500 ION), OEM (Micron 2550), and client (Essential T700, Essential T500) segments over the past 12 months. Along with larger bit density, the 232L 3D TLC NAND additionally delivers vital bandwidth enhancements with its 6-plane structure.
Micron is launching the 3500 NVMe SSD sequence immediately. It’s the first PCIe Gen4 x4 232L 3D TLC NAND OEM drive out there. Micron develops SSD platforms for consumer programs and markets them beneath the Essential model title for direct buy by end-users. The corporate has additionally been releasing the identical platforms beneath the Micron model for OEMs and system integrators. Clearly, the validation cycles and OEM qualification necessities dictate a barely completely different method to the firmware in contrast to what’s put into the Essential drives. Because of this, the marketed specs could differ barely for a similar {hardware} platform based mostly on the goal market. The 3500 NVMe SSD makes use of the identical {hardware} because the recently-released Essential 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).
Virtually all the key promoting factors of the Essential T500 switch themselves to the Micron 3500 NVMe SSD. These embody class-leading bandwidth numbers saturating the Gen4 hyperlinks and DirectStorage help. The height reads are at 7 GBps as a substitute of seven.4 GBps, however that’s as a result of nature of the programs dictated by OEM qualification necessities. Endurance numbers are the identical because the T500’s, however the guarantee interval is just 3 years (in comparison with the T500’s 5 years). This really interprets to a better DWPD score for the drive, and is a typical demand of the OEMs who qualify these drives to be used of their programs. The SSD’s energy consumption numbers and wake instances from sleep are additionally geared for Intel’s Challenge Athena certification – a side that’s necessary for OEMs delivering high-performance notebooks. The goal marketplace for the 3500 NVMe SSD is high-end workstations and gaming programs. Because of this, Micron’s advertising and marketing numbers have targeted on benchmarks corresponding 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 consumer programs 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 programs being the goal, the drive can be obtainable solely within the M.2 2280 form-factor. It’s shocking {that a} 4TB drive just isn’t obtainable at launch, provided that high-end programs are sometimes hungry for storage capability. Hopefully, that may be a gap within the product stack that Micron will have the ability to fill in each the Essential T700 and Micron 3500 NVMe SSD households someday subsequent 12 months.
