Phison this week showcased its next-generation PS5026-E26 SSD platform with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at high-performance desktops and enterprise applications. Based on the demonstration, the new drives will radically improve the sequential read and write performance.
Because of the PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that offers raw bandwidth of up to 15.8 GB/s in each direction, solid-state drives featuring this interface are projected to increase sequential read and write speeds of SSDs drastically. Other improvements include higher capacities thanks to new 3D NAND devices, enhanced reliability, and new features enabled by next-generation controllers.
Phison's reference SSD featuring its PS5026-E26 controller and 1TB of Micron's 3D TLC memory provides a maximum sequential read speed of up to 12,457 MB/s and a maximum sequential write speed of up to 10,023 MB/s (according to CrystalDiskMark), which by far exceeds capabilities of today's best SSDs. As for random performance, the drive can provide up to 1.31 million 4K read IOPS and up to 1.16 million 4K read IOPS, which is higher than the vast majority of client PCIe 4.0 x4 drives.
Phison's 1st Generation PCIe Gen5 E26 SSD controller is powered by Arm's Cortex-R5 cores accompanied by special-purpose accelerators from the company's CoXProcessor 2.0 family. The controller can work with all contemporary and future types of 3D NAND memory featuring ONFI 5.x and Toggle 5.x interfaces at up to 2400 MT/s data transfer speeds. Since Phison positions its PS5026-E26 both for client and enterprise usage, the controller also supports functionality like PCIe Dual Port connectivity for U.3 SSDs, single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV), and zone namespaces (ZNS).
Phison did not reveal when the first client SSDs based on the PS5026-E26 controllers will be available commercially. However, last year it implied that the first drives using its PCIe 5.0 x4 platform would hit the market in the second half of 2022, which probably means late 2022. These SSDs should come to market in the same time frame as the Zen 4-powered AMD Ryzen 7000 processors.