FMS: Micron is working on the first SSD with PCIe 6.0
The SSD should achieve up to 26 GByte/s when reading large files. This should help with the development of future AI applications.
(Image: zaidi razak/Shutterstock.com)
With the 9950, Micron has one of the fastest SSDs in its portfolio, and future SSDs are set to be even faster: The company is already developing SSDs with twice as fast PCIe 6.0 interface, which achieves a gross speed of 32 GByte/s with four lanes.
However, the unnamed SSD will not be quite that fast; Micron initially promises a read speed of 26 GByte/s under sequential load. Information on IOPS performance is currently not available. According to its announcement, Micron wants to boost the PCIe 6.0 ecosystem. In Micron-speak, the company is building the 6.0 SSD “for data centers to enable ecosystems as part of a portfolio of storage and data storage products to support the broad demand for AI.”
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Standard is delayed
However, it was announced a few weeks ago that work on the new standard will be delayed. The first products with PCIe 6.0 were due to be released this year, but there is not much time left: conformance tests were originally scheduled for March; now the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) is aiming to open at least a preliminary test phase in the second quarter of 2024.
The specifications for PCIe 6.0 have been ready for more than two years. A single lane should be able to read and write 8 GByte/s simultaneously, whereas today's standard PCIe 4.0 SSDs still require four lanes.
At the Flash Memory Summit, where the industry is meeting this week in Silicon Valley, other companies are also showcasing products for PCIe 6.0, including protocol testers. An overview of the upcoming standards can be found in the article Superfast RAM & PCI Express: DDR6, LPDDR6, GDDR7, HBM4 and PCIe 7.0 on heise+. (ll)
