Silicon Motion Announces World's First PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD Reference Design Kit Supporting up to 128TB
Rhea-AI Summary
Silicon Motion (SIMO) has unveiled the world's first 128TB PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD Reference Design Kit (RDK) based on their MonTitan™ platform. The groundbreaking design incorporates the enterprise-grade SM8366 controller, supporting PCIe Gen5 x4 NVMe 2.0 and OCP 2.5 data center specifications.
The SSD delivers exceptional performance metrics, including sequential read speeds over 14 GB/s and random read performance exceeding 3.3 million IOPS, offering a 25% improvement compared to other Gen5 high-capacity solutions. Built with 2Tb die QLC NAND, the design features enterprise-optimized firmware and supports NVMe 2.0 FDP and proprietary PerformaShape™ technology for enhanced data management.
The RDK is now available for sampling to select partners, with companies like Innodisk and Exascend already collaborating on enterprise SSD development for AI servers and data centers.
Positive
- First-to-market with 128TB PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD technology
- Superior performance metrics: 14 GB/s read speeds and 3.3M IOPS
- 25% performance improvement over competing Gen5 solutions
- Strategic partnerships with Innodisk and Exascend for market expansion
- Targeting growing AI data center market with optimized storage solutions
Negative
- initial availability (select partners only)
- Reliance on QLC NAND may impact endurance compared to TLC solutions
Insights
Silicon Motion's introduction of the world's first 128TB PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD Reference Design Kit represents a significant technological breakthrough in the enterprise storage market. This isn't merely an incremental improvement—it's a 4x capacity increase over typical high-end enterprise SSDs currently available (32TB).
The timing is strategically aligned with the explosive growth of AI workloads, which demand unprecedented storage capacity and performance. The MonTitan platform's 14 GB/s sequential reads and 3.3 million IOPS random performance provide a 25% performance improvement over competing Gen5 solutions, directly addressing critical AI infrastructure bottlenecks.
What's particularly valuable is the integration of QLC NAND technology, which enables the massive capacity while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability. The NVMe 2.0 FDP (Flexible Data Placement) implementation combined with Silicon Motion's proprietary PerformaShape™ technology creates a sophisticated data management system optimized for multi-tenant AI environments.
The endorsements from industry partners Innodisk and Exascend validate the platform's commercial viability and suggest Silicon Motion is positioned to capitalize on the growing AI server and data center storage market. By offering this as a reference design kit rather than just a controller, Silicon Motion accelerates customer time-to-market, potentially expanding their footprint in the high-margin enterprise storage ecosystem.
The release of Silicon Motion's 128TB MonTitan SSD reference design represents a critical advancement for AI-focused data centers facing severe storage constraints. This product addresses several key pain points in current AI infrastructure deployments.
First, the unprecedented capacity density enables massive data consolidation—essential for large language models and generative AI that require petabyte-scale training datasets. At 128TB per device, data centers can dramatically reduce physical infrastructure footprint while maintaining performance.
Second, the architecture specifically optimizes for AI workloads across the entire pipeline. The multi-stage data management system with PerformaShape™ technology creates distinct performance profiles for different AI operations—ingest, preparation, training, and inference—each with unique I/O patterns.
Third, by supporting the OCP 2.5 specifications, Silicon Motion ensures compatibility with the increasingly dominant open compute infrastructure designs adopted by hyperscalers and major AI research organizations.
The implications extend beyond raw performance metrics. The ability to maintain 25% better random read performance directly translates to improved GPU utilization in AI clusters—addressing the critical issue of expensive compute resources sitting idle while waiting for data. In practical terms, this means reduced training times and lower total cost of ownership for AI infrastructure deployments.
Company Demos 128TB SSD Design at China Flash Market Summit 2025
The SSD RDK incorporates Silicon Motion's PCIe Dual Ported enterprise-grade SM8366 controller, which supports PCIe Gen5 x4 NVMe 2.0 and OCP 2.5 data center specifications offering unmatched performance, QoS, and capacity for next-generation large data lake storage needs.
Built with the latest 2Tb die QLC NAND, the 128TB SSD features enterprise and data center-optimized firmware, ensuring reliability and endurance in demanding environments. The SSD design delivers exceptional sequential read speeds of over 14 GB/s and random read performance exceeding 3.3 million IOPS, maximizing throughput and reducing operational bottlenecks. Providing over
The 128TB SSD RDK also supports NVMe 2.0 FDP (Flexible Data Placement), a critical feature that allows advanced data management and improved SSD write efficiency and endurance. Coupled with Silicon Motion's proprietary PerformaShape™ technology, this solution utilizes a multi-stage shaping algorithm to optimize SSD performance based on user-defined QoS sets. The combination of FDP and PerformaShape™ effectively manages data, minimizes latency, and maximizes overall performance, particularly in AI data pipelines in multi-tenant environments including Ingest, Prep, Train, and Inference stages.
"Silicon Motion's MonTitan SSD RDK offers a comprehensive solution for our customers, enabling them to rapidly develop and deploy enterprise-class SSDs tailored for AI data center and edge server applications." said Alex Chou, Senior VP of Enterprise Storage & Display Interface Solution Business. "By providing this fully integrated platform that supports up to 128TB SSD with QLC NAND, we empower our customers and solution partners to accelerate the development and commercialization of AI solution's growing demands of high-capacity, high-performance storage."
"We are delighted to collaborate with Silicon Motion in developing our latest enterprise SSD for AI servers and data centers," said CC Wu, VP of Innodisk, "With Silicon Motion's MonTitan Enterprise SSD development platform, we have the flexibility to design enterprise SSDs that deliver industry-leading performance."
"In the era of AI explosion, data storage is more critical than ever." said Frank Chen, CEO of Exascend, "Through this collaboration with Silicon Motion, we have developed a PCIe Gen5 SSD tailored for AI servers, ensuring stable read and write speeds with efficient data management, perfectly meeting the storage demands of the AI era."
The new 128TB SSD RDK is now available for sampling to select partners and customers. For more information, visit www.siliconmotion.com.
Corporate Media Contact:
Minnie Lin
Director of Marketing Communication
E-mail: minnie.lin@siliconmotion.com
Investor Contacts:
E-mail:IR@siliconmotion.com
Sales Contact:
E-mail: service@siliconmotion.com
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SOURCE Silicon Motion Technology Corporation
FAQ
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