Western Digital’s FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for cell workstations and client desktops. The Gen 5 consumer SSD market has been dominated by options primarily based on Phison’s E26 controller. The primary era merchandise launched with slower NAND flash, whereas the newer ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by using Micron’s 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative during the last yr or so by focusing extra on the mainstream / mid-range market by way of new product introductions (such because the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an replace with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will find yourself doing simply that.
Western Digital’s know-how demonstrations on this phase concerned two completely different M.2 2280 SSDs – one for the efficiency phase, and one other for the mainstream market. They each make the most of in-house controllers – whereas the efficiency phase drive makes use of a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one makes use of a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Each drives being benchmarked dwell have been outfitted with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the facility effectivity of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (efficiency drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the entire SSD beneath traumatic visitors. This makes it appropriate to be used in cell workstations, however a very good match for desktops as properly.
Demonstrated efficiency numbers point out virtually 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random learn IOPS for the efficiency drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream model. Western Digital might need missed the Gen 5 bus because it began out slowly. Nonetheless, the know-how demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND point out that WD has caught up simply because the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|