First super fast PCIe 5.0 SSDs teased ahead of CES

Samsung and Adata are both teasing PCIe 5.0 SSDs ahead of January’s big CES event. With read/write speeds up to 14/12 GBps, this new generation of solid state storage is essentially twice as fast as the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives.

Adata teased two prototypes of its first PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs with capacities up to 8TB. The so-called Project Nighthawk SSD is designed using a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller capable of sequential read/write speeds up to 14/12GBps, while the Project Blackbird SSD features an InnoGrit IG5666 controller for 14/10GBps read/write speeds. Adata will hopefully provide more details at CES which begins January 5th, unless COVID derails it again.

Image: Samsung

Samsung, meanwhile, just announced the PM1743 PCIe NVMe SSD, fitted with Samsung’s 6th gen v-NAND and a proprietary controller that supports the PCIe 5.0 interface. The company is targeting enterprise customers with the promise of 30 percent enhanced power efficiency and advanced security features.

The PM1743 is capable of sequential read speeds of up to 13GBps (random read speed of 2,500K IOPS) and sequential write speeds of 6.6GBps (random write speed of 250K IOPS), according to Samsung. The PM1743 SSD will be available in capacities ranging from 1.92TB to 15.36TB, and is currently being sampled by chipset and server manufacturers prior to mass production in Q1 2022.