Kingston, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced the availability of the DC1500M, a U.2 data center NVMe PCIe SSD for mixed-use workloads. Leveraging a high-performance Gen 3.0 x4 PCIe NVMe design, the DC1500M delivers predictable random IO performance as well as predictable latencies over a wide range of workloads.

"DC1500M adds support for multiple namespaces making it ideal for environments including virtualisation and web hosting," said Tony Hollingsbee, SSD business manager, Kingston EMEA. "From high-performance cloud services, media capture and transport to a range of big-data applications, DC1500M sets the standard for applications where QoS and predictability of performance are paramount. Data centers need drives that are reliable, have serviceable form factors and are equipped with the enterprise-grade features that make it easier to maintain SLAs."

TEAMGROUP unveils the T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD with two patented cooling modules, QLC Flash, and PCIe Gen 4x4 interface that supports the latest NVMe 1.4 standard and provides a massive capacity of up to 4 TB. Consumers can opt for different specs based on their preference and needs, and gamers can have everything from cooling, performance, and capacity in one SSD, and explore the infinite possibilities with T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe4.0 SSD.

Equipped with QLC Flash, the T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD supports the latest PCIe Gen 4x4 interface and NVMe 1.4 standards, meaning that it is compatible with PCIe Gen3.0 interface while offering up to 4 TB in capacity. The read/write speeds reach up to 5,000/4,000 MB/s, which are 10 times faster than traditional SSDs, making it a pioneer for the new TB M.2 era and the best choice for players in terms of cooling, speed, and capacity.

Seagate today announced its newest PC gaming SSD, the FireCuda 530, at the company's inaugural virtual gaming event, SG21. The new drive offers gamers the latest PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD technology and the fastest performance from the company's line of PC gaming storage products - bringing speed, endurance, and high capacity to the peak of PC performance.

Delivering sequential read speeds of up to 7300 MB/s, the FireCuda 530 catalyzes PCIe Gen4 power with transfer rates up to two times faster than PCIe Gen3 SSDs and 12 times faster than SATA-based SSDs. The drive is built with a Seagate-validated E18 controller and the latest 3D TLC NAND to provide the most advanced speed and durability for PC gaming. Seagate also offers a minimalist heatsink option, specially designed by EKWB that swaps out cooling fins for a more massive, high-grade aluminium block with a finely textured finish, maximizing cooling.

When solid state drives were first manufactured, they were designed using form factors similar to hard disk drives. But, because they are made from flash memory, SSDs can be designed in various form factors that best take advantage of the unique needs of respective client, hyperscale and enterprise compute environments. The form factor that is best suited for rack storage over the current industry-standard M.2 drive is the E1.S, according to experts at Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions. Phison's own E1.S SSD with the world's highest capacity storage is coming to market soon.

When first released, the M.2 form factor was popular in hyper-scale data centers due to its small size, low-cost structure, flexibility and scalability of multiple drives per server. But the M.2 form factor is not hot-pluggable and typically a challenge to service with the SSD installed on an internal motherboard socket. The M.2 form factor dimensions are also not ideal to fully utilize the space available in a 1U rack height (1.75") for storage capacity.

ASRock has been accommodating the mining craze and the company is today launching its H510 Pro BTC+ motherboard designed to host a suite of GPUs. More precisely, the company has released a motherboard with six full-size PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. Measuring at the huge 50.1 x 22.4 cm, the motherboard is anything but small. There is room to install any triple-slot GPU with ease, as the slots are spaced out nicely. However, to feed all six GPUs at full speed, you would need as many as 96 lanes. That is why only the first slot runs at full x16 speed, while others are stuck at x1 speeds. The H510 chipset can not support 96 lanes naturally.

To power the board, you need a double 24-pin PCIe power connector. The power is regulated by four-phase power delivery with 50 Amp chokes. There is one SATA III connector and an M.2 PCIe 3.0 slot for M.2 SSDs that are up to 110 mm long. The motherboard is available for purchase at Newegg at the price tag of $279.

SMART Modular Technologies, a SMART Global Holdings, Inc. company (Nasdaq: SGH) and a global leader in memory solutions, solid-state drives and hybrid storage products, today announced the new T5EN PCIe/NVMe M.2 2280 and U.2 flash drives for aerospace, defense and industrial applications that require durable, rugged, and secure memory storage.

Extending SMART Modular's T5E family of SSDs, the T5EN offers capacities up to 8 TB (M.2 up to 4 TB) Gen 3 x4 performance using 3D TLC flash with pSLC support. "With the growing trend toward NVMe in embedded systems, developing the T5EN was a natural progression and complement to our existing product line," explains Mike Guzzo, senior director of SMART Modular's RUGGED line of Flash products. Guzzo adds, "Fundamentally, the T5EN includes all of the existing advantages of the T5E, such as very high capacity, superior reliability for harsh environmental extremes, military erase algorithm support, as well as 256 bit encryption. These advantages equate to a higher level of protection for mission-critical data and instill confidence in the overall reliability of the data storage devices that support high-performing NVMe architectures."

KINGMAX today unveiled the AX448 line of M.2 NVMe SSDs. These drives come in high capacity variants of 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB, and take advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface, and NVMe protocol. The 1 TB variant offers sequential transfer rates of up to 4500 MB/s reads, with up to 1750 MB/s writes. The 2 TB variant does up to 4700 MB/s reads, with up to 3300 MB/s writes. The 4 TB variant tops the charts with up to 4800 MB/s reads, and up to 3450 MB/s writes, at least on paper. Endurance of the three variants is rated at up to 200 TBW for the 1 TB variant, up to 400 TBW for the 2 TB variant, and up to 800 TBW for the 4 TB variant. The drive is likely using QLC NAND flash, given these endurance numbers, although the company didn't mention the controller or NAND flash type.

PLEXTOR, a leading provider of high-performance storage solutions, announces the launch of the M10P series PCIe Gen4 solid state drives (SSD). With faster speeds, higher capacities, and excellent stability, M10P series SSDs offer avid gamers and audio-visual (AV) enthusiasts alike a high-performance device that also exudes gaming flair with its dynamic industrial design and RGB lighting.

Implementing the next generation of PCIe, Gen4, M10P series SSDs can deliver read/write speeds of up to 7000/5000 MB/s, approximately two times faster than previous generation SSDs. This amazing performance is achieved in combination with Plextor's proprietary PlexNitro II technology, which uses an SLC cache mechanism as a buffer to improve read and write speeds. PlexNitro II technology ups the ante on random read/write performance and enhances sequential read/write performance by up to fifty-percent over previous generation SSDs.

Championing the Zoned Storage initiative, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced at its Flash Perspective Event that it has teamed with Percona, a leader in open source database software and services, to unlock the performance benefits of Western Digital's Ultrastar DC ZN540 NVMe ZNS SSDs for MySQL Server, one of the most popular open-source transactional databases in the world.

"Many of our customers are using MySQL as a database for their online data services and this new partnership with Percona will allow customers to unlock the full capabilities of our innovative ZNS flash solutions. With our contributions to the Linux and MySQL open-source communities, MySQL users will be able to install the Percona Server for MySQL and get out-of-the-box support for Western Digital Zoned Namespaces SSDs," said Wim De Wispelaere, vice president, Strategic Initiatives at Western Digital. "This demonstrates our continued commitment to deliver innovative data center infrastructure products and to build our partnership ecosystem to make those easy to implement by our customers."

Enterprise SSD procurement has been rising on the back of growing server shipments since 2Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, the share of 8 TB products in shipments of SSDs to data centers has shown the most noticeable growth, which is expected to persist through 3Q21. However, certain SSD components and parts may be in shortage due to insufficient foundry capacity. TrendForce is therefore revising the QoQ hikes in contract prices of enterprise SSDs for 3Q21 to 10-15% from the previous projection of 5-10%.

TrendForce further indicates that the high demand for enterprise SSDs in 3Q21 is attributed to several factors. First, North American cloud service providers (hyperscalers) have pretty much completed their inventory adjustments and now continue to expand their storage capacity. Second, the flow of incoming orders to traditional server brands is getting stronger over the quarters as government agencies and SMBs increase their budgets for IT infrastructure. Third, Intel and AMD are ramping up production for server CPUs based on their respective new processor platforms. Following the adoption of new CPUs, the overall demand for enterprise SSDs has also shifted to higher-density products because clients want to upgrade their computing power and storage capacity. Specifically, demand is mainly trending toward 4/8 TB SSDs since raising NAND Flash density can lower the cost of SSD deployment.

NVM Express, Inc. today announced the release of the NVM Express (NVMe ) 2.0 family of specifications. The restructured NVMe 2.0 specifications allow for faster and simpler development of NVMe solutions to support the increasingly diverse NVMe device environment, now including Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). The extensibility of the specifications encourages the development of independent command sets like Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) and Key Value (KV) while enabling support for the various underlying transport protocols common to NVMe and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF ) technologies.

"NVMe technology is the leading interface for SSDs, with overall worldwide enterprise SSD capacity expected to grow at a 43% compound annual growth rate into 2024," said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president, IDC. "NVMe architecture is designed for future SSD development and form factors, as we enter a new era in hyperscale and enterprise computing that drives digital transformation."

Today at Computex 2021, Intel announced two new additions to the lineup of 11th Gen Intel Core processors. These new processors, combined with Intel's co-engineering work with independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), continue Intel's leadership in mobile compute—delivering the world's best processors for thin-and-light Windows-based laptops. Intel also introduced its first 5G product for the next generation of PC experiences, Intel 5G Solution 5000, following the previously announced collaboration with MediaTek and Fibocom.

"We've taken the world's best processor for thin-and-light Windows laptops and made the experience even better with the addition of our two new 11th Gen Intel Core processors with Intel Iris Xe graphics. In addition, we know real-world performance and connectivity are vital to our partners and the people who rely on PCs every day, so we're continuing that momentum with more platform capabilities and choice in the market with the launch of our first 5G product for PCs: the Intel 5G Solution 5000," said Chris Walker, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Mobility Client Platforms.

Marvell today announced its new Bravera SC5 controller family, bringing unprecedented performance, best-in-class efficiency, and leading security features to address ever-expanding workloads in the cloud. The massive amount of data to be processed in cloud data centers is driving demand for faster and higher bandwidth storage in these environments. Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controllers address the critical requirements for scalable, containerized cloud storage infrastructure. By enabling the highest performing flash storage solutions, Marvell's controllers are poised to be the foundation for data centers that offer ultra-low latency, real-time applications while also providing cost-optimized, cloud-scale capacity.

As the industry's first SSD controllers to support PCIe 5.0 and NVMe 1.4b, Marvell's Bravera SC5 doubles the performance compared to PCIe 4.0 SSDs. This contributes to accelerated workloads and reduced latency, dramatically improving the user experience. In order to meet cloud service providers' stringent security requirements to ensure users' data is safe and protected, the controllers offer FIPS-compliant root of trust (RoT), AES 256-bit encryption and multi-key revocation. The new controllers are the first with a hardware-based Elastic SLA Enforcer to assure quality of service (QoS) and provide metering capabilities per customer to increase overall storage efficiency and utilization while lowering total cost of ownership (TCO).

Total NAND Flash revenue for 1Q21 increased by 5.1% QoQ to US$14.82 billion, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, bit shipments rose by 11% QoQ, while the overall ASP dropped by 5% QoQ; hence, bit shipment growth offset the decline in the overall ASP. Although NAND Flash demand from notebook computer and smartphone manufacturers remained high, clients from the data center segment exhibited relatively weak demand, since this segment had yet to leave the state of NAND Flash oversupply. Contract prices for this quarter therefore still mostly showed a considerable QoQ drop. On the other hand, OEMs/ODMs of end products began to increase procurement of NAND Flash products from the second half of January onward because they noticed that the shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs was affecting the production of medium- and low-density storage products. Besides avoiding a possible supply crunch in the future, OEMs/ODMs were placing additional orders because they were preparing for a push to expand market share. On account of these developments, the overall NAND Flash demand surpassed expectations in 1Q21.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controllers and a complete line of storage solutions, and Cigent Technology, Inc., the leader in embedded cybersecurity technology, today unveiled design details behind the partnership that has delivered the industry's first and only line of self-defending storage devices with cybersecurity built into the firmware itself to protect against ransomware, data theft and malicious insider theft.

Phison's innovative and robust NAND flash solutions support a broad range of applications including embedded, consumer, enterprise and automotive. The Phison Crypto-SSD is a line of TCG enabled Self-Encrypting Drives that are designed to pass FIPS 140-3 Level 2 certification. Phison is committed to data security which helps to protect business and government users against loss or theft. Phison's collaboration with Cigent expands the E12DC Crypto-SSD security architecture to add additional compute capabilities, attack detectors and sensors directly on the drive. Together with Cigent, Phison has created a product that raises the bar of data security to a whole new level.

Memblaze today announced its first PCIe4.0 NVMe SSDs PBlaze6 6920 Series, which represent its 6th-generation enterprise SSD products. This Series is developed based on Memblaze's self-developed MUFP (Memblaze Unified Framework Platform), a unified framework platform for the development of all subsequent products of the firm.

The MUFP enables flexible decoupling among modules, improves the reusability and flexibility of firmware, and strengthens the cross-platform capability of firmware algorithm through software layering. The solutions based on Memblaze's MUFP are compatible with different controllers and NAND flash memory, thereby significantly improving the R&D efficiency of enterprise SSDs, shortening product development cycle and time to market, and meeting fast-changing market demands.

Chia, the new crypto-currency that relies on storage as proof-of-work to obtain, rather than processing power, is already causing widespread failures of storage devices that have a finite write endurance, according a report by Chinese tech publication MyDrivers. We've detailed how Chia farming works in an older article. Farming it (i.e. participating in the network that keeps the crypto-currency running, in exchange for the currency itself), takes a toll on your storage device. NAND flash-based devices, such as SSDs and USB flash drives, can be re-written a finite number of times, described by manufacturers as "write endurance" and expressed as TBW (terabytes written), or DWPD (drive writes per day, a unit in which drive size is accounted for).

MyDrivers notes that Chia farmers in China are noticing that typical 256 GB SSDs barely last through 40 drive-write days, 80 days for 512 GB, and about 160 days for 1 TB. Endurance varies among the various SSD brands, and NAND flash type used. Since disk space, and not drive performance is paramount in farming Chia, and magnetic storage devices such as HDDs offer more re-writing, stocks of high-capacity HDDs, including those typically headed to the NVR and security surveilance markets, are being soaked up by Chia farmers.

GIGABYTE today unveiled the M30 line of solid state drives built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, which leverage PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface. The drives combine an unknown controller with 256 MB of DDR3L DRAM cache, and 3D TLC NAND flash memory; and comes in capacities of 512 GB and 1 TB. Both these capacity variants have the same amount of DRAM cache. GIGABYTE is using a high-density PCB with 2 oz copper layers, which it claims, can lower controller temperature by up to 15 °C and NAND flash temperature by up to 5 °C.

As for performance, GIGABYTE claims that both capacity variants offer sequential reads of up to 3500 MB/s, and sequential writes of up to 3000 MB/s. The 1 TB variant offers 4K random reads of up to 308,000 IOPS, and random writes of up to 332,000 IOPS; while the 512 GB variant is slightly faster, offering up to 350,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and 302,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The drives are backed by 5-year warranty, the 1 TB variant offers an endurance of 650 TBW, and the 512 GB variant 350 TBW. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal third quarter 2021 financial results. "We reported solid results above the guidance range, driven by increasing momentum of our energy-assisted drives and our second-generation NVMe enterprise SSDs, improving NAND flash pricing trends, along with the continued accelerated digital transformation across end markets," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO.

"Western Digital's strengths in technology and cost leadership, expansive product portfolio and broad routes to market are providing a foundation upon which we are solidifying our position as an essential building block of the digital economy. These strengths, combined with our increased operational and strategic focus enabled by our new business unit structure, are driving results. As we continue to face a dynamic environment, we are seeing the benefits of the synergistic value in the breadth of Western Digital's portfolio, and our unique ability to deliver both hard drive and flash solutions to our diverse end-markets and customer base."

ATP Electronics, the global leader in specialized storage and memory solutions, has announced the launch of its tiniest NVMe flash storage offering: the N700 Series PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe solid state drives (SSDs, which are available as M.2 Type 1620 heatsink ball-grid array (HSBGA) package. Complying with M.2 specifications, the M.2 Type 1620 HSBGA measures just 16 (L) x 20 (W) x 1.6 (H) mm, supporting high-speed PCIe 3.0 interface x4 lanes and NVMe protocol to deliver up to 32 Gb/s bandwidth at 8 Gb/s per lane. The soldered-down design makes them vibration-proof, while the 291-ball packaging takes up minimal space within tightly confined systems.

For customers who prefer a removable and field-replaceable design, ATP can accommodate the HSBGA onto an M.2 2230 module with the same firmware and NAND configuration. Both variants are suitable for thin and light systems in embedded, industrial and mobile applications. N700 Series SSDs are built with 3D triple-level cell (TLC) configured as pseudo single-level cell (pSLC) NAND flash. By storing only one bit per cell, they increase the reliability and endurance of the NAND flash memory, while benefiting from the lower cost compared with native SLC, due to the higher cell density.

Microsoft on Tuesday, in a developer presentation, confirmed that the DirectStorage API, designed to speed up the storage sub-system, is compatible even with NVMe SSDs that use the PCI-Express Gen 3 host interface. It also confirmed that all GPUs compatible with DirectX 12 support the feature. A feature making its way to the PC from consoles, DirectStorage enables the GPU to directly access an NVMe storage device, paving the way for GPU-accelerated decompression of game assets.

This works to reduce latencies at the storage sub-system level, and offload the CPU. Any DirectX 12-compatible GPU technically supports DirectStorage, according to Microsoft. The company however recommends DirectX 12 Ultimate GPUs "for the best experience." The GPU-accelerated game asset decompression is handled via compute shaders. In addition to reducing latencies; DirectStorage is said to accelerate the Sampler Feedback feature in DirectX 12 Ultimate.More slides from the presentation follow.

BIWIN, a leading chip manufacturer for flash storage, reached an agreement with Acer to bring Acer-branded memory and personal SSD storage products to customers in the United States and China. The product offerings will take advantage of BIWIN's manufacturing capabilities and Acer's global brand recognition to provide the latest memory and storage solutions for both professional and home users. The new Acer-branded SSD portfolio offers a range of 2.5" SATA, M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe NVMe drives. The entry-level 2.5" SA100 offers performance and reliability and is available in capacities from 120 GB to 1.92 TB.

The RE100 is available as a standard 2.5" SATA drive as well as in a smaller M.2 SATA form factor. With capacities from 128 GB up to 1 TB (M.2) and 4 TB (SATA) and with read and write speeds of 560 MB/s and 520 MB/s, the RE100 performs close to the SATA interface's maximum speed and is an extremely reliable solution in terms of speed and capacity to upgrade any desktop PC or laptop to the latest SATA technology. In terms of maximizing performance, an Acer-branded M.2 PCIe Gen3 NVMe drive, the FA100—is available in capacities from 128 GB up to 2 TB, reaching up to 3300 MB/s read and 2700 MB/s write speeds. This exceptional performance is six times faster than standard SATA SSDs.

Silicon Power (SP) is releasing its latest PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD, the XD80, available in massive storage capacities up to 2 TB. It is the ideal solution for performance enthusiasts building custom gaming rigs or desktops. Featuring SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer, the XD80 peels rubber with blazing read/write speeds up to 3,400/3,000 MB/s, respectively. Its high-speed PCIe Gen3 x4 interface leaves traditional SATA III SSDs behind in the dust, giving hardcore gamers the competitive edge they need to secure the win.

With NVMe 1.3 support, the XD80 delivers higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption for the smoothest gameplay without any lag. The durable aluminium heatsink provides maximum heat dissipation and thermal management. In fact, compared to SSDs without a heatsink, the XD80 keeps temperatures as much as 20% lower, maintaining its stability.

Patriot Memory's gaming brand, Viper Gaming, today announced the VP4300 series M.2 NVMe SSDs that take advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 bus. The drives combine Innogrit IG5236 controllers with 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and come in 1 TB and 2 TB capacity variants. On offer are sequential transfer rates of up to 7400 MB/s sequential reads, with up to 6800 MB/s writes for the 2 TB variant, and up to 5500 MB/s writes for the 1 TB variant; along with 4K random access performance of up to 800,000 IOPS.

The Viper VP4300 comes with two thermal solutions in the box. You can choose to run it bare (in notebooks, where it might thermal-throttle); with a thin copper heatspreader that uses a graphene-based thermal pad, or a slightly thicker aluminium heatsink. The drives are backed by 5-year warranties.

Update Apr 16th: Patriot reports that the 1 TB version will be priced at USD $254.99, and the 2 TB version at $499.99.

Novachips Co., Ltd., an innovator in flash storage solutions, today announced that it has started shipping a newcomer in its SCALAR Series of high-capacity SSDs. The new entrant, SCALAR-20T, is a 2.5-inch SATA MLC (Multi-Level Cell) 20 TB SSD that is entirely based on in-house hardware and firmware. SCALAR-20T utilizes Novachips' NVS3800 controller, and no third-party components—including JBOD and RAID component chips—are built into the device.

Since launching the world's first 2.5-inch SATA and NVMe MLC 8 TB in 2015, Novachips has consistently broken new ground in the massive capacity flash storage arena. The standard bus topology interface between SSD controllers and NAND flash memory has proven a limiting factor in flash storage capacity innovation. Novachips has resolved this structural problem by using a unique point-to-point ring topology. This technology has helped Novachips build its most recent, 20 TB capacity SSD, without compromising on performance or reliability from channel noise over its guaranteed lifetime.