Silicon Motion has announced its first PCIe Gen6 SSD controller, the MonTitan SM8466, designed for high-performance enterprise and data center storage solutions. The new controller was revealed at FMS 2025, where the company shared details about its features and performance targets.
The SM8466 is part of Silicon Motion’s MonTitan series, which focuses on enterprise-level products. Built on TSMC’s 4nm process, the controller supports the SCA (Standard Command Architecture) interface and can handle storage capacities of up to 512 TB. This is a notable increase from the previous-generation SM8366, which supported up to 128 TB and was based on a 12nm process.
In terms of performance, the SM8466 doubles the sequential transfer speeds of its predecessor. It is capable of delivering up to 28 GB/s, compared to 14.2 GB/s on the SM8366. Random I/O performance also sees an improvement, with up to 7 million IOPS, which is twice as fast as the earlier model’s 3.5 million IOPS.
The controller meets the NVMe 2.0+ specification and is compliant with OCP NVMe SSD Spec 2.5. Key enterprise features include Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), multiple namespaces, SMART monitoring, and advanced security options such as End-to-End Data Protection, Secure Boot, AES-256 encryption, TCG Opal support, and attestation. These features are designed to address the growing demand for secure and reliable storage in modern data centers.
Although the specifications have been revealed, products built around the SM8466 are not expected to be available until 2026 or later. Silicon Motion’s CEO, Wallace C. Kuo, stated that consumer-level PCIe Gen6 SSDs are unlikely to arrive before the end of the decade, as Gen5 drives are still making their way into mainstream adoption.
Other storage vendors, including Micron and SK Hynix, are also working on PCIe Gen6 solutions for the enterprise market. More announcements from these companies are expected as the industry prepares for the next phase of high-speed storage technology.
