Asia and Taiwan's biggest technology industry event, Computex Taipei 2014, will take place from June 3rd to June 7th. More than 130 thousand people are expected to visit. The world's leading memory brand Apacer (TAIEX 8271) will continue to extend its brand's commitment "Access the best" and offer optimized user experiences through its "Access the best experience" philosophy. It will offer corporate customers and consumers three important experiences from a user standpoint: Best Solution & Service, Best Gaming Performance, and Best Smart Life. Apacer will show its unique products and applications at Computex Taipei 2014. The applications cover a wide range of fields, including embedded, overclocking, cloud, mobile, and end devices. Additionally, Apacer will display their fruitful results in the cloud and mobile applications.

The popularity of cloud applications and mobile devices has accelerated the development of networking and smart lifestyles. Apacer, keeping pace with global industry trends, is continued focus on its existing business, additionally developing potential cloud and mobile markets, and providing users with complete and diverse experiences, opening up new pages in their business. At the Computex Taipei 2014, Apacer will introduce innovative products and applications from their new product series through three major experiences: "Best Solution & Service," "Best Gaming Performance," and "Best Smart Life."

The KINGMAX SME Xvalue super value SSD has become the first choice for entry-level users after it was released. In response to the continued increase of market demands for SSD, KINGMAX has again released a new product - the Full Capacity SMG Titan. KINGMAX is a manufacturer of memory-related products; products are sold globally and it has over 200 dealers around the world. The opening of new capacities for NAND Flash on the market, drove prices of the SSD down to the sweet spot, which helped increase the permeability of SSDs into the market. KINGMAX SSD products series are also expected to benefit from this.

There are many brands available on the market. The problem of capacity vacuity is frequently seen, which causes consumers to be suspicious. KINGMAX has always paid extra attention to the problem of specifications. The SATA 6 Gb/s Full Capacity SSD released this time comes in four capacities for consumers to choose from: 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB. The SMG Titan also used a SandForce control chip with high speed NAND Flash kernels and the standard SATAIII 6GB/s interface; it uses flash memory to store data and has a maximum reading speed of 550 MB/s while the writing speed can also reach 520 MB/s.

Virtium, the embedded industry's trusted supplier of highly reliable infrastructure SSDs and industrial memory modules, today announced the availability of its StorFly M.2 SATA 6G (SATA III) solid state drives (SSDs). Delivering an optimal storage solution for embedded infrastructure-based applications that require high performance in a small form factor, Virtium developed two M.2 modules.

Standard StorFly M.2 modules are available in 42 mm (2242) and 80 mm (2280) lengths, with 60 mm and 110 mm modules offered as customer needs dictate. Engineered to provide superior endurance and extended product lifecycles, the new StorFly M.2 SSDs are optimized for a broad variety of embedded applications including networking base stations, industrial automation equipment, casino gaming and data logging systems.

Marvell today announced the launch of its new 88SS1083 PCI Express (PCIe) solid state drive (SSD) controller -a two-lane PCIe Gen2 SSD controller. With performance transfer rates up to 1 GB/s, Marvell's 88SS1083 controller allows SSD manufacturers to offer PCIe SSD at price parity to SATA SSD. The Marvell 88SS1083 is the industry's first controller to be fully compliant with the SATA Express standard, which leverages the most popular PCIe interface and brings in low latency, dual-lane support and 1 GB/s data transfer rate.

The new 88SS1083 controller also supports Separate RefClock with Independent SSC (SRIS), a critical feature as it eliminates the need for an expensive shielded cable for minimizing noise and instead allows for a cost-effective SATA Express cable. SATA Express host can connect either high-performance SATA Express SSDs or traditional SATA devices at similar accessory costs.

"Improving performance while maintaining low power becomes more important than ever, especially for today's ultrathin notebooks and tablets," said Rajan Pai, Vice President, Sales and Field Applications Engineering at Marvell. "The new 88SS1083 allows SSD OEMs to offer higher performance, PCIe-based SSD solutions at similar prices to SATA and is quickly becoming the controller of choice for global OEMs. Marvell is proudly pioneering a new generation of high-performance and low-power silicon solutions that is driving our industry forward."

This summer Kingston Technology will be joining the M.2 crowd by rolling out the SM2280S3 solid state drive. Pictured below Kingston's M.2 offering has a 2280 (80 mm long) form factor and makes use of a Phison PS3108 controller which supports the SATA interface and not PCIe like the SandForce 3700 found in the ADATA SR1020NP SSDs. This means the SM2280S3 only delivers speeds comparable with today's SATA 6.0 Gbps drives (540/514 MB read/write speeds in testing) and may have compatibility problems with some M.2-equipped Z97-based motherboards (the ASUS Z97-A is one of them).

The SM2280S3 also uses DDR3 memory (at least 256 MB) as cache and should ship in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities. The drives' prices are not yet known but it's likely they will be some of the cheapest M.2 solutions available.

Announced back in July 2013, Micron's 128 Gigabit 16 nm-manufactured MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory will soon be making its debut within a new Crucial solid state drive. Named MX100, the 16 nm NAND-equipped drive will be showcased at Computex 2014 and is expected to arrive in a 2.5-inch form factor.

The MX100 has a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and performance-wise it's said to be somewhere between the aging M500 and the recently released M550. Pricing is expected to be very competitive.

ADATA revealed its flagship consumer SSD in the M.2 form-factor, the SR1020NP series, which is an evolution of the AXNP280e it unveiled at this year's International CES. The drive comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, is based on LSI-SandForce 3700 series processor wired to MLC NAND flash, and a host interface with wiring for PCI-Express 2.0 x4 physical layer. Most M.2 SSDs, in contrast, are being designed for PCI-Express 2.0 x2.

That's not all, most motherboards launched on Intel's 9-series chipset feature M.2 slots with just PCI-Express 2.0 x2 wiring, with the exception of ASRock's top-end Z97-Extreme6, which features a special M.2 slot with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 wiring. Using that slot, however, will eat into the bandwidth meant for graphics cards, and the primary PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot will run at 3.0 x8, because ASRock wired the slot to the CPU's root complex. Under ideal conditions, SandForce 3700 series processors are advertised to offer sequential transfer rates as high as 1.8 GB/s. Given that, this drive should be bottlenecked on most motherboards with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 based M.2 slots. ADATA will display the drive at the 2014 Computex, early next month, alongside gaming-grade and overclocker-grade DDR4 modules.

At Computex 2014, we're expecting the proverbial Noah's Flood of new SSDs in the M.2 form-factor, which overcome the bandwidth limitation of SATA 6 Gb/s, and aren't as messy when installed as SATA-Express. The first generation of M.2, at its physical layer, is PCI-Express 2.0 x2, with a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 1000 MB/s per direction. Among the first such drives is the XP941 from Samsung. The drive went into mass production way back in June 2013, but it's only now hitting the stores, as the first motherboards with M.2 slots launched, with the advent of Intel's 9-series chipset.

What sets this drive apart from conventional M.2 drives is it follows a draft specification that mandates PCI-Express 2.0 x4 interface. When installed on slots with x4 wiring, the drive offers sequential read speeds of up to 1,170 MB/s, and up to 930 MB/s maximum writes. It also offers 4K random read performance of up to 122,000 IOPS, and 4K random write performance of up to 72,000 IOPS. The only 9-series motherboard with such a slot is the Z97 Extreme6 by ASRock. You could also try using PCI-Express 2.0 x4 add-on cards such as the one Plextor's M6e comes with. The 512 GB variant of the drive is priced at 79,800 JPY including local taxes (US $780).

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, today launches the Premier SP610 2.5" SATA III (6 Gb/s) SSD. With a SMI controller, the Premier SP610 maintains high read/write speeds consistently for stable performance, and also features the advanced BCH ECC (Error Correction Code) technology. The Premier SP610 is ideal for PC builders who are looking to make the jump from mechanical drives to the exponentially faster speeds of solid state drives.

The Premier SP610 offers sequential read/write speeds up to 560/450 MB, and 4KB random read/write speeds up to 73,000/72,000 IOPS, which greatly improves the performance of data transfer. It also provides excellent performance for multi-tasks, including games and often used applications/programs.

Virtium, the embedded industry's trusted supplier of highly reliable infrastructure SSDs and industrial memory modules, today introduced its second generation StorFly SATA 6G (SATA III) solid state drive product family. Virtium's Gen2 StorFly SSDs family is available in 2.5 and 1.8-inch SATA, M.2, mSATA, Slim SATA, and CFast form factors. Designed to meet the diverse storage requirements of mission-critical embedded applications, Virtium's second generation StorFly SSD products provide superior endurance and are engineered for extended product lifecycles. The new StorFly products are optimized for the data types and workloads of a wide range of infrastructure applications including networking, communications, industrial, remote monitoring, transportation, digital signage and gaming systems.

Greatly minimizing the need for costly product requalifications, Virtium's StorFly PE Class SLC-based SSDs will maintain stable configurations for at least three or more years enabling OEMs to realize a considerable total cost-of-ownership (TCO) advantage. The new StorFly SATA SSDs deliver four times the read performance, along with improved error-checking and correction (ECC) and wear-leveling capabilities, providing greater levels of reliability and endurance compared to the first generation StorFly SSDs. The new StorFly designs also support SMART commands and feature Virtium's vtGUARD power fail protection technology to protect against potential data corruption as a result of an unexpected power loss.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the availability of the company's first, self-encrypting solid state drive (SSD) - the SanDisk X300s SSD. Leveraging TCG Opal 2.0 and Microsoft Encrypted Hard Drive hardware-based encryption, coupled with a new SSD administration dashboard for easier audit and compliance management, the new X300s SSD delivers maximum data protection and performance to help address IT decision makers' top data management and security challenges. In making today's announcement, SanDisk also unveiled a broad ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISV) that enables enhanced security scalability of the X300s SSD.

TDK Corporation announced today the successful development of the SNG4A series of serial ATA II compatible industrial solid state drives. The new NAND flash memory modules enable storage capacities of up to 64 GB with SLC type NAND flash memory. Measuring only approx. 22 x 42 mm, the modules support use in M.2 slots and will be available from August 2014.

The new M.2 form factor is currently garnering a lot of attention and is expected to become the dominant standard for consumer applications. Furthermore, the adoption of M.2 for industrial applications will most likely also be promoted heavily. Motherboards for industrial use not only have to achieve good transfer speeds, but there is also a growing tendency to place more emphasis on reliability, since products often have to be operable for periods of ten years or more.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, and Panorama Software, a global leader in Business Intelligence (BI) 3.0 solutions, have established a technology partnership to deliver real-time Big Data analytics of data stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2014 databases.

The companies have jointly developed a solutions demonstration for the upcoming PASS Business Analytics (BA) Conference showcasing Panorama's leading Necto BI capabilities with OCZ's ZD-XL SQL Accelerator's ability to accelerate SQL Server applications. The collaborated demonstration showcases how the power of data transforms businesses through data-driven insights and business intelligence and will be presented during exhibit hours in OCZ's booth E-11 at the PASS BA Conference, San Jose Convention Center, May 7th through May 9th.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the Optimus MAX Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drive (SSD), the industry's first 4 TB SAS SSD. The Optimus MAX SSD achieves a capacity point that far outpaces today's highest-capacity 2.5" 10K and 15K rpm SAS hard-disk drives (HDDs), making it the first true replacement for legacy mission-critical data center SAS HDDs. Most notably, the Optimus MAX SSD delivers SAS performance and functionality at a breakthrough price point that was previously only available in SATA-based SSDs.

The Optimus MAX SSD tops the newly refreshed Optimus SAS SSD family and also joins the company's newly announced Lightning Gen. II 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs, extending SanDisk's entire SAS portfolio to cover the performance, capacity and endurance needs of a wide array of enterprise applications.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the Lightning Gen. II family of enterprise-class 12 Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drives (SSDs). The Lightning Gen. II 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs, together with the newly announced Optimus MAX 4 TB SAS SSD and updated Optimus SSD product family, help businesses meet the performance, uptime and capacity requirements across the wide range of mixed-use, read- and write-intensive application workloads common in today's data centers.

"Business data needs are becoming so performance-intensive that even applications that are already using SSDs need an additional boost," said John Scaramuzzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions at SanDisk. "The Lightning Gen. II SAS SSDs deliver double the throughput to each slot, empowering organizations to quickly and easily scale their performance infrastructure to meet this growing need."

Since the leading memory manufacturer KINGMAX released the Nano Gaming RAM in 2012, it has always received excellent positive reviews. Currently there are four memory clocks available for gamers to choose from: 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz, 2000 MHz, and 2200 MHz. Now, KINGMAX is disclosing its new Nano Gaming Ram to over-clocking enthusiasts before COMPUTEX 2014.

The newly released Nano Gaming RAM strives for better performance in terms of frequency and voltage, and KINGMAX is dedicated to finding the optimal balance between the two to bring an all new usage experience for over-clocking enthusiasts. KINGMAX also used its exclusive Nano cooling technology to make cooling more efficient and to bring better stability for Nano Gaming Ram, allowing gamers to become more excited and hot-blooded because of its the smooth and immersive game play.

Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, said today that it has begun mass producing the industry's first high-performance, three-bit-NAND-based SSD for servers and data centers. The new SSD will allow data centers to better manage workloads related to social networking, web browsing and email, and enhance operation efficiency. Installations of the 3-bit MLC (multi-level-cell) NAND SSDs, initially in large-scale data centers, are expected to begin later this quarter.

"Following the last year's introduction of 3-bit NAND-based SSDs for PC markets, our new 3-bit SSD for data centers will help considerably in expanding the market base for SSDs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. "We expect SSD market growth will gain momentum as this new SSD delivers significant improvements in data center investment efficiency, leading to full-fledged commercialization of SSDs in IT systems later this year."

Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, is proud to announce the launch of its JetDrive SSD Upgrade Kits aimed at MacBook computers. The JetDrive Upgrade Kits are ideal for professional photographers, videographers, and graphic artists looking to enhance the performance and capacity of their MacBook system, and even includes an easy-to-use drive enclosure for converting the original SSD or HDD into a new USB 3.0 portable storage device.

Faster Performance and Increased Storage
Built on the next-generation SATA III 6 Gb/s interface to achieve lightning-fast transfer speeds of up to 560 MB/s, upgrading to a Transcend JetDrive SSD translates into faster system boot up and application launch times, while offering the lag-free responsiveness and stability necessary for data-intensive computing and advanced gaming. Moreover, the newly-released SSDs are available in capacities of up to 960 GB, offering the perfect combination of speed and high-density storage.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the RevoDrive 350 Series with workstation-grade design capabilities and maximum performance for professional content creation, multimedia, and extreme gaming applications. Achieving three times the performance of SATA-based SSD solutions, RevoDrive 350 is based on proven performance architecture and features 19 nm Toshiba NAND to complete OCZ's portfolio transition to in-house flash, offering a high-performance yet cost-efficient SSD solution for bandwidth-intensive client applications.

Using the PCI Express Gen. 2 x8 interface and up to four LSI SF-2282 processors to offer more available bandwidth than the previous generation, RevoDrive 350 features up to 1.8GB/s sequential speeds and up to 140,000 4K random write IOPS, delivering SSD RAID performance without the hassle in an easy-to-deploy, single card solution.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today introduced the Canvio AeroMobile Wireless SSD, a product that offers a smart, easy and more reliable way to store, stream, and share files and media from mobile devices without ever attaching a single cable.

Toshiba's new portable Canvio AeroMobile Wireless SSD is sleek and durable, combining the convenience and capacity of portable wireless storage with the proven durability and performance of solid state hard drive technology. This slim, lightweight unit allows users to upload media instantly, freeing their smartphones, tablets and cameras to take thousands of pictures and video. Up to eight devices including smartphones, laptops, tablets and PCs can access the Canvio AeroMobile Wireless SSD.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has developed the world's first 15-nanometer (nm) process technology, which will apply to 2-bit-per-cell 128-gigabit (16 gigabytes) NAND flash memories. Mass production with the new technology will start at the end of April at Fab 5 Yokkaichi Operations, Toshiba's NAND flash fabrication facility (fab), replacing second generation 19 nm process technology, Toshiba's previous flagship process. The second stage of Fab 5 is currently under construction, and the new technology will also be deployed there.

Toshiba has achieved the world's smallest class chip size with the 15nm process plus improved peripheral circuitry technology. The new chips achieve the same write speed as chips formed with second generation 19 nm process technology, but boost the data transfer rate to 533 megabits a second, 1.3 times faster, by employing a high speed interface.

Silicon Power, the world's leading provider of memory storage solutions, today presents the upgrade solution of its revolutionary Thunderbolt external solid state drive - Thunder T11 with great capacity of 240 GB. In addition, Thunder T11 gets the new color variant-starlight blue to brighten up itself with more elegance and flavor.

Featuring advanced Thunderbolt technology and exceptional product design, SP Thunder T11 has acquired great attention and support from worldwide professional designers and Apple fans since its debut last year. Thunder T11 also proved its superiority with the recognition from red dot award: Product Design 2014, which is the most influential and prestigious design award all over the world.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a new enterprise-class solid state drive (SSD) designed specifically for data center storage platforms. Enterprise applications are experiencing tremendous new demands for greater data throughput due to rapid growth in mobile applications, cloud services and connected devices. Micron's new M500DC SATA SSD addresses this growing need by providing the performance and data protection features of an enterprise-class drive at a great value.

"System administrators are realizing that there is a need for an SSD that delivers more enterprise-features than a client drive at a more affordable price than most enterprise drives," said Greg Wong, founder and principal analyst at Forward Insights. "Products such as Micron's M500DC SSD offer data centers the optimal balance of enterprise class features, performance and price for demanding 24/7 enterprise workloads."

Plextor has now announced the European release of the M6S, its newest SATA solid state drive which makes use of Marvell's SS9188 dual-core controller and Toshiba 19 nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND memory. The SSD comes in a 2.5-inch form factor (7 mm tall) and has a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and is capable of read/write speeds of up to 520/440 MB/s.

Plextor's M6S is backed by a three-year warranty and comes in 128 GB (82 Euro), 256 GB (145 Euro) and 512 GB (306 Euro) capacities.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that its entire PCIe-based enterprise-class Z-Drive SSD Series are now certified as DataCore Ready. Through this certification program, OCZ's Z-Drive SSD Series has demonstrated product compatibility with DataCore's SANsymphony-V software platform by meeting the verification criteria set by DataCore through the successful execution of planned functional tests.

SANsymphony-V is DataCore's ninth-generation storage virtualization solution and is currently being used in more than 10,000 customer sites worldwide. The software is designed to maximize IT infrastructure performance, availability and utilization by virtualizing storage assets. Once deployed, it seamlessly manages and scales data storage architectures, combines all available storage into a single storage pool and virtualizes it delivering large performance gains through a hardware-agnostic model.
"We are pleased that OCZ's Z-Drive SSD Series is now DataCore Ready certified as this enables our joint customers to confidently utilize one of the fastest PCIe-based SSD products to further optimize application performance on software-defined architectures," said Carlos M. Carreras, Vice President of Alliances and Business Development at DataCore. "In the software-defined data center, virtualization, automation and system efficiencies must be driven through software, requiring a cost-effective approach to managing storage growth while getting the most out of hardware investments."