In 2018, AMD has decided to introduce a neat concept. By combining HDD with SSD, the technology was named StoreMI. Last year, the technology got re-designed from the ground up and now it reflects a completely safe and efficient way to get a faster PC with little effort. Now, StoreMI is copying the most used files onto a faster drive (SSD), and all the Windows calls are redirected to the copied files on the faster drive. By providing optimizations for storage, AMD has managed to provide a nice performance uplift for all owners of AMD Ryzen processors. However, today the company has introduced another update to its technology bringing in even more features.

Starting with the support for Ryzen Threadripper Pro, AMD now supports these processors for TRX40 and WRX80 motherboard chipsets as well. Next in line is a feature that supports SSD partitions. Now SSD partition can be used as a cache device. If you have an AMD X570, B550, 400 Series, X399, TRX40, or WRX80 motherboard, you can use the StoreMI software, which you can download here.

Enmotus is the company behind the FuzeDrive software on which the original AMD StoreMI technology is based, which juggles data among your various physical storage devices based on heat (frequency of access), improving performance. The company has now come up with its first hardware-product, the FuzeDrive NVMe SSD. Built in an M.2-2280 form-factor, the drive offers 1.6 TB of capacity, and combines a Phison E12-series controller with 96-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory. The drive takes advantage of PCI-Express gen 3.0 x4.

Performance numbers of the FuzeDrive 1.6 TB SSD as rated by its makers include up to 3,470 MB/s sequential reads, up to 3,000 MB/s sequential writes; and an endurance rating of 5,000 TBW. The drive uses a 128 GB SLC cache to speed up write performance in moderate bursts. There's more to this drive than just its hard-product, Enmotus includes software that juggles data between the 128 GB pseudo-SLC and QLC areas; and of course the FuzeDrive software that lets you build volumes of up to 15 TB in size by throwing in fixed physical drives of any shape and size. Enmotus is pricing the FuzeDrive 1.6 TB NVMe SSD at $349.Update Jul 3rd: We've learned through Enmotus that this drive has a permanent 128 GB SLC cache that's exclusive of the 1.6 TB QLC user-area. We believe this drive is possibly a 2 TB QLC drive, in which a quarter of the user area is permanently assigned to work as SLC, with 30,000 P/E cycles. The FuzeDrive firmware transfers hot data between the SLC and QLC areas of the drive.

AMD today updated its Product Change Advisory with notes that its StoreMI software won't be available for download anymore. "AMD has decided to end-of-life the current version of the StoreMI technology, and effective March 31, 2020, AMD will no longer make this technology available for download on AMD.com. End users who download the current version of the StoreMI technology prior to March 31, 2020 may continue to use it thereafter (i.e. it will not be deactivated) but AMD will no longer provide any technical or end user support. Instead, AMD will focus its internal development resources on a replacement solution with a rearchitected feature set and a planned release window of 2Q20." - says the AMD Product Change Advisory website.

AMD's StoreMI technology offered users an option to combine up to 256 GB of SSD memory with a slower HDD, to provide "SSD like speeds with HDD like capacity", and it was supported from the second generation Ryzen processors until the current third generation, Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. Given that AMD is working on a replacement solution that is coming out in Q2, we expect that the new solution will be a better and more usable one, so we will report on it as soon as there is more information.