Western Digital Previews M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Client SSDs: 15GBps at Under 7 Watts
by Ganesh T S on August 8, 2024 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Western Digital
- NVMe
- BiCS
- PCIe 5.0 x4
- M.2 2280
- FMS 2024
Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream / mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.
Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.
Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5 bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|
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NextGen_Gamer - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
Yowzers, all that performance with 7-Watts max?! Western Digital has another winner on their hands. This would make "regular" M.2 drives with normal passive heatspreaders them viable again.Makaveli - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
Agreed that is looking very nice.PeachNCream - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
7W is okay-ish (sort of) for a M.2 SSD form factor storage device. The speed is impressive, of course, but I'd rather sacrifice quite a bit of performance in the name of less power consumption and thusly less heat concentrated on a relatively small PCB. 2W worst-case under full load would be ideal.dotjaz - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
Do you live in a fantasy world or something? What's with this unrealistic expectation? 2W for 15GB/s? Are you drunk or watt mean a different thing in your world?PeachNCream - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link
It's probably a good idea to read a little more carefully before posting.kn00tcn - Saturday, August 10, 2024 - link
there are various products that fit various speed tiers and power consumption peaks, nor is the more costly pcie5 required to likely max out the speed in a 2w power envelope, yet you insist on trolling products in a different tier that the majority of people wont buy and add weasel words to never fully admit a higher perf higher power higher cost product is 'okay'PeachNCream - Sunday, August 11, 2024 - link
I recognize you've been trying to be noticed by me for a while now so I'll give you a little something, I suppose - Yes, it could be PCIe 4 or 3 and that'd be okay. I don't think companies are as interested in developing new products for older interface standards. Since a lot of computer parts buyers are silly enough to fall for dragon or girl pictures on boxes (or construction equipment, military-related things, etc) they're more included to purchase things that also feature newer standards in their marketing bullet points as well.eek2121 - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
No, he is pointing out that 2W SSDs already exist on the market. Stop being obtuse, my guy.