Silicon Motion Technology Corporation has announced a significant advancement in SSD technology with the introduction of the SM2508, a PCIe Gen 5 NVMe 2.0 client SSD controller that sets new benchmarks for power efficiency in the industry. The SM2508 is designed to meet the demands of AI-capable PCs and gaming consoles, offering superior performance with low power consumption.

The SM2508 leverages TSMC's 6 nm EUV process, which results in less than 7 W of power consumption for the entire SSD, a 1.7x improvement in power efficiency over PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, and up to 70% better than current competitive PCIe Gen 5 products on the market. This achievement underlines Silicon Motion's commitment to developing storage solutions that are at the forefront of technological innovation.

The controller supports eight NAND channels with speeds of up to 3,600 MT/s per channel, enabling sequential performance speeds of up to 14.5 GB/s and 13.6 GB/s, and random performance speeds of up to 2.5M IOPS—more than doubling the performance of PCIe Gen 4 products. The SM2508 also integrates Silicon Motion's proprietary 8th-generation NANDXtend technology, which includes an on-disk training algorithm to reduce ECC timing, thereby boosting performance and maximizing power efficiency.

Nelson Duann, Senior VP of Client & Automotive Storage Business at Silicon Motion, stated, "SSD storage solutions are continuously evolving to meet the new challenges posed by future AI applications, which demand data efficiency and high-performance models. Our PCIe Gen 5 SSD controller, with its best-in-class power efficiency, is designed to satisfy the unique demands of today's AI-capable PCs, delivering high performance and power efficiency to meet the evolving AI PC standards of tomorrow."

The SM2508 is currently being designed by multiple major SSD vendors, including key NAND manufacturers, with a targeted production ramp-up for Q4 of this year. In addition to the SM2508, Silicon Motion's exhibit at the Future of Memory and Storage event will feature the MonTitan PCIe Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Development Platform for AI Storage Workloads, UFS 4.0 and USB Storage Solutions for AI PCs and AI Smartphones, and Advanced Storage Solutions for AI in Automotive and IoT Edge Applications.