Phison uses Zen 4 processor to demonstrate PCI-E 5.0 E26 SSD: read and write speeds exceeding 10GB/s
Although Intel was the first to bring PCI-E 5.0 to the consumer market, the PCI-E configuration of the Z690 motherboard and Alder Lake processor clearly did not intend to use the PCI-E 5.0 channel for SSDs, and so far no actual equipment is available.
AMD’s new-generation Ryzen 7000 processor also adds support for PCI-E 5.0 and DDR5 memory and also reserves a dedicated channel for SSD. It is expected that Phison will be brought to the platform to launch the first consumer-grade SSD with PCI-E 5.0.
According to reports from tomshardware, Phison demonstrated their PCI-E 5.0 SSD controller at the 2022 Flash Memory Summit, and ran a 10GB/s read and write speed on the AM5 platform. They are showing an SSD equipped with a PS5026-E26 controller, and products using this controller may be launched on September 15 together with the Ryzen 7000 processor.
The test system used by Phison is a Zen 4 processor with 6 cores and 12 threads. The OPN code is 100-000000593-20_Y. It can be judged that it is a Ryzen 5 7600X. This motherboard has a usable PCI-E 5.0 M.2 port, two DDR5 memories installed, and a small fan on the VRM power supply.
The read and write speed of this SSD in CrystalDiskMark exceeds 10GB/s. According to the data provided by Phison, the E26 controller can achieve a maximum reading speed of 12GB/s and a write speed of 11GB/s, and the random read/write IOPS can break through 1500K/2000K. The SSD used for demonstration uses Micron’s 232-layer stacked 3D flash memory with a capacity of 2TB. The new generation of SSD firmware will support DirectStorage API, and the Ryzen 7000 processor will support Smart Access Storage (SAS), which is a slightly adjusted version based on DirectStorage. Given the close cooperation between Phison and AMD, the E26 controller may also support AMD SAS.
