Comment by rbanffy
4 years ago
> The larger form factor enterprise drives, which are maybe 25% more expensive, have PLP capacitor banks.
I wonder if there would be a market for a small board that contains the capacitors and passes the signals down to a M.2 female connector. The physical disconnect would probably help with the temperature as well (and the board could come with its own heatsink).
I want to revise my comments. There are indeed some capacitors on many M.2 boards -- not sure how much. It takes several mF or more to drive a few amps at 3.3V for some tens of milliseconds, which is not insignificant, so larger form factors are certainly at an advantage.
The PCI-e and SAS/SATA 2.3 and 3.5 carriers also could use larger - and cheaper caps for that, or, simply add a small lithium coin cell.
If you have that, then you can play A LOT with large DRAM buffers without risking losing any significant data.