Innodisk at Computex 2023: Has the Right Idea About Gen 5 SSDs, to Make them AICs | TechPowerUp Innodisk has the right idea about how to do PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs—to ditch the M.2 form-factor, and make them PCIe add-in cards. This would remove the need for cartoonishly disproportionate cooling solutions with high-pitched 20 mm fans; and rather allow SSD designers to use cooling solutions resembling those of graphics cards. Gen 5 NVMe controllers have a TDP of around 15 W, or roughly similar to that of a motherboard chipset. The M.2-2280 form-factor is tiny for the deployment of a sufficiently large heatsink, and so SSD designers are resorting to active cooling, using 20 mm fans that don't sound pleasant. Most single-slot VGA cooling solutions can make short work of 15 W of heat while being much quieter, some event fanless.
The Innodisk 5TG-P AIC SSD uses a PCIe Gen 5 + NVMe 2.0 SSD controller with a large passive heatsink, a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, and 32 TB of capacity. The drive runs entirely on slot power, and besides the 3D TLC NAND flash, uses a large DDR4 DRAM cache. The company claims sequential transfer speeds of up to 13 GB/s in either direction. Innodisk is targeting the PCIe 5TG-P at workstation and HEDT use-cases. The company is building them in server-relevant form-factors such as U.2 and E.1S. A CDM screenshot shows 13.62 GB/s sequential reads, with 11.55 GB/s sequential writes.
The nanoSSD PCIe 4TE3 is a single-chip BGA SSD that takes in PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, offers capacities ranging between 128 GB to 1 TB, and sequential transfer speeds of up to 3.6 GB/s reads, with up to 3.2 GB/s writes. The P80 4TG2-P is a client-segment M.2-2280 SSD with a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface. The drive has been tested for PlayStation 5 compatibility, and comes in capacities ranging between 512 GB and 4 TB. The drive offers sequential transfer rates of up to 7.1 GB/s reads, with up to 5.8 GB/s writes.
The P42 4TE2 is an M.2-2242 SSD targeted at the OEM and SI markets, it uses a DRAMless Gen 4 controller, and comes in capacities ranging between 128 GB and 2 TB. The drive offers speeds of up to 4 GB/s reads, with up to 3.4 GB/s writes. The P110 4TG2-P iCell is an M.2-22110 SSD with a Gen 4 interface. It uses its extra length to deploy a bank of capacitors, which gives it power-loss protection. The drive comes in 512 GB thru 4 TB capacities, and offers sequential speeds of up to 7.5 GB/s reads, with up to 5.3 GB/s writes. The P80 4TE2 iCell is a miniaturized version of this in the popular M.2-2280 form-factor, but it uses a compact DRAMless architecture to free up PCB real-estate for the capacitor bank.
Innodisk also showed off an assortment of DDR5 DRAM products in standard UDIMM, R-DIMM, and SO-DIMM form-factors, with their applications ranging between PCs to servers. There are some stand-out products, such as the Ultra Temperature class of DDR4 and DDR5 SO-DIMMs, which are meant for outdoor, embedded, industrial, and automotive applications. These SO-DIMMs feature an extreme operational temperature range of -40°C to 125°C, and come in densities ranging between 8 GB single-rank to 32 GB dual-rank.
The underlying question I have is how much would the add-in card cost?
