Adata Announces XPG SX950U SSD

Today Adata announced the latest addition to the XPG product line designed for gamers and performance enthusiasts. The new XPG SX950U SSD comes to market in four capacities ranging from 120GB to 960GB. The company released only the bare minimum specifications to get some something on paper. For instance, the controller inside the SX950U comes from Silicon Motion, Inc. (SMI) but Adata didn't say what specific part number. We suspect this is the SMI SM2258 controller paired with Micron's 2nd generation 3D 3-bit per cell technology.

Adata released some performance data for the new SX950U line. The sequential read performance reaches as high as 560 MB/s, the upper limit of the SATA 6Gb/s bus with overhead factored in. The 120GB drive achieves up to 300 MB/s sequential write performance but the three larger capacities are capable of delivering up to 520 MB/s.

Adata will back the new series with a 5-year warranty, but the company didn't detail any endurance limitations for the data written.

The SX950U hardware configuration mimics that of the successful Crucial MX500. The MX500's success came from R&D with the proprietary cache algorithm called Dynamic Write Acceleration. Adata, working with SMI, pieced together an advanced cache algorithm that uses the DRAM to cache user data as well as the flash translation layer map. The SX950U also uses a SLC buffer system for data writes called Intelligent SLC Caching to increase performance.

Picking winners and losers is more difficult than explaining the technology. Adata has a long history of bringing products to market at competitive prices. The XPG SX950U press release didn't list any pricing details, but we suspect this will be another competitive product that steers the pricing curve at a greater downward angle. SSD prices, especially SATA-based products, have already started down a downward trajectory now that the manufacturing of flash has caught up to demand. Over the coming year supply will grow beyond demand and prices will rapidly decline.  

TrendFocus, an analyst firm, recently predicted SSD price reduction will spur an increase in SSD adaption by OEMs. The company projects new notebook systems will reach 50% SSD adoption this year, a 5% increase from 2017.