Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the HyperX 3K SSD, a high-performance, lower priced solid-state drive enabling users to experience ultra-responsive gaming, multitasking and multimedia computing power. Powered by the second-generation SandForce SF-2281 processor and based on SATA Rev. 3.0 (6 Gb/s) interface, Kingston HyperX 3K SSD is the ideal high-performance upgrade solution for budget-minded gamers, enthusiasts, multitaskers, overclockers and system builders.

HyperX 3K SSD loads games and applications faster, increases frames-per-second for an improved gaming experience and allows for quick transfers and edits of large media files. It has incredible sequential read/write throughputs of 555/510 MB/s and max random R/W IOPS of 85k/74k. HyperX 3K SSD features SandForce DuraClass technology to provide best in class endurance, and to maximize life span and durability under the most intensive environments.

Toshiba Corporation today announced the development of NPEngine, the world's first hardware engine for streaming servers that directly delivers video content from SSD to IP networks, without accessing the server's CPU or memory resources. NPEngine can simultaneously deliver up to 64,000 high quality video streams at a rate of 40Gigabit per sec, far surpassing the performance of a typical server, and reducing power consumption, the number of servers and the space required.

Toshiba will showcase a server integrating the NPEngine at the NAB show in Las Vegas, from April 16 to 19. Server products running NPEngine will be available this year.

Renice Technology Co., Ltd has just released a large capacity 240 GB mSATA solid state hard drive (SSD). Now Renice is one of only a handful of manufacturers able to make such large capacity thin, fast storage devices, and will be at the vanguard of their rapidly expanding use.

Renice is a prominent manufacturer of SSD (solid state drives). The brand new series is named Renice X3 50 mm mSATA (MO-300B) SSD, and it can be used in tablet PCs, mobile computers, road surveillance systems and other embedded storage applications. Renice X3 50 mm mSATA (MO-300B) SSD has been well-received since its release in America and Europe.

PNY Technologies, Inc. ("PNY") will showcase the all new XLR8 GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 graphics card, 2133MHz DDR3 desktop memory kit, Smart Active HDMI Cables, and a sneak peak at their brand new revamped line-up of XLR8 Solid State Drives at the PAX East 2012 exhibition.

PNY has once again partnered with Newegg.com at the 3-day gaming festival, being held April 6th - 8th at the Boston Convention Center. Visitors to PNY's booth (#613) will be offered the opportunity to take part in free play, live tournaments, contests, prize giveaways, and more. Attendees can enjoy the free play on the gaming stations -- built with PNY products, featuring games such as Street Fighter 4, StarCraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

MOSAID Technologies Inc. today announced that it is sampling the industry's first NAND Flash MCP (multi-chip package) with a 16-die NAND stack operating on a single high-performance channel.

MOSAID's 512Gb HLNAND (HyperLink NAND) MCP combines a stack of 16 industry standard 32Gb NAND Flash die with two HLNAND interface devices to achieve 333MB/s output over a single byte-wide HLNAND interface channel. Conventional NAND Flash MCP designs cannot stack more than four NAND dies without suffering from performance degradation, and would require two or more channels to deliver similar throughput.

MSI released pictures and performance numbers of its in-house SuperRAID storage design that's implemented in its GT70 gaming notebook. The GT70 has two drive bays, one of which holds a 500 GB WD Scorpio Black hard drive, and the other, the SuperRAID module. The hard drive is tasked with just storage and a system recovery partition, while the SuperRAID module is where the action is.

Simply put, the SuperRAID module is a PCB with a RAID controller, and two mSATA 6 Gb/s slots. Each of these slots holds a SanDisk U100 64 GB mSATA SSD. Each of these SSDs come with rated sequential transfer rates as high as 440 MB/s (reads) with 220 MB/s (writes), but striped in RAID 0, the volume churns out tested transfer rates as high as 964 MB/s (max. read), 928 MB/s (avg. read), and 843 MB/s (min. read), when tested by HDTune Pro 5.00. The SuperRAID module is bootable, and holds the operating system and programs. MSI claims with transfer speeds well over 900 MB/s, it has the fastest storage solution among gaming notebooks.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced Indilinx Everest 2, its next-generation SSD platform that delivers an industry-best performance of 120,000 random input/output operations per second (IOPS) for SATA-based drives.

In addition to this unprecedented transactional performance, the Everest 2 features the most advanced flash management capabilities which can significantly extend NAND flash life and enhance SSD reliability. This innovative controller platform will debut in OCZ's new Vertex 4 SSD product line.

The Indilinx Everest 2 family of solid state drive processors establishes a new computing and storage paradigm by delivering breakthrough performance and uncompromising reliability to next-generation SSDs. Combining a 400M Hz dual-core CPU, 6 Gbps SATA Revision 3.0 interface, and support for the latest, most advanced NAND flash memory technology available, Everest 2 exceeds the needs of the most demanding SSD environments.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced the Vertex 4 SATA III SSD series featuring the company's advanced Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform.

The Vertex 4 delivers the industry's highest input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance for SATA-based drives across a wide variety of application workloads making this fourth generation flagship product line ideally suited for demanding computing and workstation environments. It consistently accomplishes superior real world performance over the long term regardless of whether the data streams are in compressed or uncompressed formats.

I-O Data began shipping the SSDN-3T120B solid-state drive. Originally manufactured by Toshiba, the SSDN-3T120B is a 120 GB drive in the 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s form-factor, with sequential speeds of 480 MB/s (reads), 350 MB/s (writes); and random-access speeds of 440 MB/s (reads), 340 MB/s (writes), with 4K random seek performance of 73,000/58,000 IOPS (read/write). Its pricing is open to the retailers.

Intel made its SSD 313 series official, its product page was activated, and ARK pages of its variants maintain the products are already launched. The SSD 313 series succeeds SSD 311 series, it consists of SSDs specifically designed for SSD-caching technologies such as Intel Smart Response Technology, and upcoming technologies that the upcoming "Ivy Bridge" platform brings with it, including "Rapid Start" and "Smart Connect". The SSD 313 Series is introduced in two variants, a 20 GB variant, and a 24 GB variant.

The 20 GB variant offers sequential performance up to 220 MB/s and 100 MB/s (read and write), while the 24 GB variant offers 160 MB/s and 115 MB/s, which might make one wonder about the need for a 24 GB variant, given that it's also slower at 4K random-seek performance 33,000 IOPS / 4,000 IOPS vs. 36,000 IOPS / 3,300 IOPS of the 20 GB. One reason behind the 24 GB variant's existence could be that a combination of different Intel technologies partition the SSD, taking away small amounts of capacity. The extra 4 GB of capacity might more than make up for the slightly lower performance. Both drives use SLC NAND flash chips, which are more durable than MLC NAND flash, and can take more rewrite cycles (something that factors in heavily for caching SSDs). Both drives are available in 2.5" SATA 3 Gb/s and mSATA 3 Gb/s form-factors. The 20 GB variant was earlier put to test.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced its participation and activities at PAX East 2012, an annual festival for tabletop, console and PC gamers being held in Boston, Massachussetts from April 6th to April 8th. Corsair will be located in booth #1150.

Corsair has teamed up with Digital Storm, Intel, and NVIDIA to give away a fully configured dream gaming PC each day of the event. These awesome dream machines will be built using Corsair's PC cases, power supplies, CPU coolers, SSDs, and Vengeance memory. These gaming PCs will also Intel Core desktop processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics cards.

A-Tech Fabrication, a company that specializes in hand-crafted HTPCs, unveiled the HeatSync 1200 fanless HTPC. The part that makes it fanless is the chassis itself, which is made of aluminum, with fins on the sides, that dissipate heat. Copper heat pipes transfer heat from key components such as the CPU and chipset to the sides of the chassis, which takes care of the rest. Although most of the chassis is anodized black, with its front-panel, you can choose between silver and black options.

The HeatSync 1200 internally packs an Intel DH61AG thin mini-ITX motherboard, which seats an Intel Core i3-2100T dual-core 35W processor, clocked at 2.50 GHz. 4 GB Corsair Vengeance SO-DIMM memory comes standard. Also standard is the Intel SSD 310 40 GB mSATA SSD. Considering there are no mechanical hard drives, or a PSU with active-cooling (a 160W power-brick does the job), the HeatSync 1200 is literally silent. A consumer IR (CIR) receiver with Windows Media Center remote, and Windows 7 Home Premium make for the rest of it.

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user-friendly designed PC components, today announced improved MX-JET ULTRA Series 2.5" SSD for mainstream users. MX-JET ULTRA Series delivers blazing fast, smooth and stutter free performance at an affordable price point.

The MX-JET ULTRA Series SSD provides outstanding performance, endurance and power efficiency resulting in exceptional user experience. This series is offering users robust data protection with enhanced hardware BCH ECC engine, StaticDataRefresh technology support and data shaping for higher data reliability.

With 3rd generation Core "Ivy Bridge" processors, and 7-series "Panther Point" chipset, Intel will also release a new line of cache-SSDs to complement its Smart Response Technology (SRT) feature, which provides a decent performance middle-ground between HDDs, and expensive SSDs. The SSD 313 "Hawley Creek" family will replace SSD 310 "Larson Creek" family. It consists of drives that make use of relatively low amounts of SLC NAND flash memory (which have much higher endurance than MLC NAND flash, making them ideal for caching). Built in the 2.5" SATA and mSATA form-factors, the drives will be available in two variants; the 20 GB variant offers 220/100 MB/s (reads/writes), with 36,000 4K random read IOPS, while the 24 GB variant offers 160/115 MB/s (reads/writes), with 33,000 4K random read IOPS.

HWBOX.gr got to test the SSD 313 20 GB variant on a current generation Z68 motherboard (ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z), and post its findings. The Greek tech-site tested its performance in what it's meant to do: SSD caching using Intel SRT. Findings show a healthy boost in performance, with synthetic benchmarks, including synthetic read/write performance, random-access (IOPS), PCMark, and real-world tests such as Windows 7 boot-time, and startup of content-creation applications, but the performance-difference between SRT and plain-HDD narrowed as tests with data-loads grew, which is expected. SSD caching merely places "hot-data" (frequently-accessed data of the HDD on the SSD, for quicker access), and shunts data in and out of the SSD, as "heat" of data on the HDD changes competitively. Find a ton of more test results at the source link.

Intel's upcoming mainstream consumer SSD line, the SSD 330 series, could have attractive pricing, which could catalyze further proliferation of SSD technology, according to a LaptopReviews report, citing tease-listings by online retailers and other sources. The new lineup will embrace SATA rev. 3.0 (6 Gb/s) standard, and offer performance that takes advantage of it. The 120 GB variant of the SSD 330, for example, was listed for US $149, on MacMall.com, the listing is removed. This gives it a price/GB on par with other 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs in the market, which underwent several rounds of price-adjustments to get there.

The SSD 330 series from Intel, will be available in three capacities, 60 GB, 120 GB, and 180 GB. The 120 GB and 180 GB variants offer sequential transfer-rates of up to 500 MB/s (read) and 450 MB/s (write); the 60 GB variant offers 500 MB/s (read), and 400 MB/s (write). These drives use IMFlash Technologies-made 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and offer standard feature-set that includes support for TRIM, NCQ, 256-bit AES data-encryption, and limited SMART attributes.

In the wake of two massive and tragic natural disasters, worldwide hard disk drive (HDD) unit shipments experienced a year-over-year decline of 4.5% in 2011. Although efforts to clean and repair flooded factory buildings and equipment will take most of the first half of 2012, HDD and HDD component production is expected to return to preflood output levels in the second half of this year. According to a new forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), the HDD industry will record year-over-year unit shipment growth of 7.7% in 2012 and a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6% for the 2011-2016 forecast period.

Due to the imbalance in supply and demand that resulted from the Thailand floods, HDD prices have moved higher in recent months. HDD vendors are taking advantage of this opportunity to reset prices and recover some of the excessive price erosion that began in 2009. IDC expects year-over-year HDD revenue growth to exceed shipment growth in 2012, a precedent for the industry. Assuming the industry is successful with hybrid solid state hard drives (hybrid SSHDs), industry revenue could approach $50 billion by 2016 with a 2011-2016 CAGR of 8.6%.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, is pleased to announce the Deneva 2 Series SSDs will be used as the storage device of choice in a pending 'Data-Scope' research project at The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) to create servers for scientific data processing. This initiative to maximize data processing power is spearheaded by Dr. Alexander Szalay, Alumni Centennial Professor in the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy and Director of the JHU Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science.

With the goal of creating an affordable, powerful computational environment that can be used as a blueprint for future science applications, the JHU project comprises a system of nearly one hundred servers using hundreds of OCZ Deneva 2 SSDs combined with regular hard disk drives with two tiers for storage and computing. These powerful yet inexpensive systems also serve to expose students and researchers to leading-edge technology at an early stage.

Transcend Information, Inc., a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, today announced the latest addition to its complete line-up of solid state drives (SSDs), the PSD320 2.5'' parallel ATA (PATA/IDE) SSD. Designed to replace traditional 2.5'' 44-pin PATA hard disk drives, the PSD320 is a value-priced solution that gives older systems the ability to upgrade to the enhanced performance and reliability benefits of solid-state technology.

Lite-On, renowned as an Optical Storage innovator, has today announced its first solid state drive (SSD) for the UK. The E200 SSD is aimed at small/medium business users, with a design which is easily integrated into existing systems for minimal disruption and with a fast, consistent and reliable performance over time - at an affordable cost.

"With the E200 we aim to challenge the concept that SSDs are an unaffordable luxury for SMB; our aim is that smaller companies will be able to experience the increased speed and performance that a fast SSD provides," says Maarten Souren, Marketing Manager at Lite-On.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that the company's enterprise class Deneva 2 solid state drives will be deployed within the newest NuVola Private Cloud Platform Solution Appliance - SAN Velocity powered by Fujitsu, which also utilizes Assurance Storage's ApplicationSmart software.

The SAN Velocity powered by Fujitsu appliance combines Assurance Storage's ApplicationSmart software with Fujitsu's server hardware, and delivers significant benefits of intelligent, autonomic data cache and tier management used to optimize the performance of I/O intensive applications. Customers using the SAN Velocity appliance gain the benefits of aligning the value of data with the value of OCZ Deneva 2 SSD storage and Assurance Storage's software, to improve performance for a variety of business critical applications such as OLTP, database applications and storage cache management.

OCZ released the Arowana Flash Translation Layer (FTL) firmware update for SSDs running Indilinx Barefoot controllers, and 34 nm NAND flash. The update was announced in May, 2011, and released for the OCZ Vertex Plus family, but it's only now that users of the original Barefoot-controlled drives get a firmware to update their drives with. The new 3.55 firmware significantly improves sequential and random-seek performance. The screenshots below (in order) are of a Barefoot-driven OCZ Vertex drive with the old firmware (IDE), new firmware (IDE), and new fimware (AHCI). To learn more about the update, and how to go about do it to your drive, visit this page. Like most other SSD firmware updates, the process erases everything on your drive, so be sure to make a backup.

FinalWire today released the latest version of AIDA64, version 2.30. This release is set around enhancing the desktop gadget, improving the UPS and smart-battery monitoring capabilities, and adding support for newly-released hardware, such as the latest GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA; and the latest Intel SSDs. AIDA64 is proprietary software, and is available through FinalWire's online store.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 2.30 EXE (installer), ZIP Package

The condensed change-log follows.

Centon Electronics, Inc. has announced the release of their SATA III 2.5 line. While SSD has become a standard specification for enthusiast PC gamers owing to its features including high-speed read/write performance and high shock resistance that can break through the performance bottleneck of PC systems, the introduction of SATA III SSDs further highlights the advantage of SSD's read/write performance.

Twice as fast as the SATA II, Centon's new line of SATA III will take full advantage of the bandwidth and provide extremely fast data transfer rates that reach as high as 400 MB/s read speed and 300 MB/s write speed. Centon's SSD models now address the growing market demand for fast, high density and reliable drives.

Things on the Chromebook front have been pretty quiet this year but it seems they will change soon as the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has received and tested a new machine running Google's Chrome OS. Seen below is the VAIO VCC111 Series, Sony's very first Chromebook, which features a 11.6-inch LCD screen (made by Samsung), 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, an SSD, an SD card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, a HDMI output, a webcam, and a 4100 mAh battery.

After asking around Taiwan, Digitimes has apparently found out Intel's SSD intentions for the rest of this year. As soon as May the Santa Clara-based chip giant is said to bring out the 300 Series ' Maple Crest' drives, as well as the 720 Series (Ramsdale). The 300s are consumer-grade solutions, while the 720s target enterprises and feature a PCIe interface.

The 720 Series SSDs will come in 400 GB and 800 GB capacities and, like the 300 Series, will utilize 25 nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory.

In Q3 Intel is set to be making the transition to 20 nm NAND and will release the 500 Series 'King Crest' models, while later on, in Q4 we should see the arrival of the 100 GB, 200 GB, 400 GB and 800 GB Taylorsville drives part of the 700 Series, and the Jay Crest and Oak Crest SSDs bearing the 300 Series banner.