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SMI SSD controller SM8266 has 16 channels and 6.5 GB/s over PCIe 4.0

SMI has introduced its new SSD controller the SM8266. With this, up to 6.5 GB/s and 950,000 IOPS at peak performance are feasible.

SMI wants to conquer the market with enterprise chips

Up to now, Silicon Motion (SMI) has been better known for its consumer solutions. With the new SM8266 controller, the company now wants to further penetrate the enterprise chip market. Here the manufacturer is still at the beginning. With the new SM8266 SSD controller, the focus is primarily on performance. With the PCIe-4.0-x4 interface, up to 3,100 MB/s are achieved for sequential writing and up to 6,550 MB/s for sequential reading. The controller achieves 950,000 IOPS for random reading and 220,000 IOPS for random writing. SMI’s SM8266 SSD controller is expected to be the company’s new flagship product. The controller chip provides 16 NAND channels for SSDs with up to 16 TB. However, the performance of the controller ultimately depends on which NAND it is combined with. The SM8266 supports all common NAND interfaces with up to 1,200 MT/s. The current generation of NANDs is 1,600 MT/s, but it is not yet clear whether a combination is possible. However, SMI says that the latest 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash technologies are supported.

The SM8266 sits on a 21 × 21 mm FCBGA package and is compatible with the current revision 1.4 of the NVMe protocol. The controller supports 128 NVMe queues, security standards such as TCG Enterprise, Opal 2.0, AES 256 and Secure Boot and Host Memory Buffer. The reference design with U.2 or U.3 connector shows that support for “real” capacitor-based power loss protection is feasible. The following end products have not yet been presented by SMI.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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