ADATA Showcases Upcoming 3D-NAND NVMe M.2, U.2 & SATA SSDs At Computex 2016

Competition in the performance SSD market is heating up. ADATA has taken the wraps off the NVMe SX8000NP, a solid-state drive with a full PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface via either M.2 or U.2 form-factors. PCIe “Gen 3×4” with NVMe support is currently the highest performance consumers can get from a solid-state drive without switching to a full-blown native PCIe card SSD. Performance is listed at a blistering 2900MB/s reads and 1300MB/s writes for the traditional M.2 2280 gumstick form-factor.

The drive looks to feature a Silicon Motion SM2260H controller, 512MB of DDR3 cache, and will be utilizing 3D MLC NAND, possibly sourced from Micron. Pricing will be announced later, though if the choice between M.2 and U.2 connectors isn’t enough, models will range up to a whopping 2TB.

At the opposite end of the market, ADATA has the SU700, which is being aimed as a literal hard drive replacement SSD. Featuring a relatively unknown Maxiotek MK8115 SATA 3 controller and skipping DRAM cache entirely, this 3D TLC flash drive will not win performance awards but it should still trounce any hard drive pitted against it. Pricing is unfortunately not yet known, though at the right price point it could easily shake up the budget segment of the SSD market.

The “Ultimate” SU800 and SU900 series of drives are aimed at the price/performance sweet spot thanks to higher density 3D NAND. Models will be PCIe 3.0 x4 capable to deliver better performance, feature NVMe for lower latency over SATA 3.0 SSDs, and will also size up to 2TB thanks to the higher densities of 3D NAND. As with the SX800NP, these drives will be available with M.2 or U.2 interfaces

Intriguingly, ADATA has also announced the SR1030 SSD, an enterprise geared model powered by the Seagate SF-3514 controller. If you mistakenly read that as “SandForce SF-3514” at first (as I did) you would doubtlessly forgiven, as Seagate did purchase SandForce from LSI a full two years ago.  As with the others, little else has been released yet about the SR1030, or for that matter its controller, though all drives are expected to launch later this year and should prove quite interesting indeed.