Kioxia Claims “World’s Smallest” Title With BG5 Series PCIe 4.0 SSDs

Kioxia recently launched its BG5 series of client SSDs. While the storage medium may seem nothing out of the ordinary, Kioxia claims that it is also the world’s smallest PCIe NVMe Gen4 SSD in the world.

Specifically, the BG5 series comes in the usual M.2 form factor, but instead of just a standard 2280 length, Kioxia’s new family of SSDs is also available the 2230 form factor. As mentioned, the SSD also uses the PCIe 4.0 interface, which is exceedingly rare among memory and storage makers. Further, the SSD uses Kioxia’s 112-layer BiCS5 3D NAND memory with a 1.2GT/s interface, and is available in three storage capacities: 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.

In terms of performance, the BG5 PCIe 4.0 SSDs aren’t the fastest we’ve seen on the market, with maximum sequential read and write speeds of 3500MB/s and 2900MB/s, respectively, plus random read and write speeds of 500000 IOPS and 450000 IOPS. We’re guessing that’s the price Kioxia had to pay in order to cram in all the PCIe 4.0 related technology, into a form factor that is usually reserved for AX Wi-Fi modules.

Speaking of downsides, it should be noted that the BG5 series SSDs do not come in the Ball Grid Array (BGA) form factor, meaning that any OEM or laptop maker who wishes to solder the storage modules onto their laptop PCBs are out of luck.

At the time of writing, Kioxia did not specify pricing or availability dates for the BG5 series, but it has stated it is currently sampling the product to several key industry players and customers.

Chia Crypto Mining Reportedly Cripples Inexpensive SSDs In Just A Few Weeks

By now, it’s clear that many among you have begun the process to mine the Chia, a form of cryptocurrency also known as Burstcoin (Burst) that utilises available storage space, instead of GPUs and CPUs. If you’re using high-speed SSDs to “plot” your space, though, you may want to ensure that they’re suited to the task.

As pointed out by Tom’s Hardware, using inexpensive, consumer-grade SSDs could end up being rendered unusable in just 40 days or several weeks. Statistically, a 1TB with a 600TB to be written (TBW) endurance would usually take over five years before it begins to fail. Imagine then, the cost of running several SSDs in RAID mode.

Even renown overclocker, Roman”der8auer” Hartung has advised that, for miners building a Chia mining rig, it is imperative that they find and use SSDs with high TBW and DWPD ratings, so as to minimise the risk of drive failure in the long run.

There is, unsurprisingly, a catch to all this. SSDs with higher resistance to failure ratings are usually made available to commercial and professional markets, such as datacentres. To that end, such SSDs are usually sold at far higher prices, due in part to the enterprise-grade features that are usually integrated into them.

Chia has been steadily gaining momentum in the cryptocurrency world, but it should be noted that at the time of writing, the coin still isn’t publicly traded.