Samsung Discusses Enterprise SSDs – CES 2015 Update

This morning at CES Las Vegas, we attended the Bellagio where we met with Ryan Smith, Sr. Product Manager of SSD Marketing, Samsung. We got to take a look not only at their current SSD line up, but what should be coming out over the next year or so.

The first thing to catch our interest were an M.2 and mSATA variant of the new 850 EVO series. As you can see the M.2 will come in a 2280 form factor. While many out there will be purchasing 2.5” drives for desktop use, these more compact and light weight form factors are essential for mobile platforms.

Next up, we got to check out what they have going on with the enterprise side of things. There are quite bit of new drives to be released. Let’s start by going over the categories. They have SATA, SAS, and PCIe devices.

Within the SATA range of devices, we see the already released 845DC Pro and EVO. Underneath them are two very interesting high capacity drives. The PM863 and SM863. The SM863 will be available in capacities ranging from 120GB all the way up to 1.92TB and the PM863 up to 3.84TB – while still maintaining a 7mm z-height! The PM863 will offer 530MB/s read and 450MB/s write speeds, as well as up to 95K read and 15K write IOPS. The SM863 will offer a bit faster writes at 480MB/s and a bit higher write IOPS at 20K. Both utilize 3D V-NAND and a Mercury controller, however the SM863 utilizes MLC NAND while the PM863 utilizes TLC. They also come with power loss protection. The PM863 will have a 3-year warranty while the SM863 will have a 5-year warranty.

Moving on to SAS devices, Samsung has 3 options. The SM1635 and 1637 as well as a PM1633. All their SAS drives will have power loss protection and 5-year warranties. They will also utilize 3D V-NAND and a REX controller. The PM1633 comes with TLC NAND while the SM drives utilize MLC.

Capacities for the SM1635 range from 400GB to 1.6TB, sequential reads and writes are rated for up to 1,380MB/s and 1300MB/s respectively and random 4K read and write IOPS are rated for up to 215K/47K. Capacities for the SM1637 range from 200GB to 800GB, sequential reads and writes are rated for up to 1,400MB/s and 1250MB/s respectively and random 4K read and write IOPS are rated for up to 200K/59K. And finally, capacities for the PM1633 range from 480GB to 3.84TB, sequential reads and writes are rated for up to 1,400MB/s and 1250MB/s respectively and random 4K read and write IOPS are rated for up to 200K/59K.

Last on the enterprise options list are the PCIe SSDs. You should already be familiar with the XS1715 as we already reviewed it back in November. However, now they have on display a new 22110 M.2 form factor drive, the SM953. It will only be available in 480GB and utilizes 1xnm MLC NAND and a UBX controller for sequential read and write speeds up to 1,750MB/s and 750MB/s respectively. Random 4K read IOPS are rated up to 250K while write IOPS are unlisted. It will come with power loss protection and a 5 year warranty. Lastly, they have their SM1715. It comes in 1.6TB and 3.2TB capacity options and utilizes their 3D V-NAND and a Princeton controller for sequential read and write speeds of up to 3GB/s and 2.2GB/s respectively. Random 4K read IOPS are rated up to 750K and write IOPS for up to 185K. It has power loss protection and will have a 5-year warranty.

Finally on the SSD side of things, on display was a demo of their XS1715 showing 750K IOPS and 3GB/s speeds via IOMeter. When looking at the average latency, it is at around .34ms and CPU utilization is non-existent at 0%. Essentially, this shows off just how fast NVMe is allowing SSDs to go, even in its infancy.

Stay tuned for more throughout the day as we continue our journey though CES 2015!