Toshiba Announces XG6-P NVMe SSD For Client And Datacenter

by Billy Tallis on May 29, 2019 9:00 AM EST

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Toshiba has announced a new variant of their XG6 client NVMe SSD: the XG6-P that adds a 2TB option to the family. The previous XG5 generation of SSDs followed the same pattern, with the initial version offering mainstream capacities up to 1TB, and the later -P version offering just higher capacities with tuned firmware for better performance on heavier workloads. When the XG6 launched, its performance was enough to render the 1TB XG5-P obsolete, but the 2TB XG5-P didn't have a proper successor until now.

The XG6-P doesn't bring any improvement to the top-line performance numbers compared to the original XG6. While the XG6 and XG6-P are both quite modern in their use of 96-layer 3D NAND, they are still using the same controller as the XG5 family, and there doesn't seem to be much room to squeeze more performance out of that chip. However, like the XG5-P, the XG6-P can be expected to offer some improvements for use cases that aren't quantified on the spec sheet, such as write performance after the SLC cache is filled.

Toshiba Client OEM NVMe SSD Comparison
Model		XG6-P	XG6	XG5	XG5-P
Capacities		up to 2TB	256GB, 512GB, 1024GB		1TB, 2TB
Form Factor		M.2 2280
Host Interface		PCIe 3.1 x4
Protocol		NVMe 1.3a		NVMe 1.2.1
NAND Flash		Toshiba 96L BiCS4 3D TLC		Toshiba 64L BiCS3 3D TLC
Sequential Read		3180 MB/s	3180 MB/s	3000 MB/s	3000 MB/s
Sequential Write		2920 MB/s	2960 MB/s	2100 MB/s	2200 MB/s
Random Read		355k IOPS	355k IOPS		320k IOPS
Random Write		365k IOPS	365k IOPS		265k IOPS
Power	Read	< 5 W	4.2 W	4.5 W	4.9 W
	Write		4.7 W	3.4 W
	Idle	3 mW	3 mW	3 mW	3 mW
TCG Opal Encryption		Optional
Announced		May 2019	July 2018	November 2017	May 2017

Toshiba's XG family of SSDs are OEM-only products intended for high-end client and entry-level datacenter usage (eg. server boot and logging), while their BG series covers more mainstream segments and was significantly updated earlier this year with the BG4. Toshiba has not released a retail counterpart to an XG series since the XG3 was adapted into the Toshiba OCZ RD400 in 2016. The XG5-P will start sampling next month, so it should start showing up in notebooks this fall.