INTRODUCTION

     Roughly 2 years ago when I first started testing PCIe Gen5 SSDs I made sure to point out that high operating temperatures would be the sole reason as to why such drives wouldn't be out in large numbers. Well, it's been a while but with flash controller manufacturers having all but resolved this issue Gen5 drives are finally here in large quantities and by most well established storage manufacturers. One of the latest PCIe Gen5 SSDs to hit the market is the GM9000 model by Acer Predator (BIWIN) and for the past week or so I've been testing the 2TB capacity model.

    Predator branded storage products are designed and manufactured by BIWIN Storage Technology company, a leading maker of quality flash memory, DRAM memory and solid-state drives (SSDs). Delivering premium products for serious gamers and overclocking enthusiasts looking for the ultimate experience, our mission is to provide best-in-class memory modules and solid-state drives that enhance overall system performance and gameplay. Defined by faster speeds and gaming-inspired design, these Predator storage products are built to be the Number One choice for gamers worldwide. Founded in 2010, BIWIN focuses on providing global customers with high-quality storage products and specializes in the research, development, manufacturing and sales of memory chip application products.

    The Acer Predator GM9000 line is based on the quite popular SM2508 NVMe 2.0 controller by Silicon Motion (6nm lithography) which BIWIN has paired with 232-layer Micron B58R 3D TLC NAND flash and 2GB LPDDR4-3200 DRAM (for the 2TB capacity model). The Silicon Motion SM2508 NVMe 2.0 controller features an quad-core ARM Cortex R8 CPU with support for 4 PCIe lanes of 32Gb/s data transfer speed (Gen5 x4), 8 NAND channels with a speed of up to 3600MT/s per channel and packs various technologies including end to end data path protection, programmable firmware interface, SRAM ECC & CRC parity, Innovative LDPC ECC engine, embedded programmable RAID, real-time full-drive AES 128/256bit encryption, hardware SHA 256/384 and TRNG, secure boot for FW authentication, built-in smart clock-gating mechanism (highly efficient power consumption), ONFI 5.0 and Toggle 5.0 support and TCG Opal 2.0 compliance. Regarding endurance numbers BIWIN reports an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1.5 million hours and TBW of 800/1600/3200 for the currently available capacities (1/2/4TB).