Samsung PCI Express SSD for Ultrabooks Enters Mass Production

From DailyTech: Samsung has become the first manufacturer in the computer industry to mass-produce a PCI Express (PCIe) SSD for ultra slim notebook computers: the XP941.

Samsung says it began providing the XP941 to major notebook makers earlier this quarter, and that it is available in 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB capacities. The PCIe-based solution obliterates SSDs based on the “old” SATA 6Gb/s interface, and Samsung promises sequential read performance of up to 1,400 MB per second.

That sort of performance allows 500 GB of data to be read or 100 HD quality movies at 5 GB each in only 6 min. The performance is roughly seven times faster than a traditional hard drive and 2.5 times faster than the fastest SATA SSD.

The SSD uses the new M.2 form-factor measuring 80 mm x 22 mm and weighs 6 g. The small SSD also has about one seventh as much volume as a traditional 2.5-inch SSD, which allows manufacturers to focus more on adding battery capacity and “thinning out” their designs.

Apple introduced PCI-E based SSDs with its latest generation MacBook Airs, which boosted I/O performance significantly compared to the previous SATA-3 models.

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