Apex Storage, a new company in the storage world, has announced that its X21 add-in-card (AIC) has room for 21 (you read that right) PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The card supports up to 168 TBs with 8 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs and 336 TBs of storage with future 16 TB M.2 SSDs drives and can withstand speeds of up to 30.5 GB/s. Packed inside a single-slot, full-length, full-height AIC, the X21 card is built for a snug fit inside workstations and applications such as machine learning and hyper-converged infrastructure that enterprises need to develop inside servers and workstations across the site.

The X21 AIC has 100 PCIe lanes on the board, which indicates the presence of a PCIe switch, likely placed under the heatsink. To power all the storage, the PCIe slot itself needs to be more, and the card also has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors that provide 225 Watts of power in total. Interestingly, the heatsink is passively cooled, but Apex Storage suggests that there should be an active airflow with a minimum of 400 LFM to ensure the regular operation of the card. In the example application, the company laid out X21 with Samsung's 990 Pro SSDs; however, the card also supports Intel Optane drives. Read and Write IOPS are higher than 10 million. Additionally, the average read and write access latencies are 79 ms and 52 ms. Apex Storage didn't reveal the pricing and availability of the card; however, expect it to come with a premium.

In the last few months, we have seen a wealth of new systems that all support Gen 5 SSD capabilities. A few companies have even released Gen 5 SSDs rating in the 10,000 MB/s range. At Sabrent, we have been working very hard to bring this new product to market while working extremely closely with Phison to develop our new line of Gen 5 SSDs to push the boundaries to 14,000 MB/s. There have been many challenges to overcome with these new products to meet our strict requirements for new drives to enter our lineup of high-quality products. We have been working to make the best Gen 5 SSD possible to improve system performance and user experience. Here we have our new Sabrent Rocket X5 Gen 5 SSD being tested to our specifications.

We will showcase examples of what we have come up with to demonstrate our commitment to bringing the highest quality and top performers to the marketplace.
There is no doubt that many have already seen the Tech Demo sample results that were sent out by Phison. We aim to improve that and increase the performance as high as possible. At this stage, we have passed 12,000 MB/s with the technology available. Below we'd like to show a sample of what we are able to achieve with the Technology Demo we present to you today.

It's almost cherry-blossom season in Japan, and MINISFORUM released a special edition mini PC to mark it. The UM773 SE has a pastel pink body color along with a cherry-blossom print. Under the hood, it rocks an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor (6 nm, Zen 3+, "Rembrandt Refresh" silicon), with an 8-core/16-thread CPU, and a 12-CU RDNA2 iGPU (Radeon 680M). You get two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots to drop in your own memory, and an M.2-2280 NVMe SSD slot with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring, to use your own SSD, and a 2.5-inch drive bay with SATA 6 Gbps.

Networking connectivity on the MINISFORUM UM773 SE include 2.5 GbE, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. USB connectivity includes USB4, for a type-C port that supports DisplayPort passthrough from the iGPU. There are a couple of 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C ports, a couple of such type-A ports, and a couple of USB 2.0 type-A. A couple of HDMI ports, and HD audio make for the rest of it. The box measures 127 mm x 128 mm x 47 mm (WxDxH). The UM773 SE is sold either as a barebones that lacks memory and SSDs; or as prebuilts with 1x 16 GB, 2x 8 GB, and 2x 16 GB memory; each with a 512 GB NVMe SSD.

Update Mar 10th: MINISFORUM confirmed the US price of the UM773 SE to be $429 for the barebones, $579 for the prebuilt with 16 GB memory and 512 GB SSD, $639 for the one with 32 GB memory and 512 GB SSD, and $679 for the top model with 32 GB memory and 1 TB SSD storage.

To showcase its ever-expanding line of Industry 4.0 solutions, AAEON will present world-class augmented reality (AR) solutions at Embedded World 2023, with live demonstrations illustrating how its product lines have amplified AR realization for two of its Industry 4.0 partners. AAEON will be at Booth 306, Hall 1, at Embedded World 2023 in Nuremberg between 14 - 16 March 2023. Along with a number of product showcases, AAEON will present two live demos of AR applications that were developed with its partners, Seabery Augmented Technology and XYZ Reality. Demonstrating cutting-edge AR technology, AAEON will give attendees an insight into the AR revolution it is pioneering.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced it will be exhibiting at the upcoming Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany from the 14th to 16th March and will be showcasing their high-performance PCIe NVMe Gen 4 single-chip SSD solution, automotive controller as well as an array of PCIe NVMe Gen 4 SSD controller solutions for personal computers, industrial/embedded and automotive applications.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini computer solutions company, today announced a new Simply NUC branded mini PC product family called Chapel Rock. The ultracompact long life mini PC is built for several use cases, from embedded units like kiosks and vending machines, to edge devices like security systems and sensor arrays. Chapel Rock brings the same reliability and customizability as its predecessor, Chimney Rock, with upgrades like dual 2.5Gb Ethernet and the all-new 12th Gen Intel Architecture. Simply NUC is currently taking orders on Chapel Rock with units expected to ship by the end of March.

"Since launching our long life NUC product line, our customers have successfully leveraged these mini PCs for an array of applications where longer development cycles are required for validation and certifications," said Aaron Rowsell, Simply NUC CEO, "and we're thrilled to extend our long life NUC offering with Chapel Rock."

German company GRAUGEAR, an aftermarket/OEM cooling solutions company, released an interesting M.2 SSD cooler for PlayStation 5, which taps into the airflow of the console's main intake fan. The G-PS5HS01-Cov cooler from GRAUGEAR is meant for bare M.2 NVMe SSDs. It consists of an aluminium monoblock heatsink with a single flat 7 mm copper heatpipe running underneath, making contact with hot components on the drive's topside, through silicone-based thermal pads. This heatpipe sneaks up to the intake fan vent of the PS5, with a copper-channel stack in its end, which dissipates some of the drive's heat to the airflow. The company claims that this design offers 50% better cooling compared to drives with heatsinks that maximize the space above the M.2 slot of the PS5, and can lower controller temperatures by 15-20°C, since it is essentially an active cooling solution. The cooler weighs 70 g. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability information.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing the latest addition to its revolutionary ultra-high performance, high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family. Supermicro systems in this high performance storage product family will support the next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices, in form factors that accommodate 16- and 32 high-performance PCIe Gen 5 NVMe drive bays.

The initial offering of the updated product line will support up to one-half of a petabyte storage space in a 1U 16 bay rackmount system, followed by a fully petabyte storage space in 2U 32 bay rackmount system for both Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms.

Pure Storage, a maker of various storage solutions and custom enterprise-grade SSDs, claims the company will produce SSDs with up to 300 TBs of capacity by 2026. In an interview with Pure Storage CTO Alex McMullan, Blocks & Files got exclusive information that the company targets SSD capacities of up to 300 TBs in 2026. Pure Storage creates proprietary Direct Flash Modules (DFM) SSDs which use 3D NAND chips controlled by a custom SSD controller, are used in the FlashArray systems, and run on a custom FlashBlade operating system. This level of customization allows Pure Storage to create SSD drives with remarkable capacities in the future as the 3D NAND technology advances.

In the coming years, 3D NAND flash manufacturers will switch from the current 200-layer chips to the 400/500-layer chips, driving storage density to new highs. As manufacturers update their technology, so does Pure with its DFM cards that use regular U.2 NVMe connectors in a custom ruler-style format made explicitly for Pure FlashArray systems. Compared to upcoming HDDs that Toshiba and Seagate will use, Pure Storage DFM SSDs will have much higher capacities and read/write speeds, especially as higher-density 3D NAND arrives. You can see the comparison of Pure's estimates for the future 300 TB SSDs with future HDD technology.

Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, will be showcasing its latest generation of systems that accelerate workloads for the entire Telco industry, specifically at the edge of the network. These systems are part of the newly introduced Supermicro Intel-based product line; the better, faster, and greener systems based on the brand new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids) that deliver up to 60% better workload-optimized performance. From a performance standpoint these new systems that demonstrate up to 30X faster AI inference speedups on large models for AI and edge workloads with the NVIDIA H100 GPUs. In addition, Supermicro systems support the new Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (formerly codenamed Ponte Vecchio) across a wide range of servers. The Intel Data Center GPU Max Series contains up to 128 Xe-HPC cores and will accelerate a range of AI, HPC, and visualization workloads. Supermicro X13 AI systems will support next-generation built-in accelerators and GPUs up to 700 W from Intel, NVIDIA, and others.

Supermicro's wide range of product families is deployed in a broad range of industries to speed up workloads and allow faster and more accurate decisions. With the addition of purpose-built servers tuned for networking workloads, such as Open RAN deployments and private 5G, the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor vRAN Boost technology reduces power consumption while improving performance. Supermicro continues to offer a wide range of environmentally friendly servers for workloads from the edge to the data center.

Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. announces its proud participation in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2) program. As part of the program, KIOXIA SSDs provide robust flash storage in HPE Edgeline and HPE ProLiant servers in a test environment to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"By bringing KIOXIA's expertise and its SSDs, one of the industry's leading NAND flash capabilities, with HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, together we are pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery and innovation at the most extreme edge."

Late last year, it was reported that Intel is skipping its upcoming "Meteor Lake" microarchitecture for the desktop platform, giving it a mobile-platform debut in late-2023, with "Arrow Lake" following on in 2024, which would address both platforms. In the interim, Intel was expected to release a "Raptor Lake Refresh" architecture for desktop in 2023. It turns out now, that both the "Raptor Lake Refresh" and "Meteor Lake" architectures are coming to desktop—we just don't know when.

Apparently, Intel will brazen it out against AMD with a maximum CPU core-count of just 6 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores possible for "Meteor Lake." It's just that both the P-cores and a E-cores get an IPC uplift with "Meteor Lake." The processor features up to six "Redwood Cove" P-cores with an IPC uplift over the current "Raptor Cove" cores; and introduce the new "Crestmont" E-cores. A lot will depend on the IPC uplift of the latter. Leaf_hobby, a reliable source with Intel leaks on social media, has some interesting details on the I/O capabilities of "Meteor Lake" on the desktop platform.

With the releases of the latest generation of Intel and AMD platforms, the era of PCIe 5.0 SSD has officially arrived. Team Group today has launched the T-FORCE CARDEA Z540 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD. Developed with outstanding technological expertise, it is the SSD gamers of all kinds have been waiting for. Now it's ready to lead the consumer SSD market into the new era of Gen 5. The Z540 PCIe 5.0 SSD uses the latest PCIe Gen 5 x 4 interface and supports the latest NVMe 2.0 protocol, allowing it to reach read and write speeds of up to 12,000 MB/s and 10,000 MB/s respectively, nearly double the theoretical speed limit of PCIe 4.0. Possessing cutting-edge specifications, Z540 SSD brings gamers an unprecedented, next-generation gaming experience.

The T-FORCE CARDEA Z540 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD is equipped with an exclusive ultra-thin graphene heatspreader that combines multiple patented technologies. It's made of 100% recyclable graphene material and utilizes the advantages of hexagonal honeycomb lattice structures to rapidly and evenly disperse heat horizontally, providing Z540 SSD with top-notch cooling. The Z540's ultra-thin graphene heatspreader is less than 1 mm thick and is compatible with various PCIe 5.0 motherboard heatsinks. Based on T-FORCE LAB's internal testing, the operating temperature of Z540 SSD combining motherboard heatsink and graphene heatspreader is 3-5°C lower than the temperature with only motherboard heatsinks. Moreover, CARDEA Z540 uses the latest intelligent thermal regulation technology with built-in temperature sensing to automatically adjust performance and prevent overheating. T-FORCE LAB has created numerous temperature solutions for the Z540 SSD to not only enhance and protect data integrity of the SSD but also maintain good operating temperatures at high speeds, extending the lifespan of the SSD.

Kontron, a leading global provider of IoT/Embedded Computer Technology (ECT), announces that all ATX, µATX and Mini-ITX motherboards supporting the 12th generation Intel Core i processor series will soon receive a comprehensive BIOS update to 13th generation. Equipped with Intel's Performance Hybrid Architecture, they offer a significant increase in performance with lower energy consumption. All boards belong to a product family with synergetic BIOS, uniform drivers and comprehensive tool set for customer-specific settings (default settings, thermal management, boot logo, etc.) and are "designed and made in Germany". They are suitable for IoT applications in the fields of industry, medicine, kiosk, digital signage, POS/POI, video surveillance and casino gaming. They will be available from Q2/2023.

The compact Mini-ITX motherboards K3833-Q and K3832-Q are equipped with the powerful Intel Q670E chipset, which offers extensive features such as vPro Manageability, Stable Image (SIPP) or RAID. They have Dual Intel LAN interfaces incl. teaming as well as TSN and real-time support (TCC), a PCIe x16 Gen 5 expansion slot, USB 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces, an M.2 Key-M and Key-E slot as well as two DIMM sockets for DDR5 memory.

It looks like Gigabyte might be the first company to offer a PCIe 5.0 SSD for sale to major markets outside of Japan, since no other brand appears to have launched such a product at the time of this news post. The Aorus Gen5 10000 was launched around two weeks ago, but is currently listed as being on backorder at both Newegg and Amazon in the US. Currently only the 2 TB version is listed and it's coming in at about the same cost as two equivalent PCIe 4.0 drives.

We're not sure if the backorder price of US$339.99 on Newegg is the actual retail price, but considering a 2 TB version of WD's Black SN850X costs US$159.99, it doesn't seems like the very slight performance increase the Aorus Gen5 10000 will bring to the table is going to be worth the asking price. Then again, Gigabyte's SSDs are overpriced on Newegg compared to competing products and the Aorus Gen4 7000s Premium, which features the same heatsink as the Aorus Gen5 10000, retails for US$281.99 on Newegg. Amazon didn't list any pricing as yet.

Sabrent introduces our new USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) for normal use and cloning. The USB Type-C Flat Docking Station (DS-UFNC) is designed to make your life easier with a dual-drive, tool-free installation. It supports an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 2.5"/3.5" SATA SSD/HDD in single- or dual-drive mode for data transfer and offline cloning with clear LED indicators. The M.2 drive is kept cool during operation to prevent throttling with an integrated M.2 heatsink and includes a thermal pad. No matter your storage, this docking station has you covered.

The included power adapter improves reliability during operation with 3.5" HDDs and high-power SSDs. Transfers are possible over a 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2) backward-compatible interface. Type-C/Type-A to Type-C USB cables are included to work with a wide range of devices, and the docking station is designed for Windows and macOS machines. SSDs are fully supported with TRIM and UASP for the best performance and reliability. Easy, convenient, and backed by Sabrent.

AAEON, a provider of elite embedded solutions, has expanded its line of fanless embedded box PCs powered by 12th Generation Intel Core /Celeron processors (formerly Alder Lake-P U15) with the release of the BOXER-6451-ADP. Boasting the smallest chassis of AAEON's trifecta of new box PCs utilizing the latest Intel technology, the BOXER-6451-ADP offers 10 cores and 12 threads of processing power in a compact 7.48" x 4.37" x 2.5" (190 mm x 111 mm x 63.5 mm) model. AAEON believe this will help to bring compact, flexible solutions such as smart kiosks and charging stations to market with ease.

Adding to the BOXER-6451-ADP's suitability to smaller deployment spaces is its innovative new heat dissipation framework, which has seen AAEON replace the tubular heat pipe typically used to conduct heat from a PC's CPU to its heatsink with a flattened pipe to both increase its conduction area and accelerate heat transfer. This enables the system to maintain thermal regulation during periods of high workloads.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced the SM2268XT, its latest high-performance PCIe Gen 4 SSD controller solution optimized for higher speed NAND transfer rates. The SM2268XT's superior performance and robust reliability allows customers to accelerate development of next-generation SSDs using current and future TLC and QLC 3D NAND flash with comprehensive data integrity and correction without compromising throughput and latency.

The SM2268XT features a dual-core ARM R8 CPU with four lanes of 16 Gb/s PCIe data flow and supports four NAND channels with up to 3,200 MT/s per channel, enabling designers to take advantage of higher throughput next-generation high-speed TLC and QLC 3D NAND flash. Its multi-core design automatically balances the compute load to deliver industry-leading sequential read and write speeds of 7,400 MB/s & 6,500 MB/s, and random read & write speed of 1,200K IOPS. In addition, its advanced architecture enables lower power consumption and rigorous data protection, providing high performance and reliability in a cost-effective DRAM-less PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD solution.

Leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces its new ASRock W790 WS motherboard for workstations for Intel Xeon W-3400/W-2400 series processors (LGA4677). The ASRock W790 WS features up to 2 TB DDR5 ECC RDIMM support, PCI-Express 5.0 expansion slots, USB4/Thunderbolt 4 and Dual 10 Gbps Ethernet. A flagship-class 14-layer PCB and 20+2 phase CPU VRM ensures ultimate performance and superb reliability, even when subjected to the most demanding sustained workloads.

Supports New 4th Generation Xeon Processor
The W790 WS chipset is optimized for new Intel Xeon W-2400 series (LGA4677) processors and is compatible with W-3400 series processors with up to 56 cores also. The ASRock W790 WS provides a quad-channel DDR5 design with 2DPC over 8 DIMM slots, maximizing memory performance, potential memory pool capacity and supports ECC RDIMMs to ensure data reliability.

ADATA today unveiled a 4 TB variant of its Premier series M.2 NVMe SSD with integrated heatsink (APSFG-4TCS). The drive takes advantage of PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface, and targets the crowd that wants storage upgrades for their Sony PlayStation 5 consoles. The drive offers sequential read speeds of up to 6300 MB/s when used with a PS5. It's slightly faster when used with a PC, with sequential transfer rates of up to 7400 MB/s sequential reads, with up to 6600 MB/s sequential writes. ADATA is backing the drive with an impressive 2960 TBW endurance rating, and with a 5-year warranty. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Exascend, Inc., a leader in industrial-grade, enterprise-class and cinematography flash storage solutions, announces new ultra-high-capacity industrial- and enterprise-grade PCIe NVMe U.2 SSDs in 16 TB, or 15,360 GB capacity.

Performance and capacity that power cloud and edge servers
U.2 SSDs have some characteristics that give them an edge over M.2 SSDs, such as better thermal performance, high IOPs, low latency, low power consumption, and the ability to come out with higher capacities due to their 2.5-inch form factor - making U.2 ideal for enterprise data centers switching from traditional HDDs to high-performing SSDs.

One of the major issues with M.2 based NVMe SSDs today is the excessive heat they output, part of the reason most of them run so hot is because of the older fabrication node they're made on. Most current PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD controllers are built on a 12 nm node of some kind, but based on data out of IT Home in the PRC, we now have details of Silicon Motion's SM2504XT PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD controller, which appears to be one of the first, if not the first, to be made on a 7 nm node.

Although it's not mentioned specifically who Silicon Motion's manufacturing partner is, it's most likely going to be TSMC, as Silicon Motion is a Taiwanese company. The SM2504XT will be a mainstream 4-channel controller, but it'll support NAND flash rated at up to 3600 MT/s, which is a step up from any other currently announced NVMe SSD controller. It also supports the NVMe 2.0 protocol and will have a PCIe 5.0 x4 host system interface. The new controller is expected to have hit the engineering sample stage some time in September this year.

GIGABYTE formally launched its flagship AORUS Gen5 10000 series M.2 NVMe SSDs that take advantage of a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 interface. Currently, all AMD B650 series and X670 series motherboards offer a PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slot wired to the processor without eating into PEG bandwidth, while some Intel 700-series chipset motherboards offer Gen 5 M.2 slots by subtracting lanes from the PEG slot. AORUS Gen5 10000 for now comes in 1 TB and 2 TB capacities. The drives combine a Phison E26 series controller with 3D TLC NAND flash memory and LPDDR4 DRAM cache.

The 1 TB model offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 9.5 GB/s reads, with up to 8.5 GB/s writes, and 700 TBW endurance; whereas the 2 TB model is faster, with up to 10 GB/s sequential reads, up to 9.5 GB/s writes, and 1,400 TBW endurance. The drive's power consumption is under 10 W, and GIGABYTE has deployed a thoughtful fanless cooling solution for the drive that spares you from the annoying high-pitched noise of other upcoming Gen 5 M.2 SSDs that use fan-heatsinks. The company didn't reveal pricing, but mentioned that the drives are backed by 5-year warranties.

In Japan, the first consumer focused PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs have gone on sale and one of these drives has been put through some quick synthetic benchmarks by @momomo_us on Twitter. We're not familiar with the CFD Gaming brand which the drive is sold under, but the CSSD-M2M2TPG5NFZ—as the drive is called—is based on Phison's E26 controller and it's paired with Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND, suggesting it's based around a reference design from Phison. CFD Gaming offers the drive in 1, 2 and 4 TB sizes and @momomo_us tested the 2 TB version.

Before we go into the performance figures, there's one thing that needs to be highlighted about this drive, it produces a high pitch noise during use, thanks to its tiny 17x17 mm, 21,000 rpm fan from Sunon. @momomo_us provided a video on Twitter which is linked below, so you can hear it in action for yourself. Hopefully this isn't the future of NVMe SSDs, as it's going to put off many potential customers from getting one. @momomo_us only tested the drive with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, which shows that sequential write speeds are slightly faster than claimed by CFD Gaming, with the sequential write speeds being bang on the money. For those hoping for higher random performance, things aren't looking so great, as the drive only performs slightly better than the best PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a world-renowned manufacturer of desktop components, laptops, desktops, AIO PCs, and storage, launches the B760 Series motherboards for the 13th Gen and 12th Gen Intel Core processors. The Intel B760 Series motherboards are ideal gaming and content creation with DDR5 and DDR4 memory support depending on model.

COLORFUL introduces the CVN B760M FROZEN WIFI D5 and CVN B760I FROZEN WIFI motherboards for gamers and enthusiasts. Coming in a compact micro-ATX and Mini-ITX form factors, both motherboards feature PCIe 5.0 x16 slot to support the latest high-end graphics cards. The CVN B760 motherboards also come with Wi-Fi 6, three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots for the CVN B760M FROZEN WIFI D5 and two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots for the CVN B760I FROZEN WIFI Mini-ITX motherboard. COLORFUL also presents the BATTLE-AX B760M-F PRO motherboard with DDR4 memory support and two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots.