Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP).
FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.
Silicon Motion's MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.
At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.
Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.
Storage
Posted by The Techinical Support
XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM 
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
Western Digital Previews M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Client SSDs: 15GBps at Under 7 Watts 
Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream / mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.
Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.
Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5 bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|
Storage
Realtek Outlines SSD Controller Roadmap: High-End PCIe 5.0 x4 Platform in the Works 
While Realtek is best known in the enthusiast space for for its peripheral controllers such as audio codecs and network controllers, the company also has a small-but-respectable SSD controller business that tends to fly under the radar due to its focus on entry-level and mainstream drives. But Realtek's stature in the SSD space is on the rise, as the company is not only planning new PCIe Gen5 SSD controllers, but also their first high-end, DRAM-equipped SSD controller.
For this year's Computex trade show, Realtek laid out a new SSD controller roadmap that calls for the company to release a trio of new SSD controllers over the next couple of years. First up is a new four-channel entry-level PCIe 4.0 controller, the RTS5776DL, which will be joined a bit later by a PCIe 5.0 variant, the RTS5781DL. But most interesting on Realtek's new roadmap is the final chip being planned: the eight-channel, DRAM-equipped RTS5782, which would be the company's first high-end SSD controller, capable of hitting sequential read rates as high as 14GB/second.
| Realtek NVMe SSD Controller Comparison | |||||||||
| RTS5782 | RTS5781DL | RTS5776DL | RTS5772DL | RTS5766DL | |||||
| Market Segment | High-End | Mainstream | Entry-Level | ||||||
| Error Correction | 4K LDPC | 2K LDPC | |||||||
| DRAM | DDR4, LPDDR4(X) | No | No | No | No | ||||
| Host Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | ||||
| NVMe Version | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 1.4 | NVMe 1.4 | ||||
| NAND Channels, Interface Speed | 8 ch, 3600 MT/s |
4 ch, 3600 MT/s |
4 ch, 3600 MT/s |
8 ch, 1600 MT/s |
4 ch, 1200 MT/s |
||||
| Sequential Read | 14 GB/s | 10 GB/s | 7.4 GB/s | 6 GB/s | 3.2 GB/s | ||||
| Sequential Write | 12 GB/s | 10 GB/s | 7.4 GB/s | 6 GB/s | 2.2 GB/s | ||||
| 4KB Random Read IOPS | 2500k | 1400k | 1200k | - | - | ||||
| 4KB Random Write IOPS | 2500k | 1400k | 1200k | - | - | ||||
Diving a bit deeper into Realtek's roadmap, the RTS5776DL is traditional DRAM-less PCIe Gen4 x4 controller with four NAND chann... SSDs
XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
Western Digital Previews M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Client SSDs: 15GBps at Under 7 Watts
Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream / mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.
Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.
Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5 bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|
Storage
Realtek Outlines SSD Controller Roadmap: High-End PCIe 5.0 x4 Platform in the Works
While Realtek is best known in the enthusiast space for for its peripheral controllers such as audio codecs and network controllers, the company also has a small-but-respectable SSD controller business that tends to fly under the radar due to its focus on entry-level and mainstream drives. But Realtek's stature in the SSD space is on the rise, as the company is not only planning new PCIe Gen5 SSD controllers, but also their first high-end, DRAM-equipped SSD controller.
For this year's Computex trade show, Realtek laid out a new SSD controller roadmap that calls for the company to release a trio of new SSD controllers over the next couple of years. First up is a new four-channel entry-level PCIe 4.0 controller, the RTS5776DL, which will be joined a bit later by a PCIe 5.0 variant, the RTS5781DL. But most interesting on Realtek's new roadmap is the final chip being planned: the eight-channel, DRAM-equipped RTS5782, which would be the company's first high-end SSD controller, capable of hitting sequential read rates as high as 14GB/second.
| Realtek NVMe SSD Controller Comparison | |||||||||
| RTS5782 | RTS5781DL | RTS5776DL | RTS5772DL | RTS5766DL | |||||
| Market Segment | High-End | Mainstream | Entry-Level | ||||||
| Error Correction | 4K LDPC | 2K LDPC | |||||||
| DRAM | DDR4, LPDDR4(X) | No | No | No | No | ||||
| Host Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | ||||
| NVMe Version | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 2.0 | NVMe 1.4 | NVMe 1.4 | ||||
| NAND Channels, Interface Speed | 8 ch, 3600 MT/s |
4 ch, 3600 MT/s |
4 ch, 3600 MT/s |
8 ch, 1600 MT/s |
4 ch, 1200 MT/s |
||||
| Sequential Read | 14 GB/s | 10 GB/s | 7.4 GB/s | 6 GB/s | 3.2 GB/s | ||||
| Sequential Write | 12 GB/s | 10 GB/s | 7.4 GB/s | 6 GB/s | 2.2 GB/s | ||||
| 4KB Random Read IOPS | 2500k | 1400k | 1200k | - | - | ||||
| 4KB Random Write IOPS | 2500k | 1400k | 1200k | - | - | ||||
Diving a bit deeper into Realtek's roadmap, the RTS5776DL is traditional DRAM-less PCIe Gen4 x4 controller with four NAND chann... SSDs
ASRock Unveils Motherboards For Ryzen 9000 At Computex 2024: X870E Taichi and X870E Taichi Lite 
During Computex 2024, ASRock held an event to unveil some of its upcoming X870E motherboards, designed for AMD's Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series processors. ASRock's announcement includes a pair of Taichi-branded boards, the X870E Taichi and the lighter X870E Taichi lite, which uses AMD's X870E (Promontory 21) chipset for AM5.
The current flagship model announced from ASRock's X870E line-up for Ryzen 9000 is the ASRock X870E Taichi. ASRock is advertising a large 27-phase power delivery through 110A SPS, suggesting this board is designed for overclockers and all-around power users. Two PCIe 5.0 x16 slots (operating in either x16/x0 or x8/x8) provide high-speed bandwidth for cutting-edge graphics cards and other devices. Meanwhile, ASRock has gone with 4 DIMM slots on this board, so system builders will be able to max out the board's memory capacity at the cost of bandwidth.
The storage offering is impressive; besides the obligatory PCIe Gen5 x4 M.2 slot (Blazing M.2), ASRock has outfit the board with another three PCIe Gen4 x4 (Hyper) M.2 slots. Also present are two USB4 Type-C ports for high-bandwidth external I/O, while networking support is a solid pairing of a discrete Wi-Fi 7 controller with a Realtek 5Gb Ethernet controller (and the first AM5 board we've come across with something faster than a 2.5GbE controller).
The audio setup includes a Realtek ALC4082 codec and ESS SABRE9218 DAC supporting high-fidelity sound. The BIOS flashback feature is also a nice touch, and we believe this should be a feature on all mid-range to high-end motherboards, which provides an easy way to update the firmware without installing a CPU. And, as no high-end board would be complete without it, ASRock has put RGB lighting on the X870E Taichi as well.
Ultimately, as ASRock's high-end X870E board, the X870E Taichi comes with pretty much every last cutting-edge technology that ASRock can fit on the board.
Comparatively, the ASRock X870E Taichi Lite is a more streamlined and functional version of the X870E Taichi. The Lite retaining all of the latter's key features, including the 27-phase power delivery with 110A smart power stages, dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots operating at x16 or x8/x8, four DDR5 DIMM slots, and four M.2 slots (1x Gen5 + 3x Gen4). The only significant difference is aesthetics: the Taichi Lite features a simpler silver-themed design without the RGB lighting, while the standard Taichi has a more intricate gold-accented and fanciful aesthetics.
In terms of availability, ASRock is not disclosing a release date for the board at the show. And, checking around with other tech journalists, Andreas Schilling from HawrdwareLUXX has heard that X870E and X870 motherboards aren't expected to be available in time for the Ryzen 9000 series launch. We will investigate this and contact the motherboard vendors to confirm the situation. Though as X870E/X870 boards barely differ from the current crop of X670E/B650E boards to begin with, the Ryzen 9000 series won't be fazed by a lack of slightly newer motherboards.
Motherboards
Fadu's FC5161 SSD Controller Breaks Cover in Western Digital's PCIe Gen5 Enterprise Drives 
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions.
The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting an ONFi 5.0 2400 MT/s interface, and features a combination of enterprise-grade capabilities (OCP Cloud Spec 2.0, SR-IOV, up to 512 name spaces for ZNS support, flexible data placement, NVMe-MI 1.2, advanced security, telemetry, power loss protection) not available on other off-the-shelf controllers – or on any previous Western Digital controllers.
The Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD offers sequential read speeds up to 13.7 GB/s as well as sequential write speeds up to 7.5 GB/s. As for random performance, it boasts with an up to 3.3 million random 4K read IOPS and up to 0.8 million random 4K write IOPS. The drives are available in capacities between 1.6 TB and 7.68 TB with one or three drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years rating as well as in U.2 and E1.S form-factors.
While the two form factors of the SN861 share a similar technical design, Western Digital has tailored each version for distinct workloads: the E1.S supports FDP and performance enhancements specifically for cloud environments. By contrast, the U.2 model is geared towards high-performance enterprise tasks and emerging applications like AI.
Without any doubts, Western Digital's Ultrastar DC SN861 is a feature-rich high-performance enterprise-grade SSD. It has another distinctive feature: a 5W idle power consumption, which is rather low by the standards of enterprise-grade drives (e.g., it is 1W lower compared to the SN840). While the difference with predecessors may be just 1W, hyperscalers deploy thousands of drives and for their TCO every watt counts.
Western Digital's Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs are now available for purchase to select customers (such as Meta) and to interested parties. Prices are unknown, but they will depend on such factors as volumes.
Sources: Fadu, Storage Review
Storage
Kioxia Details BiCS 8 NAND at FMS 2024: 218 Layers With Superior Scaling 
Kioxia's booth at FMS 2024 was a busy one with multiple technology demonstrations keeping visitors occupied. A walk-through of the BiCS 8 manufacturing process was the first to grab my attention. Kioxia and Western Digital announced the sampling of BiCS 8 in March 2023. We had touched briefly upon its CMOS Bonded Array (CBA) scheme in our coverage of Kioxial's 2Tb QLC NAND device and coverage of Western Digital's 128 TB QLC enterprise SSD proof-of-concept demonstration. At Kioxia's booth, we got more insights.
Traditionally, fabrication of flash chips involved placement of the associate logic circuitry (CMOS process) around the periphery of the flash array. The process then moved on to putting the CMOS under the cell array, but the wafer development process was serialized with the CMOS logic getting fabricated first followed by the cell array on top. However, this has some challenges because the cell array requires a high-temperature processing step to ensure higher reliability that can be detrimental to the health of the CMOS logic. Thanks to recent advancements in wafer bonding techniques, the new CBA process allows the CMOS wafer and cell array wafer to be processed independently in parallel and then pieced together, as shown in the models above.
The BiCS 8 3D NAND incorporates 218 layers, compared to 112 layers in BiCS 5 and 162 layers in BiCS 6. The company decided to skip over BiCS 7 (or, rather, it was probably a short-lived generation meant as an internal test vehicle). The generation retains the four-plane charge trap structure of BiCS 6. In its TLC avatar, it is available as a 1 Tbit device. The QLC version is available in two capacities - 1 Tbit and 2 Tbit.
Kioxia also noted that while the number of layers (218) doesn't compare favorably with the latest layer counts from the competition, its lateral scaling / cell shrinkage has enabled it to be competitive in terms of bit density as well as operating speeds (3200 MT/s). For reference, the latest shipping NAND from Micron - the G9 - has 276 layers with a bit density in TLC mode of 21 Gbit/mm2, and operates at up to 3600 MT/s. However, its 232L NAND operates only up to 2400 MT/s and has a bit density of 14.6 Gbit/mm2.
It must be noted that the CBA hybrid bonding process has advantages over the current processes used by other vendors - including Micron's CMOS under array (CuA) and SK hynix's 4D PUC (periphery-under-chip) developed in the late 2010s. It is expected that other NAND vendors will also move eventually to some variant of the hybrid bonding scheme used by Kioxia.
Storage
![](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2025/05/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible_31.html&text=Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/carousel_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - <a href="https://nvmexpress.org/nvmeflexible-data-placement-fdp-blog/">Flexible Data Placement</a> (FDP).</p>
<p>FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion's <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/17512/silicon-motion-sm8366-montitan-ssd-platform">MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform</a> was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/mid-page_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.</p>
</p> Storage){kind=link}
![](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2025/05/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible_31.html&media=https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tN1AeCP8B5DzWnDKsF6b1Lx2Aj5zDDL3fKBbwRL5ANlbU9VfYeeoOtJkwUHa8buPMTBcaSWGN_E67oR_JOgwr79aicTcVY8JpwhW7KFMYoDRklpQYKtIvNtCIljTQ&description=Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/carousel_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - <a href="https://nvmexpress.org/nvmeflexible-data-placement-fdp-blog/">Flexible Data Placement</a> (FDP).</p>
<p>FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion's <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/17512/silicon-motion-sm8366-montitan-ssd-platform">MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform</a> was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/mid-page_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.</p>
</p> Storage){kind=link}
![](https://web.whatsapp.com/send?text=Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/carousel_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - <a href="https://nvmexpress.org/nvmeflexible-data-placement-fdp-blog/">Flexible Data Placement</a> (FDP).</p>
<p>FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion's <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/17512/silicon-motion-sm8366-montitan-ssd-platform">MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform</a> was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/mid-page_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.</p>
</p> Storage | https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2025/05/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible_31.html){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/carousel_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - <a href="https://nvmexpress.org/nvmeflexible-data-placement-fdp-blog/">Flexible Data Placement</a> (FDP).</p>
<p>FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion's <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/17512/silicon-motion-sm8366-montitan-ssd-platform">MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform</a> was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21522/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible-data-placement-on-montitan-gen-5-enterprise-ssd-platform"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21522/mid-page_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.</p>
<p>Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.</p>
</p> Storage&body=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2025/05/silicon-motion-demonstrates-flexible_31.html){kind=link}
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XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
Western Digital Previews M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Client SSDs: 15GBps at Under 7 Watts
Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream / mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.
Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.
Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5 bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|
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