Previewing Silicon Motion SM2260 NVMe Controller With 3D MLC NAND (512GB)

ATTO

ATTO's Disk Benchmark is a quick and easy freeware tool to measure drive performance across various transfer sizes.

Silicon Motion SM2260 512GB 3D MLCADATA Premier SP550 120GBADATA Premier SP550 240GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 120GBADATA XPG SX930 240GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 120GBCrucial BX100 250GBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX100 1TBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial BX200 960GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 250GBCrucial MX200 500GBCrucial MX200 1TBCrucial MX300 750GBIntel 540s 480GBOCZ Trion 100 240GBOCZ Trion 100 480GBOCZ Trion 100 960GBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBOCZ VX500 256GBOCZ VX500 512GBOCZ VX500 1TBPatriot Hellfire 480GBPlextor M6V 256GBPNY CS1311 120GBPNY CS1311 240GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 240GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 750 EVO 120GBSamsung 750 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 120GBSamsung 850 EVO mSATA 250GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 500GBSamsung 850 EVO 120GBSamsung 850 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 2TBSamsung 850 EVO 4TBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 2TBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 960GBSanDisk Ultra II 240GBSanDisk X400 1TBToshiba Q300 480GBIntel SSD 750 1.2TB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe)OCZ RD400A 256GBOCZ RD400A 512GBOCZ RD400A 1TBSamsung SM951 512GB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - AHCI)Samsung XP941 512GB (PCIe 2.0 x4 - AHCI)Samsung 950 Pro 256GBSamsung 950 Pro 512GBSamsung 960 Pro 2TBSamsung 960 EVO 1TB

The SM2260 is close to its full write speed when the transfer size is 16kB, but full read speed takes much longer to attain and occurs at 512kB, after which thermal throttling slows things back down.

AS-SSD

AS-SSD is another quick and free benchmark tool. It uses incompressible data for all of its tests, making it an easy way to keep an eye on which drives are relying on transparent data compression. The short duration of the test makes it a decent indicator of peak drive performance.

The peak sequential read speed of the SM2260 sample as measured by AS-SSD is slightly higher than the Intel SSD 600p instead of being tied as shown by our longer IOmeter test, but they both are still behind the rest of the NVMe crowd. For write speed, the SLC cache enables the SM2260 to beat the Intel SSD 750 in addition to the 600p, but it is also slightly slower than its more recent NVMe competition.

Idle Power Consumption

Since the ATSB tests based on real-world usage cut idle times short to 25ms, their power consumption scores paint an inaccurate picture of the relative suitability of drives for mobile use. During real-world client use, a solid state drive will spend far more time idle than actively processing commands. We report two measures of idle power consumption: active idle where the SSD is not in use but has not been put in to any low-power sleep state, and idle power consumption in the deepest sleep state supported by our testbed. For NVMe SSDs, the lowest drive power state is measured but PCIe Active State Power Management (ASPM) is not used due to limitations of this motherboard. For SATA SSDs, aggressive link power management is used to put the SATA link into slumber state. Many SSDs support a deeper DevSleep state, but this cannot be engaged using ordinary desktop platforms.

The SM2260 sample has slightly worse idle power consumption than the Intel SSD 600p, but it's ahead of the Plextor M8Pe and OCZ RD400, while the Phison E7-based Patriot Hellfire is in a distant last place among M.2 PCIe SSDs. Samsung continues to deliver far better idle power that is close to what we typically see for SATA SSDs.

For active idle power without making use of any explicit power saving modes, the SM2260 does better than any PCIe SSD and better than at least one SATA SSD, but the SM2260 sample is still using a bit more power than the Intel SSD 600p.