On a side note, I received my M.2 device yesterday. True to their word, I received it within 7 days. I had intended to use this on my Dell motherboard, but I would need to get or move the existing clip to ensure it could be secured. It's a 2260 form factor, so it is shorter than most NVMe drives available today, so I can't clip it down right now.
During my exchange with the Regional Sales Manager, I commented that I hoped they release a version of the device with a USB interface. The response was "
We had a USB interface product long ago, but it didn’t offer the right level of performance. So, we no longer offer it."
I heard people mention USB before but never knew if they had one generally available to the public as they do with their current enablement platforms. The
reference chip diagram does specify that it has a USB 3.0 endpoint, so at 5 Gbps, it would have fared a lot better with USB 3.1 or 3.2 (I'm not sure what the sweet spot is for Akida). Still, it has throughput needs beyond the USB specification for the version baked into the chip. Given what I know now, I probably won't invest in a USB enclosure for the device, since even a USB-C connector would have to throttle down to match the chip's I/O speed.
I've ordered a
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 development kit, which is about 143.00 USD (shipping is brutal at 57.49 USD since it comes from Malaysia) and includes the interface card with the M.2 slot.
A fun fact: I was looking high and low for the M.2 device's asset tag, in and around the box, in the static bag, on the packing slip, etc. I finally e-mailed them back asking where I could find it and the reply was a 2-digit number. Sure enough, there was a tiny sticker on one of the small chips with that number, confirming it was a very short asset tag. The one on the PCIe device was much longer.
I thought the 2-digit number sticker was something like the QA inspector #, like the ones they put in packs of Fruit-of-the-Loom® underwear.