A Closer Look and Testing
Phison designed the new E18 from the ground up on the efficient TSMC 12nm process node. This provides SSD manufacturers with a state-of-the-art controller solution in an increasingly competitive field. The controller utilizes Phison’s proprietary CoXProcessor 2.0 technology, an innovative SSD architecture that enables E18 to deliver exceptional performance and power efficiency. Phison architecture is also primed for AI-assisted storage, where its distributed architecture uses many small cores to perform the workload in parallel. The E18 is ideal for gamers, content creators, and computing enthusiasts, which demand the best experience. This ultra-low latency is possible only with NVMe SSDs.
The E18 maximizes use of the available bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 to improve sequential read performance up to 7.4GB/s and write performance to 7.0GB/s, making E18 the only solution in the market to break the 7.0GB/s on both read and write access. When fully utilized, the eight-channel E18 delivers up to 1 million IOPS and scales to a massive 8TB capacity.
Phispm PCIe Gen4 SSD Controller
| Technology Node | TSMC 12nm |
| Capacities | Max: 8TB |
| PCIe | |
| Speed & Lane # | Gen 4 x 4L |
| NVMe Rev. | 1.4 |
| Others | 1. Boot Partition; 2. RPMB |
| NAND | |
| Channel # | Max: 8 |
| CE # | Max: 32 |
| Speed | 1600 MT/s per channel |
| DRAM | DDR4 |
| Performance (FOB; est.) | |
| SR/SW (MBps) | Max: 7400/7000 |
| RR/RW (IOPS) | Max: 1000K/1000K |
| Controller Power (Est.) | 3.0W |
| Processor | 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 (Three CPUs) CoXProcessor Technology |
| Peripheral Interface | GPIO, UART, ICE, I2C, SPI, SMBus |
| Data Reliability | 4th Gen LDPC engine; End-To-End Data Path Protection; SmartECC |
| SRAM Protection | Internal SRAM ECC/parity protection |
| Security | HW ) AES 128/256 bit, SHA 160/256/512, RSA 4096 FW ) TCG & Opal 2.0, Pyrite, Sanitize and Crypto Erase |
| Temperature | Controller: -40 ~ 125oC (Tj) |
| Others | Dynamic SLC cache support 4KB & 512B support |
Now that we have seen the Mushkin Gamma 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD up close, let us see the results from testing!
Testing was accomplished on a blank formatted SSD. Our test setup consists of the following hardware:
| CPU | Intel Core i9-11900K @ 3.6GHz (Rocket Lake) |
| Cooling | Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240 Illusion |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z590 Vision G |
| Ram | Gigabyte AORUS 16GB (2×8) 4800MHz |
| HDD | Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIE M.2 SSD (OS)
Gamma 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD (Test) |
| PSU | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W |
| OS | Windows 10 |
Performance
Just as a quick reminder of the advertised specifications from Mushkin. Sequential read up to 7150MB/s and Sequential write up to 5600MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark v4.01
The ATTO Disk Benchmark application was designed to measure your storage systems performance with transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and write speeds. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. You can test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives.
ATTO Disk Benchmark Features:
- Transfer sizes from 512KB to 8MB
- Transfer lengths from 64KB to 2GB
- Support for overlapped I/O Supports a variety of queue depths
- I/O comparisons with various test patterns
- Timed mode allows continuous testing
- Non-destructive performance measurement on formatted drives.
Results: Max Sequential read 6707.2MB/s and sequential write 5181.4MB/s
Very close to advertised speeds.
Crystal Disk Mark 7.0
CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds.
CrystalDiskMark Features:
- Measure sequential reads/writes speed
- Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed
- Select test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill)
- Theme support
- Multi-Language support
Results: Max Sequential read 6977.5MB/s and sequential write 5453MB/s
Very close to advertised speeds.!
PCMark 10 Results with real-world relevance
- PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks produce an overall score as a measure of drive performance. Comparing devices is as simple as comparing scores. The tests also measure and report the bandwidth and average access time performance for the drive.
- Each test uses traces recorded while performing real-world tasks such as booting Windows 10, starting applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, working with applications such as Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, and copying several large files and many small files.
- Unlike other synthetic storage tests, this focus on real-world activities enables PCMark 10 to show meaningful differences between the latest, high-performance storage technologies.
- PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks help professional users relate manufacturers’ technical specifications to practical real-world performance with tests that are easy to set up and run.
- You can compare up to four results in the PCMark 10 app, or export your results to Microsoft Excel for more detailed analysis.
The Quick System Drive Benchmark is a shorter test with a smaller set of less demanding real-world traces. You can use this benchmark to test smaller system drives that are unable to run the Full System Drive benchmark.
The Data Drive Benchmark is designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.
Well there we have it, the Mushkin Gamma 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, now lets move on to the last page and read a little on the Conclusion and Verdict.
