PCIe Gen 5 based M.2 NVMe SSDs have a nasty habit of heating up to deliver sequential transfer speeds over 10 GB/s, requiring some awful cooling solutions with tiny fans. All this might change, as Phison, a leading SSD controller manufacturer, unveiled three new controllers in the 2024 International CES, built on the TSMC 7 nm foundry node. This is a big upgrade from the 12 nm node on which its first Gen 5 controllers used. The star attraction here is the PS5031-E31T, a DRAMless controller meant for mainstream Gen 5 SSDs. This controller has a 4-channel flash interface (16 CE), a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, supports capacities of up to 8 TB, and is claimed by Phison to offer sequential transfer rates of up to 10.8 GB/s, and up to 1500K IOPS random access; exceeding the fastest Gen 4 SSDs.

Phison also updated its high-end controller lineup with the new PS5026-E26 Max14um. This is a variant of the E26 that's designed for the upcoming Micron B58R NAND flash chip that offers 2400 MT/s per channel transfers. Over the 8-channel interface of the E26, this finally unlocks sequential transfer speeds exceeding 14 GB/s reads, and 12.7 GB/s sequential writes. The E26 Max14um is the first controller to surpass 1000 MB/s in all three PCMark 10 storage tests.