Silicon Motion Launches First Automotive-Grade PCIe NVMe SSD Controller

According to foreign media reports, Silicon Motion is committed to providing customers with semiconductor storage solutions and has launched the first automotive-grade PCIe NVMe SSD controller. The controller is equipped with a master chip with built-in SR-IOV function, which is an ideal choice for automotive-grade storage devices and can support up to eight virtual machines (VMs) at the same time to provide a direct high-speed PCIe interface.

The controller uses a 12nm process, which can significantly increase data transmission rates, reduce power consumption and provide strict data protection, providing high-performance, reliable and high-performance PCIe NVMe SSD solutions for automotive applications that can be used for automotive storage.

Image source: Silicon Motion official website

Built-in SR-IOV functionality for automotive storage

Image source: Silicon Motion official website

The SR-IOV architecture applies the concept of virtualization, which makes it flexible to run virtual machines (VMs) on supported hardware "targets" and optimize the use of available hardware resources, ultimately reducing hardware costs because data centers with virtualized systems can perform more computing operations with fewer servers than older non-virtualized systems.

The advantage of virtualized architecture is that data transmission no longer needs to be routed through a hypervisor (virtual machine manager or VMM), eliminating the delay caused by converting software code from PCIe format to hypervisor format and back again, while also reducing the burden on the CPU running the hypervisor. Silicon Motion's SSD controller provides built-in SR-IOV function and supports up to 8 virtual machines (VMs), which can be directly and independently connected to each VM at high speed through dedicated virtual functions (VFs) implemented in the SSD controller.

Providing ECC technology with reliability, high performance and low power consumption for 3D NAND

Image source: Silicon Motion official website

The seventh generation NANDXtend® is an advanced firmware technology developed by Silicon Motion specifically for the needs of 3D NAND SSD products. NANDXtend® three-dimensional error correction mechanism combines LDPC (Low-Density Parity Correction Code) and RAID Data Recover correction technology to correct errors with high-speed parallel decoding. This technology strengthens the P/E Cycle of 3D NAND, bringing longer service life and stability to SSD products, satisfying customers to design SSD products with market reputation.

The new generation of NANDXtend® includes a 4KB LDPC engine with advanced software algorithms, providing higher power efficiency, decoding efficiency and error correction capabilities to maintain the consistency of all data. Even as the life cycle of NAND flash products increases and the number of error bits increases, NANDXtend® can provide a better user experience.

End-to-end data path protection

Silicon Motion's SSD controller combines comprehensive data error detection and recovery engines to provide data integrity for the entire "host to NAND to host" data path. The data recovery algorithm can effectively detect errors in the SSD data path, including hardware (such as ASIC) errors, firmware errors, and memory errors in SRAM, DRAM, or NAND.

The product has been extensively tested and meets various automotive processes and certifications, including AEC-Q100 compliance, ISO 26262 functional safety standard (ASIL-B), IATF 16949 supply chain compliance certification, and ASPICE compliance SW development process.