**Edit** There was some speculation about which controller was in this SSD. It has since been solved. Here's a shot of the top of the PCB:

Now lets compare that with a shot I caught at FMS 2015 last week:

…from the Phison booth. I hadn't wirtten up my Phison post yet but this new Kingston SSD is most certainly going to be using the Phison E7 controller. Here's the placard stating some high level specs:

***end edit***

We saw a draft copy of Kingston’s HyperX Predator at CES 2014. That demo unit was equipped with a SandForce 3700 series controller, but since SandForce never came through on that part, Kingston had to switch gears and introduce the HyperX Predator with a Marvell 88SS9293 controller. The Marvell part was very capable, and the HyperX Predator turned out to be an attractive and performant PCIe SSD. The one catch was that Marvell’s controller was only an AHCI part, while newer NVMe-based SSDs were quickly pushing the Predator down in our performance results.

Kingston’s solution is a newer generation PCIe SSD, this time equipped with NVMe:

We have very little additional information about this new part, though we can tell from the above image that the flash was provided by Toshiba (toggle mode). They also had Iometer running:

We were not sure of the exact workload being run, but those results are in line with the specs we saw listed on Silicon Motion’s SM2260, seen last week at Flash Memory Summit.

We’ll keep track of the development of this new part and hope to see it in a more disclosed form at CES 2016. Kingston's IDF 2015 press blast appears after the break.

Kingston Technology to Exhibit, Demo at IDF 2015

Fountain Valley, CA & San Francisco, CA – August 18, 2015 – Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it will exhibit and demo next-generation DDR4 memory and SSDs at the 2015 Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Kingston® will display a soon-to-be released 64GB memory kit, DDR4 SO-DIMMs and a sneak peek of its forthcoming NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD at booth 953 at Moscone Center West Hall.

            Demo products will include Kingston and HyperX®, its high-performance product division. Demos include:

  • HyperX Predator DDR4 64GB kit of four running at 3200MHz on an ASUS Z170-Deluxe motherboard using the Intel® Core™ i7 6700K processor (former code name Skylake-S).
  • A working prototype of an upcoming NVMe PCIe SSD alongside our current HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD.
  • HyperX Impact DDR4 SO-DIMMs and a Predator M.2 PCIe SSD on a future Intel Mini PC.
  • Intel Compute Stick with Kingston inside: an embedded Kingston 32GB eMMC 5.0(HS400) and 2GB DDR3L 1333MHz. 

“We are proud to be back once again at IDF demonstrating both current and soon-to-be released Kingston and HyperX products,” said Mike Mohney, senior technology manager, Kingston. “We have always maintained a strong relationship with Intel and are pleased to pair our top-of-the-line memory products with their offerings featuring the new Intel Core 6th generation processors.”

HyperX is the high-performance product division of Kingston Technology, encompassing high-speed DDR4 and DDR3 memory, SSDs, USB Flash drives, headsets and gaming accessories. Targeted at gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts, HyperX is known throughout the world for quality, performance and innovation. HyperX is committed to eSports as it sponsors over 20 teams globally and is the main sponsor of Intel Extreme Masters. HyperX can be found at many shows includingBrasil Game ShowChina JoyDreamHackgamescom and PAX.

For more information visit the Kingston and HyperX home pages.