M.2: Next Generation SSD

SSDs are quickly becoming a serious threat to the dominance of hard drives, especially as the rollout of next generation M.2 technology has started.

A new generation of Solid-State Drive (SSD) is on its way. M.2 is the smaller and better-performing SSD, and could possibly even be the silver bullet needed for SSDs to topple the dominance of the hard drive. To get an idea on the evolution of SSD, scroll to the image at the bottom of this post.
At least this is the hope after the latest M.2 technology was presented at January’s CES 2015 conference. Manufacturers including Samsung, Plextor and Kingston all exhibited speedier, more efficient devices, which get their edge by taking advantage of faster PCI Express (PCIe) protocol. M.2 devices also takes up less space and uses less energy.
At CES 2015 in Las Vegas, visitors could study the HyperX Predator from Kingston. Pricing details aren’t available yet, but the device uses PCIe 2.0 and delivers reading speeds up to 1,400MB/s and writing speeds up to 1,000MB/s. Mushkin has promised even faster speeds using the PCIe 3.0 standard once Hyperion drive becomes available in the second quarter of the year.
M.2 socket adaptors will be available for users who lack the interface, meaning everyone who wants to can take advantage of M.2 technology right away.
The rising popularity of the SSD in the past few years is not just down to its speedy performance, but also the fact that it’s been getting progressively cheaper. In 2013, when the computer storage industry saw shipments fall by 5%, a report from IHS Technology found that the SSD market grew by an impressive 82%.
While SSDs are expected to keep grabbing a bigger slice of the data storage market in 2015, hard drives are likely to stick around for a good while yet – they are still cheaper and offer more storage capacity. At the moment, the choice comes down to the priorities of the user, although SSDs have become the drive of choice for ultrabooks and compact PCs because they are quieter and more rugged.
Still, sales of SSDs have received a major boost as the kit has become more prevalent in corporate storage systems and enterprise products such as caches, arrays and drives. By 2017, SSD shipping volumes are predicted to reach over 189 million units per year according to IHS Technology – that’s half the number of expected hard disk drive sales.