Next-gen SSDs achieve 28 GByte/s and many more IOPS
Silicon Motion unveils the key data of its first PCIe 6.0 controller for server SSDs. The SM8466 is designed to remain efficient with 4 nm technology.
The first known PCI Express 6.0 controller for SSDs is called SM8466 and comes from the Taiwanese company Silicon Motion. The company unveiled the key data of the controller at the Chinese trade fair Flash Memory World 2025, as ITHome reports, among others. SSD manufacturers will be able to purchase the controller for their models.
As PCIe 6.0 doubles the bandwidth compared to PCIe 5.0, the transfer rate of the SM8466 should also almost double compared to current PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Silicon Motion specifies 28 GByte/s. The controller uses four PCIe 6.0 lanes for this purpose.
More impressive are the input/output operations per second (IOPS) for random accesses to 4-kilobyte blocks. Silicon Motion claims up to seven million IOPS, almost three times as much as the fastest SSDs currently available under ideal conditions. The IOPS in particular determine how snappy an SSD feels in everyday use.
With 4-nanometer technology from TSMC
However, ever faster accesses and higher transfer rates come at the expense of electrical power consumption. To keep this in check, Silicon Motion has the SM8466 produced by chip contract manufacturer TSMC using 4-nanometer technology. This is an unusually modern process for a controller. The current SM2508 for end customer SSDs is already produced using 6 nm structures.
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The SM8466, meanwhile, is intended purely for server SSDs. The first models are set to appear by the end of 2026. AMD is also launching its next generation of Epyc server processors, Venice (Zen 6) with PCIe 6.0 support and Intel Xeon CPUs from the Diamond Rapids family. At Nvidia, the next ARM offshoot Vera is likely to support PCIe 6.0.
There seems to be little interest in PCI Express 6.0 for desktop PCs and notebooks. According to Silicon Motion CEO Wallace C. Kou, corresponding platforms are not expected to appear until around 2030.
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