Innodisk, the service-driven flash provider, announces its latest series of SATADOM disk-on-module SSDs featuring a new cable-less power technology. This latest series of SATADOM and ServerDOM come in the same compact form factor but feature a new way of delivering power to the flash drive directly through the SATA connector itself for less clutter and superior reliability. The new patented Pin 8 technology powers a series of SATADOM drives which will come in a variety of compact form factors and flash flavors including SLC, MLC and iSLC, as well as DRAM-less versions for 100% data integrity in the face of power loss. Besides SATADOM with Pin 8 Technology, Innodisk is updating its full line of SATADOM SSDs including SATADOM powered by Pin 7 power and external power cables. The new SATADOM SSDs will feature higher capacities and DRAM-Less SSD technology.

Patented by Innodisk, SATA Pin 8 Vcc uses the SATA connector itself as a power supply to drive the device without external cables. Extra pins on each side of the drive's connector mate with pins in the motherboard's SATA interface to provide a power source that eliminates the need for cables. Already available on motherboards from top manufacturers, Innodisk's Pin 8 Vcc technology joins Innodisk's SATA Pin 7 Vcc technology to enable compact, cableless SATA storage solutions.

Samsung Electronics today announced the introduction of the Samsung 950 PRO solid state drive (SSD), designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. The drive's M.2 form factor means that users with ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations can benefit from industry-leading storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency.

The Samsung 950 PRO SSD is Samsung's first consumer-ready Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) M.2 form factor SSD with vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology; supporting the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. With the introduction of NVMe, the first protocol optimized for SSDs, users of the Samsung 950 PRO will benefit from improved performance and power saving which can help increase battery life and potentially reduce operating costs. The drive is ideal for professionals who want cutting-edge performance, higher bandwidth and lower latency from their high-end PCs and workstations, for projects such as computer-aided design, data analysis and engineering simulation. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface.

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research "Solid State Drive Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2022," the global Solid State Drive (SSD) market was valued at US$15.1 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach US$229.5 billion by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 40.7% from 2015 to 2022.

Asia Pacific was the largest revenue contributor in 2014 and accounted for 57.0% of the global solid state drive market. The higher performance requirement in enterprise applications and consumer mobile devices is fueling the demand for solid state drives. Features such as lower power consumption, cooler computing, low form factor, and reduced latency are cementing the demand for solid state drives. The solid state drive market has witnessed rising demand for client SSDs, owing to their use in devices such as notebooks, tablets, and mobiles. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing market for solid state drive in terms of revenue during the forecast period. Growth in this region is mainly attributed to an expanding customer base and high IT infrastructure spending in countries such as Japan, China, and Taiwan. Competition in the market is paving way for the development of novel technologies in the solid state drive market. Furthermore, benefits offered by SSDs over HDDs, and the resulting replacement demand, are expected to drive the growth of solid state drive market during the forecast period.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the new business-class AMD-powered quad-core TS-x63U series NAS; available in 4, 8 and 12-bay models with single and redundant power supply options. The TS-x63U series provides 10GbE network connectivity with its single-port SFP+ network adapter, and supports bridging 1GbE devices to a 10GbE network with its four built-in GbE interfaces. Coupled with an AES-NI hardware-accelerated encryption engine, SSD cache support, and flexible scalability; the TS-x63U series is ideal for SMBs looking for backup, restoration, virtualization storage, private cloud, and to future-proof their IT infrastructure for 10GbE networks.

The TS-x63U series is powered by an advanced 64-bit AMD Embedded G-Series quad-core 2.0GHz SoC processor with 4GB DDR3L RAM (upgradable to 16GB) and features four 1GbE LAN ports, delivering high speeds of up to 1,090 MB/s sequential read throughput with10GbE configuration for multi-tasking business applications. The AES-NI hardware encryption engine allows unmatched sequential read performance exceeding 780 MB/s with AES 256-bit full NAS volume encryption, with the new shared folder encryption supported, accelerating system performance and security while ensuring the safety of sensitive data.

The world's leading memory brand, Team Group today launches an all new SSD - L3 EVO. L3 EVO SSD is using the new generation SATA II 6Gb/s transferring interface which has excellent transferring efficiency and compatibility to satisfy requirements from any kind of motherboard, notebook and embedded device. With the development of the latest processor platform, demand for SSD is also increasing day by day in the market. The ultra high cost-performance SSD - L3 EVO will shock the industry and boost your computer to the next level in storage performance. It is powered by a quad-core, 8-channel controller chip and SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s).

Not only it can fully demonstrate its powerful performance, but also has a smooth read/write speed. The speed and performance of the entire system will be upgraded with write speed of up to 530 MB/s, and read speed of up to 500 MB/s (480/960GB). It is able to accelerate the processing speed of consumer's computer. With more free time after work, people are also able to enjoy life and spend quality time with families and friends.

Ever wondered why nobody made a SATA-Express SSD? We guess it's probably because of its IDE-sized connector. The SSD industry is turning its attention to other connector standards, such as M.2 and the newer U.2 (formerly known as SFF-8639). The U.2 is essentially a cabled M.2 connector, designed for drives in more common form-factors, such as 2.5-inch. The connector itself is more narrow, although it has the same pin-count as M.2, and the same bandwidth (up to 32 Gb/s with current PCI-Express standard).

ASUS debuted the connector on its flagship Maximus VIII Extreme motherboard, but MSI doesn't plan to be left behind. MSI released a new accessory that converts M.2 slots into a U.2 port. The MSI Turbo U.2 Host Card has wiring to support 32 Gb/s physical layer. The card could be included in MSI's upcoming high-end motherboards, and looking at the way it's branded and packaged, it could even be sold separately. One of the first U.2 drives is Intel SSD 750 in its 2.5-inch avatar.

G-Technology, a leader in delivering premium storage solutions, today announced four new products in its Evolution Series, a flexible ecosystem of docking stations and interchangeable and expandable external hard drives and accessories that makes transferring, editing and distributing content more efficient, scalable and reliable. The new products include the G-SPEED Studio XL with two ev Series Bay Adapters, ev Series Reader RED MINI-MAG Edition, G-DOCK ev Solo and the ev Series FireWire Adapter. Designed with creative professionals in mind, the new Evolution Series products provide the ultimate flexibility and customization for all workflows.

The G-SPEED Studio XL with two ev Series Bay Adapters is a flexible, eight-bay Thunderbolt 2 storage solution, which comes with six enterprise-class hard drives and two integrated ev Series Bay Adapters. It offers professional content creators colossal capacity and huge performance. The integrated ev Series Bay Adapters accommodate all ev Series drive modules, enabling cross-functionality with the Evolution Series for enhanced workflow and productivity. Configurable in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, & 10, it supports multi-stream compressed 4K workflows with extremely large volumes of data at transfer rates of up to 1,200MB/sec and has the ability to daisy-chain via dual Thunderbolt 2 ports. Complete with a three-year limited warranty and sleek black enclosure, this modular, enterprise-class solution provides optimal storage for demanding workflows. The G-SPEED STUDIO XL with two ev Series Bay Adapters will be available in October. Manufacturer's suggested retail pricing for 18TB is $2,799.95, 24TB is $2,999.95, 36TB is $3,999.95 and 48TB is $4,999.95.

ASUS today announced G11, a high-performance gaming desktop aimed at casual gamers. G11 is powered by a 6th-generation Intel Core i7 processor and up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics for unstoppable gaming performance. It also features an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 solid-state drive (SSD), DDR4 memory, and 10Gbit/s USB 3.1 Gen 2 for high speed data access. G11 has a futuristic chassis design, and features Mayan-inspired markings and 8-million-color LED effects. The exclusive ASUS Aegis II gaming utility even allows for easy gameplay recording and sharing.

ASUS G11 features the latest 6th-generation Intel Core i7 processor to give users the performance to take on the most demanding of tasks, allowing them to play games at the highest quality settings, watch stutter-free 4K/UHD videos, or create websites and 3D models for work. The latest processor is 23% more powerful and 22% more energy-efficient than the previous generation.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., announced today two new internal solid-state drive (SSD) storage devices with up to 960 GB of capacity. The new SSDs include the Toshiba Q300 Pro Series Internal SSD Hard Drive, built for gaming and creative applications with high-end demand for performance and reliability and the Toshiba Q300 Series Internal SSD, offering a balance of high performance and value, ideal for PC upgrades from traditional hard drives. With Adaptive Size SLC Write cache technology to enable SLC-like performance, both models offer high processing speed and low power consumption and are compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.

"Toshiba's announcement of the new Q300 Pro and Q300 internal SSDs demonstrates that Toshiba is continuously striving to bring the best storage solutions to the market," said Maciek Brzeski, Vice President of Branded Storage Products, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Today's announcement addresses increasing consumer demand for speed, performance, quality and reliability to improve their computing experience. As the inventor of flash memory, our new Q300 and Q300 Pro Internal SSD Series delivers leading-class performance and reliability to meet a wide variety of computing needs."

TRENDFOCUS recently published its updated Quarterly NAND/SSD report covering the NAND & SSD industries' performance in CQ2 '15. In the SSD market, unit shipments increased, despite the fact that a good portion of the volume is tied to a weak notebook PC market. The two main factors contributing to the slight 2.9% Q-Q rise was the increase in DFF (drive form factor) client SSDs in the channel market, as well as an uptick in datacenter demand for SATA SSDs, driving a total of 23.859 million units. Total SSD capacity shipped increased by 13.3% Q-Q to 6.4 exabytes, with the overall average capacity increasing to 268 GB. Despite the rise in overall unit shipments, client modules declined, reflecting the continued slow demand for notebook PCs.

Enterprise SAS SSDs declined 10% while PCIe SSDs in the enterprise segment remained under 100,000 units for the quarter. Enterprise SATA SSDs were the bright spot in the enterprise market, posting an increase of 48.6% Q-Q as datacenters resumed purchases of SSDs - a trend not seen in nearline HDDs during the quarter. Samsung continues to dominate due to its successes in the client space - both from a unit and exabyte perspective - while Kingston showed once again that it can be a major player by focusing on the channel market. HGST's unit and exabyte share leads the SAS SSD market and Intel continues to dominate the enterprise PCIe market for a second quarter in a row.

UK based memory manufacturer Integral has launched a high-end performance Solid State Drive (SSD) that targets the needs of serious gamers, digital designers and pro video makers. Powered by a quad-core, 8-channel Phison S10 controller, the UltimaPro X SSD delivers super-fast speeds of up to 565MB/s read and 545MB/s write with enough rapid access storage to satisfy the most data intensive applications.

Integral has engineered the drives specifically to enhance high-specification computers that handle super-high resolution graphics such as those found in the latest 4K PC games and data fuelled workflows of content editors, 3D animators, 4K video and live broadcast cameras. Hard drives were viewed by many as the last major bottleneck in gaming and video editing workstations, after the introduction of overclocked RAM and graphics cards running in a multi-GPU setup. Now with an SSD designed for incredible performance all will enjoy the benefits of faster loading times, an ultra-responsive system and super-fast boot.

Nintendo's upcoming high-performance game console, codenamed "Nintendo NX," could be the first major console in 15 years to completely do away with optical disc media. Patent applications covering the console, filed in February by Nintendo, with the USPTO, and unearthed by NeoGAF, describe a console that "is not provided with an optical disc drive." Nintendo is expected to reveal the NX some time in 2016.

This points at a new direction in which Nintendo wants to guide the console gaming industry - one in which an Internet connection is mandatory, games are bought from a centralized marketplace online, downloaded to your console's local storage (HDDs/SSDs), and played. DLCs and in-game purchases are as seamless as possible, and game progress, settings, etc., are stored on the cloud. Such a system already existed for close to a decade, with Xbox Live and PSN, but Nintendo NX will be the first platform to completely do away with optical disc media. This method could also curb piracy, since the only way your console can receive games to play is through that online marketplace.

Intel plans to launch the first consumer SSD based on its new 3D Xpoint memory technology, a successor to NAND flash which promises exponential gains in performance and capacity, some time in 2016. The Intel-branded drive will be called Intel Optane, will come in modern form-factors such as M.2/NGFF, SATA-Express, PCI-Express (add-on card), and will take advantage of the new NVMe protocol.

Early prototypes of Optane demoed at IDF already offer up to 5.5 times the throughput of NAND flash-based DC P3700 series SSDs, and we're only talking about single-queue performance. Compared to the queue depth of just 32 commands for AHCI, NVMe offers command queue depth of a staggering 65,535 commands. Since Micron Technology is the co-developer of 3D Xpoint, it's likely that we'll also see Micron/Crucial branded drives based on this tech.

At the 2015 Flash Memory Summit, Samsung announced the fruition of its swanky new 48-layer 3D V-NAND chips, the PM1633a. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, and featuring a SAS 12 Gb/s interface, this drive offers an unformatted capacity nearing 16 TB (15,360 GB to be precise). The drive relies on ten 48-layer stacks of 256 Gb 3-bit NAND flash dies, making up 15,360 GB of unformatted capacity. Samsung showed off a system with 48 of these drives, making up 720 TB of total storage.

Besides the largest SSD, Samsung also showed off the fastest. The PM1725 SSD, designed for servers with high-traffic databases, where throughput is the king, is built in the 2.5-inch form factor (up to 3.2 TB) and HHHL form-factor (up to 6.4 TB). It features a PCI-Express 3.0 host bus, and talks to the OS over the modern NVMe protocol. The two offer random access throughput of up to 1,000,000 IOPS.

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced three distinct families of PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) solid state drive (SSD) products using NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) protocol, targeted for various applications including high performance notebooks; thin notebooks, 2-in-1/convertible notebooks and tablets; and server and storage applications. All three SSD product lines are optimized for high performance and low latency and utilize the PCIe interface, which provides point-to-point links with the processor, reducing system bottlenecks. Each SSD family is designed for its target segment with capacity, optimized form factor, and security capabilities. Samples of the Toshiba's newest lines of NVMe, PCIe SSDs will be available from the fourth quarter (Oct. to Dec.) of 2015.

High Performance Notebooks: The XG3 family of SSDs is the industry's highest capacity (1024GB) client NVMe SSD available in M.2 Type 2280 form factor and optimally designed for high performance notebooks, 2-in-1 PCs and all-in-one PCs. The XG3 in M.2 Type 2280 form factor supports up to four lanes of PCIe 3.1, which has a maximum interface bandwidth more than six times that of SATA 6 Gbits/s. XG3 is also the industry's first NVMe SSD available in 2.5-inch SATA express form factor. The XG3 SSD family is equipped with Toshiba's proprietary QSBC (Quadruple Swing-By Code) error-correction technology, a highly efficient error correction code (ECC), which helps protect customer data from corruption, improves reliability, and extends the life of Toshiba SSDs. Engineered for power efficiency, the XG3 series also features lower power state modes and is the first Toshiba product, along with the BG1 SSD family, to support the Trusted Computing Group specification, Pyrite (TCG Pyrite).

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced it will be presenting at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA from August 11th to 13th and will be showcasing an array of SSD solutions at booth #313, including the award winning SM2246EN SATA 6Gb/s SSD solutions, the new products using SM2256, the world's first turnkey SSD controller supporting TLC NAND and the new SM2260 PCIe 3.0 SSD controller.

Lite-On, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of enterprise and client Solid-State Drives, announces its next generation EP series, the EP2 M.2 with NVMe protocol, at Flash Memory Summit 2015 in Santa Clara, California. As the demand for data storage, server virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and cloud computing applications increases, companies are looking for ways to consolidate as well as integrate storage solutions that address the need for rigorous workloads.

Lite-On's NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs are capable of combating various storage issues in the datacenter environment. The EP2 series enables systems to process large amounts of data-intensive applications. By combining the NVMe protocol with Lite-On's customized firmware, commands are bypassed and subsequently, result in improvement for multiple queues and higher queue depths. The CPU is also used to its full potential, so that the IOPS will not be bottlenecked by single core limitations.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND flash products, today launched the Premier SP550 SSD, which uses triple-level cell (TLC) architecture to offer an affordable SSD without compromising performance. The Premier SP550 is the first ADATA drive to include the Silicon Motion (SMI) SM2256 controller, which uses NANDXtend technology to help ADATA implement SSD technologies such as data shaping, LDPC ECC, and a RAID engine for enhanced data protection, stability, and reliability. SLC caching technology has been implemented to boost performance.

"The launch of ADATA's Premier SP550 SSD with our SM2256 client controller represents a milestone in SSD adoption," said Nelson Duann, Silicon Motion's Vice President of Product Marketing. "TLC-based SSDs significantly improve the affordability of high performance, low power SSDs."

Toshiba Corporation today announced the development of the world's first 16-die (max.) stacked NAND flash memory utilizing Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology. The prototype will be shown at Flash Memory Summit 2015, to be held from August 11 to 13 in Santa Clara, USA.

The prior art of stacked NAND flash memories are connected together with wire bonding in a package. TSV technology instead utilizes the vertical electrodes and vias to pass through the silicon dies for the connection. This enables high speed data input and output, and reduces power consumption.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the availability of the 1200.2 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Solid State Drive (SSD). The Seagate 1200.2 SAS SSD is the first product to result from a strategic alliance between Seagate and Micron Technology, Inc., announced in February 2015.

"Enterprise and cloud users face record growing storage demands challenging the performance of their IT systems to churn through mass amounts of data, while being restricted by opex/capex expenditure limits," said Brett Pemble, vice president of flash products, Seagate cloud systems and electronics solutions. "As our partners and customers depend on Seagate flash technologies to meet these challenges, we are leveraging our collaboration and innovation with Micron to exceed their expectations."

The framework established between Seagate and Micron has led to the development and production of this next-generation, high-capacity SAS SSD platform. It is the first 12 gigabits-per-second (Gb/s) SAS device to optimize dual channel throughput with up to 1800 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential reads and offer multiple endurance choices within a single hardware and firmware design. These advantages engineered for the 1200.2 SAS SSD ensure it will deliver ultra-fast performance to match the needs of specific enterprise applications and workloads.

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company today announced its next generation of enterprise solid state drives (eSSDs) for the PX Series. The new PX04S line features four serial-attached small computer system interface (SCSI) SAS eSSD models well-suited for enterprise applications including: mail servers; database servers; virtualized enterprise file servers; and primary storage in read, write or mixed workload environments. Continuing Toshiba's legacy of quality and reliability, the dual-ported 12 Gbit/s SAS PX04S line offers random 4K performance with read IOPS up to 270K and write IOPS up to 145K. This is Toshiba's first 12Gbit/s SAS SSD to deliver 3.84 TB of operating capacity. Sample shipment starts from today.

The PX04S line features four eSSD models - PX04SHB, PX04SMB, PX04SVB and PX04SRB - each offering a range of capacities and optimized for different applications and workloads; High-Endurance: Targeted at applications requiring the highest levels of eSSD performance, reliability and endurance, the PX04SHB supports 25 complete drive writes per day (DWPD) with a one hundred percent random workload and is available in a range of capacities from 200 GB to 1.6 TB. Write-intensive virtualized data centers, big data analytics and high performance computing (HPC) workloads will benefit from the impressive performance and data integrity afforded by the PX04SHB.

Unigen Corporation has announced an MLC NAND flash based 2.5" SATA III SSD solution in densities up to 1TB. This SSD solution is intended for high density storage, cloud storage, industrial, and networking applications. The products are designed around a Multi-Format Flash Media controller, which allows read/write capability to MLC, eMLC or SLC NAND Flash, providing performance and high reliability density media to store code and data.

The solutions are based on the standard 2.5" form factor (7mm and 9mm heights), which operates on a 5V power supply. It is fully compliant with SATA III and backward compatible with SATA II. The solutions feature a performance throughput of up to 530MB/s Read, and 500MB/s write, with typical latency lower than 100uS, and low power consumption of less than 6W active.

Mushkin Enhanced MFG, an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and cost-effective solid state storage products, today announced its latest addition to the ATLAS family of products - the new ATLAS VITAL M.2 2280 Series for Ultrabooks, notebooks, and small form-factor PCs. Atlas Vital is suitable for mobile gamers, professionals, or general end-users looking to take their computing experience to the next level with solid state storage.

Leveraging Seagate's SandForce SF-2000 series SSD processor with a SATA 3.0 interface, the ATLAS VITAL provides stable performance with sequential read and write speeds up to 550 and 535MB/s respectively and 4KB random transactional performance of up to 86,000 IOPS for low-latency computing and high throughput. With these features, the ATLAS VITAL is an ideal solution for value-minded users looking to improve their systems' response time and greatly reduce their operating system boot and application load times compared to a traditional hard drive.

Addonics Technologies today announced a rack-mount SATA to USB 3.1 Converter, which allows users to turn any SATA device into the latest SuperSpeed+ USB 3.1 storage.

When connected to a USB 3.1 port, the converter can deliver data throughput up to 10 Gbps. This effectively doubles the speed of USB 3.0 and is 20 times faster than USB 2.0. Since it is backward compatible with previous USB standards, any SATA hard drive, SSD (Solid State Drive), and even optical drives can easily be converted into USB 3.1 storage. It comes mounted on a SCIS-I bracket, which means it can easily be mounted onto any storage enclosure with a standard SCSI-1 (Centronic 50) cut out. It can be mounted on a standard desktop computer chassis by using an optional PCI mounting bracket.

Plextor announced availability of its entry-level SATA 6 Gb/s SSD, the M6V series. The drives are offered in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch, M.2 (as M6GV series), and mSATA (as M6MV) form-factors; and in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. It combines a Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller with Toshiba 16 nm Toggle NAND flash memory. The 2.5-inch variant offers PlexTurbo technology, which speeds up sequential transfer-rates.

The 128 GB variant features 128 MB of DRAM cache, with sequential speeds of up to 535 MB/s reads, with up to 170 MB/s writes. The 256 GB variant, which comes with a larger 256 MB DRAM cache, offers up to 535 MB/s reads, with up to 335 MB/s writes. The 512 GB variant leads the pack, with a 512 MB DRAM cache, up to 535 MB/s reads, and up to 455 MB/s writes. 4K random-access performance for the three are in the range of 83,000 IOPS reads, with up to 80,000 IOPS writes. The 128 GB variant is priced at 69€, the 256 GB variant 115€, and the 512 GB variant 245€ (all prices include VAT).