'PCIe Gen7 development has already started,' says Silicon Motion's Alex Chou

Alex Chou, CEO of Silicon Motion, announced at Computex that development for PCIe Gen7 has already begun, signaling a major step forward in storage performance. As a leading NAND controller and storag... Read original →

Silicon Motion’s early push into PCIe Gen7 reflects the inflexible bandwidth and latency demands of AI data centers. This move triggers a cascade: NAND makers must accelerate EUV adoption, while controller designs evolve toward sophisticated traffic-shaping engines—linking interface speed, controller architecture, and flash co-optimization. Geopolitically, reliance on U.S.-based cloud customers offers short-term regulatory shelter, but new U.S. export controls on advanced storage tech could sharply raise compliance costs. To counter Broadcom and Western Digital’s vertical integration, SMI is aligning with NVIDIA’s Storage Next vision, betting on software-defined differentiation. Within 18 months, with PCIe Gen6 still ramping, Gen7 development signals an era of concurrent multi-generation investment—raising entry barriers and accelerating market consolidation in the $4B enterprise SSD controller space.