China is About To Launch SSDs So Small You Insert Them Like a SIM Card (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0178683406
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/15/104251/china-is-about-to-launch-ssds-so-small-you-insert-them-like-a-sim-card
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/news/759624/china-is-about-to-launch-ssds-so-small-you-insert-them-like-a-sim-card
The "Mini SSD" by Biwin measures 15mm x 17mm x 1.4mm thick and connects via PCIe 4x2, offering 512GB to 2TB capacities. The drive inserts into devices using a SIM card-style tray mechanism and claims IP68 water resistance plus three-meter drop protection. Two gaming portables announced at ChinaJoy will include slots for the drives: GPD's Win 5 handheld and OneNetbook's OneXPlayer Super X hybrid laptop/tablet, both powered by AMD's Strix Halo processors. The Mini SSD outpaces MicroSD Express cards used in Nintendo Switch 2 by nearly four times, though full-size M.2 drives remain faster at up to 14,000MB/s.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/759624/china-is-about-to-launch-ssds-so-small-you-insert-them-like-a-sim-card
This is impressive (Score:2)
At about the size of a human nail I can imagine loads of uses for this. Computers can get even smaller with this, which would be a real advantage. Devices which need to be small (such as phones) can absolutely make good use of this.
Re: (Score:3)
MicroSDs have been around for years, in that range of capacity, and are actually a little bit smaller. (Slower, though.)
Endurance? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the endurance of these drives? How many write cycles before failure?
Re: (Score:2)
These will have fewer chips with fewer layers so NAND redundancy and wear leveling will be much lower. Expect close to microSD levels of TBW (aka very low, probably 25TB per TB)
Imagine it, but with 1xPCIe 5 (Score:2)
The extra expense of the PCIe 5 circuitry would be balanced by having 1 less amplificator and one less set of Pads to the external world, while maintaning speed.
Wins all around.
The next Speed Bump will come with PCIe 6
Hope this, or something like it, gets standarized across the industry, like what happened with Dell's CAMM, that Del gave free of charge to JEDEC, so that CAMM2 could become an indsutry wide neutral standard.
Time to kill MicroSD (Score:2)
MicroSD has been around for 20 years now, and it's been another 6 years of SD before that. They can now fit tons of storage in the format, but they can't bump it up to modern performance speeds. It's time to find a new format that overcomes that. Now I'm not saying that this is necessarily the right answer, but it's certainly something in the right direction.
Why Not just M.2? (Score:3)
What I don't understand is why there is no card/slot for M.2 drives. Even a full length one is not much larger than a USB drive, and the slot could be made similar to a larger USB-C style connector. Is there something technological, like trace length limitations, that makes that difficult?
Re: (Score:3)
I think the reason may have to do with mechanical properties of the connectors. They are not designed for frequent insertion/removal cycles that an external slot would imply.
Otherwise, I don't think an SATA M.2 drive would not have problems with trace lengths. NVMe might be more difficult.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think those are hot-swappable? Maybe they are but i've never seen it or tried it.
Re: (Score:3)
Does nobody remember expresscard? It had a narrow slot format that would be perfect. There were slot-in SSD's for the format back then as well.