Amazon has just listed a 16TB capacity M.2 SSD at a price of almost $16,000.
Unless you've spent the last six months or so in a cave, you can't escape the dizzying inflation in both DRAM and NAND chips. Both used en masse by the artificial intelligence industry, they are virtually unavailable for more conventional products, or at indecent prices. Artificial intelligence promoters are prepared to spend incredible sums to acquire the components capable of powering the famous models. DRAM/NAND manufacturers have obviously sniffed out the opportunity: why undercut consumers when you can double, triple or even quadruple your profits thanks to AI?
Four capacities available for this PE4 Series © Amazon
And yet, despite this crazy inflation, there's still information to surprise us. Exascend launched its "PE4 Series" M.2 SSD on the market a few weeks ago, and while the product was only available in very small quantities at the time, it has just arrived on Amazon's virtual shelves. Why talk about this PE4 Series in particular? Because it's the first M.2 SSD model to be offered with a maximum capacity of 16TB. Yes, 16TB on a PCB 22 mm wide and 80 mm long. That's a lot of data per square centimeter! Remember that, until now, the largest M.2s were content with 8TB.
Not far from $16,000! © Amazon
Times being what they are, you probably won't be able to get your hands on this little storage marvel. Indeed, on Amazon's page, we see it listed at the modest price of $15,935. A price that makes it totally uncompetitive with even the most expensive 8TB models, which can be found today for around $2,000/3,000. You'll need to have very specific needs - and a very well-stocked wallet - to justify such a purchase. However, price and capacity aren't everything: this PE4 Series model doesn't boast very high performance. We're talking about a maximum of 3,270 MB/s for sequential reading and 52 K IOPS for random writing.
