Tech news in 3 minutes

Longsys Gen5 2TB mSSD Review 13GB/s Speed up to 8TB Capacity in a 25 Cent Piece Sized Storage Device

1 d ago

Exascend, a boutique NAND flash storage manufacturer, has launched its PD5 Gen5 7.68TB Enterprise SSD, a PCIe 5.0 x4 drive designed for AI/ML, HPC, and data-intensive workloads, featuring up to 14.1GB/s sequential reads and 3.12 million IOPS. The company, which The SSD Review met at Computex in Taiwan and later visited at its engineering team in Shanghai, differentiates itself through a vertically integrated approach—developing solutions from the wafer level with in-house hardware, firmware, and software expertise to deliver highly customized, customer-focused storage rather than one-size-fits-all products. The PD5 arrives in a U.2 form factor with a ribbed black aluminum casing and is available in capacities from 7.68TB to 30.72TB. It is rated for sequential write speeds up to 9.35GB/s and supports a broad range of enterprise operating systems including Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, VMware ESXi, and KVM. Enterprise-class features include advanced LDPC error correction, Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) support, and integrated hardware power-loss protection. At its core, the PD5 uses a Silicon Motion SM8366 16-channel PCIe 5.0 x4 controller paired with 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. A standout technology is Exascend’s Dual Power Loss Protection, which uses custom firmware and onboard tantalum capacitors to flush DRAM cache data to NAND during unexpected power failures, then rapidly reconstructs the Flash Translation Layer mapping table upon power restoration. The drive is offered in standard and Pro Editions with different endurance ratings, carries a 5-year limited warranty, and has active power consumption up to 25W with 5.4W idle.