Silicon Movement Readies PCIe Gen5 SSDs with 3.5W Energy Consumption

Nearly all PCIe Gen5 SSDs launched up to now are comparatively power-hungry and require an enormous cooling system, successfully stopping their set up into compact desktops and notebooks. However Silicon Movement’s next-generation SM2508 SSD platform guarantees to alter that and allow ultra-high-performance drives with a PCIe 5.0 interface and energy consumption as little as 3.5W. The corporate is showcasing prototypes of its PCIe Gen5 consumer drives on the Flash Reminiscence Summit 2023.

The Silicon Movement SM2508 SSD controller options eight NAND channels supporting interface pace of as much as 3600 MT/s per channel and able to delivering sequential learn and write speeds of as much as 14 GB/s as properly random learn and write speeds of as much as 2.5 million IOPS, which is corresponding to capabilities of enterprise-grade SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. 

Maybe essentially the most crucial facet of the SM2508 is its decreased energy consumption, which is round 3.5W, based on Silicon Movement. SMI doesn’t disclose whether or not 3.5W is idle, common, or peak energy consumption, however 3.5W appears to be too excessive for peak, and even whether it is common energy consumption, it’s significantly decrease when in comparison with the common energy consumption of PCIe Gen5 SSDs based mostly on the Phison PS5026-E26 controller (round 10W).

The quickest 3D NAND flash reminiscence gadgets at the moment function a 2400 MT/s interface. Utilizing such reminiscence is essential to completely saturate a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and ship sequential learn/write efficiency of 13 – 14 GB/s. Assist for a 3600 MT/s ONFI/Toggle DDR interface will enable the constructing of ultra-fast SSDs with out utilizing many reminiscence gadgets, which is crucial as next-generation 3D TLC gadgets are anticipated to have capacities of 1 Tb and bigger.

Silicon Movement doesn’t disclose many particulars about its SM2508, however we all know from unofficial sources that the chip is made on TSCM’s 12FFC (12 nm-class, compact low-power manufacturing node) and has been sampling since January 2023. In the meantime, the corporate has focused late 2023 – early 2024 because the launch timeframe for its client PCIe Gen5 SSD platform.

Along with demonstrating its first consumer PC-bound SM2508-based SSDs on the FMS 2023, Silicon Movement is showcasing its MonTitan turnkey enterprise PCIe Gen5 x5 SSD options based mostly on its SM8366 controller introduced last year. The SM8366 controller options 16 NAND channels at 2400 MT/s and might allow SSDs with capacities of as much as 128 TB that supply as much as 14 GB/s sequential learn/write efficiency and as much as 3M/2.8M random learn/write efficiency. Samples of MonTitan SSDs shall be demonstrated on the FMS 2023.

Supply: Silicon Motion