Crucial's new MX100 is an SSD with a mission. Instead of planting yet another flag in the expensive high end category, it has been precision designed for the performance-minded side of the mainstream category with an eye towards dethroning drives like OCZ's Vertex 460 and AData's SP920. That may seem like a difficult goal to achieve but Crucial has a knack of hitting the ground running with precisely targeted products.

Crucial is actually in an enviable position within the SSD market. As the distribution arm of Micron, they have first-run access to a vast selection of components that fall under the IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) umbrella. While there are advantages to being tied at the hip to a powerful parent company, the MX100 is also an excellent example of how quickly technology is progressing. Recently they released the flagship M550 series which features 20nm L85 / ONFi 128GBit NAND' and the latest Marvel '89 controller. This new drive however replaces the slightly older but nonetheless popular M500 but it actually makes use of brand new 16nm 128GBit NAND modules. This has placed Crucial in the unenviable position of having to showcasing the next generation NAND in a drive that cannot directly compete with their M550. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not.

Crucial has ensured no toes are stepped on by tweaking the MX100's architecture so that while it will outperform the M500, it won't scavenge sales from their more expensive M550 series. To this end the MX100 uses the same upgraded Marvell 89 controller as the M550 but that 16nm NAND (in its current implementation at least) can't outperform the 20nm modules on the higher end SSD. This has been accomplished by limiting the number of interleaved channels being run in parallel.