Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers and solid-state storage devices, today released the SM2270, a complete PCIe NVMe SSD controller solution which offers high performance, high capacity, high reliability and low latency SSD storage for enterprise and data center applications.

The dual-mode SM2270 is a complete SSD controller solution with customer specific or turnkey firmware that can support Open Channel storage implementations as well as standard NVMe protocols. In either mode, the SM2270 management technology enables ultra-high performance, guaranteed low latency, and more efficient use of storage capacity in high density, multi-tenant data center applications.

The controller specifications include:

  • PCIe Gen 3 x 8 lanes, supporting standard NVMe 1.3 protocols
  • Support Open Channel implementations such as the Microsoft Denali pre-standard
  • 16 NAND flash channels and SSD capacity up to 16TB
  • Powerful triple dual-core Arm® Cortex®-R5-based architecture for high data throughput
  • Up to 800,000 IOPS in 4KB random read operation
  • Support the latest 3D NAND, including 96-layer TLC and QLC flash, from all major NAND manufacturers.

In addition, the SM2270 ensures reliable, long-term data storage and retrieval, even in extreme operating conditions by incorporating advanced NAND monitoring and protection technologies including:

  • Power Loss Protection, which eliminates the risk of data loss in the event of an unexpected power outage.
  • The 6th generation NANDXtendTM technology, which incorporates machine learning algorithms supporting Silicon Motion's proprietary high-performance LDPC error correction code (ECC) engine with RAID, ensuring better data integrity even in extreme operating environments.
  • End-to-end data path protection, which applies ECC to the SSD's SRAM and DRAM buffers as well as to the primary NAND flash memory array. This maintains the integrity of every bit of data as it is transmitted between the host and the SSD, and between buffer memories and NAND flash.

"The SM2270 is the world's first PCIe SSD controller that supports standard NVMe and Open Channel technology to be available in production. It draws on Silicon Motion's leadership position in flash controller technology and unrivaled knowledge of the data center SSD storage systems," said Wallace C. Kou, President and CEO of Silicon Motion. "This combination makes the SM2270 the ideal controller in SSDs for demanding cloud server and data center applications."

The SM2270 is available and in production now. It will be on display at the Silicon Motion booth #413 at the Flash Memory Summit (Santa Clara, California, USA, 7-9 August 2018).