New PCIe Gen 5 controller coming to SSDs next year with high IOPS - SM2508

[g67575]

I haven't made the jump yet to an NVME drive yet, but this caught my eye:

Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]

www.anandtech.com

Over 2 million random read + write IOPS. Quite a jump from existing consumer SSDs.

This controller will used with laptop Gen 5 SSDs also:

Silicon Motion Reveals When Laptops With PCIe 5.0 SSDs Will Finally Arrive

Laptops with 14GB/s storage and circa 3.5W ultra-low power controller consumption are promised to arrive before too long.

hothardware.com

Most Gen 5 drives have so far used the Phison PS5026-E26 controller, so I imagine the specs will be all within the same ball park. This controller has a power consumption of 10w, somewhat higher than the upcoming controller.

So, might be worth waiting to see what drives become available next year.

I personally think PCIe Gen 6 is several years away, but I suppose these drives will be backwards compatible with most NVME capable motherboards.

We haven't seen a Gen 5 drive yet from Samsung either, I imagine they will come up with something decent also...

 

[g67575]

Looking at a Samsung enterprise class Gen 5 SSD, the random 4K read IOPS is 2.5 million, but the random 4K write IOPS is 250,000 IOPS, so I think Samsung is likely to need a better controller to compete with Silicon Motion Gen 5 Controller.

Link:

Samsung PM1743 SSD Review

The Samsung PM1743 SSD stands as a testament to the power and potential of PCIe Gen5 SSDs, posting 1.25 million 4K IOPS from a single drive.

www.storagereview.com

 

[g67575]

I think lots of people have already got Gen 4 NVME SSDs and the current Gen 5 SSDs haven't been a huge improvement so far, except for sequential read and write speeds which are somewhat higher. Some Gen 4 drives can already handle high sequential speeds of 6-7 GBps though, which seems more than enough.

The main thing that needs improvement is the random read and write speeds, just as we saw with the cancelled Intel Optane drives, and faster access times seem to be important also. From my point of view I might as well wait to see what the drives released next year can offer.

 

[g67575]

Samsung was supposed to be working on a Gen 5 drive (but released the Samsung 990 Pro instead), I've wondering if they decided to hold off until they had something better to offer? They'll need something that can compete with the upcoming gen 5 Silicon Motion based drives.

 

[g67575]

T-Force is going to release a Gen 5 drive at some point, I think probably this year:

From here:

The Alliance Between T-FORCE Z54A Series and InnoGrit Corporation Partnership Of The Top Technology Making Ultra-fast 14,000 MB/s GEN5 SSD a New Experience-TEAMGROUP

TEAMGROUP’s gaming brand, T-FORCE’s Z54A series, develops the pioneering new generation PCIe Gen5 SSD with outstanding performance, with read and write speeds up to 14,000 MB/s and 10,000 MB/s, respectively. TEAMGROUP exclusively cooperates with globe-leading advancing storage supplier...

www.teamgroupinc.com

It's using the IG5666 controller, which seems to be a bit faster than the Phison controller for random 4K read/writes.

EDIT - Although it doesn't seem to be that much faster than the Samsung 990 Pro, except for sequential read /writes.

The Samsung 990 Pro with a heatsink costs a fair bit more than the version without, a bit off-putting.

 

[g67575]

TBW will cost them a lot more.
They can either use SLC/MLC or add redundancy. The trend is for low endurance drives using QLC.

It sucks that QLC is becoming the norm.

Not much point in SSDs if the reliability + endurance isn't better than a hard disk, in my view.

I got a new SSD off Ebay (Crucial BX500 2TB) and replaced it because it had read errors every second, which caused pauses in games.

The replacement drive, a Samsung 2TB 840 Pro, has worked perfectly for over a year - MLC is much better (Wear Levelling = 98%). My main windows drive (~222GB) is MLC also, and that has lasted >5 years (Wear Levelling =61%).

 

[g67575]

You can get QLC drives with decent endurance ratings now, I found one for my dad a few months ago. The Samsung drives had the best ratings. It's worth comparing the TBW rating of different brands and models.

But for a high end drive, it's probably not a good idea...

 

[g67575]

No sign of a consumer class drive with 2 million random read/ random write IOPS yet, as least not that I could find. I think these will probably become available next year.

Models with the SM2508 controller could be the first.

 

[g67575]

Seemingly, no cons with this gen 5 controller.

 

[g67575]

Samsung Gen 5 (5nm) drives are now in production:

Samsung Starts Mass Production of Industry’s Most Powerful PC SSD Optimal for AI Applications | Samsung Semiconductor EMEA

Integrating Samsung’s 5nm controller and eighth-generation V-NAND, PM9E1 provides unmatched performance and power efficiency suitable for AI PCs

semiconductor.samsung.com

Samsung starts production of its fastest SSD for PCs

The PCIe 5.0 SSD can reach 14.5 GB/s read and 13 GB/s write speeds. Samsung announced it has begun mass production of its fastest SSD for PCs. The PCIe...

www.gsmarena.com

Don’t yet know what the IOPS will be.