SandForce Inc., the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client, and industrial computing applications, today announced the availability of the SF-2000 Family of SSD Processors optimized for SSDs deployed in mission-critical Enterprise and Industrial computing applications. These chips feature a 6 Gigabit-per-second SATA host interface, industry applauded DuraClass Technology, an unprecedented 60,000 sustained random read/write IOPS (Input-output Operations Per Second) and sustained sequential read/write performance of 500 Megabytes per second. In addition to state-of-the-art performance, reliability, security, and Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) connectivity enhancements, the SF-2000 family supports single-level, multi-level, and enterprise multi-level cell (SLC, MLC, & eMLC) NAND Flash families from all major suppliers with its high-speed ONFi2 and Toggle Flash interface.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it is mass producing 100 and 200 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives (SSDs) for use as the primary storage in enterprise storage systems. "By being able to fully meet the rising demand for high-performance and eco-friendly server and storage platforms, SSDs will be able to penetrate the enterprise application market even more rapidly," said Dong-Soo Jun, executive vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to deliver SSD solutions with outstanding performance and low power consumption to provide optimal value for data centers and other enterprise storage environments."

The first recipient of the drive will be EMC. "EMC collaborated with Samsung to qualify Samsung's new enterprise-class SSDs for EMC's market-leading midrange storage portfolio," said Joel Schwartz, Sr. Vice President, Common Storage Platform Operations at EMC. Samsung started producing its 3.5 inch 100 and 200GB SSDs last month. Adopting SSDs as a main storage media in storage systems will minimize power consumption as well as enhance overall system performance, leading to a lowering of the total cost of ownership over time.

Team Group Inc. has been receiving tremendous feedback and support from power users since its launch of the SSD products. Eyeing at the increasing demand for laptop Hard Drives upgrade to SSD, Team thus launches the third model of the Combo Family, Combo II Elite. It is equipped with SATA2 and USB2.0 dual interface that fulfills the consumer's demand for low power consumption and high-performance mobile storage. The Combo II Elite will absolutely be the perfect choice for laptop upgrade.

An improved version of the Combo II, the Combo II Elite is also equipped with built-in 64MB DDR2 memory. With the research & development, the input/output per second (IOPS) has been enhanced significantly. When compared with the 4K data block for reading and writing small files tailored for operating systems in general SSDs, the Combo II Elite has increased the writing speed up to 40% faster. Along with the extremely low lag time, users can immediately experience system startup at superb speed when installing the Combo II Elite as the system disk in any laptops. The same experience is also found when opening programs, and running image processing software with no presence of lag. Therefore, the Combo II Elite is a perfect partner that meets the demands of art designers and brings more perfect experience than any conventional hard disk drives.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, has unveiled a proprietary interface called "High-Speed Data Link" (HSDL) to accelerate the progression of solid-state storage. Unsatisfied with existing interface options, OCZ developed HSDL to eliminate I/O bottlenecks and enable SSD technology to operate at its full potential. With this initiative, OCZ aims to enhance high performance computing (HPC) and I/O-intensive infrastructures for its clients.

"Solid State Drive throughput speeds are increasing at a rate in excess of what current storage buses can support, and as a result, storage protocols are quickly becoming the bottleneck to storage subsystem performance," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "Designed for both high-performance computing and enterprise storage applications, our new High Speed Data Link interface addresses this issue and revolutionizes data storage by significantly outperforming other current interfaces delivering performance at levels that saturate most CPU buses."

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer peripheral solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the Patriot Convoy 4x4 series of 5.25" bay enclosures for 2.5" Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Drives. The Patriot Convoy 425S and Convoy 425XL expand upon the award winning Convoy product line of 3.5" bay devices for two 2.5" drives.

Designed with storage density and performance in mind, each Patriot Convoy 425S and 425XL storage device provides a simple to install solution for up to four 2.5" HDD or SSD with the 425XL offering RAID functionality. Displayed during the 2010 Computex trade show as part of a technology showcase with high capacity SSD systems, the Convoy 425XL was a key component for the Patriot Artemis II technology demonstration. Paired with 56 Patriot Inferno 100GB SSDs in RAID 0 configuration, the storage and performance benefits of this enclosure were evident: maximum storage density in a small space with extreme performance. In the Artemis II system, the Patriot Inferno SSDs and the Convoy 425XL achieved breathtaking performance of over 240,000 IOPS.

Foremay, Inc., a leader of technology innovation in solid state drive and one of the world's Top 10 SSD OEMs, today announced the EC188 M-series SATA 6 Gb/s solid state hard drive which has standard host interfaces of third generation SATA, also known as SATA 6 Gb/s. The SATA 6 Gb/s SSD is designed for enterprise servers, studio workstations and high end DIY personal computers, with speeds up to 450 MB/s for reading and 350 MB/s for writing, with a capacity up to 500 GB.

"The mainstream motherboards delivered to the market today have significantly increased their support of the SATA 3 hard drive," said Jason Hoover, Foremay's VP Marketing. "Our SATA 3.0 SSD is designed to meet the demand for fully utilizing the advantages of SATA 3.0 speed in SATA 3-ready motherboards. Users will now be able to enjoy the ultra-high speed provided by our SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, has unveiled the OCZ Onyx 2 Series, a 2.5 inch SSD with superior affordability designed for mainstream desktops and mobile systems. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient solution, the Onyx 2 delivers excellent performance with lower price per gigabyte than that of other comparable drives on the market.

"While we are constantly looking to push the envelope in solid state drive performance, we are also dedicated to making the technology more affordable to consumers," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The new Onyx 2 Series SSDs give customers the very best of both worlds when it comes to performance and value, and they are an ideal solution for mobile and desktop users that want to take advantage of all the benefits that SSDs offer over traditional rotational based drives."

Kingston expanded its SSD product lineup for Europe with the new SSDNow V+ 180 series. These drives come in the 1.8-inch SATA form factor, and are suited for both enterprise (servers) and consumer (notebooks). Kingston started off its SSD lineup with Intel's expertise, and this seems to be similar. Making use of MLC NAND flash chips, the SSDNow V+ provides read/write speeds of upto 230 MB/s (read), 180 MB/s (write). The controller has its dedicated 128 MB of DDR3 memory, and uses the SATA 3 Gb/s interface, it supports the TRIM function in supported OSes. The MTBF of 1 million hours seems to add to its prospects of making it to enterprises. It is available in capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB; priced at €180, €312, €737, respectively.

Addonics Technologies, announced a very small storage appliance which, despite being the size of a four inch cube, packs the power and features of RAID storage devices that are much larger and up to three times as expensive. Called the Compact RAID, the unit accommodates up to five 2.5", 9.5 mm height hard drives or SSDs to form high performance storage configurable to various RAID levels up to RAID 5. Drives can easily be removed or added to the Compact RAID, much like a tape cartridge without special tools.

In addition to the powerful RAID engine, the Compact RAID comes built-in with a high speed eSATA connection and can deliver a screaming throughput up to 300 Mbytes/sec. The Compact RAID weighs just over a pound without drive. It also features a silent operation and the ability to be used as a boot drive or as additional storage.

Viking Modular Solutions, a division of Sanmina-SCI Corporation, and a leading manufacturer of innovative DRAM modules and flash solutions, today announced that the newest member of its SSD product family, the Element Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD, is available for immediate qualification. This enterprise class 2.5" SAS SSD delivers unparalleled price-performance, helping to redefine server and storage SSD utilization.

The Element SAS SSD features a dual-ported 6GB SAS interface and an advanced parallel NAND channel architecture, providing unprecedented endurance capabilities to meet the high performance and high availability requirements of a variety of enterprise computing applications. Viking Modular's Element SSDs enable the use of Multi-Level Cell (MLC) and Enterprise MLC (eMLC) NAND flash technology for enterprise Input/Output (I/O) workloads, which have typically demanded the use of Single-Level Cell (SLC) flash.

PhotoFast is working on yet another monster SSD, this time one that uses the PCI-Express x8 interface (fits inside x16 slots), the GMonster PowerDrive-LSI. As the name suggests, some of the drive's chippery (such as storage controller) is made by LSI, which runs an internal (abstract to OS) RAID a number of SSD modules. If 2 GT/s interface was any indication of the drive's speeds, then here goes: 1,400 MB/s read; 1,500 MB/s write. The controller has its own 512 MB of dedicated DDR2 memory. The GMonster PowerDrive-LSI comes in capacities of 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. It has a rated MTBF of 1.5 million hours. It is slated for next month. Once again, PhotoFast did not give out pricing.

Flash-memory expert PhotoFast is releasing its fastest SATA solid state drive (SSD) series, the GMonster 3X V1. Based on a new controller, the drive supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and significantly relies on the higher interface bandwidth. These drives carry read speeds of up to 430 MB/s, writing at up to 300 MB/s. Available in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB variants, these drives have different read/write speeds: the 64 GB model reads/writes at up to 370/120 MB/s, the 128 GB model at 410/190 MB/s, with the 256 GB model running full throttle at 430/300 MB/s. The controller makes full use of the NAND flash memory installed as data-area, while it has its own 128 MB DDR3 memory to carry out its tasks and use as cache. Aimed at consumers, these drives carry MTBF of 1.5 million hours. October is when these will hit the shelves, though prices have not been announced yet.

SandForce Inc., the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client and industrial computing applications, today announced that it has closed $25 million in Series D funding, led by Canaan Partners. Existing investors who also participated include DCM, Storm Ventures, Translink Capital, LSI Corporation & UMC Capital.

"We are increasing volume shipments of our Enterprise and Client SSD Processors to leading drive manufacturers around the globe and continue to receive exceptional market acceptance of our DuraClass technology in I/O intensive storage applications," said Michael Raam, president and CEO of SandForce. "This new funding will help us bring our next-generation products to market, expand our customer and partner support infrastructure, and accelerate our core technology development that will extend our market leadership."

At the ongoing Intel Developer Forum event, OCZ Technology showed off its upcoming RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD. For those unfamiliar with RevoDrive, it is a PCI-Express addon card that holds a couple of SandForce-drive SSDs in an internal (abstract to OS) RAID 0. The SATA bandwidth bottleneck is eliminated, as the drive connects to the system bus over PCI-Express x4. The RevoDrive X2, uses no less than four SandForce-driven SSDs in an internal RAID. The drive connects to the system over PCI-E x4, and is bootable. According to OCZ's internal testing, the drive offers read speeds of up to 740 MB/s, writes of up to 730 MB/s, and 4K random write performance of up to 120,000 IOPS. An IOMeter session running on the demo rig measured 107,124 IOPS live.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has expanded its 'Green Memory' initiative going beyond DRAM and solid state drives (SSDs) to include several memory products for PC and mobile application areas. At the seventh annual Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum being held here today, Samsung announced that its 'Green Memory' initiative will now include Samsung LPDDR2 and GDDR5 green memory as well as its GreenDDR3 and Green SSDs.

Stepping up its efforts to increase worldwide interest in Green IT products and eco-friendly solutions, a new website has been launched to promote the expanded initiative to OEM customers and consumers. It provides detailed information on Samsung's green product strategies and green-focused partners, for all three market areas, as well as industry-wide green IT trends.

Transcend Information, Inc, a global leader in storage and multimedia products, today announced a radical upgrade of its 2.5" solid state drives (SSD). The new SSDs boast transfer speeds reaching 260 MB/s and storage capacities up to 512 GB, offering performance-minded enthusiasts a perfect combination of speed, high-capacity storage and long-term reliability.

To boost overall performance, Transcend's new 2.5-inch SATA SSDs feature an upgraded controller chip that supports a maximum sequential transfer speed of 260 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write. This dramatically improved performance translates into significantly faster system boot up and application launch speed, while offering the lag-free responsiveness and stability necessary for storage-intensive computing and high-end gaming systems.

Icy Dock released a handy enclosure that makes room for four 2.5" SATA or SAS HDDs/SSDs inside a 5.25" drive bay. The Icy Dock MB994SP-4S enclosure provides the four 2.5" bays with doors and trays that make loading and unloading the drives inside easy. Internally, the enclosure relays four SATA or SAS connections to the ports at the back (from which they can be individually connected to the system's storage controller, while power is drawn in from two Molex connectors. Each tray has its own drive activity indicator. Cooling is care of two 40 mm fans on its rear side. Measuring 6.7" x 5.75 x 1.63", the enclosure is the size of most 5.25" optical drives, and is designed to fit in almost every case with a 5.25" bay. Icy Dock did not give out pricing or availability details yet.

Mushkin, Inc., a global leader in enhanced-performance computer products and, through its Mushkin Select brand, the VAR channel, announced today the release of a new solid state drive in its Callisto deluxe series, a 40 GB version. This SSD is ideal for new adopters of solid state drive technology looking for an extremely fast drive at a very attractive price, and offers excellent performance when coupled with other drives in RAID configurations.

"Our new 40GB Callisto deluxe drives are a product that customers in all segments can enjoy. They are not only a great solution to enter the exciting world of solid state disk technology, but also a great data storage solution for enthusiasts when placed in a RAID configuration." - Brian Flood, Mushkin's director of product development. Boasting read speeds of up to 280 MB/s and write speeds of up to an impressive 270 MB/s, the Callisto deluxe series is equipped with the industry-acclaimed Sandforce SF-1200 controller.

Samsung's newest line of consumer solid state drives (SSDs) in the 2.5" SATA form-factor have made a quiet entry into European markets. Samsung, which is known more in the SSD industry for its NAND flash chips than an SSD line under its own banner, designed the new Samsung 470 series SSDs to pack the latest technologies, offer high IOPS and throughput for PCs and notebooks. In these, Samsung is using its a homegrown "multi-core" SSD controller that works to give high data rates without provisioning a portion of the NAND flash memory for controller operations. The drives use Samsung's 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND flash memory chips.

The Samsung 470 series SSDs come in capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB; offering data rates of 250 MB/s (read) and 220 MB/s (write), with up to 31,000 IOPS for reads, 21,000 IOPS for random writes. The 64 GB variant, however, writes at up to 170 MB/s. The drives use the newer SATA 6 Gb/s interface, though are backwards compatible with older versions of SATA. The TRIM feature is also present, it keeps the drives' write performance from deteriorating over time. Samsung advertises a mean time before failure (MTBF) or 1.5 million hours, and backs these drives with a three-year warranty. The drives are designed to withstand mechanical shocks of up to 1,500 G. The 64, 128 and 256 GB variants are each priced at €152.39, €294.46 and €558.57, respectively.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today a new 40GB model to its award-winning OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD line as the most affordable high performance SandForce Processor based Solid State Drive on the market. Designed and made in the U.S. from imported parts, the new OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 40GB SSD's special introductory pricing of $99.99 makes it the lowest priced SSD on the market to offer three key high performance features:

• Industry leading sustained Read AND Write speeds over 260MB/s (with peak speeds up to 285MB/s).
• Best in class error correction (ECC) and SandForce RAISE redundancy with 7% over provisioning.
• SandForce DuraClass technology with ultra-efficient Block Management & Wear Leveling for long term durability.

Today, the BitFenix Design Lab has officially announced its highly-anticipated PC chassis. Dubbed Colossus, this full tower E-ATX PC chassis is built specifically for gamers and PC enthusiasts from the ground up, making it the ideal enclosure for the most colossal gaming rigs. "With Colossus, we focused on how gamers and PC enthusiasts were interacting with their computers on a daily basis, and crafted a PC chassis that actually helps to enhance their computing experience," says David Jarlestedt, BitFenix Product Manager. "What we've been able to do is create a case that not only looks striking, but delivers novel features that truly benefit the user in terms of security, control, and performance."

Inspired by one of the wonders of the ancient world, Colossus brings PC chassis design to a new level. Whether in Monolith Black or Glacier White, Colossus combines an aggressive futuristic design with clean modern lines. Its top and front surfaces are coated with proprietary BitFenix SofTouch coating, which not only looks great, but protects the surface from stains and lends an amazing feel. The LED lighting system adorning the front door and side panels provide even lighting for a stunning look, and users can select either red or blue lighting with the touch of a button. The lighting also has three selectable modes, including on, pulse, and off, giving users complete control over the ambience of their computing environment.

G.Skill International Co. Ltd., manufacturer of extreme performance memory and solid-state storage with solid quality, has today added three new capacities to its ultra-high performance Phoenix Pro series SSD, including 40GB, 80GB and 160GB models.

Based on the popular SandForce SF-1200 SSD controller that has been tuned to deliver an unparalleled performance in 4k random write speed up to 50,000 IOPS, G.Skill's Phoenix pro SSD family has been the international award winning drive of choice since its recent debut at Computex 2010.

SanDisk Corporation, the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced the first product in a new category of embedded solid state drives (SSD) that are smaller than a postage stamp and offer higher capacities and performance than existing storage solutions. The SanDisk integrated SSD (iSSD), the first high-capacity product within this new category, is designed for use in fast-growing mobile computing platforms such as tablet PCs and ultra-thin notebooks.

Computing platforms are responding to consumer demand for highly portable, ultra-thin, anywhere-anytime access to the Internet and their favorite content. The SanDisk iSSD drive is the first flash SSD device to support the industry standard SATA interface in a small BGA (Ball Grid Array) package that can be soldered onto any motherboard, and that is fast enough for use with advanced operating systems in next-generation mobile computing platforms.

Viking Modular Solutions, a division of Sanmina-SCI Corporation, and leading manufacturer of innovative memory and flash solutions, today announced its Slim SATA SSD, a case-less, small form-factor and rugged SATA SSD, is available for immediate customer qualification.

Viking Modular Solutions' Slim SATA SSD is an embedded solid state drive solution that delivers outstanding performance in a standard form factor - and is less than half the size of a 2.5" SSD. With its 3Gb SATA II interface and sustained performance of up to 260 MB/s (megabytes per second), the Viking Modular Slim SATA SSD is ideal for telecommunications, gaming, embedded server & storage systems, field computing and defense & aerospace applications.

Intel is planning a series of four solid state drives (SSDs) in Q4 2010, that makes use of the latest IMFlash Technologies 25 nm NAND flash memory chips, under a possible "G3" (third generation) brand identifier, and sold complete under the Intel X25-M, and X18-M (mainstream) and X25-V (value) brands. The four drives will continue to carry the company internal codename "Postville", and mostly the same exact feature set as the 34 nm Postville SSDs, except for the new 25 nm NAND chips, native data encryption, SMART, and higher performance.

Under the 2.5" form-factor X25-M series, there are 600 GB, 300 GB, and 160 GB models on the roadmap, while an X25-V 2.5" value SSD featuring the 25 nm flash chips includes an 80 GB model in Q4. Later in Q1 2011, Intel will add new enterprise X25-E "Lydonville" models based on the new chips, as well as introduce 25 nm based 300 GB and 160 GB 1.8" mainstream X18-M SSDs, and a 40 GB X25-M model. The introduction of these new SSDs follows the February 2010 announcement of the 25 nm NAND flash memory chips by IMFlash Technologies. IMFlash is a joint venture between Intel and Micron Technology.