In a nutshell: A mysterious Microsoft storage drive has surfaced on X that may very well be utilized in knowledge facilities and servers. The Z1000 SSD in query makes use of a CNEX Labs controller mated to 4 256 GB Toshiba Bit-Cost Scalable Generation 4 96-layer 3D eTLC NAND flash modules for a complete capability of 960 GB. There can also be a gigabyte of Micron-made DDR4 used as cache.
Assuming the drive makes use of PCIe 4.0, it may very well be decently quick. Then once more, whether it is meant for knowledge facilities and servers, pure velocity most likely isn’t a high precedence.
Interestingly sufficient, a label affixed to the drive identifies it as an engineering identical with a date of 5/18/2020 hooked up. If that’s certainly the drive’s manufacturing date, it means the sample is sort of 4 years previous at this level. This probably guidelines out the opportunity of it being a PCIe 5.0 drive as such tech was in its very early states in mid-2020.
SSDï¼Â Microsoft Z1000 960GB M.2 22110 NVMe 1.2
主æ§(Control)ï¼Â CNEXLabs CNX-2670AA-CB2T(19y6w)
�”åÂ(Cache)ï¼Â Micronï¼ÂD9VPPï¼Â DDR4 1GB MT40A1G8SA-075:E
�-�'(NAND)ï¼Â Toshiba 3D eTLC – 256GB TH58LJT1V24BA8Hï¼Âbics4 96Lï¼Â https://t.co/pJegEYzsph pic.twitter.com/ifgxTDiiJM– �”åÂÂå®Â�–YuuKi_AnS (@yuuki_ans) March 9, 2024
Tom’s Hardware additionally identified the additional BGA mounting factors in among the leaked pictures, the place an extra chip may very well be added. There are additionally a number of unused solder factors on each side of the SSD, suggesting increased capability fashions are certainly doable and sure exist, maybe in 2 TB or 4 TB variants.
The publication factors to a number of clues suggesting this may very well be an information heart half. For starters, you will have the CNEX Labs controller itself. This privately-held firm was based in 2013 and has beforehand been linked to 3D XPoint and Optane drives. Tom’s additionally notes the drive is a 22100 mannequin, that means it’s 100mm in size. That is a bit longer than drives generally present in unusual PCs like 2280s which measure 80mm lengthy.
The foremost motive why now we have not heard a lot about this drive up thus far is probably going because of the easy incontrovertible fact that it’s not a retail half. It would possibly reside solely in Microsoft servers, therefore the rationale to not promote it.
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