5 ms·

This one of those things were the default reaction is to say "Cool! This will be super handy" but then realize your existing computer is still running PCIE4 and

This one of those things were the default reaction is to say "Cool! This will be super handy" but then realize your existing computer is still running PCIE4 and and PCIE5 devices are still rare. I didn't realize that PCIE6 was already done and "out".

Tuna-Fish 3y ago
The standard needs to be developed well in advance of the devices that support it. PCIe 7.0 is not coming particularly quickly when compared to past standards. PCIe 5.0 first draft was out in 2017, final spec released in 2019, platform support first available in 2021, devices that actually supported it on the market in late 2022. PCIe 6.0 first draft out in 2020, final spec released in 2022, first devices (and hopefully platform support?) out this year. PCIe 7.0 first draft out in 2024, spec scheduled to be released 2025, devices and platform support out probably a few years after that. It's not that the standard is moving super quickly, but that because everyone needs to collaborate for the standard to actually be interoperable, you get to see how the sausage is made and so the news about it seems to be out very early.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Any reason a few companies can't leapfrog to the fastest one?
  - Tuna-Fish 3y ago
    It takes time to design and manufacture chips.
zamadatix 3y ago
Consumer devices don't really need the bandwidth doubling, outside power users treating it as a way to have less lane contention instead of increased bandwidth per device, yet. Most of the attraction is for large systems hoping to remotely access/share memory in a cluster. On the consumer side the only thing really close to mattering is "higher speed sequential SSD reads/writes on an x4 m.2 NVMe slot" and even then the speeds are already a bit silly for any practical single drive purpose.
- bducycy 3y ago
  You're making the same 64k should be enough for anyone argument. Just because we don't need it now, doesn't mean we won't. Just because we might not, the mere fact it becomes available drives prices of existing drives down. That is something everyone needs. That is something that moves society forward.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    No, I don't think it's the same "64K should be good enough" at all. Even then many people were rightly skeptical btw. As a guy who did the very occasional data science job, my iMac Pro's SSD tops out at ~2.7 GB/s in sequential workloads. For 4.5 years of using it I've only seen 3 programs being able to use its SSD to the absolute maximum, and the tasks lasted 30-40 seconds. So it didn't matter much. I get it, there are people who do specialized work and are doing it every day and they need absolutely everything that the hardware can give them but realistically your average JS / Python / Golang / Rust dev having a 5700x with 32GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD (e.g. topping at 4 GB/s) is not just quite fine, they are likely over-served even. As a guy who peeked under the hood of a lot of open-source software, I have found that software is 99% of the bottleneck, even today. Almost nothing has changed.
    - kaliqt 3y ago
      I don't think you are correct on this, with ML workloads becoming a thing, increasing speeds across the board is extremely important.
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        And? You're saying all of us will train models all day?
    - bducycy 3y ago
      This is the same 64k argument again. You don't know what is possible with more resources being made available. Eventually, people will figure out how to use them. The main issue we face is that we're not limited by the top end, we're limited by the bottom end. Bottom end computers are still running sata and 8gb of ram. Once you see that stuff move to 32gb and 1tb nvme, you might see changes in strategy. Games are a big one for example, those things now run multi hundred GB, SSD speeds make a huge difference in what is possible there. Just wait til game Devs figure out how to use generative ai backed by huge models disk speed and ram will definitely play a role.
whartung 3y ago
It’s still “WOW” and tickles my “remember when” neurons.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Hell yes. I will never forget the day that I upgrade from spinning hard drive to an NVMe drive. It blew my mind. That was a "post I/O" moment for me. Up until then, almost all of my computing experiences were limited by slow hard drives. I had "enough" CPU, memory, and network, but the disks were always too slow. NVMe was a 100x improvement.
  - blkhp19 3y ago
    I still remember apps opening in less than one “bounce” on the OS X dock back in the snow leopard days. That was on a hackintosh with a 7200rpm hard drive. To be honest, I don’t really remember my first real Mac (a Haswell late 2013 MBP with NVME) feeling all that different. I’m sure large disk operations were faster, and compile times were faster because of the better CPU, but something about that “good enough” snow leopard desktop setup withh spinning metal worked great; maybe they warmed up some caches of apps they knew you were likely to use to make the basics feel fast. Overall I feel like things have gotten less snappy since then, but it’s hard to be objective after all these years.
doubled112 3y ago
My newest desktop is still PCIe 3. Apparently by the time I get around to upgrading, things will be really fast.
- fransje26 3y ago
  Nah. The software bloat will have caught up by then, and things will be just as slow..
hajile 3y ago
External cable size is limited by flexibility. In theory the 4x variant could drive an external GPU at PCIe 5 x16 bandwidth. Alternatively, it could drive a 4x16 card and have bandwidth left for fast SSDs and fast Ethernet and various USB stuff at the same time. That sounds great for laptop docks.
throwaway2037 3y ago
> PCIE5 devices are still rare I would agree for expansion cards, such as GPUs and network cards. But I would disagree for NVMe drives. There are plenty now. And really, how many do you need? Even if there are three options for PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives, it will be enough. All will be far faster than you will ever need.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Sure, but I'd be worried about durability if the choice is as scarce. I don't need 32+ GB/s, I need something that will last me 10+ years.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    For NMVe drives? All the components are made by third party vendors -- except Samsung who makes their own ASIC. As long as your GB written per day is well below their warranty, you will be fine.
    - internet101010 3y ago
      Warranties are always presented in terms of years rather than TBW. When shopping you have to go to the manufacturers' websites and pull the data sheets for every single model. Two drives for the same price could both have 5 year warranties but have vastly different endurance ratings. It's similar to x-mile, y-year warranty system with cars but in this case you have to hunt down the x-mile piece yourself. On top of that, newer versions can release within same product line but have much worse endurance ratings. For example, my old Corsair MP600 2TB drives from 2020 are rated for 3600 TBW. The newer MP600 Core XT and Elite models have 450 TBW and 1600 TBW respectively. My MP600 drives are currently at 1.5-2.0 PB written.

Tuna-Fish 3y ago

The standard needs to be developed well in advance of the devices that support it. PCIe 7.0 is not coming particularly quickly when compared to past standards. PCIe 5.0 first draft was out in 2017, final spec released in 2019, platform support first available in 2021, devices that actually supported it on the market in late 2022. PCIe 6.0 first draft out in 2020, final spec released in 2022, first devices (and hopefully platform support?) out this year. PCIe 7.0 first draft out in 2024, spec scheduled to be released 2025, devices and platform support out probably a few years after that. It's not that the standard is moving super quickly, but that because everyone needs to collaborate for the standard to actually be interoperable, you get to see how the sausage is made and so the news about it seems to be out very early.

rkagerer 3y ago
Any reason a few companies can't leapfrog to the fastest one?
- Tuna-Fish 3y ago
  It takes time to design and manufacture chips.

zamadatix 3y ago

Consumer devices don't really need the bandwidth doubling, outside power users treating it as a way to have less lane contention instead of increased bandwidth per device, yet. Most of the attraction is for large systems hoping to remotely access/share memory in a cluster. On the consumer side the only thing really close to mattering is "higher speed sequential SSD reads/writes on an x4 m.2 NVMe slot" and even then the speeds are already a bit silly for any practical single drive purpose.

bducycy 3y ago
You're making the same 64k should be enough for anyone argument. Just because we don't need it now, doesn't mean we won't. Just because we might not, the mere fact it becomes available drives prices of existing drives down. That is something everyone needs. That is something that moves society forward.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  No, I don't think it's the same "64K should be good enough" at all. Even then many people were rightly skeptical btw. As a guy who did the very occasional data science job, my iMac Pro's SSD tops out at ~2.7 GB/s in sequential workloads. For 4.5 years of using it I've only seen 3 programs being able to use its SSD to the absolute maximum, and the tasks lasted 30-40 seconds. So it didn't matter much. I get it, there are people who do specialized work and are doing it every day and they need absolutely everything that the hardware can give them but realistically your average JS / Python / Golang / Rust dev having a 5700x with 32GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD (e.g. topping at 4 GB/s) is not just quite fine, they are likely over-served even. As a guy who peeked under the hood of a lot of open-source software, I have found that software is 99% of the bottleneck, even today. Almost nothing has changed.
  - kaliqt 3y ago
    I don't think you are correct on this, with ML workloads becoming a thing, increasing speeds across the board is extremely important.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      And? You're saying all of us will train models all day?
  - bducycy 3y ago
    This is the same 64k argument again. You don't know what is possible with more resources being made available. Eventually, people will figure out how to use them. The main issue we face is that we're not limited by the top end, we're limited by the bottom end. Bottom end computers are still running sata and 8gb of ram. Once you see that stuff move to 32gb and 1tb nvme, you might see changes in strategy. Games are a big one for example, those things now run multi hundred GB, SSD speeds make a huge difference in what is possible there. Just wait til game Devs figure out how to use generative ai backed by huge models disk speed and ram will definitely play a role.

whartung 3y ago

It’s still “WOW” and tickles my “remember when” neurons.

throwaway2037 3y ago
Hell yes. I will never forget the day that I upgrade from spinning hard drive to an NVMe drive. It blew my mind. That was a "post I/O" moment for me. Up until then, almost all of my computing experiences were limited by slow hard drives. I had "enough" CPU, memory, and network, but the disks were always too slow. NVMe was a 100x improvement.
- blkhp19 3y ago
  I still remember apps opening in less than one “bounce” on the OS X dock back in the snow leopard days. That was on a hackintosh with a 7200rpm hard drive. To be honest, I don’t really remember my first real Mac (a Haswell late 2013 MBP with NVME) feeling all that different. I’m sure large disk operations were faster, and compile times were faster because of the better CPU, but something about that “good enough” snow leopard desktop setup withh spinning metal worked great; maybe they warmed up some caches of apps they knew you were likely to use to make the basics feel fast. Overall I feel like things have gotten less snappy since then, but it’s hard to be objective after all these years.

doubled112 3y ago

My newest desktop is still PCIe 3. Apparently by the time I get around to upgrading, things will be really fast.

fransje26 3y ago
Nah. The software bloat will have caught up by then, and things will be just as slow..

hajile 3y ago

External cable size is limited by flexibility. In theory the 4x variant could drive an external GPU at PCIe 5 x16 bandwidth. Alternatively, it could drive a 4x16 card and have bandwidth left for fast SSDs and fast Ethernet and various USB stuff at the same time. That sounds great for laptop docks.

throwaway2037 3y ago

> PCIE5 devices are still rare I would agree for expansion cards, such as GPUs and network cards. But I would disagree for NVMe drives. There are plenty now. And really, how many do you need? Even if there are three options for PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives, it will be enough. All will be far faster than you will ever need.

pdimitar 3y ago
Sure, but I'd be worried about durability if the choice is as scarce. I don't need 32+ GB/s, I need something that will last me 10+ years.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  For NMVe drives? All the components are made by third party vendors -- except Samsung who makes their own ASIC. As long as your GB written per day is well below their warranty, you will be fine.
  - internet101010 3y ago
    Warranties are always presented in terms of years rather than TBW. When shopping you have to go to the manufacturers' websites and pull the data sheets for every single model. Two drives for the same price could both have 5 year warranties but have vastly different endurance ratings. It's similar to x-mile, y-year warranty system with cars but in this case you have to hunt down the x-mile piece yourself. On top of that, newer versions can release within same product line but have much worse endurance ratings. For example, my old Corsair MP600 2TB drives from 2020 are rated for 3600 TBW. The newer MP600 Core XT and Elite models have 450 TBW and 1600 TBW respectively. My MP600 drives are currently at 1.5-2.0 PB written.