Toshiba Corporation today announced that the company has developed second generation 19 nanometer process technology that it will apply to mass production of 2-bit-per-cell 64 gigabit NAND memory chips later this month.

Toshiba has used the new generation technology to develop the world's smallest 2-bit per-cell 64 gigabit NAND memory chips, with an area of only 94 square millimeters. Using a unique high speed writing method, the next generation chips can achieve a write speed of up to 25 megabytes a second - the world's fastest class* in 2-bit-per-cell chips.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced Canvio Connect, a portable external hard drive that offers high capacity storage along with the ability to access and share files directly from the device, making it the first of its kind.

"Toshiba's Canvio Connect represents the next evolution in external portable hard drives," said Maciek Brzeski , vice president of product marketing and development, Branded Storage Products, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "With its remote access and file sharing capabilities, users can now share their digital content with friends, family and colleagues from anywhere at any time directly from their Canvio Connect - making it unlike any other portable hard drive on the market."

Toshiba Corporation today announced that its new line of high performance CompactFlash (CF) memory cards, the EXCERIA PRO series, will go on sale from April 27th in the Japanese market. Sales will also follow in Asia, Europe and North America. The initial line-up of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB cards offers the world's highest level read and write speeds and complies with the new Video Performance Guarantee Profile 2 (VPG-65) standard.

The EXCERIA PRO CF cards integrate Toshiba's high performance NAND flash memory and specially developed dedicated firmware. They achieve a read speed of 160 MB/s and write speed of 150 MB/s, the highest level yet reported.

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.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.

Despite some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago. Fading Mini Notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending. PC industry efforts to offer touch capabilities and ultraslim systems have been hampered by traditional barriers of price and component supply, as well as a weak reception for Windows 8. The PC industry is struggling to identify innovations that differentiate PCs from other products and inspire consumers to buy, and instead is meeting significant resistance to changes perceived as cumbersome or costly.

Without making much noise about it, Corsair retrofitted its Neuton GTX line of performance consumer SSDs with 19 nm Toggle-NAND flash chips made by Toshiba. The newer drives' model numbering scheme looks like "CSSD-NxxxGBGTXB-BK," where "B" denotes 19 nm Toggle NAND flash, and "xxx" denotes the capacity (120/240/480 GB). The MTBF on Corsair website appears unchanged, so does the 5-year product warranty, and rated P/E cycle count of 3,000. The Corsair Neutron GTX line of performance SSDs were launched in September 2012, originally with 24 nm toggle-NAND flash.Source: Hermitage Akihabara

Known more for its graphics cards, Galaxy has an SSD lineup, with which it targets the Greater China region. It rolled out the Thunder GT 128 Pro, a 128 gigabyte SSD in the 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The drive utilizes Toshiba-made Toggle-NAND flash, JMicron JMF667H processor, and an unknown amount of DRAM cache. The drive offers sequential transfer rates as high as 480 MB/s reads, 300 MB/s writes, 70,000 IOPS QD64 reads, and 58,000 IOPS QD64 writes. Available in China from later this month, the Galaxy Thunder GT 128 Pro is priced at 799¥ (US $128).Source: Expreview

Toshiba Corporation today announced the launch of new microSDHC Memory Cards based on SeeQVault technology that will provide a flexible platform for storing and distributing high definition content.

SeeQVault is a leading-edge content protection technology developed by Toshiba Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Sony Corporation, that is licensed through NSM Initiatives LLC (NSM is an abbreviation of Next Generation Secure Memory Initiative). The technology applies bidirectional authentication with a unique identifier and public key infrastructure to assure consumers can enjoy a high level secure environment for storing and distributing of High Definition (HD) content. The technology can be integrated into flash memory cards and the devices that run them, and NSM Initiatives LLC started to license it to device manufacturers and content service providers on February 25.

Toshiba Corporation and Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed leader that collaborates with technology companies to create breakthrough designs, today announced that it began shipping samples of its 64-gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module equipped with a Universal Flash Storage (UFS) interface. The first in the industry, the new module is fully compliant with the JEDEC UFS Ver.1.1 standard, and is designed for a wide range of digital consumer products - including smartphones and tablet PCs.

With improved data processing speeds in host chipsets and wider bandwidths for wireless connectivity, demand continues to grow for large density, high-performance memory that supports high resolution video. A proven innovator in this key area, Toshiba is reinforcing its leadership role by being the first in the industry to ship samples with a 64GB UFS module.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has developed NANO FLASH-100 much faster access for embedded microcontrollers, based on Toshiba's original NANO FLASH. The rich functionality and high speed capabilities of embedded microcontrollers require much flash memory with much faster access rates. Toshiba has recognized and responded to this by developing NANO FLASH which merges two features: high speed programming, based on NAND flash memory cell device technology; and NOR flash memory circuit technology.

Toshiba has subsequently brought this high level performance to its original microcontrollers and to ARM core-based microcontrollers. Now, as more users use ARM core-based microcontrollers, there is an emerging need for greater speed and large memory capacities. NANO FLASH-100 is highly suited to this market.

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.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the addition of new two terabyte offerings to its Canvio storage lineup, including a 2 TB Canvio Basics 3.0 portable hard drive and a 2 TB Canvio Special Edition portable hard drive.

"We understand that consumers have varying capacity needs and we strive to provide solutions that match differing requirements," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of product marketing and development of branded storage products, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Our new 2TB solutions now provide our customers that are looking for basic functionality with an increased storage capacity, as the most basic users are continuing to grow an expansive digital library."

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. announced that a leading German luxury car manufacturer is now shipping its vehicles standard with Toshiba's MK2060GSC 200GB Serial ATA automotive hard disk drives (HDD), marking 26 million automotive-grade HDDs shipped. Toshiba has led innovation in the automotive sector since launching its first automotive-grade HDD in 2000, and is the leading vendor in the automotive storage market.

By 2016, more than 55 million people worldwide will have Internet access built into their vehicles, according to iSuppli Corp. Sophisticated navigation and entertainment systems, smartphone and tablet integration, and Internet connectivity are all features that consumers rely on to enhance their in-car experience, and these systems depend on reliable, shock-resistant HDDs to operate. Toshiba works in partnership with premier automotive manufacturers to provide best-in-class storage devices that can withstand severe road conditions, the growing quantities of data embedded in a vehicle's systems, and users' demands for constant connectivity to stream high-definition movies and update their navigation systems simultaneously.

Thecus announces the Seagate and Toshiba HDD internal 3.5 hard drive addition. Thecus is constantly providing the most updated HDD on the market to pair with Thecus NAS. Thecus has been hard at work keeping its compatibility lists ahead of the market and has added a number of new compatible hard drives for a number of different NAS.

Plextor implemented a design change in the NAND flash memory of its M5S and M5 Pro series consumer SSDs. The two see a transit from 20 nm-class NAND flash chips in the BGA package, to 19 nm chips in the TSOP (pins along the shorter edges) package. Both chips are Toshiba-made. The controller and latest firmware (FW 1.02) remain unchanged. The move to chips in the TSOP package doesn't impact on the specifications or price of the products, but gives the controller the ability to handle greater page-size on the chips.

The TSOP chips feature maximum page-size of 16 KB/page, while the BGA chips feature 8 KB/page. In theory, this should improve "buffer management," when the controller decides to use NAND flash as scratchpads, in spite of having a gigabyte of DRAM cache at its disposal. Further, the new TSOP package NAND flash chips have lighter thermal requirements, letting Plextor get rid of the conductive thermal pads over the chips, saving a Dollar or two. The company did not release any markers on how to identify the two variants of drives by looking at serial numbers.Source: Hermitage Akihabara

Toshiba Corporation announced it will launch the industry's first microUSB adaptor module compliant with the TransferJet close proximity wireless transfer technology standard. Mass production of this microUSB adaptor module, TJM35420MU, is scheduled to begin in March 2013 for sales to smartphone and tablet manufacturers and to PC peripheral equipment manufacturers.

The TJM35420MU is the industry's first TransferJet microUSB adaptor module integrating a TransferJet transceiver IC, a coupler, an RF filter, peripheral passive parts, and a USB connection circuit. TransferJet communications can be implemented in Android devices, such as smartphones and tablets, that have a microUSB port by inserting this module in the port and installing application software for Android.

Toshiba announced a new storage option for its 2013 Qosmio X875 gaming notebook, a combination of a 1 TB HDD with 8 GB SSD caching. Toshiba claims the contraption offers a 3.6-times speed increase in read/write speeds over conventional hard drives, and a more modest figure of 30 percent faster application load time. The rest of the notebook should remain unchanged, featuring a Core i7 processor, 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M graphics. With the new storage option, the Qosmio X875 goes for $1,480.Source: Engadget

Toshiba joined industry-wide efforts to bring the Ultrabook down to mainstream prices, by launching the Satellite U845t. The 14-incher features a lean feature-set to achieve its $799 price-point. It features 1366 x 768 pixels resolution, a Core i3 dual-core processor, up to 6 GB of RAM, 500 GB HDD-based storage with a 32 GB cache-SSD to speed things up, and connectivity that includes USB 3.0, HDMI, and SDXC. The Satellite U845t will be released to market on March 10th.Source: C|Net

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces new enterprise-grade SATA SSD models supporting cryptographic-erase and self-encrypting drive (SED) models, one an enterprise SAS solid state drive (eSSD) and the other a mobile SATA hard disk drive (HDD). Collectively, these four new 2.5-inch storage device models provide both IT system and PC system administrators with more effective tools to help secure sensitive business information.

For the enterprise, the PX02AMU value line of SATA eSSD models and PX03ANU read-intensive line of SATA SSD models feature cryptographic-erase. In addition, the PX02SMQ/U series offers Trusted Computing Group (TCG) enterprise protocol self-encryption and cryptographic-erase support in high-performance eSSD SAS models.

Toshiba Corporation will showcase a reference display of an SDHC memory card with TransferJet close proximity wireless transfer technology at the 2013 International CES, to be held from January 8 to 11, 2013, in Las Vegas, U.S.A.

The SDHC memory card on reference display will be a product under development, integrating a TransferJet transceiver IC, a coupler, an RF filter, peripheral passive parts, an SD bridge connection circuit, and Toshiba's NAND flash memory.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will launch two-lane SPDT switches that support PCI Express 3.0 (8 Gbps). The new products, TC7PCI3412MT and TC7PCI3415MT, reduce switch terminal capacitance to achieve high bandwidth characteristics of 10GHz at -3dB, making high-speed transmission with lower signal degradation capable.

The new SPDT switches have optimal configurations for all arrangements of PCI Express slots, connectors, and switches on the motherboards of desktop PCs and notebook PCs. They can also be used for high-speed differential lines, such as USB3.0, DisplayPort1.2, and SATA3.0. Samples are available now with mass production scheduled for the end of January.

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.

Source: The SSD Review

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will launch a new line of high performance CompactFlash (CF) memory cards, the EXCERIA PRO 2 series, expressly targeting the digital single lens reflex camera market. The initial line-up of 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB cards will come to market in spring of 2013 and offer the world's highest level3 read and write speeds. EXCERIA PRO will position Toshiba to meet the demands of the high-end DSLR market, including high resolution image capture, sustained continuous shooting, HD video recording and high speed data transfers to other devices.

The EXCERIA PRO CF cards integrate Toshiba's high performance NAND flash memory and specially developed dedicated firmware. They achieve a read speed of 160 MB/s and write speed of 150 MB/s, the highest level yet reported.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that samples of two new large capacity nearline hard disk drives (HDDs) are available now. The 3.5-inch 7,200 rpm MG Series includes both SATA and SAS versions, "MG03ACA400" and "MG03SCA400" respectively, that deliver 4TB[1] of storage, the largest capacity yet offered by Toshiba. Samples of lower capacity models in each series are also available.

As business works to keep up with the explosion of unstructured data, large capacity HDDs are crucial tools in IT systems designed to organize and access fast growing reservoirs of valuable information. The massive capacities of the MG Series drives are suited to RAID storage and arrays, tiered virtual infrastructures for public and private cloud deployments, archives and disk-based backup.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that the company has developed a prototype memory element for a spin transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM) that achieves the world's lowest power consumption yet reported, indicating that it has the potential to surpass the power consumption efficiency of SRAM as cache memory.

Like all digital products, mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet PCs, rely on high-speed memory to supply the main processor with essential instructions and frequently requested data. Until now SRAM has provided the cache-memory solution. However, improving the performance of SRAM to match advances in mobile products results in increasing current leakage, both during operation and in standby mode, degrading power performance.