Kingston was quite successful with its SSC KC1000 in the past. And at CES 2018 they presented the new A1000 generation. Kingston’s A1000 is a PCIe SSD with NVMe interface aimed at the mass market.
Kingston A1000 uses 3D NAND memory
Kingston presents its new M.2 A1000 SSD during CES 2018
The Kingston SSD A1000 is an M.2 module. And does not have much eye-catching visual. This unit uses 3D NAND TLC modules that allow you to obtain up to 1623MB/s in reading and 1040MB/s in writing. Random performance has been about 190K IOPS in reading and 200K IOPS in writing.
The shape factor M. 2 and size 2280 make the unit compatible with most systems. When most NVMe SSDs use a PCIe x4 interface, it only applies an x2 interface. Also, we see that it would be more than doubling the speed achieved by other SSDs with traditional SATA interface, according to Kingston’s performance tests.
It will come in three capacities
Kingston will manufacture the A1000 NVMe SSD in three capacity options. The smallest will be 240GB, there is a standard version of 480GB. And the highest capacity will have 960GB.
Kingston has not yet revealed an availability date. What we can guess is that they would not be expensive. The components and speed classifications place it in the NVME primary market. As such, it will fix the price that corresponds or not sells one. Although it is not a unit that breaks any performance record. Also, it is a big step forward for those who now have SATA-based drives in their systems.