With the SATA to NVMe transition well under way, NVMe drives have started to enter the market in large numbers. The chief conduit for the NVMe protocol is the popular M.2 form factor. Due to its small size and flexibility, M.2 has displaced the traditional drive form factor, at least for consumer uses. In order to bolster their SSD offerings, Toshiba has revealed their new XG5 M.2 Performance NVMe SSD.
Just like the XG3, the new XG5 makes use of the M.2 2280 form factor. Since it is a new drive, it moves onto the newer PCIe 3.0 interface along with the newer NVMe 1.2 protocol. The XG5, even though it is performance oriented, uses TLC. However, it is the latest Toshiba 64-layer BiCS Flash 3D TLC NAND flash memory. For thin M.2 drives, TLC is often a requirement to hit the higher capacities demanded by many users.
Toshiba is releasing the XG5 in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB capacities. Performance is pretty standard for a TLC NVMe drive with sequential transfer reads of up to 3,000 MB/s and writes up to 2,100 MB/s. Just like any TLC SSD worth its salt, the XG5 features pseudo SLC caching. There is no word yet on which controller the XG5 uses. The drive should become available within the week as an OEM drive.
