Maxiotek starts mass production controller without dram for cheap SSDs

Maxiotek has started mass production of its MK8115 controller for sata-m2 ssds. The controller can handle 3d-mlc and 3d-tlc nand memory and does not use dram cache. These properties make the controller suitable for cheap SSDs.

According to TheSSDReview, several manufacturers will use the MK8115 in their SSDs and Maxiotek has announced that mass production has started. The controller is only made for SSDs with m2 and msata form factor and on SSDs of that size, omitting dram also provides more space, so that more nand memory can be placed on the pcb. The controller should support 1TB M2 SSDs with all NAND memory chips placed on a single side of the PCB.

Omitting the dram cache can have a performance impact because caching must be done in the slower nand memory. Firmware algorithms can mitigate those drawbacks, and Maxiotek claims its controller achieves high speeds compared to competitor dramless controllers. According to the company, the performance is comparable to controllers that do have dram cache.

With the 88NV1120, Marvell also has an SSD controller without dram in its range, which is used by Adata in the SP580 SSDs. Toshiba also makes a dramless controller, which is included in the budget series OCZ TL100 SSDs. The MK8115 is the first DRAM-less controller to support 3D Nand memory.

Maxiotek announced its MK8115 controller in August. The chip can handle 3D-MLC and 3D-TLC NAND memory from different manufacturers, but not with chips from Samsung. There is also support for regular slc and mlc nand memory. When using 3D-tlc memory, the maximum capacity is 1536GB and, according to the makers, the controller is good for read and write speeds of 560 and 530MB/s.