ECS Industrial Computer Co., Ltd., (ECSIPC) is pleased to announce its participation in ISE 2024 where it will showcase its latest smart retail solutions, IPC motherboards, and two new LIVA mini-PCs that are ready for applications including digital signage, smart vending machines, kiosks, factory automation equipment and AOI. Designed for digital signage and self-service kiosks in the smart retail industry, or in large vehicles fitted with display-board advertising, this unique mini-PC offers up to 4 display outputs that can showcase a variety of rich and vibrant content. The highly flexible solution can display 4 different screens, mirror all screens the same, split one image across 4 displays, or splits of 3-and-1 or 2-and-2, affording maximum flexibility to cover wide areas of retail spaces that can easily plan and push a multitude of content to inform and advertise in attractive, dynamic, high-resolution visuals, all from a single device. The LIVA X3A mini-PC is ready to go right out the box, along with ECSIPC's own content management software to streamline product deployment.

Powered by a highly efficient Rockchip octa-core featuring a 4x Arm Cortex-A76 and 4x Arm Cortex-A55 processors in this Arm-based CPU, the highly efficient, fanless design ensures a sustainable solution that accommodates many use-cases. In addition, 8 GB of fast LPDDR5 and 64 GB of internal storage is preinstalled, while dual GbE, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 provide a variety of internet connectivity built-in, which can be further expanded with optional PoE and 4G LTE to meet specific deployment requirements.

At CES 2024, Frore Systems, the pioneering developer of AirJet Mini, the world's first Solid-State Active Cooling Chip, unveiled the AirJet Mini Slim - a thinner, lighter, smarter and even more advanced solid-state active cooling chip.

Building on the success of the original AirJet Mini, which garnered widespread recognition, including the prestigious COMPUTEX 2023 Golden Award and CES 2024 "Best of Innovation" Award, Frore Systems continues to accelerate the pace of innovation in thermal management. The AirJet Mini Slim, featuring the same groundbreaking solid-state active cooling design of its predecessor, includes three new features, while remaining silent, lightweight and delivering superior heat removal compared to traditional fans.

The current crop of PCIe Gen 5 based M.2 NVMe SSDs run scorching hot to deliver sequential transfer speeds of 10 GB/s, requiring some massive cooling solutions with tiny fans. All this might change, as Phison, a leading SSD controller manufacturer, unveiled three new controllers at the 2024 International CES. One of these that stands out, is the PS5031-E31T, which is built on the 7 nm node, and could power the first Gen 5 SSDs delivering 10 GB/s without elaborate cooling solutions. This is a big upgrade from the 12 nm node used by their first Gen 5 controllers. The PS5031-E31T is a DRAMless controller meant for mainstream Gen 5 SSDs. This controller has a 4-channel flash interface (16 CE), a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, supports capacities of up to 8 TB, and is claimed by Phison to offer sequential transfer rates of up to 10.8 GB/s, and up to 1500K IOPS random access; exceeding the fastest Gen 4 SSDs.

Phison also updated its high-end controller lineup with the new PS5026-E26 Max14um. This is a variant of the E26 that's designed for the upcoming Micron B58R NAND flash chip that offers 2400 MT/s per channel transfers. Over the 8-channel interface of the E26, this finally unlocks sequential transfer speeds exceeding 14 GB/s reads, and 12.7 GB/s sequential writes. This is merely a revision of the existing E26 with updated power-optimized firmware, the underlying silicon is identical. The E26 Max14um is the first controller to surpass 1000 MB/s in all three PCMark 10 storage tests. We have a sample of an SSD powered by the E26 Max14um in our labs, and will post our review soon.

MSI Spatium M580 Liquid Frozr is easily one of the most interesting SSDs we've come across in CES 2024. Picture this—an M.2-2280 SSD that has a self-contained liquid cooler, complete with a fan, radiator, a pump-block, and coolant channels. This is both cute and a little sad. M.2 SSDs were supposed to stay out of sight and be completely cable-free, like DIMMs. This isn't MSI's fault, they have to use the fastest controllers in the market, which are built on older 12 nm foundry nodes. PCI-Express 5.0 x4 is comparable bandwidth to PCI-Express 3.0 x16, and moving this kind of data is bound to generate heat for an SSD controller. Enough banter—the Spatium M580 uses the fastest Phison E26 Max14um controller, with Micron's fastest B58R 232-layer 3D NAND flash chips that deliver 2400 MT/s per flash channel.

The combination of Phison Max14um and B58R results in sequential transfer speeds beyond the 14 GB/s mark, which is where most PCIe Gen 5 x4 drives will end up accounting for the interface+protocol overhead. The theoretical max bandwidth of Gen 5 x4 is 16 GB/s. The drive comes in capacities of up to 4 TB. As for the cooler's design, the bare drive makes contact with a copper cold-plate, which has the block+reservoir, with a tiny pump. This sends coolant through a real aluminium heat-exchanger—this is probably the smallest radiator we've ever seen. The radiator is held up, a supporting structure has a tiny 20 mm lateral-flow fan, which blows air through the radiator. We can't wait to review this thing!

BIWIN is a major memory and SSD OEM that manufactures products for leading PC brands, including Lenovo, HP, and Acer. These include everything from USB flash drives, to portable SSDs; and even memory DIMMs. Acer has been trying to enter the DIY hardware market in a big way with its Predator brand, it's tapping into BIWIN for the memory side of things. We've had the Acer Predator Hermes DDR5 RGB series at the high-end; and the Pallas II DDR5 series at the entry level, and Acer is looking to fill the gap with the Vesta II DDR5 series. The original Vesta II series won a Red Dot design award in 2022. The Vesta II comes in certain upper mid-range speeds of DDR5-6000, DDR5-6400, DDR5-6600, and DDR5-6800; with capacities that include 32 GB (2x 16), and 64 GB (2x 32 GB). We also ran into some SSDs that strick to Acer's main marquee, which includes the FA200, a PCIe Gen 4 drive, which is based on a high-end Gen 4 platform, with speeds of up to 7.2 GB/s sequential reads, and up to 6.2 GB/s sequential writes. The drive comes in capacities of up to 4 TB.

Switching gears, we see the first Lenovo-branded DIY client SSDs in the retail channel. The LN960 is a fairly premium M.2-2280 drive with a Gen 4 x4 interface, capacities of up to 4 TB, sequential speeds of up to 7.4 GB/s, and a graphene-based heatspreader. The LN860 is an entry-level NVMe drive based on a Gen 3 x4 interface, with sequential speeds of up to 3.5 GB/s. The LS800 is is being offered more as an upgrade option for those still on older machines with a 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s drive bay. It comes in capacities of up to 1.92 TB, has modern SLC caching technology, and offers sequential speeds of up to 520 MB/s.

KIOXIA brought a handful of its latest data center SSDs to the 2024 International CES. The lineup begins with the CD8P series designed for a balance in data-heat (frequency of access) and capacity, with applications that include CDN, compute, read-intensive use-cases, and data streaming. The drive comes in the 2.5-inch 18 mm U.2 and EDSFF E3.8 form-factors. The CD8P features a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface, and comes in capacities ranging between 1.92 TB, going all the way up to 15.36 TB. Write endurance recommended is between 1 DWPD to 3 DWPD, so this really isn't a major write-intensive drive, for that, you'll need to pay attention to our next drive, the KIOXIA FL6.

The FL6 from KIOXIA is a scribe par none. It's aimed at write heavy applications such as server caching, and the hottest tiers in tiered storage; and Big Iron database machines. The FL6 comes in capacities of up to 3.2 TB, but offers a mammoth 60 DWPD write endurance. It comes in the 2.5-inch 18 mm form factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. Security features include SIE, SED, and FIPS 140-2.

Patriot Memory brought their latest ware to the 2024 International CES that use recent advancements in tech on both the SSD and memory fronts. On the SSD front, this year sees 14 GB/s capable PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs thanks to Phison's E26 Max14um controller; and a new crop of USB4 portable SSDs; while the memory front sees DDR5 speeds go far north of DDR5-6000, thanks to on-module CKDs. Patriot showed us examples of each.

First up, there's the Patriot Viper PV573 Gen 5 NVMe SSD. This thing comes in capacities of up to 4 TB, and combines a Phison E26 Max14um controller with Micron's latest B58R TLC NAND flash chips that offer 2400 MT/s per flash channel. The controller also gets some incremental thermal optimizations, which means the cooling solution for the PV573 is a 16.5 mm-tall fan-heatsink. The drive offers up to 14 GB/s sequential reads, with up to 12 GB/s sequential writes. There's also a slightly de-rated version of this drive, the Viper PV553, which has the same combination of controller and NAND flash, but with transfer speeds of up to 12.4 GB/s reads, with up to 11.8 GB/s writes.

Today marks the launch of not just two new incredibly well-designed NAS devices, but also two new features brand new to the ASUSTOR line of NAS devices with ARM processors. The introduction of the Drivestor 2 Pro Gen2 and Drivestor 4 Pro Gen2 come with an upgraded SoC, providing 21% more performance, which increases read and write speeds and performance for the features and apps available for the Drivestor Pro Gen2. The Drivestor Pro Gen2 series comes with 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet, hot-swappable hard drive bays, hardware transcoding, tool-free design and more! The upgraded iGPU found in the Drivestor Pro Gen2 now gives even better performance when transcoding multimedia.

The all-new Drivestor Pro Gen2 series comes with a new killer feature. Btrfs is now supported on the Drivestor Pro Gen2, a first for ASUSTOR NAS devices running ARM CPUs. Btrfs helps protect data by enabling snapshots of data at certain points in time and is able to rewind the clock should any unintentional modifications be made and restore data if needed.

NAS major Synology showcased its latest consumer NAS, personal cloud, and surveillance solutions at the 2024 International CES. Starting things off are the company's latest TC500 and BC500 high-resolution wired cameras; and the CC400W wireless cameras, enhanced with AI. This may sound nebulous, but upon detecting movement, the cameras automatically move to zoom in on faces or vehicle license plates, and automatically dial up video resolution and probably bitrate (image quality). The wired cameras come with 5 MP sensors, while the wireless ones have 4 MP (capable of 1440p @ 30 FPS). Each of these comes with a dark light that can illuminate up to 30 m. They also come with microSD slots, to in the event of network failures, recording continues onto a memory card. You don't need a Synology Surveillance Station device license to use these.

Moving on to the stuff Synology is best known for, NAS, and we have the upgraded DiskStation DS1823xs+, an 8-bay business grade NAS with a combined RW throughput of 3100 MB/s reads, with 2600 MB/s writes; over 173,000 IOPS random reads, and over 80,800 IOPS random writes. The main networking interface is a 10 GbE, but with an additional PCIe Gen 3 x4 slot to drop in more NICs. The NAS can pair with DX517 expansion units over USB 3.1 to scale up to 18 drives. The DS423+ is a compact 4-bay NAS powered by a Celeron J4125 quad-core CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and room for two M.2-2280 NVMe SSDs besides the four 3.5-inch HDDs. The maximum rated throughput is still around 226 MB/s, but the main networking interfaces are two 10 GbE. The DS224+ is nearly the same device, but with just two 3.5-inch bays, and two 2.5 GbE interfaces.

Ugreen, a leading brand in consumer electronics.They'll be unveiling their rendition of NAS devices along with vehicle accessories to complement their portable power station, aptly titled the PowerRoam series, at CES 2024 (booth No.22733), running from January 9-12, 2024 in Las Vegas.

At the forefront of Ugreen NAS product line is the flagship product: NASync DX480T Plus. The DX480T Plus is the smallest in the NAS line at 7.0 x 5.6 x 2.0 inches and developed with an emphasis on high-performance and portability. SSD storage spaces allow for up to 16 TB of fast, all-flash storage space. An expandable RAM drive provides up to 32 GB of memory for high-speed processing, and powering the homemade Ugreen OS Pro (UGOS Pro) is Intel's very own 12th gen Core i5 10 Core processor. Boosting data and media transfer speeds are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports providing up to 40 Gb/s of transfer speeds, making it one of the smallest, fastest NAS devices around.

Next week at CES 2024, KIOXIA, the inventors of NAND flash, will highlight its extensive portfolio of solid state drives (SSDs) and memory solutions. This diverse lineup - one of the broadest range of flash solutions in the industry - is well-suited to virtually any solution that uses flash and includes new products, form factors and standards designed for upcoming IT requirements.

In today's dynamic technological landscape, where evolving standards push performance boundaries higher and end user expectations continue to climb, KIOXIA stands poised for the future by making the memory to process, manage and store the world's data. "Whether it's designing ultra-thin consumer PCs, enabling the automotive in-vehicle experience or streamlining professional photography - we make flash memory that brings applications to life and enhances user experiences," said Alex Mei, vice president of corporate marketing for KIOXIA America, Inc. "Countless consumer devices and applications rely on KIOXIA technology solutions to enrich lives and make new memories. CES gives us an opportunity to explore new possibilities and showcase the depth and breadth of our solutions."

TerraMaster, a professional brand focused on providing innovative storage products for homes and businesses, recently introduced the 424 series, a new upgrade of 423 series. It is equipped with an Intel Core i3 CPU and up to 32 GB DDR5 memory, catering to the needs of individuals and business users who demand higher performance. The 424 series will come with TOS 5.1 operating system and can be smoothly upgraded to the TerraMaster TOS 6 in the future.

Peak Performance 4-Bay NAS
Intel Core i3 8-core 8-thread CPU at 3.8 GHz (turbo), integrated UHD GPU at 1.25 GHz, 32 GB DDR5, dual 2.5G Ethernet ports, and dual M.2 NVMe slots for SSD caching.

Plextor, one of the most iconic names in PC storage once known for high performance and quality, has announced it will cease operations. Parent company Kioxia has decided to retire the Plextor brand name for solid state drives (SSDs). Instead, it will market products under its Solid State Storage Technology Corporation (SSSTC) brand going forward. The move comes after Kioxia acquired Plextor and its parent company Lite-On's SSD business back in 2019. Since then, Plextor has struggled to keep pace with new storage technologies. With PCIe Gen 4 and PCIe Gen 5 SSD controllers coming to market, Plextor failed to adopt the new Phison and InnoGrit platforms, instead sticking with Marvell controllers, lagging behind at that time.

Now, SSSTC and Kioxia will strictly focus SSD sales on the enterprise, data center, and industrial segments rather than the consumer market. The Plextor website is already redirecting to SSSTC.com, which no longer lists any drives for client PCs. While current Plextor SSD owners will continue to receive warranty support and RMA services, no new Plextor drives are expected to be released. The company had a history stretching back over 30 years of making top-performing optical disk drives and SSDs. Similarly to OCZ after its acquisition by Toshiba, the Plextor name will now fade into history. But in the fast-moving storage business, companies live and die by their ability to adopt cutting-edge technologies. Hence, companies are always on the edge of their seats, trying to survive.

LG Electronics (LG) is expanding its LG gram series in 2024, offering consumers a wider selection of compelling choices, including the new LG gram Pro. The perfect blend of power and portability, LG gram series ultra-lightweight laptops combine high-end specifications with exceptionally slim yet durable designs and all-day battery life. All 2024 models come with the latest AI-enabled functions on LG gram Link app, simplifying tasks like file sharing, photo sharing and screen mirroring across LG gram, Android and iOS devices. U.S. pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.

LG's best-in-class LG gram Pro laptops (models 16Z90SP and 17Z90SP) come equipped with a Intel Core Ultra processor with hybrid architecture, an NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. The new LG gram Pro laptops are also embedded with the Intel AI Boost, Intel's neural processing unit (NPU) that can handle AI workloads even without a network connection.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that for the first time in the industry, it has successfully verified Compute Express Link (CXL) memory operations in a real user environment with open-source software provider Red Hat, leading the expansion of its CXL ecosystem.

Due to the exponential growth of data throughput and memory requirements for emerging fields like generative AI, autonomous driving and in-memory databases (IMDBs), the demand for systems with greater memory bandwidth and capacity is also increasing. CXL is a unified interface standard that connects various processors, such as CPUs, GPUs and memory devices through a PCIe interface that can serve as a solution for limitations in existing systems in terms of speed, latency and expandability.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced the company's predictions for 2024 trends in NAND flash infrastructure deployment. The company predicts that rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will continue apace, with PCIe 5.0-based infrastructure providing high-performance, sustainable support for AI workload consistency as adoption rapidly expands. PCIe 5.0 NAND flash solutions will be at the core of a well-balanced hardware ecosystem, with private AI deployments such as on-premise large language models (LLMs) driving significant growth in both everyday AI and the infrastructure required to support it.

"We are moving past initial excitement over AI toward wider everyday deployment of the technology. In these configurations, high-quality AI output must be achieved by infrastructure designed to be secure, while also being affordable. The organizations that leverage AI to boost productivity will be incredibly successful," said Sebastien Jean, CTO, Phison US. "Building on the widespread proliferation of AI applications, infrastructure providers will be responsible for making certain that AI models do not run up against the limitations of memory - and NAND flash will become central to how we configure data center architectures to support today's developing AI market while laying the foundation for success in our fast-evolving digital future."

MSI, the world's leading gaming PC hardware brand, is excited to announce the launch of its next-gen flagship SSD, the SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR, along with the high-performance model, SPATIUM M482, expanding its SSD product line. Featuring the revolutionary PHISON E26 PCIe Gen 5 controller paired with state-of-the-art 3D NAND flash and an innovative passive thermal solution, the SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR introduces a new era in storage performance with lightning-fast read and write speeds of up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s.

This represents up to 1.8 times faster speeds compared to current PCIe 4.0 SSDs, accompanied by a temperature reduction of up to 20℃. The SPATIUM M482, built with high-quality, high-density 3D NAND flash, delivers top-tier performance for PCIe 4.0 with a sequential read speed of up to 7300 MB/s. Both models deliver a supremely responsive experience, gaining valuable milliseconds in latency for gameplay or processing gigabytes of files for professionals, content creators, and gamers. Performance-enhancing technologies include a DRAM cache buffer for M570 PRO, and a SLC cache for all announced models, supporting a comprehensive range of data error correction features including LPDC ECC and E2E Data Protection. These SSDs offer a high TBW (Terabytes Written) for excellent durability and longevity backed with a limited 5-year warranty.

You can check out our review of the MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr 2 TB SSD.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced that its CM7 Series and CD8P Series NVM Express (NVMe) SSDs have passed certification testing for PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 specification and NVMe 2.0 specification compliance. Developed by PCI-SIG, the PCIe 5.0 interface specification is an upgrade that enables twice the data transfer speed and bandwidth versus the PCIe 4.0 specification - up to 14,000 Megabyte/s read throughput for a x4 lane SSD. PCIe 5.0 tests were conducted at PCI-SIG compliance workshops against PCI-SIG maintained systems, along with other leading manufacturers of PCIe products.

KIOXIA CM7 Series and CD8P Series drives can now be found on the PCI-SIG Integrator's List. Achieving compliance certification during these workshops assures users that KIOXIA drives meet the rigorous PCIe 5.0 specification requirements. KIOXIA CM7 Series and CD8P Series drives have been added to The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory's (UNH-IOL) official Integrator's List. In order to be considered for inclusion on the list, technologies must undergo conformance testing performed by the UNH-IOL through laboratory tests or during an NVMe plugfest. Successful completion of this testing provides a level of assurance that the product being tested will function properly in NVMe enabled systems and NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) environments.

ADATA Industrial, the world's leading brand for industrial-grade embedded storage, officially released today its SATA 31D series of industrial-grade solid-state drives including 2.5-inch ISSS31D, M.2 2280 IM2S31D8, and M.2 2242 IM2S31D4, designed for retail terminals and embedded systems.

The SATA 31D series of industrial-grade SSDs utilize 112-layer 3D TLC flash memory developed by WDC, boasting a P/E Cycle of 3,000 which is comparable to MLC. The 31D series also offers a variety of ultra-thin and compact mainstream specifications such as SATA 2.5-inch, M.2 2280, M.2 2242, and various capacity options from 128 GB to 2 TB. 112-layer 3D NAND (BiCS5) 31D series SSDs all support thermal throttling technology, which reduces SSD transmission performance in stages to effectively mitigate the risk of data damage due to overheating. Furthermore, a LDPC ECC error correction mechanism and End-to-End Data Protection technology ensure reliable data transfer and improve data integrity. The 31D series is eminently suitable for POS systems, information kiosks, digital signage, and embedded equipment.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, and storage solutions innovator, today unveiled the new high-capacity TS-hx77AXU-RP ZFS NAS series, including 12-bay TS-h1277AXU-RP and 16-bay TS-h1677AXU-RP rackmount models powered by AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors based on the cutting-edge AMD Socket AM5 platform. By integrating robust hardware and diverse I/O including DDR5 RAM, M.2 PCIe Gen 5, PCIe Gen 4 slots, and redundant power supplies, the TS-hx77AXU-RP series unleashes enterprise-level performance and delivers ultra-high bandwidth, futureproof expandability, and trusted reliability for performance-demanding Tier 2 storage, virtualization, 4K video editing, and PB-level storage applications.

"The whole new TS-hx77AXU-RP series ZFS NAS provides enterprises with superb performance and large storage capacity to tackle business-critical workloads and storage-demanding applications. The AMD Ryzen 7000 Series multi-core processors further unlocks the key performance of DDR5 and M.2 PCIe Gen 5," said Alex Shih, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "Paired with the ZFS file system that's most suited for business applications, the TS-hx77AXU-RP series stands out as the top choice for storage solutions that require uncompromising data integrity."

Other World Computing www.OWC.com -- the leading end-to-end ecosystem solution provider of computer hardware, accessories, and software for both consumers and professionals - today introduced the Express 1M2, the first USB4 drive and fastest single blade NVMe OWC has ever offered.

Exceptional Speed, Ultimate Flexibility
The OWC Express 1M2 was purposefully built to maximize the performance capabilities of today's and tomorrow's USB4-equipped Macs and PCs. It offers photo and video professionals, DITs, and prosumers/performance enthusiasts real-world speeds up to 3151 MB/s. It also offers versatile compatibility to work with millions of existing Thunderbolt and USB-C machines and devices.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced that its lineup of KIOXIA RM7 Series Value SAS SSDs are now available in HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). KIOXIA RM7 Series SSDs are the latest generation of the company's 12 Gb/s Value SAS SSDs, which provide server applications with higher performance, reliability and lower latency than SATA SSDs, delivering higher IOPS/W and IOPS/$.

In addition to being available in ProLiant servers, KIOXIA RM Series Value SAS SSDs are being used in the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2). As part of the program, KIOXIA SSDs provide robust flash storage in HPE Edgeline and HPE ProLiant servers in a test environment to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

ADATA Technology, the world's leading memory brand, has launched its latest SD810 external solid state drive, featuring triple IP68 waterproof, dustproof, and MIL-STD shockproof protection. The drive is equipped with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 transmission interface with a read/write speed of up to 2000 MB/s and adopts the mainstream Type-C interface. In addition to supporting the latest series of iPhone 15 smartphones, it is also perfect for photographers or video creators who work outdoors on a regular basis. The SD810 external SSD delivers fast transfer and backup of large audio and video files while guarding against accidents and allaying the challenges of harsh working environments to perfectly protect your precious files.

The SD810 external SSD supports the USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 high-speed transmission interface with read/write speeds up to 2000 MB/s. In order to prevent the high temperatures generated by high-speed transfer from affecting performance and stability, the body of the SD810 is constructed from aluminium alloy and its unique structure improves heat dissipation to maintain stable transfer performance even during continuous operation. Users can also edit and access large files directly on the SD810, increasing work efficiency. In addition, the SD810's elegant aluminium body is smaller than a credit card, making it lightweight, space-saving, and very convenient to carry whether you are working or traveling.

TrendForce reports a pivotal shift in the NAND Flash market for 3Q23, primarily driven by Samsung's strategic decision to reduce production. Initially, the market was clouded by uncertainty regarding end-user demand and fears of a subdued peak season, prompting buyers to adopt a conservative approach with low inventory and slow procurement. However, as market leaders like Samsung implemented substantial production cuts, buyers' attitudes shifted toward a more aggressive procurement strategy in anticipation of a market supply decrease. This led to a stabilization and even an uptick in NAND Flash contract prices by quarter-end, driving a 3% QoQ increase in bit shipments and culminating in a total revenue of US$9.229 billion, marking an approximate 2.9% increase.

The story unfolds with Kioxia and Micron—the only two to witness a dip in revenue rankings this quarter—while Samsung maintained its robust performance. Despite sluggish demand in the server sector, Samsung's fortunes rebounded thanks to a boost in consumer electronics, especially with high-capacity products in PCs and smartphones. Samsung emerged from a trough in Q3, with strategic inventory replenishments fueling further strategic stocking, and a shift in operational focus toward maximizing profit. This led to a minor 1-3% decrease in shipped bits, but a 1-3% increase in ASP, stabilizing Q3 NAND Flash revenue at US$2.9 billion.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced it is shipping the Micron 3500 NVMe SSD, which leverages its 232-layer NAND to power demanding workloads for business applications, scientific computing, cutting-edge gaming and content creation, pushing the limits of what is possible. The Micron 3500 SSD, available in the M.2 form factor and with capacities up to 2 TB, provides a superior user experience over the competition as proven by its best-in-class SPECwpcsm performance, including an up to 71% improvement for product development applications.

"At Micron, we are focused on delivering exceptional products that best meet the rigorous needs of end-users," said Prasad Alluri, Micron's vice president and general manager of Client Storage. "With impressive specs like a remarkable 132% improvement in scientific computing benchmark scores, the 3500 SSD will turn your next PC or workstation into a powerhouse to enable insights and empower creativity."