Riser cards carrying multiple M.2-2280 SSDs are nothing new, but Apex Storage went above and beyond with its new X21 board, which can carry up to 21 M.2 drives. The add-in-card is aimed at applications that take advantage of both high storage capacities and performance, including databases as well as machine learning applications. At maximum capacity and utilization, the X21 can hold 168 TB of M.2 storage, running at a peak sequential read/write speed of up to 31 GB/s.
The Apex Storage X21 is a dual-PCB add-in-card with a PCIe x16 interface that is based around an unspecified PCIe Gen4 switch system (ed: and what looks like 2 switches) covered with a large heatsink. The AIC has 21 M.2-2280 slots for SSDs, and using 8 TB M.2 drives it can offer up to 168 TB storage capacity when fully populated – and twice that once 16 TB M.2 SSDs become available.
