Gigabyte continues to expand its Ultra Durable (UD) series NVMe drive portfolio with an emphasis on AI. SSDs of this series are characterized by a large endurance reserve. The manufacturer has released the AI TOP UD SSD 1TB model, which is a “budget” version of the AI TOP 100E SSD models. It differs from the latter in lower productivity and a smaller operating life, but its calculated durability is still more than 100 thousand TBW (terabytes of overwritten information).
Image Source: Gigabyte
The AI TOP UD SSD 1TB model is equipped with a PCIe 4.0 interface. The stated sequential read speed of the drive is 6500 MB/s, and sequential write speed is up to 5700 MB/s. The operating resource is 109,500 TBW. The manufacturer provides a five-year warranty for the new product. AI TOP UD SSD 1TB is made in the familiar M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it compatible with most laptops and desktop PCs.
The new AI TOP UD SSD 1TB differs from the 100E series models by up to 700 MB/s lower sequential read speed and up to 800 MB/s lower sequential write speed. In addition, the operating life of the AI TOP UD SSD 1TB is half that of the SSD 100E 2TB model (219,000 TBW), but corresponds to the resource of the 1 TB SSD 100E model.
In terms of performance, the AI TOP UD SSD 1TB is significantly slower than the Samsung 990 Pro, which provides maximum performance for the PCIe 4.0 interface and operating speeds of over 7000 MB/s. However, in the AI TOP series of drives, Gigabyte gives priority not to pure performance, but to operating resource, since these SSDs are designed for operations associated with AI workloads. For comparison, the operating life of the same Samsung 990 Pro with a capacity of 4 TB is “only” 2400 TBW, which is 41 times less than that of the AI TOP UD SSD.
The cost of AI TOP UD SSD 1TB has not been announced. But taking into account the characteristics, the cost of the new product should be lower than that of the AI TOP 100E 1TB model, which is currently offered by some retailers for more than $2,600.