The Power of Small: Evolution of Data Storage—since computers were built, making them smaller has never stopped. This is especially evident in the industrial sector, where compactness is highly valued. As a crucial component of computers, data storage has undergone a process of miniaturization as well, leading to the era of M.2 interface SSDs. While some ultra compact fanless PC and rugged mobile PC may adopt smaller embedded storage, such as eMMC (Embedded MultiMediaCard), they significantly lag behind M.2 PCIe SSDs in terms of performance. Therefore, M.2 PCIe SSDs have emerged as the superior choice for those seeking top-notch performance and efficiency in their computing experience.

Introducing the Cervoz T425 SSD: Unleash Power in a Tiny Package
To embrace this remarkable trend, Cervoz presents the latest T425, a new M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD. Designed with a compact M.2 2230 form factor (22 mm x 30 mm), it supports both A and E key configurations and utilizes PCIe Gen 3 x2 lanes for high-speed data transfer. With impressive sequential speeds of up to 815 MB/s read and 760 MB/s write, along with storage capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 512 GB, the T425 is the ultimate solution for enhancing the performance of embedded computing systems with space constraints.

Kaleidescape, maker of the ultimate movie platform, has announced the availability of its new Terra Prime movie server product line. Terra Prime features an all-new board design with faster processing power and faster network - the only dedicated movie server with 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. The new servers are available with either high-capacity hard drives or fast solid-state drives. "Kaleidescape's new Terra Prime movie servers support lightning-fast movie downloads and can serve more Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies concurrently to multiple screens," said Tayloe Stansbury, Kaleidescape chairman & CEO.

Kaleidescape Terra Prime SSD Movie Servers
Terra Prime SSD movie servers are the fastest and quietest movie servers available, ideal for yachts and large installations. Terra Prime SSD downloads Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies in as little as four minutes and serves up to 25 simultaneous playback zones. Terra Prime SSD 31 TB stores approximately 500 Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies and the 8 TB model stores roughly 125 Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies.

Verbatim, a global leader in data storage and computer peripherals, is pleased to announce its participation in this year's IFA exhibition in Berlin (01-05 Sept 2023). Attendees at the Verbatim stand, located in Hall 10.2, Booth 112, will have the opportunity to explore an impressive selection of new storage products and mobile and desktop accessories designed to enhance everyday practicality, efficiency, and peace of mind.

Innovative SSDs take centre stage
Verbatim will be proud to demonstrate its new Vi12000 Generation 5 PCIe NVMe M.2 internal SSD, one of the fastest internal SSDs on the market, with read / write speeds of 12300 MB/s and 11,888 MB/s respectively. Alongside this flagship product, Verbatim will also present an assortment of internal and external SSDs, including the Vi7000G internal SSD, tailored for gaming enthusiasts and compatible with PlayStation 5 consoles.

FUJIFILM Corporation (President and CEO, Representative Director: Teiichi Goto) and IBM today announced the development of a 50 TB native tape storage system, featuring the world's highest native data tape cartridge capacity. Fujifilm has commenced production of a high-density tape cartridge for use with IBM's newest enterprise tape drive, the TS1170. The sixth-generation IBM 3592 JF tape cartridge incorporates a newly developed technology featuring fine hybrid magnetic particles to enable higher data storage capacity.

Innovations in achieving 50 TB Native Capacity
Fujifilm has succeeded in achieving this innovative cartridge capacity by evolving the technologies developed in previous tape generations. This involved enhancing both the areal recording density (the amount of data that can be recorded per square inch) and the overall recording area (the surface area capable of recording data).

GIGABYTE Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announced today the latest AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD with an M.2 2280 form factor. Harnessing the power of a PCIe 5.0 controller with ultra-fast 3D-TLC NAND Flash, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD delivers a boosted performance of more than 70% over PCIe 4.0 SSDs with easy installation and superb capability. Equipped with the ultimate thermal design of M.2 Thermal Guard Extreme, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD becomes the perfect choice for power users, content creators, and gamers.

With PCIe 5.0 support on new motherboard platforms, the bandwidth and transfer performance are raised to the next level. The AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD is equipped with the latest Phison PS5026-E26 8-channel controller, providing users with superior control of random read speeds. Along with an over 232-layer stack structure of 3D-TLC NAND Flash and a built-in LPDDR4 cache design, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD unleashes the full potential of PCIe 5.0 performance with 12 GB/s ultra-fast access speed, which is more than a 70% increase compared to its predecessor. Furthermore, with AORUS optimized Direct Storage support, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD brings next-level performance with optimized stability.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced a new VMware vSAN solution optimized to run enterprise class hyperconverged virtualized workloads. As virtualized workloads become more advanced, processing power and storage performance requirements increase, requiring greater capacity to meet application SLAs and maximize virtual machine density. This solution also utilizes the latest Intel AMX accelerator for AI workloads.

When compared to the Supermicro X11 BigTwin, benchmark testing conducted by Supermicro showed up to 4.7X higher IO throughput and 8.2X lower latency on the HCIBench benchmark, up to 4.9X faster image classification inference throughput on the ResNet50 model and up to 4X faster natural language processing throughput on BERT-Large model. In addition, the superior power and efficiency of the Supermicro X13 BigTwin architecture can deliver up to 3X cost and performance improvement within the same node footprint compared to a similar deployment based on older generation Supermicro systems, creating a compelling case for organizations to upgrade their aging infrastructure.

Lenovo Group today announced first quarter results, reporting Group revenue of US$12.9 billion and net income of US$191 million on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) basis. Revenue from the non-PC businesses accounted for 41% of Group revenue, with the service-led business achieving strong growth and sustained profitability - further demonstrating the effectiveness of Lenovo's intelligent transformation strategy.

The Group continues to take proactive actions to keep its Expenses-to-Revenue (E/R) ratio resilient and drive sustainable profitability, whilst also investing for growth and transformation. It remains committed to doubling investment in innovation in the mid-term, including an additional US$1 billion investment over three years to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployment for businesses around the world - specifically AI devices, AI infrastructure, and AI solutions.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today launched the Kingston IronKey Keypad 200C, a hardware-encrypted USB Type-C drive that ensures both security and convenience at your fingertips. Now, users can achieve seamless data protection and effortless compatibility without the use of adapters when using USB-C equipped devices.

KP200C offers FIPS 140-3 Level 3 (Pending) certified military-grade security in an OS-independent alphanumeric keypad for easy-to-use PIN access. It incorporates XTS-AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption with Brute Force password attack protection and BadUSB protection with digitally signed firmware ensuring an unparalleled level of safeguarding for your valuable data. With the Multi-PIN option (Admin/User), the keypad can be used to set up an easy-to-remember alphanumeric PIN for the Admin or User accounts. Admin can restore a User PIN to provide access to the drive if the User PIN is forgotten.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that focuses on providing innovative storage products for homes and businesses, recently released new design NAS series F2-212, F4-212 and U4-212, support TRAID, BTRFS file system, Snapshot and TFSS providing stronger data backup and better home multimedia experience, which perfectly meet the requirement of personal and home users. Among the 3 models, the sample of F2-212 for review will be firstly available soon in August.

More Modern Exterior Design
The 212 NAS series adopts brand-new design elements and color matching, and has a more fashionable and modern appearance design, better heat dissipation, lower noise, and more convenient installation and use.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

MaxLinear, Inc., a leader in data storage accelerator solutions, today announced the production-release of the OCP 3.0 storage accelerator adapter card for Panther III. The ultra-low latency accelerator is designed to quicken key storage workloads, including database acceleration, storage offload, encryption, compression, and deduplication enablement for maximum data reduction. The Panther III OCP card is ideal for use in modern data centers, including public to edge clouds, enterprise data centers, and telecommunications infrastructure, allowing users to access, process, and transfer data up to 12 times faster than without a storage accelerator. The OCP version of the card is available immediately with a PCIe version available in Q3 2023.

"In an era where the amount of data generated exceeds new storage installations by multiple fold, Panther III helps reduce the massive storage gap while improving TCO per bit stored," said Dylan Patel, Chief Analyst at SemiAnalysis.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced the availability of the first hardware samples that support the Linux Foundation's vendor-neutral Software-Enabled Flash Community Project, which is making flash software-defined. The company is expecting to deliver customer samples in August 2023. Built for the demanding needs of hyperscale environments, Software-Enabled Flash technology helps hyperscale cloud providers and storage developers maximize the value of flash memory. The hardware from KIOXIA is the first step to putting this working technology in the hands of developers.

The first running units will be showcased in live demonstrations in the KIOXIA booth (#307) next week at Flash Memory Summit 2023 (FMS 2023). This new class of drive consists of purpose-built, media-centric flash hardware focused on hyperscale requirements that work with an open source API and libraries to provide the needed functionality. By unlocking the power of flash, this technology breaks free from legacy hard disk drive (HDD) protocols and creates a platform specific to flash media in a hyperscale environment.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD and Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD, two new performance offerings in the Crucial Pro Series product portfolio, designed for content creators such as photographers, videographers, designers, or any performance-seeking consumer. Both drives utilize Micron TLC NAND and leverage a revolutionary single-ASIC portable storage architecture to enable a breakthrough, ultra-compact, lightweight form factor and allows Micron to ship the most capacity per square millimeter in the industry. With either the Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro, users can safely store, transport and backup important videos, photos, files and more on the go, without cloud or internet access at lightning-fast speeds.

"We recognize that fast, efficient workflow processes are essential to the success of videographers, photographers and other content creators," said Jonathan Weech, senior director of product marketing for Micron's Commercial Products Group. "We designed and built our two new portable SSDs, the Crucial X9 Pro and the Crucial X10 Pro, to specifically address these demanding workloads. With more photos and videos being taken than ever before, consumers are looking for ways to save, preserve and protect their digital lives reliably and quickly. These two new Crucial Pro Portable SSDs are a great choice for anyone who needs dependable, fast, high-capacity storage."

Solidigm over the weekend announced the Solidigm D5-P5336 line of enterprise SSDs. The company earns bragging rights for having the highest capacity among production SSDs, with these coming in capacities of up to 61.44 TB—an incredible amount of storage that HDDs have yet to catch up to. These drives are targeted at the data-center, where they not just replace HDDs due to their sheer density, but also provide the advantage of responsive flash storage. The drives aren't gunning to top SSD performance charts, the design goal is simply capacity and reliability. The D5-P5336 series feature enterprise-grade QLC NAND flash memory that's been extensively tested for reliability and write endurance.

The Solidigm D5-P5336 series comes in three data-center relevant form-factors—15 mm-thick U.2, 7.5 mm-thick E3.S, and the E1.L (ruler) form-factor. Capacities start at 7.68 TB for the U.2 and E3.S models, and 15.36 TB for the E1.L. The maximum capacity on offer is 61.44 TB for the U.2 and E1.L form-factors, and 30.72 TB for the E3.S. Among the capacity variants are 15.36 TB, 30.72 TB, and 61.44 TB. The drives use a proprietary controller that takes advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, and NVMe 1.4c protocol. The star attraction, however, is the 192-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory made in-house by Solidigm.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing several new servers to its already broad application optimized product line. These new servers incorporate the new AmpereOne CPU, with up to 192 single-threaded cores and up to 4 TB of memory capacity. Applications such as databases, telco edge, web servers, caching services, media encoding, and video gaming streaming will benefit from increased cores, faster memory access, higher performance per watt, scalable power management, and the new cloud security features. Additionally, Cloud Native microservice based applications will benefit from the lower latencies and power usage.

"Supermicro is expanding our customer choices by introducing these new systems that incorporate the latest high core count CPUs from Ampere Computing," said Michael McNerney, vice president of Marketing and Security, Supermicro. "With high core counts, predictable latencies, and up to 4 TB of memory, users will experience increased performance for a range of workloads and lower energy use. We continue to design and deliver a range of environmentally friendly servers that give customers a competitive advantage for various applications."

Today, Lenovo announced its next wave of data management innovation with new ThinkSystem DG Enterprise Storage Arrays and ThinkSystem DM3010H Enterprise Storage Arrays, designed to make it easier for organizations to enable AI workloads and unlock value from their data. Also announced are two new integrated and engineered ThinkAgile SXM Microsoft Azure Stack solutions, enabling a unified hybrid cloud solution for seamless data management. As businesses continue to scale their operations to address growing data, security and sustainability requirements, the new Lenovo flash solutions provide customers with an accelerated path to deploy AI workloads efficiently and with added security features from edge to cloud, enabling workload consolidation and mobilizing faster insights fortified with ransomware protection.

As the #4 global external storage OEM and #1 storage provider in Price Bands 1-41, the news is another significant step forward in Lenovo's data management strategy as it expands its leadership in the mid-range market. "The data management landscape is increasingly complex, and customers need solutions that offer the simplicity and flexibility of cloud with the performance and security of on-premises data management," said Kamran Amini, Vice President and General Manager of Server & Storage, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. "As we continue our journey to become the world's largest end-to-end infrastructure solutions provider, we are focused on delivering innovation that enables our customers to manage, leverage and protect their data seamlessly, giving every business the ability to bring AI to the source of the data and transform their business."

The AS5402T and AS5404T are here! The all-new gaming-inspired AS54 series bring numerous improvements to deliver a phenomenal combination of performance and price. The AS54 series is powered by Intel's latest 10 nm Celeron N5105 Quad-Core that turbos up to 2.9 GHz. The N5105 represents a 31% performance uplift over the previous generation of Celeron CPUs while the included 4 GB DDR4-2933 of RAM that brings up to 20% more performance than DDR4-2400.

New to the AS54 are the addition of four M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs. These slots use PCIe 3.0 to allow for lightning-fast read and write speeds. Installed M.2 SSDs can be used for system storage, caching or both, and significantly enhances access speed for data on different types of volumes. This feature provides the AS54 series with the dual benefits of maximum speed and maximum capacity.

TrendForce reports that OEMs have continued making concerted efforts to scale back production. However, given that the trajectory of market demand is still unclear, it's expected that the NAND Flash market will continue to be in a state of oversupply in 3Q23. Cautious inventory management by buyers is preventing a stabilization in NAND Flash prices even with an anticipated seasonal surge in demand for 2H23. TrendForce predicts that NAND Flash wafers will be the first to see a price hike in 3Q23 as prices for module products such as SSDs, eMMCs, and UFS will likely continue to fall due to tepid downstream demand. Consequently, the overall ASP of NAND Flash is forecast to continue dropping by about 3~8% in 3Q23, though a possibility exists prices may recover in 4Q23.

Client SSD: Although notebook shipments are expected to gradually recover in 3Q23, reversing an oversupply of SSD will continue to be challenging. Furthermore, a portion of suppliers have implemented aggressive promotions to secure customer orders and hit shipping targets in light of weakened demand and less-than-satisfactory order volumes from major clients, putting pressure on other suppliers. TrendForce estimates that the ASP of client SSDs will fall by 8~13% in the third quarter.

In keeping with Framework's philosophy, the Framework Laptop 16 has socketed memory and storage, making it easy for you to choose what you need on day one and upgrade to more any time later. Our pre-built configurations have set combinations of memory and storage, while on DIY Edition, you can choose any of the modules we offer in the Marketplace or bring your own if you prefer. We've taken both memory and storage to the next level on Framework Laptop 16. For memory, we've created new semi-custom Framework-branded DDR5-5600 modules. For storage, we have two M.2 slots, as well as the ability to add two more in the Expansion Bay for colossal storage capacity.

One core challenge we aimed to solve for memory on the Framework Laptop 16 was being able to offer the same modules for pre-built systems, DIY Edition, and the Framework Marketplace. Historically, we needed to source separate "OEM" modules from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron for use in our factory, and "Retail" modules from Crucial to offer in DIY Edition and the Marketplace. Instead, we worked with memory maker ADATA to create custom-label modules that we can use across all areas. Currently, we're leveraging SK Hynix DDR5-5600 memory chips for these modules, but may use other chips that meet the performance bar in the future as well.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 was released more than four years ago. With its TU117 graphics processor, it features 896 CUDA cores, 56 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. NVIDIA has paired 4 GB GDDR5 memory with the GeForce GTX 1650, which are connected using a 128-bit memory interface. Interestingly, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results, this GPU still remains the most popular choice among gamers. While the total addressable market is unknown with the exact number, it is fair to assume that a large group participates every month. The latest numbers for June 2023 indicate that the GeForce GTX 1650 is still the number one GPU, with 5.50% of the users having that GPU. The second closest one was GeForce RTX 3060, with 4.60%.

Other information in the survey remains similar, with CPUs mostly ranging from 2.3 GHz to 2.69 GHz in frequency and with six cores and twelve threads. Storage also recorded a small bump with capacity over 1 TB surging 1.48%, indicating that gamers are buying larger drives as game sizes get bigger.

ASRock Industrial is introducing new choices in industrial motherboards powered by 13th Gen Intel Core Processors (Raptor Lake-S) with up to 24 cores and 32 threads that boost computer-intensive edge performance. They come equipped with Intel W680, Q670, and H610 chipsets, and offer support for up to DDR5-5600 memory modules and PCIe Gen 5, allowing expanded possibilities and seamless integration within industry-specific applications.

By harnessing the power of the 13th Gen Intel Core Processors, they leap up to 1.04x/1.34x/1.25x faster in single-thread, multi-thread, and CPU image classification inference performance, respectively, compared to the preceding 12th Gen Intel Core processors. The new 13th Gen Intel CPU motherboards with DDR5 support, available in Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, and ATX form factors, have been specifically designed to cater to the unique requirements of the Edge AIoT applications in commerce, automation, robot, entertainment, and security industries.

Pure Storage, the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services, today announced the opening of its new global corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California to provide state-of-the-art support to employees and customers as the company's industry-leading innovations continue to drive strong growth.

Industry Significance
In the last year, Pure Storage's customer base has surpassed 11,500 customers, with annual revenue reaching a milestone of $2.8 billion USD. The new space, designed with sustainability top of mind, will serve customers and employees, while accommodating headcount growth as the company continues its strong growth trajectory and invests in talent.

Seagate has released a new firmware update for its FireCuda 530 series of NVMe SSDs that adds DirectStorage support. Seagate is to our knowledge only the second company to release a firmware with DirectStorage support for its SSDs, but we're expecting more to follow. The FireCuda 530 is based on Phison's E18 controller, which is commonly found in a range of NVMe M.2 SSDs from several major and minor SSD brands, with Sabrent being the first company to have announced a DirectStorage firmware update for its drives based on the same controller.

To update to the new firmware, you need the serial number of your FireCuda 530 drive, which you then have to enter on Segate's support site to be able to download the update. The company didn't specify how the firmware update is done, but it seems to be a standalone installer, rather than using some kind of SSD tool, which most SSD makers provide for their drives these days. The new firmware is said to be "reducing CPU overhead and I/O latency, load times and asset streaming are streamlined—allowing for improved multitasking and optimized PC gaming with DirectStorage compatible games." The list of games that support DirectStorage is quite short at the moment, but hopefully we'll see more games implementing support now that there is supported hardware out there.

HP brought some of its storage products to the Computex 2023 show, including the new HP Portable SSD P900, a portable storage option that will be available in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities, as well as plenty of color options, including Grey, Black, Silver, Green, and Pink. It also showed some storage cards and the FX900 Plus PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD.

The HP Portable SSD P900 is pretty compact at 71x52x8.6 mm and weighs just 60 g. The sequential read and write speed are at 2,000 MB/s, which pretty much tops out the Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface. The HP Portable SSD P900 will be backed by a 3-year warranty.

Lenovo Group today announced full-year results, reporting Group revenue of US$62 billion and net income of US$1.6 billion, or US$1.9 billion on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) [1] basis. Profitability was stable with gross margin and operating margin both delivering 18-year highs and non-HKFRS net margin flat year-to-year. While Group revenue was impacted due to the softness in the device market, revenue from non-PC businesses reached a fiscal year high of nearly 40%, fueled by Lenovo's diversified growth engines of Solutions and Services Group (SSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) growing revenue to record highs of US$6.7 billion and US$9.8 billion respectively, up 22% and 37% year-on-year.

After a year of industry and global uncertainties, Lenovo sees positive signs of the market stabilizing. The Group expects the entire PC and smart devices market to resume year-to-year growth in the second half of 2023, and for the IT services market to resume relatively high growth - together these will drive the total IT market in 2023 back to moderate growth. In the mid-to-long term, digital and intelligent transformation will continue to accelerate, leading to a big growth potential for cloud and computing infrastructure.