Western Digital is enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to easily transition to NVMe storage and dramatically improve application performance with a new addition to its portfolio of data center NVMe SSDs: the first enterprise-class NVMe SSD in the WD Gold family. Industry analyst firm IDC expects NVMe unit shipments to reach more than 79 percent of the market by 2023. With advancements in multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs, legacy storage technology has become a bottleneck to maximum application performance.

Shipping in early cQ2 2020, the new WD Gold NVMe SSDs will be available in four capacities to channel partners and end customers. The WD Gold NVMe SSD is designed to be the primary storage in servers delivering superior response times, higher throughput and greater scale than existing SATA devices for enterprise applications. WD Gold NVMe SSDs complement recently launched WD Gold HDDs by providing a high-performance storage tier for applications and data sets that requires low latency or high throughput.

According to the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, 4Q19 NAND flash bit shipment increased by nearly 10% QoQ thanks to demand growth from data center clients. On the supply side, contract prices made a successful rebound due to shortages caused by the power outage at Kioxia's Yokkaichi production base in June. In sum, 4Q19 NAND flash revenue reached $12.5 billion, an 8.5% increase QoQ.

The stronger-than-expected 4Q19 performance from the demand side helped improve supplier inventory back to normal levels. In response, NAND suppliers were able to reduce their allocations to the wafer market and instead focus on shipping products with comparatively higher margins.

Continuing our quick look series, this time we cover a product that came to us after our article on portable encrypted storage was published. That very article came about from two companies asking us if we would be interested in checking out their products, and when a startup company formed by Russians who specialize in data protection and embedded security asks you the same, you answer yes! Hawk Security was set up in 2018, and is actually based out of Hong Kong now, and offers data encryption solutions with military-grade encryption standards. They sent out their S-Drive, a portable solution with a 3D NAND-based memory and certification galore, with performance and privacy as the selling point.

The Hawk Security S-Drive ships in a thick cardboard box with a two-piece packaging, with aptly named security seals on the sides. The inner box slides out to reveal a premium unboxing experience with thick foam cut to shape, which in turn houses the user manual, the drive, and the connecting cable itself. The manual is handy for not only knowing the locking and unlocking procedures for this encrypted drive, but also the default password for using it the first time. The cable terminates in a standard USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A connector on one end, but a 10-pin USB 3.1 Gen 1 Micro Type B super-speed connector on the other to help make the most of connection speeds. This means backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 ports is restricted to USB ports/hubs that provide enough power only, so keep that in mind. Read past the break for more on the drive.

Phison Electronics, the industry's leader in flash controller and NAND storage solutions, is demonstrating mainstream performance using 4-bits per cell QLC NAND flash controllers and SSDs at the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. In its private suite, Phison is showcasing the addition of support for QLC NAND to its already shipping E16 PCIe Gen 4x4, E12 PCIe Gen 3x4, and S12 SATA controllers that use TLC NAND. Phison's industry leading approach leverages highly successful controllers that were qualified by tier-1 OEMs, are in mass production now, and extends new SSD designs to utilize either TLC or QLC NAND. Phison's proprietary QLC NAND controller technology enables higher SSD capacities in industry standard form factors while meeting the performance demands of mainstream applications.

Phison's flagship E16 series controller for PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe SSDs can achieve up to 4 TB in capacity with QLC NAND and reaches speeds of 4.9 GB/s for sequential reads and 3.8 GB/s for sequential writes. The E12 series controller enables PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe SSDs and has a capacity of up to 8 TB and speeds of 3.4 GB/s sequential reads, 3.0 GB/s sequential writes with QLC NAND. For the SATA interface, Phison is also demonstrating the S12 controller series SSDs with up to 16 TB using QLC NAND and performance at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 530 MB/s sequential writes. Phison's DRAM-less S13T controllers enable smaller form factors, have a capacity of up to 2 TB, and operate at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 500 MB/s sequential writes.

Mushkin at CES 2020 showcased their latest products, both in the storage or random access memory space. Starting with the NVMe products, the EON NVMe SSD will be available in capacities starting at 500 GB through 4 TB, and make use of 3D TLC NAND paired with Silicon Motion's SM2267 controller. It's a PCIe 4.0 x4 affair in the M.2 2280 form-factor, with built-in LDPC ECC technology. The company is quoting speeds up to 4 GB/s read and up to 3 GB/s writes, with up to 400K IOPS on either case. The EON Pro upgrades both storage capacity (available in up to a whopping 16 TB density) and speeds, leveraging Silicon Motion's SM 2264 controller. Sequential reads and writes are quoted at 6.4 GB/s and 3.9 GB/s, respectively, with 700K IOPS on both scenarios.

The Source Q, on the other hand, is a 2.5" SATA SSD, and keeps the Silicon Motion trend going with the company's SM2259XT controller. It offers up to 560 MB/s reads and 515 MB/s writes, with up to 95K read IOPS and 86K write IOPS. It will only be available in 500 GB through 2 TB capacities, which goes to show how Mushkin is prioritizing demand for their NVMe drives.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories today announces the launch of the XPG Hunter DDR4 memory module. Geared toward PC enthusiasts and gamers, the XPG Hunter delivers all the benefits of DDR4 with remarkable performance and efficiency. It supports XMP 2.0 for easy overclocking and offers great stability, making it ideal for performance seekers - gaming to competitive benchmarking. It comes in U-DIMM and SO-DIMM variants to meet the needs of desktop and notebook users alike.

The XPG Hunter modules are made with high-quality chips selected through a strict filtering process. They are equipped with the finest PCBs and pass rigid reliability and compatibility tests to ensure longevity and rugged durability, which are vital for overclocking, gaming, and extreme benchmarking. The modules deliver high-speed performance of up to 3200 MHz and comes with capacities of 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB to meet the needs of diverse users and budgets.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories is pleased to announce the launch of the ADATA SC685 external solid state drive (SSD). Featuring a compact and slim form factor, the ADATA SC685 external solid state drive is as small as they come. Despite its portable size, it's big on capacity and will transfer and backup data in no time.

The SC685 weighs only 35 g and is as thin as a smartphone at 9.5 mm thin. Its slim card-like form factor slips easily into back pockets or bags for hassle-free mobility. Despite its portable form factor the SC685 is up to 6.6 times faster than your typical external hard drive, giving users exceptionally speedy data transfers and backups. With this performance, users can transfer a 10 GB 4K movie in just 20 seconds. The SC685 comes with 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB capacities to meet the needs of different users. What's more, users can use their SC685 with peace of mind knowing that it comes backed by a 3-year warranty.

Crucial has started shipping a 2 TB version of its famous, budget/minded BX500 Series of SATA SSDs. As pricing on NAND density has come down, it makes sense that budget solutions start to increase their capacities as well, since there is no longer a premium on new, advanced technologies. The Crucial BX500 2 TB model features the same 3D TLC NAND as the other capacities in Crucial's portfolio: 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory mated to an SMI SM2258XT DRAM-less controller.

Since it maintains the communication protocol (SATA), and the hardware is virtually unchanged except for higher densities, don't expect improved performance: the 2 TB drive is still rated for up to 540 MB/s reads and up to 500 MB/s writes. Pricing is set at $214 (or €241) for the 2 TB model, which means price per GB stands at roughly $0.10.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a breakthrough in nonvolatile memory technology with the introduction of the world's fastest SSD, the Micron X100 SSD. The Micron X100 SSD is the first solution in a family of products from Micron targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for the data center. These solutions will leverage the strengths of 3D XPoint technology and usher in a new tier in the memory-to-storage hierarchy with higher capacity and persistence than DRAM, along with higher endurance and performance than NAND.

"Micron's innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases," said Micron Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana. "Micron is the only vertically-integrated provider of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint solutions in the world, and this product continues the evolution of our portfolio towards higher value solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence capabilities, drive faster data analytics and create new insights for our customers."

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it shipped over 13.3 million SSDs in the first half of 2019, according to data compiled by market research firm TrendFocus. The astounding amount places Kingston as the third-largest supplier of SSDs in the world behind semiconductor manufacturers Samsung and Western Digital, showing its strength and position in the market place as the world's leading third-party SSD maker. Kingston's total accounted for a whopping 11.3 percent of the total number of SSDs shipped globally during the first half of the year among all manufacturers.

"TrendFocus' research shows continued growth in total SSD shipments for all categories this year," said Don Jeanette, Vice President, TrendFocus. "Our research finds that client SSDs make up the majority portion of units shipped while NVMe PCIe also saw gains due to demand in hyperscale environments. The storyline for the first half of 2019 is NAND shipments are increasing and pricing has bottomed out, thus driving SSD demand."

Intel today at a press event in South Korea announced their plans for future product launches in the memory spaces. Optane is the name of the carriage Intel is pulling here - there's no novelty about that - and the company will be pushing a second generation release of Optane enterprise SSDs and Optane DC Persistent Memory modules. Most interesting for us down-to-earth PC enthusiasts, though - the market launch of 144 Layer QLC NAND in 2020, which should bring even lower pricing to NAND-based devices. Later, the company also plans to launch 144 layer TLC NAND solutions.

The new Optane modules apparently make use of first-generation 3D XPoint memory still - the love child of the now defunct Intel-Micron partnership. Intel's new Optane DC Persistent Memory products will materialize in codename Barlow Pass modules, with a release window around the likes of Cooper Lake (14nm) and Ice Lake (10nm) server processors scheduled for 2020. It seems that Intel's only consumer solution based in Optane - the Optane Memory H10 two-in-one SSD - is a lonely child effort which won't be joined by the previously-planned Optane Memory M15 (a dedicated cache drive for systems with mechanical-based storage, which are already on their way out) and Optane SSD 815P (which would only offer 118 GB of storage, clearly too little for current data storing trends in the overall market.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has brought the latest software innovations to the company's most cutting-edge PCIe Gen4 solid state drive (SSD) series, opening up a new paradigm in SSD performance.

"We are combining breakthrough speeds and capacities with revolutionary software solutions as we accelerate expansion in the premium SSD market," said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Memory Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. "We plan to introduce additional innovation led by our most advanced (sixth-generation) V-NAND in helping to trigger a lot more growth in the global IT market."

TEAMGROUP releases new T-FORCE gaming products gamers around the world have long been waiting for, which included the industry's first T-FORCE DELTA MAX RGB Solid State Drive and T-FORCE's latest gaming memory DARK Z. T-FORCE DELTA MAX RGB Solid State Drive uses its magnificent RGB mirror design to offer the largest visual proportion of the lighting effects. The magnificent mirror surface displays a transparent effect like a magic mirror, which is the first in the industry. The all-new T-FORCE DARK Z DDR4 Gaming Memory is designed with armor for complete protection and enhanced heat dissipation. Using only selected IC chips, these two new products can offer high performance, low power consumption, easy upgrade and completely satisfy the needs of the gaming market.

The latest generation of T-FORCE DELTA MAX RGB Solid State Drive has an innovative full mirror design which is a design breakthrough of the traditional solid state drive. It offers the largest proportion of luminous area in the industry and the largest area of color lighting effects. The densely arranged ARGB LED lighting effect design can offer a colorful light feast. The minimalist design mirror can present a magic mirror like reflection effect when the lighting is off. The advanced 3D NAND delivers up to 560 MB/s in read speed and 510 MB/s in write speed. It also supports motherboards with 5 V 3-pin ARGB Addressable LED header. T-FORCE DELTA MAX RGB Solid State Drive's lighting modes and effects can be customized via software of each brand's motherboard to light up consumers' storage devices. Maximum 2 TB of capacity is the most magnificent storage expansion you can get and the mirror design is creating a trend in the tech world. Currently applying for exclusive patents in three regions, including Taiwan/China/USA.

Amidst falling prices of NAND flash and increased desirability from users' part, companies have been expanding their portfolio of SSD offerings for the consumer side of the fence as well as the enterprise one. ADATA's XPG SX8200 Pro SSD was initially only offered in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB configurations, but in the case of SSD storage, "moar" is usually better. We'll see when do 256 GB offerings get discontinued, but I'd give it another pair of years at the most.

The ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro features Silicon Motion's SM2262EN controller packing eight NAND channels, four ARM Cortex-R5 cores, support for NVMe 1.3, LDPC ECC, RAID engine et all (eh), paired with Micron's 3D TLC NAND - no QLC here, folks. The SSD offers up to 3.5 GB/s sequential read speed and up to 3 GB/s sequential write speed, and up to 360K random read/write 4K IOPS. The ADATA SSD features a TBW rating of 1280 TB over a 5-year warranty period - and a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) rate of 2,000,000 hours (something like 83.333, 33 (3) days of continuous usage. Now that's north of two hundred years of continuous operation, which makes me sad just thinking about it and what I'd do with that time. In another conscience state, perhaps. ADATA's 2 TB XPG SX8200 Pro is $289.99, in select European countries (from eBay) at about €308, and in Japan for ¥36,680.

Samsung Electronics, Ltd., has taken its leadership position in the memory market a step further today by announcing support of the Samsung PM1733 PCIe Gen4 Solid State Drive (SSD) and high density RDIMM and LRDIMM dynamic random access memory (DRAM) for the AMD EPYC 7002 Generation Processors. AMD launched the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor in San Francisco yesterday.

"AMD has listened to the needs of its customers in developing the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors and has worked closely with us to integrate the best of our cutting-edge memory and storage products," said Jinman Han, senior VP of Memory Product Planning, Samsung Electronics. "With these new datacenter processors, AMD is providing customers with a processor that enables a new standard for the modern datacenter."

Back at CES 2019 we shared a story on Kingston's then upcoming A2000 series NVMe drives. The company's development strategy for these was to undercut SATA SSDs in pricing while delivering non SATA-bound speeds. The company planned to leverage component cost falls for NVMe controllers, pairing that with the reduced materials cost of NVMe drives (smaller than their SATA counterparts) so as to be able to achieve below-SATA price points. The choice of Toshiba's BiCS4 3D TLC NAND also aimed to keep costs down, whilst delivering performance that's "at least three times as high as SATA-bound drives".

The company is offering a limited 5-year warranty on their A2000 series, which in itself is a sign of the company's confidence in these products - despite their entry-level classification and overall development strategy. The A2000 series will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities, with speeds claimed of up to 2,200/2,000MB/s sequential read/writes; up to 250,000/220,000 IOPS in random 4K read/writes; and 600 TBW rating (all of these values are for the 1 TB solution, with TBW falling to 350 TBW for the 500 GB part and 150 TBW for the 250 GB drive. These drives make use of a PCIe 3.0 4x controller, which means savings weren't at the expense of 2x PCIe channels, as some solutions have done in the past in order to cut costs. Pricing is being quoted at $40 for the 250 GB part, $60 for the 500 GB one, and a mere $100 for the 1 TB part. The true democratization of NVMe SSDs has just caught some heavy favorable winds on its sails.

Western Digital today announced two new 96-layer 3D flash NVMe SSD families, the Ultrastar DC SN640 and Ultrastar DC SN340. Both are purpose-built for either mixed-use-case workloads or very read-intensive applications, respectively. The new Ultrastar drives help meet the evolving, and increasingly specific workload demands placed on data centers today, while building a strong, flexible foundation for the zettabyte-scale era of the future. Leveraging Western Digital's in-house SSD controller designs, firmware development and vertical integration, these new solutions underscore the company's strengths in developing innovations that allow customers' data to thrive, from edge to core to cloud.

NVMe is having a great impact on enterprises and what they can do with data, particularly for real-time analytics, M2M and IoT, and emerging technologies like composable infrastructure. Data center customers understand the nature of their data streams and application workloads and are realizing that today's general-purpose architectures are inefficient and can carry resource and cost overhead.

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."

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories is pleased to announce the ADATA HD770G durable external hard drive, the world first with RGB lighting. With the HD770G, users can not only store all their games and data, but store them with flair. What is more, the HD770G exceeds the IP68 standard meaning it is waterproof and dustproof as well as shock-resistant with its robust triple-layer construction.

The HD770G sports a design like no other external HDD thanks to its distinct chamfered edges and two light-beam-shaped RGB strips that'll show off users' personal flair. What's more, in between the two light strips is a centerpiece that features a perforated pattern that comes to life as the RGB lighting pulsates. With plenty of storage capacity, users can carry all their games or supplement the limited storage on their PS4 or Xbox console. Not only is the HD770G great for console gaming, but also great for PC gaming too.

SK Hynix Inc. announced today that it has developed and starts mass-producing the world's first 128-Layer 1 Tb (Terabit) TLC (Triple-Level Cell) 4D NAND Flash, only eight months after the Company announced the 96-Layer 4D NAND Flash last year.

The 128-Layer 1 Tb NAND chip offers the industry's highest vertical stacking with more than 360 billion NAND cells, each of which stores 3 bits, per one chip. To achieve this, SK Hynix applied innovative technologies, such as "ultra-homogeneous vertical etching technology," "high-reliability multi-layer thin-film cell formation technology," and ultra-fast low-power circuit design, to its own 4D NAND technology.

SK hynix Inc. today announced financial results for its second quarter 2019 ended on June 30, 2019. The consolidated second quarter revenue was 6.45 trillion won while the operating profit amounted to 638 billion won and the net income 537 billion won. Operating margin for the quarter was 10% and net margin was 8%.

As demand recovery did not meet expectations and price declines were steeper than expected, the revenue and the operating profit in the second quarter fell by 5% and 53%, respectively, quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). DRAM bit shipments increased by 13% QoQ as the Company actively responded to the mobile and PC DRAM markets, where demand growth was relatively high. However, DRAM prices remained weak and the average selling price dropped by 24%. For NAND Flash, the bit shipments increased by 40% QoQ because of demand recovery due to price declines, while the average selling price decreased by 25%.

First seen at Computex this year, Corsair seems to be first to market with a PCI-Express x4 Gen 4 SSD. Amazon Japan has the Corsair MP600 listed now for pre-order, with a "July 13" release date - it was also listed on Amazon US earlier today, but the product page has vanished since then. Corsair's MP600 SSD comes in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB, and will be priced at $250 for the 1 TB version, and $450 for the 2 TB model. With PCIe 4.0, the bandwidth per pin is once again doubled over what 3.0 offered. According to Corsair, the MP600 SSD will reach up to 4.95 GB/s sequential write speed and up to 4.25 GB/s sequential read. Like most other PCI-E Gen 4 SSDs that we saw at Computex, the MP600 is based on Phison's PS5016-E16 controller and uses 3D TLC NAND memory.

Update Jul 1st: The drive is now listed at Amazon US, release date is "July 1st", so today: MP600 1 TB ($249.99) and 2 TB ($449.99). It is sold and shipped by Amazon itself.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has developed and started mass-producing the world's first 128-Layer 1 Tb (Terabit) TLC (Triple-Level Cell) 4D NAND Flash, only eight months after the Company announced the 96-Layer 4D NAND Flash last year.

The 128-Layer 1 Tb NAND chip offers the industry's highest vertical stacking with more than 360 billion NAND cells, each of which stores 3 bits, per one chip. To achieve this, SK hynix applied innovative technologies, such as "ultra-homogeneous vertical etching technology," "high-reliability multi-layer thin-film cell formation technology," and ultra-fast low-power circuit design, to its own 4D NAND technology.

The new product provides the industry's highest density of 1 Tb for TLC NAND Flash. A number of companies including SK hynix have developed 1 Tb QLC (Quad-Level Cell) NAND products, but SK hynix is the first to commercialize the 1 Tb TLC NAND Flash. TLC accounts for more than 85% of the NAND Flash market with excellent performance and reliability.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it launched a new low-power Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) Enterprise SSD (eSSD) with the 72-layer TLC 3D NAND flash that offers best-in-class performance for power as well as Quality of Service. The product features an in-house NVMe controller on top of the 72-layer 3D NAND technology currently in mass production. With the launch, SK hynix has established itself as a memory producer that designs, develops, and mass-produces all key components, from NAND and DRAM to controllers, in-house, for not only Client but also Enterprise applications.

Meanwhile, power consumption of datacenters is an increasingly important concern in terms of energy and environmental preservation, as their footprint grows amid rising enterprise demand for cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). As datacenters are expected to account for one-fifth of the world's energy consumption in 2025, low-power components that enable datacenter energy efficiency are expected to only grow in importance.

Microsoft at its E3 2019 keynote dropped a huge teaser of its next-generation gaming console development, codenamed "Project Scarlett." The console is expected to pack some serious hardware that powers gaming at 8K resolution (that's four times 4K, sixteen times Full HD). That's not all, it will also feature real-time ray-tracing. Microsoft's performance target for the console is to be 4 times higher than that of the Xbox One X. The company is also giving the console its first major storage sub-system performance update in years.

At its heart is a new 7 nm semi-custom SoC by AMD and a high degree of customization by Microsoft. This chip features CPU cores based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, which provide a massive leap in CPU performance over the current Scorpio Engine SoC that uses low-power "Jaguar Enhanced" cores. At the helm of graphics is a new iGPU based on the RDNA architecture that powers AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5000 "Navi" graphics cards. It's interesting here to note that Microsoft talks about real-time ray-tracing while we're yet to see evidence of any specialized ray-tracing hardware on "Navi." In its teaser, however, Microsoft stressed on the ray-tracing feature being "hardware-accelerated."