Silicon Motion new SM8008 PCIe Gen5 controller, 14GB/s speeds on less than 5W

Silicon Motion has announced the launch of its latest PCIe Gen5 x4 NVMe SSD controller, the SM8008. Designed and purpose-built for data center drives and enterprise storage, where NVMe SSDs are becoming the go-to option for the AI era, the SM8008 is all about delivering performance, power efficiency, and stability.

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Built on TSMC's 6nm process technology, the SM8008 delivers up to 14 GB/s or 14,000 MB/sec with over 2.3 million random IOPS (4K) while maintaining a power draw of under 5W. NVMe 2.0a and OCP Hyperscale NVMe Boot SSD Specification Version 1.0 compliant, you've also got inline DDR4-3200 or LPDDR4-3200 to enhance power efficiency and affordability for large-scale deployments.

On that note, Silicon Motion says that SSDs with the SM8008 controller can operate continuously across thousands or even "millions" of servers. Although it's difficult to visualize what millions of SSDs in a data center would look like, the point is that with PCIe Gen5 speeds and power consumption of under 5W, this translates to "significant reductions in total data center power consumption."

With capacities of up to 16TB, the new SM8008 controller will be available in various data-center-friendly form factors, including M.2, U.2, E3.S, and E1.S. And with Silicon Motion's NANDCommand technology, there's end-to-end data path protection, along with support for enterprise-grade security.

"The rapid growth of AI and cloud infrastructure is driving large-scale server deployments," said Alex Chou, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Storage & Display Interface Solution Business at Silicon Motion. "While much focus is placed on accelerators and high-performance storage, every AI server relies on reliable, power-efficient boot storage. SM8008 is purpose-built for this critical layer, delivering Gen5 performance with enterprise-grade security while strengthening our enterprise portfolio."