Introduction

Lexar has made a name for itself in the portable storage market—they are very well known for their SD cards and USB sticks, so it's natural for them to expand into other areas of flash storage, like consumer SSDs. Lexar was founded as a subsidiary of Micron, but was sold to Longsys in 2017 and has been operating quite independently since.



Lexar announced the NM620 SSD last month, on March 11th. It is based on the combination of a Lexar DM620 flash controller and Micron 3D TLC flash. A DRAM chip is not available since the drive is designed for entry-level, light workloads. Lexar building their own flash controller "DM620" made big waves in the industry. Everybody wondered whether it is based on an existing IP or if Lexar's parent company Longsys could become a major player in the SSD flash controller market soon. As always, competition is good because it drives innovation and brings down pricing for us customers. For the case of the Lexar NM620, it looks like the controller is a rebranded Innogrit IG5216 "Shasta+" controller, possibly with custom firmware. The Lexar DM620 controller has support for NVMe 1.4, over four channels.

The Lexar NM620 is available in capacities of 256 GB ($45), 512 GB ($90), and 1 TB ($160). Endurance for these models is set at 125 TBW, 250 TBW, and 500 TBW respectively. Lexar includes a five-year warranty with the NM620.

Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Lexar NM620 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller and four flash chips.

Chip Component Analysis

The prominent markings say this is a flash controller made my Lexar, called DM620. Actually we've identified several factors, in addition to the physical size and design, that led us to believe this is a rebranded Innogrit IG5216 controller. It has four flash channels and supports the NVMe 1.4 specification.


The device ID has actually been adjusted to match the Lexar/Longsys branding, 1D97 is "Shenzen Longsys Electronics Co., Ltd."


The four 64-layer 3D TLC flash chips are made by Micron. NW964 decodes to MT29F1T08EMCAGJ4.

Test Setup