Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU) today introduced the Micron SolidScale architecture, an integrated platform that delivers breakthrough low-latency and high performance access to compute and storage. The Micron SolidScale architecture provides customers with the agility to deploy next-generation, cloud-native applications while supporting legacy applications that run the enterprises of today - and tomorrow. From online transaction processing, to virtual platforms and analytics, to machine learning, Micron's innovative architecture not only delivers data quickly due to its extremely high throughput, but it delivers faster time to results because of its unprecedented low latency.

"We estimate that companies using NVMe SSDs deployed in application servers today are on average using less than 50% of their IOPS and capacity. With the new Micron SolidScale architecture, capacity is shared across application servers, unlocking capacity customers have already paid for so that they can do more with less and unleash flash's true performance," said Darren Thomas, vice president, Storage Business Unit, Micron Technology, Inc. "At Micron, we consider the impact of every workload, application and environment as we design the technology, products and systems that allow our customers to deploy applications faster and scale without limits."

BIOSTAR has announced an evolution of their G300 SSDs that it introduced in August 2016. The new, revised G330 series maintains the overall design from the series it supersedes, but upgrades the controller to an SMI 2258 (from an SMI 2256). They're built on Micron's 3D TLC NAND, with a DRAM cache that boosts performance, and come in three different capacities (128, 256 and 512 GB) in a 2.5-inch form factor, with a 6.8 mm height.

The drives feature read speeds up to 565MB/s and write speeds up to 515MB/s over a SATA 6Gb/s interface, and come with a MSRP of $59 for the 128GB model (G330-128GB), $99 for the 256GB model (G330-256GB), and $169 for the 512GB model (G330-512GB).

Continuing the trend of previous reports, DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, reports the general price increase in the PC DRAM market is growing larger than anticipated as the already tight supply situation is compounded by quality problems with products made on the leading-edge processes. Based on a preliminary survey of completed contracts for the second quarter, DRAMeXchange estimates that the average contract price of 4GB DDR4 modules will go up by about 12.5% compared with the first quarter, from US$24 to around US$27.

"PC-OEMs that have been negotiating their second-quarter memory contracts initially expected the market supply to expand because Samsung and Micron have begun to produce on the 18 nm and the 17 nm processes, respectively," said Avril Wu, research director of DRAMeXchange. "However, both Samsung and Micron have encountered setbacks related to sampling and yield, so the supply situation remains tight going into the second quarter and PC DRAM prices will continue to rise through this three-month period."

While Intel has made some definite announcements and product launches of its own take on 3D XPoint technology with its Optane-based professional and consumer products, Micron has been a little late to the party on both. However, recent reports peg Micron's take on the new memory technology, under its QuantX brand, to ship later this year.

Micron is apparently taking a path that differs from Intel's though, in that it's looking to license its 3D Xpoint technology to other storage makers (not currently known which), in SSD or DDR-like formats, according to the company. However, these products will likely first target the enterprise space, with QuantX-based SSDs on the PCI-Express 3.0/NVMe protocols, with capacities of up to 1.4TB. Micron is aligning QuantX with emerging throughput technologies like Gen-Z, which could expand QuantX's reach towards the ARM server market, which has seen increasing interest in recent times.. The QuantX storage and memory will have their own dedicated controllers, sitting close to the CPU for quick data transfers, thus reducing potential bottlenecks.

DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, today reported that the average contract price of 4GB PC DRAM modules increased over 20% between September and October of 2016 (jumping from US$14.5 to US$17.5) as DRAM suppliers completed their fourth-quarter contract negotiations with first-tier PC-OEMs.

These increases come as the result of production capacity gradually shifting from PC-centric DRAM towards mobile and server DRAM, which have seen tremendous growths in demand. In fact, PC DRAM memory accounts for less than 20% of overall DRAM production. The already low inventories of branded device makers go hand in hand with higher-than-expected demand for DRAM-carrying products. And this higher demand comes after the PC DRAM market being severely undersupplied in the second half of 2016. The result: an across-the-board price upturn for all types of DRAM.

PNY today introduced the CS1311b line of entry-level SSDs in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, featuring SATA 6 Gbps interface. Available in capacities of 128 GB and 256 GB, the drives feature 3D TLC-NAND flash memory made by Micron Technology. The 128 GB variant offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 510 MB/s reads with up to 410 MB/s writes, and up to 42,000 IOPS 4K random reads, with up to 82,000 IOPS 4K random writes; while the 256 GB variant is slightly faster, with up to 560 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 510 MB/s writes; with up to 80,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 81,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The drives are backed by 3-year product warranties. Acronis True Image data migration software comes included. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Microprocessor giant Intel has launched a new page dedicated to its 3D XPoint-based Optane memory solution, a technology that it jointly developed with memory manufacturer Micron back in 2015, and was supposed to be on the market by 2016. The company missed that date; however, the technology is still interesting to enthusiasts and power users alike, due to its promises of both high speed and large capacity, a seemingly unattainable combo in today's markets.

Unfortunately, it seems that any system built around when Optane was announced will not be able to run Optane-based SSDs. In the system requirements section of its page, Intel has indicated that Optane will not run on anything earlier than a Kaby Lake based CPU. No exceptions. Yes, that includes Skylake, Broadwell, and pretty much everything else besides Kaby Lake. You will also need a 200-series chipset or newer.

Peak season demand and surging prices for DRAM products across different applications resulted in an 18.2% sequential growth in the global DRAM revenue for the final quarter of 2016, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce.

Smartphone shipments peaked in the fourth quarter on account of the traditional busy season. Chinese smartphone brands continued to post strong sales while Apple benefitted from the release of iPhone 7. "Rising demand for mobile DRAM kept squeezing the industry's production capacity for PC DRAM," said Avril Wu, research director of DRAMeXchange. "Contract prices of PC DRAM modules increased by more than 30% sequentially on average in the fourth quarter due to insufficient market supply. Server DRAM lagged behind PC and mobile DRAM in terms of price hike during the same period, but it is expected to catch up in the first quarter of this year."

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.

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.

NVM Express, Inc., the organization that developed the NVM Express specification for accessing solid-state drives (SSDs) on a PCI Express (PCIe) bus, today announced the results of its recent board elections. Elected to Promoter positions were Facebook, Micron, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. Facebook and Toshiba are new to the Promoter level, and the others are incumbents. The election winners join existing Promoters Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Microsemi, NetApp and Oracle, whose current terms expire at the end of 2017.

Representatives from the 13 Promoter companies form the NVM Express, Inc. Board of Directors, which governs the organization, including setting strategic direction. All Contributor and Promoter member companies are eligible to run for Promoter positions, where there are elections each year for roughly half the positions.

"We're very pleased to welcome Toshiba and Facebook to the NVM Express, Inc. Board, to help shape the future direction of NVM Express technology and the organization," said Amber Huffman, NVM Express President. "In 2016, we marked major milestones, such as publishing the NVM Express over Fabrics specification. We look forward to publishing revision 1.3 in the first half of this year - with much more to come later in 2017."

Micron Technology, Inc. today introduced the Micron Enterprise 5100 Series SATA solid state drive (SSD) family, enabling future-focused data storage platforms to meet the combined demands of performance, capacity and enterprise-class reliability. Micron's 5100 Series Enterprise SATA SSDs provide IT with an easy migration to bridge the infrastructure divide to tomorrow's all flash data center. With an industry-leading 8-terabyte (TB) capacity, the 5100 Series helps you manage the data deluge created by today's diverse digital universe with performance characteristics perfectly tailored to manage the data tsunami.

"Micron is uniquely positioned to help IT embrace modernization and agility, and leading enterprise and cloud data centers look to Micron for breadth and depth in solid state storage solutions to tame a diverse digital universe," Darren Thomas, vice president of storage at Micron. "Our Micron 5100 Series SATA SSDs featuring FlexPro architecture offer a seamless migration path with enterprise class reliability and proven ROI, ensuring flexibility, continuity and agility for data management today and tomorrow."

The Ballistix sub-brand of Crucial, Micron Technology's consumer products subsidiary, is now its own brand, and no longer labeled next to Crucial. The Ballistix Gaming brand will now include PC gaming hardware, including memory (RAM), and perhaps even SSDs and gaming peripherals in the future. Ballistix products will be targeted at DIY gaming PC builders and enthusiasts.

Commenting on the story, Crucial stated: "Ballistix is now it's own defined brand, becoming a sibling to Crucial (previously a sub-brand). For more than a decade, Ballistix has injected speed and style into PC gaming in a way that can't be imitated. As the only major brand of gaming memory that builds and tests products from start to finish, Ballistix brings you the proven performance and reliability that pro gamers build with. Ballistix performance memory (RAM) is designed to give the upper hand to gamers, performance enthusiasts, and overclockers."

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).

On the heels of the recent Gen-Z interconnect announcement, an aggregate of some of the most recognizable names in the tech industry have once again banded together. This time, it's an effort towards the implementation of a fast, coherent and widely compatible interconnect technology that will pave the way towards tighter integration of ever-more heterogeneous systems.

Technology leaders AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx announced the new open standard to appropriate fanfare, considering the promises of an up-to 10x performance uplift in datacenter server environments, thus accelerating big-data, machine learning, analytics, and other emerging workloads. The interconnect promises to provide a high-speed pathway towards tighter integration between different types of technology currently making up the heterogeneous server computing's needs, ranging through fixed-purpose accelerators, current and future system memory subsistems, and coherent storage and network controllers.

A group of leading technology companies today announced the Gen-Z Consortium, an industry alliance working to create and commercialize a new scalable computing interconnect and protocol. This flexible, high-performance memory semantic fabric provides a peer-to-peer interconnect that easily accesses large volumes of data while lowering costs and avoiding today's bottlenecks. The alliance members include AMD, ARM, Cavium Inc., Cray, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei, IBM, IDT, Lenovo, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, Microsemi, Red Hat, Samsung, Seagate, SK hynix, Western Digital Corporation, and Xilinx.

Modern computer systems have been built around the assumption that storage is slow, persistent and reliable, while data in memory is fast but volatile. As new storage class memory technologies emerge that drive the convergence of storage and memory attributes, the programmatic and architectural assumptions that have worked in the past are no longer optimal. The challenges associated with explosive data growth, real-time application demands, the emergence of low latency storage class memory, and demand for rack scale resource pools require a new approach to data access.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global PCle SSD Market 2016-2020" report to their offering. The report forecast the global peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) SSD market to grow at a CAGR of 33.24% during the period 2016-2020. The report has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

According to the report, need for managed service data centers will be a key driver for market growth. It is advantageous for an enterprise to operate a colocation facility rather than to build a data center. Data center colocation allows enterprises to rent computing storage, servers, and network. It enables minimal utilization of power and bandwidth and enhances the security of enterprise IT equipment.

Crucial today, in a statement to TechPowerUp stated that it has canceled the Ballistix TX3 PCIe solid-state drive launch. The company canceled the product on the basis of "prioritization of company resources and investments." The company however stated that it will continue to develop SSD products that target the gamer-enthusiast market that the Ballistix TX3 PCIe was intended for. "We are, however, continuing to explore potential opportunities for future gaming products and will provide an update as new plans are formalized," the company stated.

Crucial first unveiled the Ballistix TX3 at the 2016 Computex Expo, where it demonstrated its M.2 variants. The drives combined Silicon Motion's new SMI2260H processor with Micron-made 3D MLC NAND flash memory. The drive took advantage of 32 Gb/s PCIe and the new NVMe protocol to offer transfer rates up to four times higher than current performance-segment SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs.

Micron Technology, Inc., (Nasdaq:MU) today introduced the company's first 3D NAND memory technology optimized for mobile devices and its first products based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.1 standard. Micron's initial mobile 3D NAND-based 32GB solution is targeted specifically for the high and mid-end smartphone segments which make up approximately 50 percent of worldwide smartphone volume[1]. As mobile devices bypass personal computers as consumers' primary computing device, user behaviors heavily impact the device's mobile memory and storage requirements. Micron's mobile 3D NAND addresses these concerns, enabling an unparalleled user experience that includes seamless high definition video streaming, higher bandwidth gameplay, faster boot up times, camera performance and file loading.

"Micron continues to advance NAND technology with our introduction of 3D NAND and UFS products for the mobile segment," said Mike Rayfield, vice president of Micron's mobile business unit. "The improved performance, higher capacity and enhanced reliability of 3D NAND will help our customers meet the ever-growing demand for mobile storage and will enable much more exciting end user experiences."

Crucial, a leading global brand of memory and storage upgrades, today announced additional capacities of the Crucial MX300 solid state drive (SSD). Built for speed and loaded with advanced features, the new drives deliver an immediate increase to system performance.

With read speeds up to 530 MB/s and write speeds up to 510 MB/s on all file types, the Crucial MX300 enables users to boot up almost instantly, load programs with ease, and accelerate demanding applications. The drive is engineered with Micron 3D NAND technology, resulting in an endurance rating of up to 220 TB total bytes written by leveraging larger NAND cells to deliver top-notch performance and prolong endurance.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced its newest embedded SLC NAND Flash optimized for the next generation of Internet of Things (IoT) and automotive applications. Available with differing interfaces to accommodate design, Micron's second generation Serial (SPI) NAND and fifth generation parallel SLC NAND, offers the industry's best-in-class reliability1 and read and program performance, ease of design and advanced security features.

Gartner projects that the IoT endpoint hardware and services market will rise to a $3.5 trillion industry by 20202. As system designers seek embedded solutions to power the performance for the connected home, wearables and the connected car, the technical demands have raised the bar for the security and seamlessness for ingredient semiconductor suppliers. Micron's newest SLC NAND addresses these needs for high-performance storage technology to propel the market forward.

"Micron works closely with chipset partners and customers within the ecosystem to design tomorrow's products that meet the complex NAND requirements fueled by IoT and automotive," said Aravind Ramamoorthy, product line director of NAND flash for Micron's Embedded Business Unit. "The new SLC NAND Flash technology enable a new category of embedded applications that need reliable, high-performance, low pin count and secure4 memory for code and low density data storage."

Micron Technology, Inc., today hosted a groundbreaking ceremony with company and Singapore government officials to begin the expansion of its Singapore NAND flash memory fabrication facility.

Previously announced by the company in December, the approximate 255,000 square foot expansion will facilitate efficient implementation of 3D NAND production at the Singapore facility and give Micron the flexibility to gradually add incremental capacity in response to market requirements. In addition, the space will enable production of storage class and other memory technologies.

"Micron enjoys a strong relationship with Singapore where we employ more than 7,000 team members operating at four major facilities," said Micron President Mark Adams. "We're excited to expand our manufacturing footprint in Singapore, and we commend the government and Economic Development Board for fostering such a productive business environment."

ADATA is a launch partner for Maxiotek MK8115 processor, a new entrant to the consumer SSD scene, with the new SU700 series. These drives will be ADATA's most affordable, and targeted at buyers upgrading from hard drives. The MK8115 is mated to synchronous Micron-made DRAM-less 3D TLC NAND flash memory, in capacities ranging up to 1 TB. ADATA put out CDM performance numbers for the drive, which clocks in at 554 MB/s sequential reads, and 529 MB/s sequential writes.

Here are some of the first pictures of a Micron-made GDDR5X memory chip, up close. The picture reveals the 8-gigabit chip's package number "6HA77Z9TXT-2N3Y." The company's part number is "MT58K256M32." The GeForce GTX 1080 is the first production graphics card with GDDR5X memory, and Micron is the first to market with these chips. The GTX 1080 uses eight such 8-gigabit chips across its 256-bit wide memory interface, to make up its 8 GB standard memory amount. The reference-design GTX 1080 features a memory clock speed of 2.50 GHz (actual), or 10 Gbps (effective). The memory bandwidth for the GTX 1080 is a staggering 320 GB/s.

In its company blog post, Micron states: "Designed by our specialized team of Graphics memory engineers in Munich, GDDR5X provides NVIDIA with an unprecedented level of memory bandwidth for their new GeForce GTX 1080. The bandwidth delivered by Micron's GDDR5X memory is the result of thousands of hours of teamwork by some of the most brilliant minds in our two companies." Not only is GDDR5X faster, but also more energy-efficient than the 7 Gbps GDDR5 chips from the previous generation. This particular chip has a module voltage (VDDQ) of 1.35V, its package measures 14 mm x 10 mm x 1.1 mm (LxWxH).

A new picture of NVIDIA GP104 "Pascal" ASIC surrounded with GDDR5X memory chips hints at the possibility of NVIDIA reserving the new fast memory standard for the GTX 1080, and older GDDR5 for the more affordable GTX 1070. The picture reveals a GP104 chip with the ASIC code "GP104-400-A1," surrounded by eight Micron-made GDDR5X memory chips. We know from an older article that this ASIC code denotes the top-tier GTX 1080. A second picture (recently posted) reveals a "GP104-200-A1" ASIC surrounded by conventional GDDR5 memory chips. This ASIC corresponds to the second-fastest GTX 1070.

GDDR5 and GDDR5X are nearly identical electrically, and it's quite conceivable that the GP104 chip features a memory controller that supports both standards. GDDR5 can be had at speeds of up to 8 Gbps, while GDDR5X chips can range between 10 Gbps thru 12 Gbps initially, with 14 Gbps chips planned for a little later. Besides memory, CUDA core count could be another factor that sets the two SKUs apart. NVIDIA is planning to launch a total of three SKUs based on the GP104 silicon, in June 2016, beginning with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 in early-June (probably along the sidelines of Computex 2016), and a third SKU in mid-June.