At least three SSD manufacturers — Corsair, Gigabyte, and good rum — has unveiled an SSD based on Phison’s E26 controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface over the past few weeks. Corsair and Goodram drives offer maximum sequential read speeds of 10 GBps, while Gigabyte’s are said to reach 12.4 GBps. There is a reason for this. There are currently no 3D NAND chips fast enough to saturate controller capabilities.
Phison’s PS5026-E26 controller has eight NAND channels, which are common in client SSDs. These channels support different data transfer speeds, but saturating PCIe 5.0 x4 (15.754 GBps in both directions) requires 3D NAND memory with a 2400 MTps interface. Micron first announced such memory in July this year, SK Hynix followed his early August, and YMTC announced the Xtacking 3.0 architecture that allows for speeds of 2400 MTps. All of Phison’s E26 demonstrations use his SSDs with Micron’s latest 3D NAND chips, and this is when these drives hit sequential read speeds of up to 12 GBps. Galax also tested his HOF Extreme 50 SSD with Micron’s 232-layer 2400 MTps chip. IT home (opens in new tab).
With a 2400 MTps interface, Micron’s 232-layer 3D NAND chips outperform their competitors in mass production and maturity. But there is a problem. The yield of chips with 2400 MTps data transfer rate is low. However, it works perfectly at 1600 MTps. As a result, Tom’s Hardware sources say it will be a while before the company starts mass-producing chips that all run at 2400 MTps.
In the meantime, SSDs based on Phison’s E26 controller only hit around 10,000 MBps. Gigabyte has announced the Aorus Gen5 10000 SSD with 12.4 GB/s sequential read speed with Micron’s 2400 MTps memory, while Corsair and Goodram want to use 3D NAND memory with a 1600 MTps interface, so the drive was rated at 10 GBps.
Only time will tell if Gigabyte can procure enough 2400 MTps chips to make good use of the drives. Corsair and Goodram are arguably more realistic when it comes to performance goals, so expect SSDs to become widely available. These will be one of the best of his SSDs this fall, and the companies also plan to launch successors to the MP700 and IRDM Pro drives as soon as memory with a 2400 MTps interface becomes widely available. Expect it to go on sale. Finally, we don’t know when Galax plans to introduce HOF Extreme 50 drives, but we can speculate as we’ve tested them with Micron’s 232-layer 2400 MTps chips.
