Building high-performance SSDs requires the use of multiple high-performance 3D NAND flash memory devices, which is why the fastest client SSDs usually come in an M.2-2280 form-factor. As devices become smaller many modern PCs require small yet fast storage devices. This week Kioxia introduced its BG5 family of tiny SSDs that bring together an M.2 form-factor, a PCIe 4.0 interface, and decent performance.
Kioxia’s BG5-series SSDs carry 256GB, 512GB or 1024GB of the company’s 112-layer BiCS5 3D NAND memory with a 1.2 GT/s interface and come in an M.2-2230 form-factor. The drives rely on an unknown NVMe 1.4-compliant controller (most probably from Phison, though we a speculating), though Kioxia probably uses its own firmware to optimize performance and power consumption of its tiny SSDs.
Speaking of performance, Kioxia rates its BG5 drives for up to 3,500 MB/s sequential read and an up to 2,900 MB/s sequential write speed as well as up to 500K random read IOPS and up to 450K random read IOPS.
