They have finally arrived on the market too Raspberry Pi 5 NVMe SSD (that you find on Amazon), which complement the A2 class microSD cards recently launched by the company. It is possible to purchase either the drive alone or a kit with HAT+ M.2 for installing the SSD on the Raspberry Pi.
The SSD is available in the 256GB version, while the variant gives 512GB will come to end of November. Units cost $30 and $45 respectively, while kits cost $10 more, bringing the price to $40 and $55 respectively.
The Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ allows you to add an M.2 NVMe SSD, or even other devices like the Hailo-8L NPU used in the AI kit, easily and affordably. Installing it is very easy: you just need to connect a flat-flex cable and some screws and you’re done.
Previously the Raspberry Pi only supported PCIe Gen 2, however the new SSDs support the PCIe gen 3. In fact, it is possible to enable the gen 3 interface via raspi-confing, and it is likely that it will become the standard for future versions of the SBC in the future.
The 256GB SSD offers 40,000 IOPS 4kB random read and 70,000 IOPS 4kB random write, while the 512GB model tops out at 50,000 IOPS random read and 90,000 IOPS random write. The drives appear to be made by Biwin, an OEM supplier for HP, Acer and now Raspberry Pi.
Source: www.tomshw.it
