Gigabyte has launched its AI TOP 100E series of SSDs designed specifically for heavy-duty tasks like AI training.
The new SSDs are available in 1TB and 2TB capacities and come housed in a standard M.2 2280 form factor.
What sets them apart from the competition is their extraordinary resistance rates. Gigabyte says the 2TB model offers up to 219,000 TBW (Terabytes Written), significantly more than you'd expect from typical consumer SSDs. The mean time between failures (MTBF) is estimated at 1.6 million hours.
Superior AI Utility
AI TOP 100E uses the PCIe 4.0×4, NVMe 1.4 interface, so it won't win any performance races, especially compared to newer PCIe 5.0 drives, but it's fast enough. The 1TB SSD offers sequential read speeds of up to 7,200 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6,500 MB/s, slightly outperforming the 2TB model (7,000 MB/s reads, 5,900 MB/s writes). Basically, based on the numbers provided, Gigabyte says the 2TB model can write 219,000,000GB at 5.9GB/s in 37,118,644 seconds, or about 1.18 years. That is a great statement.
Gigabyte hasn't detailed how it achieves its improved durability, nor has it specified the type of 3D NAND used, but the drive supports exceptionally high levels of data write operations, rated at 60 drive writes per day (DWPD).
Due to their limited capacity and high costs, system VRAM and DRAM often become bottlenecks when training AI models. The AI TOP 100E SSD comes with an “AI TOP” utility that Gigabyte says will allow users to “offload processing of large VRAM or DRAM data sets to the AI TOP 100E SSD, effectively expanding its memory pool and upgrading the ability to tune large AI models. This approach improves performance and significantly reduces total cost of ownership (TCO), with the AI TOP 100E SSD emerging as the most cost-effective option per gigabyte compared to system VRAM and DRAM.” .
While specific pricing and availability details have yet to be announced, the SSD comes with a five-year limited warranty or is guaranteed for 109,500 TBW (1 TB model) or 219,000 TBW (2 TB), whichever comes first.
