Silicon Motion Inc. brought its latest SSD controller lineup to Computex 2026, starting with the consumer-focused SM2524XT. This DRAMless PCIe Gen 5 controller supports NVMe 2.1 and delivers up to 14 GB/s sequential reads and 2.2 million IOPS while consuming just 2.5W active power. Built on TSMC's 6nm process, it targets mid-range Gen 5 SSDs using 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash.

The standout is SMI's first PCIe Gen 6 controller, the SM8466, designed for enterprise SSDs requiring near-GPU storage speeds. With a PCIe 6.0 x4 interface providing 256 Gbps per direction, it supports up to 512 TB capacities and promises sequential transfers reaching 28 GB/s with 7 million IOPS random access. This architecture aims to supplement GPU memory for running larger AI models.

SMI also demonstrated a U.2 NVMe SSD using the SM8388 PCIe Gen 5 controller, achieving 14,602 MB/s reads in their demo. The company's push into higher-performance storage reflects the growing demand for faster data access in AI and high-performance computing workloads.