Even though most companies have not transitioned their entire NVMe SSD selections to PCI Express 4.0, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are already looking very close. In its recent earnings call, Silicon Motion, a storage company, said that it expects its PCIe 5.0-capable SSD controllers for consumer SSD will be here in 2024.
The new generation will open the door to many high-performance drives from various makers. SSD maker ADATA teased some PCIe 5.0 SSDs at CES in January but did not talk about the release date.
The enterprise SSDs could be here later this year
The company did mention that read speeds could be as high as 14GB/s and write speeds of up to 12GB/s with a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. The existing PCIe 4.0 SSDs only reach about half those speeds. Some reports have suggested that the PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs could be here as early as later this year. However, according to the call transcripts, that statement is only valid for the latest version of Silicon Motion’s PCIe 5.0 controller for enterprise SSDs (used in data centres and servers and not consumer products).
We are still in the PCIe 4.0 era
The early PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumer PCs were shown at CES a couple of years before they were available for anyone to buy.
For 2022 and 2023, Silicon Motion’s focus will still be on the PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Budget SSDs are only just beginning the transition to PCIe 4.0, and as seen in reviews by renowned experts, the controllers and flash memory are not fast enough to take advantage of the extra bandwidth. Silicon Motion says that PCIe 4.0 SSDs have only become a common addition in pre-built PCs within the last year due to lengthy verification and testing requirements.
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