6/10/2021 What’s the Difference Between mPCIe and mSATA?

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TECHNOLOGIES MEMORY

What’s the Difference

Between mPCIe and
mSATA?
Jun 24th, 2015

Often confused for each other, mSATA and mPCIe

Elec cards share a form factor and connector, yet are
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Prod electrically unique miniature card formats.
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6/10/2021 What’s the Difference Between mPCIe and mSATA? | Electronic Design

Mar
2017
C.C. Wu
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Download this article in PDF format.
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Pick up an mPCIe card and mSATA card and you’d be forgiven
Elec for thinking these are the same format. Possessing an identical
Des
Prod interface and dimensions, an mSATA card can look like an
Feb 2 mPCIe card and even fit in the same slot—but looks can be
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deceiving.

Elec While they share the same physical specifications and even fit
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Prod into the same connectors, mPCIe and mSATA are electrically
Feb 1 different. Both are miniature peripheral cards made for
2017
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expanding system capability based on a similar physical card
Mea and connector. However, mPCIe utilizes the same PCI Express
Elec signals used by desktop expansion cards (e.g., graphics
Des
adapters), while mSATA uses the SATA storage interface
Prod
Feb 8 employed by SSDs and hard drives (Figs. 1 and 2).
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6/10/2021 What’s the Difference Between mPCIe and mSATA? | Electronic Design

To understand these two miniature-card formats, let’s take a

brief look at their full-size counterparts:

PCI Express: An expansion interface for desktop computers

and servers, PCI Express uses serial connectivity for higher
speeds and lower pin counts than its predecessor PCI. Instead
of PCI’s parallel bus architecture, PCI Express leverages point-
to-point topology. Each serial link consists of a full duplex pair
of differential signals, known as a lane, between two endpoints.
This design makes PCI Express highly performance-scalable,
with up to 32 lanes possible for speeds up to 1064 MB/s.

SATA: SATA is a bus interface that connects host systems with

storage devices using a serial link. As a serial update to PATA,
SATA boasts higher speeds, lower profile connectors, and
cables for better system airflow, as well as an improved feature
set. SATA host controllers support native command queuing
through AHCI and RAID as well as legacy IDE mode. Like
PCIe, SATA uses serial communication with differential
signaling to achieve speeds up to 6Gbps with SATA III and has
lower pin counts compared to legacy PATA.

Mini PCI-Express

Based on PCI Express, Mini PCI-Express, commonly

abbreviated as mPCIe, is a miniature peripheral card interface
designed for space-constrained systems such as laptops or
embedded systems. Widely used in laptops for Wi-Fi or 3G
capability, mPCIe is a replacement for the older Mini-PCI
format that was a miniature expansion-card form factor based
on the older PCI expansion-card standard. Much smaller than
their desktop counterparts, mPCIe cards come in 30- × 50.95-
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6/10/2021 What’s the Difference Between mPCIe and mSATA? | Electronic Design

mm full-size and 30- × 26.8-mm half-size versions. Their small

size enables modular expansion of space-constrained systems
such as laptops, embedded systems and industrial PCs.

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Though similar to mSATA SSDs in form factor and connector,
mPCIe cards like this VGA adapter use a different signaling
standard.

The mPCIe expansion modules are as diverse as their full-size

PCI Express counterparts, and include graphics cards, network
adapters, serial ports, and more. By using mPCIe, system
designers can easily and economically provide numerous
configurations to customers, and expand product features or
signal-handling capability.

While it can be described as a scaled-down version of PCI

Express, mPCIe does have a few differences from its full-size
counterpart. Though desktop PCI Express supports up to 32
lanes, standard mPCIe cards use only one lane. It also includes
support for USB 2.0 signals in addition to PCI Express.
Additional pins reserved for SIM card signals make 3G/4G
connectivity easy to add through mPCIe. Pins are reserved for a

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6/10/2021 What’s the Difference Between mPCIe and mSATA? | Electronic Design

second lane of PCI Express communication, though these are

less commonly used and considered non-standard.

mSATA

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This SATA port multiplier is an example of an mSATA SSD.

Announced in 2009 by the SATA-IO consortium, mSATA is a

dedicated storage interface for space-constrained systems based
on the SATA storage bus interface. Rather than use its own
form factor, mSATA implemented the existing mPCIe physical
form factor and connector. Emerging on the market in 2010,
mSATA SSDs quickly took off, being that it’s based on an
existing and widespread storage interface. In addition, storage
providers could easily and quickly produce mSATA SSDs.

Like mPCIe, mSATA cards come in both 30- × 50.95-mm full-

size and 30- × 26.8-mm half-size form factors (Fig. 3). The
common connector also makes shared mPCIe/mSATA slots
possible, saving board space on embedded systems while
giving end users the option of expanding with either card type.

mSATA and mPCIe Compatibility

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Though the shared form factor and physical connector have

been beneficial for manufacturers and end users, it creates a lot
of room for confusion, too. That’s simply because these two
card formats look the same, but aren’t necessarily compatible.
While mSATA cards fit in any mPCIe card slot, they only
function correctly if that slot is connected to a SATA host
controller. This will usually be labeled clearly in system
specifications, with compatible slots being labeled as mSATA
or mPCIe/mSATA shared. Some systems offer dedicated
mSATA slots, though that’s rare. These slots would only work
with mSATA cards; mPCIe cards installed in them would not
function properly.

mPCIe Storage Cards

mSATA SSDs are an obvious choice for solid-state storage in

embedded systems. However, certain systems, especially in the
industrial sector, may not include mSATA slots or may only
have a free mPCIe slot without mSATA support. For these
situations, some mPCIe SSDs on the market allow legacy
systems to easily expand their capacity with flash-based
storage. Some proprietary mPCIe SSDs require special drivers
or controllers to function, so system integrators should check
that the mPCIe SSD they’re looking at works natively with the
mPCIe standard (Fig. 4).

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Both full- and half-size versions of mSATA cards are available.
Shown is a half-sized mSATA 3IE SSD from Innodisk.

The similarity of mSATA and mPCIE cards creates a lot of

room for confusion. Though based on the same physical
standard, these two peripheral card formats use different
electrical and logical interfaces. System integrators and
designers who understand the background, capabilities, and
usage of mPCIe and mSATA can make full use of these
miniature peripheral cards to easily enhance storage capacity
and signal-handling capability of their products.

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While rare, true mPCIe SSDs like this Innodisk Mini
PCIeDOM do exist.

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