Realtek Unveils New SSD Controllers

Realtek, a company more known for its sound processors, has entered the SSD game within recent time. But, while the company is slightly new to the game, development of its next-generation PCIe 4.0 controller is underway. Unfortunately, 'under development' is as far as the company is at this point, with no engineering samples anywhere to be seen. Rather, the company showcased it current-gen controllers, like the RTS5762 and RST5763DL (DRAMless), and a new USB to PCIe bridge controller that natively supports RGB lighting.

The RTS5771 is Realtek's next-gen top-tier controller and it is aimed to hit the market sometime in Q3 2020. It will feature a multi-core, DRAM-based architecture, with a second-generation LDPC error correction engine as well as AES encryption. Performance stats aren’t yet available, but with eight NAND channels and NAND interface speeds of up to 1,200 MT/s and a PCIe 4.0 x4 host link, it should be quite potent.

The DRAMless RTS5765DL is going to be a bit slower, but more efficient its PCIe 3.0 x4 host interface and support for just four NAND channels. It will be sampling sooner in Q4 of this year. It’s NAND interface will operate at up to 1,200 MT/s speeds to keep up with the latest NAND and it will also feature a multi-core CPU architecture with the same security and LDPC support, too. The package size will be BGA 11x11 for the RTS5765DL controller, while the beefier RTS5771 has not been finalized yet.

As mentioned previously, Realtek was also showing off their current-gen products. So far, the company has been able to secure contact with ADATA, and through that partnership, the latest XPG SX6000 Pro has come to light. The SSD is powered by the RTS5763DL, a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3-compliant controller that can deliver sequential performance of up to 2.1/1.5 GB/s read/write and 250,000 IOPS. This may be a bit slow for some, but that’s where the RTS5762 comes into play.

The current high-end controller in the company’s lineup is the RTS5762. This controller has recently hit the market in ADATA’s newest SSD, the XPG Spectrix S40G RGB SSD. With performance stats of up to 3.5/3.0 Gb/s and the capability to hit 420,000 / 320,000 IOPS, the seemingly high-end controller just may keep up the pace against the current top dogs in the controller industry, but we’ll have to see that once we get our S40G review sample in.  

The company also showcased a new RTL9210 USB 3.1 Gen 2 to PCIe 3.0 x2 bridge controller for external SSDs and enclosures. This is a welcome sight because a popular controller, the JMicron JMS583 is available, but it is pretty power-hungry, and thus, there are some compatibility issues with some hosts that don’t deliver enough juice. The Realtek is said to consume much less power through active state power management support, and thus it will also help to lower overall heat output too. Additionally, it supports RGB lighting natively through the controller. It’s rather limited being able to address just three LEDs at this time, but it will be interesting to see what vendors make of it. As with Realtek’s other controllers, ADATA currently has this one embedded into their external device lineup.