Silicon Motion SM2508 Smashes Speed Records at COMPUTEX 2024

Last year, Silicon Motion introduced its new PCIe 5.0 master control chip, the SM2508. However, everything remained quiet afterward, with no further updates from Silicon Motion regarding this chip.

According to TomsHardware, Silicon Motion showcased the SM2508 at COMPUTEX 2024 and conducted live benchmark tests, providing sample data. In CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it exhibited a sequential read speed of 14,903.27 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 13,058.09 MB/s. Compared to Phison’s E26 Max14um, it surpassed by 800 MB/s in read speed and 500 MB/s in write speed.

The SM2508, a flagship PCIe 5.0 SSD master control chip, supports the NVMe 2.0 protocol and features eight flash channels supporting speeds up to 3600 MT/s. Its maximum sequential read and write speeds reach 14.5 GB/s and 14 GB/s, respectively, with random read and write speeds both peaking at 2.5M IOPS. It supports 3D TLC/QLC NAND flash, fully exploiting the high-speed performance of PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The chip adopts a big.LITTLE processing architecture, achieving higher parallelism, lower power consumption, and higher frequency to balance performance and power efficiency. It combines four Arm Cortex R8 cores and one Arm Cortex M0 core, with the former reaching frequencies up to 1.25 GHz, supporting symmetric multiprocessing and out-of-order execution, offering 50% higher computational power compared to the asymmetric Cortex R5 cores.

The SM2508 employs TSMC’s 6nm process and integrates Silicon Motion’s intelligent power management, adjusting power consumption through a dedicated module, resulting in lower power consumption compared to the E26. The SM2508’s power consumption is 3.5W, with the entire SSD consuming 7W during operation, whereas a typical SSD equipped with the E26 consumes over 11W, which is significant for mobile devices. This suggests the emergence of PCIe 5.0 SSDs with smaller or even no heat sinks.

Silicon Motion is still fine-tuning the firmware of the SM2508, indicating potential further performance improvements. The overall power consumption performance of the SSD is similar to that of PCIe 4.0 SSDs with the E18. It is anticipated that Silicon Motion will release the SM2508 in the fourth quarter of 2024, heralding new devices equipped with this next-generation PCIe 5.0 SSD master control chip.