Biwin NuvoDrive NX Early Preview SSD

The NuvoDrive NX uses the same case design as the Elite series model we have in the lab with a SandForce controller under the hood.

The early sample drive uses a 2.5" form factor with a 9mm z-height.

Getting right to the good part. The Novachips Bugatti controller is the large chip to the right of the PCB. This is a 10-channel controller so there are 20 NAND flash ICs instead of the standard 16 that we see on most drives using 8-channels.

There are 10 flash ICs on each side of the PCB.

Here we get our first look at the Novachips Bugatti controller. The writing on the chip is pretty worn from the thermal pad that rests between the controller and the drive case.

On the early sample Biwin chose to use a 256MB DDR buffer. With many of the new Marvell drives going up to a 1GB buffer (Vertex 4 512GB), it will be interesting to see what Biwin does on the final drive.

The early sample uses Micron flash that is labeled 2FA12 and NW295. This should be L74A which is 25nm ONFi flash. The total amount of flash is 320GB.

This may bring back some memories. On the early Indilinx Barefoot drives you had to close the circuit with a jumper to flash the drives with new firmware. We can't say for sure what the jumper is for - we didn't want to kill the sample in this test.