Phison delivers “Ultimate Gen5” SSD performance with new E28 controller

Phison is ushering in a new era of PCIe 5.0 SSD performance with their new E28 controller

OC3D is at CES 2025, and while there, we had the opportunity to talk to the people at Phison. Phison has just revealed its next-generation E28 PCIe 5.0 SSD controller. Phison is calling this the “Ultimate Gen5 SSD” controller. The E28 will replace Phison’s existing E26 SSD controller as its high-end offering and will usher in a new era of PCIe SSD performance.

If you haven’t heard of Phison, they are a company that has their fingers on the pulse of the SSD market. They don’t sell consumer SSDs directly, but their technology can be found inside the SSDs of most major brands. Corsair, MSI, Sabrent, Crucial, Acer, TeamGroup, and others use Phison controllers in their SSDs. That’s what makes the reveal of the E28 so important, as it will push the entire consumer SSD market forward.

How fast is the Phison E28?

Phison’s new PS5028-E28 (E28) SSD controller boasts sequential read/write speeds of 14.5 GB/s and random read/write performance of 3,000K IOPS. It also supports NAND flash speeds of up to 4200 MT/s across 8-channels. In theory, this controller supports up to 32TB of NAND. However, the reality is that this amount of NAND will only be supported on larger enterprise drives. After all, you can only fit a certain number of NAND chips on a M.2 SSD.

When it comes to sequential reads, the Phison E28 controller doesn’t offer much more maximum performance than the E26 (14,5 GB/s VS 14GB/s). That said, it delivers much more performance in other areas. Note that sequential write speeds are also boosted with the E28 (14.5 GB/s vs 12 GBps on the E26). Additionally, RANDOM read performance has been doubled to 3,000K IOPS on the E28.

With the E28, read/write performance has been equalised. With faster NAND support and greatly improved random performance, users should expect systems with E28 SSDs to feel snappier. While maximum sequential write speeds haven’t changed much, Phison’s E28 has delivered performance gains in all the areas that really matter.

Power Efficiency and Thermals are also greatly improved

Phison’s E28 SSD controller was built using TSMC’s 6nm lithography node. For context, their E26 controller used TSMC’s 12nm node. This change in lithography node has helped Phison to deliver more performance and significantly increased levels of power efficiency with their new E28 controller. Phison states that this SSD draws 8.5W on average, making it much less power-hungry than their E26 controller.

With their E28 controller, high-speed PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers can be used without a heatsink without major issues. Workstation users will want to use a heatsink, but mainstream users will find that this SSD will run more than cool enough during day-to-day tasks. This addresses one of the largest downsides of Phison’s E26 SSD controller, as it could run very hot under heavy loads.

All in all, Phison’s E28 offers everything that we would want from a new SSD controller. Faster speeds, lower power draw, and less heat production. With the E28, Phison is approaching the limits of the PCIe 5.0 interface. With optimisation, this controller might even reach the upper limit of PCIe 5.0 performance.

You can join the discussion on Phison’s new E28 PCIe 5.0 SSD controller on the OC3D Forums.