Great news emerged from the Persistent Memory Summit recently, regarding Sony’s new Cross Point ReRAM SSD. The new SSD technology will boost speeds to a whole new level, making it almost identical to those for PC.
The news surfaced today on ResetEra, with a complete report on what was talked about during the Persistent Memory Summit in Santa Clara.
Sony expects ReRAM SSD to become the main competitor for Intel Optane and release it during 2020. According to the Nikkei Tech department, “The ReRAM is targeted at “storage-class memories (SCMs),” non-volatile memories that feature a higher speed than NAND flash memory and fill the gap between DRAM and NAND flash memory”.
The 128GB drive for the Sony ReRAM SSD will target 25.6 GB/s read, 9.6 GB/s write while the 256GB version will double the GB/s for both reading and writing times. Those numbers in addition to the fact that Sony intends to bring that technology to consoles can bring PlayStation 5 closer to the performance of a PC.
This comes as a contradiction to what leaks wanted for Sony’s next console though. According to recent rumors, PS5 would ship with a 2TB SSD. If ReRAM is destined for the console, then the available space comes down to either 128GB or 256GB, which is significantly less but more possible.
In related news, during the Samsung SSD Forum in Tokyo last week, the company unveiled a new model, the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express). Samsung confirmed that the new hard drive will be equipped in a gaming console. At the time we believed this is “screaming” Playstation 5. After Sony’s announcement for the ReRAM SSD, we have to reconsider the possibility.
For what it’s worth, we won’t know what the hardware state of Sony’s next console will be in the months to come. The company intends to release Playstation 5 around 2020 winter holiday, so the official reveals should happen around the spring of next year.
