At the Computex 2026 international exhibition, Silicon Motion presented an updated portfolio of solid-state drive controllers. The presentation covered solutions for the consumer market as well as innovative developments for the corporate segment, including the industry's first chip supporting the PCIe 6.0 interface.

New Generation for Enthusiasts: SM2524XT

Special attention at the company's booth was paid to the SM2524XT model — a DRAM-less controller designed for mid-range consumer SSDs. The chip, manufactured using TSMC's 6nm process, operates with the PCIe 5.0 interface and supports the current NVMe 2.1 protocol.

The key specifications of the new product are impressive:

  • Four flash memory channels with sixteen CE lines provide a throughput of up to 4800 MT/s per channel.
  • Maximum sequential read speed reaches 14 GB/s, and write speed — 12 GB/s.
  • Random access performance is up to 2.2 million IOPS.

It is important to note the energy efficiency of the solution: active power consumption is only 2.5 W, and in PS4 standby mode, it drops to 1 mW. The controller is fully compatible with popular 3D TLC and QLC NAND memory types.

Corporate Breakthrough: SM8466 and PCIe 6.0 Interface

The main event of the presentation was the debut of the SM8466 controller — the first solution for the corporate segment with a PCIe 6.0 interface. The development is designed to ensure storage performance at the level of graphics accelerators, which is critical for GPU memory expansion and launching large-scale AI language models.

The technical capabilities of the SM8466 include:

  • PCIe 6.0 x4 host interface with a throughput of 256 Gbps in each direction (figures comparable to PCIe 4.0 x16).
  • 16-channel architecture with eight CE elements per channel, operating at speeds up to 4800 MT/s.
  • Support for the NVMe 2.3 protocol with computational storage features.

Drives based on this chip can reach capacities of up to 512 TB when using 3D TLC and QLC NAND memory. The declared sequential data transfer speed is up to 28 GB/s, and random access — up to 7 million IOPS.

MonTitan Platform Demonstration

During the exhibition, the operation of a U.2 form factor NVMe drive based on the updated SM8388 controller with a PCIe 5.0 interface was also demonstrated. The device works in conjunction with the MonTitan programmable platform.

The SM8388 controller received support for the NVMe 2.1 protocol and two upstream channels: PCIe 5.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2. The configuration includes 16 flash memory channels at a speed of 2400 MT/s, allowing for the creation of drives with a capacity of up to 128 TB.

The results of the test measurements showed the following performance indicators:

  • Sequential write: 9329 MB/s.
  • Sequential read: 14,602 MB/s.
  • Random access: 450k IOPS for write and 3585 MB/s for read.