Phison showcases PCIe 5.0 SSD based on its new controller, reaches 12 GB/s speeds

[Tudor Cibean]

Why it matters: These extreme SSD speeds might finally make a difference in loading times when games utilizing the DirectStorage API are out. Until then, the usefulness of high sequential transfer speeds is going to be limited to situations such as large video file transfers.

Phison has just shown off a PCIe 5.0 reference SSD based on its new PS5026-E26 controller and 1TB of Micron's 3D TLC NAND.

In CrystalDiskMark, this SSD reached a sequential read speed of over 12 GB/s and a sequential write speed of about 10 GB/s. Those are extremely impressive numbers, considering flagship PCIe 4.0 drives top out at around 7 GB/s for sequential transfers.

Meanwhile, 4K random reads at QD1, arguably the more important metric for everyday usage, is limited to about 16.000 IOPS, whereas drives like the Samsung 980 Pro can reach up to 22.000 IOPS here. However, these numbers might improve with more mature firmware in shipping products.

Phison's PS5026-E26 is its first PCIe 5.0 controller, and it ships with two ARM Cortex-R5 cores and three proprietary CoXProcessor 2.0 accelerators. It's built on TSMC's 12nm process node, and it supports both TLC and QLC NAND flash memory with data transfer speeds up to 2,400 MT/s.

It's also worth mentioning that Phison's engineering sample seems to be using a slightly wider M.2 2580 form factor, with most M.2 SSDs nowadays using 2280 (the first two digits denote width, while the last two indicate length). This extra width might make these new SSDs incompatible with previous motherboards, though it's doubtful anyone would shell out for a premium PCIe 5 SSD and limit its performance by using it on an older platform.

SSDs based on the E26 are expected to hit the market later this year when AMD's 600-series motherboards also become available.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/94751-phison-showcases-pcie-50-ssd-based-new-controller.html

 

[Irata]

Looks promising. Weren‘t they also first with 4.0 controllers ?

 

[punctualturn]

Looks promising. Weren‘t they also first with 4.0 controllers ?

You are correct!

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1444...9e19-the-worlds-first-pcie-40-ssd-controllers

Given how premium the space is on some motherboards, I wonder if these drives should be placed in another or physical format, maybe something like dram modules.

I dont know, just something that seems kind of off for me.

 

[Last1Standing]

The random reads for this drive are worse compared to Gen4 drives. Unless you're working for Disney, etc. transferring big chunks of files very often, Gen5 use is not practical today (and probably not for years to come).

Storage drives have reached their limits for consumer usage and ~3-seconds faster is not going to matter much for the vast majority.

 

[bviktor]

Stick to standard sizes, until then, I don't care.

 

[HardReset]

Given how premium the space is on some motherboards, I wonder if these drives should be placed in another or physical format, maybe something like dram modules.

I dont know, just something that seems kind of off for me.

U.2 is good for desktops. Unfortunately laptop crap keeps M.2 format on desktop too...

 

[kiwigraeme]

Seeing the new gen AMD topline motherboards for Zen 4 - with huge bandwidth .

I think the future is bright for a select bunch of home enthusiast wishing to do science ,CGI or whatever
What with powerful CPUs , GPUS, fast ram , ssd etc they can now do some supercomputer of not that old serious crunching .
The tools will come to exploit these synergies - you can go to youtube 10 years ago and see some pretty amazing homemade short animations

Then we have that bitcoin that trashes SSD ugh

 

[rmcrys]

I wonder if these drives should be placed in another or physical format, maybe something like dram modules.
I dont know, just something that seems kind of off for me.

This format *is* like dram but the connector doesn't need to be as big as the one from DRAM.

Storage drives have reached their limits for consumer usage and ~3-seconds faster is not going to matter much for the vast majority.

Most SSDs above 1.5 GBps won't make a difference for private users:
- most OSes are as big as before and more optimized
- video files (private use) are very compressed

so everything will be 500 ms faster...

Though on some scenarios:
- most AAA games are much bigger
- professional video files are very little compressed and editing means many videos at same time, which demands to read 300 - 500 GB in a "couple of seconds"