I think this product is probably only viable because the ASMedia PCIe switch is reasonably cheap and low-power. They don't have PCIe 4.0 switches yet, so the only options would be Broadcom and Microsemi. Their PCIe 4.0 switch product lines start at 26-28 lanes and ~12W, which would be prohibitively expensive and might require adding active cooling.
That does indeed sound unrealistic, but if they launch a 12-lane controller that would make for a pretty compelling product assuming the TDP scales more or less linearly down. 6W+4x~5W for the SSDs is still quite a lot in a 3.5" chassis, but definitely doable as long as there's sufficient surface area and airflow.
Yeah, a 12-lane PCIe 4 switch would probably work if one existed. Broadcom and Microsemi won't be the ones to provide such a switch. I assume ASMedia will get there eventually, but it took a long time for them to introduce gen3 switches. I'm interested to see what kind of successor Marvell comes up with for the 88NR2241. Moving that to gen4 and maybe doubling the downstream lane count would make a very useful NVMe switch for things like this U.2 carrier and quad-M.2 riser cards.
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RMSe17 - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
I like the idea, I wonder if they have a PCIe 4.0 model with a compatible switch in the works? Would be great given the lane sharing/splitting!Billy Tallis - Thursday, January 14, 2021 - link
I think this product is probably only viable because the ASMedia PCIe switch is reasonably cheap and low-power. They don't have PCIe 4.0 switches yet, so the only options would be Broadcom and Microsemi. Their PCIe 4.0 switch product lines start at 26-28 lanes and ~12W, which would be prohibitively expensive and might require adding active cooling.Valantar - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
That does indeed sound unrealistic, but if they launch a 12-lane controller that would make for a pretty compelling product assuming the TDP scales more or less linearly down. 6W+4x~5W for the SSDs is still quite a lot in a 3.5" chassis, but definitely doable as long as there's sufficient surface area and airflow.Billy Tallis - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
Yeah, a 12-lane PCIe 4 switch would probably work if one existed. Broadcom and Microsemi won't be the ones to provide such a switch. I assume ASMedia will get there eventually, but it took a long time for them to introduce gen3 switches. I'm interested to see what kind of successor Marvell comes up with for the 88NR2241. Moving that to gen4 and maybe doubling the downstream lane count would make a very useful NVMe switch for things like this U.2 carrier and quad-M.2 riser cards.Jorgp2 - Friday, January 15, 2021 - link
That product would be ~$500-800 just for the carrier, with no SSDs.