Just to add, Sweeny describing Sony putting their flash memory "close" to working memory, or to the CPU or GPU or whatever is referencing latency, not bandwidth.
"Distance" in this metric is how many ticks of a CPU/GPU it takes before it has what it asked for in its cache.
It's not PS5's 5.5GB/s that puts its flash storage "close" (although it plays a part) it's the elimination of bottlenecks. It's the DMAC eliminating check-in (initially copying to RAM, then copying from and back to RAM again), it's a coprocessor mapping and remapping the memory for what the SSD is delivering, it's a coherency engine keeping RAM and GPU caches "coherent" and in sync without needing to stall the GPU for a cycle to completely flush the cache as new data streams into RAM, it's traditional IO tasks like file lookup being replaced by a hardware accelerator and new access API.
It's asking for an asset and having it ready to work on during the same frame without needing to fall back or rely on prediction.
It's all well and good having a lot of GPU compute, but if they have to stop what they're doing for a clock cycle every time new data streams into RAM and potentially invalidates their working cache that would need to be rebuilt, then they're idling.
Being able to selectively invalidate a GPU's cache means it is pretty much always working during heavy streaming moments.
This is part of what Sweeny means by flash being "close". Distance in this context means latency and time costs, not just simply comparing sequential read speed between NAND and APU.
5.5-9-22GB/s from NAND to APU is comparatively useless on traditional architecture whereby that 5.5-9-22GB/s potential would be constantly stopping and starting and waiting while it's handled without hardware acceleration and removal of bottlenecks, or if it kept causing the GPU to essentially miss clock cycles of work while being updated, effectively downclocking it in real terms.
PS5 being described as having god-tier IO is more than just a NAND and flash controllers peak sequential read speed. That's just the start of the chain. The thickest part of the pipeline. Comparing raw sequential read isn't even half the story in how PS5 IO differs from PC, or even XSX.