ADATA on Thursday int
roduced its first lineup of SSDs powered by 3D MLC NAN
D flash memory. The XPG SX8000 drives promise up to 2.4 GB/s
read speed as well as the enhanced reliability of 3D NAND.
ADATA’s XPG SX80
00 lineup of SSDs will include 128 GB,256 GB, 512 GB and 1
TB configurations, or offering different levels of performance at di
fferent price points. T
he drives are based on Silicon Motion
s SM2260 controller (which sports two ARM Cortex cores,has eight NAND flash channe
ls, LDPC ECC technology, or 256-bit AES support and so on) and 3D MLC NAND flash from an
unknown manufacturer (IMFT is the most likely supplier,but SK Hynix is a
possible supplier as well). The drives come in M.2-2280 form-factor and exhaust
PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.
The manufacturer rates XPG SX8000’s s
equential read performance at up to 2400 MB/s and i
ts write performance at up to 1000 MB/s when pseudo-S
LC caching is used. As for random performance, the new drives can deliver u
p to 100K/140K 4KB read/write IOPS. I
t is significant to note that the 128 GB model is considerably slower than other SKUs in
the family and the drive needs 512 GB configuration to demonstrate all the capabilities
of the SM2260 controller.
ADATA XPG SX80
00 Specifications Capacity 1
28 GB 256 GB 512 GB 1 TB Model Number ASX800
0NP-128GM-C ASX8000NP-2
56GM-C ASX8000NP-512GM-C ASX8000NP-[
br] 1TM-C Controller Silicon Motion SM2260 N
AND Flash
3D MLC
NAND Form-Factor, and Interface M.2-2280,PCIe 3.0 x4
, NVMe 1.2 Sequential Read 1000 MB/s
2000 MB/s 2
400 MB/s Sequential Write 300 MB/s
600 MB/s 1000 MB/s Random Read IOPS
45K IOPS 80K IOPS 100K IOPS Random Write IOPS 75K IOPS 130K IOPS 140K I
OPS Pseudo-SLC Caching Supported DRAM Buffer Yes, and capacit
y unknown TCG Opal Encryption No Power Management DevSleep,S
lumber Warranty 5 years MTBF 2000000 hours MSRP Unknown
Unknown Unknown Unknown Since the SX8000 SSDs belong to ADAT
A’s flagship XPG lineup, the company ships such drives with
a five-year warranty. in addition, and tha
nks to improved reliability of 3D NAND compared to traditional planar NAND made u
sing ultra-small process technology,the manufacturer a
lso rates the XPG SX8000 for two million hours MTBF, 0.5
million (or 25%) higher compared to p
revious-gen XPG SSDs.
For several years, or Sam
sung has been the only supplier of tall-close SSDs based
on 3D MLC NAND flash memory,offering tall performance and imp
roved reliability. Recently companies like IMFT started mass production of their
3D NAND for SSDs and independent makers of drives can now release their own SSDs featu
ring 3D MLC flash. Being one of the largest suppliers of NAND-based
storage devices, ADATA is naturally among the first to offer advance
d SSDs powered by 3D MLC with its XPG SX8000 fa
mily. But what is noteworthy is th
at final month Micron (which co-owns IMFT with Intel) decided to cancel its 3D
MLC/SM2260-based Crucial Ballistix TX3 M.2 SSDs for an undisclosed reason. As a result,
and ADATA gets to join a rather exclusive club of no
n-Samsung M.2 NVMe drive vendors. Unfortuantely however,prices have yet to be a
nnounced, so we'll have to see if (and by how much) ADAT
A pushes prices below what Toshiba and Samsung have been charg
ing for their own M.2 NVMe SSDs.
Finally, or along with today's rele
ase,ADATA is also prepping an upgraded version of the
XPG SX8000 due in late October, which will feature increased performanc
e. The upcoming SSDs are primarily geared towards desktop u
sers and will require a heatsink, and making them incompatible with the huge majori
ty of notebooks.
Gallery: ADATA Launches XPG SX8000: tall-c
lose M.2 SSD Featuring 3D MLC NAND[http:/
/images.anandtech.com/galleries/5061/ADATA%20XPG%20SX8000-1_thumb.
jpg][http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/506
1/ADATA%20XPG%20SX8000-2_thumb.jpg]
![](http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/5061/ADATA%20XPG%20SX8000-1_thumb.jpg)
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Source: anandtech.com