QNAP Systems, Inc. (QNAP) today announced the launch of the TS-1635AX NAS - the successor of the landmark TS-1635 NAS. With 16 drive bays (twelve 3.5-inch and four 2.5-inch) and dual 10GbE SFP+ ports, the TS-1635AX is further boosted with a high-performance Marvell ARMADA 8040 ARMv8 Cortex-A72 64-bit quad-core 1.6 GHz processor and two M.2 SATA SSD slots (2280 form factor) and supports Linux virtualization, SSD caching, and Qtier 2.0. The TS-1635AX sets a new standard for ARM-based NAS and marks a new milestone for high-capacity and affordable desktop NAS models.

The TS-1635AX supports QNAP's proprietary Qtier 2.0 for automatic tiered storage and provides a cache-like mechanism in volumes and LUNs to boost the performance of applications where high-efficiency data access is necessary (such as virtualization). The TS-1635AX also supports containerized virtualization (LXC and Docker ) and Linux command-line interface (CLI) virtual machines* for deploying virtualization applications to fully realize the potential of the Marvell ARMADA 8040 processor.

Latticework, Inc. today introduced Amber: the world's first personal hybrid cloud storage platform. Amber is a multimedia storage and streaming device that gives users complete control over their digital assets, offering the convenience of the cloud in the privacy of their own homes. With Amber, users' life memories and digital files are always secure, while Amber's companion app ensures that they are always within reach to access, relive and share. Amber is the debut product from Latticework, Inc., a company founded by storage pioneer and Marvell co-founder, Dr. Pantas Sutardja, to tackle escalating consumer storage and bandwidth use. Watch this video to learn more about Amber.

Amber offers security and convenience without compromising digital data, privacy or peace of mind. "Your personal data and memories are just that - yours. Why would you want to give complete strangers or cloud providers access to your data?" said Dr. Pantas Sutardja, founder & CEO, Latticework, Inc. "Amber makes storage personal, enabling you to protect, control and secure your digital life, while seamlessly allowing you to relive and share life's memories with only the people you choose."

PLEXTOR, a leading developer of award-winning solid-state drives (SSDs) and other high-performance digital storage devices, showcased the new M9Pe Extreme at COMPUTEX 2018, Taipei, Taiwan. Breaking consumer SSD speed barriers, the new M9Pe Extreme delivers astonishing sequential read/write speeds of up to 6,500 / 5,000 MB/s. The next-generation M9Pe Extreme combines technologically advanced components and the Marvell 88NR2241 intelligent NVMe switch along with PLEXTOR exclusive technologies to deliver high level performance required by prosumers, professional PC gamers and other application-intensive users such as animation editors, audio-visual drafting personnel, and film-making companies. Not only does M9Pe Extreme provide greatly enhanced data transmission performance, it also offers RAID functionalities for data redundancy and performance improvements making it a great choice for office or workspace environments.

Fay Ho, Senior Director for Brand Division, LITE-ON Technology Corporation, said, "Continuing Plextor's outstanding capability in the high-speed storage devices, the M9Pe Extreme, as the name states, delivers unprecedented extreme high-speed performance, making a new record in consumer SSD read/write speeds. With high quality components and excellent performance boosting technologies, PC gaming experience, for one, will never be the same."

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking, and connectivity semiconductor solutions today introduced the industry's first high-efficiency wireless 802.11ax solution with 2x2 plus 2x2 concurrent dual Wi-Fi , dual-mode Bluetooth 5/Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.11p for connected vehicles. The new 88Q9098 combo solution enables gigabit-level performance, superior reliability, and enhanced security for the car and extends Marvell's leadership in providing comprehensive 802.11ax solutions. Marvell's innovative concurrent dual Wi-Fi architecture sets a new technology precedent, integrating two complete Wi-Fi subsystems into a single SoC, and enabling two independent 2x2 data streams to run concurrently and at full throughput. One use case demanding this capability is when one Wi-Fi radio is dedicated to mobile phone projection while the other is streaming video to and from mobile/accessory devices in the car. The 88Q9098 enables reuse of a single solution across infotainment and telematics applications, delivering market-leading multimedia streaming, secure over-the-air updates, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and hot-spot functionality.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking and connectivity semiconductor solutions, today announced its latest NVM Express (NVMe ) solid-state drive (SSD) controller family for mainstream and high-performance PC client and edge computing SSDs. The Gen 3x4 PCIe SSD controllers, the 4-channel 88SS1084 and 8-channel 88SS1100, bring leading performance, endurance and reliability to the industry and will help broaden the adoption of NVMe SSDs across emerging client and edge computing applications. The controllers integrate Marvell's fourth generation of NANDEdge technology, offering the advanced error correction capabilities to address the increasing demands required to enable future SSD solutions with emerging 96-layer triple level-cell (TLC) and quad level-cell(QLC) NAND architectures.

As gaming, video-on-demand, CAD, imaging, photography and video surveillance proliferate and scale, NVMe SSDs can meet the increasing storage performance and capacity requirements that these end use applications seek. The new Marvell client NVMe SSD controller family can provide up to 3.6GB/s of bandwidth and up to 700,000 input output per second (IOPS). The 88SS1084 and 88SS1100 devices can save system power consumption by supporting lower voltage NAND devices and LPDDR4 DRAM components. These features enable PCs and edge computing devices to process and store increasingly data-intensive workloads more quickly and reliably.

Kingston's UV500 family of SSDs debuted last April with capacities ranging from 120 GB all the way up to 960 GB. However, Kingston has decided to add a 2 TB model to the existing lineup due to increasing demands for higher capacity drives. Like its siblings, the 2 TB model also employs the Marvell 88SS1074 controller and 3D TLC NAND. It will also carry the same features like support for 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption and TCG Opal 2.0. While the 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB models are available in 2.5-inch, M.2, and mSATA formats, the 2 TB model only comes in the 2.5-inch form factor. In terms of performance, the 2 TB variant delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 520 MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively. It also offers 4 KB random read performance up to 79,000 IOPS and 4 KB write performance up to 50,000 IOPS. Backed by a 5-year warranty, the UV500 2 TB SSD is priced at $695.50 according to Kingston's website.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it is shipping the UV500 family line of SSD products. Available in multiple form factors, UV500 will be Kingston's first 3D NAND-enabled SSD featuring full-disk encryption. UV500 is powered by the Marvell 88SS1074 controller, and combined with 3D NAND Flash, delivers incredible read/write speeds of up to 520 MB/s and 500 MB/s, making it 10x faster than a 7200 RPM hard drive.

UV500 dramatically improves a system's overall responsiveness with incredible boot, loading and transfer times; and, with no moving parts is far less likely to fail compared to mechanical hard drives. UV500 protects sensitive data with 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption and supports TCG Opal 2.0. It is available in three different form factors (2.5", M.2 2280, mSATA) to accommodate any client system. UV500 is perfect as a boot drive or for primary storage as it is available in 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, 960 GB and 1920 GB capacities.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking and connectivity semiconductor solutions, today announced that it is launching innovative NVM Express (NVMe)-based chipset solutions that will accelerate the time to market for application-optimized data center SSD implementations. These new, highly-versatile building blocks can optimally address current and emerging workload storage requirements, spanning capacity, latency, performance, power and cost, to enable tailored SSD solutions for specific cloud and enterprise workloads.

The proliferation of cloud services and new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, is driving various workloads in the data center. These evolving and expanding workloads can have differing storage requirements that emerging SSD form factors are targeted to address. Marvell has developed innovative NVMe chipsets capable of powering the larger Enterprise Data Storage Form Factors (EDSFF), Next Generation Small Form Factors (NGSFF) and various customized form factors, providing the ability to increase storage capacity, performance and overall workload efficiencies.

LITE-ON Storage, an established leader in the rapidly expanding solid-state drive (SSD) industry, said today it will demonstrate its latest enterprise drives, the NVRAM Hybrid SSD, during the OCP U.S. Summit 2018, kicking off here today.

The new LITE-ON NVRAM Hybrid drive, slated for release this spring, is a compact high-density drive with multi-namespaces. One of the namespaces can be dedicated to NVRAM drive and the other namespace to boot drive, fully utilizing the NAND portion of the drive. This drive has a dual-use feature such that it can serve as boot drive for server with the SSD namespace and as cache with the NVRAM part of the drive, resulting in reduced overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with a better utilization rate.

"Customers tell us they need the most technologically advanced SSDs in their enterprises, but those storage solutions must also make financial sense," said Darlo Perez, Managing Director, LITE-ON Storage Group. "Our new NVRAM Hybrid SSD is capable of meeting today's demanding and time-sensitive data center requirements while maximizing TCO."

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking and connectivity semiconductor solutions, today announced the launch of the 88X7120, the latest offering in its Alaska C family of high-speed Ethernet physical layer (PHY) transceivers, designed to improve bandwidth and performance in the data center. The new transceiver is purpose-built to address the transition in hyperscale data centers from 25GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) and 100GbE to 50GbE, 200GbE and 400GbE as new applications like artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to drive exponential processing and I/O bandwidth demands. The 88X7120 addresses this I/O speed transition in hyperscale data centers with support of 16 ports of 50GbE, 4 ports of 200GbE and 2 ports of 400GbE, utilizing 50G PAM4 signaling.

Marvell provides a wide variety of products for data center applications and PHYs are a critical element in Marvell's strategy, as they form the backbone of high-speed data center interconnects. The new transceivers add to the Marvell portfolio of switches and other differentiated products targeted at the data center market, including scaling interconnect speeds to match the I/O throughput requirements in a cost-effective and power-efficient manner.

QLC is the next big step in flash memory, with another bump in density increases and, crucially for consumers, revised, lower pricing for flash-based products that employ the new technology. We've already had a sneak peek at what QLC-based products can deliver - Intel's leaked SSD 660P employs QLC memory and is expected to deliver 1,800 MB/s in sequential read and up to 1,200 MB/s in sequential write speeds with 150,000 IOPS. Expect base drive capacities to increase - QLC being higher density would mean fewer NAND chips, but manufacturers want to keep the added performance of chip parallelism.

However, flash needs controllers to deliver its true potential, and Marvell has one up its sleeve. The new controller will eventually replace the NVMe 1.1 Eldora (88SS1093) used in some popular SSDs that are already shipping, such as Plextor's M9Pe, and the folks at Tom's hardware took a peek at it - running the current TLC memory, that is. The controller delivered over 670,000 IOPS and 3,500 MB/s in the demo, though there's no information on the density of the drive. But for those performance levels, it must've had a good amount of silicon. While not representative of final QLC memory performance of the controller, it's good to know that at least this part of the ecosystem is good to go. Now if only QLC was quick and hot off the presses, we could see a $100 512 GB SSD.

SolidRun, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance embedded solutions, and edge computing platforms, today announced support for the public beta of Google Cloud IoT Core, a fully managed service on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to securely connect and manage IoT devices at scale. Cloud IoT Core is now publicly available to all users in beta, including new features and pricing plan. With Cloud IoT Core, businesses can easily connect and centrally manage millions of globally dispersed IoT devices. When used as part of the broader Google Cloud IoT solution, it can ingest all IoT data and connect to Google Cloud's state of the art analytics services including Cloud Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Bigtable, BigQuery, and Machine Learning.

The MACCHIATObin ClearCloud 8K, is based on a Marvell ARMADA A8040 SoC, and features a quad core Arm Cortex A-72 1.6GHz processor, including 4GB DDR4 DIMM memory (16GB optional), dual 10GbE, microSD connectors, 3 x SATA 3.0, USB 3.0 and PCIe x4 3.0 slot. SolidRun's MACCHIATObin ClearCloud 8K with Google's Cloud IoT Core allows users to easily and securely connect to GCP. The solution has been developed in collaboration with Sartura Ltd., a leading specialized open source developer and integrator for embedded applications, in conjunction with Marvell.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Agile Multiband is a new certification program from Wi-Fi Alliance that enables devices to utilize Wi-Fi network resources better, and networks to adapt and balance load as network conditions change. Wi-Fi Agile Multiband devices dynamically exchange information about a network environment, enabling devices to make smarter decisions and quicker connections in home, enterprise, and managed network environments. Wi-Fi Agile Multiband delivers new capabilities that provide a better experience with both static use cases, such as streaming a high-definition movie, and mobile use cases such as Wi-Fi calling.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking, and connectivity semiconductor solutions today introduced the industry's most complete 802.11ax wireless product portfolio. The Marvell 802.11ax product family is architected to deliver breakthrough performance, improved network efficiency, low latency and enterprise-grade reliability. Marvell is the first to offer a full MU-MIMO and OFDMA uplink and downlink based on the latest IEEE 802.11ax standards which will help the next generation of high-end users, "Generation Upload," with real-time cloud-based requirements.

Delivering consistent performance and reliability is becoming increasingly difficult for networks already straining to support a dramatic increase in connected devices, high definition streaming video, social media and cloud applications. The average household will have about 50 connected devices by 2022. Major technology advancements are needed to better support today's diverse users that are driving higher end emerging use cases such as virtual and augmented reality, live streaming and smart cities.

Halos AI Inc. unveiled its flagship product "CatDrive" which will be crowdfunding on Indiegogo on 21st Nov. As the most secure wireless external hard drive, CatDrive is safer than the cloud and even smarter than mobile hard drives. It astonishingly allows users to be masters of their own data and to store and share digital content safely and freely.

In addition to functions such as centralized storage and on-the-go access, CatDrive also lets provides you with safe and easy storage.

• 5 advanced technologies: Local-storage, shockproof HDD, independent accounts with private spaces and auto backup.
• Multiple users: Each user has their own account and space which is invisible to others.
• Private share circle: Members of CatDrive can share files without limits, receive real-time notifications, and the shared content will never expire.
• Photo Roll: Organize and display photos in a stunning way.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Cavium, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement, unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, under which Marvell will acquire all outstanding shares of Cavium common stock in exchange for consideration of $40.00 per share in cash and 2.1757 Marvell common shares for each Cavium share. Upon completion of the transaction, Marvell will become a leader in infrastructure solutions with approximately $3.4 billion in annual revenue.

The transaction combines Marvell's portfolio of leading HDD and SSD storage controllers, networking solutions and high-performance wireless connectivity products with Cavium's portfolio of leading multi-core processing, networking communications, storage connectivity and security solutions. The combined product portfolios provide the scale and breadth to deliver comprehensive end-to-end solutions for customers across the cloud data center, enterprise and service provider markets, and expands Marvell's serviceable addressable market to more than $16 billion. This transaction also creates an R&D innovation engine to accelerate product development, positioning the company to meet today's massive and growing demand for data storage, heterogeneous computing and high-speed connectivity.

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.

LiteOn rolled out the CA3 line of NVMe SSDs in the M.2-2280 form-factor. Available in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB capacities, the drives combine a Marvell 88SS1092 controller with Toshiba-made TLC NAND flash memory. The drive takes advantage of PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and the NVMe protocol, to put of sequential read speeds of up to 2100 MB/s for the 256 GB variant, and 2900 MB/s for the 512 GB and 1 TB variants; and sequential write speeds of up to 600 MB/s, 1200 MB/s, and 1700 MB/s for the three variants, respectively.

Random access speeds of the LiteOn CA3 series drives are up to 150K/150K IOPS (read/write) for the 256 GB variant; up to 260K/260K IOPS for the 512 GB variant, and up to 380K/260K IOPS for the 1 TB variant. The controller supports 3rd generation LPDC error correction, NVMe deallocate, TCG-OPAL 2.0 native encryption, and 256-bit AES native encryption. The company didn't put out endurance numbers, but stated that its MTBF is rated at 1.5 million hours. The drives are backed by 3-year warranties. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Stocks of both Marvell and Cavium rallied over the weekend as reports emerged of Marvell entering talks to acquire the network equipment SoC giant. Cavium specializes in network infrastructure equipment SoCs, such as the famed ThunderX processor, while Marvell holds IP in networking and storage. There are no details as to the value of the acquisition. Shares of Marvell rose 5 percent, and those of Cavium by a staggering 17 percent, as reports of the deal emerged. Tech stocks could rally big on Monday, if Marvell and Cavium close the deal, and Broadcom inches closer to close its $100 billion bid to acquire Qualcomm.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the XPG SX9000, its fastest consumer SSD yet. The SX9000 caters to gamers and PC overclockers. It arrives in an M.2 2280 form factor and uses the PCIe3x4 interface to deliver up to 2800MB/s read and 1450 MB/s write. ADATA has selected a new Marvell controller to ensure consistently optimized performance, while in-house ADATA manufacturing, assembly, and quality control result in up to a 1000TB terabytes/total bytes written (TBW) rating. The SX9000 uses MLC NAND Flash and ships in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB capacities.

The SX9000 goes even beyond the XPG SX8000 thanks to balanced ADATA design and the integration of a new Marvell controller. It reaches 2800MB/s read and 1450 MB/s write, leveraging the PCI Express Gen 3x4 interface and the NVMe 1.2 protocol. A compact M.2 2280 drive, the SX9000 also manages 310K/140K IOPS random 4K read/write. For fast boot, reduced cross-drive transfer times, shorter game loads, and quicker in-game asset delivery, the SX9000 offers an excellent foundation.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced over 6 million SSD units between the Kingston and HyperX lines have shipped worldwide featuring Marvell controllers. The feat was accomplished in just over two years as the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD in February 2015 was the company's first SSD to ship utilizing a Marvell controller. Marvell's 88SS9293 controller provides lightning fast, next generation SSD performance making HyperX Predator PCIe SSD a must have for system-builders and enthusiasts.

Wanting to offer users of all levels the benefits of high performance from an SSD, Kingston released UV400, powered by Marvell's 88SS1074 four-channel controller in May of 2016. As the product family evolves later this year, Kingston will launch the UV500 series, its first 3D NAND-enabled SSD utilizing Marvell's newest 88SS1074 full turnkey (FTK) solution. UV500 will be available in 2.5", M.2 and mSATA form factors providing solutions for any consumer and system builder SSD needs. It is designed for mainstream client use but also has 256-bit AES encryption and TCG Opal 2.0 enabled for enterprise users as well.

Western Digital and SanDisk have updated their Blue and Ultra line of consumer SSDs with the latest 3D BiCS FLASH NAND technology. Capacities will range from 250 GB capacities through 500 GB and up to 1TB at launch, with a 2 TB SanDisk Ultra 3D SSD "coming soon." The hardware powering each drive is exactly the same, save for the difference in available storage: the controller used is a Marvell 88SS1074, protocol is SATA 6Gbps / AHCI, and even warranty stays the same through all WD and SanDisk models, at three-years (limited.)

The WD Blue line of SSDs will be available in both 2.5" and M.2 2280 single-sided models. Sequential read speed starts at 550 MB/s for both WD Blue 250 GB and SanDisk Ultra 3D, with sequential write speeds at a rated 525 MB/s and read/write IOPS being set at 95,000/81,000 respectively. All other (higher) capacities deliver slightly more performance: 560 MB/s sequential read speeds, 530 MB/s sequential writes, 95,000 random read IOPS, and 84,000 random write IOPS. Pricing is as follows: WD Blue 3D 250 GB ($89); Blue 3D 500 GB ($149.99), Blue 3D 1 TB ($279.99); SanDisk Ultra 3D 250 GB ($99.99), Ultra 3D 500 GB ($164.99), Ultra 3D 1TB ($279.99) and Ultra 3D 2TB ($549.99, currently unavailable.)

Crucial is giving final touches to its next-generation mainstream SATA SSDs, under the BX300 series. A follow-up to its MX300 series, the BX300 series will be launched later this Summer. The drives combine a Marvell-made controller with Micron 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and likely come in capacities of 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. Crucial will sell these drives only in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, initially. While the company didn't talk about performance, it mentioned that the drives offer "SATA-saturating performance," meaning that at least its sequential reads could be around the 530 MB/s mark (that of the MX300), if not higher. With the BX300, Crucual is launching a new multi-media SSD install tutorial website that's made as simple to understand as possible, so anyone with a screwdriver can replace their HDD with a new SSD.

At the ADATA booth, we ran into two of the company's most exciting products, the XPG SX9000 and XPG SX8000 series M.2 PCIe SSDs. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface, and NVMe protocol support, the drives are positioned in the upper-performance/enthusiast segments. The XPG SX9000 combines a Marvell 88S1093 controller with planar MLC toggle-NAND flash, and comes in capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB. It offers sequential speeds of up to 2,800 MB/s reads, with up to 1,500 MB/s writes, and features an LDPC ECC engine.

Plextor today announced retail availability of its M8Se series of PCI-Express solid-state drives (SSDs). Designed to compete with Samsung 960 EVO series, the drives use Toshiba-made TLC NAND flash memory, mated to a Marvell 88SS1093 controller. Available in M.2-2280 and half-height PCI-Express 3.0 x4 add-on card form-factors, the drives take advantage of PCI-Express gen 3.0 x4 interface, and the NVMe protocol.

The M8Se lineup are available in three distinct variants based on form-factor, M8Se-Y (PCIe add-on card), M8Se-G (M.2-2280 with heatsink), and M8Se-GN (M.2-2280 without heatsink, ideal for notebooks); the three further consist of variants based on capacity - 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB. Performance ratings are the same on all variants - up to 2,450 MB/s sequential reads, up to 1,000 MB/s sequential writes, up to 210,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 175,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The M8Se-Y and M8Se-G series drives feature chunky aluminium heatsinks which make contact with the NAND flash, DRAM, and main controller. Prices start at 83€ for the 128 GB variant, and go all the way up to 494€ for the 1 TB variant.