Silicon Motion

LaCie's portable storage drives have enjoyed a fan following, particularly among creative professionals valuing both performance and product design / appearance. After Seagate's acquisition, the brand has continued to cater to this segment with new products. The company has both USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 SSDs under the LaCie brand, and is adding a new 2 GBps-class Rugged Mini SSD today. The USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) ecosystem has been gaining traction recently after the launch of a number of low-cost portable SSDs based on native controllers. The new LaCie Rugged Mini SSD belongs to the same category, albeit with a slight premium for the product design. The PSSD is available in four capacities - 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. The company...

Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD Review: 20 Gbps Performance in a Budget Offering

The portable SSD market has seen rapid growth over the last decade. Almost all of the tier-one NAND flash manufacturers have jumped in with multiple offerings, presenting consumers with...

19 by Ganesh T S on 11/10/2023

Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD Review: Micron 176L 3D NAND Delivers Record UFD Consistency

Crucial introduced their X9 Pro and X10 Pro high-performance portable SSDs last month. Based on Silicon Motion's SM2320 native USB flash controller, coupled with Micron's 176L 3D TLC NAND...

18 by Ganesh T S on 8/18/2023

Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]

UPDATE 8/24: As it turns out, the 3.5W figure referes to power consumption of the controller alone, not the whole SSD. The story has been updated accordingly. We also...

19 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2023

Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro High-Performance Portable SSDs Announced

Crucial's X6 and X8 Portable SSDs have been attractive budget options for the mainstream consumers looking to purchase high-capacity direct-attached storage drives. The company has been delivering some industry-firsts...

8 by Ganesh T S on 7/25/2023

Transcend ESD310C Dual-Interface UFD Review: Silicon Motion Powers Portable SSD in a Thumb Drive

Transcend recently introduced the ESD310C portable SSD in a thumb drive form-factor. A compact device with both Type-A and Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) interfaces, the ESD310C...

28 by Ganesh T S on 6/22/2023

Silicon Motion SM2268XT DRAM-less NVMe SSD Controller: PCIe 4.0 Speeds on a Budget

The excitement in the client SSD space recently has understandably been on the Gen 5 front. However, cooling requirements have made it difficult for vendors to bring effective M.2...

17 by Ganesh T S on 2/16/2023

Solidigm Announces P41 Plus SSD: Taking Another Shot at QLC With Cache Tiering

Although Intel is no longer directly in the SSD market these days, their SSD team and related technologies continue to live on under the SK hynix umbrella as Solidigm...

44 by Ryan Smith on 8/2/2022

Silicon Motion Announces SM8366 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Controller and MonTitan SSD Solutions Platform for Enterprise Storage

In the lead up to the Flash Memory Summit next week, many vendors have started announcing their new products. Today, Silicon Motion is unveiling their first enterprise-focused PCIe 5.0...

3 by Ganesh T S on 7/28/2022

Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Series Review: New Type-A Thumb Drive Retains NVMe Performance

Kingston's new products in the portable flash-based external storage space have met with good market reception over the last year or so. Two products in particular - the Kingston...

17 by Ganesh T S on 7/11/2022

Kingston XS2000 Portable SSDs Review: USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Goes Mainstream

Flash-based portable drives have become popular fast storage options for both content creators and backups-seeking consumers. The advent of high-speed interfaces such as USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps...

19 by Ganesh T S on 11/10/2021

Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Review: NVMe Performance in a USB Thumb Drive

Rapid advancements in flash technology and continued improvements in high-speed interfaces have driven the growth of small, bus-powered portable SSDs. Kingston introduced the DataTraveler Max in August 2021 as...

12 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2021

USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Portable SSDs Go Native: The Silicon Motion SM2320 UFD Controller Preview

The external storage market has experienced rapid growth over the last few years, particularly in the retail consumer segment. It has been fueled in part by advancements in bus-powered...

18 by Ganesh T S on 9/16/2021

Next Gen NVMe SD Card Review: The SM2708 Controller Serves it Hot and Fast

Flash-based removable media has a host of use cases in products ranging from content capture devices to portable game consoles. Behind the standards of these is the SD Association...

43 by Ganesh T S on 9/9/2021

The ADATA GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB SSD Review: Mainstream PCIe Gen4

Today we're taking a look at ADATA's XPG Gammix S50 Lite, a mid-range consumer NVMe SSD based on Silicon Motion's new SM2267 controller. Among other notable features, the Gammix...

93 by Billy Tallis on 4/30/2021

Silicon Motion Announces SM2708 SD Express Controller

Silicon Motion has announced their first SD Card controller to support the NVMe-based SD Express interface. The new SM2708 controller is capable of sequential transfer speeds of 1700 MB/s...

17 by Billy Tallis on 4/7/2021

The Intel SSD 670p (2TB) Review: Improving QLC, But Crazy Pricing?!?

Intel's third generation QLC SSD delivers much-needed performance improvements due to its new 144-layer 3D QLC NAND and a new low-cost SSD controller from Silicon Motion.

73 by Billy Tallis on 3/1/2021

Kingston at CES 2021: New NVMe SSDs and a USB 3.2 Portable SSD

Kingston introduced a variety of new storage products at CES 2021, announcing new NVMe SSDs ranging from entry-level to high-end consumer and enterprise drives, plus new portable storage products. NV1...

1 by Billy Tallis on 1/14/2021

New Enterprise SSD Controllers From Silicon Motion, Phison, FADU

In the past month, three SSD controller designers have announced new enterprise NVMe SSD controllers, bringing a wave of new competition to the high-end enterprise/datacenter SSD market. FADU is...

5 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020

Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers

Silicon Motion has announced the official launch of their first generation of PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controllers. These controllers have been on the roadmap for quite a while and...

23 by Billy Tallis on 10/20/2020

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