Samsung Mass-Producing SM951 PCIe M.2 SSDs

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has begun mass producing a high-performance, low-powered PCIe, the SM951, for use in ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations.

“We are helping to accelerate growth of the ultra-slim notebook PC market with the introduction of this energy-efficient, high-speed PCIe SSD,” said Jeeho Baek, SVP of memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to introduce next-generation high-density SSDs with improved performance and increased differentiation, as we further strengthen our business competitiveness in global SSD market.“

The SM951 boasts performance, supporting both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 interfaces. For use in the latest ultra-slim notebooks, it can read and write sequentially at 1,600MB/s and 1,350MB/s respectively based on PCIe 2.0. This performance level is approximately three times faster than that of the latest SSD with a SATA interface and about 30% faster than that of the Samsung XP941, its predecessor. In addition, the new SSD’s random read and write speeds reach up to 130,000 and 85,000 IO/s respectively.

For ultra-slim notebooks and workstations wanting to adopt the PCIe 3.0 interface, the SM951 can read and write sequentially at 2,150MB/s and 1,550MB/s respectively, which would provide approximately four times faster sequential reading performance compared to current SATA SSDs. With a PCIe 3.0 interface, the drive achieves substantially higher energy efficiency, requiring only about 450MB/s per watt for sequential reading and 250MB/s per watt for sequential writing, which translates into a more than 50% of improvement in performance per watt over that of the XP941 SSD.

In addition, the SM951 adopts the L1.2 low power standby mode (which allows all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is on sleeping or in hibernation) as defined by PCI-SIG (the PCIe standards body). By embracing the L1.2 level of standby operation, the SM951’s power consumption is reduced to under 2mW, about a 97% decrease from the 50mW consumed using a L1 state.

SM951 comes in the M.2 form factor (80x22mm), which is only about one seventh the size of a 2.5 inch SSD. Also, it weighs approximately six grams. The drive’s compactness is suited for most notebook PC designs, freeing up space for other components including the battery. The SM951 lineup consists of 512, 256 and 128GB SSDs.

Samsung will also work on timely introduction of next-generation PCIe SSDs that support the NVMe interface, which will provide further performance increases.