SK Hynix has introduced its fastest client SSDs to date. Being aimed at gamers and content creators, the new P41 Platinum drives with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface can offer up to 7000 MBps read speed and 1.4 million random IOPS, which is a world record for PCIe Gen4 drives.
The SK Hynix Platinum P41 SSDs are based on the company's proprietary platform as well as 176-layer 3D TLC NAND memory. In fact, they will be among the first drives to use this type of memory. Since the products are designed for client PCs, they will be offered in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions, the most popular capacity points these days.
The key selling point of SK Hynix's Platinum P41 is of course its massively higher performance compared to the Gold P31. The new drives are rated for up to 7,000 MB/s sequential read speeds and up to 6,500 MB/s sequential write speeds. As for random read/write speeds, the SSDs are speced for up to 1.4 million IOPS random read speeds and 1.3 million IOPS random write speeds, which makes them among the fastest client drives available today.
Another advantage that SK Hynix's Platinum P41 SSDs have to offer is enhanced endurance. Most modern client drives are rated for around 0.2 drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years. By contrast, the Platinum P41 SSDs are designed for 0.32 DWPD. So, for example, the 2TB drive has an endurance rating of 1,2000 TBW (terabytes written).
SK Hynix will start sales of its Platinum P41 drives in Q1 2022. Pricing will depend on market conditions, but typically SK Hynix does not charge a huge premium for its own-brand SSDs.
