Product showcase

Before we can have a peek, we need to peel off the sticker. We'll test with it applied though.  The compact M.2 2280 (2280 = 80 mm) form factor ensures compatibility with next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface. The front-facing side holds the controller, just two NAND chips in total and a DRAM chip (cache) on one side of the PCB.

  
With the sticker removed we see the top of the SSD, it holds two NAND chips on the top side, none on the back, one Micron DRAM cache chips sitting close to the Silicon motion controller. Typically this is set up in a 1:1 fashion, so it should be a 1024 DRAM cache buffer in total.
  

 
The chip read out as the new Silicon motion Series NVMe controller. The SM2263 is a multi channel (quad) controller that makes use of the PCI Express 3.0 x4 (and not x2) interface and support both your regular and vertically stacked NAND flash. The controller supports the latest SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC as well as the latest 3D (vertically stacked) NAND (64-layer BiCs). 

  
You probably have not seen this type of NAND before, yes QLC as fabbed by Micron, of course.  The beauty of QLC is that you can do more with less, two NAND chips for 1 TB of storage. So yes, these are 512 GB packages.

One PCB to rule them all, the 2TB model would get two more NAND and an SDRAM package here on the empty SMT traces.