Phison and Seagate have been collaborating on SSDs in the client and SMB/SME space since 2017.of April 2022, announced a partnership to develop and distribute enterprise NVMe SSDs. At this week’s Flash Memory Summit, the result of the collaboration was announced in the form of the X1 SSD platform. This is a U.3 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD that is backward compatible with U.2 slot.
The X1 SSD utilizes Seagate’s exclusive new Phison controller, the E20. It integrates two ARM Cortex-R5 cores and multiple coprocessors that accelerate SSD management tasks. Phison sees improved random read IOPS (claiming up to 30% faster than competitors in its class) as a key factor in its suitability for AI training and application servers serving thousands of clients. We are advertising. The key specifications of the X1 SSD platform are summarized in the table below. The performance numbers quoted are for the 1DWPD 3.84TB model.
| Seagate / Phison X1 SSD Platform | |
| capacity | 1.92TB, 3.84TB, 7.68TB, 15.36TB (1DWPD model) 1.6TB, 3.2TB, 6.4TB, 12.8TB (3DWPD model) |
| host interface | PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe 1.4) |
| form factor | U.3 (15mm / 7mm Z height) |
| NAND | 128L 3D eTLC |
| Sequential access performance | 7400 MBps (read) 7200 MBps (write) |
| Random access performance | 1.75M IOPS & 84us Latency @ QD1 (4K Read) 470K IOPS & 10us latency @ QD1 (4K writes) |
| Uncorrectable bit error rate | one tenth18 |
| power consumption | 13.5W (random read) 17.9W (random write) 6.5W (at idle) |
Seagate equips the X1 with eTLC (enterprise TLC), power loss protection capacitors, and end-to-end data path protection. SECDED (single error correction/double error detection) and periodic memory scrubbing are performed on the internal DRAM as part of the ECC feature. As for the contents of the flash itself, the X1 supports Data Integrity Field / Data Integrity Extension / Protection Information (DIF/DIX/PI) for end-to-end data protection. Various other enterprise features such as SR-IOV support and he NVMe-MI (Management Interface) are also supported.
Seagate and Phison claim that the X1 SSD can be customized for specific use cases, offering best-in-class performance and the highest energy efficiency. When it comes to competing in the PCIe 4.0/U.2/U.3 space, the X1 goes up against Micron’s 7450 PRO and 7450 MAX (PDF), 176L 3D TLC flash, and Kioxia flash CD7-V/CD7-R Data center SSD. On paper, Seagate/Phison’s performance specs easily surpass any platform that’s been shipping for over a year.
