In early October 2014, security researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson publicly released source code to a firmware attack against Phison USB controller ICs.[4] This code implements the BadUSB exploit described in July 2014 at the Black Hat Briefings conference.
In August 2019, Phison announced that they would be releasing PS-50 series chips, e.g., PS5018-E18, that are designed to support PCIe 4.0 NVMe (non-volatile memory express) solid-state drives (SSDs). With such technology, the chips built on the NVMe SSDs have read and write speed of up to 7,000 MBs per second.[5]
In late 2020, Phison started shipping their E18 for high-end NVMe SSDs.[6]
In January 2021, Phison announced that they were planning to introduce a pair of USB flash drive controllers for high-end portable SSDs, designed to compete against current solutions that combine a USB to NVMe bridge chip with a standard NVMe SSD controller.[7] Phison also released a new entry-level DRAM-less NVMe SSD controller in 2021. For portable SSDs, Phison introduced the U17 and U18 controllers. For NVMe SSDs, Phison introduced the E21T controller in 2021, their latest DRAM-less NVMe controller. This is a follow-up to the E19T controller, which had seen very little use in retail consumer SSDs but has actually been outselling their high-end E16 PCIe 4.0 controller due to strong demand from OEMs.[6]
In January 2022, Phison introduced the E26 SSD controller, with higher transfer speeds than previous controllers.[8][9]
In April 2022, Phison announced a long term partnership with data storage company Seagate to develop and distribute enterprise NVMe SSDs.[10][11]
Subsidiaries
The company set up a research and development (R&D) centre named "Phisontech" in Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia in 2012, that was involved in the design and development of flash memory applications.[12] The R&D centre was later closed down in 2019 due to talent loss, work culture and lack of supporting local businesses.[13] In 2024, Phison started a new company called "MaiStorage" in Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia, involved in integrated circuit (IC) design and computer data storage technologies in data centres, electric vehicles, and generative artificial intelligence.[14]