Silicon Motion Shows Power Efficient PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD at Flash Memory Summit 2023

[TheLostSwede]

It appears that Silicon Motion is ready to start competing with Phison in the PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD controller market, as the company has shown a new controller at the Flash Memory Summit 2023 which should give Phison a run for its money. The SM2508 as the controller is called is set to be the most power efficient PCIe 5.0 NVMe controller to date, with a power consumption of 3.5 W, which is in line with most PCIe 4.0 SSD controllers. This still means that a decent heatsink will be needed, but not active cooling or massive heatsinks that we've seen on the current crop of PCIe 5.0 drives based on Phison's E26 controller.

Silicon Motion also appears to have the Phison E26 beat, in terms of performance, as the SM2508 promises to deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 14 GB/s. Random performance is rated at 2.5 million IOPS read and 2.4 million IOPS write. To get the most out of the SM2508 2400 MT/s or faster NAND flash is going to be needed to deliver the claimed performance figures though, but according to Anandtech, the SM2508 is future proofed by supporting NAND flash speeds of up to 3600 MT/s, so we might see faster drives based on the controller once faster NAND appears, such as SK Hynix new 321-layer NAND, which is scheduled for a 2025 introduction. The SM2508 on the other hand is said to be launching at the end of this year or early 2024.



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[TumbleGeorge]

But why 8TB limit?

 

[bonehead123]

"I feel the need"....

"the need for (moar) SPEED !" - Maverick/Goose

Bring it SilMo, just bring it

 

[Nanochip]

Where’s the mighty Samsung in the PCIe5.0 NVME arms race?

 

[Assimilator]

Where’s the mighty Samsung in the PCIe5.0 NVME arms race?

They don't need to bother because they know their idiot fans will buy their products regardless.

 

[Nanochip]

They don't need to bother because they know their idiot fans will buy their products regardless.

They lost me to western digital. Sn850x is a beast. But I’m willing to come back next generation if the price to performance to reliability ratio is right.

 

[InVasMani]

These will probably be quite impressive once the newer NAND release as well. The introductory PCIE 5.0 Gen 5 NVME devices were kind of rubbish on the power efficiency and heat of controller. Glad to see it's getting addressed. I wonder if Solidigm will be using these the P44 devices looked pretty impressive for Gen 4. I look forward to seeing what their Gen 5 devices turn out like. If they can follow up with something similarly competitive that will be great.

 

[Tomorrow]

These will probably be quite impressive once the newer NAND release as well. The introductory PCIE 5.0 Gen 5 NVME devices were kind of rubbish on the power efficiency and heat of controller. Glad to see it's getting addressed. I wonder if Solidigm will be using these the P44 devices looked pretty impressive for Gen 4. I look forward to seeing what their Gen 5 devices turn out like. If they can follow up with something similarly competitive that will be great.

It was the same for Gen4 first gen models. Hot and not maxing out the interface. Also high prices. Actually Gen4 initial prices were higher than Gen5 prices.

 

[chrcoluk]

Where’s the mighty Samsung in the PCIe5.0 NVME arms race?

Maybe trying to get a shipping firmware thats stable and doesnt lose data.

 

[Nanochip]

Maybe trying to get a shipping firmware thats stable and doesnt lose data.

They have certainly fallen from grace.

 

[TruthPhoenix]

Nice to see the competition. Personally I have Crucial P5 plus M.2 drives and Samsung 870 Evo sata drives.

 

[tavosoft]

Nice to see the competition. Personally I have Crucial P5 plus M.2 drives and Samsung 870 Evo sata drives.

Friend, how about the performance of the crucial p5 plus? Is it very fast booting Windows and opening programs? Is it very hot? How about the performance of Samsung 870? Have you had any problems with them? What firmware do they have?