FADU Untangles PCIe Gen6 Controller at FMS 2025
The South Korean company, FADU, has officially entered into the PCIe Gen6 territory with the launch of the next-gen enterprise SSD controller, the Sierra FC6161. Announced at FMS 2025, the new controller is said to deliver performance with impressive power efficiency gains for datacenter and AI.
This announcement comes just shortly after Silicon Motion made their own announcement regarding their PCIe Gen6 controller, the SM8466. FADU has also joined hands with Meta, which will utilize the next-gen AI SSD technology for its enterprise solutions.
FADU Sierra FC6161 Controller Specifications
Sierra FC6161 is engineered for high-performance enterprise storage. Some of the important technical specifications include:
- Sequential Read/Write Speed Up to 28.5 GB/s
- Capacity Up to 512 TB
- Random Read 6.9 million IOPS
- Random Write 1.0 million IOPS (based on 7% Over-Provisioning)
- Power Consumption Less than 9W
Power Consumption and Efficiency
One of the more notable claims from FADU states that the controller consumes below 9 watts. Such a number is particularly interesting compared to existing technologies. High-performance consumer Gen5 SSDs typically consume around 7.5W at peak load, while enterprise-grade Gen5 SSDs go beyond 20W.
While thus there is hope for significant power reduction on next-gen enterprise SSDs, it should be noted that early industry expectation for Gen6 was that it would tail power increase with performance increases. Hence, the initial power numbers should be treated cautiously until verified under real-world conditions.
The Premising Enterprise PCIe Gen6 Market
With the FADU announcement, we can begin to shape the PCIe Gen6 controllers market. The Sierra FC6161's 28.5 GB/s sequential speed has just a little more than the 28 GB/s promised by Silicon Motion's SM8466, suggesting a hotly contested market for next-generation enterprise storage solutions.
Consumer Availability Prognosis
This technology is firmly for the enterprise market. Consumers should not expect to see PCIe Gen6 SSDs in retail in a long while, with estimates putting it in 2030 at the earliest. The PCIe Gen5 has not yet seen full consumer market adoption.
