Phison Blazes Trails for Enterprise NAND Flash in AI Ecosystem

2023 has been an exciting year for Phison as the company led the industry in delivering available PCIe 5.0 enterprise NAND flash designs, pioneered custom services for NAND flash solutions with the introduction of its IMAGIN+ platform, and innovated across a wide array of use cases and industry verticals. In addition, 2023 saw the company advancing the industry’s understanding of the place of NAND flash in the AI+ML topography, announcing its aiDAPTIV+ platform for more balanced, efficient AI operations.

2023 Flashback0

This year, it starts its recap with recent news worth celebrating: It is a 2023 recipient of the Outstanding Supplier Performance Award in the semiconductor category from enterprise NAND flash market leader and firm collaborator Micron. Its partner Kioxia also awarded the company an outstanding supplier performance award for the company’s ongoing collaboration. Finally, space manufacturing provider SkyCorp honored Phison with a plaque acknowledging the performance of Phison SSDs in the International Space Station.

2023 Flashback1

Phison delivers on PCIe 5.0 ecosystem
It kicked off 2023 at CES previewing the company’s latest Gen5 X Series SSD enterprise controllers, including the PCIe 5.0 E26, its first-ever SSD, capable of doubling the bandwidth and improving latency of its predecessor PCIe Gen4 by 30%.

The firm continued to integrate data center environments WW with its customizable X1 SSD platform, redefining low-power compute for evolving AI applications. Indeed, the need for energy efficient infrastructure technologies is more urgent than ever as the world becomes evermore hyper-networked. To address this critical requirement, Phison continued its ongoing work with hyperscale partners and other infrastructure providers to develop more sustainable data center models that can meaningfully address the challenges presented by climate change.

Rounding out this PCIe 5.0 data ecosystem, it introduced new retimer and redriver solutions designed to take advantage of PCIe 5.0 to deliver superior signal integrity for more complex compute environments across a variety of use cases. With the market’s widest portfolio of multi-channel PCIe 5.0 redriver, retimer, and storage, it offered some of the industry’s most compelling solutions based the latest, CXL 2.0 and PCIe 5.0 performance-enhancing protocols.

It also showcased R&D expertise by publishing testing methodologies and emphasized the importance of designing critical IC design to align with the specific purpose an application is meant to fulfill.

2023 Flashback2

IMAGIN+ ties it all together with customized solutions for AI and more
Setting the 2023 stage with domain expertise and enterprise product development and delivery, the manufacturer introduced IMAGIN+, a platform for R&D resource sharing and custom design-in services for enterprise infrastructure. Clients and partners work closely with Phison engineers and data scientists, describing the infrastructure problems they have to solve and relying on Phison to come up with a solution that is optimized to succeed.

As the IT landscape becomes more complex, customers increasingly count on IMAGIN+ engineering to design digital topographies without waste, streamlining time-to-product while reducing waste alongside evolving corporate sustainability goals. Examples span industry verticals, with applications around the world from M&E deployments, industrial robotics, automotive applications, hyperscale – even space exploration.

2023 Flashback3

With aiDAPTIV+, the company introduces SSD strategy for everyday AI computational environments
As we’ve seen throughout the course of this year-in-review, AI-related advancements drove innovation across domains throughout 2023, and that trend is expected to continue to go strong through 2024. The rapid growth of AI models has also led to an increase in the hardware infrastructure cost associated with providing AI services, which is why Phison developed and announced the aiDAPTIV+ platform.

Systems based on aiDAPTIV+ integrate PCIe 5.0 enterprise NAND flash directly into the architectural core, proceeding from the perspective that AI workloads will evolve to exceed the performance capabilities of GPU and DRAM alone. Providing SSD offload support, GPU and DRAM can handle first-order applications, while lower order calculations can be done on high capacity data center NAND flash. The result is a more balanced system better equipped to address performance and efficiency requirements to continue to advance AI without interruption due to hardware capacities.

In many ways, aiDAPTIV+ is an illustration of Phison’s leadership in enterprise NAND flash storage R&D and custom design – a fitting coda to 2023. It offers the ability to deliver superior products and adapt them to suit the specific architectural circumstances to meet clients’ needs while preparing them for future success. The year saw the vendor advancing a new vision for a data ecosystem that is CXL-compatible, designed for PCIe 5.0, with custom design services that offer customers new approaches to infrastructure for the AI-everywhere era.

Phison’s excellence in NAND flash innovation recognized by industry leaders
Rounding out 2023, the firm is honored to be recognized for its excellence as a semiconductor provider by enterprise NAND flash market leader and Phison collaborator Micron.

2023 Flashback4

“We can deliver,” said CEO and co-founder KS Pua. KS accepted the award on behalf of Phison at the Micron Supplier Awards Dinner in San Francisco, CA, on November 14 from Mike Bokan, Micron senior president WW sales.

The award recognizes performance of Micron’s top suppliers for FY23. Phison has an ongoing strategic partnership with Micron to develop PCIe 5.0 solutions and services that deliver data performance and more sustainable scalability for contemporary, AI-driven data center architectures.

Next, SSD and NAND flash provider Kioxia awarded Phison for its top performance as a semiconductor supplier in 2023.

2023 Flashback5

“The relationship between Kioxia and Phison has evolved from early supplier cooperation to a special strategic partnership,” said Tomoharu Watanabe, EVP and COO. “The 2 companies not only have very close business interactions in NAND procurement, but also have many joint collaborations in the development of NAND controllers, including PCIe SSD, UFS, and eMMC.“

Caesar Ichimura, executive officer and CMO, emphasized the deep and mutually indispensable relationship between the 2 companies.

“Together, we have overcome various technical challenges and market demands, and have grown together to this day”, Ichimura said. “Kioxia and Phison will continue to deepen and broaden our cooperation, and through our leading-edge technology, we together will “uplift the world with NAND storage products.“

Finally, VP of development at space manufacturer SkyCorp Bruce Pittman presented K.S. Pua with a plaque recognizing the exceptional endurance of Phison’s SSD solutions. The plaque held Phison’s 4TB NVMe M.2, 2280 SSD, which spent more than 8 months in orbit around the Earth on the International Space Station.

The Phison team is honored for the prestigious recognition from all its industry partners. It underscores our unwavering commitment to performance and dedication, setting us apart among the industry’s most exceptional solutions providers.

Popular blog posts 2023
Throughout the year, the firm have published numerous posts on its blog where we discuss industry insights, technological updates, and product information. Here are the most popular posts of 2023:

As the company transitions into 2024, it looks forward to keeping up the momentum with more innovation, reliability, and sustainability-forward data center NAND flash performance for the evolving, global data ecosystem.