Toshiba calls its new RC100 drive an "Everybody" NVMe (SSD). The company leveraged its multi-chip package (MCP) technology to fit the SSD controller and flash into a single package. The RC100 is essentially a BGA SSD put on a consumer friendly M.2 2242 board to shave costs.
The DRAM-less design helps cut costs even more by using a small portion of your system memory to handle the flash translation layer map cache. The technology only works over PCI Express, and that's the largest selling point for the RC100, next to the low price. Toshiba's thought process here is that you'll buy the RC100 over a mainstream or premium grade SATA SSD. This isn't a new concept, it's just a new spin on selling an entry-level NVMe drive.
Toshiba brings the RC100 to market in three capacities that range from 120GB to 480GB. Prices fit the intended purpose, starting at just $60 and moving up to $155 ($25 more than a Samsung 860 EVO 500GB).
The performance varies between the three sizes, but the 480GB shows the strongest performance with up to 1,600 MB/s sequential read, and 1,100 MB/s sequential writes. Random performance tops off at 150,000 IOPS read and 110,000 IOPS write thanks to Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology.
In the coming weeks we hope to publish a full review of the new RC100 to see if it successfully lives up to the promise of outperforming the best SATA SSDs with a nearly equivalent sale price.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | RC100 120GB | RC100 240GB | RC100 480GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSRP | $60 | $80 | $155 |
| Form Factor | M.2 2242 | M.2 2242 | M.2 2242 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 3.0 x2 / NVMe 1.3 |
| Controller | Toshiba MCP | Toshiba MCP | Toshiba MCP |
| DRAM | None (HMB) | None (HMB) | None (HMB) |
| Memory | Toshiba 64-Layer TLC | Toshiba 64-Layer TLC | Toshiba 64-Layer TLC |
| Sequential Read | Up To 1,350 MB/s | Up To 1,600 MB/s | Up To 1,600 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | Up To 700 MB/s | Up To 1,050 MB/s | Up To 1,100 MB/s |
| Random Read | Up To 80,000 IOPS | Up To 130,000 IOPS | Up To 150,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | Up To 85,000 IOPS | Up To 110,000 IOPS | Up To 110,000 IOPS |
| Endurance | 60 TBW | 120 TBW | 240 TBW |
| Warranty | 3-Years | 3-Years | 3-Years |
