Western Digital working on m2 NVME SSDs in Black series

In addition to its Blue and Green SSDs, Western Digital will also release Black variants. These are m2-nvme SSDs with TLC memory from SanDisk, which communicate via four PCI-e 3.0 lanes and are equipped with a Marvell 88SS1093 controller.

WD hasn’t announced the fast SSDs yet, but Benchlife has published a photo showing the Black SSDs in 256GB and 512GB versions. It is not yet known whether SSDs with a different capacity will be released. The Chinese website says that WD’s NVME SSDs will hit the market next year. The photo shows that these are still evaluation samples.

In October, WD entered the SSD market with the announcement of Green and Blue series solid state drives. The introduction of those SSDs followed the acquisition of SanDisk and the previously introduced SSDs are largely based on existing SanDisk models.

SanDisk itself did not yet have NVME SSDs in its range and the WD Black variants do not appear to be based on existing models. The Marvell 88SS1093 controller used has three cores and can be found in Seagate’s 2TB SSD and possibly also in the OCZ RD400.