Silicon Motion: SM2258 6Gb SATA SSD Controller Solution

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation introduced SM2258, a first turnkey merchant ASIC/firmware 6Gb SATA SSD controller solution supporting the 3D TLC NAND from all the major NAND suppliers.

The SM2258 controller solution is designed to meet the demands of managing 3D TLC NAND for client SSDs, offering capacity with best-in-class performance, low power consumption and extended durability and data retention. The will accelerate the adoption of a new class of cost-competitive, high-capacity and high-performance 3D TLC-based SSDs.

Firm’s customizable turnkey controller solution is enabling SSD OEMs to use the latest generation, most cost-effective 3D TLC NAND flash to quickly bring to market differentiated SSD solutions that will accelerate SSD adoption. The controller employs the company’s proprietary NANDXtend technology consisting of LDPC hard and soft decoding as well as RAID protection that together triple the P/E cycles of 3D TLC NAND – extending the SSD lifespan and ensuring data integrity. SM2258 also features advanced Direct-to-TLC and SLC caching algorithms for optimal sustained performance with TLC NAND.

“NAND vendors are readying for the transition to 3D TLC NAND that will improve affordability and accelerate adoption of SSDs,” said Wallace Kou, president and CEO, Silicon Motion. “As the NAND controller market leader, our new SM2258 customizable turnkey controller solution will enable our partners to rapidly bring to market a new generation of low-cost 3D TLC-based SSDs with uncompromising performance and capacity to drive even faster displacement of HDDs in a variety of end-markets and applications.“

“As 3D NAND approaches half of client SSD petabytes going into next year, advanced SSD controllers enabling low cost, high performance 3D TLC NAND-based solutions are critical for this transition,” said Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst, Forward Insights.

SM2258 provides complete customizable hardware and firmware turnkey SSD
controller solution with industry capabilities and technologies, including:

• Supports 2D/3D MLC and TLC NAND flash from all the major NAND flash vendors

• High sequential read performance of up to 560MB/s and sequential write of up to 520MB/s ^(*)

• Up to 90,000 random read IO/s ^(*) and up to 80,000 random write IO/s ^(*)

• Proprietary NANDXtend error-correcting and data protection technology to triple the P/E cycles for 2D/3D TLC SSD devices

• Direct-to-TLC, Dynamic SLC cache as well as ctatic SLC cache algorithms for optimal sustained read and write performance

• Support for ONFI 3.0, Toggle 2.0 and asynchronous NAND

• Latest security protocols, including AES-256, Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and Opal full-drive encryption compliant

• Ideal suitability for client SSDs targeting ultrabooks, laptops, tablets and HDD replacement

• Support for both commercial (0°C to 70°C) and industrial grade (-40°C to 85°C) requirements

The SM2258 SSD controller solution with 3D TLC NAND support is available.

^(*) With IMFT 3D TLC NAND