(Image credit: Tom's Hardware) While high-end SSDs with eight-channel controllers approached peak read speeds of around 14 GB/s years ago, mainstream drives with quad-channel controllers often offer around 11 GB/s. However, with new types of 3D NAND that feature a higher-speed interface, it is possible to get to 14 GB/s with just four NAND channels. This is exactly what Silicon Motion’s SM2524XT controller is designed to do: it has four NAND channels that support transfer rates of up to 4,800 MT/s and can offer up to 14 GB/s read speeds. Silicon Motion’s SM2524XT controller is based on four (presumably Arm Cortex-R-series) cores, does not use DRAM, and complies with the NVM 2.0 specification. The unit has four NAND channels supporting data transfer rates of up to 4,800 MT/s as well as a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface.…