Plextor M8Pe PCIe SSD To Debut At CES 2016

By Nathan Kirsch

Plextor M7e

It appears that Plextor has scrapped the M7e PCIe SSD that was going to use the Marvell 88SS9293 controller and that the successor to the M6e PCIe SSD released in 2014 will be the M8Pe in Q1 2016. We were told that the Plextor M7e wouldn’t likely make it to market this summer due to a number of reasons, but the main reason was likely performance. The Plextor M7e was a PCIe 2.0 device that had sequential read/write performance of up to 1400MB/s and 1000MB/s with 4K Random read performance at up to 125,000 Input/Output operations per second (IOPS) and 4K Random Write performance at up to 140,000 IOPS. Not bad performance numbers compared to SATA SSD’s, but nothing exciting when Samsung released a PCIe 3.0 x4 product in September 2015 (SSD Pro 950) that is faster across the board.

plextor m7e

The upcoming Plextor M8Pe storage drive used the M.2 form factor that connects to the system through a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection, uses the NVMe protocol and should be durable TLC NAND Flash memory chips. Plextor claims that they are able to get 4KB random reads up to 270,000 IOPS and 4KB write up to 150,000 IOPS with the M8Pe PCIe SSD. The Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB drive is rated as having up to 300,000 IOPS for 4KB Random Read speeds and up to 110,000 IOPS for 4K Random Write speeds, so Plextor will be able to compete with the M8Pe Solid-State Drive. The Plextor M8Pe sequential performance numbers have not been released yet nor has the warranty or TBW ratings. Plextor also isn’t talking about pricing, what capacities will be available or release dates, but we are sure that all those details will be told at CES 2016. The one thing that they have released is a picture of the M8Pe that can be shown below.

Plextor M8Pe SSD

In other news, Plextor will also be showing off an improved M7v SATA Drive at CES 2016. The Plextor M7V uses 15nm TLC NAND Flash And PlexTurbo 3.0 to become a storage drive aimed at the entry level SSD market with ~500MB/s sequential read/write speeds. Plextor first showed off the M7V at Computex 2015, so they have been working on the firmware for that drive for over half a year.