SSDs, Review

Rounding out our Computex 2024 SSD controller news, let's talk about the final major controller vendor at the show: Silicon Motion. Silicon Motion has been somewhat late to the PCIe Gen5 SSD party, as its rival Phison has been offering their high-end PS5026-E26 controller for almost 18 months now. But as Silicon Motion gets ready to make the transition to PCIe 5.0, the company has a trump card up its sleeve: the SM2508 controller, an energy-efficient high-end SSD controller that is intended for lower-power drives. A PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, SMI's SM2508 boasts a very low active power consumption of 3.5W. Which, installed in an M.2 SSD, is intended to allow drive manufacturers to built 7 Watt (or lower) SSDs, according to the company. The...

Intel Announces New Wave of Optane and 3D NAND SSDs

Today Intel is announcing updates to most of their SSD product lines. Their products based on 3D NAND are being updated to use Intel's 144-layer QLC and TLC NAND...

70 by Billy Tallis on 12/16/2020

Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q USB / Thunderbolt 3 Dual Mode External SSD Review: Yin and Yang

The external storage market has shown renewed vigor in recent years, thanks in part to growth fueled by bus-powered flash-based storage solutions. The introduction of 3D NAND, coupled with...

14 by Ganesh T S on 12/14/2020

The Corsair MP400 1TB QLC NVMe SSD: A Quick Review

Following up from our recent look at 8TB QLC SSDs, today we're taking a look at the 1TB Corsair MP400. This is a QLC NVMe SSD using the Phison...

75 by Billy Tallis on 12/11/2020

Mushkin Announces 8TB M.2 SSD: ALPHA Series

Anyone in the market for high capacity 8 TB M.2 drives has so far only had one choice on the market. Today Mushkin is coming in as the second...

26 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/8/2020

SK Hynix Announces 176-Layer 3D NAND

SK hynix has announced their latest generation of 3D NAND, now featuring 176 layers of charge trap flash memory cells. SK hynix is the second NAND manufacturer to reach...

29 by Billy Tallis on 12/7/2020

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 12/4/2020

EDSFF Form Factor Updates In 2020: New Versions, Growing Adoption

The Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor family of standards is now about three years old, and continues to evolve. The EDSFF form factor options are gaining traction in...

6 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020

New 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 11/25/2020

Xilinx 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 11/12/2020

Highpoint 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 11/12/2020

IBM 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 11/12/2020

Western 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 11/11/2020

Kioxia 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 11/9/2020

Micron Announces 176-layer 3D NAND

Just in time for Flash Memory Summit, Micron is announcing their fifth generation of 3D NAND flash memory, with a record-breaking 176 layers. The new 176L flash is their...

29 by Billy Tallis on 11/9/2020

Kioxia 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 11/3/2020

Sabrent 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 10/30/2020

Crucial 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 10/21/2020

Silicon 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 10/20/2020

SK Hynix to Buy Intel’s NAND Memory Business For $9 Billion

In a joint press release issued early this morning, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK...

66 by Ryan Smith on 10/20/2020

Western 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 10/8/2020

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