Move over M.2, here comes M.3*

[NumLock21]

M.2 drive have been with us for a while now, with their slim gum stick design allowing for small form factor builds, even a 2.5 inch drive cannot achieve. While M.2 is great on the consumer side, it's not so great for the enterprise. Enter M.3 where now enterprise can also get the same gum stick form factor with a lot more features.
 

Quote

 

The two M.3 SSDs we've seen thus far from Samsung and now Adata feature a wider (30.5mm vs 22mm) width that gives manufacturers more surface area to mount components. The extra surface area gives the companies more options with NAND packages, host power failure capacitors, and larger controllers. Adata's IM3P33E1 features a PCIe 3.0 x4 host connector that support hot plug. The drive will enter the market in sizes that range from 240GB to 1.92TB. This is lower than Samsung's, which reaches up to 16TB, but much more economical. Adata claims up to 3,200 MB/s sequential and 1,800 MB/s sequential write speeds over the NVMe 1.3 protocol.

The connector in the server doesn't use an angle when inserting the drive. This direct, straight through connector gives users hot plug capabilities without the use of a complicated mechanism. The only server we've seen with the M.3 form factor puts 34 drive sleds on the front of the 1U chassis. The server consolidates the drives vertically and fits more high-speed storage than possible with 2.5" U.2 ever could in 1.75" height server.

The pin out is the same between M.2 and M.3, but don't expect to use these in your desktop anytime soon. The two M.3 drives we've seen from Samsung and Adata use 12v instead of 5v.

 

 

* M.3 name is not set in stone yet, they just calling M.3 for now.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/adata-im3p33e1-m.3-ssd-nvme,36332.html

[Trik'Stari]

Interesting. My first thought was "I work on laptops in a large scale deployment environment, that have M.2 spaces and go unused, so why would they design a new form factor when companies aren't using the older version that's available".

 

But I hadn't considered what I am going to call "extreme small form factor storage" usage in an actual server environment.

 

Any idea if this will reduce power usage or heat generation? Or is it going to just be higher storage density per rack kind of deal? Maybe a mix of all three?

 

Still, pretty neat. Wonder when @LinusTech will upgrade his server room with one lol

[captain_to_fire]

Now when will Samsung release a M.3 update to their existing 960 Evo/Pro. 

[Damascus]

I'm not a fan of the name, I feel that the actual naming convention world work better

 

Standard m.2

M.2 2280

 

"M.3" 

M.2 30.580, or just 3080 to save the decimal

[RadiatingLight]

IMO seems like a dumb update.

if this is for servers, then why would you want 500 small M.3 SSDs, when you could instead create a standard that's more square, and much larger.

Intel's ruler SSDs seem better than this.

 

that being said, this form factor is really new, so there will obviously be winners, losers, and a clusterfuck of different protocols in the transition period (M.2, U.2, M.3, Intel ruler SSD, etc.)

[Orangeator]

So this M.3 is strictly for enterprise grade work, not for the consumer correct? We won't be seeing consumer level $150-$250 MOBO's with this new standard right?

[Damascus]

10 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

We won't be seeing consumer level $150-$250 MOBO's with this new standard right?

You'll notice my complaint up above, this isn't a new standard connector - it's still m.2

 

Meaning any current mobo will probably accept one, though the power draw will likely lead to incompatibility.

 

Quote

The pin out is the same between M.2 and M.3, but don't expect to use these in your desktop anytime soon. The two M.3 drives we've seen from Samsung and Adata use 12v instead of 5v. Even the name M.3 is not a technically correct term at this time—it's a specification that does not exist. 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, hey_yo_ said:

Now when will Samsung release a M.3 update to their existing 960 Evo/Pro. 

Kinda is what Samsung was showing off with this new form factor since they were the ones pushing it the most.

 

Quote

Utilizing the new NGSFF drive instead of M.2 drives in a 1U server can increase the storage capacity of the system by four times. To highlight the advantages, Samsung demonstrated a reference server system that delivers 576TB in a 1U rack, using 36 16TB NGSFF SSDs. The 1U reference system can process about 10 million random read IOPS, which triples the IOPS performance of a 1U server equipped with 2.5-inch SSDs. A petabyte capacity can be achieved using only two of the 576TB systems.

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-far-reaching-v-nand-memory-solutions-to-tackle-data-processing-and-storage-challenges

[Orangeator]

2 minutes ago, Damascus said:

You'll notice my complaint up above, this isn't a new standard connector - it's still m.2

 

Meaning any current mobo will probably accept one, though the power draw will likely lead to incompatibility.

 

 

Yes, I understand what you are saying... But my question fell more in line with the physical size of the new standard. It's wider, meaning at least on nearly every MOBO with M.2 support today, these new drives would not fit on. Not because of the connecter but rather the body. So I was really asking will there be consumer boards with this new "M.3" device in mind?

 

However, I did miss the comment on the voltage usage... That's not a good thing honestly.

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

if this is for servers, then why would you want 500 small M.3 SSDs, when you could instead create a standard that's more square, and much larger.

Intel's ruler SSDs seem better than this.

Rack space actually costs a lot of money if you are renting rack space. Currently takes us nearly two full 42U cabinets to get 600TB of storage, not using 8TB+ HDDs though. The OP image shown isn't actually the complete product either, see below.

 

[Damascus]

16 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

But my question fell more in line with the physical size of the new standard. It's wider, meaning at least on nearly every MOBO with M.2 support today, these new drives would not fit on.

Anything with a daughterboard or backmounted drive should work.

[Sakkura]

3 hours ago, RadiatingLight said:

IMO seems like a dumb update.

if this is for servers, then why would you want 500 small M.3 SSDs, when you could instead create a standard that's more square, and much larger.

Intel's ruler SSDs seem better than this.

 

that being said, this form factor is really new, so there will obviously be winners, losers, and a clusterfuck of different protocols in the transition period (M.2, U.2, M.3, Intel ruler SSD, etc.)

Intel's ruler seems to be very long and just go into a backplane. M.3 is smaller but more adaptable.

 

If you just want a storage-only 1U then Intel's solution is obviously more space-efficient, but Samsung's M.3 idea could be useful in other niches.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, CUDA_Cores said:

If M.2 is so great why isn't there an M.3? Oh wait...

I'm still on M.1

[Sniperfox47]

Stupid question, but why would 12v prevent it from working with your home motherboard?

 

Don't standard m.2 E-key and M-key slots have 3.3v, 5v, and 12v lines? (PCIe defaults to 12v for example and there are m.2 to PCIe risers out there...)

 

What am I missing here?

[Doobeedoo]

As mentioned im the article, don't expect it on the consumer side any time soon. Many are more than fine with SATA SSDs and current NVMe for enthusiasts, not to mention prices. Also it will still take time until we all transition to SSD only and price of them go down. 

I wonder how they'll figure out having many of them connected. Can't really take that many space on mobo screwing like 10 M.2's maybe on back hah. But something like U.2 connector could work as SATA replacement. 

 

Also when is the rumored Samsung 980 series of NVMe gonna come though. I guess in time, enterprise version was shown. 

[Misanthrope]

I do hope this gets called m.2 but knowing how stupid standards are named, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being m.2 version 1.1

[Drak3]

4 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Stupid question, but why would 12v prevent it from working with your home motherboard?

 

Don't standard m.2 E-key and M-key slots have 3.3v, 5v, and 12v lines? (PCIe defaults to 12v for example and there are m.2 to PCIe risers out there...)

 

What am I missing here?

Consumer M.2 SSDs run off the 5V lines. That's what consumer mainboards probably are limited to.

[TVwazhere]

4 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I do hope this gets called m.2 but knowing how stupid standards are named, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being m.2 version 1.1

M.2.1 Gen 3 v2 refresh

 

To be clear, this is not, and would not be, a mainstream drive correct? I feel like M.2 implementation is pretty mature, (fitting in between, above and around PCI-E slots perfectly) and having a wider PCB would limit the mounting positions

[Sniperfox47]

24 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Consumer M.2 SSDs run off the 5V lines. That's what consumer mainboards probably are limited to.

Maybe if they're super cheap Chinese budget boards, but why would any major board designer improperly wire their sockets on the hope that no device will come out that uses the higher voltage rails? To save the fractions of a cent for the cost of a single trace?

 

I mean in a lot of cases they're already wiring most slots to support all of PCIe, and  SATA with 5v and 3.3v (standby power) rails, it's not like the extra 12v rail thats in the spec would add *that* much to the complexity, particularly since your m.2 drive is usually by the PCIe slots that you're running the 12v rail to anyways.

 

And that's not even to mention that a bunch of the higher end Intel boards with E-key(WiFi card) m.2 slots are wiring their slots up with all of PCIe, USB, I2C, SDIO, UART and I2S just to make 100% sure their bases are covered for all the cards out there.

[The Benjamins]

I would of liked to see the possibility of more lanes on m.3

[NumLock21]

6 hours ago, The Benjamins said:

I would of liked to see the possibility of more lanes on m.3

No extra lanes, but it does now require 5 screws to mount that sucker.

[Energycore]

16 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

The two M.3 drives we've seen from Samsung and Adata use 12v instead of 5v.

Can we just phase out 5V and 3.3V so Power Supplies become cheaper and smaller? And so we don't have to mess with as many cables. ATX2 anyone?

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Can we just phase out 5V and 3.3V so Power Supplies become cheaper and smaller? And so we don't have to mess with as many cables. ATX2 anyone?

I don't think removing them is going to make the psu any smaller.

And I've noticed one of my old HP netbook, the SATA power cable has quite a few pins missing, some of those pins are for features like staggered spin up or activity LED.

 

 

[Lurick]

M.3 is sooooooo 2019

Maybe one day they'll catch up and release M.5 with 2.3Tb/s read and write speeds

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

M.3 is sooooooo 2019

Maybe one day they'll catch up and release M.5 with 2.3Tb/s read and write speeds

M.16 can fire off roughly 1,000 5.56TiB writes a minute...