Several SSDs to Come From Plextor

Brand of storage and multimedia products owned by Shinano Kenshi Corp. of Japan, Plextor announced four storage solutions at CES 2013, including new entries into the enterprise and mobile storage markets.

Individual product launches are scheduled throughout 2013.

M5M mSATA 6Gb SSD

This is a streamlined drive that’s designed without an outer case one eighth the size of a standard 2.5-inch drive and is suited for ultrabooks with limited space. It features the Marvell 88SS9187 controller, Toshiba’s new 19 nm TOGGLE NAND, DEVSLP Power Mode, and True Speed and True Protect technology. It comes in 64/128/256GB versions. All versions feature sequential read speeds of 540MB/s. The sequential write speeds for the three models are 160MB/s, 320MB/s and 430MB/s respectively. Availability: Early 1Q. The M5M has an MTBF of 2.4 million hours. That level of reliability gives Plextor the highest ranking in the industry. This has been achieved through development, quality control, and a pre-production testing requirement of 400 drives passing 500 hours of tests with zero errors.

NGFF SSD

NGFF (the Next Generation Form Factor, newly renamed M.2) enables design of drives smaller than existing mSATA models. A typical footprint of 51x30x5mm can be reduced to 42x22x2.5mm thick about the size of a small flash drive, except thinner. The new version has a sequential read and write speed of 700/550MB/s and a random R/W of 100k/90k IOPS. Both a 128GB and 256GB version will be available. This is a solution for upgrading ultrabook as a workstation. Availability: Late 1Q.  

Enterprise SSD
Available in SLC NAND (more stable for enterprise) as well as MLC NAND versions. The SLC version focuses on high endurance which from a Plextor perspective would mean extreme reliability. The MLC version features power protection that guards against data loss in case of power outages and is capable of withstanding an extreme range of temperatures. The Plextor dedicated team can support custom firmware for these units. The enterprise drive also features Plextor’s True Speed technology to sustain like-new performance. Currently available by custom order.

eMMC
Embedded applications such as digital cameras, smart phones, and tablets store their content on flash memory. As technology has evolved allowing increased storage density it has become inefficient for the controller to manage these functions from outside the flash memory die. eMMC is a standardized method for bundling the controller into the flash die. The standard now includes features such as secure erase and trim and high-priority interrupt to meet the demand for high performance and security. Each generation of the standard will include additional new features and be resourced for future enhanced Plextor storage solutions. Availability: Late Q2.