Silicon Motion says it's working on next-gen PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers

Silicon Motion has announce that it has kicked off development for PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers, preparing for the big next-gen wave of NVMe M.2 SSDs.

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Right now the PCIe 4.0-based NVMe drives are maxing out at about 7GB/sec, so we should expect up to 14-16GB/sec or so from PCIe 5.0-based NVMe SSDs of the future. Most PCIe 4.0 SSDs come are on the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and can still pump away at 7GB/sec, so a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD should offer around 14GB/sec.

PCIe 4.0 x16 has up to 32GB/sec of bandwidth available while the next-gen PCIe 5.0 standard will double that up to a huge 64GB/sec that will leave 16GB/sec for the x4 interface -- perfect for next-gen PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs.

• Read more: PCIe 5.0 spec announced, touts 64GB/sec peak bandwidth (PCIe 3.0 has 16GB/sec, PCIe 4.0 has 64GB/sec)
• Read more: AMD will support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 in 2022, but Intel has DDR5 first

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Silicon Motion announced the news in its recent earnings call, with Silicon Motion president and CEO Wallace C. Kou saying that the company will have its new PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers sampling out to customers in 2H 2022 while consumer drives will be available sometime in 2023.