With Adata, another manufacturer is jumping on the bandwagon of SSDs specially designed for mining the crypto currency Chia. With the reference to a “pure SLC mode”, Adata practically reveals that inexpensive memory is converted into durable “SLC-NAND” via firmware.
The Adata Prospector 970 with 2 TB is specified with a high 56,000 TB TBW, the Prospector 950 with 28,000 TB TBW with half the storage capacity of 1 TB also offers half the write guarantee.
Adata is on the same track as Team Group, Sabrent and PNY with their “Chia SSDs” before. The difference to conventional consumer SSDs lies in the significantly higher write guarantee alias Total Bytes Written or TBW. The TBW values are at the level of enterprise SSDs designed for high write performance and well above those of consumer SSDs, which are mostly below or just above the 1,000 TBW mark.
QLC-NAND becomes simulated SLC-NAND
But it can be read between the lines that no special and expensive NAND flash is required. Because the manufacturer speaks of the Prospector 950 as a “pure SLC mode”. This means that the NAND flash is simply operated completely in SLC mode, but it is by no means SLC NAND. This is hardly manufactured anyway and does not achieve the required storage density.
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The assumption is that Adata, like the competition mentioned, relies on inexpensive QLC-NAND with a high storage density thanks to 4 bits per cell and operates it completely and permanently in SLC mode with only 1 bit per cell, which is both faster and faster others significantly increase the shelf life. A QLC-SSD with 8 TB becomes a simulated “SLC-SSD” with only 2 TB, but significantly better durability.
Prices as for 8 TB or 4 TB
At prices of around 1,500 US dollars for the Prospector 970 with 2 TB and 800 US dollars for the Prospector 950 with 1 TB has to be considered that in reality there are 8 TB and 4 TB NAND-Flash available, which puts the price into perspective.
For the Prospector 970 mentions Adata supports the use of PCIe 4.0 for transfer rates of up to 7,400 MB/s. Much more information is already available on the Prospector 950, which still works with PCIe 3.0 x4 and should achieve 3,500 MB/s reading and 3,000 MB/s writing.