Built on Microchip's proven 5th generation SmartROC 3200 storage controller, the SmartRAID 3254-8i supports a x8 PCIe Gen 4 host interface with 8 media facing port variants for internal tri-mode connectivity. New technologies available with the SmartRAID 3200 family includes DirectPath, which integrates a PCIe switch for the industry's lowest latency and highest bandwidth NVMe solution and Microchip's Dynamic Channel Multiplexing (DCM) technology that aggregates expander attached SAS or SATA hard drives onto 24G SAS infrastructure with near 100% link efficiency for unparalleled through-put. Native HBA modes for all media types are also supported, which offers the lowest latency for memory-based PCIe storage.