OCP Global Summit: Silicon Motion Enables Capacity and Performance Enterprise SATA SSDs With SM2271 SSD Controller

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation released the SM2271, an SSD controller ASIC with a turnkey firmware stack which enables customers to accelerate the development of high-performance enterprise SATA SSDs with a maximum capacity of 16TB.

The SM2271 is a performance, eight-channel enterprise SATA SSD controller solution which supports the latest 3D TLC and QLC Flash technologies. It exploits the potential of the SATA interface, achieving a maximum sequential read speed of 540MB/s and sequential write speed of 520MB/s.

The SM2271 combines enterprise endurance, support for high SSD capacity, and performance for read-intensive workloads while enabling users to maintain their existing SATA storage infrastructure for a low TCO. Providing more consistent latency than client SSDs for more reliable data write and read operation, it is a platform for SATA SSD designs intended to replace lower-performance HDDs in enterprise storage, data center and industrial storage systems.

Sophisticated physical flash media management and data integrity functions in the SM2271 ensure that the SSD performs reliably and has a long operating lifetime. Data integrity is safeguarded by end-to-end data path protection and advanced data handling firmware/software. The firm’s 6th generation proprietary NANDXtend technology, which integrates error recovery functionality with a machine learning algorithm, prolongs data retention to improve QoS during life time.

Data security is safeguarded by the provision of AES 256-bit encryption, secure boot, and full compliance with the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal specification.

“The SM2271 is Silicon Motion’s latest enterprise SSD controller, enabling customers to get to market quickly with new 16TB, high performance SATA SSDs that feature 3D TLC or QLC Flash from any of the major NAND Flash manufacturers,” said Nelson S. Duann, SVP, marketing and R&D, Silicon Motion. “It incorporates our latest enterprise innovations including our 6th generation NANDXtend technology for data retention extension, end-to-end data protection and comprehensive security while providing the industry’s best QoS consistency.“

The company provides a complete SSD reference design kit that includes turnkey FW minimizing development time and investment.

Features include:

• Support latest 3D TLC/QLC; up to 16TB capacity

• Consistent IO/s and predictable QoS latency

• End-to-end data protection SRAM/DRAM ECC

• Data retention extension with NANDXtend

• Self-encrypting drive (SED) with AES-256 and TCG Opal

• Secure Boot Support

The SM2271 controller, turnkey firmware and reference design is currently being sampled to key partners and was on display in the company’s private meeting room at the 2019 OCP Global Summit in San Jose, CA.