For those looking at upgrading—or adding an SSD—to their Steam Deck, there's now a new option from Sabrent. The company has launched an M.2 2230 sized version of its Rocket SSD that will be available in sizes of 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB. As one would expect, due to the form factor, we're looking at DRAM-less drives. Sabrent has gone with Phison's E21T controller and it has been paired with Micron's B47R, 176-layer NAND.

In other words, we're not talking about a high-performance drive here, but that might be a good thing as well, since it'll produce less heat, which should prevent drive throttling in the tiny space available inside the Steam Deck. Sabrent rates the drives as having a sequential read speed of up to 5,000 MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 4,300 MB/s. The read IOPS are rated at up to 450K, with the write IOPS at up to 920K, which once again varies between the drive sizes. The 512 GB drive appears to have the overall best performance. The drives are rated for 200, 300 and 600 TBW and come with a five year warranty. No pricing has been revealed so far.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash and storage solutions, announced today that its 8 TB M.2 2280 SSD solution has completed flight qualification tests required for Lonestar Data Holdings' historic first lunar data center mission. This SSD has been selected by Lonestar's contractor and Phison's partner, space logistics company Skycorp. Skycorp is also Lonestar's engineering design and manufacturing partner for the lunar data center mission scheduled for the second half of 2023.

"After comprehensive testing and certification process, Phison is thrilled that our SSD technology has passed all the rigorous requirements for Lonestar's upcoming Moon mission," said K.S. Pua, Phison CEO. "We are excited about playing a vital role on this important mission, and other future ones as we continue our foray into the new frontier. We also want to thank our outstanding customer, Lonestar, and partner, Skycorp, for helping to make this happen."

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, announced that its latest flagship enterprise PCIe 4.0 X1 SSD solution, which was developed in partnership with Seagate was awarded the 2023 Taiwan Excellence Award. "We are very pleased that Phison's enterprise PCIe 4.0 X1 SSD solution has received this honor," said K.S. Pua, CEO or Phison. "For Taiwanese products, the mark of Taiwan Excellence is associated with innovative values that are renowned in the international market for excellence and quality."

The Taiwan Excellence Awards were established by the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan in 1993. Every year, eligible candidates are subjected to a rigorous and stringent selection system that covers four major aspects of R&D, Design, Quality, and Marketing to identify outstanding products that offer "Innovative Value" while satisfying the key criterion of being "made in Taiwan." Products that have been selected for the Taiwan Excellence Awards will serve as domestic industry examples while being promoted by the government in the international market to shape the creative image for Taiwanese businesses.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced significant milestones in 2022 that were highlighted by key partnerships, product innovations and advancements, and overall technology leadership.

"Despite market challenges, Phison is proud to have successfully navigated 2022 with strong innovation and technology leadership, two hallmarks of our company," said K.S. Pua, Phison CEO. "As a forward-thinking company, we cannot wait to bring more SSD customizations, innovations, and solutions to our partners, and customers next year."

Corsair has quietly launched two new SSD SKUs, the MP600 PRO NH and the MP600 GS. Although the model names seem similar, the two models couldn't be more different. Both are PCIe 4.0 x4 drives and in both cases controllers from Phison are used, but beyond both using a black PCB, the common features end here. The MP600 PRO NH is based around the Phison E18 and delivers sequential read speeds of up to 7000 MB/s, with the write speeds peaking at 6500 MB/s, depending on the storage capacity and this is where things get really interesting. Corsair is offering the MP600 PRO NH in capacities of up to 8 TB, but the SKU with the overall best performance is the 4 TB SKU. Random write performance is said to be up to 1.2 million IOPS, with random read performance topping out around 1 million IOPS. For some reason Corsair is offering a 500 GB SKU as well, but it offers fairly poor performance compared to its larger siblings. All drives use 3 TLC NAND, so we're not looking at QLC drives here.

The MP600 GS on the other hand is based on the Phison E21T, which is a DRAM-less controller that targets the more affordable drive segment. Here we're looking at only two SKUs, 500 GB or 1 TB, with the 1 TB drive offering sequential read speeds of up to 4800 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 3900 MB/s. The random read speed hits 580k IOPS with the random write speeds reaching 800k IOPS. This drive is also using 3D TLC NAND. The MP600 GS costs US$57.99 for the 500 GB SKU and US$92.99 for the 1 TB SKU. The MP600 PRO NH starts at US$72.99 for the 500 GB SKU, followed by US$112.99 for 1 TB, US$212.99 for 2 TB, US$529.99 for 4 TB and finally a rather steep US$1,074.99 for the 8 TB SKU. Both models come with a five year warranty.

MSI, the world's leading gaming PC hardware brand, is proud to announce the new SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS, with blazing fast read speeds up to 10 GB/s that unites the latest in top-notch PCIe Gen 5 controller technology with high-quality 3D NAND flash, and advanced cooling. Sporting a bronze-coloredaluminiumm heatsink, the SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS SSD takes a sensational leap in storage performance, bringing more than 1.5 times faster read/write speeds compared to current PCIe 4.0 SSDs. With compliance of NVMe 2.0 and M.2 2280 form factor, the SPATIUM M570 HS offers optimal performance and long-lasting durability in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity variants for professionals, content creators, and gamers in an easy installation and extreme transfer speeds for multitasking workloads. The strong collaboration between MSI and Phison was showcased to convey innovations in the storage space area during CES 2022 mutually.

"K.S.Pua, CEO of Phison Electronics, said that the cooperation between Phison and MSI started from the SSD product line. Since both companies have their own expertise in NAND controller and computer system integration respectively, and in addition to SSD, MSI has also actively expanded its strategy in the fields of gaming, content creators, commercial, industrial, robotics, and even automotive in recent years, where the application markets are in line with Phison's long-term strategy, so the two companies hit it off. The SPATIUM PCIe 5.0 SSD launched by MSI this time adopted Phison's E26 SSD controller. Since the performance of PCIe 5.0 is much faster than the previous generation of PCIe 4.0, the two companies have conducted a lot of tests and discussions on power consumption and heat dissipation, which is a valuable cooperation experience. In the future, Phison will continue to support MSI through controller technology."

The first batch of PCIe 5.0 SSDs are all likely to be based on Phison's PS5026-E26 controller, which offers eight NAND channels, capable of supporting NAND speeds of up to 2400 MT/s. Phison's own figures for the controller are 13 GB/s writes and 12 GB/s reads, with up to 1.5 million random read IOPS and 2 million random write IOPS. However, as we've already seen from various SSD brands, many PCIe 5.0 SSDs won't exceed 10 GB/s when it comes to the sequential read/write speeds. This is because the current NAND flash simply isn't fast enough to saturate the PCIe 5.0 bus, which is capable of 15.75 GB/s. That said, Micron's 232-layer 3D NAND should be able to boost the performance up to 12.4 GB/s based on the numbers Gigabyte announced for their Aorus Gen 10000 SSD.

Based on an article over at Tom's Hardware, we shouldn't expect too many drives that exceed 10 GB/s sequential writes at launch, due to most drives using 176-layer 3D NAND flash, that is limited to 1600 MT/s. As such, it might be wise to hold off on buying the first generation of PCIe 5.0 drives and wait for better availability of 232-layer 3D NAND, as beyond Micron, SK Hynix is expected to have a 238-layer 3D NAND flash in the market sometime in the first half of 2023. If you're not really eager to have the fastest SSD out there for pure bragging rights, it would seem that mid 2023 might be the right time to get a PCIe 5.0 SSD.

Kingston released the NV2 line of entry-level M.2 NVMe SSDs succeeding the NV1 series from early-2021, which was infamous for its hardware-specs lottery. The biggest change with the NV2 series is the move to PCI-Express Gen 4 (from Gen 3 for the NV1 series), even though it doesn't appear like they can take advantage of all that bandwidth.

The Kingston NV2 comes in capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB; and offer sequential transfer speeds of up to 3000 MB/s reads, with up to 1300 MB/s writes; with endurance ratings of up to 80 TBW for 250 GB, 160 TBW for 500 GB, 320 TBW for 1 TB, and 640 TBW for 2 TB. The company won't mention the controller + NAND flash combo in use (so it could use whatever combination it wants to in the future, as long as the advertised speeds and endurance are achieved); but in all likelihood, this is Phison E19T DRAMless controller that features PCI-Express 4.0 x4, paired with 3D QLC NAND flash. Kingston is backing these with 3-year warranties.

Here are some of the first pictures of the GoodRAM IRDM Ultimate PCIe Gen 5 M.2 NVMe SSD. Built in the M.2-2580 form-factor, the drive combines Phison's upcoming E26 controller, with what's likely KIOXIA 162-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory. The controller takes advantage of the PCI-Express 5.0 x4 interface, and NVMe 2.0 protocol, offering sequential transfer speeds of around 10 GB/s reads, with around 9.5 GB/s writes. The drive comes in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB. It comes with a fairly large heatsink included. AMD Socket AM5 will be the first platform to feature CPU-attached PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slots, which goes on sale by late-September. The first PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs, according to AMD, should be here by November.

GIGABYTE Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announces today the latest AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD with 10 GB/s read speed. Enhanced by the new generation PCIe 5.0 controller with ultra-fast 3D-TLC NAND Flash, AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD provides boosted performance of more than 55% over PCIe 4.0 SSDs and comes in 1 TB to 4 TB capacity variants using an M.2 2280 interface to deliver easy installation and superb capability. Additionally, the separate SSD and heatsink offers more flexibility in system build and thermal options for users. GIGABYTE's exclusive SSD Tool Box application provides users real-time status of SSD to leverage performance, thermal, stability and capability.

"With PCIe 5.0 support on new motherboard platform, the bandwidth and transfer performance are raised to the next level. As the first manufacturer to have both motherboards and SSD product lines in the market, GIGABYTE is also the first to unveil the AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD. This new product brings blistering fast storage performance with ultra durability and compatibility to users for optimal quality and performance." said Jackson Hsu, Director of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions Product Development Division.

During this year's Flash Memory Summit, Phison, a company known for SSD controllers and now flash drives, demonstrated a system running AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors based on Zen 4 architecture. What is interesting about the shown specification is that the system was running an engineering sample of an upcoming Zen 4-based CPU with the latest storage technologies at impressive speeds. Using a Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller, also called E26, the PCIe 5.0 SSD is powered by Micron's latest 232-layer TLC NAND flash. This new NAND technology will also bring greater densities to the market by promising higher endurance, higher read/write speeds, and better efficiency.

With AMD's upcoming AM5 platform, support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs is a welcome addition. And we today have some preliminary tests that show just how fast these SSDs can run. In CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it achieved over 10 GB/s in both read and write. We know that the E26 controller is capable of 12 GB/s speeds, so more fine-tuning is needed. Being an early sample, we expect final specifications to be better. The system is powered by an engineering sample of a six-core, twelve-threaded Zen 4 CPU running at unknown clocks, codenamed 100-000000593-20_Y. We can expect to see more of this technology once AMD's AM5 platform lands and Phison-powered SSDs hit the shelves in September.

Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, announced two additions to its Nytro portfolio, the Nytro 5550 SSD and Nytro 5350 SSD. Engineered with Phison technology for high performance, efficiency, and increased storage density in data centers, the new products comprise the Seagate Nytro 5050 NVMe SSD series. Designed to offer more computing with less energy consumption, they provide a cost-effective solution that eliminates bottlenecks, improves quality of service (QoS), and delivers the highest levels of data integrity and security for business applications.

The Nytro 5350 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD doubles the read throughput of the latest SAS SSDs, achieving over ten times the bandwidth of SATA to significantly improve QoS. Designed to give data centers more computing power while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), the drive removes data bottlenecks with blistering up to 7.4 GB/s bandwidth and up to 195K IOPS random write speeds and up to 1.7M IOPS random read speeds to provide consistent response times. Perfectly tuned to increase density and boost capacity in ultra-dense environments, Nytro 5350 brings up to 15.36 TB in a 15 mm form factor and up to 7.68 TB in a 7 mm form factor with dual ports, supporting both U.2 and U.3 interfaces for active-active high availability. Designed to take on enterprise workloads, Nytro 5350 delivers 1 DWPD at 2.5M MTBF for enhanced endurance.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced the launch of its X1 controller based solid state drive (SSD) platform that delivers the industry's most advanced enterprise SSD solution. Engineered with Phison's technology to meet the evolving demands of faster and smarter global data-center infrastructures, the X1 SSD platform was designed in partnership with Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions. The X1 SSD customizable platform offers more computing with less energy consumption. With a cost-effective solution that eliminates bottlenecks and improves quality of service, the X1 offers more than a 30 percent increase in data reads than existing market competitors for the same power used.

"We combined Seagate's proprietary data management and customer integration capabilities with Phison's cutting-edge technology to create highly customized SSDs that meet the ever-evolving needs of the enterprise storage market," said Sai Varanasi, senior vice president of product and business marketing at Seagate Technology. "Seagate is excited to partner with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology to provide the industry with increased density, higher performance and power efficiency for all mass capacity storage providers."

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash and storage solutions, and Cigent Technology, Inc., the leader in embedded cybersecurity technology, today announced an innovative partnership program called Cigent Secure SSD Ready. This strategic partnership embeds select Phison storage devices and controllers with Cigent's built-in cybersecurity enhancements - features that Phison's storage partners can easily switch on and resell as an option to their global channel partners and customers.

"We couldn't be more excited about our exclusive partnership with Cigent to equip selected Phison products with the most secure storage solution on the market," said Sebastien Jean, CTO, Phison. "Phison OEM partners and PC OEMs now have a turnkey solution that provides unparalleled storage-based data security across the entire storage ecosystem/PC supply chain."

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today unveiled two new PCIe Gen4x4 Enterprise Class SSDs: the EPR3750 in M.2 2280 form factor and the EPR3760 in M.2 22110 form factor. The EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs are backward compatible in PCIe Gen3 M.2 slots at even faster speeds while offering significant performance enhancements when matched with PCIe Gen4 chipsets. Also, the EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs provide a faster quality of service (QoS) command execution with Enterprise SSD firmware. Workstation and Server boot applications require consistent and predictable performance from storage. Phison's new SSDs are ideal to use as boot drives in workstations, servers, and in Network Attached Storage (NAS) and RAID environments.

Just under a month ago, ASUS posted a teaser for its first internal SSD, the ROG Strix SQ7 and now the company has finally released the full specs. It is indeed based around the 12 nm Phison E18 controller, as predicted by our Editor-In-Chief, something he spotted from the sneak peek picture. Although ASUS didn't specifically mention what kind of flash the drive is using, they kindly left the flash model number visible in one of its pictures of the drive. Although the full model name isn't visible, enough of it is visible to identify it as Micron's 176-layer TLC flash. The ROG Strix SQ7 also sports a DDR4 cache, as expected, although ASUS doesn't mention clock speeds.

ASUS claims the drive will deliver sequential read speeds of up to 7000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6000 MB/s, which places the ROG Strix SQ7 in direct competition with several other Phison E18 based high-end drives from the likes of Kingston, MSI, Sabrent and others. Unfortunately, ASUS doesn't mention IOPS or random performance, although an unspecified "large" SLC cache is mentioned. Other features include TGC Opal and AES 256-bit encryption. ASUS also provides its own SSD dashboard, which of course is ROG branded, but looks like a skinned version of Phison's standard SSD dashboard, rather than something custom made. ASUS also provides a copy of NTI Backup Now EZ software and the drives appear to have a five year warranty. ASUS mentions PS5 compatibility outside of the PC space. No word on pricing or retail availability was provided and so far ASUS has only listed a 1 TB model.

Phison has showcased the expected performance of its upcoming PS5026-E26 controller, built to usher NVMe SSDs into the PCIe 5.0 realm. The company showcased its new controller's prowess by building a reference SSD design based on 1 TB of Micron's TLC NAND. Phison's new controller has been built from the ground-up to accelerate next-generation SSD workloads - including direct access technologies based on Microsoft's DirectStorage API, accelerated by two ARM Cortex-R5 cores and three proprietary CoXProcessor 2.0 accelerators built on TSMC's 12 nm process.

Phison's internal testing shows its reference SSD achieving sequential read speeds of over 12 GB/s in CrystalDiskMark, with sequential writes going as high as 10 GB/s - a 70% performance increase compared to the world's fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs, which currently top out at around 7 GB/s sequential speeds. As to 4K performance, one of the most tangible metrics for user experience, random reads are set at around 16.000 IOPS, showcasing room for improvement with further firmware optimizations for actual shipping products.

Phison Electronics Corp., a leading provider of NAND controller and flash storage solutions, announced today a strategic collaboration with AMD and Micron to build a cooperative PCIe Gen5 ecosystem of compatible products that elevate the gaming and creator experience. Phison's role includes delivering a class-leading PCie Gen5 SSD controller - PS5026-E26 - that features nearly a 2x performance increase over the previous generation flagship while adhering to the same power limitations of the M.2 form factor.

"We are pleased to announce our cooperative effort with Micron and AMD to advance the technological development of PCIe Gen5 storage offerings, as this validates Phison's commitment to upholding customer-centric values," said Leo Huang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Phison. "The E26 controller enables gamers to compete at the highest level and helps content creators to maximize the overall system performance to increase productivity." The need for high-speed storage has increased with the popularity of 5G Wireless availability worldwide. Global markets including desktop PC, notebooks, gaming consoles, cloud servers and even mobile devices will benefit from increased data transfer rates and the bandwidth available for multitask purposes. The ecosystem consisting of AMD's AM5 platform, Phison's PS5026-E26 controller, Micron's DDR5 DRAM and Replacement Gate 3D NAND allow for platform acceleration across the entire system to meet the requirements for today's always-connected lifestyle.

Phison Electronics Corp., a leading provider of NAND controller and NAND storage solutions integration services, announced today that it is successfully deploying the world's first PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC PS7101 certified by the PCI-SIG Association to help solve the compatibility problems of high-speed signal transmission between CPU (Central Processing Unit) and peripheral devices (such as SSD and graphics card, etc.). In the generation of PCIe 5.0 high-speed transmission, Redriver ICs will be required in devices such as desktop computers, servers, industrial computers, cables, and notebook computers. Depending on the degree of signal attenuation and the number of compensation channels, each system device will require 2 to 16 Redriver ICs. According to market research agencies, high-speed transmission signal enhancement ICs (including Redriver and Retimer ICs) will reach a market size of 50 million per year in 2025.

With the vigorous development of massive data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, demand for high-speed data transmission continues to rise. The CPU is the core of high-speed signal transmission. Under the leadership of CPU chip suppliers such as Intel and AMD, the transmission interface of the system has ushered the PCIe 5.0 generation, and the single-lane transmission speed reaching 32 Gbps per second, which is twice that of the previous generation PCIe 4.0. However, in the high-speed transmission environment of PCIe 5.0, compatibility issues such as signal attenuation and noise effects on the motherboard have become common problems and challenges faced by all system integrators.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, and Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, announced today plans to expand their SSD portfolio of next-gen high-performance, high-density enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new SSDs will help enterprises lower total cost ownership (TCO) through increased storage density, lower power consumption, and higher performance. The companies also announced that they have entered a long-term partnership that will strengthen the development cycle and distribution of enterprise-class SSDs.

Seagate and Phison have collaborated on Seagate's mainstream SATA SSD products since 2017. That close cooperation has continued through the company's performance-leading line of FireCuda consumer gaming NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSDs and the world's first purpose-built NAS NVMe SSDs. The partnership will now focus on meeting the evolving global enterprise demand for higher density, faster, and smarter storage infrastructure needs that complement HDD storage to enable comprehensive enterprise applications such as hyperscale data center, high-performance computing and AI.

The IRDM PRO M.2 PCIe gen 4 x4 SSD model is the fastest data storage device in the IRDM SSD line. The latest IRDM PRO M.2 SSD mass storage device is equipped with a high-speed PCIe 4 x4 NVMe interface. This solution enables twice the speed compared to 3 x4 generation products. Maximum read and write speeds of 7000 MB/s and 6850 MB/s respectively, provide excellent performance and stability. An additional DRAM buffer of up to 2 GB contributes to the performance, ensuring that the drive remains stable even under heavy load.

The controller of the whole system is PS5018-E18, which is a technologically advanced model supplied by one of the best and most experienced manufacturers in the market, namely Phison. The eight-channel E18 controller is based on ARM Cortex R5 architecture and is also compatible with the latest version of the NVMe protocol, which is 1.4. The newly introduced IRDM PRO drive is available in three capacities - 1, 2 and 4 TB. This is a response to the diverse needs of users of this type of products - from everyday solutions to professional applications, such as working with 3D modeling and animation or rendering images.

KINGMAX today unveiled the PQ4480, an interesting "entry-level" M.2 NVMe SSD. While it features a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, it doesn't really utilize that kind of bandwidth, and should offer nearly-identical performance with both PCIe Gen3 and Gen4 M.2 slots. While the company doesn't mention the controller + NAND flash combination in play, we predict this to be a Phison PS5019-E19T PCIe Gen4 DRAM-less controller, paired with 3D TLC NAND flash memory.

The PQ4480 comes in capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB. All three capacity variants offer sequential read speeds of up to 3600 MB/s. The 250 GB variant writes at up to 1200 MB/s and has 4K random access speeds of up to 150k/300k IOPS reads/writes, the 500 GB variant up to 2300 MB/s with up to 300k/350k IOPS, and the 1 TB variant up to 3000 MB/s, with up to 400k/450k IOPS. Endurance is rated at 150 TBW for the 250 GB variant, 300 TBW for the 500 GB variant, and 600 TBW for the 1 TB variant. KINGMAX is backing these drives with 3-year warranties. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Phison is on a mission to be the first to market with PCIe Gen 5 SSD controllers, having announced the E26-series controllers this CES. The company is ready with a branded drive under the MSI Spatium brand, the MSI Spatium E26. Built in the PCIe add-in-card (AIC) form-factor, the drive features a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 interface (128 Gbps per direction), and very likely sticks to the reference design that Phison demoed in its own booth.

This PCB is used in its client configuration, with just the controller, DRAM, and NAND flash chips; while the PCB allows an enterprise configuration with banks of capacitors offering explicit power-loss protection (the NAND flash chips offer implicit PLP). A simple copper-film heatspreader is used. Neither MSI nor Phison put out actual performance numbers, but mentioned sequential reads being "10 GB/s or beyond" (the interface is physically capable of 16 GB/s).Update Jan 17th: MSI clarified that this is not yet a shipping product, but a representation of what such a device could be. Thus, this should be considered a concept or at best proof of concept. Both MSI and Phison are actively working together on exploring what such a retail product could be.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions, today announced that its SD Express storage solution is the first product to pass the SD Association's SD Express/UHS-II Verification Program (SVP). This verification indicates that these products meet interface standards, providing confidence to both consumers and businesses that it will operate and perform properly.

According to the SD Association, "PCIe and UHS-II are both high differential interfaces and meeting their specifications demanding requirements is extremely important to assure proper operation and interoperability." The Association officially launched the SVP program at the end of 2021, becoming the notary unit that leads the compatibility verification between the host system and the SD memory card manufacturer to positively assist in the development of the product ecosystem. As the world's leading supplier of SD card controllers and solutions, Phison Electronics has pledged to support the SD Association's SVP program and to work with Phison's global brand customers in launching the latest SD Express storage solutions that meet the SVP verification requirements.

In response to the rising market demand for next-generation, customized high-end storage, Phison Electronics Corp. (Phison; 8299TT), a leader in NAND controllers and NAND storage solutions, acquired shares of its joint-venture company Nextorage Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "Nextorage") from its joint-venture partner, Sony Storage Media Solutions Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "SSMS"; SSMS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation). The acquisition continues Phison's expansion into the customized high-end storage market, including high-resolution image processing systems, automotive electronics, e-sports and gaming systems, factory automation, electronic medical equipment, and industrial robots, etc. Through the resources of local R&D engineers in Japan, it serves nearby Japanese customers and continuously improves service quality.

Japan is a major industrial country. In addition to industrial robots that are widely used globally, automotive electronics, e-sports and game systems, high-resolution imaging systems, electronic medical equipment, and factory automation equipment all occupy important positions in the world. In addition to high-speed data access, storage products required by this type of high-end application market often require a certain degree of customization and system-optimization adjustments for terminal applications. In other words, the standard storage products on the market cannot be perfectly matched and integrated with the system side, and therefore there is a demand gap for customization. The acquisition of the joint-venture company Nextorage, from joint-venture partner SSMS, which is strong in the customized high-end storage market, is expected to help Phison strengthen its high-end customized storage products to meet the needs of the Japanese and global markets.