Will SSDs no longer overheat? A new RISC-V controller has been developed in China that eliminates the disadvantages of drives

Chinese companies operating in the electronics development and production industry are actively developing. One of them is Yingren Technology, its team managed to create a new controller for modern solid-state drives. It seems like nothing important, but no – it is this component that allows you to eliminate the problem of SSD overheating, which greatly affects the service life of the media.

What exactly has the company developed?

The controller is based on the RISC-V architecture known to many of us, it is called YRS820. Designed for installation in consumer models, the component allows for high data transfer rates without the negative side effect of overheating the drive itself.

Some SSD models get very hot, which reduces the overall performance of the drive at best. At worst, it simply fails, which leads to the loss of all user data, because the SSD “falls” unexpectedly, unlike HDDs, which often gradually fail.

Some companies offer solutions to eliminate overheating – for example, they are developing special radiators, or even liquid cooling systems. The latter are created for the most expensive SSDs. The controller discussed above eliminates the need to install additional accessories. Moreover, it is based on open technologies, so you do not have to pay license fees. Accordingly, the cost of the product is reduced – at least, I would like to hope so.

Its manufacturer reports that the controller is a simplified version of the YRS900 model, which is installed on corporate SSDs. The component makes it possible to provide high data exchange speeds – at the reading level up to 14 GB/s (gigabytes per second) and writing up to 12 GB/s.

This is possible thanks to a four-channel PCIe 5.0 interface and eight channels of NAND flash memory. Controller supports NVMe 2.0, and the data transfer speed over the PCI-E interface reaches 2667 MT/s (millions of data transfers per second). The maximum storage capacity supported by the controller is 8 TB. There is no minimum indicator, but, in general, this is not that important.

Other features of the YRS820 include intelligent capabilities and special optimizations to reduce latency and improve performance in workloads specific to games and artificial intelligence applications, and support for DirectStorage.

The manufacturer also reports that the component is ideally compatible with TLC and QLC memory standards, that is, with three and four bits of information in one cell. High data exchange speeds were achieved through the use of a 232-layer X3-9070 TLC NAND memory chip developed by the Chinese company YMTC.

It is worth noting that the Chinese company announced the 232-layer memory X3-9070 back in August of this year. In addition to memory, YMTC also spoke about the proprietary memory architecture Xtacking 3.0. This architecture involves constructing a NAND chip from two crystals: one contains an array of 3D NAND memory cells, and the other contains power and control circuits.

Are there any analogues?

Yes, but, according to the manufacturer, most similar solutions have drawbacks. The closest in characteristics is the Phison E26 controller. This is a hybrid chip that combines one AndesCore N25F core based on RISC-V architecture with four ARM Cortex R5 cores. It provides read and write speeds of 14.5 GB/s and 12.7 GB/s.

In general, very good performance, but to achieve them, the chip needs passive or, subject to constant operation in high-performance mode, active cooling. If this condition is not met, the controller begins to throttle, that is, reduce its own performance in order to avoid overheating.

RISC-V is sweeping the planet

This architecture continues to evolve, and it is not only Chinese companies that support it. At the end of 2023, it became known that several well-known companies, including Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG, Nordic Semiconductor ASA, NXP® Semiconductors, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., founded a new organization, which was named Quintauris GmbH. She will develop and implement new technologies based on RISC-V around the world.

This was done to ensure that new technologies are unified and products from different companies are compatible. In addition, experts from project partners will help each other create reliable solutions for different industries. The main focus will be on the automotive industry, but in the future the range of activities of Quintauris GmbH will be expanded.

As far as can be understood, the initiator of all this was Qualcomm, which has been using the RISC-V architecture for about five years in its microcontrollers, as well as in chips for Snapdragon Wear wearable devices running the Wear OS platform from Google. The same company is actively investing in the development and production of chips based on the Arm architecture.

Overall, we can expect other companies to start working with RISC-V, which will help create various solutions for the electronics industry.