Samsung has announced that it has started mass producing a “high performance, low-powered” PCIe-based SSD, the SM951, which supports both PCIe 3.0 and the M.2 standards. The M.2 is a new interconnect that allows data transfer directly through PCIe bus via the NVMe (Non Volatile Memory Express) standard, which is much faster than the usual SATA interface. The SM951 supports read speeds of up to 2.15GB/s and write speeds of up to 1.55GB/s. This is much faster than PCIe 2.0 based SSDs, which have read speeds of up to 1.6GB/s and write speeds of up to 1.35GB/s. They will be available in three variants; 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. These SSDs are the first to feature a new low L1.2 power standby mode, which consumes 97 percent (48 mW) less power than current drives, allowing the laptops to hibernate for longer periods of time, possibly for months.
These SSDs are destined to be used in new Intel Broadwell-U based laptops. Lenovo is a confirmed customer who will be using these new SSDs. The SM951 might also be used in the next-generation Macbook Air and Macbook Pro, which Apple will announce later this year.
