Just as mainstream computers begin adopting PCIe Gen 5 support, FADU Technology has announced its first-ever PCIe Gen 5 SSD and SSD controller designs. According to GlobeNewswire, these SSDs will target 14.6 GB/s of performance, consume less power, and will be designed specifically for the cloud and data center market.
FADU's preliminary specification for its Gen 5 SSD includes sequential write speeds of up to 10.4 GB/s, and sequential read speeds of up to 14.6GB/s, all while consuming less than 5.2W of power. It also delivers up to 3.5 million random read IOPS and 734,000 random write IOPS.
| SSD Form Factors | E1.S / E1.L / E3 / U.2 |
| SSD Controller | FADU FC5161 |
| Host Interface | PCIe 5.0 x 4 / NVMe 1.4+ / OCP Cloud Spec 2.0 |
| NAND Interface | 16 Channel / ONFi 5 (2400MT/s) |
| Sequential Read | 14.6 GB/s |
| Sequential Write | 10.4 GB/s |
| Random Read | 3400 KIOPs |
| Random Write | 735 KIOPs |
| Average Power | <5.2 W |
The new SSDs will operate on a PCIe Gen 5 interface with four lanes of connectivity and feature the NVMe 1.4+ protocol along with OCP Cloud Spec 2.0. SSD form factors.
While we don't have signs of a consumer variant just yet, it's good to know that Gen 5 SSDs are being built right now. So we can expect that technology to trickle down to the consumer market. This is especially important, considering we already have our first consumer-based platform that supports Gen 5 SSDs, in the form of Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs and Z690 motherboards. For now, there are no Gen 5 products on the market making PCIe Gen 5 support largely useless for everybody until Gen 5 products start coming online.
These SSDs are poised to launch in late 2022.