Phison’s lineup of SSD and moveable SSD controllers is retaining tempo with the overall business developments, as evidenced by their merchandise on show on the 2024 CES.
Transportable SSDs in all types and sizes (together with the favored thumb drive as a SSD-in-a-stick) have gained a variety of market and mind-share in recent times, due to rising capability and efficiency. An necessary contributor on the power-efficiency entrance (which is necessary for flash drive distributors to pack SSD efficiency in a thumb drive) has been the rise of native flash controllers like Phison’s U17 / U18 and Silicon Movement’s SM2320.
For the reason that launch of the U17 / U18 in 2021, USB4 has grow to be frequent on shopper platforms from each Intel and AMD. SSD controller distributors are retaining tempo with that replace, and Phison is formally the primary out of the door with their U21 USB4 eSSD controller. (Be aware: It seems that the PSSD nomenclature promoted by SSD distributors is being changed by eSSD on the controller facet). Just like the U17 / U18, these are single-chip options. Small thumb drives may additionally find yourself utilizing these in a multi-chip bundle (the place the flash and the controller are packaged collectively to avoid wasting on space).
Phison indicated that the U21 controller can virtually saturate the USB4 bus with speeds as much as 4000 MBps. Fabricated in TSMC’s 12nm course of, the U21 can assist as much as 4 channels with 16 chip permits. Backwards compatibility is a crucial facet. USB4 requires compatibility with solely USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 1, and USB 2.0 for certification functions. Nonetheless, the U21 may also work within the USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) mode if required. Phison’s prospects can use this controller for PSSDs ranging in capability from 512GB to 8TB. Each TLC and QLC NAND can be utilized. Flash speeds of as much as 1600 MT/s is supported. This may maintain again the power- and energy- effectivity a bit, as we have now seen larger flash speeds getting the job finished sooner and having decrease general power consumption for a given workload. Greater flash speeds additionally scale back the variety of required channels for a given efficiency goal, and that leads to energy financial savings too. It stays to be seen if different eSSD controller distributors assist 2400 MT/s flash later this 12 months.
In inside SSD controller information, Phison can be readying the E31T mainstream Gen 5 controller for launch this 12 months. Because the naming conference goes, this can be a DRAM-less controller appropriate for mainstream M.2 2280 SSDs with a give attention to low energy operation (appropriate for cellular platforms). This quad-channel controller is fabricated in TSMC’s 7nm course of with peak efficiency numbers of round 10800 MBps for sequential workloads and 1.5M IOPS for 4K random accesses.
Assist for TCG Opal / Pyrite ensures that the E31T platform will also be used for OEM SSDs meant for enterprise deployments.
Phison additionally had the X2 enterprise SSD platform on show. This can be a Gen 5 x4 twin port U.2 resolution (additionally obtainable in E3.S type issue) with regular state sequential efficiency of 14 GBps for reads and 12 GBps for writes. Random learn IOPS are at 3M, and write IOPS are at 0.8M.
Phison’s X1 platform was adopted by Seagate within the Nytro 5050 Sequence, and it’s probably that we are going to see the X2 come to market with a unique efficiency profile / firmware tuning when the Nytro collection get an replace.
