Cadence, a fabless semiconductor company focusing on the development of IP solutions and IC design and verification tools, today posted an update regarding their development efforts for the 5th generation of DDR memory which is giving us some insights into the development of a new standard. The new DDR5 standard is supposed to bring better speeds and lower voltages while being more power-efficient. In the Cadence's blog called Breakfast Bytes, one of Cadence's memory experts talked about developments of the new standards and how they are developing the IP for the upcoming SoC solutions. Even though JEDEC, a company developing memory standards, hasn't officially published DDR5 standard specifications, Cadence is working closely with them to ensure that they stay on track and be the first on the market to deliver IP for the new standard.

Marc Greenberg, a Cadence expert for memory solutions was sharing his thoughts in the blog about the DDR5 and how it is progressing. Firstly, he notes that DDR5 is going to feature 4800 MT/s speeds at first. The initial speeds will improve throughout the 12 months when the data transfer rate will increase in the same fashion we have seen with previous generation DDR standards. Mr. Greenberg also shared that the goals of DDR5 are to have larger memory dies while managing latency challenges, same speed DRAM core as DDR4 with a higher speed I/O. He also noted that the goal of the new standard is not the bandwidth, but rather capacity - there should be 24Gb of memory per die initially, while later it should go up to 32Gb. That will allow for 256 GB DIMMs, where each byte can be accessed under 100 ns, making for a very responsive system. Mr. Greenberg also added that this is the year of DDR5, as Cadence is receiving a lot of orders for their 7 nm IP which should go in production systems this year.

It's been a while since we've had a post on a Goodram product at TechPowerUp, with the company's releases mainly falling off the radar. However, the company's new PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are being positioned as value options in the segment, whilst being quoted with some respectable transfer speeds - provided you don't acquire the lowest capacity version. Available in 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities, the Goodram PX500 are DRAM-less SSDs driven by Silicon Motion's SMI 2263XT controller.

Quoted numbers for the 256 GB version stand at 1,850 MB/s sequential read, 950 MB/s sequential write, 102,000 IOPS 4K random read and 230,000 IOPS 4K random write. The 512 GB version posts 2,000 MB/s, 1,600 MB/s, 173,000 IOPS and 140,000 IOPS in the same performance metrics, while the 1 TB version maxes out at 2,050 MB/s, 1650 MB/s, 240,000 IOPS and 280,000 IOPS, respectively. The Goodram PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are backed by a three-year warranty, and prices have not yet been announced.

Apple today updated MacBook Air, the world's most loved notebook, with faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, twice the storage and a new lower price of $999, and $899 for education. The new MacBook Air delivers up to two times faster CPU performance and up to 80 percent faster graphics performance, letting customers breeze through daily activities and play more games. Now starting with 256 GB of storage, MacBook Air allows customers to store even more movies, photos and files. With its brilliant 13-inch Retina display for vivid images and sharp text, Touch ID for easy login and secure online purchases, spacious trackpad, and all-day battery life combined with the power of macOS Catalina, it's the best MacBook Air ever made.

"From students and consumers buying their first computer to customers looking to upgrade, everyone loves the Mac, and they especially love MacBook Air. Today we're giving it a huge update, with two times faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, double the storage, a new lower price of $999 and an even lower price of $899 for education," said Tom Boger, Apple's senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. "With its stunning, thin and light design, brilliant Retina display, all-day battery life and the power and ease-of-use of macOS, MacBook Air is the world's best consumer notebook."

PATRIOT, a global leader in performance memory, SSDs, gaming peripherals, and flash storage solutions, is pleased to announce the official launch of P300 Gen3 x4 NVMe m.2 SSD with capacities available from 256 GB up to 1 TB. The P300 is designed to deliver the most significant all-around performance for desktop and laptop users. Built with next-generation PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe controller and best-in-class components, the P300 is posed to bring out rapid data transfer speeds and best in class reliability for the user. P300 represents a milestone for the next generation of PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe SSD, which can offer 25% higher transfer speeds better IOPs over standard PCIe 3 x2 solutions and attribute to its low power consumption is the best solution for laptop battery endurance.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce an all-new high capacity, low-latency memory kit, Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CL16-20-20 256 GB (32GBx8) 1.35 V, for the latest AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor. Built with the latest high-density 16Gb components, this new DDR4 memory specification offers a perfect choice for those pursuing ultimate memory performance or attempting to build a powerful workstation for heavy content creation workloads.

With the ultra-high kit capacity of 256 GB, G.SKILL is now pushing the performance boundary of 32 GB modules to a high level of DDR4-3600 on the high core-count AMD Threadripper platform. Optimized to unlock the full potential of the newest AMD 64-core processor, the Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CL16 256 GB (32 GB x8) has been validated with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor and the ASUS ROG ZENITH II EXTREME ALPHA motherboard, as shown in the screenshot below.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is excited to announce an all-new high-capacity, low-latency DDR4-3200 CL14-18-18-38 memory kit specification based on 32 GB modules across the Trident Z RGB, Trident Z Royal, and Trident Z Neo series. Available in 256 GB (32GBx8), 128 GB (32GBx4), and 64 GB (32GBx2) kit capacities for quad-channel and dual-channel platforms, these new DDR4 memory specifications are built with the latest high-density 16Gb components and provide the perfect mix of extreme performance and high memory capacity.

DDR4-3200 CL14 has always been the ultimate sweet spot for performance since the early days of DDR4 memory, and G.SKILL is now bringing the legendary high-performance efficiency to the latest 32 GB high-capacity DDR4 modules. Designed for the latest HEDT platforms with quad-channel support, the DDR4-3200 CL14-18-18-38 specification with 256 GB (32GBx8) memory kit capacity can be seen validated in the screenshots below with the new Intel Core i9-10900X processor on the ASUS ROG RAMPAGE VI EXTREME ENCORE motherboard and the Intel Core i9-10940X processor on the MSI Creator X299 motherboard.

Gigabyte today announced they were expanding their SSD storage lineup (started with the UD PRO series SATA III SSDs) with M.2 solutions. The new SSDs transfer data under the NVMe protocol and carry the M.2 form factor, in 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB sizes.

According to Gigabyte's own product pages, the 256 GB version has a sequential read and write speed of up to 1200 MB/s and 800 MB/s, while the 128 GB model cuts those speeds down to 1100 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, announced today a 256 GB capacity addition to its 'Canvas' React Flash memory microSD card line. With the new capacity consumers will now have a complete range from 32 GB to 256 GB to fit their storage and performance needs.

Kingston's Canvas React line of microSD cards are designed to be the solution shooters need when capturing photos continuously in burst mode or stunning 4K video where the action does not stop. It gives users the flexibility to experience more and worry less about running out of space on their device. The cards are designed to deliver the speed, capacity, and durability needed for life's memories, even in the most extreme conditions. With Class 10 UHS-I U3 speeds up to 100 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write, users have the freedom to capture adventures in full HD or record in 4K on their DSLR, mirrorless camera or premium smartphone.

Sk Hynix has added to its product catalog single-die 16 Gb DDR4 memory chips, which should enable a two-fold increase in maximum memory capacity per single DIMM. This allows SK Hynix to sell same-capacity chips with fewer memory semiconductor dies, due to the increase in storage density, and to increase maximum memory capacity at the same memory die populations as before. The benefits are lower power consumption (due to the reduced number of memory dies to power), and the possibility of putting together either dual-ranked 64 GB modules, quad-ranked 128 GB LRDIMMs and octal-ranked 256 GB LRDIMMs. That last part is the most important: theoretically, the maximum amount of memory on top Intel or AMD server platforms could double, which could enable up to 4 TB RAM in EPYC systems, for example. And as memory-hungry as big data applications have become, there's ever need for higher memory capacity.

SK Hynix's 16 Gb DDR4 chips are organized as 1Gx16 and 2Gx8 and supplied in FBGA96 and FBGA78 packages, respectively. Current 16 Gb density speeds stand at DDR4-2133 CL15 or DDR4-2400 CL17 modes at 1.2 V. SK Hynix plans increase the available frequencies in the third quarter of this year, adding DDR4-2666 CL19 to the lineup.

Intel today released their mainstream answer to users' fast, NVMe-based storage needs, the SSD 760p. We've already covered this new consumer, mainstream SSD series in our news pieces; however, information and press decks have now come directly from Intel, allowing us a clearer picture of how Intel sees its products to fit into the consumer market - and hopefully, in consumer's choices.

Following up on its CA3 NVMe SSD series launch from earlier this month, LiteOn introduced the new CV6 line of value SSDs featuring the SATA 6 Gbps interface. The drives come in 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch, and M.2-2280 form-factors (M-key), taking advantage of SATA 6 Gbps interface. The drives combine a Marvell 88SS1074 controller with Toshiba-made 3D TLC NAND flash memory. The controller features LDPC gen 3 error correction, and SLC caching, a feature with which it treats a small portion of the TLC NAND flash as SLC, juggling hot data in and out of it for more performance.

The 2.5-inch CV6 series is available in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB capacities, while the M.2 variant comes in 128 GB and 256 GB. All variants offer sequential transfer rates of up to 520 MB/s reads, with up to 450 MB/s writes. The 256 GB and 512 GB variants offer 4K random read performance of up to 85,000 IOPS, while the 128 GB variant offers 58,000 IOPS. 4K random write performance is rated at 28,000 IOPS for the 2.5-inch 128 GB variant, 30,000 IOPS for the M.2 128 GB variant; and up to 45,000 IOPS for both the 256 GB and 512 GB variants. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Phison has been working hard towards bringing to market a new, budget SSD controller in the form of its Phison E8 solution. The controller was designed with the purpose to try and dethrone Intel's 600p solutions from the budget, entry-level NVMe options, through offering increased performance at the same affordable prices. To do this, and so as to decrease power consumption, Phison opted for a PCIe 2x support for the E8 - this means the company is trading burst performance for decreased power consumption. E8-based SSDs are expected in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, with prices lower than the current 600p and Phison's own E7-based products like the MyDigitalSSD BPX.

The Phison E8 controller should still offer plenty of increased performance over a typical HDD, and has been designed to work with 3D NAND technology. even with the firmware in its non-final stages, Tom's Hardware is reporting that the Phison E8's performance is already higher than Intel's 600p and WD's Black PCIe solutions. As we all know, though, firmware optimizations are paramount to SSD controllers' performance, so we can only expect these performance numbers to go up. All in all, it seems we'll have yet another low-cost NVMe SSD solution in the market, though desktop users will likely opt for a PCIe 4x solution, since that environment doesn't care about power consumption as much as a mobile solution would.

BIOSTAR has announced an evolution of their G300 SSDs that it introduced in August 2016. The new, revised G330 series maintains the overall design from the series it supersedes, but upgrades the controller to an SMI 2258 (from an SMI 2256). They're built on Micron's 3D TLC NAND, with a DRAM cache that boosts performance, and come in three different capacities (128, 256 and 512 GB) in a 2.5-inch form factor, with a 6.8 mm height.

The drives feature read speeds up to 565MB/s and write speeds up to 515MB/s over a SATA 6Gb/s interface, and come with a MSRP of $59 for the 128GB model (G330-128GB), $99 for the 256GB model (G330-256GB), and $169 for the 512GB model (G330-512GB).

At CES 2017, Plextor announced their next SSD product line. Dubbed the M8Se, these will be restricted to NVMe SSDs with 15nm 3-bit-per-cell TLC of Toshiba manufacture, ranging from 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1TB capacities leveraged by Marvell's Eldora controller.

The new mid-range NVMe SSD uses a new heatsink design (slight cost-reduction when compared with the one the M8Pe carries), that Plextor says will improve cooling by up to 20% - convenient, since throttling does happen with NVMe based SSDs - and particularly with Marvell's Eldora controller - as it did with Plextor's M8Pe line of SSDs. The card also features blue accent lighting. Plextor will also sell a heatsink-less M8PeGN model in the M.2 form factor.