At the Future of Memory and Storage summit 2025, Silicon Motion unveils new hardware: PCIe 6.0 SSDs, high-capacity drives of 256 and 512 Terabytes, along with the next evolution of 16K LDPC technology.
At the recent Future for Memory and Storage (FMS) conference, Silicon Motion announced a groundbreaking development in their enterprise SSD controller technology: the 16KiB CoCo LPDC. This innovative approach seeks to deliver near-16KiB LDPC level error correction with the cost, power, and latency benefits of 4KiB LDPC.
The 16KiB CoCo LPDC technology is designed to divide a 16KiB NAND page into four independent 4KiB LDPC codewords, allowing for independent decoding and recovery from failed chunks. This hybrid codeword structure enables most reads to work like a fast standard 4KiB LDPC, while still offering the reliability benefits of larger LDPC.
One of the key features of the 16KiB CoCo LPDC is collaborative decoding. If one or more of the 4KiB chunks fail to decode, successfully decoded chunks provide helper information to assist decoding the failed chunks. This enables recovery from up to all four chunks failing, achieving reliability close to a true 16KiB LDPC.
The 16KiB CoCo LPDC solution preserves small-IO latency for random reads, which is critical in mixed workloads, while also delivering the stronger error-correction needed for high-capacity drives. This makes it well suited for large, dense NAND flash SSDs requiring robust ECC and performance.
Silicon Motion's MonTitan SM8466 controller, which features the 16KiB CoCo LPDC technology, is targeted for high-performance, high-capacity enterprise SSDs. The controller supports an LDPC ECC with a 4KiB codeword and 16KiB Collaborative Codeword (CoCo), and a PCIe 6.x x4 host interface, 16 NAND channels, and NVMe 2.0 compliance.
The MonTitan SM8466 platform can support SSDs with capacities of up to 512 TB and offer sequential performance of 28 GB/s and random performance of 7 million 4K IOPS. Performance Shaping, a method for SSDs to regulate their behavior for stable, predictable performance, is also a part of the MonTitan SM8466 platform.
In addition to the MonTitan SM8466, Silicon Motion is developing a PCIe 6.0 SSD controller, the Neptune, for consumer PCs. Mass production is scheduled for 2028, with drives expected to hit the market in 2029 or 2030.
According to Silicon Motion CEO Wallace Kou, PCIe Gen6 SSDs for consumer PCs are unlikely to appear before 2030. However, high-capacity 256 TB SSDs based on a standard controller are anticipated to become more widespread several quarters from now.
The MonTitan SM8466 platform includes the Separate Command Architecture (SCA) to reduce latency and improve throughput. The drive features Secure Boot, AES-256 encryption, TCG Opal compatibility, and firmware attestation for mission-critical enterprise data security.
In summary, Silicon Motion's 16KiB CoCo LPDC ECC technology is a crucial capability for data center solid-state drives, offering extreme performance, high capacities, and exceptional reliability. The technology is expected to land in the months and years ahead, bringing a new level of performance and reliability to enterprise SSDs.
Technology in data-and-cloud-computing applications is set to benefit from Silicon Motion's upcoming advancements, as demonstrated by their recent announcement of the 16KiB CoCo LPDC at the Future for Memory and Storage (FMS) conference. This innovative enterprise SSD controller technology offers near-16KiB LDPC level error correction, while still maintaining the cost, power, and latency benefits of 4KiB LDPC.
