Toshiba's first retail SSDs to use the company's 64-layer BiCS3 3D NAND technology have been announced by Toshiba. The successors to the company's Trion 100 and Trion 150 SSDs still carry some vestiges of OCZ branding in the product logo and TR (short for Trion) moniker. This is Toshiba's first generation of mainstream, mass-market-suitable 3D NAND flash.

These drives make use of a DRAM-less controller design, and will be available in capacities ranging from 240 GB up to 960 GB. Toshiba advertises 550 MB/s read and 525 MB/s write speeds. 4K Random Read IOPS stand at 87K, while 4K Random Write IOPS go up to 87K. The endurance on the models will range from 60 to 240 TB according to capacity, and these carry the same three-year warranty as previous Trion SSDs. Pricing has not yet been announced, although the TR200 series will start shipping to retailers this fall.

PNY Technologies considered one of the worldwide leaders in consumer electronics market and flash memory products, is proud to announce the launch of the new CS1311b solid state drives. Targeting the sweet spot of price against performance, the CS1311b SSDs are 20 times faster than traditional hard drives, promising an affordable solution to boost your PC performance without breaking the bank.

The 2.5-inch form factor SSDs weighing only 35gms and having dimensions of 100 mm (L) x 70 mm (W) x 7 mm (H), can be installed in not only almost every notebook computer and Ultrabook, but even in regular desktop PCs, thus supporting an easy performance upgrade in a very wide range of computers. The absence of moving parts not only guarantees the safety of your data against mechanical shocks, but it also means cool and quiet operation. The very low power consumption easily translates into better battery life for notebook and Ultrabook computers.

Western Digital Corp. today announced its successful development of four bits per cell, X4, flash memory architecture offering on 64-layer 3D NAND, BiCS3, technology. Building on its pioneering innovation of X4 for 2D NAND technology and past success in commercializing it, the company has now developed X4 for 3D NAND by leveraging its deep vertical integration capabilities. These include silicon wafer processing, device engineering to provide sixteen distinct data levels in every storage node, and system expertise for overall flash management. BiCS3 X4 technology delivers an industry-leading storage capacity of 768 gigabits on a single chip, a 50 percent increase from the prior 512 gigabit chip that was enabled with the three bits per cell (X3) architecture. Western Digital will showcase removable products and solid-state drives built with BiCS3 X4 and systems capabilities in August at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California.

"The implementation of X4 architecture on BiCS3 is a significant development for Western Digital as it demonstrates our continued leadership in NAND flash technology, and it also enables us to offer an expanded choice of storage solutions for our customers," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, Memory Technology, Western Digital. "The most striking aspect in today's announcement is the use of innovative techniques in the X4 architecture that allows our BiCS3 X4 to deliver performance attributes comparable to those in BiCS3 X3. The narrowing of the performance gap between the X4 and X3 architectures is an important and differentiating capability for us, and it should help drive broader market acceptance of X4 technology over the next several years."

After announcing their intention to begin mass production of their latest 72-Layer 3D NAND Flash back in April, SK Hynix has now confirmed that it has entered mass production of the high density NAND modules. Apparently, SK Hynix has already achieved the much sought-after "golden yield" ratios, where the semiconductor yield is now at such a level that it is advantageous to finally enter mass production. Apparently, SK Hynix's leadership was fearful of not being able to achieve the golden yield in a timely manner after their announcement of the technology only three months ago; however, after its "management team and engineers repeatedly spent nights doing research, yield went up vertically and has become comparable to Samsung Electronics'" own yield - and as you know, Samsung is kind of the golden standard when it comes to NAND technology.

According to industry sources, SK Hynix is already mass-producing SSDs (Solid State Drives) with the company's own controllers and firmware which leverage this new 72-layer 256Gb NAND flash memory. This is a welcome change for the company which should allow it to increase revenue, since this is the first time controllers are developed in-house. The company is also said to be already producing eMMC (embedded Multimedia Card) for mobile devices based on this technology, with supply already arriving to its customers.

Not all news coming out of Toshiba is bad or somewhat bad. The Japanese giant still is one of the biggest players in the NAND semiconductor business, no matter the recent woes. Even more recently, though, Toshiba announced they had developed quadruple level cell NAND memory, which should improve density and, therefore, reduce the price/GB ratio on future consumer products, such as SSDs. However, each increase in the number of cell levels bring concerns regarding not only performance, but especially durability, since a higher number of states per cell increases the voltage steps that are applied to it (SLC NAND dealt with two voltage states, MLC with four, TLC with eight voltage states, and QLC will handle 16 of these.) This tends to make errors more common, and the cell's longevity to be compromised due to the amount of variation in its states, which means more powerful error correction techniques must be employed.According to Toshiba, its 3D QLC NAND targets around ~1000 program/erase cycles, which is close to TLC NAND flash. This is considerably higher than the amount of P/E cycles (100 - 150) expected for QLC by the industry, which means the company has achieved what many thought difficult. Toshiba has begun sampling of its 3D QLC NAND memory devices earlier this month. everything points to mass production on late 2018, early 2019, though, which means we still have a long way to go until we see this technology implemented. This won't be the one to save us from escalating NAND prices; we'll have to look to other, more market and supply-and-demand based factors instead.

Intel today announced the SSD 545s line of mainstream SATA solid-state drives. Built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gbps interface, the drives combine new 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory by IMFlash Technology, with a Silicon Motion SMI SM2259 controller, and a custom firmware by Intel. For now, the drive is only available in one capacity, 512 GB. It offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 550 MB/s, with up to 500 MB/s sequential writes; 4K random read performance of up to 75,000 IOPS, 4K random write performance of up to 85,000 IOPS, and endurance of at least 144 TBW. Besides common SSD features such as NCQ and TRIM, the drive offers native 256-bit AES encryption. Available now, and backed by a 3-year warranty, the SSD 545s 512 GB is priced at USD $179.99.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun volume production of 64-layer, 256Gb V-NAND flash memory for use with an expanding line-up of storage solutions for server, PC and mobile applications. Since Samsung began producing the industry's first SSD based on 64-layer 256Gb V-NAND chips in January for key IT customers, it has been working on a wide range of new V-NAND-based mobile and consumer storage solutions. These include embedded UFS memory, branded SSDs and external memory cards, which the company plans to introduce later this year.

To solidify its competitive edge in the memory market, Samsung intends for its volume production of the 64-layer V-NAND chip, which is widely referred to as 4th generation V-NAND, to cover more than 50 percent of its monthly NAND flash production by year end. "Following a long commitment to innovative technology, we will continuously push the limits of generations of industry-first V-NAND production, in moving the industry closer to the advent of the terabit V-NAND era," said Kye Hyun Kyung, Executive Vice President of the Flash Product and Technology team, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "We will keep developing next-generation V-NAND products in sync with the global IT industry so that we can contribute to the timeliest launches of new systems and services, in bringing a higher level of satisfaction to consumers."

Here are some of the first pictures of GeIL Shuttle series SSDs. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface, the drives take advantage of the NVMe 1.2 protocol, and are characterized by a prominent aluminium heatsink over the controller, DRAM, and NAND flash chips, which keeps temperatures of these chips below 38°C in a common work environment. The GeIL Shuttle series drives combine a Silicon Machines SM2260 controller with 3D MLC NAND flash (G2 variant) and 3D TLC NAND flash (G1 variant). The drives offer sequential performance of up to 2,000 MB/s reads, with up to 1,000 MB/s writes.

NVM Express, the special interest group behind the NVMe protocol, which enables significantly higher performance on flash-based storage devices, compared to the AHCI protocol, published the NVMe 1.3 specification. This is the most significant update to the protocol since the NVMe 1.2 specification released in 2014. NVMe 1.3, which could be implemented in SSDs, motherboards, and HBA cards starting late-2017 or 2018, introduces several major features that increase performance, endurance, and manageability of flash-based storage devices, such as SSDs.

To begin with, NVMe 1.3 introduces a drive self-test feature similar to SMART. The host machine can now command the drive to perform a self-test without having to mount volumes and expose their contents to OS-based utilities. The self-test parameters could be left up to the drive vendor, and could include hardware tests in addition to data integrity tests. The protocol also adds much needed support for boot-partitions, without needing the motherboard UEFI firmware to store it. The current implementation of motherboards with NVMe booting support involves storing a tiny boot partition with the bootloader on the SPI flash chip of the motherboard which stores the UEFI firmware.

Western Digital Corp., a global data storage technology and solutions leader, today announced the HGST-branded Ultrastar SS300, the company's highest-performing SAS SSD to date. It is the latest addition to the company's family of Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSDs, which are used to meet the rigorous data demands of many of the world's largest companies today. Developed in partnership with Intel, the new Ultrastar SS300 delivers best-in-class random performance, offering speeds of up to 400,000 IOPS random read and up to 200,000 IOPS random write.

"Today, we raise the bar with our newest 12 Gb/s SAS SSD, the Ultrastar SS300," said Ulrich Hansen, vice president of SSD product marketing at Western Digital. "Built with high-endurance 3D NAND flash memory, the Ultrastar SS300 offers best-in-class speed, outstanding capacity and intelligent power options that enable customers to tailor storage systems and server solutions that are just right for their demanding needs. These benefits are delivered with the same tremendous reliability that has helped to make Ultrastar 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs popular around the globe."

Transcend Memory announced four client SSD product lines based on 3D NAND flash memory. The lineup begins with the new MTS810 and MTS420 lines of mainstream SSDs built in the M.2-2280 and M.2-2242 form-factors, respectively, which take advantage of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The MTS810 succeeds the MTS800 series the company launched in 2016. It is based on a newer TLC NAND flash memory, and a more compact SSD controller made by Silicon Motion. The drive puts out up to 560 MB/s of sequential transfer rates. The MTS420 is its miniaturized version in the M.2-2242 form-factor. Both drives will be available only in 128 GB capacities.

Next up, is the SSD230 series. The company already announced this drive back in November 2016. Built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, it comes in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB capacities, and offers sequential transfer rates of up to 560 MB/s reads, with up to 520 MB/s writes. Lastly, Transcend unveiled its latest high-performance M.2-2280 SSD, which takes advantage of the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface with NVMe 1.2 protocol, the MTE850 series. Available in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB capacities, the drive belts out sequential transfer rates of up to 2,500 MB/s reads, with up to 1,100 MB/s writes. It features 3D MLC NAND flash memory.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers and solid-state storage devices, today announced that it has extended its popular family of SATA 6 Gb/s FerriSSD Industrial BGA SSDs to support the latest 3D NAND with end-to-end data path protection, NANDXtend ECC, and IntelligentScan feature - delivering unsurpassed data reliability for embedded storage applications. The new FerriSSD products offer flexible data capacity options up to 256GB and feature proprietary data protection technologies that eliminate drive downtime and extend the service life of these SSDs. FerriSSD products offer customized solutions for various end-market demands and are optimized to meet the specific needs of the customer.

Kingston today announced the DCP-1000 line of high-performance PCI-Express SSDs, targeted at enterprises, particularly at data-centers with high bandwidth demands, the drives come in the half-height add-on card form-factor, and take feature a PCI-Express 3.0 x8 host interface (64 Gbps), and takes advantage of the NVMe protcol. It puts this interface bandwidth to good use, belting out sequential transfer rates in excess of 6,800 MB/s. The drive comes in capacities of 800 GB, 1600 GB, and 3200 GB.

All three models offer sequential read speeds of up to 6,800 MB/s. The 800 GB variant writes at speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s, while the other two models write at up to 6,000 MB/s. The 4K random access performance of the 800 GB variant is 900,000/145,000 IOPS (reads/writes); with the 1600 GB variant belting out 1,100,000/200,000 IOPS, and the 3200 GB variant 1,000,000/180,000 IOPS. The drives come with full-length heatsinks cooling the MLC NAND flash chips and controller; and a bank of capacitors that provide power-outage data-loss mitigation.

NGD Systems, a pioneer creating intelligent solid state drives (SSD) for public and private cloud data centers, today announced the availability of the industry's highest density storage solution. Shipping immediately and currently being qualified at leading OEMs, the Catalina SSD is available in capacities up to 24TB with 3D TLC flash in a PCIe edge card form factor.

"The Catalina is the industry's highest capacity PCIe NVMe SSD, designed and optimized for applications requiring consistent and low latency mass storage," said Nader Salessi, founder and chief executive officer of NGD Systems. "We are setting a new metric for energy and storage density to meet a key concern within data center and cold storage applications alike."

Toshiba may not be dead in the water just yet, but news are dire for the company. After the companyconfirmed it was looking to spin-off its NAND production business so as to sell a minority, 20% stake for much-needed liquidity in the face of amounting debt and multiple management mistakes, reports now announce a much more aggressive stance from the company. It is now apparently looking to sell a majority stake (60%) on the spin-off, in the face of escalating costs and dwindling prospective chances.

Intel is readying a fleet of new SSDs based on its new 3D XPoint non-volatile memory, a technology that Intel hopes will replace NAND flash in the years to come. The company developed this technology in collaboration with Micron Technology, under its IMFlash Technologies banner. The first Intel SSDs with this memory will be sold under the Optane brand. There are several sub-brands targeting the various market segments (client, enterprise, data-center, etc.), and technical slides of the data-center targeted Optane DC P4800X SSD were leaked to the web.

One of the first Optane DC P4800X SSDs comes in a rather measly capacity of 375 GB. The drive is built in the half-height PCI-Express add-on card (AIC) form-factor, with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface. The drive belts out sequential transfer rates of up to 2400 MB/s reads, with up to 2000 MB/s writes, which may not sound like much given that even TLC NAND flash based PCIe 3.0 x4 drives offer higher transfer rates; until you look at three key metrics - latency, random-access performance, and endurance.

SanDisk today announced the SkyHawk and SkyHawk Ultra lines of enterprise SSDs. Built in the 12 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, the drives feature PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface over U.2 or SATA-Express connections. The drives incorporate high-endurance 15 nm MLC NAND flash memory. The SkyHawk series includes 1920 GB and 3840 GB variants, and offer transfer speeds of up to 1500 MB/s reads, with up to 1700 MB/s writes; up to 250,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 47,000 IOPS 4K random writes. Its MTBF is rated at 2 million hours, and it is backed by a 5-year warranty.

The more premium SkyHawk Ultra series comes in 1600 GB and 3200 GB variants, with sequential transfer speeds of up to 1700 MB/s reads, and up to 1200 MB/s writes, up to 250,000 IOPS random reads, with up to 83,000 IOPS random writes. These drives offer nearly triple the durability of the SkyHawk (standard) series, with 1.7 DWPD (vs. 0.6 DWPD of the SkyHawk standard); although their MTBF are rated the same, at 2 million hours, and are backed by the same 5-year product warranties.

After finally reaching mature yields (comparable to those of planar NAND processes), Micron's 32-layer first generation 3D NAND has grown increasingly prominent in the company's NAND output. Now, the company is looking to ramp-up production of their (currently sampling) 64-layer 3D NAND, promising "meaningful output" by the end of December 2017, looking for an 80% increase in total GB per wafer and a 30% decrease in production costs.

When it comes to the graphics subsystem memory, Micron is looking to transition their 20nm production to a "1x nm" (most likely 16nm) node, in a bid to improve cost per GB by around $20, with introduction of 16nm GDDR5 memory to be introduced later this year. However, GDDR5X volume is expected to grow significantly, in a bid to satisfy bandwidth-hungry uses through GPUs (like NVIDIA's GTX 1080 and potentially the upcoming 1080 Ti) and networking, with GDDR6 memory being introduced by the end of 2017 or early 2018. The company is still mum on actual consumer products based on their interpretation of the 3D XPoint products through their QuantX brand, though work is already under way on the second and third generation specifications of this memory, with Micron planning an hitherto unknown (in significance and product type) presence in the consumer market by the end of this year.

Lenovo has recently released the specifications for their 2017 Thinkpad series line-up, with several models (T470p, L470, L570, T470, T570, X270 and Yoga 370) featuring the usual, evolutionary hardware improvements, such as being equipped with Intel's latest generation Kaby Lake processors and increased screen resolutions. However, one of the hardware announcements for the new Thinkpad series goes a little further than your usual, run-of-the-mill updates: these solutions will feature what is expected to be the first consumer-level adaptations of Intel's Optane technology.

PNY announced the CS2030 line of high-performance SSDs in the M.2-2280 form-factor. The drives take advantage of PCI-Express 3.0 x4 (32 Gb/s M.2 slots), and the NVMe protocol, and are available in two capacities - 240 GB and 480 GB. Combining a Phison PS5007 controller with MLC NAND flash memory, the drives offer sequential transfer-rates of up to 2,750 MB/s reads, with up to 1,500 MB/s sequential writes. 4K random access performance is rated by the manufacturer at up to 210,000 IOPS reads, and up to 215,000 IOPS writes. Backed by 3-year warranties, the 240 GB variant is priced at US $179.99, and the 480 GB variant at $329.99.

SP/ Silicon Power, a leading provider of memory storage solutions, launches its new High Endurance microSDHC/microSDXC cards especially designed for car video recorders, security cameras and surveillance systems. These write-intensive applications crucially depend on the highest level of reliability to provide trustworthy proof in the most decisive moments. Equipped with high-quality MLC NAND flash chips, SP's new high Endurance micro SDHC/microSDXC card meets this special requirement by achieving up to 12,000 hours of 64 GB Full HD video recording.

Additional key features for reliable and speedy performance are the card's built- in error correction code (ECC) function technology for high data transmission safety and full support of Ultra High Speed Class 3 (U3) specification.

Business. Business never changes. Whether you're for Keynes or Hayek, some truths just can't be escaped: and the one based on the market tending to equilibrium between the forces of supply and demand is oft times almost akin to a law of physics - other times, not so much. This time, it appears as if the market forces are steering NAND prices through the roof. The causes? Varied, though you probably carry one of them in your pocket most of the time. We earlier reported surging prices in the DRAM market, spurred by the Note 7 fiasco and increased production of that smartphone's competitors (and Samsung's own products) to fill the gaping hole left by its forcible market removal. But not only by DRAM are smartphones powered - they also make use of NAND flash.

Plextor today announced that it revised the warranty policy of its recently announced EX1 portable solid-state drive to be effective for 5 years, from its existing 3 years. This change is applicable to all products already sold and with retailers as unsold inventory. The EX1 is a series of portable SSDs with 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 host interface, with a single cable handling both power and host connectivity. The drives combine Silicon Motion-made controllers with SK Hynix 16 nm TLC NAND flash memory, and come in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, priced at 79€, 119€, and 213€, respectively.

Intel is readying a follow-on to its 600P series performance-segment PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) series, with the 610P series. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, with PCIe gen 3.0 x4 bus interface, and support for the NVMe protocol, the SSD 610P will be based on TLC 3D NAND flash by IMFlash Technology, the company's joint-venture with Micron Technology. The SSD 610P series will come in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB.

The company is also working on a smaller M.2-1620 variant for notebooks and SFF desktops, which will feature a BGA version of the SSD. These are multi-chip modules of NAND flash stacks and SSD controllers bundled into single packages. The BGA variants will come in sizes of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. Not much else (performance figures) are known about these drives, except that Intel plans to release these towards Q4 2017 (after September).

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced an exclusive collaboration with Ubisoft, offering a free PC download of Watch_Dogs 2 with the purchase of qualifying Samsung solid state drives (SSDs) and its newest Curved Gaming Monitors. The partnership delivers gamers an incredible package for high-level gameplay.

"Samsung is dedicated to providing best-in-class technology to gamers, so we're excited to offer Ubisoft's highly anticipated Watch_Dogs 2 as an added value with our industry-leading SSDs and monitors," said Andrew Sivori, Vice President of CE-IT Marketing at Samsung Electronics America. "Our high-performance SSDs and stunning new monitors deliver an enhanced gaming experience, providing exceptional visuals and lag-free gameplay."