SSD controllers: Phison confirms E25 and E20 for PCIe 4.0 along with E26 for 5.0

With over 13GB/s over PCIe 5.0, the upcoming Phison E26 is the new flagship of SSD controllers. Among them, there will also be a newcomer with PCIe 4.0, the E25, which is said to be slightly faster than the current E18. E20, in turn, is intended for server solid-state drives.

Phison E25 as new top with PCIe 4.0

However, the information about the new Phison E25 or PS5025-E25 in the full product name is still very weak. That’s a Twitter user Tweet embed Discover VIZON Annual Report (PDF) The slide is described in one sentence as follows:

The PS5025-E25 controller is a PCIe Gen4 SSD with external DRAM design and maximum performance up to 7200MB/s, which is the best choice for super fast gamers.

Phison

Like the still mainstream flagship E18 that accelerates the fastest consumer SSDs like the Corsair MP600 Pro XT (test) and Seagate FireCuda 530 (test), the E25 also uses PCIe 4.0 x4. Furthermore, a maximum of 7200 MB/s should be achieved, which is slightly higher than the 7000 MB/s that Phison specifies for the E18. SSD manufacturers have already exceeded these values ​​with the E18.

We are talking about external DRAM, i.e. dedicated DRAM. In the case of mainstream NVMe-equipped SSDs, on the other hand, a DRAM-less design that saves costs and power is becoming more and more popular. Daily performance is usually not affected by the compromise, as long as a portion of the working memory is used as an SSD cache via the host memory buffer (HBM). For enthusiasts and gamers, Phison thinks ditching DRAM apparently isn’t an option.

The flagship will be the E26 for PCIe 5.0

The absolute spearhead will be the Phison E26 with PCIe 5.0 and up to 13.5 GB/s and 2 million IOPS. Not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of waste heat and costs, SSDs can set new standards. Only the latest platforms from AMD and Intel will provide PCIe 5.0 for maximum performance. So it’s no surprise that Phison is also planning a new PCIe 4.0 flagship with the E25.