Components
Contents
Figure 4 shows the solder side of the SSD 750 Series. Here you can see 14 flash memory chips and two DDR3 memory chips that work as a data buffer. Unfortunately, the heatsink that covers the chips at the component side is glued to the chips, so we could not remove it. However, we discovered that there are under it, besides the controller chip, more 18 flash memory chips and three DDR3 chips.
The controller used in the SSD 750 Series is the Intel CH29AE41AB0, which supports PCI Express 3.0 x4 and 18 channels for the flash memory chips. For you to have an idea, most controllers found on “common” SSDs use only eight channels.
Figure 4: solder side
Figure 5 shows the detail of one of the NAND MLC 20 nm flash memory chips from Intel itself. Each one of those chips stores 16 GiB of data. The chips on the other side, however, have similar characteristics, but store four times more data. This is probably because the chips on the other side are cooled by the heatsink, while the ones at the solder side have no cooling.
Figure 5: memory chip detail
Figure 6 shows one of the five DDR3L-1600 Micron chips used as data buffer.
Figure 6: buffer memory chip