News Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 x4 SM2508-based low-power SSDs coming in Q4

[Admin]

Silicon Motion gives an update on its consumer PCIe Gen5 SSD platform at Computex

Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 x4 SM2508-based low-power SSDs coming in Q4 : Read more

 

[bit_user]

That's progress. So, what happens to power consumption when you run it at PCIe 4.0 speed?

I guess we should also like to know about 5.0 x2 - is there any power savings from using fewer lanes?

 

[DougMcC]

That's progress. So, what happens to power consumption when you run it at PCIe 4.0 speed?

I guess we should also like to know about 5.0 x2 - is there any power savings from using fewer lanes?

Almost certainly you'd save power either way. But who is going to build x2? x4 is completely entrenched. x8 is far more likely than x2, since the bragging rights from the faster speed might actually sell units.

 

[bit_user]

But who is going to build x2? x4 is completely entrenched.

I have a mini PC with a PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 slot. I've even seen a couple boards that have just x1!

x8 is far more likely than x2, since the bragging rights from the faster speed might actually sell units.

Uh, well that'd have to be in an AIC form factor, because neither M.2 nor U.2 support more than x4.

I think you'll also find a lot of desktop users are reluctant to run an x8 AIC, because that means cutting down their GPU to run at just x8 lanes. For some of the fatter GPUs, the slot might even be blocked! That means it would be just a niche product for servers and workstation users, and thus it's not a good way to "sell units".

 

[Makaveli]

The sequential speeds are great but there has been no movement in RND4k Q1T1 speeds in like a decade now. With Intel optane being the lone exception.

 

[Notton]

It's always nice when RND4k is faster, but games already load insanely fast on a WD SN850X.
I don't think I would feel 0.05s faster loading times.
and if I was running a program that required fast RND4K, I would get the appropriate server grade SSD.

 

[dimar]

SN850X is 6.8W max, 990 Pro 6W. So 7W for such speed is not bad I guess.
I'd like to know the TBW info as well.
I'd like to have some kind of battery saving mode on SSD where the power goes to 0.5W for example when needed.

 

[bit_user]

The sequential speeds are great but there has been no movement in RND4k Q1T1 speeds in like a decade now. With Intel optane being the lone exception.

Weren't there some drives that used SLC to achieve nearly Optane-level performance?

Unless you're running something like a database server, you probably don't need super-low latency as much as you think you do. And if you are, then what you probably care about even more are tail latencies.

 

[bit_user]

I'd like to have some kind of battery saving mode on SSD where the power goes to 0.5W for example when needed.

A lot of drives will go even lower, if you have ASPM enabled. For something like a laptop, idling at even 0.5 W is actually rather a lot.

This might be informative, but beware that it's provided by a SSD manufacturer:

https://sabrent.com/blogs/storage/ssd-power-consumption
​

The reason desktop users might not want to enable ASPM is that it measurably hurts responsiveness. It takes time for the drive to climb back up to higher power states.

 

[Diogene7]

The sequential speeds are great but there has been no movement in RND4k Q1T1 speeds in like a decade now. With Intel optane being the lone exception.

I agree as well that it is a shame since Intel Optane is gone that there isn’t any lower latency persistent memory on the market …

I hope that CXL will help enable the introduction of new persistent memory with low latency that will likely be very expensive at first (ex: Nantero carbon nanotubes NRAM, Weebit Nano ReRAM, Avalanche technology MRAM, Antaios SOT-MRAM,…)

I also wish that the work done by the European research center IMEC on SOT-MRAM would help create DRAM-like Non-Volatile-Memory (NVM) : that would open so many new opportunities.

https://www.imec-int.com/en/press/i...how-record-low-switching-energy-and-virtually

 

[dimar]

A lot of drives will go even lower, if you have ASPM enabled. For something like a laptop, idling at even 0.5 W is actually rather a lot.

This might be informative, but beware that it's provided by a SSD manufacturer:

​

https://sabrent.com/blogs/storage/ssd-power-consumption​

​

The reason desktop users might not want to enable ASPM is that it measurably hurts responsiveness. It takes time for the drive to climb back up to higher power states.

Right, but I meant max power, not idling.