Silicon Motion has been teasing their SM2508 client SSD controller for more than a year now at various trade shows. The controller is finally set for mass production, just in time as the mainstream segment of the Gen 5 SSD market is poised to take off. Silicon Motion expects SSDs based on the SM2508 to be available for purchase by the end of the year.

At FMS 2024, the company was reusing the same information cards seen at Computex in June. The specifications of the SM2508 from our Computex coverage are reproduced here.

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 5.0 x4 PCIe 4.0 x4 PCIe 4.0 x4 PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe Version NVMe 2.0 NVMe 1.4 NVMe 2.0 NVMe 1.4
NAND Channels, Interface Speed 8 ch,
3600 MT/s
8 ch,
1600 MT/s
4 ch,
3600 MT/s
4 ch,
1600 MT/s
Sequential Read 14.5 GB/s 7.5 GB/s 7.4 GB/s 5.1 GB/s
Sequential Write 14 GB/s 7 GB/s 6.7 GB/s 4.8 GB/s
4KB Random Read IOPS 2500k 1300k 1200k 900k
4KB Random Write IOPS 2500k 1200k 1200k 900k

Current Gen 5 SSDs in the consumer client market are currently all based on Phison's E26 controller. The appearance of newer platform solutions for SSD vendors is bound to be good from both an end-user pricing and adoption perspective.

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  • James5mith - Thursday, August 8, 2024 - link

    Would be very interested in seeing the difference in power/heat profiles for this controller vs. the E26. Like is it actually PCIe5.0 that is causing all the heat/power drama? Or just a rushed out controller that was pulling the now ubiquitous "performance at any cost" solution to go faster?

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