Gigabyte launched its AI TOP 100E series of SSDs, aiming to rival the best SSDs around town. With an unprecedented endurance rating of up to 219,000 TBW on the 2TB model, the AI TOP 100E drives target heavy workloads, such as AI training.
The AI TOP 100E SSD comes in a standard M.2 2280 form factor and uses a PCIe 4.0 interface. It's not going to win any pure performance races, especially if you pit it against more modern PCIe 5.0 drives. However, its durability rating is the main selling point of the AI TOP 100E SSD. Sadly, Gigabyte doesn't reveal what kind of 3D NAND flash the company uses in the AI TOP 100E SSD or what kind of magic it uses to achieve that level of stability. It probably has a lot of redundant NAND, but even that on its own won't be enough to hit the 60 drive writes per day (DWPD) rating.
The company only mentions an “AI TOP” utility that apparently offloads the processing of large data sets from the graphics card's VRAM or system RAM to the AI TOP 100E SSD. The approach intends to increase the size of the memory pool so that the user can fine-tune large AI models. That's why Gigabyte made the AI TOP 100E SSD as durable as it is.
Gigabyte rates the 1TB and 2TB models for 109,500 TBW and 219,500 TBW, respectively. That equates to about 17 hours per day of continuous 2 TB/s writes for five years on the big drive – an impressive figure that rivals enterprise and data center-grade SSDs. Comparing the AI TOP 100E SSD to the Samsung 990 Pro, one of the PCIe 4.0 SSDs, Gigabyte's drives offer up to 183X more endurance in the same 1TB and 2TB capacities. The math isn't far off from Gigabyte's claims that the AI TOP 100E SSD has a 150X higher TBW rating than a traditional PCIe 4.0 SSD (1,400 TBW).
Gigabyte AI TOP 100E SSD Specifications
SSD | Capacity (TB) | Sequential Read (MB/s) | Sequential Write (MB/s) | Random Read (IOPS) | Random Writes (IOPS) | DRAM Cache (GB) | Endurance (TBW) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AI100E2TB | 2 | 7,000 | 5,900 | ? | ? | 2 | 219,000 |
AI100E1TB | 1 | 7,200 | 6,500 | ? | ? | 1 | 109,500 |
The AI TOP 100E comes in two variants, 1TB and 2TB, with the latter doubling the endurance rating. If we look past endurance, the AI TOP 100E SSD performs similarly to other PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The 1TB has the highest performance of the pair, with sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,200 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s respectively. The 2TB model has slightly slower specs, with the same 7,200 MB/s sequential reads but only 5,900 MB/s for sequential writes. The 1TB and 2TB models have 1GB and 2GB of LPDDR4 memory respectively.
Gigabyte didn't reveal random performance for the AI TOP 100E SSD, so we'll have to work with sequential numbers to compare. The performance of the AI TOP 100E SSD is in the same street as the Samsung 990 Pro – at least on paper. The Samsung 990 Pro offers sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, respectively, so it's only 3.5% and 6.2% faster than the AI TOP 100E SSD.
Gigabyte does not market the AI TOP 100E SSD as an enterprise SSD or anything else. The company simply touts the drive's robust endurance as being perfect for AI workloads, with the features page stating that the “AI TOP 100E SSD is specifically designed for AI workloads ” Like many consumer drives, the Gigabyte AI TOP 100E SSD is backed by a five-year limited warranty or until TBW expires. The company recently listed the SSD, so pricing and availability are unknown.