Background and market context Phison emerged in the late 1990s and grew alongside the flash memory market, supplying controllers for USB flash drives, SD cards, and increasingly, SSDs. As NAND flash densities rose and interfaces evolved (from SATA to PCIe), the need for sophisticated controllers—handling error correction, wear leveling, garbage collection, and host communication—became central. Phison’s controllers aimed to balance cost, performance, power efficiency, and feature sets suitable for OEMs and consumer products.