Cheap PCIe 5.0 DRAM-less NVMe SSD like Crucial P510 are finally coming thanks to Phison

At the CES 2025 event today, Phison is introducing a couple of major products that will be part of its portfolio going forward. A new NAND controller is making its debut today, and it is special since it is the world's first PCIe Gen5 SSD controller that is going to be DRAM-less.

For those who may not be familiar, many SSDs come with a dedicated DRAM chip that acts as a buffer for metadata between the controller and the NAND flash memory. The presence of this DRAM cache improves write caching and generally reduces random access times. Those NVME SSDs that do not have the DRAM cache typically support the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, which helps the controller access system memory via Direct Memory Access (DMA).

So far, all Gen5 NVMe drives have had DRAM chips for caching, but Phison's new PS5031-E31T does away with that in an effort to make PCIe 5.0 SSDs a bit more affordable.

In terms of where you can find it, the new E31T has been integrated into Micron's Crucial P510 SSD based on G9 (9th Generation) NAND flash, although it remains to be seen what the pricing is and how it compares with other Gen5 NVMe drives that come equipped with a DRAM cache.

Phison writes:

Designed for the mainstream market, the E31T is the world’s first DRAM-less PCIe Gen5 SSD controller to deliver over 10GB/s performance. This cost-effective solution brings premium-level performance to cost-conscious consumers.

.. the Phison E31T controller is making its debut in the Crucial P510 SSD, a brand new consumer SSD Micron is announcing at CES this week. The Crucial P510 makes powerfully fast Gen5 performance up to 11,000/9,500 megabytes (MB) per second available to the masses while lowering energy consumption

Aside from the E31T NAND controller, Phison is also launching the U21, the world's first native USB4 SoC today. It says:

As the world’s first native USB4 SoC, the U21 delivers speeds of up to 4GB/s sequential read and write, offering a low-power, high-performance solution for portable devices in compact form factors.

You can find the press release on Phison's and Crucial's official websites (link1, link2).