Silicon Motion has demonstrated a working solid state drive based on the first platform for SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface. SM8366 based drives used various types of memory from other manufacturers. This demonstrates that SMI works with all 3D NAND manufacturers to provide maximum flexibility to our partners. In terms of performance, the SSD was fast compared to his one competing platform, but slower than the others.
A demo drive exhibited by SMI at the Open Compute Project (OCP) forum delivered 13.6 GBps of sequential read performance and 3.4 million IOPS of random read performance. storage review (opens in new tab)In terms of sequential speed, SMI’s SM8366-based drive was a bit slower than Samsung’s PM1743 SSD (delivering up to 13.8 GBps), but Phison’s PS5026-E26-based drive (superior memory).
Silicon Motion’s MonTitan SM8366 SSD Platform (opens in new tab) Designed primarily for enterprise grade SSDs. It features 16 NAND Flash channels with a 2400 MTps ONFI/Toggle interface for connecting up to 128TB of 3D TLC, 3D QLC or XL-Flash memory. The controller supports DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800 DRAM buffers with dual-channel and PCIe 5.0 x4 interfaces or dual independent x2/x2 or x1/x1 interfaces for connecting to the host. Phison’s E26, in contrast, is aimed primarily at high-performance consumer SSDs and features eight NAND channels. The PS5026-E26 can still accommodate enterprise grade drives, but consumer drives are the primary application.
Silicon Motion validated the SM8366 platform with Kioxia’s BICS6 3D TLC NAND, Micron’s N48R 3D QLC NAND, and Micron’s B58R 3D TLC NAND memories. Additionally, the company offers multiple reference designs for the latest enterprise-oriented SSD controllers, including form factors such as E1.S, E1.L E3.x, and U.2/3. Traditionally, SMI’s clients could purchase turnkey solutions from the company with standard configurations and firmware, or develop custom his solutions using their own firmware.
Silicon Motion’s MonTitan SM8366 SSD platform will be available to early sign-up customers this quarter and reference hardware design kits with licensable turnkey and layered firmware stacks to develop customer-specific solutions make it possible. Bearing in mind that many members of the Open Compute Project run data centers, some of them are expected to launch the first of his SMI-powered SSDs with PCIe Gen5 x4 interfaces in the coming months. may expand. Others wait for the drive manufacturer to build his SSD.
Silicon Motion plans to announce a consumer controller for PCIe Gen5 drives in 2023.
