The Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Company presented the first retail SSD with Silicon Motion’s new SM2256 controller. The SM2256 was designed particularly for use with next gen triple level cell NAND, which delivers a number of challenges by regarding data retention and write functionality.
End users here in the States looking to upgrade a desktop or a notebook will most likely find themselves buying a branded product from a more recognizable name. But if your organization needs to upgrade several systems, then it may be worthwhile to contact Longsys about volume pricing. Without global distribution, it would be very difficult to purchase a S500 outside of China.
some companies will purchase Longsys-manufactured SSDs and re-brand them. Longsys plans to expand into America and Europe over time, and getting review samples into our hands is a good start. But distribution and marketing need to come into play as well.
The SM2256 is a processor which will be seen at the heart of several domestic SSDs over the next two years. Armed with LDPC code that makes low cost TLC to be viable for client SSDs, Silicon Motion’s SM2256 is the next SF2281. TLC is here to stay, whether you like it or not.
By the end of 2016, it’s expected to outsell SLC and MLC combined. Triple-level-cell memory from Samsung, Micron and Toshiba will even drop into high functionality drives using the NVMe protocol. This is what a commodity SSD will look like for the next year. It isn’t a bad trade off for most folks, though once power users push it harder than they should, the user experience sours quickly.
Longsys’ Foresee S500 trails every other charted drive. Once it is allowed to tap that small emulated SLC cache which was given a little more time between each test, the S500 recovers. There, the SSD seems in the fastest group of drives. Nevertheless, it does not stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Determination
Longsys FORESEE S500 would get swallowed up in the open market by big name contenders outside of China.
