Gigabyte's PCIe 4.0 SSD can reach speeds of up to 15 GB/s

[Polycount]

Why it matters: AMD X570 motherboards are paving the way for an entirely new generation of solid state drives, with astonishingly fast speeds. MSI has already revealed an NVMe SSD with the ability to hit sequential read speeds of over 5,000 MB/s, and Corsair announced its own NVMe device with read speeds of roughly 4,950MB/s. For Gigabyte, though, those are rookie numbers.

For further context, a latest generation PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive like Samsung's 970 EVO Plus peaks at around 3,500 MB/s reads amd writes.

On Twitter today, the PC hardware maker's Aorus division revealed the "Aorus AIC Gen4." The device is a PCIe 4.0-based SSD card with 8TB of storage. Apparently, the device is capable of reaching read speeds of 15 GB/s when run in a RAID 0 configuration (with four M.2 SSDs inside).

To reach that level of performance, though, Gigabyte's SSD is quite a beast; both in terms of overall size and cooling needs. For starters, the device is roughly the size of a modern high-end GPU. Additionally, it features an aluminum shroud containing thermal pads, which allegedly help to dissipate the massive amount of heat the SSD can produce.

Finally, the Aorus AIC Gen4 includes its own built-in fan for maximum cooling efficiency (which will probably be necessary, given the SSD's overall power). The SSD's price tag is unknown, and we don't even know if it will be released to the public. However, we'll keep you updated if Gigabyte reveals any new information.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/80286-gigabyte-pcie-40-based-aorus-aic-gen4-ssd.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

While this is almost certainly a pipe dream for the average consumer, it DOES bode well for the future of storage... I'd love a few 8TB drives that run faster than the fastest current SSD

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I'd be more comfortable if it had a closed-loop liquid cooler like my CPU and GPU.

 

[VitalyT]

Back in 2011, Fusion-IO had Octal PCI SSD with 10TB capacity and 6.7GB/s throughput: https://hothardware.com/news/fusionio-doubles-iodrive-octal-capacity-to-10tb

Granted, it was a very expensive product, but it was 8 years ago! Compared to that, I'd say we are moving way too slowly as far as SSD capacities and speeds go. Today we should have SSD-s with performance exhausting PCI-E 4.0 throughput, and capacities of 100TB and beyond.

It seems that most SSD players are primarily interested in maximizing profits from the current products, which leads to market stagnation. That's where we are today.

 

[Dyson Parkes]

It seems that most SSD players are primarily interested in maximizing profits from the current products, which leads to market stagnation. That's where we are today.

While yes, maximizing profits from a product is a concern for business (that's just good business - you do the R&D, you want a return on it), that's not the only thing that's changed in these last 8 years.
We've seen SSD throughput increase in the consumer market, availability improvements, and manufacturing efficiency improve. Prices have dropped significantly, as has power consumption. Chip sizes have decreased, leading to embedded SSDs in higher capacity in ever smaller devices.
We've also seen a marked increase in the write threshold of the drives, so longevity has improved as well.

Simply saying "they're all after money" (paraphrasing, I know) is not entirely accurate.

(edit: formatting for readability)

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Once I thought it was long awaited 180W Navi's leaked pic, AMD product not GigaByte one.

 

[flipp3r]

That speed is for raid 0. It's got 4x 2TB drives.
Most motherboards will have 3 or 4 M.2 slots that you can do the same.
It won't be long before you can get the PCIe 4.0 adapter & insert your own M.2 drives...

 

[Puiu]

That speed is for raid 0. It's got 4x 2TB drives.
Most motherboards will have 3 or 4 M.2 slots that you can do the same.
It won't be long before you can get the PCIe 4.0 adapter & insert your own M.2 drives...

It depends on how many PCIe lanes the chipset sets aside for nvme storage. I doubt you'll be able to put 3-4 drives in raid 0 with full 4x PCIe 4 for each.

 

[Mike Gray]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

So far, newer SSD generations (even optane, for that matter) haven't done much for the things the original SSD revolution actually ... revolutionized: boot times, general PC usage, even gaming, everything basically.

I'm guessing this new generation will make a real difference, but to stuff I personally don't know much about - say, media-editing, big-file storage, encoding, big data and the like? (I'd perk up my ears if big AAA load screen times could be radically shortened.)

 

[Compiller]

Asus has HYPER M.2 X16 RAID Card - fill it with 4 m2 ssd - and you has this gigabyte

 

[fktech]

It's about time we speed up the bottleneck of drive read/write processes. My CPU is waiting and waiting....

 

[amstech]

I'd be more comfortable if it had a closed-loop liquid cooler like my CPU and GPU.

Air cooled is more reliable for the long haul and requires less maintenance.

 

[Mister_K]

I'd be more comfortable if it had a closed-loop liquid cooler like my CPU and GPU.

Probably will after third-parties like EKWB get their hands on it.

 

[Mister_K]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

WebApps, Databases, Video Editing 8k+ projects.

 

[Mister_K]

So far, newer SSD generations (even optane, for that matter) haven't done much for the things the original SSD revolution actually ... revolutionized: boot times, general PC usage, even gaming, everything basically.

This card is not for your gamer or average Joe. Until we start pushing 8k games where loading assets will be important, and even then standard m.2 will be more than enough.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/

SSD to M.2 is a HUGE difference for large filesets.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

So far, newer SSD generations (even optane, for that matter) haven't done much for the things the original SSD revolution actually ... revolutionized: boot times, general PC usage, even gaming, everything basically.

I'm guessing this new generation will make a real difference, but to stuff I personally don't know much about - say, media-editing, big-file storage, encoding, big data and the like? (I'd perk up my ears if big AAA load screen times could be radically shortened.)

Um.... EVERYTHING!!! Even the fastest loading times can still be improved upon....

 

[elementalSG]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

I have 1 billion+ row tables in databases at work which take literally hours to days to run queries on. Being able to read/write at 15GB/s sequential and 2GB/s+ random will help fantastically with bringing query times down to something more reasonable.

 

[Gahl1k]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

So far, newer SSD generations (even optane, for that matter) haven't done much for the things the original SSD revolution actually ... revolutionized: boot times, general PC usage, even gaming, everything basically.

I'm guessing this new generation will make a real difference, but to stuff I personally don't know much about - say, media-editing, big-file storage, encoding, big data and the like? (I'd perk up my ears if big AAA load screen times could be radically shortened.)

Hopefully, PS5 (and Xbox Next) forces developers to utilise the faster speeds of NVMe SSDs.

 

[Raytrace3D]

That speed is for raid 0. It's got 4x 2TB drives.
Most motherboards will have 3 or 4 M.2 slots that you can do the same.
It won't be long before you can get the PCIe 4.0 adapter & insert your own M.2 drives...

It depends on how many PCIe lanes the chipset sets aside for nvme storage. I doubt you'll be able to put 3-4 drives in raid 0 with full 4x PCIe 4 for each.

My X399 MEG Creation came with a M.2 RAID card with 4 slots on (motherboard has 3 on it also). I have 2 x 1TB NVMe in non-RAID already and get ~3200 MB/s read from each. I am wondering if I got a couple more and put them in RAID if I could come close to the number Gigabyte gets (if the card is an X16 - not sure, might be just an X4 but if so, the slot is capable of 32GB/s). My Threadripper should have enough lanes to do this as it supports 60 lanes.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I'm very curious to hear what kind of applications profit from the increased speed.

So far, newer SSD generations (even optane, for that matter) haven't done much for the things the original SSD revolution actually ... revolutionized: boot times, general PC usage, even gaming, everything basically.

I'm guessing this new generation will make a real difference, but to stuff I personally don't know much about - say, media-editing, big-file storage, encoding, big data and the like? (I'd perk up my ears if big AAA load screen times could be radically shortened.)

Um.... EVERYTHING!!! Even the fastest loading times can still be improved upon....

Except going from a 500MB/s SATA SSD to a 3 GB/s NVMe SSD gives a whole 1-2 seconds faster loading time for windows, and near as makes no difference in games.

Loading times dont need more bandwidth right now, they need to take advantage of what we already have. For end users, loading times are stalled out waiting for software programmers to utilize that speed. That means changing software programming and game engines to better utilize RAM and CPU caches to pre load large numbers of assets from storage, among other things.

 

[elementalSG]

Except going from a 500MB/s SATA SSD to a 3 GB/s NVMe SSD gives a whole 1-2 seconds faster loading time for windows, and near as makes no difference in games.

Loading times dont need more bandwidth right now, they need to take advantage of what we already have. For end users, loading times are stalled out waiting for software programmers to utilize that speed. That means changing software programming and game engines to better utilize RAM and CPU caches to pre load large numbers of assets from storage, among other things.

I can confirm what you just said. Out of curiosity I loaded the latest Windows versions of games (Final Fantasy XV, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, etc.) onto a 8 x SSD array in RAID0 (to remove the usual disk speed bottlenecks) and watched the amount of time spent actually reading off the SSD array through Task Manager. I was surprised how it seemed no more than 15%-25% of the entire loading time had active reading from the SSD array, with the SSD array idle during most of the loading time.

The biggest problem actually seems that most games still only use only 1 or 2 cores when loading the games, even when I had 6 physical cores (12 with HT). It was very curious to observe.

 

[msroadkill612]

That speed is for raid 0. It's got 4x 2TB drives.
Most motherboards will have 3 or 4 M.2 slots that you can do the same.
It won't be long before you can get the PCIe 4.0 adapter & insert your own M.2 drives...

It depends on how many PCIe lanes the chipset sets aside for nvme storage. I doubt you'll be able to put 3-4 drives in raid 0 with full 4x PCIe 4 for each.

My X399 MEG Creation came with a M.2 RAID card with 4 slots on (motherboard has 3 on it also). I have 2 x 1TB NVMe in non-RAID already and get ~3200 MB/s read from each. I am wondering if I got a couple more and put them in RAID if I could come close to the number Gigabyte gets (if the card is an X16 - not sure, might be just an X4 but if so, the slot is capable of 32GB/s). My Threadripper should have enough lanes to do this as it supports 60 lanes.

Yes, you can make raid arrays from those ports, and you should achieve near linear results from raid 0 sequential read and write performance.

The simplest method is using the native onboard m.2 ports and the native TR raid option in the bios.

 

[Markoni35]

Only Nordic people will be buying this. Not only because it's expensive, but because they need good heating almost entire year.