Phison Premiered Flagship E26 Controller with I/O+ Technology at CES 2023

CES is the time for technology companies to pull out all the stops and demonstrate to the world what’s possible. Phison did just that at this year’s Las Vegas show—with the E26, the world’s first PCIe Gen5 consumer SSD. It achieved another first when it surpassed 100 MB/s in the all-important RND4K Q1T1 read test. Phison’s own Senior Manager of Technical Marketing, Chris Ramseyer, said, “This is a major milestone for the company and one you will appreciate in your own PC.”

Super speed combined with I/O+ for nonstop gaming and more

The E26 comes with Phison’s I/O+ technology, which is specifically optimized to enhance sustained read workloads that run for hours. The technology has already proven itself by increasing the following workloads by up to 34%:

• • • Gaming
    • Compiling code
    • Rendering video special effects that are limited by I/O
    • Rescaling video for different platforms
    • Machine learning

That simply means more gaming, more coding, more fun—more of what you want to do. For example, combined with DirectStorage technology, I/O+ enables games to run for epic 12+ hour sessions with no significant drop in bandwidth.

See what the experts had to say at CES 2023

Phison is excited about the possibilities offered by the flagship E26 SSD controller, and experts who saw the E26 in action were impressed.

First off, our partner MSI received special recognition from Tom’s Hardware as having the Best SSD at the show—and that MSI Spatium M570 Pro SSD is powered by the Phison E26 controller. The writeup said:

“After months of teases, we finally have a blazing-fast drive that’s coming to market for purchase later and appearing in laptops. The MSI Spatium M570 Pro promises sequential read and write speeds of 12,000 and 10,000 MBps. … The Spatium M570 Pro is powered by Phison’s E26 controller, which we thoroughly tested on an engineering sample this week, paired with Micron’s speedy 232-layer NAND.”

Read on for more expert reviews and insights.

Tom’s Hardware:

“The Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller will bring PCIe 5.0 performance to the masses in Q1 of this year. Our reference design sample pairs it with Micron’s new 232-layer TLC, which improves upon the excellent 176-layer NAND flash utilized in a wide range of products. The result is unprecedented sequential speeds and immense potential IOPS …”

 “PCIe 5.0 drives can offer very high levels of sequential performance, but the newer controllers can also raise the IOPS bar for heavier workloads, blowing away all the PCIe 4.0 contenders on our current list of the best SSDs. This is not too surprising as the E26 is based on an enterprise controller design, and in fact it has optional enterprise features.”

 “These drives will also be among the first with cutting-edge flash which will improve latency and power efficiency. We did not see direct benefits with the E26 in these two areas, but the technology will be optimized and the future DirectStorage API should also benefit from the additional all-around speed improvements. For now it does feel a bit like overkill, but pushing the limits is necessary to make use of increasing PCIe bandwidth. This drive shows that it can leave PCIe 4.0 solutions in its dust.”

Read the full review: Phison E26 SSD Preview: PCIe 5.0 SSDs Are Finally Here by Shane Downing

TechWafer:

“High-end NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs) are designed to store data as quickly as possible. The latest list of Tier S ultra-high-end NVMe SSDs uses Phison E26 controllers and has sequential read and write speeds of about 12.5 GB/s and 10 GB/s, respectively. This makes them some of the fastest mobile storage devices on the market. These new ultra-high-end NVMe SSDs are an excellent choice for users who want the best performance from their laptops or desktop computers.”

In addition to TechWafer’s kudos for the E26, Phison was the controller of choice for three of the “5 Best SSDs for Speed and Reliability”—plus the controller of choice for the majority of SSD tiers discussed in the article!

Read the full article: SSD Tier List for 2023 – The Best SSDs to Buy (Updated January) by Jack Prosser

Another article by TechWafer, specifically about Phison’s E26 being shown at CES, said:

“Phison has a strong history in the SSD market, having previously released the PS7101, the world’s first PCI-SIG Association-certified PCIe 5.0 Redriver. The PS7201 Retimer, the company’s most recent release, builds on this success by addressing enterprise and automotive applications’ performance and data integrity issues. … Overall, Phison’s new X Series Enterprise SSDs with PCIe Gen5 E26 Controller and redrivers are poised to revolutionize system-level performance and usher in a new era of SSD innovation.”

Read the full article: Phison Unveils Blazing-Fast PCIe Gen5 E26 SSD Controller in CES 2023 by Adeel Younas

StorageReview:

“By doubling the bandwidth and improving latency by 30% compared to its Gen4 predecessor, PCIe Gen5 E26 allows for improved gaming and digital content creation experiences. It also pairs the latest I/O+ Technology for enhanced sustained workloads and has improved power efficiency. Phison plans to partner with companies like Seagate, Corsair, and Sabrent to bring E26 SSDs to market.”

Read the full review: Phison Gen5 SSD Controller Portfolio Updated at CES 2023 by Lyle Smith

TweakTown:

“Just as they were with PCIe Gen4, Phison is once again the first to bring PCIe Gen5 SSDs for mass consumption. 10,000 MB/s, oh yeah!”

“As we’ve alluded to on many occasions, we think Phison Electronics is the most forward-thinking SSD company in the world. As we see it, Phison’s well-earned reputation as being the most forward-thinking SSD company on the planet began its evolution back in September of 2019, with Corsair’s Force Series MP600.

 Corsair’s MP600 was the first consumer PCIe Gen4 SSD available for mass consumption. Powered by Phison’s PS5016-E16 PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe controller and arrayed with BiCS 96-Layer flash, this first-of-its-kind SSD immediately became the fastest consumer SSD on the planet.

 Phison’s next milestone and what cemented in our minds that Phison is indeed the most forward-thinking SSD company in the world, occurred back in June of 2020 when Sabrent brought forth the world’s first 8TB consumer M.2 NVMe SSD, the Rocket Q 8TB. Once again, Phison was at the core of bringing forth another world’s first.

 Okay, so here we are yet again with Phison demonstrating that it is the most forward-thinking SSD company in the world, and this time it’s coming for us at 10,000 MB/s. Phison’s PS5026-E26 is the first ready-for-primetime PCIe Gen5 controller to make its way into our lab.”

Read the full review: Phison E26 B58R 1,600MT 2TB SSD Preview – PCIe Gen5 storage is here by Jon Coulter

Hot Hardware:

“It blew away the competition in both the 3DMark storage test as well as the PCMark productivity tests. That’s surely thanks in part to its PCIe 5.0 interface, but there’s no way that’s the whole story here. Phison’s hard work with the firmware likely plays a role, and the large 4GB LPDDR4 cache surely helps as well.”

 Read the full review: Phison E26 SSD Preview: PCIe 5 Storage Breaks Out For 2023 by Marco Chiappetta

The SSD Review:

“One thing is for certain and that is Gen 5 SSDs are going to be a significant jump from Gen 4. They will change the landscape of data movement as we know it just as each jump traditionally has. We know this of course as I have been up all night testing a brand spanking new Phison PS5026-E26 Gen 5 2TB reference design 2TB SSD in different systems and am very happy with what has been received.”

 “The low, low, low game load time result is one of the best we were hoping for with the E26 sample. After averaging the results of the five load scenes, we came away with each scene averaging just 1.188 seconds!”

 Read the full review: Phison PS5026-E26 Reference Design PCIe 5.0 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD Preview – Things Just Got a Whole Lot Faster by Les Tokar

Phison is committed to the cutting edge

The Phison E26 is just the most recent first the company has achieved, and there is a lot more to come over the next few years. Phison has always invested heavily into R&D to ensure it is offering customers the latest and greatest NAND-flash based SSDs and controllers to power their most critical and data-intensive workloads.

E26 solutions have begun the validation process of development with manufacturing partners and will soon be available for purchase from your favorite retailers.