At GTC 2024, SK hynix showed off a new SSD. The SK Hynix Platinum P51 is a PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD using 238L NAND and what the company says is a custom controller. This was featured at the NVIDIA GTC 2024 booth with little fan-fare on opening night.
SK hynix Platinum P51 PCIe Gen5 M.2 NVMe SSD Shown
The new PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSDs have some fairly pedestrian specs. It features up to 13.5GB/s read and 11.5GB/s write speeds, but those specs may change by launch. There should still be headroom for a PCIe Gen5 x4 drive.
Another item we were surprised by is the capacity. The capacities listed are 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. As drives have fallen in price, there has been a shift to 1TB/ 2TB capacities over 500GB as the incremental cost per GB is generally very low. We also see a larger market for 4TB class drives and it feels like we would want a 4TB model if this is launching several months from now.
Final Words
We are still a few quarters from this drive hitting the market which feels a bit strange. It is unlikely to be the fastest PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD on the market and we will be getting closer to the PCIe Gen6 implementation on CPUs by the time the Platinum P51 launches. At the same time the SK hynix Gold P31 has become a favorite drive at STH for its low cost and cool operation. Hopefully SK hynix is able to achieve something similar with the Platinum P51. We just wish it had a 4TB option since the 2TB capacity will limit its usefulness in higher-end applications. Those higher-end applications are also ones where PCIe Gen5 SSDs might offer benefits over PCie Gen4 drives.
Another cool SSD, anything over 2TBs is plenty for most users. I like the idea of cool reliable operations at low costs like many PCI-E 3 and 4 SSDs can do.
I’m a little surprised to see this released as a Hynix drive and not Solidigm, considering the Hynix P41 was effectively just rebranded as the P44 Pro. Not clear what the branding strategy is.
@Oarman
Client SSD biz will be on hynix