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- Dec 19, 2005
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"Technology & Positioning
At Computex this year, Phison unveiled their new E28 controller, the successor to the E26. We had the exclusive opportunity to test this new controller on an engineering sample drive, using a significantly newer firmware than what was available in the various previews by other websites during the summer. While the E26 was fabricated on a 12 nanometer process at TSMC, the new E28 uses a 6 nanometer node, which alone greatly improves energy efficiency. Additionally, Phison has dedicated considerable effort to further improving energy efficiency, aiming to develop a high-performance SSD controller that addresses a common issue with most Gen 5 SSDs—the need for extensive cooling, including some solutions that require active fan cooling. The NAND flash on this drive is TLC from Kioxia, using the modern BiCS8 218-layer technology. A DRAM cache chip is installed as well, 2 GB LPDDR4-4266 from Hynix. With this hardware config, there is no doubt, the E28 is designed to use on new high-end flagship SSDs that make full use of the PCIe 5.0 interface.
Synthetic Performance
In our synthetic testing, the E28 performed extremely well, setting new records in most tests. The most impressive result is 130 MB/s at QD1 Read, which is the single most important performance metric for a consumer SSD. Sequential transfers were also highly impressive, reaching well over 14 GB/s. Performance at low queue depth has been improved across the board, again, this is important for all real-life workloads, and that's where our real-life testing comes in. It is designed to run actual applications, not disk traces that compress time by assuming infinitely fast hardware and software. We're even running those tests with the drives filled to 85% capacity, not empty. This approach puts additional pressure on the various algorithms and the SLC cache, just like in real-life.
Real-Life Performance
In our real-world tests, the E28 delivers highly impressive results that top our charts. Overall, averaged over all tests, the drive is the fastest SSD we ever tested, beating even the Hynix P51 Platinum and WD Black SN8100. Compared to older Gen 4 drives, the performance uplift is between 7% to 20%—we're finally reaching the gen-over-gen gains that justify spending more money.
SLC Cache / Sustained Performance
Phison has configured their drive with a 209 GB SLC cache, which is a medium-sized SLC cache for a 2 TB drive. It means that 31% of the drive's capacity will be used in SLC mode first, which consumes three times the storage per byte, at much higher speed. Filling the whole 2 TB capacity completed at 3.5 GB/s, which is one of the highest results we've ever seen in this test. Virtually none of the competitors are even close to this number. If you plan on writing a lot of data, then an E28 drive is what you want.
Power Consumption / Heat
Energy efficiency is extremely important for a Gen 5 SSD, because people don't want loud, fan-cooled heatsinks on their SSDs. I'm happy to report that Phison's E28 controller has set a new record for energy efficiency in our testing. It is the most efficient design for both read and writes, more than twice(!) as efficient as the E26. It's also a few percent better than the Silicon Motion SM2504 that we tested just a few days ago. What I think is very important is that Phison made sure the height of the controller matches the height of the NAND flash, so that a flat heatsink will have optimal contact, for maximum heat transfer. That does mean that the DRAM chip is a bit lower and doesn't make contact with the heatsink. But given the minimal heat output from that component that's an excellent design choice that I support 100%.
This energy efficiency allows the drive to run without any heatsink for virtually all workloads. With a maximum power draw of 5.7 W—more like 3-4 W during typical operation—the power profile feels much more like a Gen 4 SSD than what we've seen on other Gen 5 SSDs. Our new real-life thermal testing confirms that. In our thermal stress test we saw some throttling, but that disappeared completely as soon as we installed a small aftermarket heatsink—a first in our Gen 5 SSD testing.
Pricing & Alternatives
Phison didn't provide any pricing for the E28. Just last week we saw the launch of the Corsair MP700 Pro XT, which uses the same E28 controller, possibly the same hardware platform. That drive is selling for $250 currently, which I think is a price that's kinda realistic for an E28-based SSD. Still, competition is strong. You can get the Samsung 9100 Pro for just $200, the WD SN8100 is $220, the Hynix P51 goes for $215. Phison E31T-based drives sit at around $200, but they lack a dedicated DRAM cache chip. Then there's also the various Gen 4 SSDs, like the WD SN7100 ($130), Samsung 990 Pro ($160) and WD SN850X ($150), and of course MaxioTech MAP1602 drives such as the Lexar NM790 ($120).
Due to the pre-release nature of the product tested, awards were not considered. If this was a final, shipping drive, at a price point of around $250 I'd give Recommended, at $200, Editor's Choice."
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/phison-e28-pcie-5-0-ssd-engineering-sample.342327/