Phison PS5018-E18 2TB Development SSD Review

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmark

The SPECworkstation 3 was introduced in 2018 and features 30 workloads containing nearly 140 tests. The developer updated the storage workloads that are based on traces of nearly two-dozen applications. We ran the storage workload (WPCstorge) and are using the results from just three of the tests to show the performance difference between the SSDs that we are testing. Individual scores are generated for each test and a composite score for each category is calculated based on a reference machine, yielding a “bigger is better” result. We are using the actual ‘raw score’ result in three tests that we want to show actual transfer rates rather than a composite score.

The first workload that we will be showing is a trace that uses Microsoft Visual Studio to compile a build of Mozilla Firefox browser. The Phison W18 development drive (2TB ) finished this workload with a read speed of 2030.7 MB/s.

The next trace involves a Handbrake transcode and the Phison SSD finished with 536.2 MB/s on the read speed and 202.3 MB/s on the write side.

In the 7zip workload the Phison 2TB E18 development board finished with 1420.5 MB/s read and 59.9 MB/s write speeds. We noticed that the drive progressively got slower as the SPECworkstation test was run and reached out to Phison with our results. They confirmed there was a Garbage Collection issue taking place and has resolved in their labs via another firmware update.