Demo with 27 GB / s: Microns PCIe-6.0-SSDS show what you can do 11 comments
Bild: micron
There is a sign of life from the announced Microns PCIE-6.0-SSD. This was used in a double pack at the connectivity specialist Astera Labs. Each of the two models achieved a throughput of around 27 GB / s. Micron had previously promised “more than 26 GB / s”.
In August 2024, Micron announced the development of the alleged first PCIE-6.0 SSD for use in the data center at the specialist FMS conference. Micron spoke of a “kick start” for the PCIe Gen6 ecosystem. For the time being, however, it has remained with Lean information, because in addition to the interface, the area of application and the potential of more than 26 GB / s when reading sequential reads, the press release from Micronon is no longer revealed via the SSD, so that the form factor is also hidden.
The latter is now known, because a manufacturer’s video shows the Micron SSD rendered without a name in the E3. This format was now also used at the demo with Astera Labs. Two of the Micron SSDs were used on the test system, which also has a Scorpio P-Series fabric switch from Astera Labs and an NVIDIA H100 GPU. With the help of NVIDIA’s “Magnum IO Gpudirect Storage”, the SSDs were connected directly to the GPU. For the test, the data was then promoted from the SSDs to the GPU.
As a screenshot proves, the drive rate was over 25.2 GIB/s, which is about 27 GB/s.
The blog does not reveal which “processor host” Astera Labs used. The platform must at least be able to handle PCIe 6.0 in order to be able to call this speed. The fabric switch is probably the PF60641L, which is specified on the product pages with 64 PCIe 6.x lanes and is in the sampling phase. With support for PCIe 6.x and CXL 3.x, Astera Labs also has some in its portfolio.
Kickstart for the PCIe 6.0 ecosystem
Together, Astera Labs and Micron want to advance the spread of PCIe 6.0 with such demos, but this only happens in the form of available products. So far, neither of them has limited the period for the market launch of the respective products.
Other NAND and SSD manufacturers such as SK Hynix are also working on the first PCIE-6.0 SSDs. The interface itself has been ready for a long time, as the specifications for PCIe 6.0 were published in January 2022. These allow the data transfer rate to be doubled. At 16 lanes (x16), 128 GB / s (gross) must then be transferred in each direction.
For SSDs, PCIe 6.0 x4 with 32 GB / s (gross) can be expected per direction. Current SSDs with PCIe 5.0 x4 achieve almost 15 GB / s. If the technology has evolved well in the end, SSDs with almost 30 GB / s can be expected.
Topics: Flash Memory Micron NVME PCIE 6.0 Server SSD Source Source: Astera Labs, Tom’s Hardware
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