Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation, which will rebrand as Kioxia Holdings Corporation on October 1, 2019, announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with LITE-ON Technology Corporation to acquire its Solid State Drive (SSD) business. The purchase price is 165 million US dollars; the transaction is expected to close by the first half of 2020 and is subject to customary closing adjustments and regulatory approval.

LITE-ON is a Taiwan-based supplier of optoelectronics, storage, semiconductors and other devices. Toshiba Memory and LITE-ON share a commitment to quality, innovation and manufacturing excellence. With cultural synergies and LITE-ON's proven experience in the SSD field for personal computers and data centers, Toshiba Memory sees this acquisition as a way to significantly strengthen its SSD business.

Toshiba at the Flash Memory Summit announced they've managed to develop a 5-Bit-per-Cell memory solution Based on its BiCS 4 flash memory technologies, the feat was achieved using a modified module of Quad-Level Cell (QLC) memory. This shows the technology is not only feasible, but has room for improvement, since an adapted QLC technology will always be inferior to a natively-developed, Penta-Level Cell (PLC) solution.

To achieve this ability to store one extra bit of information per cell (compared to QLC), a new level of voltage refinement is required: the cell has to be able to change its state according to one of 32 voltage states, which, in turn, have to be read out correctly by the flash memory controller. This reduces the cell's performance and endurance (as does any increase in the number of bits per cell), and will require a number of solutions to mitigate and compensate for this reduced performance. However, density has become an increasing concern from manufacturers, hence the continued development of deeper, more variable voltage states that allow for even more information to be stored in the same silicon area. Higher density means cheaper solutions, but density increased in such a way has known trade-offs that have been much talked about ever since the transition from Single-Level Cell (SLC) up to the (nowadays ubiquitous) QLC.

Back at CES 2019 we shared a story on Kingston's then upcoming A2000 series NVMe drives. The company's development strategy for these was to undercut SATA SSDs in pricing while delivering non SATA-bound speeds. The company planned to leverage component cost falls for NVMe controllers, pairing that with the reduced materials cost of NVMe drives (smaller than their SATA counterparts) so as to be able to achieve below-SATA price points. The choice of Toshiba's BiCS4 3D TLC NAND also aimed to keep costs down, whilst delivering performance that's "at least three times as high as SATA-bound drives".

The company is offering a limited 5-year warranty on their A2000 series, which in itself is a sign of the company's confidence in these products - despite their entry-level classification and overall development strategy. The A2000 series will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities, with speeds claimed of up to 2,200/2,000MB/s sequential read/writes; up to 250,000/220,000 IOPS in random 4K read/writes; and 600 TBW rating (all of these values are for the 1 TB solution, with TBW falling to 350 TBW for the 500 GB part and 150 TBW for the 250 GB drive. These drives make use of a PCIe 3.0 4x controller, which means savings weren't at the expense of 2x PCIe channels, as some solutions have done in the past in order to cut costs. Pricing is being quoted at $40 for the 250 GB part, $60 for the 500 GB one, and a mere $100 for the 1 TB part. The true democratization of NVMe SSDs has just caught some heavy favorable winds on its sails.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, today announced the launch of a new Storage Class Memory (SCM) solution: XL-FLASH. Based on the company's innovative BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology with 1-bit-per-cell SLC, XL-FLASH brings low latency and high performance to data center and enterprise storage. Sample shipments will start in September, with mass production expected to begin in 2020.

Classified as SCM (or persistent memory), with the ability to retain its contents like NAND flash memory, XL-FLASH bridges the performance gap that exists between DRAM and NAND. While volatile memory solutions such as DRAM provide the access speed needed by demanding applications, that performance comes at a high cost. As the cost-per-bit and scalability of DRAM levels off, this new SCM (or persistent memory) layer in the memory hierarchy addresses that issue with a high density, cost effective, non-volatile NAND flash memory solution. Poised for growth, industry analyst firm IDC estimates the SCM market is expected to reach in excess of $3B in 2022.

Marvell today released the industry's lowest power PCIe Gen4 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) controller portfolio. Marvell's newest SSD controllers are designed to meet the need for lower power and higher performance in next-generation data centers and edge devices as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G gain momentum. This breakthrough technology delivers unparalleled performance in an ultra-compact footprint, leveraging the company's complex system-on-chip (SoC) design expertise and groundbreaking storage IP to help data center, notebook, tablet, gaming and edge computing platform architects advance their solutions for the highly distributed data era.

"Marvell's latest family of storage controllers has been architected to optimally address edge computing and data center pain points of power-performance and capacity-performance," said Nigel Alvares, vice president of marketing for the Flash Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "With today's launch, we're once again demonstrating Marvell's leadership in storage, delivering the industry's first 4-Channel PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD controllers with the industry's lowest power consumption that will help revolutionize SSD solutions for the data economy."

Prices of DRAM shot up by 20 percent as Japan put in place export curbs that restrict high-technology exports to South Korea, and as Toshiba recovers from a power blackout that temporarily halted production. This could impact prices of end-user products such as PC memory modules, or consumer electronics, such as smartphones, in the coming weeks, as inventories either dry up, or are marked-up at various stages of the supply-chain. The memory industry is inter-dependent between fabrication and packaging units spread across South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

Memory and flash industry observer DRAMeXchange reported that spot-pricing of 8-gigabit DDR4 DRAM chips, which is used as a benchmark for DRAM pricing as a whole, closed at USD $3.74 at the end of trading on Friday (19/07). It's up 14.6 percent week-over-week, and 23 percent up pricing as on 5th July. An industry observer who spoke with KBS World notes that the recent hikes are not directly infuenced by the trade-spat between Japan and Korea, but rather a power blackout experienced at a Toshiba DRAM manufacturing facility last month. The observer noted that if the trade-spat affects production at Samsung Electronics or SK Hynix, DRAM prices could "skyrocket."

Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation announced today that it will officially change its name to Kioxia Holdings Corporation on October 1, 2019. The name Kioxia (kee-ox-ee-uh) will be adopted for the names of all Toshiba Memory companies, largely effective on the same date.

Kioxia is a combination of the Japanese word kioku meaning "memory" and the Greek word axia meaning "value." Merging "memory" with "value," Kioxia represents the company's mission to uplift the world with "memory," which forms the foundation of the company's vision. Kioxia will cultivate the new era of memory, defined by rapidly increasing demands for large-capacity, high-performance storage and data processing, which positions the company to grow sustainably as a leading flash memory producer for many years to come.

American flash memory products manufacturer Sabrent announced a client-segment M.2 NVMe SSD that takes advantage of PCIe gen 4.0, the Rocket NVMe 4.0 series. Based on the same Phison PS5016-E16 controller as most PCIe gen 4.0 SSDs launched so far, the drive uses 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash by Toshiba. It also appears to have higher on-paper performance numbers than most drives from other brands that use the same combination of controller and NAND flash, with up to 5,000 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 4,400 MB/s sequential writes, on both its 1 TB and 2 TB variants. The company didn't bother with a sub-terabyte variant. The 1 TB variant is priced at USD $229.99 ($0.23 per GB), and the 2 TB variant at $429.99 ($0.21 per GB).

In another episode of the "so timely considering market projections for NAND pricing" news, Toshiba and Western Digital have disclosed expected impacts following an unexpected, 13-minute power outage on June 15th, that affected the companies' joint manufacturing facilities in Yokkaichi, Japan. Western Digital announced a loss of almost 6 Exabytes of NAND production - Toshiba is expected to have lost anywhere between 6 Exabytes and 9 Exabytes themselves, since they usually have their factories working closer to full capacity. Return to standard manufacturing rates is expected to only occur by mid-July.

Damage includes impacted wafers that were being processed, the facilities, and production equipment, hence the need for an extended inoperability period to seriously assess damages and required reinvestment. 35% of the world's NAND supply is produced at this Yokkaichi Operation campus (which includes six factories and an R&D center), so this outage and NAND flash loss is likely to impact the global markets. Whether or not this is enough to move the needle from oversupply to undersupply is as of yet unknown, but it is unlikely so - although pricing changes are expected after Q3 and Q4 orders have been settled (whose pricing has already been settled and can't be subject to change). Loss of confidence in the Toshiba and Western Digital manufacturing venture, however, could help offset some of that pricing increase. Obviously, companies have insurance policies that cover them in case of such unexpected events - should they fall squarely out of the control of said companies.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, participated in the PCI-SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group) Compliance Workshop #109 in Burlingame, California, where several prototype and engineering samples of the company's upcoming PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs underwent PCI-SIG FYI Gen 4 testing.

The fourth generation of the PCIe interface, PCIe 4.0, doubles available bandwidth for graphics cards, SSDs, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet cards. The new standard will enable SSDs in particular to provide much higher performance than previous PCIe 3.0 SSDs, especially sequential read performance. An early participant seeking to enable PCIe 4.0 technologies, Toshiba Memory leverages its technology leadership role and actively collaborates with PCI-SIG and other member companies to accelerate adoption of the new interface standard.

"We realized years ago that the future of flash storage would be built on the NVMe architecture," noted John Geldman, director, SSD Industry Standards for Toshiba Memory America, Inc. and a member of the NVM Express Board of Directors. "This new and faster PCIe standard will maximize performance capability - unlocking systems' full potential."

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announced the new NVMe architecture and PCIe 4.0 interface based M.2 SSD. The new SSD comes in 3 different capacity sizes, uses a full body copper heatsink to bolster heat dissipation during operation, and delivers sequential read/write speeds at 5000/4400 MB/s. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable certified, the new SSD has undergone rigorous stress tests to ensure that the SSD performs at an elite level users expect from an AORUS product.

AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD uses an all new PCIe 4.0 controller with Toshiba Bisc4 Nand Flash memory particles, providing up to a 40% performance boost over PCIe 3.0 which translates to 5000 MB/s sequential read speeds. Whether reading data or booting up games, the SSD boasts data transfer rates at unprecedented speeds. The new series offers 3 capacity options at 500 GB, 1 TB, 2TB, comes in 2280 module sizing, and supports the PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 interface. Whereas SATA SSDs use data and power cables, the M.2 SSDs are easier to configure with its cable free design which also improves airflow in the chassis, increasing overall heat mitigation.

A report from DigiTimes pits NAND manufacturers as accelerating their 120/128 layer 3D NAND technologies, aiming for volume production as early as 2020. Even as SK Hynix has begun sampling its 96-layer 4D NAND flash in March, Toshiba and Western Digital already had plans to introduce 128-layer technology, built on a TLC (Triple Level Cell) process technology so as to increase density while avoiding yield issues present with current QLC (Quad Level Cell) implementations.

The decision to accelerate deployment of the next generation of NAND comes from the fact that the market still faces an oversupply of NAND flash, mostly driven by the mature process of 64-layer NAND technology. With new technologies, higher ASPs and lower production scales are sustainable, which should enable supply to reduce enough so as to increase pricing of NAND-based technologies - and allow manufacturers to somewhat reset asking prices for new NAND chips.

Toshiba today announced the XG6-P solid state drive (SSD) series, a derivative of its NVMe M.2-based XG6 Series featuring class-leading write performance. Offering up to 2,048 gigabytes (GB) of capacity, XG6-P SSDs are ideal for high-end workstation PCs and gaming systems, as well as cost-optimized data center and composable infrastructures. With over 30 percent higher sequential and random write speeds and over 15 percent higher random read speeds than its predecessor, the XG6-P Series enables enhanced application performance and data access.

Toshiba Memory Corporation and Western Digital Corp. have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the "K1" manufacturing facility that Toshiba Memory is currently constructing in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The K1 facility will produce 3D flash memory to support growing demand for storage in applications such as data centers, smartphones and autonomous cars. Construction of the K1 facility is expected to be completed in the fall of calendar 2019. The companies' joint capital investments in equipment for the K1 facility will enable initial production output of 96-layer 3D flash memory beginning in calendar 2020, with meaningful output expected to begin later in the year.

Toshiba Memory and Western Digital will continue to cultivate and extend their leadership in their respective memory businesses by actively developing initiatives aimed at strengthening technology competitiveness, advancing joint development of 3D flash memory, and making capital investments according to market trends.

With solid-state drives (SSDs) entering value and mainstream price segments, and the transition in consumers' data-storage behavior from local storage to the cloud, there is expected to be a dramatic fall in shipments of hard disk drives (HDDs) in 2019. Japanese company Nidec, which manufactures nearly 85% of all DC motors for use in HDDs across the industry, estimates a nearly 50 percent drop in HDD shipments for 2019. Since these motors are specifically designed for use in HDDs, it is directly proportional to new HDD shipments, thus presenting a reliable outlook of the HDD industry itself. The DC motor inside HDDs is a non user-replaceable component as detaching it involves opening the seal of the disk chamber, thereby contaminating it.

In 2010, Nidec shipped nearly 650 million motors, which dropped significantly down to 375 million motors in 2018, indicating the sharp decline in the HDD industry. While Nidec will ship as few as 290 million motors in 2019, it estimates shipments of HDDs to go down by nearly 50 percent year-over-year (YoY). Data centers are swallowing up large volumes of high-capacity (>10 TB) HDDs for warm- and cold-storage even as SSDs and DRAM are sought for hot-storage. The client-segment, however, is now firmly captivated with SSDs, with even mainstream laptops packing SSDs. Prominent HDD manufacturers Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba, have each invested heavily in building up SSD product lines, and specializing their HDD portfolio for enterprise and quasi-enterprise (eg: NAS, NVR, high-uptime client) markets.

As of March 31, 2019, Backblaze had 106,238 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across three data centers. Of that number, there were 1,913 boot drives and 104,325 data drives. This review looks at the Q1 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way.

Hard Drive Failure Stats for Q1 2019
At the end of Q1 2019, Backblaze was using 104,325 hard drives to store data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 104,130 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q1 2019.

GIGABYTE today rolled out the Aorus RGB AIC NVMe SSD series. Built in the full-height single-slot AIC form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface, the card combines a Phison PS5012-E12 NVMe 1.3 controller with Toshiba BiCS3 TLC NAND flash, and comes in capacities of 512 GB and 1 TB, which are equipped with 512 MB and 1 GB of DRAM cache, respectively. The 1 TB variant offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 3,480 MB/s reads, with up to 3,080 MB/s writes; up to 610,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 530,000 IOPS 4K random writes. The 512 GB variant, on the other hand, gives you up to 3,480 MB/s sequential reads, up to 2,100 MB/s sequential writes; up to 360,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 510,000 IOPS random writes.

GIGABYTE deployed a passive cooling system, consisting of a thermal pad that makes contact with the controller, NAND flash chips, and DRAM chips on one side, and on the other side the card's top aluminium shroud that doubles up as a heatspreader. There's an equally thick aluminium back-plate which holds the card's acrylic RGB LED diffuser that runs along the top edge. You use GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software to control the lighting on this card. Both cards are backed by 5-year warranties, provided the card stays below their rated endurance of 800 TBW for the 512 GB model, and 1600 TBW for the 1 TB model. The company didn't reveal pricing.

High-end M.2 NVMe SSDs are beginning to come with integrated heatsinks as overheating controllers impact sustained performance. The latest such drive is a new edition of the Hall of Fame (HOF) M.2 PCIe series from Galaxy, which come with a chunky aluminium heatsink, only this one isn't just another hunk of metal. This heatsink uses a flattened copper heat pipe to pull heat from the drive's hot components and spread it evenly along both sides of the aluminium block. The heat pipe makes direct contact with the drive's Phison PS5012-E12 8-channel controller and Toshiba-made 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash chips.

The heatsink wraps around sideways of the drive and so it may not be a perfect fit for NVMe RAID cards with multiple M.2 slots side-by-side, although for most applications, such as the M.2 slot on the motherboard, the design could click. The drive comes in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. All three models offer sequential read speeds of up to 3400 MB/s. The 1 TB and 2 TB models write at up to 2800 MB/s, while the 512 GB writes at up to 2000 MB/s. 4K random access performance of the 2 TB and 1 TB models are rated at up to 400,000 IOPS reads with up to 600,000 IOPS writes; and up to 400,000 IOPS reads with up to 540,000 IOPS writes for the 512 GB model. The drive is initially being launched in China, and could make its way to western markets under the Galax and KFA2 brands later this year.

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (TDSC) today announced the consolidation of two of its subsidiaries, Toshiba Microelectronics Corporation (TOSMEC) and Toshiba Discrete Semiconductor Technology Corporation (TDIT), into a new company, Toshiba Electronic Device Solutions Corporation (TEDS). The move is expected to strengthen capabilities in proposing solutions and bringing greater efficiency to R&D for the semiconductor business. TEDS will start operation on April 1.

TDIT's business covers product development and technical sales for discrete semiconductors, while TOSMEC provides comprehensive services for system LSI, ranging from product planning, development and design to testing and failure analysis. Following the merger, TEDS will be responsible for product planning, product development, failure analysis and solution proposals for the semiconductor business, and will cooperate with TDSC as the engineering arm of its semiconductor business.

Toshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has begun sampling new Automotive JEDEC UFS Version 2.1 embedded memory solutions utilizing 3D flash memory. The new products are embedded flash memory devices that integrate the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a single package. The sequential read and write performance are improved by approximately 6 percent and 33 percent, respectively, over existing devices.

The company's Automotive UFS supports a wide temperature range (-40°C to +105°C), meets AEC-Q100 Grade 2 requirements and offers the enhanced reliability required by various automotive applications. The lineup consists of four capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, announced availability of its XD5 Series NVMe SSD platform in a 2.5-inch, 7 mm low-profile form factor that is optimized for low-latency and performance consistency in read-intensive workloads. Developed for both data center and cloud environments, the new 2.5-inch form factor XD5 Series is ideal for NoSQL databases, large-scale-out data mining and analysis, and streaming applications. The XD5 Series is also well-suited for Open Compute Project (OCP) applications and systems.

Built on 64-layer BiCS FLASH TLC (3-bit-per-cell) 3D flash memory, and featuring a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface, the new XD5 SSD 2.5-inch option delivers sequential read performance up to 2,700 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write performance up to 895 MB/s with low active power consumption of 7 watts. At one drive write per day (DWPD), the XD5 Series can write nearly 4 terabytes (TB) of random data daily for five years at a consistent performance rate. Random read/write performance is specified at 250,000/21,000 Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) respectively, making the XD5 Series a predictable and reliable solution for read-intensive or heavy transactional workloads.

Toshiba and its strategic ally Western Digital are readying a high-density 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory. In Toshiba's nomenclature, the chip will be named BiCS-5. Interestingly, despite the spatial density, the chip will implement TLC (3 bits per cell), and not the newer QLC (4 bits per cell). This is probably because NAND flash makers are still spooked about the low yields of QLC chips. Regardless, the chip has a data density of 512 Gb. With 33% more capacity than 96-layer chips, the new 128-layer chips could hit commercial production in 2020-21.

The BiCS-5 chip reportedly features a 4-plane design. Its die is divided into four sections, or planes, which can each be independently accessed; as opposed to BiCS-4 chips that use a 2-plane layout. This reportedly doubles the write performance per unit-channel to 132 MB/s from 66 MB/s. The die also reportedly uses CuA (circuitry under array), a design innovation in which logic circuitry is located in the bottom-most "layer," with data layers stacked above, resulting in 15 percent die-size savings. Aaron Rakers, a high-technology industry market analyst with Wells Fargo, estimates that Toshiba-WD's yields per 300 mm wafer could be as high as 85 percent.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, today announced that it will begin sampling new JEDEC e-MMC Ver. 5.1 compliant embedded flash memory products for consumer applications next month. The new products integrate the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a single package. The company will continue to reinforce its market-leading position by delivering a broad, high-performance product lineup, including for applications that continue to need e-MMC as an embedded memory solution.

Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, today announced that its newly released PM5 Series of 12Gb/s (gigabits per second) enterprise SAS SSDs has earned VMware vSAN 6.7 certification. This certification enables TMA's flash-based PM5 storage devices to be shared across connected hosts in a VMware vSphere cluster. With the vSAN 6.7 certification, users can pool PM5 Series SSDs together in a single, distributed shared data store. This allows users to define the storage capabilities required (such as performance, capacity and availability) for each connected virtual machine (VM) within the VMware vSAN cluster. These capabilities not only further hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) options in virtual environments, but also ensure that storage policies are administered and maintained within the PM5 Series with the utmost vSAN compatibility.

The certification of the PM5 Series enables VMware vSAN support for both hybrid and all-flash configurations using a two-tier storage architecture (capacity tier and cache tier). All write operations are sent to the cache tier and are subsequently de-staged to the capacity tier over time. When a PM5 Series SSD is deployed within a hybrid configuration, its cache tier is used as both a read and write cache, keeping hot data to improve performance. In an all-flash configuration, 100 percent of the cache tier is used for the write buffer. Given the benefits of tiered storage, PM5 Series SSDs are capable of meeting the demanding requirements of both enterprise and data center customers.

Toshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced the development of a bridge chip that realizes high-speed and large-capacity SSDs. Using developed bridge chips with a small occupied area and low-power consumption, the company has succeeded in connecting more flash memory chips with fewer high-speed signal lines than with the conventional method of no bridge chips. This result was announced in San Francisco on February 20, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2019 (ISSCC 2019).

In SSDs, multiple flash memory chips are connected to a controller that manages their operation. As more flash memory chips are connected to a controller interface, operating speed degrades, so there are limits to the number of chips that can be connected. In order to increase capacity, it is necessary to increase the number of interfaces, but that results in an enormous number of high-speed signal lines connected to the controller, making it more difficult to implement the wiring on the SSD board.