Chinese manufacturer InnoGrit has unveiled its first PCIe Gen6 SSD controller, while also giving us a look at what its Gen7 SSDs will have on offer.
China Fights Back In The Next-Gen SSD Race With InnoGrit Dishing Out Its IG5686 PCIe Gen6 Controller
InnoGrit launches its first Gen5 SSD controller in 2023, marking the entrance of a Chinese brand in the current-gen SSD segments. During Computex, InnoGrit (YingRen Technology) is showcasing its upcoming PCIe Gen6 SSD controller called Crestone "IG5686". This SSD controller is targeted towards Enterprise applications, high-end data centers, and AI use cases. Some of the features of the Gen6 SSD controller include:
- PCIe Gen6x4
- NVMe 2.3
- Up To 256 TB Capacities
- Up To 28 GB/s Read & 22 GB/s Write Speeds
- Up To 7M Random Read and 5M Random Write IOPS
- Support SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC NAND and SCM
- NAND Speeds of Up To 4800 MT/s
InnoGrit's Gen6 controller will be featured in SSDs of various form factors, primarily E1.S and E3.S. These SSDs will feature up to 256 TB of capacity, up to 28 GB/s of speed, and up to 7 million IOPS. All SSDs will feature NAND and SCM, with NAND speeds being upped to 4800 MT/s.
In addition to this, InnoGrit will also introduce its Cascade IG5676 controller, which is compliant with CXL 3.1, Type-3 devices. The controller features support for high-speed and low-latency XL-FLASH as SCM. It supports up to 2 TB of capacity and is designed to be a cost-effective solution.
Looking ahead, InnoGrit also shared its roadmap that shows where they are going next. For 2027, the company is expecting 25-50M IOPS through optimizations to the PCIe Gen6 / CXL standards through deeper integration. This will support large-scale inference clusters and long context. By 2028, InnoGrit plans to push for up to 100M IOPS that will drive AI-Native Storage architectures at scale.
PCIe Gen6, let alone Gen7, is nowhere close to a consumer or client launch. At best, we are likely to see Gen6 SSDs on client platforms by 2029-2030, but before that, no significant updates are yet to arrive.
InnoGrit will be competing in a highly heated space where Samsung, Micron, and Phison are already rolling out their PCIe Gen6 solutions.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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