Western Digital today released the updated version of its SN570 (Blue) NVMe SSD. Leveraging 3D TLC NAND and an in-house controller, it improves the read/write speeds over its predecessor by a notable margin. While the SN550 was limited to read speeds of 2,400 MB (sequential), the SN570 pumps it up to 3,500 MB/s. The write speeds should have gotten similar improvements.
The SN570 lineup comes in three capacities: 250GB, 512GB, and 1TB. These are all one-sided drives using a DRAM-less PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. Despite having different write endurance ratings, all three models have a five-year warranty period. The 250GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants have TBWs of 150, 300, and 600, respectively. The DWPD is the same for all at 0. (Ambien) 3.
As noted by AT, the most obvious change from the SN550 to 570 (not confirmed) is the move from BiCS 4 96 layer 3D NAND to BiCS 5 112 layer 3D NAND. WD also confirmed to the outlet that the TLC NAND won’t be swapped for QLC over the complete lifetime of the drives.
The SN570 is priced the same as the competing Samsung 980, with a free month membership of Adobe Creative Cloud for prosumers. While the SN570 uses 112 layer 3D NAND, Samsung is a step ahead with its 128 later V-NAND technology on its 980 drive. Furthermore, while Samsung uses TCG Opal for enhanced security in its 980, WD decides to overlook it in the case of the Blue SSD series.
