As the computer market moves to smaller and smaller form factors the need to decrease the foot print of storage devices is growing. The problem that many manufacturers face is that a reduction in component size has traditionally meant a reduction in performance. This is where technologies like mSATA and M.2 SATA (or M.2 PCIe) come into play. Each of these has a benefit in terms of size and also performance. With mSATA you can maintain close to the same performance that you have with traditional SATA (with the right components), but there are limitations on which motherboards and even mobile devices support this. Now with M.2 (also called M Key) SATA and PCIe devices we are seeing a number of motherboard makers will support for them right out of the box. Because of this interest in these new devices has grown. Today we are taking a look at the first one to hit our lab: the Kingston SM22080S3/120G M.2 SATA drive.
The SM22080S3/120G 120GB -M.2 SATA and PCIe drives are much thinner than regular mSATA drive are, but still manage to maintain the same performance profile. These drives are also going to be much longer in most cases, as your average mSATA drive is going to be 55mm long (although there are 78mm drives as well). As you can see in the image below M.2 drives are easy to spot in a crowd.
The Kingston drive uses a Phison PS3108-S8-I SATA to NAND Flash controller chip. This is what allows the drive to communicate between the NAND Flash Modules and the SATA interface. In a PCIe or SATA Express device a different controller would be required. The PS3108-S8 has some solid specifications and is a good choice for this drive:
Controller Highlights Compatible with SATA 3.0 specification Compatible with SATA I/II/III 1.5G/ 3G/ 6Gbps interface Support 2Gb/4Gb DDRIII Cache Built-in enhanced up to 72bit/1KB ECC circuit (BCH) Program RAM (Program Upgradable)Physical Characteristics Fabricated in 55nm CMOS process Available 324-pin BGA package Operating Voltage: 0.9 ~ 3.6V Built-in Regulator that supports 3.3V/1.8V Flash I/ONAND Flash Support Supports 10/20+nm flash Supports up to 64 chip-enable pins Supports interleave, 2-plane and 8-channel Flash access Supports SLC/MLC large block (8K/16K page) NAND Flash Memory MLC sequential R/W speed up to 520/460 MB/sOther Features Built-in static and dynamic wear-leveling Power Saving implemented Supports model name information update
Moving on to the actual Flash modules used on the SM22080S3 we find Kingston’s very own FA32B08UCT1-BC modules. These are 32GB each with the four on the M.2 card totaling up to 128GB RAW and 120GB available.
Another interesting item on the drive is a NANYA DDRIII chip, according to the specs that we could find on it this is a 2GB module so this is most likely the cache for the drive.
All in all the SM22080S3 is looking like it could be a nice drive. Let’s run some tests and find out.
