Gigabyte launched its AI TOP 100E series of SSDs, aiming to rival the best SSDs around town. With an unparalleled endurance rating of up to 219,000 TBW on the 2TB model, the AI TOP 100E drives target very intensive workloads, such as AI training.
The AI TOP 100E SSD comes in a standard M.2 2280 form factor and utilizes the PCIe 4.0 interface. It's not going to win any pure performance races, especially if you pitch it against the more modern PCIe 5.0 drives. However, its durability ratings are the AI TOP 100E SSD's primary selling point. Sadly, Gigabyte doesn't reveal what kind of 3D NAND flash the company utilizes in the AI TOP 100E SSD or what type of magic it uses to achieve that level of durability. Perhaps it just has a lot of spare NAND, but even that on its own wouldn't be enough to hit the 60 drive writes per day (DWPD) rating.
The company only mentions an "AI TOP" utility that seemingly offloads the processing work of large datasets from the graphics card's VRAM or the system's RAM to the AI TOP 100E SSD. The approach intends to expand the memory pool size so the user can fine-tune large AI models. That's why Gigabyte made the AI TOP 100E SSD as durable as it is.
Gigabyte rates the 1TB and 2TB models for an eye-popping 109,500 TBW and 219,500 TBW, respectively. That's equal to nearly 17 hours per day of continuous 2 TB/s writes for five years on the larger drive — an imposing figure that rivals enterprise and data center-grade SSDs. Comparing the AI TOP 100E SSD to the Samsung 990 Pro, one of the top PCIe 4.0 SSDs, Gigabyte's drives offer up to 183X more endurance at the same 1TB and 2TB capacities. The math isn't far from Gigabyte's claims that the AI TOP 100E SSD has a 150X higher TBW rating than a conventional PCIe 4.0 SSD (1,400 TBW).
Gigabyte AI TOP 100E SSD Specifications
The AI TOP 100E comes in two variants, 1TB and 2TB, with the latter doubling the endurance rating. If we look past the endurance, the AI TOP 100E SSD performs similarly to other PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The 1TB has the higher performance of the duo, with sequential read and write speeds up to 7,200 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s, respectively. The 2TB model has slightly slower specs, with the same 7,200 MB/s sequential reads but only 5,900 MB/s for sequential writes. The 1TB and 2TB models have 1GB and 2GB of LPDDR4 memory, respectively.
Gigabyte didn't reveal the random performance for the AI TOP 100E SSD, so we'll have to work with the sequential numbers to make a comparison. The AI TOP 100E SSD's performance is in the same alley as the Samsung 990 Pro — at least on paper. The Samsung 990 Pro offers sequential read and write speeds up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, respectively, so it's only around 3.5% and 6.2% faster than the AI TOP 100E SSD.
Gigabyte doesn't market the AI TOP 100E SSD as an enterprise SSD or anything else. The company simply highlights the drive's strong endurance as being great for AI workloads, with the features page stating that "the AI TOP 100E SSD is designed exclusively for intensive AI workloads." Like many consumer drives, Gigabyte backs the AI TOP 100E SSD with a limited five-year warranty or until the TBW is up. The company only recently listed the SSD, so pricing and availability are unknown.
