Going Even Faster With PCIe 4 and 176L NAND

First introduced in CES 2022 this morning, SK hynix will finally launch the new retail consumer SSD, the Platinum P41. The successor to the popular Gold P31, the P41 incorporates SK hynix’s latest controller and NAND technology, upgrading its flagship SSD lineup with PCIe 4.0 connectivity and comparable performance. Although the price of the 2TB model is over $ 260, SK Hynix has even greater ambitions than before and seems to be placing the P41 head-on in the high-end segment of the SSD market.

SK Hynix has a long-standing reputation in the NAND and OEMS SD markets, but its presence in the consumer retail market is much more recent. The company just started working on (modern) retail SSDs in the Gold P31 series in August 2020. But with a single generation and a single product alone, SK Hynix was able to establish its market position based on the strength of the first P31 drive. With solid performance and amazing power efficiency, the P31 is compatible with the very popular PCIe 3 SSD, especially for aftermarket laptop upgrades. And now, SK Hynix is ​​trying to improve that of the PCIe 4 generation with Platinum P41.

Seen from above, the Platinum P41 SSD is a direct follow-up to the P31. SK hynix aims to recreate early success with even faster NVMe drives by adopting an updated controller (Aries) and the latest generation of 176-layer TLC NAND. Still, there is also an element about the structure and feature set of P41, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” This is not a bad thing that comes from P31. This is a bit better than the faster PCIe 4.0 version of the venerable P31, but not much.

At the heart of this latest SSD is Aries, SK hynix’s in-house controller. This is the company’s first PCIe 4.0 controller. SK hynix does not provide a detailed breakdown of the spec, but we do know that it implements a multi-core CPU setup. Also, given the drive structure and the company’s 176L TLC NAND, this seems to be another 4-channel design. This is very different from other high-end NVMe SSDs, which are typically 8-channel designs, like the previous P31.

Paired with Aries is a DRAM buffer, typically 1GB per 1TB of flash ratio. SK Hynix again uses its own DRAM and uses LPDDR4 memory. Given how new Aries is, I’m a little surprised that SK Hynix isn’t using LPDDR5 here, but unless there’s a way to take advantage of the additional benefits of LPDDR5, after all, the benefits are Limited.

On the NAND side, this is the first retail SSD with SK hynix’s 176LTLC3D NAND. SK Hynix can’t open the first door of this generation with the 176L NAND (Micron gets its title), but it’s essentially one of only a handful of drives on the market with the latest generation of drives. It is one. NAND.

Based on disclosures from the ISSCC and other events, the SK Hynix 176L seems to be very similar to the previous generation 128L NAND. We are still considering 512Gb dies organized in four planes, and the company seems to be investing most of its profits in reducing the physical die size instead. Therefore, SK Hynix can fully equip the P41 with just 1TB of NAND, which is reflected in the performance figures. On the other hand, the speed of the I / O interface is 50% faster than the previous generation (1.6Gb / sec), but the program throughput of the new NAND is about 27% faster, 168MB / sec on one die. ..

Otherwise, given that SK Hynix’s 176L NAND does not improve the capacity of the die at all, it is not so surprising that the overall capacity of the SSD remains unchanged compared to the P31. In other words, the lineup starts at 500GB and ends at 2TB. This is sufficient for most markets, but not particularly impressive in mid-2022. However, this also means that SK hynix can maintain a single-sided structure. That is, place all components at the top of the drive. This makes it especially suitable for cramped laptops and other devices where NAND on the back is used. Not desirable.

In many respects, the new P41 drive is very similar to the doubled P31. The sequential read speed is estimated to be up to 7GB / sec, which is basically a PCIe bottleneck. On the other hand, a fully equipped drive is rated at a maximum of 6.5GB / sec. As always, this goes against the SLC cache, so the speed after spilling over to the TLC will be much slower. SK hynix does not publish official throughput figures, but may be considering 2.0-2.1GB / sec for sequential writes based on the P31 specification and the faster program throughput of 176L NAND. .. As a result, like other PCIe 4.0 drives, PCIe speeds are faster than TLC NAND itself, widening the gap between cached and uncached writes.

Random IOPS performance is also significantly improved over the previous generation P31. SK Hynix claims 1.4M random read IOPS and similarly ferocious 1.3 million random write IOPS. These have high queue depths (QD32), so performance on QD1 is much lower, but still in the tens of thousands of IOPS ranges. In that respect, even the partially implemented 500GB model is rated at a higher IOPS rate than the fastest P31.

On the other hand, the drive / NAND write durability has not changed from P31. That is, 500 TBW for a 500GB drive, 750 TBW for a 1TB drive, and 1200 TBW for a maximum 2TB drive. This results in 0.3 drive writes per day on the largest drive and slightly increases to near 0.5 DWPD on the smallest drive.

Performance aside, another major factor in the popularity of the original P31 is its power consumption, which requires attention to the new P41. The official rating for top-end active power consumption is 7.5W, 1.2W more than P31. Given that I’ve never seen a 1TB P31 reach 6.3W, it’s unlikely that a P41 will reach 7.5W. However, the power consumption of SSDs, especially SSD controllers, has increased with the move to PCIe 4.0, and SK hynix is ​​not affected by that. Therefore, it would be very interesting to see where the P41s are and if they can maintain high active power efficiency. On the other hand, the power consumption values ​​for idle and deep sleep are unchanged at less than 50 mW and less than 5 mW, respectively.

Beyond peak performance figures, SK Hynix hasn’t published any additional performance data / benchmarks, so it’s hard to say where you’re officially expecting a landing drive compared to your competitors. However, if retail prices reflect the expected performance, SK Hynix seems to be aiming for a high-end market.and $ 2602TB P41 is a price that competes with Samsung’s flagship product, the 980 Pro, $ 150 For 1TB model $ 105 For the 500GB model. This brings the 2TB model drive to 13 ¢ / GB and grows from there.

Needless to say, these prices have been significantly raised from P31 pricing and are very affordable, usually less than 10 ¢ / GB, even if the drive isn’t for sale (even if it’s sold frequently). It is a price drive. Compared to the P31, the P41 should be significantly faster in all cases, but SK hynix certainly doesn’t sell affordable drives here. Conversely, if SK Hynix wants to charge the flagship price, it must ensure that the P41 offers flagship performance. Otherwise, you may have trouble moving this drive in the market where there are many other options for high-end PCIe 4.0 TLC SSD.

In any case, today’s launch means that PC users will have the opportunity to check new drives directly. SK Hynix has already started selling new drives hours before today’s embargo and, like the P31, is focused on selling directly to consumers. Amazon store front.. All three drive capacities are backed by a five-year warranty.