Marvell announce new SSD controller for m.2 SSDs

SSD controllers are integral to the performance and longevity of solid state drives. With the rapid advancement of NAND technology, SSDs are gradually becoming faster and larger - thereby increasing the workload of their NAND controllers. To cope with high performance of modern drives, controllers which dictates how data is written to the flash have adopted more powerful processors and DRAM modules to assist with translating addresses and managing storage.

Marvell's new 88NV1160 SSD controller delivers respectable transfer speeds despite lacking embedded DRAM. The controller supports the NVMe 1.3 (and AHCI) protocol over PCIe 3.0 x2, which enables it to read a maximum 1600Mb/s. Write speeds are dictated by the type of NAND utilized; 15nm TLC, 3D TLC and 3D QLC are supported. The controller also uses Marvell's third generation of LPDC error correction.

The 88NV1160 controller will enable small form factor devices such as tablets and convertibles include faster SSDs at slightly lower prices.