Marvell
Marvell had an impressive display behind closed doors at Computex 2015. Three products, in particular, really stood out.
The 88NV1140 and 88NV1120 entry-level controllers operate over PCIe or SATA, depending on the model. These are two-channel processors manufactured at 28nm for low power consumption. To date, we've only written about NVMe on very high-end products. But this new series brings the interface down to tablets and embedded environments. In the display area, we saw a DRAM-less NVMe SSD running an HD movie in a Chromebook-type system. This is another race to the bottom class of product, except it sports an NVMe twist that facilitates higher-than-SATA performance.
Marvell also displayed Toshiba 15nm TLC flash running at 500 MB/s sequential read and 220 MB/s sequential write speeds, powered by its 88SS1074 controller. That part is already in a branded drive waiting to be launched. Lite-On will use the 88SS1074 in its CV2 SATA SSD. Once the final version is ready, sequential write speeds should top 480 MB/s using Toshiba 15nm TLC with advanced LDPC error correction technology to keep data safe.
Two products make up Marvell's high-end tier. The 88SS1093 (Eldora) and 88SS1094 (Eldora Lite) are both NVMe-based PCIe 3.0 x4 controllers for M.2 and add-in card form factors. Eldora uses eight channels, while Eldora Lite employs four. We expect to see Eldora in 110mm M.2 SSDS and Eldora Lite in 80mm M.2 drives.
Eldora was the fastest SSD we saw on display at Computex 2015. It was just a little faster than Phison's PS5007-E7 at 2900 MB/s sequential read.
