Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it closed out a prosperous 2021 in the number one spot for SSD Unit market share in the channel. SSD demand through Q4 2021 remained high due to continued growth in the client, enterprise and OEM sectors. In October, Kingston also broadened its portfolio by launching two new high performance client M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, KC3000 and Kingston FURY Renegade.

Market share data from analyst research company TRENDFOCUS showed Kingston as the number one client SSD vendor in the channel with 22.2% for unit market share and 22.3 million client SSDs shipped for all of 2021 in the channel. In Q4 alone, Kingston's client SSD market share grew to a substantial 26.8% in the channel which displays a healthy annual unit growth despite ongoing component shortages. According to TRENDFOCUS, total client SSD units increased 12.4% YoY in 2021. Notebook PC units increased 12% YoY while desktop PCs inched up 1% over the same period, reflecting the rapid adoption of solid-state drives by clients largely due to performance, size and reduced power consumption. Kingston maintains a competitive advantage by working closely with its suppliers, partners, and customers to remain flexible and adapt to ever-changing needs and market conditions.

Mushkin Enhanced MFG - An industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and high-reliability computer products, today launched its new Redline VORTEX Series of high-performance NVMe solid-state drives. Featuring a carbon nano heat dissipating label, the Redline Vortex delivers colossal throughput of up to 7415 MB/s sequential read and up to 6,800 MB/s sequential write. In combination with Dynamic SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer, the Redline Vortex gives you a performance boost needed for content creators, gaming, and professionals alike.

The Redline VORTEX series, powered by Innogrit's IG5236 series (Rainier) controller, features the next evolution of the PCI-Express Gen4 interface offering an impressive range of performance, security, and reliability. Delivering up to 10 times the sequential read and sequential write speeds of some SATA SSDs and up to 50 times the speed of some traditional HDDs.

Nextorage Corporation will launch a PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 ("PCIe 4.0") M.2 2280 NVMe SSD "NEM-PA series" for the USA market from March. The products are initially sold on Amazon. Nextorage was established on October 1, 2019, as a company specializing in the memory storage solutions business led by engineers and staff who built on 20 years of history in memory storage at Sony.

The NEM-PA series is an M.2 2280 SSD equipped with a PCIe 4.0 / NVMe 1.4 controller and a 3D TLC NAND, and comes with a heatsink for heat dissipation. The drive achieves sequential read up to 7,300 MB/s, sequential write up to 6,900 MB/s, and random read/write up to 1,000 K IOPS (in a PC environment). The NEM-PA series delivers both high-speed loading and smooth gaming experience.

Silicon Power (SP) releases its newest PCIe 3.0 SSD, the UD80, featuring storage capacities up to 2 TB with 3D NAND flash technology. The UD80 strikes a perfect harmony between cost and performance to breathe new life into your system without burning a hole in your pocket. Designed for creators that need more than just a jolt of inspiration, the UD80 provides exceptional value and a performance boost with a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface - a boost that leaves SATA III SSDs behind in the dust.

The UD80 utilizes the speed capabilities of PCIe 3.0 with the efficiency of NVMe and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology. Let your creative juices flow with rapid read and write speeds up to 3,400 MB/s and 3,000 MB/s, respectively. At the same time, experience seamless productivity via the higher performance and lower latency that's achieved by NVMe 1.4 and HMB technology.

Kioxia Corporation today announced that its KIOXIA PM7 Series of enterprise SAS SSDs are now available for customer evaluation. Targeted at enterprise applications and use cases - including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, caching layer, and financial trading and analysis - the new drives bring improved performance, reliability and security to enterprise servers and storage. With an emphasis on security, the PM7 Series is FIPS 140-2 certified and currently under test for FIPS 140-3 certification.

Designed for modern IT infrastructures, 24G SAS (SAS-4) doubles effective bandwidth over 12 Gb/s SAS (SAS-3). Featuring Kioxia's 5th generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, the PM7 Series delivers sequential read performance of up 4.2 Gigabytes (GB) per second (GB/s) and 720K random read IOPS, achieving approximately 20% performance improvement over the previous generation KIOXIA PM6 Series. The new Kioxia drives are available in capacities up to 30.72 terabytes (TB), making them the industry's highest capacity 2.5-inch SAS SSD.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

China is reacting to new outbreaks of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus with partial lockdowns. This could further delay the availability of laptops with 12th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA's Ti graphics cards, which debuted at the beginning of the year. The first factories have already been closed in Suzhou in the east of the country. Supply chain and logistics bottlenecks, a shortage of certain chip types and price increases are already on the horizon.

AeroCool unveiled the Cipher mid-tower case targeted at those with copious amounts of local storage. It features a mostly conventional horizontally-partitioned layout, but with a key difference. Toward the forward-right region of the case, is a fan vent that holds either two 120 mm or two 140 mm fans; and can mount 280 mm or 240 mm radiators. The radiator ends up in the crawl-space behind the motherboard tray, while its fans are on the other side. It exhausts through vents along the right side-panel. The left side-panel has these vents, too, but serves as intake. This is where things get interesting. There are four detachable 3.5-inch drive-cages mounted along the motherboard tray (with clearance for the radiator fans). These cages can either serve as a fresh air-guide for the side-mounted radiator, or hold up to eight 3.5-inch HDDs ventilated by those fans. You can pluck out the drive-cages you don't need.

The storage features don't end there. The bottom compartment has an additional three 3.5-inch bays, two 2.5-inch drives can be mounted behind the motherboard tray, and two on top of the partition, for a total of 15 drives, not counting the M.2 SSDs on your motherboard. Other ventilation options include three 120 mm front fan-mounts behind a mesh intake; three 120 mm top exhausts, and a 120 mm rear exhaust. The expansion slots include two vertical slots. Front-panel connectivity is pretty standard, with a USB 3.x type-A, two USB 2.0, and HDA jacks. All this, in mid-tower dimensions of 205 mm x 485 mm x 485 mm (WxDxH). The company didn't reveal pricing.

While NVMe storage devices offer significant performance and reliability advantages over their platter-based counterparts, many Linux and VMware based applications continue to rely on older SAS & SATA solutions due to the ready availability of firmware level RAID storage and native driver support. This combination greatly simplifies the kernel update process while minimizing downtime. RAID solutions with native driver support will be treated as embedded devices, and do not need to be updated separately to comply with the kernel change.

The SSD6200 product family was designed to address these concerns. The NVMe RAID capability is integrated at the firmware level, and functions independent of the host. In addition, SSD6200 series controllers are natively supported by all major Virtualization platforms, such as VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Proxmox, and all current versions and distributions of Windows, Linux and FreeBSD operating systems. This native, In-Box driver support ensures administrators are free to update the Kernel, apply patches, or download and install scheduled updates whenever the need arises, using standard operating procedures. No work-arounds, no hassles, no surprises.

PATRIOT, a global leader in performance memory, SSDs, gaming peripherals, and flash storage solutions, is pleased to announce the PATRIOT P400 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe M.2 SSD with capacities of 512 GB and 1 TB. The PATRIOT P400 was built using the latest PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe controller and best-in-class components to deliver faster data access, multi-application processing, and quick transfer speeds up to 5000 MB/s in sequential. The PATRIOT P400 can offer double the transfer speeds compared to standard PCIe 3x4 solutions with lower power consumption making it the best solution for laptop battery efficiency. In addition, the exclusive thin graphene heatshield provides outstanding heat dissipation, especially in systems with limited space.

"The PATRIOT P400 M.2 is designed to be an ideal solution for budget-minded users looking to achieve a cost-efficient storage solution with PCI Express gen4x4 performance. Our design team has created an excellent thermal solution using a slim graphene heatshield which can avoid any physical interference when using this drive-in system with limited space, such as a thin laptop." Said Roger Shinmoto, the vice president of PATRIOT MEMORY.

TechPowerUp partnered with NAND flash pioneer KIOXIA to give you a chance to bring home one of three KIOXIA Exceria series SSDs. Based on the company's BiCS 3D NAND flash technology, the Exceria series spans various client SSD form-factors, including M.2 NVMe and 2.5-inch SATA. The brand also extends to the company's various consumer flash products, including portable SSDs, USB flash drives, and memory cards. Up for grabs in the TechPowerUp Giveaway were a 2 TB Exceria Plus G2 NVMe SSD, a 1 TB Exceria NVMe SSD, and a 960 GB Exceria SATA 2.5-inch SSD. The results are in, and we have the winners!

• Martin from Malta, wins the 2 TB Exceria Plus G2 NVMe SSD
• Pari from New Zealand, wins the 1 TB Exceria NVMe SSD
• Paul from the United Kingdom, wins the 960 GB Exceria SATA 2.5-inch SSD

A huge Congratulations to you three! TechPowerUp and KIOXIA will return with more such interesting giveaways.

Infortrend Technology, Inc. (TWSE: 2495), the industry-leading enterprise storage provider, satisfies requirements of high throughput and fast response time for high-performance computing (HPC), media post-production, and medical PACS applications ­— with EonStor CS NVMe SSD storage delivering 13 GB/s throughput in a 3-node cluster, and performance linearly increases in a scale-out mode.

Today's HPC applications perform computationally intensive operations with billions of files across multiple resources of different nature at PB scale. Storage for HPC, therefore, must be able to simultaneously support multiple random and sequential IO workloads of different sizes. Otherwise, it can extensively delay the HPC application output and the company's success. EonStor CS NVMe SSD storage, CS 4014U, effectively eliminates these concerns and guarantees fast response time, satisfying various types of IO profiles.\

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced it has begun volume shipments of the world's first 176-layer QLC NAND SSD. Built with the most advanced NAND architecture, Micron's 176-layer QLC NAND delivers the industry's leading storage density and optimized performance for a broad range of data-rich applications. Designed for use cases spanning client and data center environments, Micron's transformative new NAND technology is now available with the introduction of the Micron 2400 SSD, the world's first 176-layer PCIe Gen4 QLC SSD for client applications. The new 176-layer QLC NAND will also be incorporated into select Micron Crucial consumer SSDs, and available as a component for system designers.

Micron's groundbreaking 176-layer QLC NAND provides a layer count and density unprecedented in QLC NAND flash and follows Micron's delivery of the industry's first 176-layer TLC NAND. Additionally, Micron's 176-layer QLC NAND enables 33% higher I/O speed and 24% lower read latency than Micron's prior generation solution. Its replacement-gate architecture is the only mass production QLC flash storage that combines charge trap with a CMOS-under-array design. These improvements are driving adoption of QLC SSDs in the client PC market, which is expected to triple QLC adoption by 2023, exceeding 35%, and reaching nearly 80% bit share in 2025.

DeepCool, a global brand in designing and manufacturing high-performance computer components for enthusiasts worldwide, announces the CK SERIES Mid-Tower Cases, which consists the CK500, CK500WH, CK560 and CK560WH. Available in black and white, all cases deliver a balance of airflow, silent performance and exceptional cooling for the modern-day builder.

The CK SERIES deliver a no-nonsense approach to a clean, sleek computer chassis design. For Minimalist Builders who appreciate the CK500 and CK500WH minimal solid front panel can be rest assured that airflow performance is not hindered thanks to enlarged ventilation outlets throughout the front, top, and rear panels for additional air movement. For Builders that insist for even more airflow, the CK560 and CK560WH feature a unique cross-hair patterned steel front panel. All cases offer a clean aesthetic and fits a modern day look while being feature-packed for additional hardware expansion and upgrades.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions, will showcase its lineup of next-generation gaming solutions for customers, partners, media and other interested parties during CES 2022, January 5-8 exclusively by private virtual demos. The new-class of solutions include the company's first PCIe Gen5 controller for high-end desktop gaming, a future high-performance Gen4 solution, and demonstration of the next-generation game workload coming soon to PCs.

Phison, the leader in gaming-optimized SSDs pushes the boundaries of performance. The company's solutions power seamless experiences for modern console, desktop/notebook and mobile gaming, which are delivered to consumers through an extensive and diverse group of partners.Update Jan 4th: Added presentation slides, product images and closeups of the PCB designs.

TechPowerUp and KIOXIA come together to bring you a change to win one of three KIOXIA Exceria client SSDs. The Exceria range of SSDs span 2.5-inch SATA and M.2 NVMe form-factors, and combine KIOXIA's in-house BiCS flash memory, and the legacy of being the inventors of flash memory. Up for grabs are a KIOXIA Exceria Plus G2 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD, a KIOXIA Exceria 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD, and a KIOXIA Exceria SATA 960 GB SSD. The Giveaway is open worldwide (wherever legal), entries close on January 9, 2022. To participate, simply fill up a brief form to help us get back to you if you've won. All the best!

For more information and to participate, visit this page.

SMART Modular, a leading global professional memory and storage solutions brand (NASDAQ: SGH), announced the expansion of its DuraFlash ME2 SATA SSD product line, officially Launched three new products, M.2 2242 SATA, mSATA (MO-300A) and Slim SATA (MO-297A), to complement the specifications other than M.2 2280 and 2.5" SATA SSD, making the DuraFlash product line more complete.

The new ME2 SATA SSD series is designed for applications with small size or traditional SSD specifications, and can be the best choice for embedded computing, transportation, medical and industrial applications. ME2 series products use 3D TLC flash memory technology, which can operate normally under commercial temperature (0°C~70°C) or industrial wide temperature (-40°C ~85°C); in addition, ME2 series also support advanced The LDPC debugging and correction mechanism and the end-to-end data path protection function ensure a high degree of data integrity and reliability.

According to research from Mordor Intelligence, the facial recognition market was valued at USD 3.72 billion in 2020, and is projected to be valued at USD 11.62 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of approximately 21.71% over the forecast period. Facial recognition technology is finally coming into its own. It has gone beyond police officers looking for a suspect on a surveillance camera. Now, smart AI-driven facial recognition technology is common in smart retail, finance, transportation and even healthcare applications. But as adoption spreads, facial recognition devices are being required to operate in ever-more-challenging locations and environments. Keeping all these developments in mind, Apacer developed and has now released the CH120 series of industrial cards powered by the latest 112-layer BiCS5 3D TLC NAND technology, optimized for both AI facial recognition and smart IoT applications.

BiCS5 promises concrete, measurable advantages for SSDs, as it greatly improves capacity while keeping transmission latency ultra-low. In fact, Apacer's A2-grade CH120 series offers 4,000/2,000 IOPS for 4K image read/write performance. And compromised environments won't slow these cards down either - their wide temperature range means they operate smoothly in temperatures as low as -40 and as high as 85 degrees Celsius. The CH120 series of industrial cards are also equipped with value-adding over-provisioning and SLC-liteX technology. The former drastically reduces write amplification, extending an SSD's operational lifespan, while the latter allows an SSD to increase its endurance to up to 30,000 P/E cycles. That's 10 times higher than standard 3D TLC SSDs.

A company dealing with niche audiophile-grade electronics on Audiophile Style, a popular site and marketplace for the community, conjured up an SSD that it feels offers the best possible audio. Put simply, this is an M.2-2280 NVMe SSD with a fully-independent power delivery mechanism (one that's isolated from the motherboard's power delivery), and an over-the-top discrete clock-source for its controller. The drive has its own 5 V 2-pin DC input and switching hardware onboard, including [get this] a pair of Audionote Kaisei audio-grade electrolytic capacitors in place of what should have been simple solid-state SMD capacitors that are hard to even notice on any other drive. It doesn't end there.

Most NVMe SSDs have a tiny 2 mm x 2 mm SMD oscillator that's used by the controller for clock-generation. This drive features a Crystek CCHD-957 high-grade Femto oscillator. These oscillators are found in some very high-grade production or scientific equipment, such as data-loggers. For the drive itself, you get a Realtek DRAM-less controller, and a single 1 TB TLC NAND flash chip that's forced to operate in SLC mode (333 GB). On a scale of absurdity, this drive is right up there with $10,000 HDMI cables. Digital audio is stored in ones and zeroes, and nothing is accomplished through an isolated power delivery or clock generation on the storage media. It's nice of the designers to include jumpers that let you switch between the discrete power source and motherboard power; so listeners can see the snake-oil for themselves.

Demand for NAND Flash products will undergo a noticeable and cyclical downward correction in 1Q22 as major smartphone brands wind down their procurement activities for the peak season and ODMs prepare for the New Year holidays, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As such, the NAND Flash market will remain in an oversupply situation, with prices continuing to undergo downward corrections accordingly. However, PC OEMs have been reinstating certain orders for client SSDs since early November in response to improvements in the supply of upstream semiconductor materials. By fulfilling these orders, suppliers are able to keep their inventory level relatively low, meaning they are not under as much pressure as previously expected to reduce inventory by lowering prices. Taking these factors into account, TrendForce expects NAND Flash ASP to undergo a 10-15% QoQ decline in 1Q22, during which NAND Flash prices will experience the most noticeable declines compared to the other quarters in 2022.

Regarding the price trend of NAND Flash products across the whole 2021, TrendForce further indicates that suppliers have actively transitioned their output to higher-layer technologies, resulting in a bit supply growth that noticeably outpaces demand, though the tight supply of components such as controller ICs and PMICs has constrained the production of NAND Flash end-products. Hence, the decline in contract prices of NAND Flash products has not been as severe as previously expected. Moving ahead to 2022, however, the supply of relevant components is expected to gradually improve, so the market for various NAND Flash products will also likely shift towards a noticeable oversupply. As a result, prices of NAND Flash products will steadily decline before the arrival of the peak season in 3Q22.

Synology announced today the launch of FlashStation FS2500, the newest addition to the company's lineup of all-flash servers, as well as an update to its portfolio of SATA SSDs with SAT5210 drives. The FS2500 is designed to tackle business IT applications requiring fast and low-latency storage, including virtual machines and post-production work. The compact, 1U chassis fits 12 2.5" SATA bays, providing ample capacity and simple installation. The unit delivers more than 170,000/82,000 4K random read/write performance,1 and features dual 10 GbE ports with room for 10/25 GbE expansion.

Released last year to meet increasingly stringent requirements in terms of reliability and sustained performance, Synology's lineup of SATA SSD drives has proven to be a dependable solution for powering IT operations in a variety of highly demanding scenarios. Synology drives are designed in conjunction with the entire stack of engineers responsible for each storage system to ensure complete hardware and software integration. It also produces new features and optimizations that would have been otherwise impossible.

Global memory brand TEAMGROUP has been leading the industry with its groundbreaking DDR5 memory products. Today, its gaming sub-brand T-FORCE announced the new SIREN GD240E All-In-One ARGB CPU Liquid Cooler, which comes with a mounting bracket for the latest LGA 1700 socket and fully supports 12th Generation Intel processors and Z690 motherboards, making it a must-have cooling solution for gamers. Launched alongside the CPU cooling system is the M200 Portable SSD, winner of Japan's 2021 GOOD DESIGN Award. Hardcore gamers around the world can look forward to both products when they are released globally this December.

The newly upgraded SIREN GD240E AIO ARGB CPU Liquid Cooler not only supports various older Intel and AMD sockets but also provides a mounting kit for the latest LGA 1700 socket. The specially selected base plate, support screws, and mounting brackets enable the water block to fit snugly with the processor. The full and even contact between the surfaces aids heat transfer swiftly to the high-density jet fin heat sink, greatly increasing the heat dissipation area and quickly removing heat from the CPU. To optimize efficiency and the path of heat transfer, the SIREN GD240E is equipped with an ultra-fast 4000RPM water pump that's installed on the radiator to reduce wear and noise on the CPU caused by water pump vibrations. These features allow the system to deliver 1.5 times higher cooling performance than typical liquid-cooled products while also providing the best protection for the next-gen Intel processors. The SIREN GD240E is an all-in-one liquid cooler system with top-notch heat dissipation and visual flair thanks to the water block's elegant mirror finish and high-speed ARGB fans that support all major motherboard lighting software.

The growth of the NAND Flash market in 3Q21 was primarily driven by strong demand from the data center and smartphone industries, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. More specifically, NAND Flash suppliers' hyperscaler and enterprise clients kept up their procurement activities that began in 2Q21 in order to deploy products based on new processor platforms. Major smartphone brands, on the other hand, likewise expanded their NAND Flash procurement activities during the quarter as they prepared to release their new flagship models. As such, clients in both server and smartphone industries made significant contributions to the revenue growth of the NAND Flash industry for 3Q21. At the same time, however, suppliers also warned that orders from PC OEMs began showing signs of decline. On the whole, the industry's quarterly total NAND Flash bit shipment increased by nearly 11% QoQ for 3Q21, and the overall NAND Flash ASP rose by nearly 4% QoQ for the same quarter. Thanks to rising prices and expanding shipments, the quarterly total NAND Flash revenue increased by 15% QoQ to a new record high of US$18.8 billion in 3Q21.

Leading global memory provider TEAMGROUP has been actively expanding in the industrial field for many years. In response to the development of 5G communication and the increasing demand for smart edge computing, TEAMGROUP today has announced two industrial-grade M.2 PCIe solid-state drives equipped with patented heat dissipating modules, the N75A-M80 and N75G-M80. The two products can be used in a limited space environment and provide excellent cooling performance during 24-hour high-speed operation, overcoming the extreme environments and ever-changing challenges of industrial applications.

To solve the issue of heat generated by SSDs under heavy workloads, TEAMGROUP launched two industrial M.2 PCIe SSDs that feature patented heat dissipating modules: N75A-M80, which comes with an aluminium fin heat sink (Taiwan Utility Model Patent No.: M541645), and N75G-M80, fitted with a graphene copper foil (Taiwan Invention Patent No.: I703921; US Invention Patent No.: US11051392B2). The two patented heat dissipating modules effectively reduce SSD slowdowns caused by high operating temperatures and significantly improve stability. The graphene heat sink of the N75G-M80 has a thickness of less than 1 mm, allowing for the SSD to be easily installed without interference. Even in 5G and IoT equipment, where installation space is limited, it can provide excellent cooling performance. The N75G-M80's outstanding technical performance was recognized in COMPUTEX d&i Awards 2021 and the Taiwan Excellence Awards 2022, winning awards from both.

Lexar unveiled the Blaze SL660, a new line of portable gaming-grade SSDs. Measuring 112.6 mm x 57.4 mm x 10.6 mm (LxWxH), and weighing 80 g, the drives feature an ARGB LED lighting element, and a unique asymmetric shape. The drive takes advantage of the 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface, and offers sequential transfer rates of up to 2,000 MB/s reads, with up to 1,900 MB/s writes. There are two variants based on capacity—512 GB and 1 TB. The drives use a single cable for both power and host connectivity, with support for both type-C and type-A ports. A plastic stand is included with the drive, letting you place the drive along its side on your desk, as well as a faux-leather pouch to help you organize things. The company didn't reveal pricing, but is backing these drives with 5-year warranties.