NVMe
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP). FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is...
QLC Goes To 8TB: Samsung 870 QVO and Sabrent Rocket Q 8TB SSDs Reviewed
Flash memory prices have been on a downward trajectory for years. A decade ago, this trend was helping SSDs establish a foothold in the consumer market—largely for enthusiasts. Now...
152 by Billy Tallis on 12/4/2020New Enterprise SSD Controllers From Silicon Motion, Phison, FADU
In the past month, three SSD controller designers have announced new enterprise NVMe SSD controllers, bringing a wave of new competition to the high-end enterprise/datacenter SSD market. FADU is...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020Xilinx and Samsung Launch SmartSSD Computational Storage Drive
At Samsung's Tech Day 2018 they debuted a collaboration with Xilinx to develop Smart SSDs that would combine storage with FPGA-based compute accelerator capabilities. Their proof of concept prototype...
25 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020Highpoint Updates NVMe RAID Cards For PCIe 4.0, Up To 8 M.2 SSDs
HighPoint Technologies has updated their NVMe RAID solutions with PCIe 4.0 support and adapter cards supporting up to eight NVMe drives. The new HighPoint SSD7500 series adapter cards are...
31 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020IBM at FMS 2020: Beating TLC With QLC, MRAM And Computational Storage
Two years ago we reported on IBM's FlashCore Module, their custom U.2 NVMe SSD for use in their FlashSystem enterprise storage appliances. Earlier this year IBM released the FlashCore...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020Western Digital at FMS 2020: Zoned SSDs, Automotive NVMe And More
At Flash Memory Summit this week (online for the first time), Western Digital is showing off three new SSD products and have outlined the company's areas of strategic focus...
12 by Billy Tallis on 11/11/2020Microchip Announces PCIe 5.0 And CXL Retimers
Microchip is entering the market for PCIe retimer chips with a pair of new retimers supporting PCIe 5.0's 32GT/s link speed. The new XpressConnect RTM-C 8xG5 and 16xG5 chips...
8 by Billy Tallis on 11/11/2020Kioxia Announces XG7 PCIe 4.0 Client SSDs
Last week, Kioxia rounded out their lineup of PCIe 4.0 enterprise and datacenter SSDs with the announcement of the XD6. Now, they're bringing PCIe 4.0 support to their client...
9 by Billy Tallis on 11/9/2020Kioxia Announces XD6 Datacenter SSDs: PCIe 4.0 and EDSFF At Scale
Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) is announcing the new XD6 series datacenter NVMe SSDs, featuring PCIe 4.0 support and using the EDSSF E1.S form factors. The XD6 is Kioxia's first...
10 by Billy Tallis on 11/3/2020Sabrent Rocket Nano Rugged IP67 Portable SSD Review: NVMe in a M.2 2242 Enclosure
Portable bus-powered SSDs are a growing segment of the direct-attached storage market. The ongoing glut in flash memory (and the growing confidence of flash vendors in QLC) has brought...
11 by Ganesh T S on 10/30/2020Crucial Portable SSD X6 and X8 2TB Review: QLC for Storage On-the-Go
Bus-powered portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the consumer-focused direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down...
22 by Ganesh T S on 10/21/2020Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers
Silicon Motion has announced the official launch of their first generation of PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controllers. These controllers have been on the roadmap for quite a while and...
23 by Billy Tallis on 10/20/2020Western Digital Launches New WD Black NVMe SSDs And Thunderbolt Dock
Today Western Digital is announcing a major expansion of their WD Black family of gaming-oriented storage products. In a digital event later today on Twitch, Western Digital will introduce...
40 by Billy Tallis on 10/8/2020Marvell and HPE Introduce NVMe RAID Adapter for Server Boot Drives
In 2018 Marvell announced the 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe Switch: the first—and so far, only—NVMe hardware RAID controller of its kind. Now that chip has scored its first major (public...
29 by Billy Tallis on 10/6/2020SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD v2 and WD My Passport SSD (2020) Review
External bus-powered storage devices have grown both in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Thanks to rapid advancements in flash technology (including the advent of...
7 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020Western Digital Unveils USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD v2
The SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD released in 2019 has been one of the top performers in the external flash storage market segment. Putting a high-end WD Black SN750-class...
14 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020The Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Review: A Spirit of Hope
It may be a bit later than originally planned, but Samsung's first consumer SSD to support PCIe 4.0 is here. The Samsung 980 PRO was first previewed at CES...
137 by Billy Tallis on 9/22/2020ADATA XPG Launches a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD for Notebooks: Gammix S50 Lite
One of the primary issues with most of the PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage drives on the market today is power consumption. The only base solution for OEMs in the...
15 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 9/18/2020Western Digital Launches Security Platform for Portable Storage with G-Technology's ArmorLock-Encrypted NVMe SSD
Data safety is of paramount importance for many enterprise use-cases, and in certain scenarios, for home consumers too. Portable storage devices have typically offered data protection in the form...
4 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2020Samsung 980 PRO Briefly Listed Online
In what seems to be an accidental leak, a product page for the highly-awaited Samsung 980 PRO SSD was posted and later taken down from Samsung's website for Singapore...
78 by Billy Tallis on 8/31/2020