Micron claims the world's fastest PCIe Gen 6 SSD with 26 GB/s, but it won't be hitting your PC until years later

Micron, the company behind Crucial SSD, has announced a new PCIe Gen 6 SSD that is capable of 26 GB/s. It's true ladies and germs. Your antiquated, 14GB/s Generation 5 drive is old news (even though PCIe 5.0 remains the best among today's gaming SSDs). Anyone who's anyone is going to have a Gen 6 drive soon.

Well, ish. The Micron drive won't be something you can buy and install in your PC or laptop next week. Your PC or laptop does not support PCIe Gen 6 yet and will not for some time.

This new PCIe 6 drive is primarily for high-end servers, AI infrastructure and other AI-related applications. Micron hasn’t revealed many details about the new drive. (via Techspot). The announcement is a preview of the Future Memory and Storage Conference currently taking place in Santa Clara.

Micron only said that the drive would have a sequential read performance of more than 26 GB/s. Existing PCIe Gen 5 drive, such as Teamgroup Z540, have theoretical maximums of 14 GB/s, but in reality, they are usually lower. Micron's latest baby is nearly twice as fast when it comes to peak bandwidth.

It's likely that it will require a megabucks adapter for servers and AI racks, and the entire thing will cost more money than your home. In any case, the real-world performance of a PC is not affected by increasing the raw bandwidth. Even older PCIe Gen 4 hard drives can deliver up to 6 GB/s. This is enough on paper to load any game within a few seconds.

Of course, this is not how it works. Other aspects of performance like random access and latency are just as important, if not even more so. If you asked us which we would prefer to see in a next-generation SSD, a doubled raw throughput or an increased IOPS performance, the latter would be our answer.

The first generation PCIe Gen 5 drives have also been problematic due to the Phison E26 Controller, which requires active cooling to achieve peak performance.

We're therefore eager to see what drives based on SiliconMotion SM2508 controllers will turn out like. The SiliconMotion controller is said to consume less power and run cooler than its Phison counterpart, while still being capable of 14.5GB/s readings and 14GB/s writings.

It's also claimed that it delivers almost twice the IOPS performance as its predecessor. We're looking forward to seeing full-spec Gen 5 drive with the new chip, which can run with passive cooler. Phison has its own E31T, which is its first mainstream controller. However, it may sacrifice raw speed to achieve thermal efficiency.

The Gen 6 drive will probably not be available until next year. PCs that support Gen 6 technology are still a few years away, likely not until 2026, and more likely 2027 or 28.

It's probably okay, since hardly anyone uses a Gen 5 hard drive today. Gen 5 drives also haven't really delivered on the promises of that iteration PCI Express interface.