Phison/Apex Raid Demo: SSD Team Achieves 113 GB/s Throughput 6 comments
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Measuring like computex is also the perfect step to “flex,” i.e., flex your muscles. SSD controller manufacturer Phison has done just that, packing a total of 32 PCIe 5.0 SSDs with the latest E28 controller onto RAID adapter cards. The result is a whopping 113 GB/s for sequential reads in the benchmark.
Workstation SSD Demo with 113 GB/s
Colleagues from Tom’s Hardware visited Computex. A “Live AI Workstation Demo” was shown at the booth. The AMD system with the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7985WX is easily recognizable in a case with viewing windows on an ASUS Pro WRX90E-SAGE SE. However, the main focus is on the PCIe adapter cards of the manufacturer’s Apex storage, each connected to PCIe 5.0 x16. A total of 32 M.2 SSDs with the new flagship Phison E28 controller allow up to 14.8 GB/s individually.
In the RAID array, the team didn’t create 32 times a single SSD, with 113.6 GB/s for sequential reading and 104.6 GB/s for sequential writing, but impressive throughput rates. A Phison spokesperson stated that the Windows kernel was to blame for the lack of higher performance. A single adapter card (Apex Storage X16 Gen5) is expected to cost $3,995 in the US, the report states. However, the high price tag doesn’t include a single SSD, which illustrates the performance in the demo system. Techastuce reported a few years ago on the Apex Storage X21 card, which used 21 SSDs with 168 TB and 100 GB/s via PCIE 4.0.
Some new key data for the Phison E28
Along with the demo, some new key data was also announced for the E28 controller. This is expected to feature a “quad-CPU architecture” and control up to 32 TB of flash memory via its 8 channels. The maximum performance figures have been easily adjusted in the meantime: instead of a maximum of 14.5 GB/s for reading and writing, 14.8 GB/s are now mentioned for reading and 14 GB/s for writing. While IOPS were previously quantified at 3 million for reading and writing, it now represents a maximum of 2.6 million for reading and 3 million for writing.
New key data for the Phison E28 controller (PS5028-E28)
These adjustments to key data during development are quite common. Only with a mature reference design can the maximum potential of the finished product be explored more precisely.
Phison PS5026-E26 Phison PS5028-E28 SMI SM2504Xt Interface Phison E31T PCIe 5.0 Protocol NVME 2.0 Production 12 nm (TSMC) 6 nm (TSMC) Package 576-ball FCCSP, 16 × 16 mm? 576-ball EHS-FCBGA, 15 × 15 mm 252LD Ball FCCSP-C, 11.6 × 6.8 mm 228-ball FCCSP, 8.0 × 12.5 mm CORES CPU 2 × ARM CORTEX R5
Processor 3 × Cox “Quad CPU” 4 × ARM CORTEX R8
1 × cortex M0 3 × ARM CORTEX R8 1 × ARM CORTEX R5
2 × Cox Processor NAND-Channel (CE) 8 (32) 4 (16) SSD capacity (max.) 32 TB? ? 8 TB TUBPUT/CHANNEL 2,400 MT/S 4,200 MT/S 3,600 MT/S DRAM DDR4/LPDDR4
(3,200 MT/S) LPDDR4 DDR4/LPDDR4
(3200 mt/s) Non-dedicated (HMB) ECC 5th generation LDPC 8th generation LDPC 4K + LDPC 7th generation LDPC Security AES 256
Sha 512
RSA 4096
TCG OPAL 2.0 AES 256
Opal TCG
Pyrite AES 256
Sha 384
TCG OPAL 2.0 AES 256
Sha 512
TCG OPAL 2.0 AES 256
Sha 512
RSA 4096
TCG OPAL 2.01
Pyrite 2.01 seq. Read 14,000 MB/s 14,800 MB/s 14,500 MB/s 11,500 MB/s 10,600 MB/s SEQ. Write * 12,000 MB/s 14,000 MB/s 14,000 MB/s 11,000 MB/s 9,500 MB/s 4K LICE ALRAM 1,500,000 IOPS 2,600,000 IOPS 2,500,000 IOPS 1,700,000 IOPS 1,500,000 IOPS 4k Random Write * 2,000,000 IOPS 3,000,000 IOPS 2,500,000 IOPS 2,000,000,000,000 IOPS 2,200,000 iop Slc-cache
All information according to Phison (from January 2024 / May 2025) and SMI (in August 2024 / May 2025): Computex 2025 Flash Memory M.2 NVME PCIe 5.0 Phison Raid SSD SSD Controller Source Source: Tom’s Hardware
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