World's First 16TB M.2 SSD Lands on Amazon—But the $16,000 Price Tag Stuns Tech Enthusiasts

Unexpectedly, the world's first 16TB M.2 SSD appeared on Amazon. This is the Exascend PE4 model from Exascend, which is not intended for the consumer market, but its characteristics might interest technology enthusiasts who are not deterred by the price.

SSD priced like a car

The Exascend PE4 with 16TB in M.2 form factor costs … $16,000. This roughly translates to nearly $1000 per terabyte, making the SSD a highly niche solution.

Expensive, but worth it

The combination of high capacity and standard M.2 form factor is the main feature of the drive. For comparison, most consumer SSDs are limited to 4-8TB, while this new model offers twice as much without increasing size.

The drive uses the PCIe 4.0 interface and provides speeds up to 3270 MB/s for reading and 2980 MB/s for writing, which corresponds to enterprise-level solutions. The SSD is designed for 24/7 operation and has an MTBF of up to 2 million hours, supporting stable operation at temperatures from 0 to 70°C. In addition, the device is optimized for power consumption and designed for intensive workloads.

The PE4 series was originally created for data centers, servers, and NAS (Network Attached Storage), but such an SSD is definitely useful for AI developers and those working with large language models.

Source: Videocardz, Amazon