# SSD Performance Has Advanced Faster Than Cloud Vendor NVMe Instances

DevFeed: [SSD Performance Has Advanced Faster Than Cloud Vendor NVMe Instances](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/ssds-have-become-ridiculously-fast-except-in-the-cloud-25084.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://databasearchitects.blogspot.com/2024/02/ssds-have-become-ridiculously-fast.html>)

Author: Viktor Leis (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2024-02-19T08:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Database Architects](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/database-architects.md>)

Topics: [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [Amazon EC2](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-ec2.md>), [NVMe](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/nvme.md>), [pcie](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/pcie.md>), [datacenter](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/datacenter.md>)

Tags: [aws](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aws.md>), [capacity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/capacity.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [data-center](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data-center.md>), [ec2](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ec2.md>), [io](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/io.md>), [nvme](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/nvme.md>), [pcie](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pcie.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/server.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>)

## AI overview

The article compares rapid advances in commodity PCIe and NVMe SSD performance with slower progress in cloud-based NVMe instances. It argues that AWS EC2 instance performance per SSD has remained around 2 GB/s since the i3 launch, leaving a substantial gap between leading data center SSDs and those offered by major cloud vendors.

## Source excerpt

In recent years, flash-based SSDs have largely replaced disks for most storage use cases. Internally, each SSD consists of many independent flash chips, each of which can be accessed in parallel. Assuming the SSD controller keeps up, the throughput of an SSD therefore primarily depends on the interface speed to the host. In the past six years, we have seen a rapid transition from SATA to PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0 to PCIe 5.0. As a result, there was an explosion in SSD throughput: At the same time, we saw not just better performance, but also more capacity per dollar: The two plots illustrate the power of a commodity market. The combination of open standards (NVMe and PCIe), huge demand, and competing vendors led to great benefits for customers. Today, top PCIe 5.0 data center SSDs such as the Kioxia CM7-R or Samsung PM1743 achieve up to 13 GB/s read throughput and 2.7M+ random read IOPS. Modern servers have around 100 PCIe lanes, making it possible to have a dozen of SSDs (each usually using 4 lanes) in a single server at full bandwidth. For example, in our lab we have a single-socket Zen 4 server with 8 Kioxia CM7-R SSDs, which achieves 100GB/s (!) I/O bandwidth: AWS EC2 was an early NVMe pioneer, launching the i3 instance with 8 physically-attached NVMe SSDs in early 2017. At that time, NVMe SSDs were still expensive, and having 8 in a single server was quite remarkable. The per-SSD read (2 GB/s) and write (1 GB/s) performance was considered state of the art as well. Another step forward occurred in 2019 with the launch of i3en instances, which doubled storage capacity per dollar. Since then, several NVMe instance types, including i4i and im4gn, have been launched. Surprisingly, however, the performance has not increased; seven years after the i3 launch, we are still stuck with 2 GB/s per SSD. Indeed, the venerable i3 and i3en instances basically remain the best EC2 has to offer in terms of IO-bandwidth/$ and SSD-capacity/$, respectively. Personally, I find this very s