Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 4-bit (QLC, quad-level cell) 4-terabyte (TB) SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers.

Based on 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND with outstanding performance equivalent to the company's 3-bit design, Samsung's QLC SSD is expected to bring a new level of efficiency to consumer SSDs.

The latest analysis on the NAND Flash market by DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, forecasts that the ASP of NAND Flash will drop by around 10% QoQ respectively in 3Q18 and 4Q18. Although 3Q18 heralds the traditional peak season for the sales of consumer electronics, the growth of the end market demand has been weaker than anticipated. At the same time, the supply of 3D-NAND Flash continues to expand.

DRAMeXchange points out that the main reason behind the falling prices is oversupply at various levels. First, the annual shipments for smartphones this year are expected to be just on par with last year's. The replacement demand for smartphones has been sluggish due to the lack of differentiation among products in terms of hardware specifications. Second, notebook shipments were very strong in 1H18, so the seasonal shipment growth for notebooks in 2H18 will be lackluster compared with the growth in the year's first half as the base period. Third, the competition is very intense in the server SSD market. Although demand for server systems is growing steadily, there is an oversupply of server SSDs because too many suppliers are engaging in this profitable segment. Finally, NAND Flash suppliers have raised their output forecasts as they have expanded their production capacity and improved the yield rates of their 64/72-layer 3D-NAND production. Given the above factors that have led to a persistent oversupply, contract prices of various NAND Flash products will remain weak through 2H18.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories today launched the UD230 and UD330 USB Flash drives. Featuring a capless, folding-cover design and a large lanyard hole for attaching to straps and keychains, they are easy-to-use and well-suited for on the go. The UD230 works in USB 2.0 and offers up to 64GB of storage, while the UD330 works in USB 3.1 and comes with up to 128GB storage. Both models are manufactured with the Chip-On-Board (COB) process, whichallows them to be more compact in size and more resistant to impact, water, and dust. ADATA remains committed to its USB Flash drive global leadership role and will continue releasing new models as market needs evolve.

Sporting a folding-cover design, the UD230 and UD330 remedy the universal dilemma of misplaced caps. The USB connector can be stored in the cover while not in use. This simple yet intuitive design helps make the UD230 and UD330very satisfying to use on the go.In addition, both models come with a large lanyard hole for convenience and personalization, allowing users to attach them to lanyard straps or keychains for easy carrying.

Western Digital Corporation, a data technology leader, today introduced the new Ultrastar DC SS530 SAS SSD, the company's highest-density drive and the fastest dual-port SAS SSD in the market¹, enabling server and storage array manufacturers to offer customers substantially lower data center TCO for Fast Data applications. By doubling maximum capacity of the previous generation to 15.36TB within the same 2.5-inch 15-mm form factor, drive storage density also doubles, giving IT managers the potential to reduce the number of drives deployed, consolidate servers and open up valuable rack space for improved CapEx and OpEx costs.

Developed in partnership with Intel , the Ultrastar DC SS530 is based on a trusted third-generation platform that has been previously qualified at most major OEMs worldwide. It offers consistent performance and reliability to meet the rigorous demands of today's toughest data center workloads. Designed with a 12Gb/s SAS interface, and available in capacities from 400GB to 15.36TB, the Ultrastar DC SS530 delivers up to 440,000 random read and 320,000 random write IOPS - providing rapid access to "hot" enterprise data for higher productivity and operational efficiency.

Western Digital Corp. today announced successful development of its second-generation, four-bits-per-cell architecture for 3D NAND. Implemented for the company's 96-layer BiCS4 device, the QLC technology delivers the industry's highest 3D NAND storage capacity of 1.33 terabits (Tb) in a single chip. BiCS4 was developed at the joint venture flash manufacturing facility in Yokkaichi, Japan with our partner Toshiba Memory Corporation. It is sampling now and volume shipments are expected to commence this calendar year beginning with consumer products marketed under the SanDisk brand. The company expects to deploy BiCS4 in a wide variety of applications from retail to enterprise SSDs.

Samsung is reportedly looking to increase its investment in the NAND space with a $2.6 billion increase to its annual NAND budget. The increase, which will bring the company's investment up to $9 billion, aims to increase production volume in what is building up to be the actual technology of choice for key players in the storage market.

Remember that for all the investment in increasing density and declining price per GB of competing mechanical solutions, we've just had notice of an HDD fabrication plant that's shutting down. Most of the funding will reportedly go into increasing production volume of 3D NAND memory. Should demand stay relatively stable, the (eventual) additional influx of memory chips to the market should help drive costs even lower - provided there's no funny business in price setting, of course.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing its fifth-generation V-NAND memory chips with the fastest data transfers now available. In the industry's first use of the 'Toggle DDR 4.0' interface, the speed for transmitting data between storage and memory over Samsung's new 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND has reached 1.4-gigabits per second (Gbps), a 40-percent increase from its 64-layer predecessor.

The energy efficiency of Samsung's new V-NAND remains comparable to that of the 64-layer chip, primarily because the operating voltage has been reduced from 1.8 volts to 1.2 volts. The new V-NAND also has the fastest data write speed to date at 500-microseconds (μs), which represents about a 30-percent improvement over the write speed of the previous generation, while the response time to read-signals has been significantly reduced to 50μs.

(Editor's Note: We'll see if this statement from Micron is enough to staunch the bleeding on its shares - which it should, since the company says no recognizable impact will exist on its bottom line. If things are as they seem (and yet, they seldom are), this is a checkmate move from Chinese manufacturing companies - eventually supported by the Chinese government - and an interesting way to lock China's voracious DRAM and NAND market to fully domestic manufacturers.)

Micron Technology, Inc., announced that the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court, Fujian Province, China today notified two Chinese subsidiaries of Micron that it has granted a preliminary injunction against those entities in patent infringement cases filed by United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. (Jinhua). The patent infringement claims of UMC and Jinhua were filed against Micron in retaliation for criminal indictments filed by Taiwan authorities against UMC and three of its employees and a civil lawsuit filed by Micron against UMC and Jinhua in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California for the misappropriation of Micron trade secrets.

Stocks of Micron Technology tanked on Tuesday as reports emerged of the company being banned in China, the world's largest semiconductor market. A Chinese court ruled in favor of Taiwanese semiconductor foundry UMC in its patent infringement lawsuit against Micron. The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court issued a preliminary injunction stopping the sale of 26 Micron products, spanning across both its DRAM and NAND flash product lines, UMC said in a statement.

Micron, meanwhile, maintains that it hasn't read the injunction order yet, and that it won't comment until it does. Micron's position is doing precious little in stopping its hemorrhage at the markets, as its stock prices fell 8 percent at the time of this writing. The Micron-UMC spat is fascinating in a broader geopolitical context. Micron accuses UMC of serving as a conduit for funneling away its IP to midwife Chinese DRAM companies such as Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. It is the counter-suit to this by UMC, which was won today. China accounted to more than 50 percent of Micron's revenues in FY 2017, with most of the chips being mopped up by the consumer electronics and PC manufacturing industries.

ADATA introduced the SR2000CP a new enterprise SSD for when you absolutely, positively, need to push data at 6 gigabytes per second. Built in the half-height add-on card form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x8 interface, the drive ships in capacities of 2 TB, 3.5 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, and 11 TB. The drives use 3D "eTLC" NAND flash. This type of memory has the 3 bits per cell characteristics of TLC, but endurance (P/E cycles) comparable to MLC NAND flash, which lends it endurance of 1~3 DWPD under a 5-year warranty.

The 4 TB variant tested by ADATA, churns out some impressive performance numbers - up to 1 million IOPS 4K random reads, up to 150,000 IOPS 4K random writes; and sequential transfer speeds of up to 6 GB/s reads, with up to 3.8 GB/s writes. You also get enterprise essentials such as user-configurable overprovisioning, power-loss protection, native 256-bit AES encryption, and up to protection against 95% relative humidity and 55°C ambient temperature (Google's datacenters). The company didn't reveal pricing as the drives could be served up to enterprise customers.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it is being recognized for its environmental reliability by receiving the industry's first Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) certificate in Korea with its 512Gb 64-layer 3bit V-NAND and 860 EVO 4TB SSD.

The Environmental Product Declaration is a national certification system in Korea which recognizes a product's performance according to seven key environmental metrics including carbon footprint, resource footprint, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, and water footprint.

The growth momentum for 2H18 NAND Flash market is expected to be weak, according to the latest report of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. Coupled with continuous improvements in yield rate and output of 64/72-layer 3D NAND Flash, DRAMeXchange expects the market to approach a balance between supply and demand, the contract prices of NAND Flash products are expected to decline further.

The contract prices of NAND Flash products have been decreasing for two consecutive quarters in 1H18 due to the traditional off-season and capacity expansion of 64/72-layer 3D NAND Flash. During this period, suppliers provided competitive prices for high-density products to boost the memory content per box, aiming to further improve the demand in peak season. Meanwhile, suppliers have postponed further plans of capacity expansion, hoping to moderate the price decline.

In their recent earnings call, Micron commented that they have 96-layer 3D NAND technology on track for volume shipments in the second half of 2018. Most of today's SSDs typically use 32-layer technology, with 64-layer flash chips used in some recent releases like the Crucial MX500. 96-layer is the third generation of 3D NAND and increases storage capacity per chip even further which allows smaller and more energy efficient mobile devices to be built. Of course it will be cheaper too, compared to current-generation 64 layer NAND, which should bring SSD pricing down even more, and of course generally help pricing of consumer products which use flash memory.

The second important note from the presentation is that Micron expects 1X nm (18 nm) DRAM production to exceed that of previous generations before the end of this year. Their next-generation 1Y nm (15/16 nm) DRAM is on track to begin production shipments in the second half of 2018, too. As they noted in a previous event, their product and process roadmap for DRAM 1z looks solid and 1-alpha development programs already under way.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has launched the industry's highest capacity NVMe solid state drive (SSD) based on the incredibly small Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF) - an eight-terabyte (TB) NF1 SSD. The new 8TB NVMe NF1 SSD has been optimized for data-intensive analytics and virtualization applications in next-generation data centers and enterprise server systems.

"By introducing the first NF1 NVMe SSD, Samsung is taking the investment efficiency in data centers to new heights," said Sewon Chun, senior vice president of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to lead the trend toward enabling ultra-high density data centers and enterprise systems by delivering storage solutions with unparalleled performance and density levels."

Today Toshiba Memory America, Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, unveiled a new, game-changing category of SAS SSDs expected to replace SATA SSDs in server applications. The RM5 12Gbit/s value SAS (vSAS) series features capacity, performance, reliability, manageability and data security advantages - at a price that obsoletes SATA SSDs.

A homogeneous SAS environment has long been the gold standard for enterprise server and storage systems. With vertical integration expertise in flash technology, firmware and controller design, Toshiba leveraged its leading position as the world's leading SAS SSD line optimizing RM5 to close the cost gap with SATA - and usher in a new class of SSD. SATA simply cannot compete with SAS, falling well short in terms of performance, robustness and encryption options.

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.

Silicon Power introduced the AIC3C0P, an industrial-grade PCI-Express NVMe SSD in the half-height add-in card form-factor, with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. Available in capacities of 800 GB, 1.6 TB, and 3.2 TB, the drive features MLC NAND flash. It offers sequential transfer rates of up to 3200 MB/s reads, with up to 1850 MB/s writes, and 4K random access speeds of up to 750,000 IOPS reads, and up to 380,000 IOPS writes. Also on offer is power-loss protection, and native 256-bit AES data encryption. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Even as researchers expect 3D NAND flash to achieve the 140-layer level by 2021, technology and manufacturers still have to take all the intermediate steps before we're actually there. In that sense, Western Digital has just announced that they're well on their way in producing 96-layer 3D NAND and distributing it to customers. For now, the memory will be used for inexpensive storage solutions, but the idea is to eventually ramp um production for other, higher-performance products.

Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan kept the production ramp-up (and the expectation of BiCS4 production eventually surpassing BiCS3) under wraps, but it seems all is going well with the production. He added that "(...) if you look to where we at from a yield curve perspective, because [BICS4] is not too mature, we are very pleased with where we are. Because once you get to a certain point, you can project where you are going to end at (based on cycles of learning, etc)." As announced by Western Digital before, it's likely this initial production run is delivering 256 Gb capacity chips, with improvements in yields to allow for increased capacity down the road, eventually, up to 1 Tb capacity per chip.

COLORFUL Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is proud to announce the addition of two new options for its CN600S line of solid-state drives. COLORFUL is adding the CN600S 240GB and CN600S 480GB drives featuring Intel 64-layer 3D NAND. Those looking for a cost-effective high-performance, high-capacity storage solution for low-profile applications including notebooks and other M.2 capable devices. The improved speed and capacity of the COLORFUL CN600S allows it to be used in a wider range of applications including gaming, professional use or HTPC.

The COLORUL CN600S is equipped with the SMI 2263XT controller, features a M.2 2280 design standard and is rated for transfer speeds up to 2 GB/s reads and 1.5 GB/s write performance. The SMI 2263XT uses the PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and can deliver 4x faster performance than SATA3 for reading, accessing and opening applications and games. The COLORFUL CN600 M.2 PCIe SSD is focused in offering the most compelling cost-benefit ratio in the market.

3D NAND has been one of the most important new technologies in allowing for greater storage density in space-constrained hardware (isn't that always the case, though?) As we've stepped away from the usual 2D NAND to the nowadays market-leading 3D solutions, which stack layers of memory one on top of the other (thus making use of vertical space instead of the usually more costly horizontal one), memory density and price per GB has been steadily declining - a relationship that isn't quite as parallel as it may seem, but still occurs.

COLORFUL Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is proud to announce the expansion of its storage offering with the addition of its largest capacity solid-state drive to date. COLORFUL is announcing the availability of the SL500 960 GB SSD which will join the fast-growing line-up of COLORFUL high-performance, high-speed storage solutions.

With the introduction of the SL500 960 GB, gamers, power users and professionals seeking high-speed storage with plenty of capacity for various workloads including modern games, large multimedia files and expansive data can be served rapidly. The 960 GB capacity of the SL500 makes it an ideal choice for those individuals that don't want to compromise performance and capacity.

TDK Corporation announces the sequential launch of the embedded SD ESRD4 series, the embedded SSD ESS1B series and the M.2 SSD Type 2280-D5-B-M SNS1B series. With the progress of IoT, the demand for micro storage for edge data is rapidly expanding. In particular, eMMC, which can be mounted on a surface, was expected to be potent, but the trend is shifting from eMMC to UFS, which is associated with the larger capacity of smartphones.

On the other hand, a reliable and appropriate storage capacity is required for I-IoT that usually uses a small capacity. TDK's embedded SD ESRD4 series is a SD card, equipped with a highly durable SLC/pSLC NAND flash that can be implemented on boards. It covers a wide range of capacities from 1GB to 32GB, suitable for storing a lightweight system such as Linux and RTOS.

If there's one green, DIY upgrade path available for users far and wide right now is acquiring an SSD. With prices on RAM being crazy enough as they are (even if slightly better now compared to some months ago), and the finally cooling prices on graphics cards (due, in no small part, to this), the latest times have been hard for users looking for a straight upgrade. SSDs, however, provide one of the most impactful system upgrades for any kind of user's workload - and pricing on these has been as merry as merry can be, with a chance of improving even more in the future.

Micron today announced general availability of the 128GB and 256GB density of edge storage microSD card solutions and collaboration with several leading video surveillance solution providers to promote surveillance-grade edge storage. Built on Micron's industry-leading 64-layer 3D TLC NAND technology, the newly released solutions enable greater capacity in a smaller space, delivering up to 30 days of surveillance video storage in the camera itself.

Over 98 percent of all microSD cards sold globally in 2017 were used in consumer applications, according to IHS Markit. These consumer-grade memory cards are not designed and validated for commercial use in video surveillance applications. Micron's industrial microSD cards are designed specifically for professional video surveillance use cases and include a three-year warranty for 24x7 continuous video recording usage. The Micron microSD card design and firmware is optimized to ensure a reliable, robust and low-maintenance system design that delivers 24x7 continuous recording capability with minimum video frame drops.

PC gaming is increasingly immersive, with richer and more intense visual content than ever before, and gamers are faced with making technology choices to maximize their experience. To push leading-edge performance, lower power consumption and extended durability for PC gaming systems, Western Digital Corporation today introduced a high-performance Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD featuring the company's own SSD architecture and controller. The drive accelerates data for PC applications to enable users to quickly, access, engage and capture today's high-resolution video, audio and gaming content.

With growing demand for rich content, PCs must have the capability to run intensive applications and enable the 4K/Ultra HD graphics and video content experiences. To move this immense amount of data quickly and seamlessly, Western Digital developed a new breed of SSDs to help remove the traditional storage bottleneck. This M.2 drive features a new NVMe architecture and controller, which optimally integrates with Western Digital 3D NAND. Western Digital's new vertically integrated SSD platform was engineered from the ground up, specifically architected to help maximize performance for NVMe SSDs, with advanced power management, durability and endurance for the growing range of applications benefiting from NVMe technology.