Phison Gen5 PS5026-E26 -It’s Time for an Exceptional SSD Solution

First, Fast, Flagship Controller with I/O+ Technology

By | Jan 2, 2023 | Consumer, All, Gaming, PCIe Gen 5

I was inspired last week. Someone uncovered a video of Steve Jobs briefing his marketing and sales teams the Think Different pitch. Steve had a lot of passion for his products and his message. The premise of the briefing was this: If historic thought leaders like Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Bob Dylan and others were around today, they would use a MAC. In the video Steve explained why he didn’t want to talk about the “speeds and fees” and wanted to instill an emotional reaction. At the end of the video, it shows the commercial that many of us still remember.

My initial throughs to the video were how powerful of a message I just saw and how this became an important time in Apple’s history. Like anyone in marketing would, I started to think about those words and how I could move people to have an emotional reaction to Phison products.

 

 

After a lot of thought I realized that Phison doesn’t sell emotions and we don’t manipulate your feelings. Phison simply provides you a tool to create your own memories by delivering the fastest and most reliable storage products available year after year.

 

A brief history

In 2019, Phison released the first PCIe Gen4 SSD to the market. The drive was so far ahead of its time it took the industry nearly a full year to release a competing product. The PS5016-E16 dominated reviewer’s storage performance charts and became the controller every enthusiast wanted in their PCs.

 

When our competition released PCIe Gen4 products Phison was finishing our second PCIe Gen4 SSD controller, the PS5018-E18. Again, Phison topped the performance charts with a superior product that elevated the user experience, set new standards for performance, reliability, and durability. The E18 was even chosen to power the first datacenter in space!

 

 

In 2022, E18 received a major update to address the challenges of DirectStorage, an emerging gaming workload that stresses consumer SSDs to the same levels as those found in datacenters. Phison invented I/O+ Technology to accelerate games coming to market in early 2023. Third-party testing has already proven I/O+ Technology a success in both throughput and performance consistency, the two main factors that will define the experience in next-generation games.

 

The new Phison PS5026-E26

 

 

Everyone at Phison has an emotional reaction to the image below. E26 is more than just a fast SSD; it is the first PCIe Gen5 consumer SSD. It’s also the first Phison SSD to surpass 100 MB/s in the important “RND4K Q1T1” read test. This is a major milestone for the company and one you will appreciate in your own PC.

 

 

RND4K Q1T1 is shorthand for random 4K data workload using a single processor core and a single thread. Simply put, this represents more than 90% of your daily PC use. This is the measurement that quantifies to how a PC feels in your hands. When you get on a new system and say to yourself, “Wow, this system is really fast and responsive”, what you feel – your own emotional reaction.

To tell the full story we really have to look back at how we got here. In interviewers I’ve stated that E26 has “Enterprise DNA”. The E26 and our new PS5020-E20 datacenter controller marketed as “X1” feature similar new architectures. This makes E26 vastly more powerful than Phison’s previous generations of consumer controllers and a true powerhouse that will not easily be challenged.

 

 

The decision to go this direction was easy once a target was set. Phison no longer wants to make good or even great SSDs, we set our goal on exceptional SSDs. This means products from our partners that are undeniably the best in every measurable metric starting with performance and going all the way to performance-per-watt for markets like gaming notebooks and workstations.

 

 

Beyond gaming

Phison has more than doubled engineering resources in the last couple of years. This means more teams to focus on reliability, durability, and advancements that lead to innovations like I/O+ Technology that make a real difference. Phison is no longer “another SSD controller” in the pool. In years past, reviewers and influencers would say, “just get an SSD, any SSD is better than a hard disk drive” and now we read things like, “get a Phison-controller SSD – they are the best”. The message has reverberated beyond professionals to social media groups filled with casual users and gamers not interested in upgrading components every year.

 

 

An industry effort

The E26 story is not complete without acknowledging our partners. An entire industry came together to make this level of performance possible. PCI Express Gen5 pooled resources from the CPU, motherboard, flash and GPU industries. The level of integration and partnerships has always been high in the PC arena. Gen4 and now Gen5 had a gravitational effect pulling many companies engineering resources closer together to solve common problems and design industry-wide solutions.

 

 

Summary

The Phison E26 is more than just the next controller in the Phison portfolio. E26 is the sum of many precision pieces aligned from across the industry to create the next great SSDs that will empower your creativity, innovation, and experiences.

 

The Foundation that Accelerates Innovation™

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