Samsung has started mass production of energy efficient PCI-Express SSDs targeted at thin laptop and Ultrabook usage. The SM951 has specified sequential read and write speeds of up 1.6 and 1.35 GB/s respectively.
According to Samsung the SM951 SSD, which uses 10nm MLC NAND flash, can be fitted in both a PCI-E 3.0 and PCI-E 2.0 slot. With specified sequential read and write speeds of 1.6 and 1.35 GB/s using the PCI-E 2.0 interface, the SSD is about 30% faster than its predecessor, the XP941 SSD. The specified IOPS for random 4KB read and write operations are respectively 130,000 and 85,000.
Besides the increased performance, the new SSD is also much more energy efficient. The SM951 uses 2 mW in the L1.2 low power mode, while it consumes 50 mW using the older L1 energy saving mode. Also during read and write actions the SSD should consume 50% less energy than current SSD designs.
Samsung will release the SM951 in capacities of 128, 256 and 512 GB in a M.2 formfactor. The drive weighs 6 grams and will likely mainly end up in thin laptops and Ultrabooks.
