Phison will deliver a 6,500 MB/s PCIe 4.0 SSD controller “by Q1 of next year”
Phison will deliver a 6,500 MB/s PCIe 4.0 SSD controller “by Q1 of next year”
At the Gigabyte Aorus Keynote at Computex 2019, with footage coming courtesy of Mixed Skills, we can see Phison’s Chairman and CEO, K.S. Pua, confirm that “the best is yet to come”.Â
PCIe 4.0 is here, but SSD markers are yet to push the limits of the standard. 5,000 MB/s read speeds are impressive, but “by Q1 of next year [2020]” Phison plans to release a new controller that can deliver speeds of 6,500 MB/s. This is 2x faster than many of the world’s leading PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 SSDs.Â
While the theoretical limit of PCIe 4.0 in a 4x lane solution is around 8 GB/s, the reality of the situation is that these speeds are impossible on the standard. There is a reason why there are no 4 GB/s PCIe 3.0 4x SSDs, or 2GB/s PCIe 3.0 2x SSDs. The same applies to PCIe 4.0.  Â
Samsung’s 970 Pro is widely regarded as the world’s fastest PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, offering a maximum sequential read speed of 3,500MB/s. Give this a 2x boost and a fair estimate for what we could expect from PCIe 4.0 devices is a maximum of 7GB/s sequential reads, assuming a powerful enough controller and fast enough NAND can be products. Phison’s upcoming 6,500 MB/s controller gets pretty close to this maximum speed estimate, which is an exciting prospect for year 2 of PCIe 4.0 storage.Â
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At this time Samsung has not made and PCIe 4.0 storage announcements and Crucial/Micron have committed to releasing a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD before the next of 2019. For now, Phison is the leader of the storage market, but as things progress, high-end SSDs will only get faster and faster.Â
One factor that must be noted is that Phison’s commitment to releasing their 6,500 MB/s controller by Q1 2020 should not be considered as a guarantee that 6.5GB/s SSDs will launch within the same quarter. SSD manufacturers will need extra time to spec out their new drives, select suitable NAND and invest in any custom alterations before they release consumer products.Â
You can join the discussion on Phison’s plans to deliver 6,500 MB/s PCIe 4.0 SSD controllers “by Q1 of next year” on the OC3D Forums.Â