Category: Press Releases

November 22, 2021

• 2021

5G technology drives the growth momentum of the NAND storage industry, and Phison will continue to increase investment in Taiwan and R&D 

Phison Electronics held the phase 5 of the new R&D building opening and affiliated parking tower beam-raising ceremony today (11/21, Taiwan). The increased R&D capacity can grasp the trend of unlimited demand for NAND storage in edge and cloud systems driven by 5G wireless technology, including industrial automation, automotive electronics, e-sports equipment, mobile devices, cloud servers, and data centers markets. In addition, Phison also announced at the ceremony that it will continue to invest more in Taiwan in addition to the existing corporate headquarters and R&D buildings (Phison has invested more than NT$3 billion in R&D buildings in Phases 1 to 5 so far), and continue to increase Taiwan's R&D capacity and build a flagship R&D team for NAND controllers and storage solutions globally.

Opening Ceremony of Phison's New R&D Building

The total investment of the phase 5 R&D building is nearly NT$1.5 billion, with a total construction area of more than 42975 square meters and a total of 9 floors. It is a composite R&D building integrating R&D center, inventory management, and parking space. It is estimated that the new building can add another 1,500 to 2,000 R&D engineers to meet the continuously growing NAND storage market demand. In addition, the affiliated parking tower has a total investment of more than NT$830 million, with a total construction area of more than 31,074 square meters, and a total of 11 floors. It is expected that more than 1,000 parking spaces can be increased; this parking tower will not only realize that everyone in Phison has a parking space, but will also become a new welfare index for Miaoli Jhunan Guangyuan Science Park (竹南廣源科學園區). 

Phison Electronics K.S.Pua stated in his speech that although the epidemic has slowed recently, Phison still abides by relevant epidemic prevention measures to simplify the ceremony. In addition to inviting Zinan Temple chairman Mr. CHUANG, CHIU-AN (莊秋安), Miaoli County Mayor Mr. HSU, YUEH-CHANG (徐耀昌), Taipei Mayor Mr. KO, WEN-CHE (柯文哲), Miaoli County Council Speaker Mr. CHUNG, TUNG-CHIN (鐘東錦), member of the Legislative Yuan Mr. CHIU, CHIH-WEI (邱志偉) and Ms. TSAI, PI-JU (蔡璧如) and Ms. KAO, HUNG-AN (高虹安), The Allied Association for Science Park Industries and KYEC chairman Mr. LI,CHIN-KUNG (李金恭), Chipbond chairman WU,FEI-CHIEN (吳非艱), OSE chairman Mr. TUNG,YUEH-MING (董悅明), etc., and the rest of the participants are basically Phison colleagues; Phison hopes to reduce the chance of cluster infection of COVID-19 by simplifying the ceremony and respond to the government's epidemic prevention measures. 

K.S.Pua went on to explain that, according to CommonWealth Magazine's evaluation in 2021, Phison is already among the top four IC design companies in Taiwan. Phison currently has more than 3,000 employees worldwide, 70% of whom are R&D engineers. Since its establishment, the cumulative R&D investment has reached NT$39.2 billion. Moreover, as the demand for NAND storage driven by 5G wireless technology continues to rise, Phison’s global customers’ needs are coming one after another. Therefore, Phison will continue to invest more in Taiwan and deepen its research and development. In addition, it is estimated that by 2025, the number of global R&D engineers will exceed 3,000, creating an international-level NAND controller R&D flagship team, letting the world to see Taiwan’s technology.

Speech by Phison K.S. Pua

Category: Press Releases

October 6, 2021

• 2021

In recent years, "Green Supply Chain" has been regarded globally as a key indicator that enterprises and industries need to face and are related to the sustainable development of the earth. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) released the "Renewable Energy Market Trends in 2021" report, the global renewable energy power generation capacity has increased significantly by 45% in 2020, reaching nearly 280GW. It is the highest year since 1999, showing that the world attaches great importance to energy conservation, carbon reduction and renewable energy. Phison Electronics (8299TT), the world's largest flash memory controller and storage solution provider, has made continuous efforts to implement ESG and green supply chain, and today (10/6) signed a ten-year green power purchase agreement with Foxwell Power, committed to energy conservation, carbon reduction and sustainable development of the earth.

Phison has signed a ten-year green power purchase agreement with Foxwell Power

Foxwell Power Chairman HUI-SEN HU (胡惠森) stated in the signing ceremony that Phison has made advance deployment and reached a ten-year green power purchase agreement. At the same time, it is emphasized that the proportion of renewable energy in Taiwan's energy policy goal will be increased to 20% by 2025. Currently, export industries such as semiconductors, motors, electronics, etc. are increasingly demanding green power. This green power transaction with Phison also represents Phison's care and attention to the earth's environment, which is admirable. 

K.S.Pua, chairman of Phison Electronics, also emphasized in the ceremony that the total green power purchase this time is about 14 million kWh, which can reduce about 7,159 metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), which is equivalent to planting 5,956.16 million trees and can supply about 4,014 households with electricity for one year. In addition, after this green power procurement cooperation, the proportion of renewable energy in Phison will reach more than 10%, and in the future, it will move towards the goal of RE100 (renewable energy 100%). These data not only represent Phison’s implementation of the green supply chain, but also Phison’s commitment to ESG and the sustainability of the planet. In the future, Phison will continue to focus on energy conservation and carbon reduction issues, and through continuous advancement from the inside out, it hopes to work together for the goal of "zero carbon emissions" for Taiwan and the earth.

Category: Press Releases

September 28, 2021

• 2021

PCIe Gen5 Doubles Performance and is Backward Compatible with Gen4

San Jose, Calif. September 28, 2021 – Phison Electronics Corp. (TPEX: 8299), a global leader in NAND flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions, today announced its technology development of PCIe Gen5 customizable SSD solutions for Enterprise and Client SSDs. 

Phison customers from Hyperscale Cloud Data Centers to PC Gaming demand the fastest performance motherboards and SSD storage devices.  Their business models require that they transition to the newest technologies when they first become available, usually well before the rest of the software and hardware ecosystem has been established. 

Phison is enabling our valued customers with PCIe Gen5 SSD platforms that may be customized to perform optimally in their applications.  

Customers who are early adopters of PCIe Gen5 SSDs will benefit from superior specifications and first to market leadership revenue. The data rate  specification for PCIe Gen5 at 32Gb/s is twice the lane speed of PCIe Gen4 at 16Gb/s, enabling either double the overall performance, or offering similar performance, but using half as many lanes as PCIe Gen4. 

Phison is actively developing its first PCIe Gen5 platform named the E26 Series Controller and SSD and has two key differentiating advantages.  First, Phison makes more of the critical intellectual property (IP) blocks inside the controller than any other company, thereby eliminating dependencies and inconsistencies that competitors have when they source 3^rd party IP for their controllers.  Second, that the E26 controller IP is developed concurrently with Phison’s firmware in a FPGA environment, even before tape out ensuring a fast time to market with the highest reliability at introduction. 

Phison will be providing early E26 Gen5 SSD samples to industry-leading motherboard manufacturers so their engineers can tune their electrical signal link-ups, command timing, and BIOS to Phison’s Gen5 SSD controllers and firmware.  Phison’s E26 SSD platform will support PCIe Dual Port, and have advanced features such as SR-IOV and ZNS, and support for the newest, fastest NAND interfaces ONFI 5.x and Toggle 5.x.

“While PCIe Gen4 SSD shipments are still ramping up, there are many server and storage customers who will want to transition to PCIe Gen5 as soon as that technology is available,” said Jeff Janukowicz, Research Vice President at IDC. “By helping to enable an ecosystem, Phison’s customizable E26 SSD is at the forefront of PCIe Gen5 introductions and will facilitate data center customers looking to benefit from the technology's increased performance.”

Phison’s E26 SSD solution is designed to be a best-in-class combination of performance at low power using Phison’s unique architecture of low power consumption ARM R5 CPUs and an array of super low power but high performance CoXProcessor 2.0 technology.  The E26 is a customizable SSD platform that will be available in M.2, U.3, E1.S, and E3.S form factors. 

The E26 Gen5 test chip has been successfully taped out in 12nm advanced process, and customized SSD solutions are targeted to be shipping in the second half of 2022.

Phison was first in the world to ship a PCIe Gen4 SSD.  By leveraging its deep expertise in controller and firmware design and investing heavily in research and development, it is the company’s goal to repeat that success by enabling its customers with PCIe Gen5 SSDs. Phison partner companies who joined in the launch of PCIe Gen4 benefited from first to market shipments with first to market revenue.  Many of them still maintain market share leadership in their sales channels. 

Phison’s goal is to provide its customers and partners with industry- leading PCIe Gen5 SSDs that will enable them to expand revenue, profitability, and market share.

Phison is seeking OEM customer partners who want to join in the success of the PCIe Gen5 customizable SSD platform launch. 

Category: Press Releases

August 12, 2021

• 2021

Company takes leadership role in IC development of next-generation platforms with introduction of PS7101 Redriver 

San Jose, Calif. August 11, 2021 –Phison Electronics Corp. (TPEX: 8299), a global leader in NAND flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions, today entered into the high-speed interface IC market with the introduction of its PS7101, a PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC with high gain and high linearity, which solves the signal attenuation caused by the transmission process on the motherboard or riser card in the PCs and Servers. 

Demand for the PCIe high-speed interface has significantly increased with the continuous development of semiconductor technology. PCIe 5.0 has quadrupled bandwidth over the previous standard in just a few years, with PCIe 6.0 expected to debut soon. Although the higher data rate of the chipset offers convenience to users, the development and design of the entire system has become increasingly more difficult. Specifically, the attenuation and the interference of noise in the motherboard eventually makes the signal between the CPU chip and the endpoints unable to be accurately transmitted and can even cause compatibility problems. 

Phison’s Redriver IC PS7101 effectively reduces the compatibility problems that may occur when connecting between the CPU and the endpoints. The company’s Flip-Chip package design further reduces the signal reflection and crosstalk interference caused by the IC package and improves the ability of heat dissipation. PS7101 provides multi-band independent compensation, which can be easily adapted to different cable or PCB materials, allowing development partners the ability to tune their electrical signals to achieve the best compensation for loss. 

In addition, Phison provides an exclusive patented Auto Tuning Tools. This package of tools can automatically set different gain parameters in the Redriver for the customer’s development environment, collect the results of the signal, and optimize with AI technology to find the best parameters for the corresponding environment. The Auto Tuning Tools allow developers to quickly adjust to find the best Redriver gain parameters that suit their motherboard environment.

Phison PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC PS7101 Test Results

As major CPU and motherboard chipset manufacturers continue to push the speed of PCIe to the limit, supporting technologies need to keep up to fulfill the ecosystem. Typically, this is achieved through huge investments and uncertainty in product compatibility. Phison is committed to the research and development of high-speed transmission interface technology used in its broad product portfolio in consumer, enterprise, gaming, automotive and industrial NAND storage products. 

After listening to our customers’ needs, Phison designed the IC specifications, invested in IC development, completed PS7101 engineering samples, and began production in a record 8 months. The company conducted rigorous tests on ICs to make sure that the features required by each IC meet the requirements of the specifications, and at the same time, ensured compatibility with the complex and diverse environment of transmission between different CPU chips and various PCIe 5.0 devices. 

“We are one of the few ASIC companies that has the team and capabilities of developing PCIe 5.0 SerDes PHY IP,” said K.S.Pua, chairman and CEO of Phison. “Our high-speed interface engineering team has accumulated many years of experience from the development of IC technology for USB, SATA and UFS interfaces to the successful product launch of the world’s first PCIe 4.0 SSD with the PCIe4.0 PHY developed in-house. Furthermore, to improve compatibility, analyze signal and simulate the proposed system, Phison invested heavily in our R&D activities and has established an advanced high-speed signal analysis laboratory. We have done all this to build a solid foundation for Phison to enter the high-speed interface IC market and develop the latest generation of PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC.” 

Besides being a leading supplier of NAND Flash controller ICs, the introduction of PS7101 is an important step to becoming a technology leader in the high-speed interface IC market. As part of Phison’s market strategy, the company is currently developing a PCIe 5.0 Retimer IC to suit different product environments in addition to the PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC. With two high-speed interface IC market products, Phison allows customers to consider both cost and signal optimization as their best choice in the future. 

Phison is not only a supplier of PCIe 5.0 Redriver and Retimer IC, but also a partner who strongly supports PCIe 5.0 signal system analysis, simulation and compatibility issues. With a solid development experience, team and equipment in the field of high-speed interface, the company’s goal is to provide customers with complete support solutions to solve technical problems encountered in the development process. Phison is also cooperating with major CPU chip manufacturers in the development of new products, making high-speed interface technology more widely used on every platform as CPU chip companies are actively developing their next-generation platforms.