Exclusive: Phison’s E18 NVMe SSD Controller Hits 1.2 Million IOPS
Will Phison’s E18 be a Samsung Killer?
Competition is heating up in the storage world as new PCIe Gen4 SSDs enter the market. While Phison was first to market with a PCIe Gen4 SSD and led the industry with chart-topping performance, the PS5016-E16 controller has been recently dethroned by newer, faster rivals. Phison's new E18 SSD controller looks to recapture the lead, though.
Phison’s current-gen PS5016-E16 has been outclassed by the likes of Samsung and its powerhouse 980 PRO. With speeds of 7/5 GBps and the ability to sustain 1 million IOPS, the 980 Pro easily outshines E16-powered SSDs.
Additionally, rival SSD-controller maker Silicon Motion just announced its new PCIe 4.0 controllers, the SM2264 and SM2267, and products like Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite are already hitting shelves (we're already testing it in our labs).
Phison isn’t sitting idly by, though; The company is busy tweaking its new E18 controller to fend off the new challengers. As the second-gen PS5018-E18 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.4 SSD controller nears the final stages of development, the company gave us an exclusive glimpse of its current capability – and the results are more than impressive.
While Samsung’s ability to sustain upwards of 1 million IOPS was impressive, Phison’s test lab has now posted speeds in excess of 1.2 million IOPS with the E18 controller.
The company didn't tell us about any specific tweaks it used to attain these speeds or share details of the test platform, but we do know that these results are based on a 2TB engineering sample armed with Micron’s 512Gb B27B 96-Layer TLC flash.
The results are miles ahead of the first Phison E18 results that surfaced last month, and even faster than the results that surfaced earlier this week. With performance results getting faster seemingly weekly and Phison already sampling silicon to its customers, it appears that we'll soon have new speedy third-party SSDs hitting the market that can trade blows with, or beat, the best SSDs on the market.
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Sean is a Contributing Editor at Tom’s Hardware US, covering storage hardware.
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Makaveli After i'm done with Zen 3 and RDNA 2 I will look at grabbing a drive using this controller sometime next year for my other m2 slot been very impressed with the E16 drive.Reply -
nofanneeded These NVME drives should be released in both versions , 4 lanes PCIe4.0 M2 , AND 8 Lanes PCIe 3.0 Cards .Reply
I Hope all NVME makers read this and consider it .. for each Gen4 PCIE GEN 4 product make a version for 8 lanes Gen3 ... Millions of PC users will not upgrade for like 2 years to come. -
NP Replynofanneeded said:These NVME drives should be released in both versions , 4 lanes PCIe4.0 M2 , AND 8 Lanes PCIe 3.0 Cards .
I Hope all NVME makers read this and consider it .. for each Gen4 PCIE GEN 4 product make a version for 8 lanes Gen3 ... Millions of PC users will not upgrade for like 2 years to come.
They will certainly not make two versions. Millions of PC users will just have to upgrade, or suffer the slower speeds until they upgrade. The same as with any other new tech.
I am happy that I will have the fastest stuff for a change in two weeks. The current mobo and CPU is from 2011. I had to build and tinker all compatibility myself. I did not ask for any handouts like "Why cannot they make PCIE GEN 2 32 lane GPUs for millions of Xeon LGA 1366 processor people?!!" -
nofanneeded ReplyNP said:They will certainly not make two versions. Millions of PC users will just have to upgrade, or suffer the slower speeds until they upgrade. The same as with any other new tech.
I am happy that I will have the fastest stuff for a change in two weeks. The current mobo and CPU is from 2011. I had to build and tinker all compatibility myself. I did not ask for any handouts like "Why cannot they make PCIE GEN 2 32 lane GPUs for millions of Xeon LGA 1366 processor people?!!"
be happy as you wish , I am addressing NVME makers not you. millions of people bought their PCs three or two or one years ago and not from 2011 .. and they are a large market share. not to mention that the majority of PCs in the market are intel based and not AMD based. People who prefer intel over AMD are buying their PC as we speak without Gen 4 PCIe. -
NP Replynofanneeded said:be happy as you wish , I am addressing NVME makers not you. millions of people bought their PCs three or two or one years ago and not from 2011 .. and they are a large market share. not to mention that the majority of PCs in the market are intel based and not AMD based. People who prefer intel over AMD are buying their PC as we speak without Gen 4 PCIe.
People who really care about nvme speed difference between pcie4 vs 3 eithe already have pcie4 or are just about to purchase it. So no, there is no large market. I give you that some of the millions of people you mention indeed could possibly care about it, and from some perspective maybe "should" care about it.
But even so, the fact is that the people who care enough are not a large market share. Neither in absolute terms or even in comparison to, say, LGA 1366 Xeon enthusiasts. Especially if we are talking about those who care enough to pay a sufficient premium to cover the manufacturers' expenses incurring from making two versions of a cutting edge high-tech product. Not to mention within a market that is already highly competitive as is.
So, I am addressing you on behalf of NVME makers here, telling how they would reply. They would reply: "No, we shouldn't." -
nofanneeded ReplyNP said:
So, I am addressing you on behalf of NVME makers here, telling how they would reply. They would reply: "No, we shouldn't."
you dont represent anyone but yourself. -
JP7188 Reply
PCIe 3 is dead. Move on. What you certainly will get in the future is a PCIe 4.0 x8 AIB that will run in a 3.0 slot, which will address your concern.nofanneeded said:you dont represent anyone but yourself. -
nofanneeded ReplyJP7188 said:PCIe 3 is dead. Move on. What you certainly will get in the future is a PCIe 4.0 x8 AIB that will run in a 3.0 slot, which will address your concern.
no it is not dead ... millions of people still using it , and NVME makers want to sell to these millions of people as well. -
NP Replynofanneeded said:no it is not dead ... millions of people still using it , and NVME makers want to sell to these millions of people as well.
But not the best. The best they will sell to pcie4 people. You will just have to deal with it. Mark my words. You will not get pcie3 x8 versions of any of these.
As you have been told: Move on.