Consumer Gen 6 SSDs will launch before 2030?

AthlonXP1800

AthlonXP1800

AthlonXP1800

Soldato
Joined
28 Sep 2014
Posts
3,772
Location
Scotland
www.tomshardware.com

SMI CEO Wallace Kou on the future of SSDs: PLC NAND and PCIe 6.0 SSDs for PCs aren't coming any time soon.

A lot of questions, a lot of answers.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

Interesting interview with Silicon Motion CEO Wallace C. Kou said we will not see first consumer Gen 6 SSDs in the next few years until 2030 so 5 years time is a very long time away, Gen 5 is here to stay for the next 5 years. Mobile phones in 2027 will feature UFS 5.0 with max bandwidth that will be faster than Gen 4 SSDs. A single SSD controller tapeout based on TSMC 6nm cost $16-$20 million and TSMC 4nm tapeout cost $30-$40 million, surprised tiny Gen 5 and Gen 6 SSD controllers are really very expensive to design for both enterprise and consumer that will need massive investments.

I am concern about consumer Gen 6 SSDs heat in 2030 if they will still rely on m2 slot.
 
For me gen 4 / 5 or even 6 doesnt matter much, latency, random read/write, low que depth, endurance, power consumption & capacity does. Newer pci-e standards don't offer improvements for end users (enterprise yes, and maybe some edge case consumer moving tb's of video files around constantly). Having max transfer speeds for large files is nice, but doesnt make much if any difference. The controller & nand type are the restricing factors at the moment in my opinion.

We have been stuck at max 8tb for years & have been at silly prices, higher capacity should be cheaper, however it's at a premium useually. It seams that 2tb standard is here for the long term. I was hoping we'd be at 64tb now.

I agree that gen 6 drives may use more power to achive the greater bandwidth and that being the main advantage. They need reasons for you to upgrade and a headline max sequential transfer speed makes for a good headline.

I'm dissapointed intel gave up on 3d xpoint, as even the 5 year old optaine drives are much faster than the best nvme drives we have which max out at around 80-100MBps in real world use (RND4K QD1). (I think).
 
Honestly.. meh to gen 5 let alone gen 6, except for VERY rare circumstances I can't tell the difference in day to day use between sata (mx500's) vs nvme gen 4 (seagate 530's) in my system.
 
The news here is that Gen 5 will remain top of the line for another 6 years, so if you have fomo about waiting for Gen 6, don't bother

I'm still on gen4 myself and as others have mentioned the main issue for consumers is not speed, it's drive capacity- give us cheap 8TB drives
 
Last edited:
Grim5 said:
The news here is that Gen 5 will remain top of the line for another 6 years, so if you have fomo about waiting for Gen 6, don't bother

I'm still on gen4 myself and as others have mentioned the main issue for consumers is not speed, it's drive capacity- give us cheap 8TB drives
Click to expand...

This pretty much for a desktop at least. I’ll take an 8tb gen 3 drive over a 7tb gen 4/5/6 as long as the price per tb ratio is greater than 1/8th
 
videocardz.com

Silicon Motion introduces PCIe Gen6 SSD controller: promising up to 28 GB/s speeds - VideoCardz.com

Silicon Motion SM8466 controller announced Silicon Motion has officially introduced its first PCIe 6.0 enterprise SSD controller, the SM8466, at the 2025
videocardz.com videocardz.com

Wow Silicon Motion now launched Gen 6 SSD controller SM8466 for Enterprise, the controller is based on TSMC 4nm, capable to read speed up to 28GB/s, 7M IOPS and support up to 512TB.

I find it hard to believe consumer Gen 6 SSDs will be 5 years away from now as Silicon Motion launched Gen 6 SSD controller for Enterprise in July 2025.
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
videocardz.com

Silicon Motion introduces PCIe Gen6 SSD controller: promising up to 28 GB/s speeds - VideoCardz.com

Silicon Motion SM8466 controller announced Silicon Motion has officially introduced its first PCIe 6.0 enterprise SSD controller, the SM8466, at the 2025
videocardz.com videocardz.com

Wow Silicon Motion now launched Gen 6 SSD controller SM8466 for Enterprise, the controller is based on TSMC 4nm, capable to read speed up to 28GB/s, 7M IOPS and support up to 512TB.

I find it hard to believe consumer Gen 6 SSDs will be 5 years away from now as Silicon Motion launched Gen 6 SSD controller for Enterprise in July 2025.
Click to expand...


Yes consumers want 40 watt pullling storage. BRB installing a Noctua D15 on my boot drive
 
Last edited:
Well it seemed things may changed now since June 2025 interview with Silicon Motion CEO.

videocardz.com

SK hynix roadmap lists GDDR7-Next, HBM5 and PCIe Gen7 SSDs for 2029-2031 - VideoCardz.com

SK hynix outlines its plans for next-gen consumer and data-center memory technology Source: SK hynix SK hynix has outlined its long term DRAM and NAND plans at the SK AI Summit 2025, confirming that GDDR7-Next graphics memory and PCIe Gen7 SSDs are not expected to arrive before the 2029-2031...
videocardz.com videocardz.com

SK hynix unveiled NAND 2026-2028 and 2029-2031 roadmap, announced they will plan to launch Gen 6 SSDs for consumers between 2026 and 2028 and Gen 7 SSDs for consumers between 2029 and 2031.

I think AMD Zen 6 probably will be the first consumer CPUs to feature PCI Express 6.0 in 2026.

I guessed SK hynix NAND roadmap caught Silicon Motion CEO off guard messed up his future roadmap plan and now he probably decided to accelerate consumer Gen 6 SSD launch plan to 2026-2028 instead of 2030.

Maybe we will see first consumer Gen 6 SSDs in late 2026 or at CES 2027.
 
We've only just fixed the power/thermal density issues of gen5, don't imagine anyone's keen to go back to sticking fans on their SSD's. So likely limited sales potential for consumer drives at first, target data centres as they don't care about thermals or noise needed to dissipate heat


I remember the 90s and 2000s, where it felt like we were stuck in a holding pattern with hard drives and we couldn't make them faster without creating a lot more noise and heat and now we're kind of there with nand, it's not as bad as hard drives yet but it's getting there
 
Last edited:
It’s funny because they focus on the read and write speeds on gen 5 drives as selling points, but the random read and write speeds are barely better if at all than gen 4.

As a few others have said I’d rather have more storage than faster.

I have a 9100 and a 990 pro and for my usage I notice zero difference in real world usage.

But I’d notice having an 8tb drive…..
 
Last edited:
Yep, thats what I said, I dont care about speeds - speeds are fine since SSD came out - I want affordable 8TB drives.
 
Considering what's happening to the price of nand flash I'm going to be actively ignoring faster SSDs. Gimme the crummy slow flash that AI doesn't want and stick it in a £100 4TB drive please.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom