Marvell today announced OCTEON TX2, the latest family of infrastructure processors targeting a wide variety of wired and wireless networking equipment including switches, routers, secure gateways, firewall, network monitoring, 5G base stations, and smart network interface controllers (NICs). Massive increases in data traffic coupled with escalating requirements for end-to-end security are intensifying the need for highly scalable compute platforms with integrated workload-optimized hardware accelerators to meet performance, power and total cost of ownership requirements. Building on five generations of the industry's most scalable and widely adopted infrastructure processor platform, the OCTEON TX2 family is enabled by a broad software ecosystem including a feature-rich software development kit (SDK) and virtualization support, delivering a unique combination of performance and programmability. The OCTEON TX2 portfolio extends Marvell's industry-leading performance and scalability, delivering a 2.5x improvement over the previous generation and scaling up to 200 Gbps of packet processing throughput.

NVIDIA today reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended Jan. 26, 2020, of $3.11 billion, up 41 percent from $2.21 billion a year earlier, and up 3 percent from $3.01 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $1.53, up 66 percent from $0.92 a year ago, and up 6 percent from $1.45 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.89, up 136 percent from $0.80 a year earlier, and up 6 percent from $1.78 in the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2020, revenue was $10.92 billion, down 7 percent from $11.72 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $4.52, down 32 percent from $6.63 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $5.79, down 13 percent from $6.64 a year earlier. "Adoption of NVIDIA accelerated computing drove excellent results, with record data center revenue," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Our initiatives are achieving great success.

Plextor showed off its very recently announced M9P line of premium PCI-Express NVMe SSDs at CES 2020. The M9P Plus comes in both half-height add-in card (AIC) form-factor, and a more conventional M.2-2280 form-factor. In both, it leverages PCI-Express 3.0 x4 along with the NVMe 1.3 protocol. At the heart of these drives is the Marvell 88SS1092 "Eldora Plus" controller that has 8 flash channels. This controller is paired with Kioxia 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash (BiCS 4), and a DDR4 DRAM cache.

With capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, the M9P offers sequential reads of up to 3,400 MB/s, with up to 2,200 MB/s writes (up to 1,700 MB/s writes for the 256 GB variant). Endurance (TBW) for the three models are proportionately rated at 160 TB, 320 TB, and 640 TB. The 256 GB variant of the M.2-2280 model is priced at $51, the 512 GB variant at $81, and the 1 TB variant at $135. The AIC equivalents are priced at roughly $15 premiums over these prices, and in addition to the convenience of AIC (easier to swap in a test bench), they feature some RGB LED embellishments.

Kingston at the 2020 International CES shows us their upcoming mid-range M.2 NVMe SSD that has the latest PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface and NVMe 1.4 protocol, codenamed "Grandview." Later this year, this drive will be launched as a high cost-performance product under the company's marquee or HyperX brand. Available in capacities ranging between 500 GB and 2 TB, the drive is powered by Marvell "Whistler Plus" 12 nm controller that has 4 flash channels, and 1.2 GT/s per channel bandwidth. They wouldn't tell us if it's TLC or QLC NAND flash in use, or the manufacturer-rated performance numbers. The PCIe to M.2 adapter in these pictures will not be part of the package.

Also on display was "Seccos," their new PCI-Express 3.0 x4 drive that uses an unnamed 8-channel controller (likely Marvell), and 3D TLC NAND flash, with capacities ranging between 250 GB to 2 TB. Kingston put out some CDM numbers for the 1 TB model of Seccos: 3,449 MB/s sequential reads, and 2,839 MB/s sequential writes. The manufacturer-rates performance numbers are up to 3,500 MB/s reads, and up to 3,000 MB/s writes.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program from Wi-Fi Alliance is now available and delivers the best user experience with devices based on IEEE 802.11ax. The certification program brings new features and capabilities that enable substantially greater overall Wi-Fi network performance in challenging environments with many connected devices such as stadiums, airports, and industrial parks. With adoption of the latest Wi-Fi generation increasing, product vendors and service providers can trust Wi-Fi CERTIFIED will distinguish Wi-Fi 6 products and networks that meet the highest standards for security and interoperability. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 provides significant capacity, performance, and latency improvements to the entire Wi-Fi ecosystem, while ensuring products across vendors to work well together to deliver greater innovation and opportunity.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 supports a more diverse set of devices and applications, from those requiring peak performance in demanding enterprise environments to those requiring low power and low latency in smart homes or industrial IoT scenarios. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 delivers nearly four times the capacity of Wi-Fi 5, and is an evolutionary advancement for Wi-Fi's ability to deliver high-performance infrastructure and optimized connectivity to all devices on a network simultaneously - bringing noticeable improvements in densely connected Wi-Fi environments. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 delivers critical connectivity that supports cellular networks, and leverages high speeds, low latency, power efficiency, greater capacity, and enhanced coverage to deliver many advanced 5G services.

Marvell today released the industry's lowest power PCIe Gen4 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) controller portfolio. Marvell's newest SSD controllers are designed to meet the need for lower power and higher performance in next-generation data centers and edge devices as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G gain momentum. This breakthrough technology delivers unparalleled performance in an ultra-compact footprint, leveraging the company's complex system-on-chip (SoC) design expertise and groundbreaking storage IP to help data center, notebook, tablet, gaming and edge computing platform architects advance their solutions for the highly distributed data era.

"Marvell's latest family of storage controllers has been architected to optimally address edge computing and data center pain points of power-performance and capacity-performance," said Nigel Alvares, vice president of marketing for the Flash Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "With today's launch, we're once again demonstrating Marvell's leadership in storage, delivering the industry's first 4-Channel PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD controllers with the industry's lowest power consumption that will help revolutionize SSD solutions for the data economy."

Marvell Technology Group Ltd., a leader in infrastructure semiconductor solutions, and Aquantia, Corp., a leader in Multi-Gig Ethernet connectivity, today announced a definitive agreement, approved by the boards of directors of both companies, under which Marvell will acquire all outstanding shares of Aquantia common stock in exchange for consideration of $13.25 per share in cash.

The acquisition of Aquantia complements Marvell's portfolio of copper and optical physical layer product offerings and extends its position in the Multi-Gig 2.5G/5G/10G Ethernet segments. In particular, Aquantia's innovative Multi-gig automotive PHYs, coupled with Marvell's industry-leading gigabit PHY and secure switch products, creates the broadest and most advanced range of high-speed in-car networking solutions in the world. This unique combination accelerates Marvell's vision for the future of automotive networking with speeds necessary to enable level 4 and 5 autonomous driving.

Western Digital is launching a behemoth, consumer-oriented 4 TB SSD based on its WD Blue product line. The WD Blue 4 TB uses the SATA interface (for which controllers are still slightly cheaper than for NVMe solutions) with a Marvell 88SS1074 4-channel controller with a 64-layer 3D TLC NAND from SanDisk. Read and write speeds are basically SATA III-bound (sequential 560MB/s read and 530MB/s write speeds, with random 4K read/write of 95K/82K IOPS.)

The WD Blue 4TB SATA SSD has its official availability date on May 13th, but it's already popping up here and there around retailers' shops in Europe. The 4 TB SSD is being priced at €545, which seems to be inline with expectations for such a capacity level. Quick napkin math saying that these should find a home at the sub-$500 level is very likely accurate, considering past pricing practices from manufacturers between the European and US markets.

In addition to the Savage EXO, Kingston also announced the HyperX Fury RGB series internal SSDs. These drives are characterized by RGB LED diffusers lining the top panels of the drives. Besides SATA 6 Gbps and SATA Power, each drive features a micro USB port that lets you not only use it as a portable drive, but also lets you plug the drive either into a standardized ARGB header of your lighting controller, or a USB header on your motherboard, for software control. The drive is sold in two packages - the base package includes only the drive and a license to Acronis True Image. The Bundle package, on the other hand, also includes a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch spacer, a portable SSD enclosure, USB cables, and a multi-function screwdriver.

Moving on to the drive itself, the HyperX Fury RGB combines a Marvell 88SS1074 controller with 3D TLC NAND flash memory. The drive comes in capacities of 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. Sequential transfer rates for all models is rated at up to 550 MB/s reads, with up to 480 MB/s writes, although you could expect reduced performance in the USB-powered external drive mode. Endurance numbers (total bytes written) are 120 TB, 240 TB, and 480 TB, for the 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB variants, respectively. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Marvell today announced the industry's first NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) SSD converter controller, the 88SN2400 designed and optimized to convert an NVMe SSD into an NVMe-oF SSD.

By bringing low latency access over the fabric and exposing the entire SSD bandwidth to the network, the Marvell controller supports true scalable, high-performance disaggregation of storage from compute. The 88SN2400 utilizes a simple, low-power and compute-less Ethernet fabric instead of a traditional PCIe fabric controlled and managed by an enterprise-class server SoC with integrated 100GE controllers.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) today announced the completion of its acquisition of Cavium, Inc. The combination creates a leading semiconductor company focused on the infrastructure market, offering customers a portfolio of storage, processing, networking, wireless connectivity and security products whose breadth and depth are unmatched in the industry.

"The next wave of semiconductor growth will be fueled by advancements in the data economy," said Matt Murphy, Marvell's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Applications such as AI, 5G, Cloud, automotive, and edge computing all require engineering solutions that combine high bandwidth, very low power consumption, and leadership in complex system on a chip solutions. As a combined company, we now offer industry-leading IP, a broad portfolio of infrastructure solutions, and a talented team of innovators ready to tackle our customers' toughest challenges. We're excited to get started."

ASUSTOR Inc. has announced today that two new NAS devices will be joining the ASUSTOR family. The AS4002T and AS4004T are our first consumer NAS that integrate 10gb Ethernet with an RJ45 connector. The AS4002T and AS4004T are the world's first NAS containing a Marvell Armada Cortex-A72 64-bit dual-core processor. Compared with the previous generation of processors, these NAS offer 3½ times more computing power. 2GB of DDR4-2400 memory is also included, which is faster and more efficient than DDR3. Both the AS4002T and AS4004T have a 10gb Ethernet port and two Gigabit Ethernet ports, which create a fast networking environment that is 10 times faster than a Gigabit network. Network aggregation technology can also be used to combine the three RJ45 ports to triple the speed of a gigabit connection without 10gb hardware.

The new AS4002T and AS4004T come with a brand new appearance. The front panel is a removable crystal black magnetic panel, which is not only aesthetically pleasing but also dust-proof. Actuated inlets are arranged around the panel to optimize heat transfer, while the inner honeycomb structure strengthens the pressure area to avoid damaging hard drives from external impact. In addition, both models support hot-swapping hard drives. The hard disk is fully secured using the caddy, and the hard drives can be quickly installed or replaced without any tools.

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.