With the increasing adoption of NAND and SSDs, the need to have multiple lines aimed at different segments has become ever more necessary. As part of their changing strategy, Plextor added several additional lineups on top of their usual P (extreme) and S (mainstream) SSDs. While the M8Pe lineup has since been launched and reviewed, the M8Se drives are reportedly launching at CES in January.
Compared to the M8Pe drives, the M8Se series will use the same Marvell 88SS1093 controller which supports NVMe and TLC. As expected of Plextor, we can expect their own custom firmware on top of the triple core design from Marvell. The key difference is that we will be seeing 15nm TLC NAND instead of the faster 15nm MLC NAND in the P series. Given the ubiquitous use of SLC caching, I expect only the heaviest sustained workloads will see a major difference.
In addition to the M8Se drives, Plextor is also expected to jump into 3D NAND as well. The company has been holding off on adoption but that is expected to change at CES. There is no word yet as to which solution will be used but SMI’s 2258 seems the most likely. However, we may yet be surprised at CES as new controllers may also debut then as well. It looks like Plextor will be addressing both the high-end mainstream and budget markets at the same time.
