ATP Electronics, a global leader in specialized storage and memory solutions, has announced that its A600Sc Series serial ATA solid state drives (SATA SSDs) have been successfully qualified for compatibility and interoperability with Adaptec Smart Storage PCIe Gen 4 Tri-Mode SmartRAID 3200, SmartHBA 2200, and HBA 1200 Smart Storage adapters.

Designed for storage platforms in next-generation data centers, the Adaptec PCIe Gen 4 SAS/SATA/NVMe HBA and RAID tri-mode adapters deliver significantly higher performance through PCIe Gen 4 x16 CPU interfaces as well as SAS and SATA storage. The new offerings simplify integration and provide flexibility to aggregate diverse storage devices with Microchip's proven security and manageability features for the most demanding server storage applications.

SiFive, Inc., the industry leader in RISC-V processors and silicon solutions, today announced launched the new SiFive Performance family of processors. The SiFive Performance family debuts with two new processor cores, the P270, SiFive's first Linux capable processor with full support for the RISC-V vector extension v1.0 rc, and the SiFive Performance P550 core, SiFive's highest performance processor to date. The new SiFive Performance P550 delivers a SPECInt 2006 score of 8.65/GHz, making it the highest performance RISC-V processor available today, and comparable to existing proprietary solutions in the application processor space.

"SiFive Performance is a significant milestone in our commitment to deliver a complete, scalable portfolio of RISC-V cores to customers in all markets who are at the vanguard of SOC design and are dissatisfied with the status quo," said Dr. Yunsup Lee, Co-Founder and CTO of SiFive. "These two new products cover new performance points and a wide range of application areas, from efficient vector processors that easily displace yesterday's SIMD architectures, to the bleeding edge that the P550 represents. SiFive is proud to set the standard for RISC-V processing and is ready to deliver these products to customers today."

The all-new AS-T10G2 is here, bringing increased efficiency and speeds to the much beloved AS-T10G. The AS-T10G2 uses the AQC-107 controller, which offers increased performance, and lower power requirements. Using the Lockerstor 16R Pro, transfer rates were found to be up to 1127 MB/s when reading and 1124 MB/s when writing. The AS-T10G2 also supports IP, TCP, UDP checksum offload to reduce CPU usage for a more efficient experience.

The AS-T10G2 is equipped with a 10 Gbps 8p8c RJ-45 Ethernet port. The AS-T10G2 supports automatic switching between all major Ethernet speeds and is compatible with four lanes of PCI Express 3.0. Pop it into an ASUSTOR NAS running ADM 4.0 or a PC to upgrade network speeds to 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The AS-T10G2 is compatible with both full-height and half-height computers, making it compatible with almost any device featuring a PCI Express slot, ensuring affordable, yet high speed networking for both homes and businesses.

GIGABYTE Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announces today the latest AORUS Gen4 7000s Prem. SSD with up to 7 GB/s read speed while optimizing passive thermal dissipation, which promises no throttling under long-lasting operation. Through the SSD Tool Box application, users can have an instant control on overall operation of SSD.

AORUS Gen4 7000s Prem. SSD adopts the PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 interface and it equips the latest Phison E18 selected 8-channel controller, which provides users with ultimate random access rate, as well as the high speed 3D-TLC NAND Flash and SLC cache design that brings the PCIe 4.0 into full play. With the read speed up to 7 GB/s and write speed up to 6.85 GB/s, AORUS Gen4 7000s Prem. SSD can power up content creators, gamers, and users eager for extreme performance.

Addressing the demands of the modern data center, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced a range of new data center products and solutions, including a new family of Alveo SmartNICs, smart world AI video analytics applications, an accelerated algorithmic trading reference design for sub-microsecond trading, and the Xilinx App Store.

Today's most demanding and complex applications, from networking and AI analytics to financial trading, require low-latency and real-time performance. Achieving this level of performance has been limited to expensive and lengthy hardware development. With these new products and solutions, Xilinx is eliminating the barriers for software developers to quickly create and deploy software-defined, hardware accelerated applications on Alveo accelerator cards.

Applications such as data analytics, autonomous-driving and medical diagnostics are driving extraordinary demands for machine learning and hyperscale compute infrastructure. To meet these demands, Microchip Technology Inc. today announced the world's first PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 switch solutions—the Switchtec PFX PCIe 5.0 family—doubling the interconnect performance for dense compute, high speed networking and NVM Express (NVMe ) storage. Together with the XpressConnect retimers, Microchip is the industry's only supplier of both PCIe Gen 5 switches and PCIe Gen 5 retimer products, delivering a complete portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with proven interoperability.

"Accelerators, graphic processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs) and high-speed network adapters continue to drive the need for higher performance PCIe infrastructure. Microchip's introduction of the world's first PCIe 5.0 switch doubles the PCIe Gen 4 interconnect link rates to 32 GT/s to support the most demanding next-generation machine learning platforms," said Andrew Dieckmann, associate vice president of marketing and applications engineering for Microchip's data center solutions business unit. "Coupled with our XpressConnect family of PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link (CXL ) 1.1/2.0 retimers, Microchip offers the industry's broadest portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with the lowest latency and end-to-end interoperability."

Intel has just released its "Architecture Instruction Set Extensions and Future Features Programming Reference" manual, which serves the purpose of providing the developers' information about Intel's upcoming hardware additions which developers can utilize later on. Today, thanks to the @InstLatX64 on Twitter we have information that Intel is bringing on-package High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) solution to its next-generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. Specifically, there are two instructions mentioned: 0220H - HBM command/address parity error and 0221H - HBM data parity error. Both instructions are there to address data errors in HBM so the CPU operates with correct data.

The addition of HBM is just one of the many new technologies Sapphire Rapids brings. The platform is supposedly going to bring many new technologies like an eight-channel DDR5 memory controller enriched with Intel's Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA). To connect to all of the external accelerators, the platform uses PCIe 5.0 protocol paired with CXL 1.1 standard to enable cache coherency in the system. And as a reminder, this would not be the first time we see a server CPU use HBM. Fujitsu has developed an A64FX processor with 48 cores and HBM memory, and it is powering today's most powerful supercomputer - Fugaku. That is showing how much can a processor get improved by adding a faster memory on-board. We are waiting to see how Intel manages to play it out and what we end up seeing on the market when Sapphire Rapids is delivered.

BittWare, a Molex company, today unveiled the IA-840F, the company's first Intel Agilex -based FPGA card designed to deliver significant performance-per-watt improvements for next-generation data center, networking and edge compute workloads. Agilex FPGAs deliver up to 40% higher performance or up to 40% lower power, depending on application requirements. BittWare maximized I/O features using the Agilex chip's unique tiling architecture with dual QSFP-DDs (4× 100G), PCIe Gen4 x16, and three MCIO expansion ports for diverse applications. BittWare also announced support for Intel oneAPI, which enables an abstracted development flow for dramatically simplified code re-use across multiple architectures.

"Modern data center workloads are incredibly diverse, requiring customers to implement a mix of scalar, vector, matrix and spatial architectures," said Craig Petrie, vice president of marketing for BittWare. "The IA-840F ensures that customers can quickly and easily exploit the advanced features of the Intel Agilex FPGA. For those customers who prefer to develop FPGA applications at an abstracted level, we are including support for oneAPI. This new unified software programming environment allows customers to program the Agilex FPGA from a single code base with native high-level language performance across architectures."

AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM) is a new technology that AMD decided to launch with its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. The technology aims to solve the problem where a CPU can only access a fraction of GPU VRAM at once, making some bottlenecks in the system. By utilizing the bandwidth of PCIe, the SAM expands its data channels and uses all the speed that the PCIe connection offers. However, it appears that AMD might not be the only company offering such technology. Thanks to Gamer's Nexus, they got a reply from NVIDIA regarding a technology similar to AMD's SAM.

NVIDIA responded that: "The capability for resizable BAR is part of the PCI Express spec. NVIDIA hardware supports this functionality and will enable it on Ampere GPUs through future software updates. We have it working internally and are seeing similar performance results." And indeed, it has been a part of the PCIe specification since 2008. This document dating to 2008 says that "This optional ECN adds a capability for Functions with BARs to report various options for sizes of their memory mapped resources that will operate properly. Also added is an ability for software to program the size to configure the BAR to." Every PCIe compatible device can enable it with the driver update through the software.

RISC-V architecture is a relatively new Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) developed at the University of California Berkeley. Starting as a "short, three-month project" the RISC-V ISA is a fifth generation of the Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) ideology. A company working on this technology and helping to grow the ecosystem is SiFive. Today, they announced a big step forward for the ecosystem that will enable developers to make and optimize even more software for this architecture and platform. Called the HiFive Unmatched, the development board represents the first entry of RISC-V ISA to the world of personal computing, with its Mini-ITX form factor and PC-like connectors of power supply and I/O.

The board is home to SiFive's FU740 SoC, a five-core heterogeneous, coherent processor with four SiFive U74 cores, and one SiFive S7 core. This SoC is capable of smooth Linux OS operation, giving the developers a good platform to do their optimizations for. There is 8 GB of onboard DDR4 RAM (unknown frequencies and timing), a MicroSD card slot, and one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot for system storage. To connect the board to the outside world, you get one Gigabit Ethernet port. For user I/O there are four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports (1 Charging port) and one MicroUSB Console port. To power the board, you need a proper power supply with a 24-pin power connector. If you plan to build a PC based on the Unmatched board, you would need a standard ITX case, as it comes in the standard Mini-ITX (170x170 mm) form factor. For more information, please check out SiFive's website.

Today, Intel has decided to surprise us and give an update to its upcoming CPU lineup for desktop. With the 11th generation, Core CPUs codenamed Rocket Lake-S, Intel is preparing to launch the new lineup in the first quarter of 2021. This means that we are just a few months away from this launch. When it comes to the architecture of these new processors, they are going to be based on a special Cypress Cove design. Gone are the days of Skylake-based designs that were present from the 6th to 10th generation processors. The Cypress Cove, as Intel calls it, is an Ice Lake adaptation. Contrary to the previous rumors, it is not an adaptation of Tiger Lake Willow Cove, but rather Ice Lake Sunny Cove.

The CPU instruction per cycle (IPC) is said to grow in double-digits, meaning that the desktop users are finally going to see an improvement that is not only frequency-based. While we do not know the numbers yet, we can expect them to be better than the current 10th gen parts. For the first time on the Intel platform for desktops, we will see the adoption of PCIe 4.0 chipset, which will allow for much faster SSD speeds and support the latest GPUs, specifically, there will be 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes coming from the CPU only. The CPU will be paired with 12th generation Xe graphics, like the one found in Tiger Lake CPUs. Other technologies such as Deep Learning Boost and VNNI, Quick Sync Video, and better overclocking tuning will be present as well. Interesting thing to note here is that the 10C/20T Core i9-10900K has a PL1 headroom of 125 W, and 250 W in PL2. However, the 8C/16T Rocket Lake-S CPU also features 125 W headroom in PL1, and 250 W in PL2. This indicates that the new Cypress Cove design runs hotter than the previous generation.

Intel has been preparing the launch of its 10 nm processors for desktop users for some time now, and today we are getting the first pictures of the Alder Lake-S CPU backside. Featuring a package with a size of 37.5×45 mm, the Alder Lake CPU uses more of its area for a pin count increase. Going up from 1200 pins in the LGA1200 socket, the new Alder Lake-S CPU uses 1700 CPU pins, which slots in the LGA1700 socket. In the picture below, there is an engineering sample of the Alder Lake-S CPU, which we see for the first time. While there is no much information about the processor, we know that it will use Intel's 10 nm SuperFin design, paired with hybrid core technology. That means that there will be big (Golden Cove) and little (Gracemont) cores in the design. Other features such as PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 should be present as well. The new CPU generation and LGA1700 motherboards are scheduled to arrive in second half of 2021.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today introduced the industry's first native NVMe RAID 1 accelerator, a state-of-the-art technology for virtualized, multi-tenant cloud and enterprise data center environments which demand optimized reliability, efficiency, and performance. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first of Marvell's partners to support the new accelerator in the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device offered on select HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Apollo systems.

As the industry transitions from legacy SAS and SATA to NVMe SSDs, Marvell's offering helps data centers fast-track the move to higher performance flash storage. The innovative accelerator lowers data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading RAID 1 processing from costly and precious server CPU resources, maximizing application processing performance. IT organizations can now deploy a "plug-and-play," NVMe-based OS boot solution, like the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device, that protects the integrity of flash data storage while delivering an optimized, application-level user experience.

Sabrent, an American hardware manufacturer, has recently started breaking records with the world's first everything. Starting from the recent 8 TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD that comes in M.2 format, Sabrent doesn't plan to stop there. Thanks to the keen eyes of folks over at TweakTown, we have found out that Sabrent has prepared to launch the new Rocket Q4 SSD which is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe monster. Coming in the capacity of 4 TB, the company has built the world's first 4 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

When it comes to specifications of the SSD, it can reach some quite impressive speeds. When writing, it reaches 3500 MB/sec (3.5 GB/sec), and in the reading, it can reach up to 4900 MB/sec (4.9 GB/sec). Now imagine putting two of these in RAID 0. Nonetheless, we don't know what controller the company is using for this model. The NAND chips used are QLC based. But you are now wondering about the price of it. The purchase of this SSD will set you back $770 with a heatsink or $750 without one. You can purchase the SSD here.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces the B550MH motherboard that runs the 3rd gen Ryzen processors. Geared towards the business and casual users, the new BIOSTAR B550MH motherboard is designed to be efficient and reliable with bleeding edge technology built to be the best in the market with a new stylish PCB design.

The B550MH motherboard supports up to 64Gb of RAM across 2 DIMMs with the capability of reaching 4400+OC speeds and technologies like PCIe 4.0 that supports 16GT/s bit data transfer rates which is 2 times faster than PCIe 3.0 with backward compatibility, as well as PCIe M.2 4.0 which delivers lower latency on a higher bandwidth of 64 Gb/s which is 2x faster than the old PCIe M.2 3.0 making the new BIOSTAR B550MH motherboard a great choice for many applications.

Sabrent, a company focused on making storage devices and PC accessories, today announced the release of the world's first 8 terabyte NVMe SSD delivered in the M.2 form factor. The new SSD dubbed Rocket Q 8 TB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD is a real treat for all SSD enthusiasts. Besides its staggering capacity, it has plenty of features as well. Built on top of 3D QLC NAND Flash memory chips, the Rocket Q SSD is supposed to deliver very high speeds on PCIe 3.0 x4 bus. With up to 3.4 GB/sec reads, and up to 3 GB/sec writes, the SSD is pushing the limits of the PCIe 3.0 x4 bus that it is designed to work for.

Rocking a Phison's E12S controller, it is supposed to maintain high speeds even on random 4K reads and writes. The company didn't reveal too many details about the performance, however, we can wait for some reviews. The SSD is PCIe 3.1 Compliant, NVMe 1.3 Compliant, and supports SMART and TRIM commands. With a purchase of this SSD, you get a free copy of Sabrent Acronis True Image for Sabrent Software for easy cloning. Pricing and availability are unknown.

The B550 chipset has been absent for a while, meaning that mid-tier motherboard models were lacking and that space is about to be filled. So far, the only thing we got was a B550A chipset, which lacked proper support for PCIe 4.0 connection, based on the refreshed B450 chipset. The B550A supports only one PCIe 4.0 slot, the one connected directly to CPU, while the regular, non-A version is said to deliver proper PCIe 4.0 configuration. The first picture of AMD's upcoming B550 motherboard has appeared.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have a picture of a B550 motherboard manufactured by SOYO, a Chinese motherboard manufacturer, and the brand behind Maxsun. Pictured below is a Micro-ATX format motherboard featuring two x16 PCIe 4.0 slots and one smaller, x1 slot. There are two DDR4 slots, along with M.2 PCIe 4.0 connector. Additionally, it has some interesting dragon-inspired masking as well.

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.

The leading global motherboard & graphics card manufacturer, ASRock, a pleasure to launch brand new compact Mini PC - Mars Series. Supports up to Intel Core i5 Quad-Core processor, 32 GB DDR4-2666 MHz, PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, 2.5-inch hard drive, and wireless connectivity; all implies into 0.7-liter chassis with 26 mm height.

ASRock Mars offers abundant USB devices connectivity, features a total of 7 USB ports, including one Type-C port; In addition, the native SD card reader and dual display outputs to provide more productive and convenience.

ASUS believes that PCI-Express gen 4.0 support on older socket AM4 motherboards based on the AMD 400-series chipset is technically possible, even if discouraged by AMD. The company's latest series of motherboard BIOS updates that expose PCIe Gen 4 toggle in the PCIe settings, does in fact enable PCIe gen 4.0 to all devices that are directly wired to the SoC. These would be the PCI-Express x16 slots meant for graphics, and one of the M.2 slots that has PCIe x4 wiring to the SoC. Below is a list of motherboards scored by Chinese tech publication MyDrivers, which details the extent of PCIe gen 4.0 support across a number of ASUS motherboards based on the X470 and B450 chipsets.

AMD apparently did not explicitly block PCIe gen 4.0 for older chipsets. It merely suggested to motherboard manufacturers not to enable it, since the newer AMD 500-series motherboards are built to new PCB specifications that ensure PCIe gen 4.0 signal-integrity and stability. ASUS wants to leave it to users to decide if they want gen 4.0. If their machines are unstable, they can choose to limit PCIe version to gen 3.0 in their BIOS settings. Among other things, AMD's specifications for 500-series chipset motherboards prescribe PCBs with more than 4 layers, for optimal PCIe and memory wiring. Many of the motherboards on ASUS' list, such as the TUF B450 Pro Gaming, use simple 4-layer PCBs.

Two of the more unique mass-market designs on show on Computex 2017 have to be the Phanteks EVOLV Shift and Shift X SFF cases. These are the essence of a tower case (though they can also lie on their side like a roman citizen at dinner time, if you are so inclined.) These are aluminum and tempered-glass crafted cases, with a ridiculous 17 (W) x 27 (D) x 48 (H) cm footprint on the Shift. The Shift X is the taller solution of the two, with a 65 cm height. These little cases than could support water cooling and component placement in multiple orientations, and include an integrated RGB controller to boot.

The front I/O contains just two USB 3.0 ports, but it's the interior which shines. Phanteks managed to cram a lot into such a compact form-factor. Motherboards will have to be of the mini-ITX type, there's no way around that; however, there's also with support for 2x PCI slots, and the Shift X brings support for 2x internal 3.5" and 2x 2.5" drives (you can also mount 2.5" solutions on the 3.5" bays, mind you.) It also supports PS2 PSUs, while the smaller Shift has to cut one of the 3.5" bays, and only supports SFF PSUs. However, for their sizes, both Shifts support 3x 120 mm and 3x 140 mm fans on the front of the case, and 1x 120 mm, 1x 140 mm fans on the bottom. The EVOLV Shift will retail for $110, while the Shift X brings that number up to $160.

Finally putting the lid on all of ASUS' leaked and detailed motherboards, comes, the PRIME Z270-A, which doesn't belong to a special, bang-and-whistle-filled product line, and is just concerned with getting the job done. It clads itself in a simple and appealing white and gray color-scheme, and is expected to keep most of the important features in ASUS' more expensive product lines.

The PRIME Z270-A comes with ASUS' 8+2+2 Phase Digital power design, fed by an 8-pin connector, that features 10K black metallic capacitors, MicroFine Alloy Chokes, NexFET PW (Power) block MOSFET and DIGI+ Power Control Utility for real-time adjustment, courtesy of the new ASUS Extreme Engine Digi+ technology that improves CPU stability and overclocking. It features four DDR4 DIMM slots that can support up to 64 GB of memory with speeds of up to 3866 MHZ (O.C+), and expansion slots on the motherboard include three PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16/x8/x4 electrical), four PCIe 3.0 x1 and dual M.2 slots that deliver up to 32 GB/s transfer speeds, with the PCIe slots being armored for higher resistance.

Continuing the trend of revealing ASUS' ROG lineup of motherboards based on the Z270 chipset, and zipping down the product line, comes the ROG STRIX Z270F Gaming, which also sports the standard ATX form factor. The motherboard features an all around solid design with an impressive metallic black / silver color scheme. The LGA 1151 socket supports the latest 6th and 7th generation Intel Core processors. ASUS went with an aggressive heatsink design that features their AURA RGB technology for a full LED illuminated color showcase. In terms of features, the ROG STRIX Z270F Gaming continues the trend of intelligent cost-cutting so as to achieve a product with an (expectedly) lower price-point. Compared to the ROG STRIX Z270E, this mobo cuts on the 2×2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac WI-FI on the back I/O, and the USB front header is downgraded to a 2.0 solution.

The ASUS ROG Strix Z270F comes with a 8+2+1 Phase Digital power design that features 10K black metallic capacitors, MicroFine Alloy Chokes, NexFET PW (Power) block MOSFET and DIGI+ Power Control Utility for real-time adjustment. All of these components are part of the new ASUS Extreme Engine Digi+ technology that improves CPU stability and overclocking. Power is fed through a single 8-Pin connector.

With the ever-closer release of Intel's Kaby Lake family of CPUs, details and leaks are becoming more and more difficult to stem. Continuing the trend, we are now detailing the ROG STRIX Z270E Gaming is yet another ATX form factor motherboard by Asus, featuring an impressive metallic black / silver color scheme on the LGA 1151 socket. ASUS went with an aggressive heatsink design that features their AURA RGB technology for a full LED illuminated color showcase. The STRIX line inherits much of the other features of the Maximus line of motherboards, though they universally do away with the black and red color scheme.

PCI-SIG, the organization responsible for the widely adopted PCI Express (PCIe) industry-standard input/output (I/O) technology, today announced the release of the PCIe M.2 Specification Revision 1.0 to its members. A next-generation form factor for ultra-light and thin platforms, the latest M.2 architecture increases design flexibility to support high-end performance and enhanced data rates for power-constrained platforms. In addition, it enables the higher integration of functions onto a single form factor module solution.

As a natural progression from PCIe Mini Card and PCIe Half Mini Card, the smaller M.2 form factor is designed to meet future market requirements for applications in thin mobile platforms, such as tablets, portable gaming devices, smartphones and devices requiring SSDs. Its extensible design provides scalability for multiple technologies and host interfaces, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SSD and WWAN.