ADATA showed off a new high-performance server-grade SSD, the SX2000. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, this drive features a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 interface (a cable runs to a PCIe riser card). It is driven by an LSI-SandForce SF-8639 controller, which is a single-chip solution that connects to the host over PCI-Express, and appears to the operating system as ATA AHCI controller, with one drive connected to it. The chip features nearly more than double the ONFI channels as an SF-2281, which reflects on the drive's advertise performance numbers: up to 1,800 MB/s reads with up to 1,800 MB/s writes; up to 200,000 IOPS 4K random reads. The controller supports all modern enterprise SSD features, including TRIM, DEVSLP support, and SMART. It ships in 100 GB, 200 GB, 400 GB, 800 GB, and 1,600 GB variants. The latter was up on display.

ADATA also showed off its SX1000 enterprise SSD, which features a more modest SATA 6 Gb/s interface, an LSI SandForce SF-2500 or SF-2600 series controller, sequential performance numbers of up to 550 MB/s reads with up to 500 MB/s writes, up to 75,000 IOPS 4K random reads/writes, can work as DAS, and most modern enterprise features. This drive will be available in 100 GB, 200 GB, and 400 GB capacities, the 200 GB variant was on display. It's unclear which kind of NAND flash the two drives use, but we're guessing it's high-endurance MLC NAND. Both offer 5-year warranties.

Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade products, today announced the release of its SATA II 3Gb/s MSM610 mSATA mini solid state drive (SSD). With its diminutive yet robust form factor, impressive sequential read/write transfer speeds, and a host of reliability features, the MSM610 mSATA mini SSD delivers solid state performance and durability to today's advanced mobile devices such as tablet PCs, Ultrabooks, and other embedded storage applications.

Fully compliant with the SATA II 3Gb/s specification and built with industry-leading toggle-mode MLC NAND flash chips, the MSM610 mSATA mini SSD boasts blazing fast sequential read and write speeds up to 245 and 48 MB/s respectively. This outstanding performance translates into reduced boot up and data transfer times, superior application launch speed, and enhanced overall system responsiveness; especially useful for dual-drive notebooks and Ultrabooks taking advantage of both the high-speed MSM610 mSATA mini SSD and a high capacity hard disk drive.

Storage legend TDK launched the SDG4A line of entry-level consumer SSDs in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor. Available in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB capacities, the drives use TDK's in-house GBDriver RS4 processor, and MLC NAND flash. Featuring SATA 3 Gb/s interface, the drives offer transfer speeds as high as 180 MB/s reads, with 130 MB/s writes. Common SSD features such as TRIM, ECC, and read-retry. Production of the drives will begin later this month.

Intel expanded its performance-segment SSD 335 series with a new entry-level 80 GB variant (model: SSDSC2CT080AK5). It joins the 180 GB and 240 GB variants, and occupies a price-point around the 110€ mark (excl VAT), which makes it particularly pricey in comparison to 120 GB drives. SSD 335 combines an LSI-SandForce SF-2281 series controller with Intel-made 20 nm MLC NAND flash.

Intel didn't update the product sheet with details of the new 80 GB model, but its bigger siblings offer sequential speeds as high as 500 MB/s reads, with up to 450 MB/s writes. Built in the 9.5 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, SSD 335 features SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and supports most standard consumer SSD features, including TRIM and NCQ. The drive should begin showing up on online stores worldwide, in both OEM (drive-only) and retail (includes bay-adapters and data migration software) trims.

First shown to crowds at this year's International CES event in January, ASUS' first enthusiast SSD, the ROG RAIDR, is heading toward a mid-May launch. A few more of its pictures and specs sheets were posted by SweClockers. As detailed earlier, the RAIDR is a compound SSD in the PCI-Express add-on card form-factor, with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface (supports x4, x8, and x16 slots). It uses two SandForce SF2281-driven SSD subunits striped in a hardware-abstract RAID 0 configuration. The subunits use Toshiba-made 19 nm MLC NAND flash chips, with 16 KB page size.

The ROG RAIDR supports TRIM command, NCQ and SMART, despite being a RAID 0-based SSD. It is bootable, and supports Windows 8 Secure Boot. Installing an operating system on the drive doesn't require any F6 drivers, as the controller masquerades as a standard AHCI controller and a single disk, with the subunits and their RAID 0 stripe completely abstract. This way, the drive can accept TRIM commands from the OS.

Are you still spending your quality time waiting for your computer to boot up? Have you experienced lag problems while operating multiple applications? SP/Silicon Power, the world's leading provider of memory storage solutions, today introduces an addition of the Velox series 2.5" SATA III SSD - Velox V50 to solve your problems. The Velox V50 features the latest controller technology to provide a brand new computer experience in excellent performance and cost effectiveness for those who are about to retire their traditional hard drives.

Different from the other solutions in the market, SP Velox V50 is equipped with a brand new controller, delivering a more stable and more powerful user experiences. Combining with the latest firmware and advanced controller circuit design, Velox V50 is able to maintain a long-standing IOPS performance while using it under extended period.

Crucial started shipping its M500 line of consumer SSDs. Available in 2.5-inch SATA (7 mm-thick), mSATA, and NGFF M.2 form-factors, the drives combine Micron 20 nm MLC NAND flash with a Marvell-made processor. All three form-factors take advantage of 6 Gb/s SATA. The drive is available in 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities for all three form-factors, while the 2.5-inch gets a 960 GB "terabyte-class" capacity option, as well.

Sequential read speeds on all capacities are as high as 500 MB/s, while sequential write speeds cap out at 130 MB/s and 250 MB/s for the 120 GB and 240 GB variants, respectively; and reach 400 MB/s on the 480 GB and 960 GB variants. The drives are backed by 3-year limited warranties, 1.2 million hours MTBF, and 72 TB total bytes written (TBW) write endurance (that's 40 GB per day). TRIM, NCQ, and SMART are standard issue. The 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB variants are priced at US $129.99, $219.99, $399.99, and $599.99, respectively.

ADATA released a firmware update for its SSDs based on SandForce SF-22xx series controllers. These models include all capacity-variants of SX910, SX900, SP900, SP800, S511, S510 and S396. The new v5.0.7a, according to the company, improves TRIM performance, which affects the drives' write speeds. The firmware is also said to fix other "minor issues," although the company didn't detail them. The firmware is available as both the EEPROM binary image, and as an updater for popular operating systems.DOWNLOAD: ADATA Firmware Update 5.0.7a

SP/Silicon Power, the world's leading provider of memory storage solutions today introduces Velox V55 and Slim S55 to its 2.5 inch SATA III 6Gb/s solid state drive line. The new additions complete the product line and are positioned as one of the most cost effective models. Offering incredible performance at a surprisingly affordable price, it is no wonder that V55 and S55 are the smartest choices for users who are looking to upgrade their system to a SSD.

Dedicated to providing high quality products for the budget minded consumers, SP is proud to present V55 and S55 which feature the latest SATA 6Gb/s interface with an impressive read/write speed of up to 550 MB/s and 440 MB/s. The V55 and S55 are ideal for computer enthusiasts, gamers and multitaskers wishing to take their computing experience to a new level; they can boot a computer in seconds and load applications in a much shorter time.

What's better than an OCZ Vector SSD? Two of them in RAID 0, on a PCIe add-on card. The SSD may use two SSD subunits in RAID, yet it's backed by OCZ's VCA 2.0 (virtualized controller architecture), which lends it TRIM support, even in high-performance RAID 0 modes. At CeBIT, the company ran live benchmarks of the drive. These include tests that are generally lenient on the drives (sequential tests), yet the results are impressive.

To begin with, the Vector PCIe 960 GB belts out up to 929.96 MB/s sequential read speeds, 883.94 MB/s sequential writes; and a comfortable 4K 64-thread read performance of 544.71 MB/s, 486.19 MB/s writes. It scrapes the 1000 MB/s mark in ATTO. In synthetic tests that replicate real-world scenarios, such as ISO file copy, program access, and game resource access, the drive managed to stay above 396 MB/s. The drive has advertised read/write speeds of 1000 MB/s, and random access performance as high as 140,000 IOPS.

MyDigitalSSD proudly introduces the BP4, the 4th generation of their critically acclaimed and award-winning Bullet Proof line of solid state drives. BP4 SSDs feature SATA III 6Gb/s performance in 2.5" Slim 7mm and 50mm mSATA form factors to increase user productivity up to 70X. Backwards compatible with SATA II applications, the BP4 eliminates the bottle-neck found in stock hard drives; making them an ideal upgrade solution for many of today's Tablets, UltraBooks, Hybrids (HDD/mSATA Notebooks), and Desktop PCs.

Unlike their predecessors, BP4 drives have been over provisioned for improved Random Read/Write performance and IOPS, extended performance endurance to reduce sluggishness as the drive fills with data, prolonged drive life, reliability, and low power consumption - all at the unequaled price to performance ratio synonymous with MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof SSDs.

Mushkin, Inc., an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, today announces the U.S. availability of the 480 GB Atlas mSATA solid-state drive. Mushkin's 480GB Atlas mSATA solid-state drive (Model No.: MKNSSDAT480GB) is initially available in the U.S. at Newegg.com, with worldwide availability scheduled for end of January. MSRP on Mushkin's 480GB Atlas mSATA SSD is $499.99 USD. The Atlas mSATA SSD is covered by a three-year limited warranty.

Japanese company Green House announced the GH-SSD22A line of consumer SSDs in the 2.5-inch (9.5 mm-thick) SATA form-factor. Available in 32 GB (GH-SSD22A32), 64 GB (GH-SSD22A64), 128 GB (GH-SSD22A128), and 256 GB (GH-SSD22A256) capacities, the drives are based on Phison PS3107-S7 controller platform, with MLC NAND flash memory. The SATA 3 Gb/s capable drives feature 200 MB/s sequential read speeds, with up to 140 MB/s writes. Most common consumer SSD features, including TRIM, NCQ, 48-bit/1KB ECC, and SMART are available. The GH-SSD22A drives are expected to occupy entry-level price points with about $0.75/GB.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its UltraDrive MX2 for those that crave the need for speed in a computing environment.

With sequential read and write speeds up to 240 MB/sec, UltraDrive MX2 allows firms to cover bases from lightning fast transaction speeds for database servers to faster load times in high end gaming rigs. The UltraDrive MX2 also supports the latest garbage collection and TRIM features which are designed to keep this SSD running at peak performance.

On taking apart the Acer S7 Ultrabook, The SSD Review discovered a strange new SSD form-factor, which bears the label of Lite-On, and carrying the model number "CMT-256L3M." This is perhaps the first mSATA SSD with two independent SSD subunits, one on each side. The mSATA interface itself is modified to have two SSD ports. The drive registers on the system BIOS as two individual drives, which is then run as a 256 GB (physical) RAID 0 volume by the BIOS and operating-system.

Each of the CMT-256L3M's two subunits feature a Marvell 88S9175 controller, which supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface, two 64 GB dual-channel 24 nm toggle NAND flash memory chips by Toshiba, and a Nanya-made DRAM cache chip. Putting the drive through sequential-friendly benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark shows a sequential read speed of the drive (combined with its two subunits) to be around 877 MB/s, with sequential writes up to 672 MB/s. Multi-subunit SSDs aren't new, most high-end consumer SSDs from the pre-TRIM, pre-SandForce era used to be dual- to quad-subunit drives. The CMT-256L3M is the first one in the super-compact mSATA form-factor, and its performance numbers could impress more Ultrabook designers.

InnoDisk, a global leader in Industrial Flash and DRAM Storage Solutions, announces two whitepapers that present our solutions for Wear Leveling & Read Disturbance, Garbage Collection & TRIM for solid state drives (SSD's). InnoDisk is a service-driven organization, and is proud to provide useful, technical documentation to our customers and colleagues.

InnoDisk's wear leveling architecture and technology delivers an innovative method of spreading write/erase operations on an SSD evenly across blocks. By using system buffer blocks along with sophisticated block swapping and a configurable wear leveling performance frequency setting, SSDs using this technology can prolong their lifespan and prevent read disturbance.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is shipping the Kingston DataTraveler Workspace USB Flash drive. DataTraveler Workspace is certified for Windows To Go, a key feature of Windows 81 Enterprise. DataTraveler Workspace enables enterprises to provision a corporate desktop on an external USB drive, thus allowing users to boot and operate Windows 8 from portable devices. This new drive is a unique external USB 3.0 device that is capable of SSD-like performance.

DataTraveler Workspace is made specifically for organizations that want to use the new Windows To Go feature found in Windows 8 Enterprise. The drive is designed to help IT administrators support their mobile user base - from remote employees to contractors and consultants. DataTraveler Workspace helps companies and organizations meet both bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives and disaster recovery requirements.

SanDisk rolled out a firmware update for its Extreme Series high-performance client SSD. The new R211 firmware corrects outstanding bugs related to TRIM and garbage collection, speeds up drive initialization time at boot, and other minor errors. To begin with, the new firmware improves TRIM delay (delay between the SSD receiving TRIM command, and finding a convenient time to "take out the trash"), as a result TRIM and its related garbage disposal performance is greatly increased. The firmware also improves error handling and power management. Next, the new firmware reduces boot-time normalization of SMART attributes, reducing POST initialization time of the drives. Lastly, a minor bug related to temperature-reading is fixed. The update is recommended for users facing issues with SanDisk's fastest client SSDs. The firmware can be updated using SanDisk SSD Toolkit, its latest version is linked below.DOWNLOAD: SanDisk SSD Toolkit 1.0.0.1

ADATA announced a new line of affordable client SSDs, the Premier Pro SP600 series. Built in the 9.5 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor, the drives take advantage of SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Available in 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB capacities, the Premier Pro SP600 series is driven by JMicron JMF661 processor, and features 20 nm-class MLC NAND flash memory. The drives offer sequential read speeds of up to 360 MB/s, and up to 130 MB/s writes. Random access performance numbers provided to us include 40,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and 30,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The drives pack most common client SSD features, including TRIM, NCQ, and 40 b/KB ECC. The 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB variants are priced at US $49.99, $69.99, and $99.99, respectively.

Super Talent Technology, a leader of NAND Flash storage solutions, today announced their fourth-generation Value SSD (VSSD), the VSSD Bolt. The new VSSD Bolt is perfect for business and home users who want the performance and durability gains of solid-state drives without breaking the budget.

The Bolt features a second-generation SandForce processor and offers fast read/write speeds of up to 250 MB/s - up to three times faster than previous-generation VSSDs. TRIM support and S.M.A.R.T. Command Transport (SCT) technology keep the Bolt performing like new and help prevent data loss by reporting on a number of reliability indicators.

MyDigitalSSD has teamed up with SuperSSpeeds to offer the fastest and top performing solid state drives on the market today. Utilizing the SandForce SF-2281 controller and SLC NAND flash, the SuperSSpeed boasts incredible speed for advanced gaming, multitasking, and multimedia computing power. Rated at 550MB/s Read and 520MB/s Write, the SuperSSpeed is proof that in this day and age, you get what you pay for, being arguably 20 times better than its nearest MLC rival at only twice the expense including accessories.

As with all MyDigitalSSD drives, the SuperSSpeed runs cool and quiet with no moving parts to create heat. Coupled with being shockproof, meaning that dropping your SSD or notebook no longer means losing your data, the SuperSSpeed it a far more durable and reliable upgrade to a traditional spinning hard drive (HDD).

Monster Digital, a leading innovator and developer of advanced memory and storage solutions, is broadening its selection of Solid State Drives (SSD), making it easier for just about anyone to adopt leading-edge SSD technology with its new ultra-high speed "Daytona Series" Solid State Drives. The 2.5" Daytona Series SSDs are conservatively rated with 550/515 read/write speeds, 60k IOPS, are over provisioned for extended reliability. Packaged in a super thin 7 mm universal fit stainless steel case, they are available as bare drives in capacities of 90GB, 120GB, 240GB and 480GB for suggested retail prices of $99.99, $109.99, $229.99, and $479.99 respectively. Monster Digital Daytona Series bare drives are available now on Amazon.com, at Fry's Electronics and PC Mall.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the SSDNow E100 SSD, the company's new enterprise-class solid state drive (SSD). The new drive enables enterprises to accommodate the performance demands required in support of big data and virtualization initiatives. The new Kingston E100 SSD achieves up to 10X improvements in endurance and reliability over client SSDs on existing hardware, while drastically reducing the physical footprint as significantly fewer SSDs are needed to handle the tasks of many traditional hard-disk drives (HDD).

The performance and processing requirements required in the rapid analysis of massive data sets and large collections of virtual systems have pushed many servers far beyond their breaking point. The next generation E100 SSD provides vastly higher IOPS compared to HDDs, dramatically reducing processing bottlenecks, computer latency and physical system limitations.

Strontium Technology has announced a new series of high-performance solid state drives (SSDs) named HAWK. These Hynix-built solid state drives with Strontium branding are based on SandForce's SF2281 controller and SK Hynix Flash. These drives are said to be a good upgrade option featuring 500MB/s of read and write performance and also claim to offer faster performance for PCs and Macs. Needless to say, SSDs feature enhanced durability, shock-proof, silent operation and are more reliable as compared to traditional hard drives.

The 2.5-inch HAWK drive is available in 120GB and 240GB storage capacities. The sequential (256KB, MAX) read speed is 510 MB/s and write speed is 470 MB/s. The random (4KB, MAX) performance is 50,000 IOPS read and 38,000 IOPS write. It comes with support for SATA I/ II/ III interface, TRIM Support (O/S support required) and has a Mean Time between Failures (MBTF) of 1.2M. Strontium HAWK SSD has been designed to offer quicker boot up and shorter lead time in the loading of applications to enhance productivity.

While PC user is more and more concerning high performance and high quality SSD, the world renowned memory and Flash module manufacturer, KINGMAX, recently launches high performance SATA III Client Pro SSD - SMU 32 and SMU35. Adopting Sandforce controller and high speed synchronous Flash memory, Client Pro SSD delivers sequential read/write speed up to 550MB/s, 520MB/s, and 4KB random write speed up to 85,000 IOPS. Its superior performance meets needs for every user, no matter for advanced gaming, multitasking or multimedia computing.

KINGMAX SATA III Client Pro SSD is based on powerful Sandforce controller and the latest firmware technology, which is able to maximize performance, extend product endurance and lifetime and enhance data protection and reliability. Since synchronous Flash is the higher grade memory, it achieves the better performance and the longer lifetime than asynchronous flash does, especially the performance under random write. For general users, synchronous Flash keeps high performance last after long term usages.