Since the arrival of Alder Lake-S, a few months ago, news about PCIe Gen5 SSDs has come to us regularly, and it is that the performance that this new standard promises us is, simply, spectacular. Quite a few manufacturers, such as Samsung, have already gotten down to work, and earlier this year Intel gave us one more proof of what we can expect. Thus, and as we anticipated a few months ago, we can expect the arrival of the first units this year.
Now, when will they become popular? We are all clear that the prices of the first PCIe Gen5 SSDs will be high, quite high. Nothing new, actually, the usual thing in these cases is that some time has to pass from the arrival of a new technology until its prices begin to drop and, in this way, its adoption becomes popular. We can be clear that this will also happen with PCIe Gen5 SSDs, the question is when we can expect that transition to occur.
And today we can read on TechPowerUp that Wallace Kou, CEO of Silicon Motion, has suggested that we may have to wait until 2024 to get to that point. In a presentation of results, he stated «PCIe Gen4 is likely to last a few years as both Intel and AMD continue to release new PCIe Gen4 CPU upgrade variants.» and added «Similarly, we are preparing to release our third generation PCIe Gen4 controller next year, before transitioning to PCIe Gen5 the following year«.
Although each manufacturer has its own cycles, Kou’s statements are especially interesting, because in addition to talking about his own product cycle, he brings the front that Intel and AMD will also continue to extend the life cycle of Gen4something understandable not only because of the huge fleet of existing systems that are not yet compatible with PCIe Gen5 SSDs, but also because components and systems that are marketed today, like all laptops, are not compatible either.
Thus, we can assume that 2022 and 2023 will be the years in which the necessary ecosystem for the massive arrival of PCIe Gen5 SSDs in two years, in 2024. This does not mean, yes, that units of this type will not be seen much sooner, in fact we will see the first ones this year. But at the end of this year, its presence in this market will be testimonial.
