Samsung launched the 850 EVO couple of months ago. The 850 EVO paired Samsung’s own MGX/MEX controller with its 2nd Gen 40nm processing node 3D V-NAND. Samsung packed the 850 EVO with improved TurboWrite and RAPID Mode 2.0 technologies. The result is that the 850 EVO is a very competitive drive that delivers excellent performance and features. The 850 EVO we reviewed a couple of month ago uses SATA 6 Gbps interface that is typical for a desktop system. The growing trends of moving toward more compact computing devices such as laptops and small form factor PC means that even the relatively small 2.5” SATA drive with its dimension of 7 cm x 10 cm x 0.7 cm (LWD) is taking up way too much of the precious space in these systems. The mSATA was designed to help reduce the footprint of the storage devices but it never quite caught on. The M.2, also known as Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF), is the latest interface that is designed to reduce not only the footprint but also maximize the usage of the card space. Since M.2 utilizes PCIE interface, it can deliver up to 32 GBit/s when using PCIE 3.0 x4 interface (though no drive is yet capable to taking such bandwidth). Compare this to the 6 Gbit/s, and we can see the benefit of M.2.



Link: Bjorn3D