AI at the edge comes with a host of challenges: limited processing resources, small storage capacities, insufficient memory, security concerns, electrical power requirements, limited physical space on edge devices, and excessive costs. That being said, there is an enormous need for AI at the edge - for devices to learn fast and make decisions in real time. Issues such as latency and distance are current drawbacks that hold edge-to-cloud AI back from reaching its full potential. In some cases, cloud data centers can be as far as hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from edge devices. Reducing the distance and therefore the latency, by bringing AI into the edge device itself, can open up a world of new possibilities. And, compared to edge-to-cloud AI, AI-enabled edge devices don't need to rely on a stable internet connection, nor do they have as much vulnerability to cyber-security issues, because they don't send data offsite.

Edge AI box computers equipped with compact and high-capacity storage is one of the key factors to make AI come true at the edge. By offloading computation and storage from the cloud to the edge itself, edge computing is enhancing the power and capabilities of the IoT. To help make this a reality, SP Industrial has launched the new MEA3FEV0 SSD Series. This industrial-grade PCIe Gen 3x4 SSD series features support for NVMe 1.3 and BiCS5 112-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash technology. It ticks many boxes that are common problems for edge AI computing: large storage capacities up to 2 TB, small M.2 2242 form factor for minimal space usage, lower power consumption compared to BiCS4, and affordable cost with a DRAM-less design.

A few days ago, reports started flooding the web on a Steam Deck mod that successfully vied to replace the handheld console's integrated 2230 SSD towards the more ubiquitous 2242 format. The general idea was that the 2242 SSDs could generally provide higher performance and more bang for the buck on the available storage space, which is at a premium on the Steam Deck already, mostly due to its increased footprint compared to the stock 2230 SSD. However, according to a tweet by Steam Deck engineer Lawrence Yang, this SSD replacement carries with it enough caveats that it might actually severely decrease the longevity of the device itself.

According to him, the Steam Deck's SSD slot is particularly sensitive to fluctuations on power requirements - of which those of 2242 SSDs are usually higher. At the same time, the device's thermal pads (of which the removal and/or compromise is required to fit in the larger form-factor SSD) are a very necessary part of temperature management for the complex engineering of the Deck - specifically for the power delivery subsystem, which should see worsened temperatures due to the thermal pad removal. It might be better to simply invest in a fast SD card solution - some relatively affordable models offer read speeds of 160 MB/s already, show no performance degradation, and are hot-swappable.

addlink, is introducing a new PCIe 4.0 SSD, the S90 Lite, featuring storage capacities of up to 2 TB and offer speeds up to 5000 MB/s. It is compatible with the latest Intel/AMD PC and laptop computer platforms. The S90 Lite uses the latest Gen4 x4 NVMe controller and 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. It utilizes PCIe Gen4x4 and NVMe 1.4 protocol as an interface to achieve rapid sequential read and write speeds up to 5000/4500 MB per second, which is ten times faster than a SATA III SSD. The SSD drive is also backward compatible with the PCIe Gen3 system.

The drive comes with an SLC caching to deliver outstanding performances and better user experiences. It also supports a host memory buffer (HMB) that allows S90 Lite SSD to proactively pursue higher performances by utilizing the memory resource of the host to maximum random read/write speeds of up to 400K/800K IOPS.

According to TrendForce research, as output from Kioxia and WDC grows month by month, it has become obvious that production capacity is sufficient to meet increased bit demand. However, post-pandemic demand for consumer electronics such as laptops will no longer lead to flagging orders. Coupled with slow destocking among Chinese smartphone brands due to the pandemic and rising inflation, these factors will lead to oversupply in the 3Q22 NAND Flash market, in turn affecting a price drop of 0~5% in 3Q22.

In terms of Client SSD, although a backstop for business notebook orders remains, demand for consumer notebook and Chromebook orders lags behind 2021, especially as PC brands stock more conservatively. Their intention to actively reduce inventory is obvious and the volume of orders in peak season may fall behind last year. However, as SSD production capacity gradually returns to normal, supply of client SSDs continues to increase. In addition, shipments of Kioxia and WDC products been delivered in succession. In order to avoid a sharp increase in inventory, the supply side is willing to let prices spike. Client SSD pricing is expected to reverse direction and move downwards approximately 3-8% in 3Q22.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, presents the T6-423 6-bay tower NAS as the latest addition to the TX-423 Series products introduces earlier this year. The T6-423 is a cost-effective professional storage solution for small-sized and medium-sized businesses without the need for a rackmount. The T6-423 can be setup and integrated to your existing storage solutions with ease.

With the launch of the T6-423 6-bay professional NAS, TerraMaster also announces the worldwide availability of the new TOS 5 operating system. The TerraMaster T6-423 supports the new TOS 5 operating system.

VIPER, a trademarked brand of PATRIOT and a global leader in performance memory, solid-state drives, and flash storage solutions, is proud to announce the market launch of its VPR400, the world's first RGB M.2 PCIe Gen 4x4 SSD. A unique aluminium heatspreader has been included to keep the drive thermally stable while accenting the onboard RGB LEDs. This SSD is built using the latest Innogrit IG5220 Gen4 x4 controller along with the highest quality 3D NAND memory chips, allowing the drive to provide the 4K Aligned Random Read and Write speeds up to 600K and 500K IOPs and Sequential Read and Write speeds up to 4,600 MB/s and 4,400 MB/s (1 TB model). Now available in capacities of 1 TB and 512 GB.

"The VIPER VPR400 has been crafted to deliver blazing speeds and performance for intense gaming and video content creation. VIPER understands that keeping high-speed SSDs thermally stable is the key to maintaining the storage unit's performance and longevity." said Roger Shinmoto, Vice President of VIPER GAMING. Onboard RGB is fully synchronizable with other VIPER GAMING RGB peripherals using the smart VIPER RGB 3.0 software, allowing users to customize their lighting profiles or choose any pre-programmed RGB lighting patterns.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of the industry's first XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0-compliant removable PCIe standard attached, NVMe storage device: the XFMEXPRESS XT2. With a new form factor and connector, the XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0 standard delivers an unparalleled combination of features designed to revolutionize ultra-mobile PCs, IoT devices and a variety of embedded applications.

First introduced in August of 2019, and then presented as a proposal to the JEDEC Subcommittee for Electrical Specifications and Command Protocols, KIOXIA XFMEXPRESS XT2 is a new form factor for PCIe/NVMe specification devices. Featuring a powerful combination of small size, speed and serviceability, XFMEXPRESS technology was developed to enhance next-generation mobile and embedded applications. The XFMEXPRESS XT2 from KIOXIA is the first product to meet the specification of the new JEDEC standard.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today unveiled two new PCIe Gen4x4 Enterprise Class SSDs: the EPR3750 in M.2 2280 form factor and the EPR3760 in M.2 22110 form factor. The EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs are backward compatible in PCIe Gen3 M.2 slots at even faster speeds while offering significant performance enhancements when matched with PCIe Gen4 chipsets. Also, the EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs provide a faster quality of service (QoS) command execution with Enterprise SSD firmware. Workstation and Server boot applications require consistent and predictable performance from storage. Phison's new SSDs are ideal to use as boot drives in workstations, servers, and in Network Attached Storage (NAS) and RAID environments.

HighPoint M.2 HPC Series RAID Controllers establish a new benchmark for NVMe performance: up to 55,000 MB/s for a single RAID array. HighPoint manufactures the industry's most comprehensive selection of M.2, U.2 and U.3 NVMe RAID controllers. The 8-Port SSD7540 and SSD7140A represent the best M.2 solutions available in today's marketplace. HighPoint 8-Port High-Port-Count (HPC) M.2 controllers deliver unbeatable performance and storage capacity in a compact PCIe device that can be easily integrated into any industry standard computing platform. Our SSD7540 PCIe Gen4 x16 controller can support up to 64 TB of storage at speeds up to 28,000 MB/s. Dual-Card Cross-Sync configurations can double performance and capacity thresholds - up to 120+TB at an astonishing 55,000 MB/s.

HighPoint's unique performance-focused NVMe architecture utilizes intelligent switch technology to allocate up to x4 lanes of bandwidth to each NVMe device port. This enables our 8-port controllers to fully saturate x16 lanes of host bandwidth using as little as four NVMe SSDs. However, additional SSDs can be added to maximize storage capacity, or fine tune the configuration for a specific application by optimizing a RAID array for sequential or random I/O.

Just under a month ago, ASUS posted a teaser for its first internal SSD, the ROG Strix SQ7 and now the company has finally released the full specs. It is indeed based around the 12 nm Phison E18 controller, as predicted by our Editor-In-Chief, something he spotted from the sneak peek picture. Although ASUS didn't specifically mention what kind of flash the drive is using, they kindly left the flash model number visible in one of its pictures of the drive. Although the full model name isn't visible, enough of it is visible to identify it as Micron's 176-layer TLC flash. The ROG Strix SQ7 also sports a DDR4 cache, as expected, although ASUS doesn't mention clock speeds.

ASUS claims the drive will deliver sequential read speeds of up to 7000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6000 MB/s, which places the ROG Strix SQ7 in direct competition with several other Phison E18 based high-end drives from the likes of Kingston, MSI, Sabrent and others. Unfortunately, ASUS doesn't mention IOPS or random performance, although an unspecified "large" SLC cache is mentioned. Other features include TGC Opal and AES 256-bit encryption. ASUS also provides its own SSD dashboard, which of course is ROG branded, but looks like a skinned version of Phison's standard SSD dashboard, rather than something custom made. ASUS also provides a copy of NTI Backup Now EZ software and the drives appear to have a five year warranty. ASUS mentions PS5 compatibility outside of the PC space. No word on pricing or retail availability was provided and so far ASUS has only listed a 1 TB model.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

NVMe SSDs based on the M.2 form factor come in several different lengths today, ranging from 30 to 110 mm, although the 30 mm drives are rare and the 110 mm drives have so far been reserved for the server space. However, they've all had one thing in common, the 22 mm width, as otherwise there might be issues in terms of fitting the drives, especially in notebooks. However, it appears that the PCI-SIG snuck in a wider, 25 mm option for M.2 SDDs at the end of 2020, but seemingly forgot to mention it to anyone. The only reason we even noticed, was because Gigabyte listed its upcoming X670 and X670E motherboards as having support for 25110 SSD's, where you'd expect to see support for 2280 or 22110 drives.

An extra 3 mm in width might not sound like much, but many M.2 drives seem to be somewhat space constrained, mainly with regards to the passive components and the power regulation. It also seems like this is in preparation for PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives, where the host controller is expected to run hotter, even though it might not be as bad as initially expected. Regardless, it seems like motherboard makers are now making space for this slightly wider M.2 form factor, as well as implementing suitable cooling solutions to match. Whether we'll see drives using this slightly wider form factor or not, is still up in the air and one reason why the SSD manufacturers might choose not to go wider, is because new drives might not fit in older motherboards and laptops, if the clearance is too small.

Samsung Electronics and Red Hat today announced a broad collaboration on software technologies for next-generation memory solutions. The partnership will focus on the development and validation of open source software for existing and emerging memory and storage products, including NVMe SSDs; CXL memory; computational memory/storage (HBM-PIM, Smart SSDs) and fabrics — in building an expansive ecosystem for closely integrated memory hardware and software. The exponential growth of data driven by AI, AR and the fast-approaching metaverse is bringing disruptive changes to memory designs, requiring more sophisticated software technologies that better link with the latest hardware advancements.

"Samsung and Red Hat will make a concerted effort to define and standardize memory software solutions that embrace evolving server and memory hardware, while building a more robust memory ecosystem," said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics. "We will invite partners from across the IT industry to join us in expanding the software-hardware memory ecosystem to create greater customer value."

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Lexar, a leading global brand of flash memory solutions, is proud to announce the new Lexar SL660 BLAZE Gaming Portable SSD. The new drive offers gamers and creatives the latest USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 technology and blazing-fast NVMe performance with speeds up to 2000 MB/s read and 1900 MB/s write. It is perfect for boosting the performance of your consoles and editing work stations.

Beyond the outstanding performance, it's got style. The new Lexar SL660 BLAZE Gaming Portable SSD comes with RGB LEDs to create a lively atmosphere making your gameplay or work station more dynamic by adding a touch of color to your setup. The Lexar SL660 BLAZE Gaming Portable SSD also recently won the Red Dot Design Award which has recognized the best products for design in a given year since 1995. The international panel of experts and judges who reviewed the products that entered the competition were guided by assessment criteria such as the product's formal quality, ergonomics and longevity.
In addition, the Lexar SL660 BLAZE Gaming Portable SSD is durable as it is stylish and built with a premium aluminium enclosure and features a sandblasted finish for added protection against shock and vibration. It also features advanced security software with 256-bit AES encryption to protect essential files against corruption, loss, and deletion.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the upcoming availability of two new consumer storage products, the Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe and Crucial P3 NVMe solid state drives (SSDs), as an expansion of its award-winning Crucial NVMe SSD product portfolio. The all new Crucial P3 Plus SSD product line will deliver attractive price-performance metrics with sequential read/write speeds up to 5000/4200 MB/s, while next-generation Crucial P3 SSDs will provide read/write speeds up to 3500/3000 MB/s. Both drives will be available in capacities up to 4 TB, making them the ideal scalable storage solutions that professionals, creatives, gamers and other high-performance users need.

"For users that have been waiting to upgrade their PCs to Gen4 SSDs, the wait is over. With the forthcoming availability of the new Crucial P3 Plus SSD, anyone seeking high-performance SSDs can upgrade to NVMe Gen4 storage and affordably futureproof their PC," said Teresa Kelley, vice president and general manager of Micron's Commercial Products Group. "Both the Crucial P3 Plus and P3 SSD products will strengthen our overall SSD portfolio and NVMe product category by offering competitive choices for high-performance storage that enables users to get more done in less time."

addlink Technology Co., Ltd, a global storage and memory solution provider, is proud to host its virtual expo from May 25th to June 30th and addlink is also launching the brand new DDR5 RGB gaming memory, AddGame SPIDER X5, DDR5-4800, 5600, and DDR5-6000. addlink Online Virtual Showcase 2022 has three major themes: AddGame SPIDER X5/S5 DDR5 Gaming Memory, AddGame A-Series M.2 PCIe Gen4x4 SSD for Sony PS5, and Micro SDXC U3 A2 card for Nintendo Switch. Addlink is excited to bring these products to the forefront for attendees to experience virtually.

The brand new AddGame Spider X5 delivers with speeds at 4800 MHz, 5600 MHz, and 6000 MHz. They are not only equipped with the Highest-Quality DDR5 components but also tested under the most stringent conditions. Spider X5 features a large lighting strip with dynamic multi-zone RGB lighting that is gorgeous and smooth. The RGB lighting can be configured and synced perfectly by motherboards from ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, and ASRock. The exclusive black Spider totem with a high-quality aluminium heatsink enables a more efficient heat dissipation.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced the release of the newest addition to its encrypted lineup, IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD (VP80ES). This marks Kingston's first innovative OS-independent external SSD with touch-screen and hardware-encryption for data protection. Using Kingston IronKey VP80ES is as innate as unlocking a smartphone and simple drag & drop file transfers. Featuring an intuitive color touch-screen and FIPS 197 certified with XTS-AES 256-bit encryption, VP80ES is designed to protect data while also being user-friendly. The drive is ideal to safeguard against Brute Force attacks and BadUSB with digitally-signed firmware for users from small-to-medium businesses (SMB) to content creators. Its military-grade security measures make it greatly superior over using the internet and Cloud services for securing important company information, documents, or high-res images and videos.

Along with its ease of use and hardware encryption, VP80ES offers additional features for data protection, like Multi-Password (Admin/User) Option with PIN/Passphrase modes and Configurable Password Rules. With Admin option, choose between numeric PIN or Passphrase modes, set Configurable Password Rules, or enable extended security options like maximum number of shared password attempts, minimum password length of 6-64 characters, alphanumeric password rules, auto-timeout to lock drive, randomize touch-screen layout and Secure-Erase to ensure maximum protection of your important files. The Admin password can be used to restore data and access should the User password be forgotten. For additional peace of mind, VP80ES' Brute Force attack protection crypto-erases the drive if the Admin and User passwords are entered incorrectly 15 times in a row by default.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced to present the latest gaming products at COMPUTEX 2022. The innovations include its flagship gaming solutions powered by Intel 12th gen processors. The perfect combination of the IF Design Awarded Z690 AORUS XTREME motherboard, high-end key components, and big size monitors provide remarkable gaming experience. The Project Stealth kit enables an easy and simple assembly experience with special interface and cables hidden design while further enhances the system airflow for optimized cooling effect. Meanwhile, the new gaming PC, Model S delivers powerful, cool, and silent operation even on 3A games with its slick and neat aesthetics.

Moreover, the latest AMD Socket AM5 motherboards including gaming series of X670 AORUS XTREME, MASTER, PRO AX and X670 AERO D for designers will be first exposed in this exhibition as well. Users can take a sneak peek at the advanced design and extensive features of PCIe 5.0 graphics slot, M.2 Gen5 interface, exclusive PCIe/M.2 EZ-latch on GIGABYTE motherboards.

Phison Electronics Corp., a leading provider of NAND controller and flash storage solutions, announced today a strategic collaboration with AMD and Micron to build a cooperative PCIe Gen5 ecosystem of compatible products that elevate the gaming and creator experience. Phison's role includes delivering a class-leading PCie Gen5 SSD controller - PS5026-E26 - that features nearly a 2x performance increase over the previous generation flagship while adhering to the same power limitations of the M.2 form factor.

"We are pleased to announce our cooperative effort with Micron and AMD to advance the technological development of PCIe Gen5 storage offerings, as this validates Phison's commitment to upholding customer-centric values," said Leo Huang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Phison. "The E26 controller enables gamers to compete at the highest level and helps content creators to maximize the overall system performance to increase productivity." The need for high-speed storage has increased with the popularity of 5G Wireless availability worldwide. Global markets including desktop PC, notebooks, gaming consoles, cloud servers and even mobile devices will benefit from increased data transfer rates and the bandwidth available for multitask purposes. The ecosystem consisting of AMD's AM5 platform, Phison's PS5026-E26 controller, Micron's DDR5 DRAM and Replacement Gate 3D NAND allow for platform acceleration across the entire system to meet the requirements for today's always-connected lifestyle.

Silicon Power unleashes its newest PCIe 4.0 SSD, the UD90, featuring storage capacities up to 1 TB with 3D NAND flash technology. Give your system the power of PCIe 4.0 with the budget-friendly UD90. Providing the best bang for your buck, it reaches read speeds up to 4,800 MB/s and write speeds up to 4,200 MB/s. It also boasts 2x faster data transfer rates than its predecessor, PCIe 3.0, for sustained use and dependable performance. With this much efficiency, the UD90 allows you to maximize your creative output at an unbeatable value.

Don't lose your train of thought with slow load times! Designed with content creators in mind, the UD90 is built to handle the demanding levels of multi-tasking that's required of creative production, effortlessly. With support for NVMe 1.4 and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, the UD90 offers uninterrupted productivity via higher performance and lower latency for seamless execution across applications.

here's another hot new ZADAK product on the market, and this one is going to take gamers one step beyond. It's the TWSG4S M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, and it delivers read-write speeds that many Gen4 x4 SSDs can't - 7,400 and 7,000 MB/s, respectively. This is an ideal expansion SSD for new game consoles and PCs, giving players the chance to dominate their games. It ships with two powerful heatsinks in the box. One is made of ultra-thin graphene and the other of aluminium, and they reduce the operating temperatures by 15% and 35% respectively.

Either will fit inside the PS5, but notebooks will only permit the installation of the graphene heatsink. PC gamers will quickly see the advantages of this SSD, but it's also fully compliant with the technical requirements and physical dimensions of Sony's PS5, so console gamers will love it too. One of the most unique features of this product is the design. Sure, there's an aesthetic similarity that makes it the perfect partner for the PS5 in looks. But it also features a heat dissipation portal that's been crafted to suggest the dimensions of the PS5's DualSense controller. It's subtle, like the tiny PlayStation symbols that adorn the DualSense itself, but gamers will appreciate the difference.

SK hynix Inc. today announced availability of the "Platinum P41" PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD that distills technical excellence driven by unmatched speeds and reliability. The Platinum series represents the company's flagship retail lineup geared towards gamers and content creators looking to turbo-boost PC performance. Launched as SK hynix's first PCIe 4.0 SSD built with advanced 176-layer NAND flash memory, the Platinum P41 is now available for purchase on Amazon in the U.S. in 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB capacity options.

Designed to excel among PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the Platinum P41 offers sequential read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 6,500 MB/s with an industry-leading endurance rating of up to 1,200 TBW. The Platinum P41 also provides further assurance of reliability with an SK hynix in-house "Aries" controller, which in itself contributes to the superior read/write speeds.

OWC, a leading customer-focused creator of innovative solutions for over 30 years that have enabled individuals, businesses, content professionals, and educators to get maximum usefulness from their technology investment, today introduced the OWC Envoy Pro mini. The OWC Envoy Pro mini is a pocket-sized SSD with full-sized SSD performance and capacity for audio, photography, graphics, gaming, and general data storage/backup uses. Now, everyday users, students, mobile professionals, IT techs, and content creators can take, access, save, and share their data anywhere. The OWC Envoy Pro mini works with USB and Thunderbolt (USB-C) Macs, PCs, iPads, Chromebooks, Android tablets, and Surface devices made over the last 15 years. Available in 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB capacities and can access and transfer data with everything at up to 946 MB/s real-world speed with Plug and Play ease.

Using the Envoy Pro mini in a mixed Mac and Windows environment is remarkably easy with the addition of OWC's MacDrive (sold separately). This seamless software runs in the background, so there is nothing to launch or learn. Just plug in the Envoy Pro mini, and not only do you have instant-read access, but full write access. MacDrive also includes powerful features that enable you to format and partition drives and repair fundamental disk issues.

During its investors day yesterday, Micron revealed its 232-layer NAND Flash, which for now is the most advanced of its kind. Micron is using what the company calls CMOS Under Array or CuA as the platform to build a pair of TLC stacks on top of, for a total of 232-layers. Each stacked NAND Flash chip is said to have a capacity of 1 Terabit, or 128 GB, so we're not seeing any new capacity increases at this point, compared to the competition, but Micron is promising increased bandwidth node-over-node, so we might end up seeing better performance compared to its competitors. The new NAND Flash is supposed to be optimised for SSDs and other "managed" NAND, such as eMMC and UFS.

Micron also revealed an updated NAND Flash roadmap, with the company planning even more 200 plus layer products before moving to 300 and 400-layer stacks of NAND in the future. The 300-layer stacks are already under structural development, whereas the 400-layer products are still in the very early stages of research. The new 232-layer products are said to go into mass production towards the end of this year, so we shouldn't expect to see products based on Micron's 232-layer NAND until sometime in 2023.