Phison Unveils Technology Development of PCIe Gen5 Customizable SSD Solutions for Enterprise and Client SSD

Phison Electronics Corp. announced its technology development of PCIe Gen5 customizable SSD solutions for enterprise and client SSDs.

The company’s customers from hyperscale cloud data centers to PC gaming demand fast performance motherboards and SSD storage devices. Their business models require that they transition to the newest technologies when they first become available, usually well before the rest of the software and hardware ecosystem has been established.

The company is enabling its customers with PCIe Gen5 SSD platforms that may be customized to perform optimally in their applications.

Customers who are early adopters of PCIe Gen5 SSDs will benefit from superior specs. The data rate spec for PCIe Gen5 at 32Gb/s is 2x the lane speed of PCIe Gen4 at 16Gb/s, enabling either double the overall performance, or offering similar performance, but using half as many lanes as PCIe Gen4.

The company is developing its first PCIe Gen5 platform named the E26 Series controller and SSD and has 2 key differentiating advantages. First, it makes more of the critical IP blocks inside the controller than other companies, thereby eliminating dependencies and inconsistencies that competitors have when they source 3rd party IP for their controllers. Second, that the E26 controller IP is developed concurrently with own firmware in a FPGA environment, even before tape out ensuring a fast time to market with the highest reliability at introduction.

The firm will be providing early E26 Gen5 SSD samples to motherboard manufacturers so their engineers can tune their electrical signal link-ups, command timing, and BIOS to firm‘s Gen5 SSD controllers and firmware. The E26 SSD platform will support PCIe Dual Port, and have features such as SR-IOV and ZNS, and support for the newest, fastest NAND interfaces ONFI 5.x and Toggle 5.x.

“While PCIe Gen4 SSD shipments are still ramping up, there are many server and storage customers who will want to transition to PCIe Gen5 as soon as that technology is available,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research VP, IDC. “By helping to enable an ecosystem, Phison’s customizable E26 SSD is at the forefront of PCIe Gen5 introductions and will facilitate data center customers looking to benefit from the technology’s increased performance.“

The E26 SSD solution is designed to be a combination of performance at low power using the company’s architecture of low power consumption ARM R5 CPUs and an array of low power but high performance CoXProcessor 2.0 technology. It’s is a customizable SSD platform that will be available in M.2, U.3, E1.S, and E3.S form factors.

The E26 Gen5 test chip has been taped out in 12nm advanced process, and customized SSD solutions are targeted to be shipping in 2H22.

The company was first to ship a PCIe Gen4 SSD. By leveraging its expertise in controller and firmware design and investing in R&D, it is the firm’s goal to repeat that success by enabling its customers with PCIe Gen5 SSDs. Company’s partners who joined in the launch of PCIe Gen4 benefited from first to market shipments with first to market revenue. Many of them still maintain market share leadership in their sales channels.

The company is seeking OEMs who want to join in the PCIe Gen5 customizable SSD platform launch.