Rounding out our Computex 2024 SSD controller information, let’s speak concerning the ultimate main controller vendor on the present: Silicon Motion. Silicon Motion has been considerably late to the PCIe Gen5 SSD occasion, as its rival Phison has been providing their high-end PS5026-E26 controller for nearly 18 months now. But as Silicon Motion will get able to make the transition to PCIe 5.0, the corporate has a trump card up its sleeve: the SM2508 controller, an energy-efficient high-end SSD controller that’s meant for lower-power drives.
A PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, SMI’s SM2508 boasts a really low lively energy consumption of three.5W. Which, put in in an M.2 SSD, is meant to permit drive producers to constructed 7 Watt (or decrease) SSDs, in keeping with the corporate. The SM2508 is made on TSMC’s N6 course of expertise, which is a 7nm-class fabrication node with an optical shrink, which is able to make it one of many (if not the) most superior controllers in the marketplace as soon as it ships. The comparatively subtle node permits Silicon Motion to pack extra cores and extra options into its controller whereas retaining its energy consumption in examine – to not point out the chip measurement.
| Silicon Motion NVMe Client SSD Controller Comparison | ||||||||
| SM2508 | SM2264 | SM2268XT2 | SM2269XT | |||||
| Market Segment | High-End | Mainstream | ||||||
| Manufacturing Process | 6nm | 12nm | 12nm | 12nm | ||||
| CPU Cores | 4x Cortex R8 | 4x Cortex R8 | 2x Cortex R8 | 2x Cortex R8 | ||||
| Error Correction | 4K+ LDPC | 4K LDPC | 4K+ LDPC | 4K LDPC | ||||
| DRAM | DDR4, LPDDR4X | DDR4, LPDDR4X | No | No | ||||
| Host Interface | PCIe 5.Zero x4 | PCIe 4.Zero x4 | PCIe 4.Zero x4 | PCIe 4.Zero x4 | ||||
| NVMe Version | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 1.4 | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 1.4 | ||||
| NAND Channels, Interface Speed | eight ch, 3600 MT/s |
eight ch, 1600 MT/s |
Four ch, 3600 MT/s |
Four ch, 1600 MT/s |
||||
| Sequential Read | 14.5 GB/s | 7.5 GB/s | 7.Four GB/s | 5.1 GB/s | ||||
| Sequential Write | 14 GB/s | 7 GB/s | 6.7 GB/s | 4.eight GB/s | ||||
| 4KB Random Read IOPS | 2500ok | 1300ok | 1200ok | 900ok | ||||
| 4KB Random Write IOPS | 2500ok | 1200ok | 1200ok | 900ok | ||||
Under the hood, the front-end of the SM2508 SSD controller is predicated round 4 Arm Cortex-R8 cores, which is able to make it a notably highly effective controller (Phison’s E26, for reference, is 2 Arm Cortex R5 cores with an accelerator). This controller is supposed for use with DRAM, as properly, and can assist each DDR4 and LPDDR4.
The back-end of the chip affords eight NAND channels with 32 CE targets, supporting interface speeds as much as 3600 MT/s. Altogether, SMI says that the controller can hit sequential learn speeds of as much as 14.5GB/sec and write speeds of as much as 14 GB/s, whereas 4K random learn and write efficiency will attain as much as 2.5 million IOPS. And SMI’s demo drive at Computex did even higher than that, reaching a 14.9GB/sec learn velocity underneath CrystalDiskMark.
Silicon Motion and its companions are at the moment finalizing the firmware for the SM2508 and qualifying it with numerous producers’ TLC NAND. The chip additionally helps QLC NAND, although we might be shocked to see anybody pair such a strong controller with slower NAND so quickly.
At Computex, Silicon Motion itself demonstrated an SM2508 drive in motion at its sales space. Various drive producers additionally had SM2508-based drives on the ground as properly, although solely as static samples.
