Corsair gave its SSD family a much needed shot in the arm, with the Neutron XT line of performance SSDs. Built in the 7 mm thick, 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, these drives combine a Phison PS3110 quad-core controller, with modern 19 nm Toshiba A19 MLC NAND flash chips, over an 8-channel interface. The PS3110 brings innovations to the table, such as SmartFlush, which pushes inbound data to the flash, minimizing the chance of data-loss, in the event of a power failure. Other features include native 256-bit AES encryption, with TCG Opal 2.0 compliance.

Corsair Neutron XT comes in three capacities, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. The 240 GB variant offers sequential transfer rates of up to 564 MB/s reads, with up to 547 MB/s writes. The 480 GB and 960 GB variants, on the other hand, offer up to 562 MB/s reads, with up to 542 MB/s writes on the 480 GB variant, and up to 532 MB/s on the 960 GB one. All three are rated with write endurance of 124 TB. Corsair also updated its SSD Toolbox software, with a refreshed user interface. It lets you manually optimize performance, update firmware, tweak overprovisioning, clone, erase, and monitor SMART status of the drive. Corsair didn't finalize pricing.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, has released a firmware update v5.8.2 for the following solid state drives (SSD) equipped with SandForce 2200 series controllers: SX910/SX900/SP900/S510.

The new firmware improves overall SSD stability and SSD reliability after unsafe power cycling. Purchasers who wish to update their SSD firmware should go to this page, select the corresponding SSD product, and then download the compressed Firmware 5.8.2 file and extract it. Then locate the executable file ADATA_SF_FieldUpdater and run it as administrator.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 3-bit multi-level-cell (MLC) three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, for use in solid state drives (SSDs).

"With the addition of a whole new line of high density SSDs that is both performance- and value-driven, we believe the 3-bit V-NAND will accelerate the transition of data storage devices from hard disk drives to SSDs," said Jaesoo Han, Senior Vice President, Memory Sales & Marketing, Samsung Electronics. "The wider variety of SSDs will increase our product competitiveness as we further expand our rapidly growing SSD business."

The 3-bit V-NAND is Samsung's latest second generation V-NAND device, which utilizes 32 vertically stacked cell layers per NAND memory chip. Each chip provides 128 gigabits (Gb) of memory storage.

ADATA Technology, a leading global manufacturer of high-performance DRAM memory modules and NAND Flash application products, today launches its SR1010 enterprise grade server SSD featuring comprehensive data encryption, reliability, superior performance and high compatibility with many operating systems. Available in 100GB, 240GB and 480GB sizes, ADATA's SR1010 SSD is a perfect upgrade solution for industrial servers, data centers and embedded devices.

For enterprise servers and data centers, unexpected system failure leads to incalculable damage and loss of vital information. To help safeguard against such scenarios, commercial servers require a powerful yet effective protection mechanism: PLP (Power-Loss Protection). Thanks to PLP technology, ADATA's SR1010 SSD helps to prevent catastrophic data crashes caused by system failures, such as utility power grid failures or data center backup generator failures. ADATA's SR1010 SSD also supports S.M.A.R.T., which monitors your SSDs' status, thus ensuring your data's security and integrity, as well as improving the SSD's efficiency.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., (TAEC), a committed leader that collaborates with technology companies to create breakthrough designs, today announced the launch of a class of e-MMCTM embedded NAND flash memory products that are among the world's smallest.The new products integrate NAND chips fabricated with Toshiba's cutting-edge 15 nm process technology and a controller to manage basic control functions for NAND applications into a single package.

Fully compliant with the latest JEDEC e-MMC standard, the new chips are designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, tablet PCs and wearable devices. Sample shipment of the 16 gigabyte (GB) products begins today, with 8GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB products to follow. By utilizing the 15nm process technology, the new product's package size is approximately 26 percent smaller than comparable Toshiba products and offers faster read/write performance due to improvements in basic chip performance and controller optimization. The read speed is approximately eight percent faster (max.), while the write speed is approximately 20 percent faster (max.).

Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk Corporation today celebrated the opening of the second phase of the No. 5 semiconductor fabrication facility (Fab 5) and the start of construction of the new No. 2 fabrication facility (Fab 2) at Yokkaichi Operations, Toshiba's NAND Flash memory plant in Mie prefecture, Japan.

Toshiba started construction of the second phase of Fab 5 in August 2013, and Toshiba and SanDisk have overseen installation of production equipment in the expanded facility since July this year. Production in phase 2 began at the start of this month, with 15 nm NAND flash memory process technology, the world's smallest and most advanced node. Toshiba and SanDisk announced deployment of this jointly developed 15 nm NAND flash process in April this year, with initial production in part of Fab 5 phase 1, and now target conversion of the remaining capacity in phase 1 to the new process technology.

Apotop, maker of creative electronics and peripherals, has released the S3C SATA III SSD with SM2246 controller and Synchronous NAND Flash coming in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB sizes.

Upgrade and speed up your computer with the Apotop S3C SSD which uses cutting-edge solid state architecture with a SM2246 controller with Synchronous NAND flash, capable of reaching sequential read speeds of up to 500 MB/s. The S3C also allows for exceptionally quick file transfers during editing and backup because of the supported 300 MB/s sequential write speed.

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it will showcase its latest NAND flash and storage products at Flash Memory Summit, the world's largest flash memory conference, which will be held from August 5 to 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, USA. The exhibition part of Flash Memory Summit will be held in the latter two days, August 6 and 7, and Toshiba will be exhibiting at booth #504.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, today introduced SM2256, the world's first complete merchant ASIC/firmware SATA 6 Gb/s SSD controller solution supporting 1x/1y/1z nm triple-level cell (TLC) NAND from all major NAND suppliers.

Leveraging Silicon Motion's proprietary NANDXtend error-correcting code (ECC) technology, the SM2256 provides comprehensive data protection and enhances the endurance and retention of TLC NAND, delivering more than three times better durability for TLC SSD. The SM2256 and Silicon Motion's other products will be showcased at booth #615 and # 617 at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA from August 5 to 7.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company, today is previewing a new architecture for solid-state drives (SSDs) that enables applications to provide faster insights to the data-intensive questions of tomorrow. The demonstration shows unprecedented SSD performance levels that are achieved by utilizing a combination of HGST's new, latency-optimized interface protocols with next-generation non-volatile memory components.

The SSD demonstration utilizes a PCIe interface and delivers three million random read IOs per second of 512 bytes each when operating in a queued environment and a random read access latency of 1.5 microseconds (us) in non-queued settings, delivering results that cannot be achieved with existing SSD architectures and NAND Flash memories. This performance is orders of magnitude faster than existing Flash based SSDs, resulting in a new class of block storage devices.

ATP, the leading manufacturer of embedded Flash and ruggedized SSD and DRAM modules, introduces its latest technology, advancedMLC, also known as "aMLC". Developed by ATP, aMLC is an advanced firmware technology uniquely implemented onto ATP's NAND Flash products to vastly improve the endurance and performance of these storage devices while using mainstream MLC NAND to provide the best cost effective solution for any read/write intensive applications.

ATP will showcase this technology and related products at the Flash Memory Summit 2014 from August 5 to 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, booth# 516.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today launched the 850 PRO, a new solid state drive (SSD) line-up featuring Samsung's cutting-edge three-dimensional (3D) vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory technology. The new Samsung 850 PRO, unveiled at the 2014 Samsung SSD Global Summit in Seoul, offers a new breed of performance for solid state drives and will be available globally across 53 markets from this month.

Based on Samsung's proprietary V-NAND technology, the new 850 PRO is ideal for use in high-end PCs and workstations. Samsung's V-NAND features a proprietary vertical cell structure and represents a breakthrough in overcoming the density limit currently facing planar NAND architecture used in conventional flash memory, yielding significant speed, endurance and energy efficiency improvements.

The consumer SSD market could witness a price-war, with leading manufacturers spooling up production, according to industry sources. NAND flash chip supplier Micron Technology reportedly reduced supplies of its chips to other manufacturers, in a possible bid to increase production of consumer SSDs bearing its own channel brand, Crucial Memory. The company plans to double shipments of Crucial-branded SSDs quarter-over-quarter. Elsewhere, Kingston Digital ramped up SSD shipments to 600,000 units a month, to step up competition against SanDisk and Samsung.

SSD makers are likely to take advantage of the entry of M.2 standard in the consumer space, with the introduction of Intel's 9-series chipset. M.2 offers 10 Gb/s of interface bandwidth (physical layer PCI-Express 2.0 x2), and some non-standard implementations are wired to offer even 20 Gb/s (physical layer PCI-Express 2.0 x4). M.2 slots feature SATA 6 Gb/s wiring in some onboard implementations, which could pave the way for M.2 replacing 2.5-inch SATA as the highest selling SSD form-factor, in the near future.

Alongside an updated desktop CPU roadmap, Intel posted an updated consumer SSD roadmap at its 3D Revolution 2014 presentation in Rome. It reveals the company's next-generation consumer SSD series, codenamed "August Ridge," and branded SSD 750 series. Targeting both the "consumer" and "professional" (≠ enterprise) market segments, the SSD 750 series comes in three form-factors, 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s, mSATA 6 Gb/s, and M.2 (likely PCIe 2.0 x2 link layer). The series will sell in most popular sub-terabyte capacities, and will be based on the company's 20 nm MLC NAND flash. We have no reason to believe Intel will discontinue using SandForce-made processors in its consumer SSDs. Intel's SSD 750 series "August Ridge" is slated for Q4-2014.

Fusion-io today announced Atomic Series, the newest flash memory platform featuring breakthrough innovations that achieve unparalleled performance and double the capacity on the smallest available NAND footprint for appliance and server environments. Companies both big and small, from small and medium enterprises (SME) to the Fortune 500 and hyperscale, all rely on Fusion-io to accelerate their applications.

"Patience is no longer a virtue in a world where we expect information at our fingertips with ever increasing velocity," said Fusion-io CEO and Chairman of the Board Shane Robison. "Latency is the new dial up. Our newest advancements in flash memory with the release of Atomic Series ensure that data flows seamlessly and with greater speed, efficiency and reliability by accelerating data-driven applications."

GeIL stepped into the modern SSD scene with its ZENITH line of SSDs. The series consists of two models, the performance-focused ZENITH S3, and the value-focused ZENITH A3. Both are built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and both come in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB. Both appear to be powered by Seagate-SandForce controllers, and MLC NAND flash memory. The ZENITH A3 offers sequential transfer rates of up to 540 MB/s reads, with up to 300 MB/s writes; while the ZENITH S3 offers up to 550 MB/s reads, with up to 500 MB/s writes.

The shipment performances of Smartphones, Tablets, and Notebooks were relatively weak in the first quarter due to seasonality. As a result of the entire NAND Flash market's oversupply in 1Q 2014, the branded suppliers' Q1 revenues saw a 6.6% drop compared to the previous quarter, and slid to approximately US$ 7,244 million, according to Sean Yang, Assistant Vice President at DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage research division of TrendForce.

Looking at the branded supplier revenue ranking, Samsung managed to retain its lead in the market with approximately US$ 2,175 million in sales, but saw its market share dip slightly to 30.0%; Toshiba came in second with a revenue total of US$ 1,548 million and an improved market share of 21.4%; SanDisk ended up in third place with US$ 1,367 million in revenue, while Micron came in fourth with US$ 1,050 million; Affected by its capacity allocations, SK Hynix's revenues slid to approximately US$ 594 million, resulting in market share of 8.2%.

Macronix, a leading provider of non-volatile memory solutions, today announced it has started production of its second generation of Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash, utilizing 36nm floating-gate technology. The 36nm floating-gate technology was developed at Macronix's state of the art 300 mm fab. The new SLC NAND family will be offered in densities from 1Gb to 8Gb in both 3.0V and 1.8V voltages, extended industrial temperature range with product longevity support. Macronix has also unveiled NAND-based MCP (Multi-Chip Package) solutions to provide customers a complete portfolio of NAND Flash products. These NAND and MCP products are targeted at a broad range of applications for the embedded and wireless markets.

As customer applications and operating systems become more sophisticated, the need for more robust and higher-density storage solutions are growing. Macronix's SLC NAND products were developed to support these market trends featuring the right balance of performance, high reliability, densities and voltages along with the longevity support from Macronix owned wafer fabs.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first three-dimensional (3D) V-NAND flash memory using 32 vertically stacked cell layers, which is its second generation V-NAND offering. Samsung's 32-layer 3D V-NAND - also referred to as Vertical NAND - requires a higher level of design technology to stack the cell arrays than the previous 24-layer V-NAND, yet delivers much greater production efficiency because Samsung can use essentially the same equipment it used for production of the first generation V-NAND.

In addition, Samsung has just launched a line-up of premium SSDs based on its 2nd generation V-NAND flash memory with 128 gigabyte (GB), 256GB, 512GB and 1TB storage options. After introducing 3D V-NAND-based SSDs to data centers last year, Samsung is now extending its V-NAND SSD line-up to high-end PC applications, in expanding its market base. "We increased the availability of our 3D V-NAND by introducing an extensive V-NAND SSD line-up that covers the PC market in addition to data centers," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Look for us to provide a consistent, timely supply of high-performance, high-density V-NAND SSDs as well as core V-NAND chips for IT customers globally, contributing to fast market adoption of 3D NAND technology."

Marvell today announced the launch of its new 88SS1083 PCI Express (PCIe) solid state drive (SSD) controller -a two-lane PCIe Gen2 SSD controller. With performance transfer rates up to 1 GB/s, Marvell's 88SS1083 controller allows SSD manufacturers to offer PCIe SSD at price parity to SATA SSD. The Marvell 88SS1083 is the industry's first controller to be fully compliant with the SATA Express standard, which leverages the most popular PCIe interface and brings in low latency, dual-lane support and 1 GB/s data transfer rate.

The new 88SS1083 controller also supports Separate RefClock with Independent SSC (SRIS), a critical feature as it eliminates the need for an expensive shielded cable for minimizing noise and instead allows for a cost-effective SATA Express cable. SATA Express host can connect either high-performance SATA Express SSDs or traditional SATA devices at similar accessory costs.

"Improving performance while maintaining low power becomes more important than ever, especially for today's ultrathin notebooks and tablets," said Rajan Pai, Vice President, Sales and Field Applications Engineering at Marvell. "The new 88SS1083 allows SSD OEMs to offer higher performance, PCIe-based SSD solutions at similar prices to SATA and is quickly becoming the controller of choice for global OEMs. Marvell is proudly pioneering a new generation of high-performance and low-power silicon solutions that is driving our industry forward."

Announced back in July 2013, Micron's 128 Gigabit 16 nm-manufactured MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory will soon be making its debut within a new Crucial solid state drive. Named MX100, the 16 nm NAND-equipped drive will be showcased at Computex 2014 and is expected to arrive in a 2.5-inch form factor.

The MX100 has a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and performance-wise it's said to be somewhere between the aging M500 and the recently released M550. Pricing is expected to be very competitive.

ADATA revealed its flagship consumer SSD in the M.2 form-factor, the SR1020NP series, which is an evolution of the AXNP280e it unveiled at this year's International CES. The drive comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, is based on LSI-SandForce 3700 series processor wired to MLC NAND flash, and a host interface with wiring for PCI-Express 2.0 x4 physical layer. Most M.2 SSDs, in contrast, are being designed for PCI-Express 2.0 x2.

That's not all, most motherboards launched on Intel's 9-series chipset feature M.2 slots with just PCI-Express 2.0 x2 wiring, with the exception of ASRock's top-end Z97-Extreme6, which features a special M.2 slot with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 wiring. Using that slot, however, will eat into the bandwidth meant for graphics cards, and the primary PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot will run at 3.0 x8, because ASRock wired the slot to the CPU's root complex. Under ideal conditions, SandForce 3700 series processors are advertised to offer sequential transfer rates as high as 1.8 GB/s. Given that, this drive should be bottlenecked on most motherboards with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 based M.2 slots. ADATA will display the drive at the 2014 Computex, early next month, alongside gaming-grade and overclocker-grade DDR4 modules.

Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., a global leader in memory semiconductor technology, today announced that its memory fabrication line in Xi'an China has begun full-scale manufacturing operations. The new facility will manufacture Samsung's advanced NAND flash memory chips: 3D V-NAND. Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and CEO Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon hosted a plant inauguration event, which welcomed a large number of attendees including government dignitaries such as Zhao Zhengyong, Secretary of Communist Party of China Committee of Shaanxi province, Lou Qinjian, Governor of Shaanxi province, and Young-se Kwon, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the People's Republic of China. Other honored attendees included Samsung suppliers and customers.

Construction of the new manufacturing facility took only 20 months since Samsung broke ground here in September, 2012. The total area of the facility is approximately 230,000 square meters, situated on 1.14 million square meters of land. In remarks delivered during the ceremony, Dr. Kwon said, "The city of Xi'an was the starting point of the Silk Road, which had performed a key role in bridging cultures from the East and the West. We expect that our new facility in Xi'an - the fruit of close cooperation with China, will mark the crowning of a 21st century Silk Road."

Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, said today that it has begun mass producing the industry's first high-performance, three-bit-NAND-based SSD for servers and data centers. The new SSD will allow data centers to better manage workloads related to social networking, web browsing and email, and enhance operation efficiency. Installations of the 3-bit MLC (multi-level-cell) NAND SSDs, initially in large-scale data centers, are expected to begin later this quarter.

"Following the last year's introduction of 3-bit NAND-based SSDs for PC markets, our new 3-bit SSD for data centers will help considerably in expanding the market base for SSDs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. "We expect SSD market growth will gain momentum as this new SSD delivers significant improvements in data center investment efficiency, leading to full-fledged commercialization of SSDs in IT systems later this year."

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the availability of its 1Z-nanometer (nm) technology, the most advanced NAND flash process node in the world. The 15 nm technology will ramp on both two bits-per-cell (X2) and three bits-per-cell (X3) NAND flash memory architectures with production ramp to begin in the second half of 2014.

"We are thrilled to continue our technology leadership with the industry's most advanced flash memory process node, enabling us to deliver the world's smallest and most cost effective 128 gigabit chips," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, senior vice president, memory technology, SanDisk. "We are delighted that these new chips will allow us to further differentiate and expand our portfolio of NAND flash solutions."