The PCI-Express adapter for four NVMe cards in a unified array will also benefit from an upgrade to the fifth generation of technology, with a potential doubling of transfer speeds possible on the way to receiving data that sounds simply imaginary
The major Taiwanese hardware manufacturer GIGABYTE was not content to tell us about the first AORUS drive it is preparing for the next generation of processors that will provide full support for storage based on the PCI-Express 5.0 interface – and also adds to this its future RAID solution mainly intended for those for whom money is usually not an issue A challenge for them, and the highest imaginable performance is the rosiest dream for them.
The future AIC (Add-In-Card) card will use a full PCI-Express 5.0×16 interface to create a storage array of four innovative NVMe drives in a standard M.2 interface, including bridging chips and controllers that will allow the operating systems to see the product as One and only storage drive in the end – but one that will be able to reach continuous transfer speeds of about 60,000MBps, or 60GBps, according to the official announcement on GIGABYTE’s website.
The AORUS Gen5 AIC Adapter will come with support for a total volume of up to 16TB (or up to 4TB per individual drive) a built-in metal heatsink, a built-in fan and eight strategically placed temperature sensors to ensure optimal performance – but without any storage drives included, similar to previous incarnations of the product, so from the statement of a total maximum speed of 60GBps it can be concluded that the company is already aware at this early stage that we will see M.2 drives down the road that reach continuous transfer speeds of 15GBps or slightly more, this compared to transfer speeds of up to 7,400MBps or 7.4GBps in drives The most advanced M.2 in the home market that are sold in stores today under PCI-Express 4.0 interfaces.
As in the case of the AORUS Gen5 10000 drive, in this case too we do not yet have a launch time window or any price estimate – but once again we can predict that it probably won’t be cheap, especially at the beginning. The AORUS Gen4 AIC Adapter was originally launched with a pricing of about 300 dollars (!), but today it is already available in certain stores in Israel at a price of under NIS 600 as evidence that the practical demand for these advanced capabilities did not quite match the early expectations.