Don’t wait for PCIE 6.0 on PCs before 2030, says CEO of Silicon Motion

Silicon Motion (SMI) is one of the leading suppliers of SSD controllers worldwide, and has currently been satisfied with their position in the PCIE 5.0 drives market. This is why your CEO, Wallace Kou, does not believe we will see products for home use at PCI 6.0 interface before 2030.

The SMI chief talked about it with Tom’s hardware people during Computex 2025, but the site has published the full interview in recent days. It is a very extensive conversation that can be completely checked in English at this link.

Among the many subjects covered, Kou spoke about PIE 6.0 and his expectations with the professional segment – as in the case of Nvidia with its future GPUS Vera Rubin. However, when asked about the use of the PC interface, the executive proved skeptical.

“For consumers? You won’t see any PCIE Gen6 by 2030,” said SMI CEO. “PC OEMs have very little interest in PCIE 6.0 right now – they don’t even want to talk about it. AMD and Intel don’t want to talk about it. That’s why we feel very good about our situation – because we dominate Piei 5.0, both in 8 -channel controllers and 4 channels. For the next four years, we will be in a comfortable position to continue to grow in the customer market.”

PCIE 6.0 is much more expensive than the current generation

It is not a surprise that PCIE 6.0 is still somewhat distant. Generation 5.0 of the interface cannot yet be considered mainstream, and has already offered more than enough performance for domestic computers.

However, being sufficient for customers not enough for a company not trying to sell more advanced and expensive products. The point is that PCIE 6.0 still has very prohibitive values ​​from the point of view of production, explains Kou.

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“For example, if you do not count R&D (research and development) spending and focus only on IP and Mask Mask for PCIE Gen5 – including memory, controllers and ARM nuclei – you probably need at least $ 16 to $ 20 million for just one 6nm Tape Out. If you make mistakes, costs get even higher.”

As mentioned by Kou in the stretch above, PIE 5.0 controllers are made at 6nm. For PCIE 6.0, SMI prepares to make 4nm:

“For 4NM, the costs are even higher – between $ 30 and $ 40 million for a tape out, again, not counting expenses with R&D,” explains the executive. “That’s why it’s very difficult for novices, and that makes us even more unique.”