ADATA Top Manufacturer for SSD Selections and New Introductions at Computex – Computex 2013 Update

Considering the success of our earlier article detailing our discovery of the new LSI SandForce flash storage processor (Codename Griffin) capable of an amazing 1.8GBs transfer speeds and 200,000 IOPS performance, and subsequent NGFF ultrabook version, one might think that ADATA has garnished enough SSD coverage during Computex 2013, but in that one would be incorrect. This year, ADATA has laid out enough new entries to their SSD portfolio to make your head spin and we want to make sure adequate coverage is available for all.

From LSI SandForce to Marvell and JMicron, new form factors to include NGFF, 2.5″ PCIe as well as new enterprise entries, ADATA will definitely make it hard to consider that the end war in the SSD arena will be won by those that own the fab (flash manufacturers).  Let’s take a look at some of the new ADATA entries that have caught our interest:

Lets start with the M.2 or NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor).  This form factor is the new industry standard and will be replacing the numerous configurations of mSATA or blade type mSATA SSDs.  Although this SSD is mislabeled mSATA, the NGFF interface is a PCIe based design and opens performance up much further than we typically see with SATA.  We have seen performance of up to 700MB/s detailed to this point with the NGFF form factor which is great news.

The ADATA XN341N is controlled by the JMicron SATA 3 JMF-667H controller and is capable of performance up to 400MB/s with DEVSLP compliance.  We were a bit surprised at the maximum capacity being 64GB when ADATA representatives explained that we would be interested to learn that SSD capacity sales differed significantly, dependent on geographic region, and the smaller capacities have great demand.

The XNS360E is a LSI SandForce based solution capable of speeds up to 550MB/s and 85K IOPS.  It uses the SF-2281 Rev B controller ans comes in capacities up to 256GB, breaking away from the typical LSI SandForce capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB.

The XNS361N is similar to the LSI Sand|Force version in that it is a blade style NGFF form factor, capable of DEVSLP,  and has capacities up to 256GB.  It has the additional 32GB capacity included.

The HNS380E is very similar to the XNS360E with a bit different form factor.

Taking a look at traditional mSATA, ADATA has made available the SP310 with the JMicron 6Gbps controller in capacities up to 128GB.

Last but not lease, the SX920 introduces Marvell to the ADATA line with 19nm memory becoming the norm.  Specs for this SSD are set at 530MB/s read and 480MB/s wrote with 85K iops and it will be available in capacities up to 512GB.