Crucial has reportedly discontinued the MX500 line of SATA SSDs after nearly 7 years of market presence. The MX500 is arguably the most popular line of SATA 6 Gbps SSDs, and comes in both the 2.5-inch and M.2-SATA form-factors. The drive continued its run into 2020s given its extremely low price-per-GB, and reasonable levels of performance to serve as a warm storage solution in client PCs. The market is changing, with the advent of cheap QLC NAND NVMe SSDs, an increase in the number of NVMe slots on today's motherboards, and a reduction in SATA ports, which mean that it is time for Crucial to retire the MX500. The MX500 is still in stock with retailers, and comes in capacities of up to a respectable 4 TB, although at prices similar to NVMe Gen 3 or Gen 4 drives based on QLC NAND, such as Crucial's own P3 Plus. The 4 TB variant of the P3 Plus Gen 4 NVMe SSD in fact costs less than the 4 TB MX500, but with significantly higher performance.

Aetina, a leading global Edge AI solution provider, announces the release of its new embedded MXM GPU series utilizing the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture - MX2000A-VP, MX3500A-SP, and MX5000A-WP. Designed for real-time ray tracing and AI-based neural graphics, this series significantly enhances GPU performance, delivering outstanding gaming and creative, professional graphics, AI, and compute performance. It provides the ultimate AI processing and computing capabilities for applications in smart healthcare, autonomous machines, smart manufacturing, and commercial gaming.

The global GPU (graphics processing unit) market is expected to achieve a 34.4% compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2028, with advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry being a key driver of this growth. As the trend of AI applications expands from the cloud to edge devices, many businesses are seeking to maximize AI computing performance within minimal devices due to space constraints in deployment environments. Aetina's latest embedded MXM modules - MX2000A-VP, MX3500A-SP, and MX5000A-WP, adopting the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, not only make significant breakthroughs in performance and energy efficiency but also enhance the performance of ray tracing and AI-based neural graphics. The modules, with their compact design, efficiently save space, thereby opening up more possibilities for edge AI devices.

It may be quite difficult to find bargains when it comes to DDR4 system memory or high-end graphics cards these days, but at least SSDs are more affordable now to help bandage that wound. This price drop of solid state storage has been happening throughout this year, and some units have reached a cost of 10 cents per gigabyte, a milestone difficult to have imagined a couple of years ago. The 2 TB variant of the Crucial MX500 SSD, for example, can be found now at $209, and those interested may want to check out our review of the 1 TB version before committing to a purchase.

This is great news already, but there is even better news coming as that cost will reportedly continue to drop. NAND flash could drop to $0.08 per gigabyte in 2019 according to some analysts, and some alternatives such as QLC drives from Samsung could push that trend even further. The traditional HDD market is also getting more inexpensive and better bang-for-your-buck, with a 2017 report from BackBlaze showed for example how cost per gigabyte was approaching $0.02 per gigabyte a year ago on some units. As always, price prediction reports tend to come out with the US market as a case study, but our own global TechPowerUp team is appreciating having more SSDs on deck for files and programs alike.

Crucial has released the first new firmware for their smash-hit MX500 Series SSD, which is among the fastest and most affordable drives on the market (our reviews: 500 GB, 1 TB, 1 TB M.2).

The Crucial website lists the following improvements in the changelog:

• Improved ready time from DEVSLP low-power state.
• Improved TRIM and Wear Leveling performance.
• Improved SATA error handing.
• Improved compatibility with some TCG Opal 2.0 third-party encryption utilities (this change does not affect MS BitLocker).

Crucial started selling all four models of its premium SATA SSD, the MX500. The drive was launched earlier this month. It comes in 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB variants; and in the 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gbps interface. M.2-2280 variants with SATA interface, which were shown off at the 2018 International CES, could launch a little later this year. The 250 GB variant is priced (MSRP) at USD $79.99 ($0.31 per GB), the 500 GB variant at $139.99 ($0.27 per GB), the 1 TB variant $259.99 ($0.25 per GB), and the range-topping 2 TB variant $499.99 ($0.24 per GB). All four models come with 5-year warranties.

Crucial MX500 combines Micron's 2nd generation 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory with a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller, and a custom firmware by Crucial. The NAND flash chips by design offer the same levels of power-loss protection as drives that need capacitor banks to do so. Among its features are Dynamic Write Acceleration (SLC-cached writes), and Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN). All four variants offer sequential transfer rates of up to 560 MB/s with up to 510 MB/s writes, and 4K random access performance ratings of up to 95,000/91,000 IOPS (reads/writes).

Crucial at CES 2018 has unveiled their M.2 version fo the prize-winning MX500 drive (you can read TPU's review of the MX500 2.5" drive here). The new M.2 SATA SSDs bring a much needed form-factor for Crucial's SSD line, with capacities ranging from 250 GB, passing through 500 GB, and ending in the 1 TB mark. All capacities have the same performance rating: 560 MB/s sequential read, 510 MB/s sequential writes, 90K random write and 95K random read IOPS.