Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
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Title: Western Digital Previews M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Client SSDs

Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21508/western-...

Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their
upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer
desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based
on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with
slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps
barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been
conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream /
mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue
SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for
an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated
at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.

Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two
different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for
the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the
performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash
translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less
controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-
layer 3D TLC.

Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key
differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream
DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it
suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.

Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and
2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential
reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5
bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the
in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5
market is about to take off.|

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