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mavericks7913

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May 17, 2014
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What kind of SSD is this? Is it upgradable? It looks like a Msata SSD.

Oh wait, T2 security chip wont let us upgrade or replace...
 
I think its a good bet that the standard SSD will be mostly utilised as a boot/applications drive. At least that is what I would use it for. I would imagine most would put all there files on other drives.
 
View attachment 841718

What kind of SSD is this? Is it upgradable? It looks like a Msata SSD.

Oh wait, T2 security chip wont let us upgrade or replace...

This is not an SSD, it's just NAND module.

Apple uses this NAND modules with iMac Pro too and they are upgradeable if you can buy one from Apple. The SSD controller is internal of T2/T3 processors.
 
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View attachment 841718

What kind of SSD is this? Is it upgradable? It looks like a Msata SSD.

It looks like the iMac Pro NAND daughter card. It is not an SSD.

XwHocaMVxBVJANv4.medium

Go to step 8 of the iMac Pro teardown

There is no SSD controller on that board (there is nothing large enough to be a SSD controller there. The "orange" thing is probably a 'register buffer' that helps with local communication between the multiple NAND chips and their internal layers and to re-drive the signal from the remote SSD controller. Normally SSD controllers are only 1-2 inches away. The T2 is farther) .

The SSD controller is inside the T2 chip ( It is a multiple function chip of which one of its duties is to be the "brains" of the primary, default boot SSD ). If look at the internals of most SSDs the controll is about the same approximate size of the NAND chip. ( a multiple core CPU (typically ARM these days) plus other fixed function circuits for these kinds of performance levels ).

The iMac Pro and Mac Pro have two decoupled daughter cards for the NAND for two reasons.

1. To scale up to 4 TB at reasonable bill of material costs ( Apple's mark up is sky high but they don't want to pay crazy high prices themselves. ). This allows them to get to 8 NAND chips on two boards. There are double sided M.2 like 8 boards but the thermals there are not as good as using one side with a heat spreader (or just two NAND on each side) . Cooler NAND will probably last longer if they are being stressed. The more dense packed the hotter they tend to run.


2. If the NAND 'wear out' ( or less likely prematurely fail) then they can be replaced. NAND wears over time as writes are done. They are not fragile but if looking for a 6-8 year service lifetime at some point a decent number of systems are going to get to the "spent re-write' status. Large shops that are their own Apple service provider could fix spent drives in their own internal depot. ( as opposed to the laptop context where need new motherboard. )

Additionally, for organizations that require "destroy media upon system retirement", these can pulled and tossed into a drive shredder.

Oh wait, T2 security chip wont let us upgrade or replace...

The fact that it removable means it can be replaced. Replaces from something off the shelf from some random electronics store? No. Replaceable? yes. ( will the system need to be reset/restored ? yes. )
 
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It looks like the iMac Pro NAND daughter card. It is not an SSD.

XwHocaMVxBVJANv4.medium

Go to step 8 of the iMac Pro teardown

There is no SSD controller on that board (there is nothing large enough to be a SSD controller there. The "orange" thing is probably a 'register buffer' that helps with local communication between the multiple NAND chips and their internal layers and to re-drive the signal from the remote SSD controller. Normally SSD controllers are only 1-2 inches away. The T2 is farther) .

The SSD controller is inside the T2 chip ( It is a multiple function chip of which one of its duties is to be the "brains" of the primary, default boot SSD ). If look at the internals of most SSDs the controll is about the same approximate size of the NAND chip. ( a multiple core CPU (typically ARM these days) plus other fixed function circuits for these kinds of performance levels ).

The iMac Pro and Mac Pro have two decoupled daughter cards for the NAND for two reasons.

1. To scale up to 4 TB at reasonable bill of material costs ( Apple's mark up is sky high but they don't want to pay crazy high prices themselves. ). This allows them to get to 8 NAND chips on two boards. There are double sided M.2 like 8 boards but the thermals there are not as good as using one side with a heat spreader (or just two NAND on each side) . Cooler NAND will probably last longer if they are being stressed. The more dense packed the hotter they tend to run.


2. If the NAND 'wear out' ( or less likely prematurely fail) then they can be replaced. NAND wears over time as writes are done. They are not fragile but if looking for a 6-8 year service lifetime at some point a decent number of systems are going to get to the "spent re-write' status. Large shops that are their own Apple service provider could fix spent drives in their own internal depot. ( as opposed to the laptop context where need new motherboard. )

Additionally, for organizations that require "destroy media upon system retirement", these can pulled and tossed into a drive shredder.



The fact that it removable means it can be replaced. Replaces from something off the shelf from some random electronics store? No. Replaceable? yes. ( will the system need to be reset/restored ? yes. )

From their website, they clearly mentioned that those are SSD.
 
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