It’s been a frustrating 18 months since launch, but we’ll finally be getting PCIe 5 SSDs worth a damn this year. SiliconMotion’s new controller is finally ready to roll out to SSD makers.
Good news everyone, the only PCIe 5.0 SSD controller that currently makes any sense is starting to ship out to drive manufacturers. Fingers crossed that means we ought to see some Gen5 drives worth it before the end of the year.
The SiliconMotion SM2508 memory controller has been delayed a couple of times, reportedly in order to switch to a more advanced 6nm process at TSMC. We initially expected it to come around earlier this year, but now it is finally being sent out to manufacturers for them to create their own SSDs built around this new controller.
But what is it about this new bit of silicon that might make PCIe 5 SSDs relevant? In short, it’s the mix of straight-line storage performance and efficiency. Half of that equation has already been dealt with by the Phison E26 controller—the one used for pretty much all Gen5 SSDs on the market today—but it runs hot. This is the reason PCIe 5 drives have come with active cooling or an admission that you’re going to need to provide some serious chip-chilling yourself.
Sure, they have great sequential read and write speeds, with 12,000 – 14,000 MB/s not being beyond the realms of possibility. But what does that actually mean? Not a huge amount when you only have one Gen5 slot in your board. Transferring in and out of that drive will always be limited by either the slowest drive or the slowest interface.
The random 4k read/write speeds have barely moved on from the PCIe 4 SSDs that have become ubiquitous. That means you’re not going to suddenly notice a faster Windows experience as your Gen5 boot drive isn’t dealing with the myriad of tiny read/write operations that make up its day-to-day OS workloads.
None of that performance stuff is going to change with the advent of the SiliconMotion SM2508 controller. You’re still going to be limited in terms of transferring in and out of your speedy SSD, and random 4k performance is still the same, but it’s significantly more efficient in operation.
Stay tuned for more updates on the latest gaming hardware and technology.
