Silicon Motion (SMI) has introduced the first PCIe Gen4 controller for NVMe SSDs. The chips with the names SM 2267 and SM 2267 XT have already been installed in upcoming SSDs by well-known manufacturers. The series production of the top model SM 2264 has already started. Manufacturers who rely on the PCIe Gen4 controller solutions from SMI include Adata, HP, Intel, Kingston, Klevv, Micron, Mushkin and Patriot.

The new top class SM 2264 is used by the Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC in a 12 – nm process manufactured. The predecessor model SM 2264 EN was still a 28 – nm method. TSMC, in cooperation with Apple, is already developing a way of manufacturing 3 nm and even 2 nm chips. With the two models SM 2267 and SM 2267 XT continues to use SMI on a 28 nm node.

The top model comes with PCIe Gen4 x4 support with eight channels at 1. 600 MT / s and has eight chip enablers per channel. LPDDR4 is also used as a DRAM cache. The achievable sequential data rates should be up to 7.4 GB / s (read) and 6.8 GB / s (write). In the other two models, Silicon Motion also uses PCIe Gen4 x4 support. In addition, the two controllers have four channels with 1. 200 MT / s. The model SM 2267 has eight CEs and the SM 2267 XT controller only with four CEs per channel. Both chips have a read speed of 3.9 GB / s and a write speed of up to 3.5 GB / s. This is slightly above the data rates that SSDs achieve with PCIe Gen3 x4. The weakest model SM 2267 XT also comes without LPDDR3 cache. However, this has the advantage that the production is cheaper and therefore also the SSDs in which the controller is installed.