Silicon Motion has introduced its new single-chip controller for external solid-state drives that is designed to enable relatively inexpensive SSDs with a 40 Gb/s USB4 interface. The SM2324 controller can be used to build compact, low-power drives with up to 32TB capacity that offer a read throughput up to 4,000 MB/s.
Silicon Motion's SM2324 is a single-chip SSD controller based on two Arm Cortex-R5 cores that has four NAND channels with 32 CE targets that support 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND devices with an up to 1,600 MT/s interface speed as well as a USB4 Gen3x2 (40 Gbps) host interface with Power Delivery 3.1. SMI claims that drives based on the SM2324 controller can achieve a sequential read performance of up to 4,000 MB/s and a sequential write performance of up to 3,809 MB/s (provided that there is enough cooling). The controller can address up to 32 TB of memory, which enables it to be used both for consumer and professional-grade external storage devices.
The SM2324 controller fully supports the company's latest NANDXtend LDPC ECC technology with a codeword size of 4 kilobytes (4096 bytes) to ensure compatibility with existing and upcoming 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND memory.
On the security side, the controller also supports real-time full-drive encryption using AES 128/256-bit, complies with TCG Opal 2.0, and includes hardware SHA-384/256 and True Random Number Generator (TRNG). For high-assurance applications, the chip can also work with a fingerprint reader, though it is unclear which interface it uses to communicate with such a device.
The SM2324 chip itself is made on TSMC's 12 nm-class low-power process technology to ensure both power efficiency and cost efficiency.
In terms of host compatibility, the SM2324 works with a broad range of platforms, including Windows XP and later, macOS 10.x and later, and Linux kernel 2.4 and above. It is also compatible with Apple ProRes recording and certified under Apple's MFi program, making it suitable for use in professional media environments with iPhone Pro Max smartphones (considering the fact that some movies are now shot on Pro-level iPhones, it is legitimate to call iPhone-based flows 'professional').
Silicon Motion's SM2324 comes in a 9mm × 9mm FCCSP-C package with a built-in aluminum heat spreader and therefore can be integrated into storage devices of various form factors, including very compact drives.
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