Toshiba Announces BG3 SSD Series Featuring Single Package BGA 64-Layer BiCS 3D Flash Memory

Toshiba is announcing its newest client SSD product that features their latest 64-layer TLC BiCS Flash memory on a single-package ball grid array.  The new BG3 series is geared toward future mobile devices, and offers superior performance in a smaller footprint than SATA SSDs.  Its DRAM-less design also reduces the cost and power requirements to enable higher quality user experiences.

The BG3 series utilizes the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) offered by NVMe Revision 1.2.1 to sustain its high performance in a DRAM-less design for flash management purposes.  The BG3 series are able to harness NVMe performance, yet in a more affordable drive with a smaller footprint.  Being both economical and fast, these miniaturized SSDs are also a good fit for data center and enterprise usage scenarios as an alternative for server boot drives.

According to Jeremy Werner, vice president of SSD marketing and product planning for Toshiba, “Toshiba’s third generation BG SSDs were designed to not spark, but fuel a revolution in mobile and IoT computing.  The BG3 series is not only smaller and lighter, but smarter thanks to its cost-effective DRAM-less design with HMB technology combined with Toshiba 64-layer 3D flash memory with TLC technology.  These SSDs enable OEMs to reimagine what’s possible for their customers.”

Toshiba’s BG3 series are small in size, but not when it comes to performance.  Utilizing a PCIe Gen3 x2 lane and the NVMe Revision 1.2.1 architecture, the BG3 series can attain up to 1520MB/s sequential read speeds and up to 840MB/s sequential write speeds.  The BG3 series also feature an SLC cache to accelerate burst-type workloads, as are often experienced with Windows-based computing devices.

Neville Ichhaporia, director of client and data center SSD marketing for Toshiba, states that “When it comes to the data center, Toshiba BG3 series SSDs can help bridge the power and price gap between enterprise SATA and mainstream client NVMe SSDs.  Every data center is pursuing ways to reduce both capital and operating expenses.  The BG3 series addresses these concerns by providing boot storage with improved power consumption and a compact footprint at appropriate capacities.”

Toshiba is offering the BG3 series in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.  All three versions are available in a surface-mount BGA (M.2 1620), or in a removable module in M.2 2230 form factor for flexibility in design.  The BG3 series features a Toshiba-designed controller and firmware, and is optimized for reliability, performance and low power consumption.  Self-encrypting (SED) versions are also available with TCG Opal Version 2.01.

Toshiba is currently sampling the BG3 series with select customers, and it will be demonstrated at this year’s Flash Memory Summit from August 8^th through 10^th in Santa Clara, California.  You can visit Toshiba at booth #407.