They can’t really control that, if the controller is hooked up to crappy flash. But they CAN control if the controller supports SMART and TRIM... It’s a pity the article doesn’t mention that.
yes they can. Random performance is almost always limited by the controller, not flash, at least with deeper queue depths. You can have crappy flash still perform decently if its paired with good enough controller.
For writes it will largely depend on how much RAM is in the controller chip, unless there is several megabytes then the write IOPS will be low. Your best bet is to transfer the tiny files into a ZIP file on the host computer and transfer that to the USB SSD.
not just ram. Random performance is heavily dependent on cpu controller uses as well. Most cheap usb controllers use 8 bit 8051 style cpus which suck at that.
As a general rule, with some very rare exceptions* whenever a manufacturer does not list or does not disclose a spec their product sucks at that spec. Manufacturers do not want their products to look bad. Hence you performance scenario looks highly unlikely.
*These exceptions always involve some "surprise aspect", meaning that the product performs surprisingly well on that spec and the manufacturer does not want to disclose that early, as a way to "tease" and startle their customers in a positive way. I *strongly* doubt this is the case here.
They said sequential 400 for R&W. The integrated hardware so far are all prototypes. Random I/O would obviously be lower.
Your comment is premature and also ignorant. I am waiting to see and I expect it to be a straightforward scale down from the 400/400 max they list. You know, just like for any other SSD ever.
USB 3.1 Type-C Generation 2 (10 Gbps) and Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps, supporting the former). With Intel Optane (XPoint) for faster random read and write (IOPS). To boot Mac and work from it all day long. And NO thermal throttling!
Added guesses for the original word now covered up: "culpable", and, more likely "capable". Think of all the confidential files one can suck down in a few minutes and high-tail it out of there. No more need to try and sneak out a laptop.
companies like SM usually make reference designs (that includes controller, pcb and firmware for different flash manufacturers) which are used by most companies, because its cheaper than designing your own.
You can make shorter ones with only 2 flash dies instead of 4, or possibly put 2 on the backside of the PCB, or stack 2 shorter PCBs. But SM is intending this to be for higher performance drives; and more flash chips gives more potential performance via increased parallelism; which means it's probably not going to be seen in smaller more compact models.
Price. Single-chip solutions can be dramatically cheaper than multi-chip ones. Flash will still be the biggest cost, but this could shave a decent chunk off still.
If it reduced the cost of USB SSDs, and it is bootable, then this could be a neat way of having 'good enough' performance for portable system drives (e.g., when you need to borrow a computer and want your own OS and files). For all three people that need this functionality...
Shame it's not USB 3 Gen 2 (10Gbps), but if this is aiming for cost.
It was already tried to get these speeds onto USB thumb drives, right after USB 3.0 was released. Its just not possible, because of the physical limit to deal with the temperature. You cant get the heat off small things like that well enough. The result is early failing components. Many manufacturers claimed they would deliver 400+ MB/s write/read, but that was never possible. Many products were announced, but never went to the public. Others did come to the public but were axed quickly again because of the high failure rate. And then there were ones with a SandForce Controller, which claimed they were that fast, but they were only that fast with compressible content, which is basically a lie, because there isnt much content that is compressible and usable on sticks like that.
Youre better off buying USB drives like the Samsung M-Series. They are bigger, but at least they can reach those speeds, yet if you write a lot onto it in one swipe at maximum speed, it will still throttle after a while.
... so there's no chance that there's less heat from better production nodes? That sounds improbable. Also, they could just make better casings, with decent cooling taken into account.
They get far too hot. Even modern uncooled SSD controllers go to 100C. Why do you think M.2 SSDs have cooling now? And they are about as big as these. The first generations didnt, and all throttled after continued load, but at least they werent packed into tiny cases that trapped the heat and damaged other components. If you build in proper cooling, then the USB stick will be much larger and then wont be the size we knew so far. These things in the picture are already huge. From size alone, I would rather get a Samsung M-Series SSD, than such a giants thumb drive.
This is _far_ lower performance - and thus power draw - than an NVMe SSD. And saying those "go to 100C" is just plain wrong - my 960 Evo gets a bit toasty in the high 60s, but that's it. Sure, it would get hotter in an uncooled casing, but adding a thermal pad and some ridged aluminium fixes that unless you're pounding your drive with tens of GB of writes at max speed all the time. And if that's your use case, an actively-cooled DAS might be a better solution for your needs anyhow. Will this - like all flash drives - get hot under sustained writes? Sure, no doubt. Will it matter? Likely not at all, neither for performance or longevity.
I was talking about the controller, not the NAND or the temperature sensor of the SSD. SSDs temperature sensor is most of the time somewhere between the NAND and the controller. Know the difference... It matters a lot. You just ignored everything I said. They broke because of the heat. Period. Otherwise we would have had 400 MB/s thumb drives long ago, and much faster. If you have an SSD that achieves 3000+ MB/s and then tell me I have the audacity to use that speed, then its obvious its useless to continue with you. My god, why do you guys always base your ego on crap like this?
That's nonsense. The temperature sensors on SSDs are largely embedded into the controller die, as that's the most temperature sensitive part, and the one in need of monitoring (flash doesn't get very hot by itself). In other words, thermal readings from most SSDs are controller die temp readings. Otherwise, how would they throttle to protect themselves?
And no, the first generations of NVMe drives didn't break because of heat. Can you show a single source reporting high failure rates of early NVMe drives? You can't, because most of them are still fully functional today. They mostly come with heatsinks today because _it sells better_ (and most of these heatsinks are _terrible_ at cooling). There are still plenty of options without, and most drives from top brands (Samsung, WD, HP) and a bunch of smaller ones are available both with or without a heatsink. The heatsinks are largely ornamental, and only matter if you either have a very poorly cooled case or if your workload is more akin to a server workload - and then only if the heatsink is actually any good.
As for speed: this is an external flash drive design. The use case for such a drive is radically different than an internal SSD, and even those differ in their use cases (is it a boot SSD or a game drive?). And, again, this is largely a replacement for cheaper flash drives but with better performance or a move to bring SATA-ish performance down in price, not something to supersede expensive SATA-to-USB drives in terms of performance - those are being superseded by NVMe-to-USB enclosures anyhow. And again: if you need that much speed or more, an actively cooled DAS is likely better suited to your workload. The aim of this product is clearly to bring mid-high performance to lower price brackets. And again: sure, it's going to get a bit toasty under sustained loads. It will no doubt throttle if it's stuck in a cheapo plastic casing and hammered with writes. But that's just the thing: throttling prevents overheating, which again prevents a lot of early hardware death. This is only an issue if you're looking for something this isn't: a high-performance external SSD for strenuous usage. If that's what you're looking for, this product isn't for you, and in case that wasn't clear, that's not at all a reason for the product not to exist or to be called bad.
Also: you'd do well to try not expressing yourself like an obnoxious and condescending ass. What's the point?
I work in that sector, my friend. I said everything I wanted to say. As always some troll comes along and tries to talk stuff he doesnt know anything about. I dont care what you say. I know whats going on. And I also know a lot of manufacturers get more audacious every year. Look for example at the gaming monitors, which are maybe worth $300 at max, have no proper QC, or even QA, yet get sold for $1000 to $2000. So I wouldnt be surprised if someone tries to sell a flawed product again.
As I said, not much use trying to talk sense into you. You attacked me first with your implications that I lie. So dont point your finger at me now. Thats a troll tactic.
Implications that you lie? What on earth are you talking about? I _disagreed with you_. If you can't tell the difference or see that as an attack, that's your problem not mine. And if you claim this is a "troll tactic", you're clearly not actually interested in discussing. If so, again, that's your problem, not mine.
As for working in "that sector", it's not clear what you mean by that (storage? flash production? something else?), and how on earth would I know? But regardless of that, you seem to have a lacking overview of the current portable storage market. There are plenty of flash drives currently available with speeds in roughly this class, most of them based on SATA-to-USB bridges. You say OEMs tried initially but gave up because of high failure rates; availability of drives like Patriot's Supersonic Rage, SanDisk's CZ880, HyperX's Savage, Corsair's Voyager GTX, and other drives with 300-400MB/s transfer rates shows that this is still a viable product category and has wide availability. Do they get hot? Absolutely! AnandTech's reviews of products in this class has shown quite a lot of throttling. Do they fail prematurely? Well, most flash drives are made cheaply and have poor protection, so one could argue yes, but these are no more likely to fail than any other flash drive - unless you use them in a manner they're not designed to handle. In which case, again, an actively cooled DAS is what you ought to be using.
As for comparing this to gaming monitors (which is a very broad field, and as with anything there are both some good products deserving of premium pricing and some overpriced garbage), that's a bit weird. Flash drives are a commodity - even high-speed ones - while monitors are not. There's a lot of scammy crap in the computer industry, but dismissing what looks to be a decent low-cost, low-power, mid-performance single-chip USB SSD controller - with hitherto unproven performance and heat output - due to whatever bad experiences you have had or read about, that's ... illogical. At best. Nobody is saying this will be the be-all, end-all of flash drives, but there's reason to believe it'll roughly match SATA-to-USB bridge flash drives in performance while running cooler and costing less. Isn't that a good thing? We should of course wait for reviews - as with everything - but your categorical dismissal is out of touch with reality.
What about I/O? And why on Earth strangle it with a USB 3.0 (as was simply -and elegantly- used to be called before USB-IF retroactively -and foolishly- rebranded it to USB 3.1 Gen 1 and now doubled on the branding absurdity by a retroactive rebrand of the retroactive rebrand to USB 3.2 Gen 1...) interface, which is now two generations behind the cutting edge?
Pretty sure this is meant as a low-cost alternative to slower USB flash drives, bringing decent performance down in price, not a replacement for current high-end flash drives.
Kind of DOA with USB4 converging w/ Thunderbolt 3 and why on earth would most modern PC users would want it in a USB-A form form factor instead of USB-C?
Especially considering high-end laptops? They have USB-A for legacy (primarily business) reasons, but it's prone to connectivity breakage & etc that USB-C was made to make obsolete.
The chip has native USB-C support, they likely just made it type-A for the demo as it's a bit easier to implement. As for this being DOA: TB3 is expensive and power-hungry, this is clearly meant to improve the performance of cheap(er) flash drives, not fight for high end performance accolades. Arguably this is more important - we already have fast, expensive TB3 storage, lifting the performance floor has more value at this point than raising the ceiling.
BTW, by the looks of it in the photo, I believe that controller chip is a 68 lead QFP rather than a QFN (N = No leads, just pads). Now you know, just in case it's ever a trivia question ;-)
Samsung's SSD support software "SSD Magician" needs to be able to work while an NVMe SSD is housed inside an external housing. The current controller chip used in several such devices is the J-Micron "JMS583" controller, which does not work with Samsung's SSD Magician software. Perhaps this new SM3282 controller would finally enable that Samsung software to properly work for firmware updates, and other type of functions on Samsung branded NVMe SSD's.
This controller isn't an NVMe-to-USB adapter, so you couldn't use it to attach an existing SSD to a PC in the first place. This is for making bespoke USB-only "SSD-like" flash drives in a SATA-like performance bracket.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
46 Comments
Back to Article
mdrejhon - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
What we really want to know is the IOPS on this baby.... Whether we can spray 1000 tiny files into a thumbdrive folder in just 2 seconds.name99 - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
They can’t really control that, if the controller is hooked up to crappy flash.But they CAN control if the controller supports SMART and TRIM... It’s a pity the article doesn’t mention that.
Samus - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
True, I wonder what protocol it’s using, hopefully UASPValantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Even cheapo AliExpress USB-to-SATA adapters support UASP, so it would be a travesty if this didn't.Icehawk - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
Last pic shows “supports UASP mode”hojnikb - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
yes they can. Random performance is almost always limited by the controller, not flash, at least with deeper queue depths. You can have crappy flash still perform decently if its paired with good enough controller.Duncan Macdonald - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
For writes it will largely depend on how much RAM is in the controller chip, unless there is several megabytes then the write IOPS will be low. Your best bet is to transfer the tiny files into a ZIP file on the host computer and transfer that to the USB SSD.hojnikb - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
not just ram. Random performance is heavily dependent on cpu controller uses as well. Most cheap usb controllers use 8 bit 8051 style cpus which suck at that.Santoval - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
As a general rule, with some very rare exceptions* whenever a manufacturer does not list or does not disclose a spec their product sucks at that spec. Manufacturers do not want their products to look bad. Hence you performance scenario looks highly unlikely.*These exceptions always involve some "surprise aspect", meaning that the product performs surprisingly well on that spec and the manufacturer does not want to disclose that early, as a way to "tease" and startle their customers in a positive way. I *strongly* doubt this is the case here.
Azethoth - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
They said sequential 400 for R&W. The integrated hardware so far are all prototypes. Random I/O would obviously be lower.Your comment is premature and also ignorant. I am waiting to see and I expect it to be a straightforward scale down from the 400/400 max they list. You know, just like for any other SSD ever.
AnTech - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
USB 3.1 Type-C Generation 2 (10 Gbps) and Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps, supporting the former). With Intel Optane (XPoint) for faster random read and write (IOPS). To boot Mac and work from it all day long. And NO thermal throttling!StormyParis - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
Let's ask the really important question: what's beneath the "portable" tacked onto the sign ?Potable ? Probable ? Torpable ? Palpable ?
futrtrubl - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
That's what I want to know as well.eastcoast_pete - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
Added guesses for the original word now covered up: "culpable", and, more likely "capable". Think of all the confidential files one can suck down in a few minutes and high-tail it out of there. No more need to try and sneak out a laptop.Joel Kleppinger - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
It's probably just a misspelling since the space for the word seems the same.name99 - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
My guess is someone unfamiliar with English misspelt, likely “protable”.Easy mistake to make if English is not your first language.
Lord of the Bored - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
Pro tables are the best.ozzuneoj86 - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
Interesting idea, but I'd be more than a little worried about something that huge sticking out of a USB port. Presumably, these won't be real cheap...Skeptical123 - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
The usb drives in the photos are just demo/engineering models. Silicon Motion only makes the driver (the tiny square chip by the USB port).hojnikb - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
companies like SM usually make reference designs (that includes controller, pcb and firmware for different flash manufacturers) which are used by most companies, because its cheaper than designing your own.DanNeely - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
You can make shorter ones with only 2 flash dies instead of 4, or possibly put 2 on the backside of the PCB, or stack 2 shorter PCBs. But SM is intending this to be for higher performance drives; and more flash chips gives more potential performance via increased parallelism; which means it's probably not going to be seen in smaller more compact models.chipped - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
Seems like it will be a flop, Sandisk has had drives with the same performance for years. What’s so exciting about these?Valantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Price. Single-chip solutions can be dramatically cheaper than multi-chip ones. Flash will still be the biggest cost, but this could shave a decent chunk off still.PixyMisa - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
With 10Gb or 20Gb USB this would be a big deal, because it would provide something better than SATA. As it stands it's a a big ball of meh.psychobriggsy - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
If it reduced the cost of USB SSDs, and it is bootable, then this could be a neat way of having 'good enough' performance for portable system drives (e.g., when you need to borrow a computer and want your own OS and files). For all three people that need this functionality...Shame it's not USB 3 Gen 2 (10Gbps), but if this is aiming for cost.
Beaver M. - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
It was already tried to get these speeds onto USB thumb drives, right after USB 3.0 was released. Its just not possible, because of the physical limit to deal with the temperature.You cant get the heat off small things like that well enough. The result is early failing components.
Many manufacturers claimed they would deliver 400+ MB/s write/read, but that was never possible. Many products were announced, but never went to the public. Others did come to the public but were axed quickly again because of the high failure rate.
And then there were ones with a SandForce Controller, which claimed they were that fast, but they were only that fast with compressible content, which is basically a lie, because there isnt much content that is compressible and usable on sticks like that.
Youre better off buying USB drives like the Samsung M-Series. They are bigger, but at least they can reach those speeds, yet if you write a lot onto it in one swipe at maximum speed, it will still throttle after a while.
Valantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
... so there's no chance that there's less heat from better production nodes? That sounds improbable. Also, they could just make better casings, with decent cooling taken into account.Beaver M. - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
They get far too hot. Even modern uncooled SSD controllers go to 100C. Why do you think M.2 SSDs have cooling now? And they are about as big as these. The first generations didnt, and all throttled after continued load, but at least they werent packed into tiny cases that trapped the heat and damaged other components.If you build in proper cooling, then the USB stick will be much larger and then wont be the size we knew so far. These things in the picture are already huge.
From size alone, I would rather get a Samsung M-Series SSD, than such a giants thumb drive.
Valantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
This is _far_ lower performance - and thus power draw - than an NVMe SSD. And saying those "go to 100C" is just plain wrong - my 960 Evo gets a bit toasty in the high 60s, but that's it. Sure, it would get hotter in an uncooled casing, but adding a thermal pad and some ridged aluminium fixes that unless you're pounding your drive with tens of GB of writes at max speed all the time. And if that's your use case, an actively-cooled DAS might be a better solution for your needs anyhow. Will this - like all flash drives - get hot under sustained writes? Sure, no doubt. Will it matter? Likely not at all, neither for performance or longevity.Beaver M. - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
I was talking about the controller, not the NAND or the temperature sensor of the SSD. SSDs temperature sensor is most of the time somewhere between the NAND and the controller. Know the difference...It matters a lot. You just ignored everything I said. They broke because of the heat. Period. Otherwise we would have had 400 MB/s thumb drives long ago, and much faster.
If you have an SSD that achieves 3000+ MB/s and then tell me I have the audacity to use that speed, then its obvious its useless to continue with you.
My god, why do you guys always base your ego on crap like this?
Valantar - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
That's nonsense. The temperature sensors on SSDs are largely embedded into the controller die, as that's the most temperature sensitive part, and the one in need of monitoring (flash doesn't get very hot by itself). In other words, thermal readings from most SSDs are controller die temp readings. Otherwise, how would they throttle to protect themselves?And no, the first generations of NVMe drives didn't break because of heat. Can you show a single source reporting high failure rates of early NVMe drives? You can't, because most of them are still fully functional today. They mostly come with heatsinks today because _it sells better_ (and most of these heatsinks are _terrible_ at cooling). There are still plenty of options without, and most drives from top brands (Samsung, WD, HP) and a bunch of smaller ones are available both with or without a heatsink. The heatsinks are largely ornamental, and only matter if you either have a very poorly cooled case or if your workload is more akin to a server workload - and then only if the heatsink is actually any good.
As for speed: this is an external flash drive design. The use case for such a drive is radically different than an internal SSD, and even those differ in their use cases (is it a boot SSD or a game drive?). And, again, this is largely a replacement for cheaper flash drives but with better performance or a move to bring SATA-ish performance down in price, not something to supersede expensive SATA-to-USB drives in terms of performance - those are being superseded by NVMe-to-USB enclosures anyhow. And again: if you need that much speed or more, an actively cooled DAS is likely better suited to your workload. The aim of this product is clearly to bring mid-high performance to lower price brackets. And again: sure, it's going to get a bit toasty under sustained loads. It will no doubt throttle if it's stuck in a cheapo plastic casing and hammered with writes. But that's just the thing: throttling prevents overheating, which again prevents a lot of early hardware death. This is only an issue if you're looking for something this isn't: a high-performance external SSD for strenuous usage. If that's what you're looking for, this product isn't for you, and in case that wasn't clear, that's not at all a reason for the product not to exist or to be called bad.
Also: you'd do well to try not expressing yourself like an obnoxious and condescending ass. What's the point?
Beaver M. - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
I work in that sector, my friend. I said everything I wanted to say. As always some troll comes along and tries to talk stuff he doesnt know anything about. I dont care what you say. I know whats going on. And I also know a lot of manufacturers get more audacious every year. Look for example at the gaming monitors, which are maybe worth $300 at max, have no proper QC, or even QA, yet get sold for $1000 to $2000. So I wouldnt be surprised if someone tries to sell a flawed product again.As I said, not much use trying to talk sense into you. You attacked me first with your implications that I lie. So dont point your finger at me now. Thats a troll tactic.
Valantar - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
Implications that you lie? What on earth are you talking about? I _disagreed with you_. If you can't tell the difference or see that as an attack, that's your problem not mine. And if you claim this is a "troll tactic", you're clearly not actually interested in discussing. If so, again, that's your problem, not mine.As for working in "that sector", it's not clear what you mean by that (storage? flash production? something else?), and how on earth would I know? But regardless of that, you seem to have a lacking overview of the current portable storage market. There are plenty of flash drives currently available with speeds in roughly this class, most of them based on SATA-to-USB bridges. You say OEMs tried initially but gave up because of high failure rates; availability of drives like Patriot's Supersonic Rage, SanDisk's CZ880, HyperX's Savage, Corsair's Voyager GTX, and other drives with 300-400MB/s transfer rates shows that this is still a viable product category and has wide availability. Do they get hot? Absolutely! AnandTech's reviews of products in this class has shown quite a lot of throttling. Do they fail prematurely? Well, most flash drives are made cheaply and have poor protection, so one could argue yes, but these are no more likely to fail than any other flash drive - unless you use them in a manner they're not designed to handle. In which case, again, an actively cooled DAS is what you ought to be using.
As for comparing this to gaming monitors (which is a very broad field, and as with anything there are both some good products deserving of premium pricing and some overpriced garbage), that's a bit weird. Flash drives are a commodity - even high-speed ones - while monitors are not. There's a lot of scammy crap in the computer industry, but dismissing what looks to be a decent low-cost, low-power, mid-performance single-chip USB SSD controller - with hitherto unproven performance and heat output - due to whatever bad experiences you have had or read about, that's ... illogical. At best. Nobody is saying this will be the be-all, end-all of flash drives, but there's reason to believe it'll roughly match SATA-to-USB bridge flash drives in performance while running cooler and costing less. Isn't that a good thing? We should of course wait for reviews - as with everything - but your categorical dismissal is out of touch with reality.
Santoval - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
What about I/O? And why on Earth strangle it with a USB 3.0 (as was simply -and elegantly- used to be called before USB-IF retroactively -and foolishly- rebranded it to USB 3.1 Gen 1 and now doubled on the branding absurdity by a retroactive rebrand of the retroactive rebrand to USB 3.2 Gen 1...) interface, which is now two generations behind the cutting edge?name99 - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
“Strangle it?” Are you serious? 400MB/s on a USB stick isn’t good enough for you? When alternative USB stick technologies may run at ~8MB/s?Christ, kids these days...
Valantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Pretty sure this is meant as a low-cost alternative to slower USB flash drives, bringing decent performance down in price, not a replacement for current high-end flash drives.Lord of the Bored - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
USB SuperSpeed 5.Valantar - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
What strikes me is just how simply that PCB is laid out. Ought to bode well for low-cost, high-capacity drives.lilkwarrior - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Kind of DOA with USB4 converging w/ Thunderbolt 3 and why on earth would most modern PC users would want it in a USB-A form form factor instead of USB-C?Especially considering high-end laptops? They have USB-A for legacy (primarily business) reasons, but it's prone to connectivity breakage & etc that USB-C was made to make obsolete.
Valantar - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
The chip has native USB-C support, they likely just made it type-A for the demo as it's a bit easier to implement. As for this being DOA: TB3 is expensive and power-hungry, this is clearly meant to improve the performance of cheap(er) flash drives, not fight for high end performance accolades. Arguably this is more important - we already have fast, expensive TB3 storage, lifting the performance floor has more value at this point than raising the ceiling.NGneer - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
BTW, by the looks of it in the photo, I believe that controller chip is a 68 lead QFP rather than a QFN (N = No leads, just pads). Now you know, just in case it's ever a trivia question ;-)LordConrad - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Or just get one of these and use any M.2 SATA you wish.https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B68T2V3/ref...
Valantar - Sunday, June 2, 2019 - link
Well, yes, but it'll be more expensive than anything based on this. Still a good solution, but this also has a use case.vailr - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
Samsung's SSD support software "SSD Magician" needs to be able to work while an NVMe SSD is housed inside an external housing. The current controller chip used in several such devices is the J-Micron "JMS583" controller, which does not work with Samsung's SSD Magician software. Perhaps this new SM3282 controller would finally enable that Samsung software to properly work for firmware updates, and other type of functions on Samsung branded NVMe SSD's.Valantar - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
This controller isn't an NVMe-to-USB adapter, so you couldn't use it to attach an existing SSD to a PC in the first place. This is for making bespoke USB-only "SSD-like" flash drives in a SATA-like performance bracket.GL1zdA - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
How is this different to what Phison already does: https://www.phison.com/en/solutions/consumer/remov... ??