IOPS · Input/Output Operations Per Second
The rate of read/write operations a storage system handles; metadata-heavy AI loads are often IOPS-bound, not bandwidth-bound.
Current numbers
~28 / 14 GB/sPCIe 6.0 x4 enterprise SSD sequential read/write (Micron 9650, first Gen6 in mass production), ~5.5M IOPS; E1.S & E3.S