14 DAY TRIAL // NVMe is short for Non-Volatile Memory Express and defines solid state drives accessed through the PCI Express interface. Essentially, they are solid state drives that take the PCI Express, 2.5-inch, or M.2 form factor. Marvell has just released a controller chip for such SSDs, although it is only applicable to M.2 and 2.5-inch units.
It is called 88SS1093 and allows drives (modules) to reach up to 2 TB capacities, as well as very high speeds of 4 GB/s.
That's leagues ahead of even the 1.8 GB/s exhibited in the recent past by high-end SSDs. It's all because of support for up to four PCI Express 3.0 lanes.
Though that performance will only be attainable on M.2 SSDs wired through the PCI Express interface instead of SATA. Also, SATA Express 2.5-inch units will be able to leverage the speed properly, thanks to the 12 Gbps bandwidth.
Other than performance, the SSDs powered by Marvell's new 88SS1093 NVMe SSD controller will boast NANDEdge LDPC error correction and Tri-core CPU architecture.
Finally, the controller can manage down to 15 nm TLC/MLC/SLC and 3D NAND chips while consuming little power, thanks to the low-power management (L1.2) design.
Currently, Marvell's chip is sampling to certain customers, which means that 4 GB/s super SSDs could debut before the year is out.