If it had PCI-Express 5.0 x4 it would have been very interesting, but x2 should achieve the same speeds as PCI-Express 4.0 x4, so what is the exact benefit of this device over PCI-E 4.0 x4 SSD's? Or is this just the marketeers trying to profit from the excitement around PCI-E 5.0?

Crazy Joe:

If it had PCI-Express 5.0 x4 it would have been very interesting, but x2 should achieve the same speeds as PCI-Express 4.0 x4, so what is the exact benefit of this device over PCI-E 4.0 x4 SSD's? Or is this just the marketeers trying to profit from the excitement around PCI-E 5.0?

You didn't read or did not understand the article?? it is plainly stated: "The number of lanes is half that of a standard SSD, but the performance is comparable to or better than that of a standard SSD, and it will be possible to design a server with greater density." Namely, you can have two disks occupying the same 4 lanes instead of one - thus the benefit for for data centers is huge, double the drives on same number of lanes...

Bifurcation is very commonly used.

mdm:

You didn't read or did not understand the article?? it is plainly stated: "The number of lanes is half that of a standard SSD, but the performance is comparable to or better than that of a standard SSD, and it will be possible to design a server with greater density." Namely, you can have two disks occupying the same 4 lanes instead of one - thus the benefit for for data centers is huge, double the drives on same number of lanes...

That only helps if the physical space occupied by these devices is smaller than that of the current SSD's, otherwise space and power requirements will still be the limiting factors. There are plenty of applications were throughput and capacity are the defining criteria for how useful a storage option is. This device does nothing for the throughput though. This is why I found it less than exciting.