Silicon Motion targets AI inference with DRAMless PCIe 5 SSD controller

The announcement positions the SM2524XT as a NAND flash controller for high-performance DRAMless SSDs. Silicon Motion says the controller supports PCIe Gen 5 x4, NAND interface speeds up to 4,800 MT/s, sequential reads up to 14 GB/s, and random performance up to 2.5 million IOPS. The company also says the controller is built on TSMC 6 nm process technology and improves performance per watt and random performance versus the prior generation. For RamTrend, the notable signal is that SSD controller vendors are tuning products around AI inference and KV-cache access patterns, which could broaden demand for fast NAND-based storage in AI systems.