Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC), a committed technology leader, will showcase its new BG series solid state drive (SSD) family featuring cutting-edge BiCS FLASH with 3-bit-per-cell TLC (triple-level cell) technology and Toshiba's new single-package ball grid array (BGA) NVMe PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3 x2 SSD at the 2016 Flash Memory Summit held in Santa Clara, California between August 8 - 11. Delivering a smaller footprint, lower power consumption and better performance than traditional storage options, the BG SSD series is purpose-built for the future wave of ultra-thin mobile PCs, including 2-in-1 convertible notebooks and tablets.

With a surface area 95 percent smaller than conventional 2.5-inch SATA storage devices and 82 percent smaller than M.2 Type 22806, the Toshiba BG series condenses both the controller and NAND flash memory in a single 16 mm x 20 mm BGA package enabling device manufacturers to prioritize features like battery capacity for longer operating times. The BG series is also available mounted on a M.2 Type 22307 module for applications requiring socketed storage. BG SSDs utilize BiCS FLASH, a three-dimensional (3D) stacked cell structure, making it possible to accommodate up to 512 GB of storage capacity in this high-performance and compact form factor. Additionally, the BG series SSDs utilize an in-house Toshiba-developed controller and firmware for a full, vertically developed solution, ensuring technology is tightly integrated for optimal performance, power consumption and reliability.

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has successfully developed its next generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS3, with 64 layers of vertical storage capability. Pilot production of the new technology has commenced in the Yokkaichi, Japan joint venture facilities and initial output is expected later this year. Western Digital expects meaningful commercial volumes of BiCS3 in the first half of calendar 2017.

"The launch of the next generation 3D NAND technology based on our industry-leading 64 layer architecture reinforces our leadership in NAND flash technology," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, memory technology, Western Digital. "BiCS3 will feature the use of 3-bits-per-cell technology along with advances in high aspect ratio semiconductor processing to deliver higher capacity, superior performance and reliability at an attractive cost. Together with BiCS2, our 3D NAND portfolio has broadened significantly, enhancing our ability to address a full spectrum of customer applications in retail, mobile and data center."

Samsung introduced a massive 4 terabyte variant of its popular SSD 850 EVO. The drive takes advantage of the company's latest 48-layer 3D V-NAND flash memory, and uses eight 2 Tb stacks driven by the company's existing S4LP052X01-8030 triple-core controller. The drive offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 540 MB/s reads, with up to 520 MB/s writes; up to 98,000 IOPS sequential reads, with up to 90,000 IOPS sequential writes. It's currently only offered in the 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Backed by a 5-year warranty, the Samsung 850 EVO 4 TB is priced at US $1,499.

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."

Plextor also unveiled the M8Pe lines of SSDs that take advantage of the 32 Gb/s PCIe interface. These include the M.2-2280 form-factor M8PeG series, and the PCI-Express add-on card form-factor M8PeY series. Both drives come in sizes of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB; and are driven by Marvell 88SS1093 series processors, wired to Toshiba-made MLC NAND flash memory.

The 128 GB variants of both drives offer up to 1,600 MB/s reads, with up to 500 MB/s writes, with up to 120,000/130,000 IOPS R/W 4K random access; the 256 GB variants offer up to 2,000 MB/s reads with up to 900 MB/s writes, and 210,000/230,000 IOPS random access; the 512 GB variants offer up to 2,300 MB/s reads with up to 1,300 MB/s writes, and 260,000/250,000 IOPS random access; while the 1 TB variants lead the pack with up to 2,500 MB/s reads, up to 1,400 MB/s writes, and 280,000/240,000 IOPS random access.

Plextor unveiled the EP2 line of SSDs that take advantage of 32 Gb/s PCIe, and come in two form-factors, M.2-22110 and U.2 2.5-inch. Both drives combine a Marvell-made processor with up to 1 GB of DDR3 DRAM caches, and Toshiba-made 15 nm MLC NAND flash. Both drives support the ATA protocol. The M.2-22110 drive comes in 960 GB capacity, and offers sequential transfer rates of up to 2,200 MB/s reads, with up to 800 MB/s writes, up to 270,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 150,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The company didn't put out performance numbers for the U.2 variant. We did manage to get some up-close pics of its PCB, though, revealing a rich array of capacitors that could amount to power-outage protection.

Even as Crucial's 2.5-inch SATA MX300 drive is nowhere close to market launch, its M.2 cousin is already unveiled. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drive appears to feature SATA 6 Gb/s interface, logically with the same controller, DRAM cache, and 3D stacked TLC NAND flash memory as the 2.5-inch SATA MX300. One could speculate looking at that large bank of SMT capcitors that the drive offers some sort of power failure protection that finishes up active write operations before powering down 'gracefully.' Crucial did not put out performance numbers.

A new entrant to the client SSD space, Maxiotek showed off its first controllers for SATA client drives. The first two controllers launched include the Maxiotek MK8113, designed for drives with DRAM caches, and the MK8115, designed for cost-effective DRAM-less NAND flash drives. The MK8113 support 2D and 3D (stacked) MLC, and 2D SLC NAND flash, with capacities of up to 2 TB. The MK8115, on the other hand, supports 3D (stacked) TLC NAND flash in addition to 2D SLC, 2D and 3D MLC, with capacities of up to 1 TB. Both controllers support the latest native encryption standards, including 256-bit AES, SM4, SED, and TCG-OPAL. Exclusive features include AgileECC (an efficient ECC method), WriteBooster (garbage collection and TRIM), Frequency Throttling (power management), and VPR (virtual parity recovery). ADATA is one of the launch partners, and already has an MK8115-based drive.

ADATA also unveiled its SR1030 SSD targeted at workstation/enterprise builds. The drive ticks on a Seagate (ex-SandForce) SF-3514 processor, wired to 3D MLC NAND flash, and comes in capacities ranging between 128 GB to 1 TB, with sequential read/write performance rated at up to 560 MB/s reads, with up to 530 MB/s writes. You get a lot of SandForce-made features such as DuraWrite (garbage collection enhancement), Shield and RAISE (protection).

ADATA showed off its flagship M.2 PCIe SSD lineup, the SX8000NP. These drives will target a price-performance sweetspot between the fastest SATA drives, and the enthusiast M.2 ones. They're driven by a Silicon Motion SMI2260H processor, wired to 3D (stacked) MLC NAND flash memory. This drive takes advantage of PCI-Express 3.0 x4, and the new NVMe protocol, to serve up sequential transfer rates of up to 2,000 MB/s reads, with up to 800 MB/s writes. ADATA put up its own CDM performance numbers for a 480 GB variant of this drive.

OCZ is refining its popular consumer SSD brands to reach out to more buyers. As part of the integration with Toshiba, they rebranded their consumer SSD lines, to VT180, and the TR150, which more closely aligns with Toshiba's SSD model naming. Besides the naming, both drives are identical to the Vector 180 and Trion 150. The VT180 comes in capacities ranging from 120 GB to 960 GB, and is powered by Toshiba-made MLC NAND flash. These drives offer sequential transfer rates of up to 550 MB/s reads, with up to 530 MB/s writes, and 96,000 IOPS 4K random reads, with 90,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The TR150, on the other hand, runs TLC NAND flash memory, and although its maximum sequential speeds are rated the same as the VT180 series, their 4K random access numbers are different - 87,000 IOPS reads, and 83,000 IOPS writes.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., an expert provider of advanced memory solutions for more than three decades, today announced worldwide availability of the 750 EVO solid state drive (SSD) in 120GB, 250GB and an all new 500GB capacity. The 750 EVO SSDs provide mainstream consumers and PC builders with an efficient migration path from hard disk drives (HDDs) or slow performing entry-level SSDs to a faster and more reliable storage solution for every day computer use.

"Samsung is committed to constantly evolving and providing high-quality memory solutions that fit general consumer needs," said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "We have seen high consumer demand for our 750 EVO in the 120GB and 250GB capacities, which have been available in select emerging markets since last year. We want to meet the consumers' expectation who seek a reliable memory solution to extend the longevity of their existing computers in an easy and effective way. By adding the 500GB version to the current 750 EVO line-up and supplying the drives to more regions, consumers who need high data consumption will be better served."

Transcend Information, Inc., a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade flash and DRAM products, is proud to announce the release of its industrial-grade SuperMLC microSD cards. Positioned between its SLC and MLC NAND flash offerings, Transcend's exclusive SuperMLC technology features a cost-effective solution that offers performance close to that of SLC NAND flash. The newly-released SuperMLC microSD cards boast high-performance, exceptional endurance, and wide temperature tolerance (-40°C to 85°C) at affordable prices, ideal for industrial applications such as medical devices, surveillance systems, and POS terminals.

Combining the benefits of both Single-Level Cell (SLC) and Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash, Transcend has successfully developed SuperMLC technology by reprogramming the two bits per cell of MLC into one bit per cell, greatly boosting its performance. The transfer speed of Transcend's new UHS-I Class 1 SuperMLC microSD cards can reach up to 95MB/s, double the speed of MLC flash chips. Although total capacity is reduced, SuperMLC offers a good balance for industrial applications that demand quality that is comparable to SLC NAND flash at a cost-effective price.

Lite-On unveiled the Mu-II line of consumer SSDs. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, the drives come in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB. The drives feature Toshiba-made 15 nm TLC NAND flash memory. The 480 GB variant offers sequential speeds of up to 555 MB/s reads with 520 MB/s writes; the 240 GB and 480 GB variants, and up to 500 MB/s reads with up to 360 MB/s writes for the 120 GB variant. Standard features include TRIM and NCQ. The drives will be backed by 3-year warranties.

Plextor unveiled the M6S Plus series performance-segment consumer SSDs. A successor to the M6S series launched as recently as February 2016, the M6S Plus features 15 nm Toggle NAND flash chips from Toshiba, instead of the 19 nm ones found on the original M6S. The controller remains unchanged - Marvell 88SS9188. The drives are built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface.

The drives come in three capacities - 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB, featuring DDR3 DRAM caches of 256 MB, 512 MB, and 768 MB, respectively. All three models offer sequential read performance of up to 520 MB/s, with sequential writes of up to 300 MB/s, 420 MB/s, and 440 MB/s, depending on the capacity. Their 4K random access performance numbers similarly vary, at up to 88,000 IOPS, up to 90,000 IOPS, and up to 94,000 IOPS, respectively. The company didn't announce pricing.

Intel unveiled the SSD 5 series (SSD 540s) of mainstream solid-state drives. The SSD 5 Series is part of Intel's new nomenclature for its consumer SSD lineup. The SSD 7 Series leads the pack with the highest performance, leveraging exotic interfaces such as M.2 PCIe, U.2, or PCIe add-on card, and NVMe protocol; the SSD 5 Pro series retains conventional 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s and M.2 SATA interfaces, but with the fastest MLC NAND flash memory. The SSD 5 series, however, offers TLC NAND flash memory, and is designed to be cost-effective.

The SSD 5 series comes in capacities of 180 GB, 240 GB, 360 GB, 480 GB, and 1 TB, and in two form-factors - 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch, and 80 mm M.2 with SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Transfer rates vary by model, but you're looking at read speeds of up to 560 MB/s, with write speeds of up to 480 MB/s. The SSD 5 Series is perhaps the only TLC NAND flash SSD in the market to ship with a 5-year warranty.

Recently, Shenzhen Renice Technology Co., Ltd., a Shenzhen-based high-end solid state drive manufacturer, announced that the company will release its 2TB R-SATA interface-based solid state drive in early April of 2016. R-SATA, or Rugged SATA in short, is the unique interface that has been designed specifically to address vibration and the shock problem during application. It can efficiently resolve the undesirable intermittent contact or potential signal spikes resulting from vibration and shock in the SATA gold finger connector.

The release of Renice X9 R-SATA SSDs shall bring a new highly reliable and big-capacity solution for its long-time industrial users. The X9 R-SATA SSDs have abundant highlights. They actually use Renice's own SATA3 controller RS3502-IT that not only assures the independence or controllability but also provides a product lifespan of 2-3 times similar products in the market with its unique NAND flash control algorithm.

Korean DRAM and NAND flash giant SK Hynix will be ready to ship its 4 GB stacked second generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) chips from Q3, 2016. These packages will be made up of four 1 GB dies, with a bandwidth-per-pin of 1 Gbps, 1.6 Gbps, and 2 Gbps, working out to per-stack bandwidths of 128 GB/s, 204 GB/s, and 256 GB/s, respectively.

These chips will target applications such as graphics cards, network infrastructure, HPC, and servers. The company is also designing 8 GB stacks, made up of eight 1 GB dies. These stacks will be targeted at HPC and server applications. The company is also offering cost-effective 2 GB, 2-die stacks, for graphics cards. The cost-effective 2 GB, 2-die stacks could prove particularly important for the standard's competition against GDDR5X, particularly in mid-range and performance-segment graphics cards.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it is now shipping the industry's largest solid state drive (SSD) - the "PM1633a," a 15.36 terabyte (TB) drive. First revealed at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit in August, the 15.36TB SSD is based on a 12Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface, for use in enterprise storage systems. Because the PM1633a comes in a 2.5-inch form factor, enterprise storage managers can fit twice as many of the drives in a standard 19-inch, 2U rack, compared to an equivalent 3.5-inch storage drive

"To satisfy an increasing market need for ultra-high-capacity SAS SSDs from leading enterprise storage system manufacturers, we are directing our best efforts toward meeting our customers' SSD requests," said Jung-bae Lee, Senior Vice President, Memory Product Planning and Application Engineering Team, Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to lead the industry with next-generation SSDs, using our advanced 3D V-NAND memory technology, in order to accelerate the growth of the premium memory market while delivering greater performance and efficiency to our customers."

A FAST '16 paper titled "Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected," by Professor Bianca Schroeder of the University of Toronto, and Raghav Lagisetty and Arif Merchant of Google, studied the reliability data from millions of SSD drive-days over a period of 6 years, to come up with some very interesting conclusions on SSD reliability. One of the study's biggest findings is that high-end (read: enterprise) SSDs with single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory are no more reliable than cheaper multi-level cell (MLC) drives. Besides millions of drive-hours, the group also studied 10 different models of enterprise and consumer SSDs, from three different memory types - MLC NAND, SLC NAND, and eMLC NAND.

The study also shows that RBER (raw bit error rate) is a more dependable measure of reliability than UBER (uncorrectable bit error rate) mentioned in drive specs or datasheets. RBER increases slower than expected from wearout, and isn't correlated with UBER. However, the measured/real-world UBER is higher for SSDs than HDDs. This means that while SSDs are less likely to "fail" than HDDs, they're more likely to lose portions of their data. Keep your SSDs regularly imaged. Age, rather than usage, affects reliability of SSDs. A disturbing 30-80% of SSDs in the study developed at least one bad-block, and 2-7% of the SSDs developed at least one bad chip, within the first 4 years of deployment.

Sony is making its international debut in consumer SSDs, with the SLW-M series. The company was selling some of its first SSDs locally in Japan. Built in the 7 mm thick 2.5-inch form-factor, the drives feature SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and come in capacities of 240 GB (SLW-MG2) and 480 GB (SLW-MG4). There's no word on the controller or NAND flash make, but the company is advertising performance figures of up to 560 MB/s reads, with up to 530 MB/s writes. A 9.5 mm spacer, and a license to Acronis True image 2015 HD come included. Sony is also including its very own drive management software, the Sony SSD Toolbox.Update: DIYPC HK posted a picture of the drive's PCB. It reveals a rebranded Phison S10 series controller, and Toshiba A19 TLC NAND flash.

In this week's TechPowerUp News - WD's whopping $19 billion acquisition of NAND flash major SanDisk and what it could mean for both brands, MSI's insanely powerful all-in-one gaming desktop; and a fully-integrated NUC desktop by Intel following three generations of the revolutionary platform. Also, an exclusive sneak peek at SilverStone's Raven RVX01 mid-tower case!

Toshiba today launched a new line-up of NAND flash memory products for embedded applications that are compatible with the widely used Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). Wide ranging applications for the new "Serial Interface NAND" include such consumer applications as flat-screen TVs, printers and wearable devices, and industrial applications, including robots. Users can choose from a wide line-up of 12 products that offers three densities, 1Gbit, 2Gbit and 4Gbit; two packages, WSON[1] and SOP[2] and two power supply voltages. Samples shipment starts today and mass production is scheduled to begin with the 1Gbit products from December. Mass production of the remaining line-up will follow.

Compatibility with the widely used SPI, which can be controlled with just six pins, allows the new "Serial Interface NAND" to be used as SLC NAND flash memory, with a low pin count, small package and large capacity.

Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk Corporation today announced the start of equipment installation in the New Fab 2 facility at Yokkaichi Operations. New Fab 2 is primarily intended to provide the clean room space necessary to transition a significant portion of the current Yokkaichi 2D NAND capacity to 3D flash memory. The companies also signed definitive agreements for joint manufacturing of 3D flash memory and investment in New Fab 2.

Seiichi Mori, Corporate Senior Vice President of Toshiba Corporation and President and CEO of Semiconductor & Storage Products Company, said, "The partnership of SanDisk and Toshiba has consistently pioneered advances in the memory industry through our technology leadership and commitment to innovation and excellence. We look forward to fabricating 3D flash memory, BiCS FLASH, in New Fab 2."

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., announced today two new internal solid-state drive (SSD) storage devices with up to 960 GB of capacity. The new SSDs include the Toshiba Q300 Pro Series Internal SSD Hard Drive, built for gaming and creative applications with high-end demand for performance and reliability and the Toshiba Q300 Series Internal SSD, offering a balance of high performance and value, ideal for PC upgrades from traditional hard drives. With Adaptive Size SLC Write cache technology to enable SLC-like performance, both models offer high processing speed and low power consumption and are compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.

"Toshiba's announcement of the new Q300 Pro and Q300 internal SSDs demonstrates that Toshiba is continuously striving to bring the best storage solutions to the market," said Maciek Brzeski, Vice President of Branded Storage Products, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Today's announcement addresses increasing consumer demand for speed, performance, quality and reliability to improve their computing experience. As the inventor of flash memory, our new Q300 and Q300 Pro Internal SSD Series delivers leading-class performance and reliability to meet a wide variety of computing needs."