If we were to look at the flash controller hierarchy, Phison has typically placed as a mid-tier company. We met with Phison at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, this past August and they spoke of a new controller that might move them up in the stack, the Phison Quad-Core PS3110 6Gbps controller. Capable of 550MB/s read, 530MB/s write, over 100K IOPS, with features such as AES 256-Bit encryption, compatible with the latest SLC, MLC and TLC memory, and capable of accommodating single form factors of up to 2TB, this controller seemed to be a definite step forward and we looked forward to getting it on our Test Bench.

Although we are sure many will follow suit in time, the Corsair Neutron XT 240GB SSD sample that we have in our hands for this report, is the first to be seen with the Phison PS3110 controller and should be available at the time, or shortly after, this launch. Having put this SSD through its paces over the past few days, we think that you just might be as surprised as we are to see a new SSD released that definitely jumps into that top-tier that so few other SSDs have been capable of.