Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today launched its new SM2320 single-chip high performance, lower power and cost effective solution for external portable SSDs. The new SM2320 controller solution is designed with integrated hardware and firmware as well as high-level security features which meet the needs of game console users requiring high performance and the low power requirements of laptop users. The external portable SSD market is growing due to the performance, low power consumption, reliability and portability of such devices enabled by NAND memory. Customers include Kingston Technology, which has designed SM2320 into its new XS2000 external portable SSD, as well as other module and NAND flash providers.

"Kingston is thrilled to collaborate with SMI for the launch of our new pocket-sized XS2000 portable SSD," said Keith Schimmenti, SSD Business Manager, Kingston. "Our Kingston engineers continue to focus on improving the performance of our products and with the new SM2320 controller, we are able to get XS2000 in the hands of our customers and meet the high performance and high capacity demands they need to keep up with the ever-evolving digital world."Silicon Motion's unique SM2320 external portable SSD controller solution features a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, advanced SSD controller architecture and four NAND channels, and delivers sequential read/write speeds up to 2,100 / 2,000 MB/s. By eliminating a USB bridge chip typically required in other more traditional designs, the SM2320 solution also lowers the Bill of Material (BOM) cost and power consumption. The SM2320 controller solution includes Silicon Motion's NANDXtend ECC end-to-end data path protection and supports up to 4 TB of capacity using the latest TLC and QLC NAND. Additionally, the SM2320 controller solution supports the highest level of data security by providing AES 256-bit encryption, full compliance with the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal specification and auxiliary Fingerprint Security support.

"The market for high-performance external portable SSDs is expected to grow due to the wide range of applications requiring fast external storage such as gaming consoles and laptops used for data intensive applications like image and video storage and editing," said Stanley Huang, Senior Director of SSD Storage Marketing at Silicon Motion. "The best external portable SSDs are not just delivering faster performance, but also offering lower power, smaller size and lower cost. By eliminating the bridge chip design, our new portable SSD controller solutions provide a simpler, more cost-effective solution for this growing product segment."