The ExpressSlot Core MB312M4P-B is a PCIe 4.0 x8 adapter card designed to support two M.2 NVMe SSDs, featuring a tool-less removable M.2 NVMe SSD tray for seamless drive access and easy maintenance. IT professionals, audio/video editors, and gamers can quickly install or swap two M.2 NVMe SSDs without opening the system chassis, making it ideal for servers, industrial PCs, workstations, and media-heavy environments where fast SSD swapping is essential for minimizing downtime, maximizing productivity, or managing media libraries.

Innovative Removable Design for M.2 NVMe SSD
Unlike traditional M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe adapter cards that require opening the chassis for maintenance, the ExpressSlot Core MB312M4P-B revolutionizes the process with dual removable M.2 NVMe SSD trays. These trays can be easily accessed from the PCIe slot panel, allowing quick and tool-less access, perfect for tasks like data backup, system recovery, or daily operations in demanding environments. With no need to remove the entire adapter card, it's an ideal solution for enterprise-level systems where time and uptime are critical.

Montage Technology today announced the mass production of its I/O expansion device for the new-generation CPU platforms—the I/O Hub (IOH) chip M88IO3020. This product is specifically designed for Intel's Birch Stream platform, aiming to provide a highly integrated and flexible I/O expansion solution for applications such as cloud computing, big data, and enterprise storage.

Montage's IOH chip establishes connectivity with Intel's latest Granite Rapids processors via the PCIe bus, achieving a maximum bandwidth of 64 Gbps. The chip features configurable high-speed interfaces including PCIe, SATA, and USB to meet diverse application requirements.

At CES this year, UGREEN was showing off two new NAS models, the NASync iDX6011 and the iDX6011 Pro, with the i in the model name seemingly denoting that both models are using Intel Core Ultra processors. The basic design builds on last years NASync models and the UGOS Pro operating system, but with several added features that may or may not appeal to the target audience. The common feature set between the two models is six 3.5-inch drive bays and a pair of M.2 slots that can be used for either storage or as a cache for the mechanical drives. Both models are expected to ship with 32 GB of RAM as standard and can be expanded to 64 GB and both of them also supports a PCIe 4.0 x8 expansion card slot, although at this point it's not clear what that slot can be used for. As with the already launched NASync models, the two new SKUs will come with the OS installed on a 128 GB SSD.

Where things get interesting is on the connectivity side of things, as both models sports dual 10 Gbps Ethernet ports, what is said to be an 8K capable HDMI port, a pair of USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports, two USB 2.0 ports and an SD 4.0 card slot. However, the NASync iDX6011 comes with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports around the front, although it's not clear if it can be used as a DAS using these ports, or if they simply act as virtual network ports. The iDX6011 Pro on the other hand, sports two USB Type-C ports around the front—as well as a small status LCD display—in favour of an OCuLink port around the back. The OCuLink port is capable of up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth, compared to 40 Gbps for the Thunderbolt 4 ports. It's currently not know what the OCuLink port can be used for, but it's more or less an external PCIe interface. It's also unknown what type of AI or LLM features the two new NASync devices will support, but it's clear they'll rely on the capabilities of the Intel processors they're built around. No pricing was announced at CES and the NASync iDX6011 is expected to launch sometime in the second quarter this year, with the NASync iDX6011 Pro launching in the third quarter. We should also note that the NASync iDX6011 Pro wasn't on display at CES, hence the renders below.