Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it has teamed up with SandForce Inc., a leader in high-performance SSD (Solid-State Drive) processors, to launch its first SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s) based SSD targeted at enthusiasts, gamers, and performance users. The Kingston HyperX SSD feature the latest and most reliable SandForce controller to date, and is also available as a bundle with the HyperX Upgrade Kit for easy installation.

Shipping in 120GB and 240GB capacities, the HyperX SSD is based on SandForce SF-2281 controllers featuring SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s). It allows for incredible sequential read/write throughputs of 525/480MB/s, IOPS of 40,000/60,000 (240GB), and SandForce DuraClass Technology to provide best in class endurance.

Mach Xtreme is among those memory vendors seeing a market in consumer mSATA SSDs, a component reserved to OEMs for use on notebooks, before Intel launched the Smart Response technology with its Z68 platform, paving way for motherboards with mSATA slots that hold the SSD used for Smart Response caching. On display at Computex is Mach Xtreme's SandForce SF-1200 driven mSATA SSD that offers capacity of 60 GB. MachXtreme also showed off its Apple Macbook Air upgrade SSD, that consumers can opt for upping capacity and transfer rates, over the bundled SSD.

Intel's Smart Response technology is doing wonders to the low-cost SSD market. The technology lets low-capacity, usually low-cost SSDs to be used as caches for hard drives, improving the system's overall responsiveness. The technology makes these low-cost SSDs more of a component than a product (such as 2.5-inch SATA SSDs), and hence it makes sense to offer them in the mSATA form-factor. Intel made its headstart by launching the Intel 311 "Larson Creek" series 20 GB SSD that comes in both 2.5-inch SATA 3 Gb/s and mSATA form factors. While mSATA makes it easy to deploy the technology into notebooks, desktop motherboard vendors such as Gigabyte thought it would be nice to give their motherboards an mSATA slot.

Capitalizing on this very market is A-Data, with a couple of new low-cost mSATA SSDs in the ISFM series. First is the ISFM-XM13, an mSATA SSD driven by a SandForce SF-1200 series controller. Even with some of the controller's channels unoccupied (due to obvious lack of space to put NAND flash chips), this card doles out decent transfer rates of up to 250 MB/s read and 170 MB/s write. This card comes in capacities of 30 GB (32 GB with 2 GB overprovisioned) and 60 GB (64 GB with 4 GB overprovisioned). This card uses MLC NAND flash. Next up, is the ISFM-IXM01, that looks to be using a JMicron-made controller. The bigger difference here is the use of SLC NAND flash on one of its two variants, which traditionally offers higher rewrite cycles. The other variant uses MLC NAND flash. The SLC variant offers transfer rates of 90 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write, and comes in capacities of 2, 4, 8, and 16 GB. The MLC variant gives you 150 MB/s read, 120 MB/s write; and comes in capacities of 32, 64, and 128 GB.

Corsair showed off its trio of 2.5-inch SATA SSD lines for this year, consisting of Force 3 series, Force 3 GT series, and Nova 2 series. Among these, Force 3 is already out, and consists of SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs based on SandForce SF-2000 series controllers, doling out transfer speeds of 550 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. The Force 3 GT features a fine-tuned SF-2000 series controller to deliver transfer rates higher than spec, at 555 MB/s read and 525 MB/s write. Like with Dominator DDR3 memory modules, the GT variants feature the fiery-red body-color. The third line of SSDs is new to us. Called Nova 2 series, this will be Corsair's big push towards propagating SSDs to consumers new to it. The green-colored Nova 2 series SSDs use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface and are driven by a cost-effective controller that gives transfer rates of 260 MB/s read and 240 MB/s write, enough to deliver the awe of SSDs to first-time adopters.

While not the very first of its kind, Intel Smart Response technology took the enthusiast community by storm, offering a middle-ground between small but fast SSDs, and large but slow HDDs. By caching on the SSD, Smart Response is able to give system responsiveness a significant boost. Before that, HDD major Seagate put a tiny SSD component onto its Momentus XT hard drive, to chop access times a little. Now OCZ inverted the concept, and strapped an HDD onto its SSD to make it more capacious, on its new RevoDrive Hybrid.

Here, the major component is a SSD RAID 0 on a stick, which pools data onto an HDD. RevoDrive is a PCI-Express x4 SSD card, which uses a number of SandForce SF-1200 driven SSD sub-units in RAID 0 that's abstract to the host machine. The card is normally available in capacities as low as 60 GB, or as high as 480 GB. On RevoDrive Hybrid, OCZ installed a 2.5-inch hard drive with capacities as high as 1 TB, with the SSD component very much intact. The device promises to give you RevoDrive-like speeds, and humongous capacities, by streaming low-access data onto the HDD.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today unleashes the Z68-ITX WiFi and Z68-ITX WiFi Supreme - a pair of mini-ITX platforms designed for the most adventurous and demanding enthusiasts. The ZOTAC Z68-ITX WiFi series enables users to take advantage of all features of 2nd Generation Intel Core family processors including integrated graphics, overclocking and Intel Quick-Sync Video technology.

Powered by the latest Intel Z68 Express chipset, the ZOTAC Z68-ITX WiFi series enables adventurous enthusiasts to extract every ounce of performance available from 2nd Generation Intel Core while maintaining use of Intel GMA HD 2000/3000 series integrated graphics processors. Support for Intel Quick-Sync Video technology enables lightning-fast video transcoding for virtually instant video conversions to popular portable media players with the ZOTAC Z68-ITX WiFi series.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, announces the Company has set a new benchmark of 1 million 4K write IOPS with a Z-Drive R4 equipped 3U Colfax International Server based on a Supermicro platform, which features 7.2TB of MLC storage. As the fastest performing single server solution on the market, this Z-Drive R4 equipped platform significantly accelerates demanding transactional workloads and reduces latency across a broad array of enterprise applications.

"The Z-Drive R4 enables our data center clients to maximize performance in the industry standard 4K file size, and this achievement with Colfax International demonstrates the raw performance benefits and latency reductions that OCZ PCIe SSDs can deliver over multi-terabyte device densities in a single 3U server," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "We are proud to enable our clients to deliver servers and storage arrays which provide the highest performance, maximum capacity, and lowest latency available to data centers today."

To make a 'great value' socket FM1 motherboard, there are two approaches, either add dual discrete graphics support by adding a second PCI-Express x16 slot, like on the Gigabyte A75-UD4H, or by adding a boat-load of connectivity while leaving single discrete graphics option, an approach taken by Sapphire on its Pure Platinum A75. This ATX form-factor motherboard comes fully loaded with a 8-phase VRM for the FM1 APU socket, four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting dual-channel DDR3-1600 MHz, powered by a 2-phase VRM, and overclocker-friendly voltage measurement points.

Expansion slots include a PCI-Express 2.0 x16, an open-ended PCI-Express x4, and two each of PCI-Express x1 and legacy PCI. There is also an mSATA slot to hold SSDs in the mSATA form-factor. Storage connectivity includes four SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, an mSATA slot, and eSATA. Other connectivity includes four USB 3.0 ports (of which two are by header), 8-channel HD audio, Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Display connectivity includes D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI 1.4a.

Gigabyte has been working on the idea of shipping socket LGA1155 motherboards based on Intel Z68 chipset with mSATA slots, to accommodate Intel 311 Series "Larson Creek" cache SSDs that come in mSATA form-factor. The company did release a number of its latest boards with the slot, including GA-Z68XP-UD3, GA-Z68XP-D3, GA-Z68AP-D3 and GA-Z68P-DS3. Now Gigabyte took the idea to its next logical step, bundling an Intel 311 Series 20 GB SSD with the motherboard (since consumers might find mSATA SSDs at little hard to find in the market). The small SSD serves as a high-speed cache which comes into use when Intel Smart Response acceleration is enabled.

The GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is a variant of the GA-Z68XP-UD3, with the "-iSSD" suffix denoting the bundled SSD. The board comes with the 20 GB mSATA SSD pre-installed into its slot. That aside, the GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is a fairly straightforward Z68 implementation, with 7-phase CPU VRM, dual-channel DDR3-2133 MHz memory support by overclocking, two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated) supporting SLI and CrossFireX; four SATA 6 Gb/s, four 3 Gb/s ports; HDMI 1.4a display output, Lucid Virtu support, 8-channel HD audio, four USB 3.0 ports, and FireWire.

Buffalo Technology released a new line of SSDs in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor, supporting the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. One of its first models is the 250 GB SSD-N256S/MC400. Making use of the bandwidth at its disposal, the drive manages read speeds of 405 MB/s, and write speeds of 223 MB/s. Its controller makes use of 256 MB cache. It supports market-standard features such as the TRIM garbage-collection feature, and NCQ. The Buffalo SSD-N256S/MC400 will reach markets in Japan for 72,200 JPY, about US $880.

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user friendly designed PC components, today unveiled the SATA MX-KATANA Series SSD modules. Based on an innovative design, the sleek KATANA Series modules deliver an enhanced mobile computing experience with much faster application loading, ultra-fast data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life of today's and future laptops and netbooks with new type low-profile SATA interface.

This series maintains the highest level of read and write performance though the life of the SSD. In addition, highly intelligent wear leveling design optimizes longevity of MX-KATANA series drives. This SSD module is the ideal upgrade option from standard storage of some popular notebooks like MacBook Air Rev.3.X series, making it a must have item for any serious notebook DIY enthusiast. The MX-KATANA drive delivers best-in-class read and write speeds clocking in at up to 275MB/s read and 225MB/s write along with the stunning maximum of 20,000 IOPS, low power consumption and superior durability (1.0 million MTBF) compared to rotating hard disk drives.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled the Arowana Flash Translation Layer (FTL) from Indilinx. Supporting both existing and upcoming Indilinx controllers, this firmware subset dramatically improves performance and enterprise capabilities and enables SSD suppliers to deploy cost-effective 2xnm NAND flash memory.

"We are always driving to add more value for our clients, and the exciting new Arowana Flash Translation Layer delivers both major performance and feature-set enhancements," commented Daryl Lang, VP of Product Management at OCZ Technology Group. "Arowana not only boosts IOPS performance by up to 500%, but does so with the support of the industry's latest 2xnm flash technology, making Indilinx solutions now more competitive than ever."

The RamSan-70 "Gorilla" is a high-performance, half-length PCIe card with 900 GB of usable SLC Flash capacity. Delivering 330K IOPS and 2 GB/s of bandwidth, it offers higher performance and greater capacity than any other half-length SLC Flash PCIe card.

Texas Memory Systems, Inc. (TMS), maker of The World's Fastest Storage, introduces the new high-performance RamSan-70, a 900-GB half-length PCIe card featuring Toshiba's newest 32nm SLC Flash. The RamSan-70 carries on Texas Memory Systems' tradition of delivering a complete integrated RamSan storage solution on a single board.

After taking some flack from the community on the relatively low maximum rewrite-cycle count capacity on its 25 nanometer MLC NAND flash chips, Intel decided to extend the warranty of its new 320 Series SSDs which use the 25 nm chips to 5 years, to assure buyers that 3,000 rewrite cycles is plenty for its target buyers. Maximum rewrite cycle count is the maximum number of times a cell of the NAND flash chip can be rewritten. 3,000 appears like a small number, but Intel believes that consumers don't have much to worry about that. The company feels that with a consumer's typical usage, the drive should work flawlessly for at least 5 years, and has extended the warranty to back its assertions.

In a Chip-Shot (Intel's micro-PR), the company said: "Confident in the enhanced reliability features of its recently introduced third-generation solid-state drive (SSD), Intel announced it has extended its limited warranty for the Intel SSD 320 Series from three years to five years. The extended warranty term will apply to all Intel SSD 320 Series drives, including those already purchased. Additional limitations apply to enterprise usage levels." Intel's SSD 320 Series is a successor of X25-M G3 series, which uses the same essential controller and specifications, but uses 25 nm MLC NAND flash chips.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, today announced the release the S511 Solid State Drive (SSD), which employs the latest SATA 6Gb/s specification. With this cutting edge implementation of the latest data transfer standard, the performance of this SSD has been dramatically raised over conventional SATA II products.

The S511 utilizes the new generation SandForce SF-2200 series chip, with native support for the SATA 6Gb/s platform. Its read and write speeds are twice that of SSDs using the older SATA II specification, and in real world test simulations reached 550/520MB read and write speeds respectively, with 4K random write speeds as high as 60,000 IOPS. For consumers, this means transferring 5GB media archives can be completed in as few as 15 seconds. In actual testing of Windows 7 boot speed, the S511 cruised to an impressive 25 second system boot time.

Newcomer into the flash storage industry, MyDigitalSSD, announced its new line of SSDs in the mSATA form-factor, called "Bullet Proof". It is being offered as an upgrade option for a number of netbooks and tablets made by the likes of ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and Google (Chrome netbook). Offering capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB; Bullet Proof can provide read speeds of up to 270 MB/s, and 200 MB/s write speeds, with 4K random read throughput of 35,000 IOPS. CrystalDiskMark measured both read and write speeds to be around the 200 MB/s mark.

The SSD uses 50 nm MLC NAND flash memory, and supports TRIM, RAID, NCQ with command chain length of 32, power failure recovery, dynamic bad-block management, hardware monitoring, and SMART. With an MTBF of 2 million hours and backed by a 2-year replacement warranty, the 32, 64, and 128 gigabyte variants are priced at US $80, $140, and $280, respectively.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the Force Series 3 family of solid-state drives. The newly announced Force Series 3 models take advantage of the new SATA 6.0 Gb/s (SATA 3) interface to deliver impressive speed at an attractive price. The Force Series 3 features the highest performance version of the latest-generation SandForce SF-2281 SSD Processor with out-of-box read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively, and an impressive 85000K IOPS for measurably faster system response, boot times and application load times than SATA 2 solid-state drives.

All Force Series 3 models are also backward compatible with SATA 2, and include an easy-to-use 3.5" adapter to allow owners of both desktop and notebook PCs to enjoy the cool, quiet operation and enhanced system performance made possible by replacing their traditional mechanical hard drive with an SSD.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, announces the Talos series, a line of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs designed for enterprise applications that require ultra-fast, high capacity solutions equipped with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND. Talos brings new strength to the Company's storage lineup by expanding the availability of OCZ's proprietary Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) technology to storage OEMs.

"We have experienced considerable demand for our high-capacity VCA-enabled SAS products, both with and without enhanced power fail protection," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "The new OCZ Talos SSD series delivers the ultimate combination of performance, scalability, and reliability. Talos series drives are tailored to meet the needs of most enterprises in a non-customer specific format, including balanced compressed and incompressible data performance and balanced read/write IOPS, all in the highest capacity SAS 6Gbps drive available today."

PCMark 7, a new Futuremark benchmark that offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7, was released today and is now available to download and purchase from here. PCMark 7 is available in 3 editions: the free Basic Edition that offers unlimited runs of the PCMark test suite without registration or expiry, the Advanced Edition which includes all 7 benchmark tests and the Professional Edition which unlocks all features and is licensed for commercial use. PCMark 7 is the latest benchmark from developer Futuremark and joins existing Windows PC tests PCMark05 for Windows XP and PCMark Vantage for Windows Vista.

PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 PC tests for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark test. The Lightweight test measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark test. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity tests. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware tests. The Storage test is ideal for testing solid state drives (SSDs) and external hard drives in addition to the system drive.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has started the industry's first production of a high-performance toggle DDR 2.0 multi-level-cell (MLC) memory chip. The new NAND flash chip features a 64 gigabit (Gb) density, made possible by using an advanced 20 nanometer (nm) class* process technology. The chip is designed to support the high-performance requirements of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and solid state drives (SSDs).

Equipped with a toggle DDR (Double Data Rate) 2.0 interface, the new 64Gb MLC chip can transmit data at a bandwidth of up to 400 megabit per second (Mbps). This provides a 10-fold increase over the 40Mbps Single Data Rate (SDR) NAND flash memory in widespread use today, and a three-fold boost over 133Mbps toggle DDR 1.0, 32Gb NAND flash memory, which Samsung was first to produce in 2009.

Facing global changes in the memory storage products industry, despite the technical threshold of industrial class and military class memory products are higher; they have the advantages of steadier market demand and supply when compared with their consumer class counterparts. As a result, products of industrial and military applications have become a very competitive field for major module manufacturers. Team Group Inc. has been actively cultivating industrial class products, taking advantage of its strong research and development abilities and its keen grasp of market trends.

Using IFM (Industrial Flash Module) SATA SSD as a pioneer, Team Group Inc. is committed to increasing the performance of integrated system products, and will further move towards to the more stringent industrial specifications in the future. Team Group Inc. aims to provide integrated solutions of more competitive embedded platforms and storage devices for telecommunication, transportation, automation and tablet system developers.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled the Agility 3 and Solid 3 SATA III SSD product lines. The Agility 3 and Solid 3 are designed to cater to speed-seeking enthusiasts in search of the best value for performance. Using the latest technology, these new series deliver nearly double the performance of the previous generation and offer a more cost-effective alternative to current SATA 6Gbps SSDs on the market.

"With increased availability of SATA III platforms, the demand for the latest generation SSDs has grown rapidly," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ technology Group. "We are addressing this demand with new products that offer both the best performance and value for consumers. The new Agility 3 and Solid 3 SSDs make it easier than ever for consumers take advantage of the new SATA III interface. When coupled with the speed and reliability benefits that our SSDs offer over traditional hard drives, it makes the two new series the ideal choices for mobile and desktop applications."

Intel's much talked about "Larson Creek" 311 Series entry-level SATA solid state drive (SSD), which forms the foundation of Intel Smart Response technology was pictured and tested. The SSD comes in a standard-looking 2.5-inch shell resembling many other Intel SSD models. Unlike the more popular X25-M series, the 311 Series SSDs use 34 nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory, and comes in low capacities such as 20 GB. That's not even enough capacity to install the OS and important applications (which is barely possible on 40 GB SSDs), but that's not the purpose of the SSD. It assists hard drives, acting as a fast "cache", storing only the most important system and program files. Upon opening, one can see Intel-made controller and NAND flash chips. The 311 Series "Larson Creek" 20 GB SSD was put through a run of CrystalDiskMark, where it clocked transfer rates of nearly 199 MB/s sequential read, and 114 MB/s sequential write.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today announced its OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express Solid State Drive is now shipping in an industry largest 480GB capacity for all 2010 Apple MacBook Air models. First announced at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show this past January, the OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express line now offers up to 4X greater capacity and up to 68% faster real-world performance than factory available options. This new 480GB model introduction continues OWC's position as the only aftermarket SSD manufacturer for the 2010 MacBook Air and the most comprehensive U.S. manufacturer of industry leading SandForce processor based SSDs available today with OWC Mercury Pro brand SSD models available for nearly every Mac and PC produced over the past decade.

SSD Caching has become the "Hot" Storage topic of the PC industry. In the near future, motherboards based on the Intel SandyBridge (Z68) will bring SSD Caching to the desktop PC. SSD Caching boots system performance by using high-speed solid state disks to offset slower, but high-capacity hard disk drives. Once limited to enterprise server applications, SSD Caching is now within the reach of PC users. The mainstream consumer market has embraced SSD's sub $100 models are now commonplace; ideal for caching applications.

Recently, HighPoint Technologies has launched a pair of 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 HBA's that deliver SSD Caching solutions to any PCI-Express Platform, sharing the high-performance benefits of this technology with PC users worldwide. HighPoint SSD Caching HBA's combine any SSD and HDD of any capacity into a single storage drive. SSD Caching Drives can be used to boot the system, host applications or simply serve as libraries for file storage and Home Media Networks. HighPoint SSD Caching HBA's provide two distinct modes of operation: Safe-Mode stores all permanent data safely on the HDD for security, while Capacity Mode uses the space provided by each device to optimize storage and performance.