Korean memory giant SK Hynix is launching its own branded consumer and enterprise SSD lines, à la Samsung (the other Korean memory giant). It is starting off with high-performance consumer SSDs targeting Ultrabooks, built in the 2.5-inch 7 mm-thick SATA form-factor. The SH910 series SSDs combine Hynix' homegrown H27QDG8VEBIR-BCB MLC NAND flash chips built in the 25 nm fab process, with LSI-SandForce SF-2281 processor.

The drive will be initially available in two capacities, 128 GB and 256 GB (higher than usual capacities thanks to adjusted overprovisioning). Both drives offer sequential transfer speeds of up to 520 MB/s reads with 500 MB/s writes; up to 60,000 IOPS 4K random seek, 35,000 IOPS random write; and feature-set that includes 128-bit AES encryption, TRIM, NCQ, and SMART. A performance review can be found at the source.

Strontium expanded its Python performance SATA 6 Gb/s SSD series with a new high-capacity 480 GB variant, which was displayed at Computex. Built in the 2.5-inch 7 mm-thick form-factor, the Python 480 GB is driven by SandForce SF-2281 processor, and uses MLC NAND flash. It offers sequential speeds as high as 550 MB/s reads, with 520 MB/s writes; and 4K random access performance of 60,000 IOPS. The company assures 1.5 million hours MTBF, and backed the product with 3 years warranty. The new 480 GB variant will reach stores soon, priced around US $450-500.

Building on the success of the industry leading Bullet Proof line of mSATA SSDs, we at MyDigitalSSD are proud to announce two highly anticipated SATA III (6G) mSATA drives that reach up to 256GB capacity at a price that's right for any budget.

Like their predecessors, Bullet Proof 3 SSDs offer the performance and reliability you've come to expect from MyDigitalSSD while boasting improved Read/Write speeds of over 500/300MB/sec with Random 4K speeds of over 20/40MB/sec. Featuring Asynchronous NAND Flash and the new Phison S8 Controller, BP3 drives are the perfect upgrade solution for anyone looking for the best price to performance ratio on the market. For those who like to push their devices to the max, MyDigitalSSD will be releasing an IOPS minded Firmware in mid to late July.

MediaTek Inc., a leading fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, announced today the world's first 1T1R 802.11ac dual-band concurrent Wi-Fi router and dongle solutions. MT7620 + MT7610E and MT7610U provide the mass market with 1T1R 802.11ac router and dongle to enable high quality data transmission, voice and video applications in connected homes. MediaTek will demonstrate its latest wireless technologies, connectivity devices and applications to its customers during Computex Taipei 2012.

MT7620 family integrates a 2T2R 802.11n Wi-Fi radio, a 600 MHz MIPS 24KEc CPU, 5p FE switch, 2xrGMII, USB, PCIe, SD-HC. The PCI Express interface will connect to 2nd Wi-Fi chipset for 11n 2x2 DBC router or to an 11ac chipset for 1x1 DBC 11ac routers. The high performance USB 2.0 allows MT7620 to add 3G/LTE support on a router or can add a UVC cam to enable the best cost/performance IP-Cam. And to support the wireless storage application, MT7620 supports NAND flash interface, SD-HC, USB 2.0 and storage accelerator for NAS, Wi-Fi HDD and Wi-Fi card reader. Audio interface I2S and PCM will enable wireless speaker and VoIP applications. MT7620 also steps up to the leading Hardware Network Address Translation (HNAT) milestone by supporting 2Gbps wired speed with IPv6 forwarding. The cost effective rGMII iNIC interface (2.4G or dual-band concurrent) can be utilized for cable, PON, xDSL and broadband wireless router.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced it is using the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturing process to produce SanDisk's highest performing embedded memory products.

iNAND Extreme is now being built on SanDisk's 19 nanometer (nm)* process technology to enable the large-capacity, high-performance embedded NAND flash memory products that are ideally suited for high-end tablets and smartphones. Products running the Android operating system as well as the upcoming Microsoft Windows RT version of the Windows 8 operating system can benefit from iNAND Extreme capacity, performance and small size.

Toshiba announced the first SSDs based on its swanky new 19 nm-class NAND flash memory. These include four models in the 2.5-inch 9.5 mm-thick form-factor (standard), another four models in the 2.5-inch 7 mm-thick form-factor (slim, for Ultrabooks); and three models in the super-compact mSATA form-factor. The 9.5 mm-thick and 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch models differ only with their thickness, and are otherwise identical, since SSDs are essentially just printed circuit boards with NAND flash memory, controllers, caches, and ancillary components soldered onto them.

The 9.5 mm-thick 2.5-inch models carry the model number scheme THNSNFxxxGBSS (xxx = number of GB capacity), while the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch models use THNSNFxxxGCSS. Both lines are available in 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB capacities. The 128, 256, and 512 GB models offer transfer rates as high as 524 MB/s, while the 64 GB model offers up to 440 MB/s. Toshiba implemented a new controller that features next-generation Deterministic Zeroing TRIM (a feature exclusive with Windows 8 and future *nix kernels), Quadruple Swing-by Code (QSBC), a performance-optimized ECC-equivalent, and a read-only mode. The mSATA models (model number scheme THNSNFxxxGMCS) offer similar performance to their 2.5-inch cousins, but are available in only three capacity options, 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. Toshiba will release its new line of SSDs in August.

The largest professional computer show in Asia, the COMPUTEX TAIPEI, is coming on June 5. Team Group Inc., one of the leading memory manufacturers in the world, is ready to reveal its latest industrial memory modules to professional buyers around the world, including industrial-standard and server-grade memory modules, embedded industrial flash memories, and so on. The emphasis on customization, product performance and after-sale service quality are the live demonstration of how Team Group is determined for the industrial grade/SI market.

Team Group's industrial memory modules come with Standard series, Green series and Wide temperature series. The modules are produced with chips from original manufacturers and go through multiple meticulous and sophisticated verification analyses and hi-low temperature tests. The Wide temperature series is capable of working at the temperature ranging from -40℃ to 95℃, and provides stable operation performance even in conditions as punishing as at a desert or in arctic environment. The Green series works only with minimal voltage as low as 1.35V. You cannot be any greener than that. The newly developed high frequency and large volume memory modules complete the full product series for various demands in medial equipment, surveillance systems and industrial computers.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled its new Agility 4 SSD series that delivers an ideal balance of 6Gbps SATA III interface speed, exceptional input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance, and enterprise-grade endurance and reliability all in a value-oriented SSD.

Utilizing OCZ's cutting-edge Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform (first introduced in the flagship Vertex 4 SSD series), Agility 4 SSDs offer a cost-effective alternative to other SATA III SSD solutions in the market making them ideal for mainstream entertainment, gaming, and mobile storage applications.

Korean company Zalman added a new segment to its expanding lineup, that of USB 3.0 flash drives, with its new "SLC Series". As the name suggests these flash drives incorporate SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash memory. The drives are available in two capacity options, 16 GB (model: U3M16SLC) and 32 GB (model: U3M32SLC). Taking advantage of the USB 3.0 interface, the drives provide transfer rates of up to 155 MB/s reads, with up to 135 MB/s writes. Measuring 78 x 17 x 8.6 mm (WxDxH), the drives are built in conventional capped form-factor. Slated for an early-June release, the U3M16SLC is priced at 5,480 JPY (US $69), while the U3M32SLC goes for 8,980 JPY (US $113).

According to a stock market analyst with Seeking Alpha, Corsair is going public, with an initial public offering (IPO), in an effort to raise US $78 million, with a market capitalization of $223 million. Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., and RBC Capital Markets, will be underwriting it. Corsair will use the name "Corsair Components", and market symbol "CRSR" in its IPO.

Corsair has two main branches of products, memory products (DRAM and NAND flash products), and peripherals (power supply, cases, and gaming peripherals). Its income fluctuates with consumers' seasonal purchasing patterns. The company plans to net $42.5 million from its IPO, some of its proceeds go toward repaying a cumulative debt of $28 million, the rest of the proceeds go toward working capital and general corporate purposes. An estimated 4.1 million shares are expected to be sold by Corsair.

RunCore, leading supplier of high-performance solid-state drives, announces the global launch of its InVincible Solid State Disc drive. This SATA SSD solution provides for highest data security through a special button device that allows for total physical destruction with a single click.

The RunCore InVincible SSDs allow you to protect sensitive data from third party access in two ways with a single click. One method is the intelligent elimination of all your data through overwriting the entire disk with meaningless code. This overwrite-deletion method ensures that there is no way to potentially recover previous data stored to the device, effectively setting you SSD back to factory default.

Green House Japan unveiled a new line of industrial SDHC cards that are designed to endure operating temperatures as high as 70°C, and as low as 0°C, which makes them fit to serve as removable storage media in IPCs and outdoor static cameras. The cards further pack ECC logic to prevent data corruption. The cards make use of SLC NAND flash, and come in capacities of 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB. The 256 and 512 MB models provide transfer rates as high as 19 MB/s reads with 7 MB/s writes, while the other models provide speeds as high as 20 MB/s reads with 13 MB/s writes. Green House left pricing to the open markets.

Storage mogul TDK launched its Series 7 mSATA SSD line (model: SMG3B). The drives incorporate TDK's in-house GBDriver RS3 processor, and 1 to 64 GB of SLC NAND flash memory, which makes these drives ideal for Rapid Storage Technology SSD caching. The processor provides cutting-edge 44-bit ECC to weed out caching errors. Another application would be taking advantage of the drive's durable NAND flash memory, and deploying it in sensitive computing devices such as ATM computers, kiosks, payment terminals, ticketing machines, medical equipment, marine navigation equipment, avionics, etc. The drives only take advantage of SATA 3 Gb/s, providing sequential speeds of up to 170 MB/s reads and 70 MB/s writes. Modern SSD features including 128-bit AES data encryption, are provided. Prices vary by the numerous capacity options available.

Team Group Inc., which is working very hard in the industrial and embedded storage devices, is making its entrance for the second time in ESEC, the largest embedded system exhibition in Japan, with boiling popularity from last year. In addition to the full series of industrial NAND flash and industrial control memory modules, Team Group will present industrial embedded NAND flash SSDs.

Team Group SSD series consists of 2.5" SATA and 1.8" PATA interfaces, and offers multiple choices of volume and customization service. The products feature high performance in vibration and impact resistance, ensuring smooth operations even in a harsh environment at a temperature of -40℃~+85℃. Team Group is hoping to grab the global storage market with these supreme products with good quality and high performance.

Team Group Inc., a major NAND flash manufacturer in the world, presents the brand new iCF, SD industrial NAND flash cards, which feature not only highly efficient transmission speed, but also the complete compatibility with IPC and other embedded platform, also support multiple transmission modes and functions. In addition to unprecedented ultra high reading and writing speed, they provide guaranteed high durability and reliability for application programs crucial for IPC, medical equipment, military equipment, point of sales (POS) systems and game consoles.

Team Group understands the cries for industrial level memory cards in the demanding storage market, and in response comes up with the high performance and high volume industrial memory cards that meet wide temperature requirements. They read and write at 45/40MBpersec, and support for ECC dynamic and static wear leveling. The features of vibration resistance and low energy consumption provide excellent performance, compatibility and reliability for hand-held barcode scanners, POS terminals, wireless communication devices, embedded systems, medical computers, set-top boxes, monitoring system and hand-held GPS and other application devices requiring frequent data access.

OCZ introduced a new high capacity variant of its Octane consumer SSD series, the OCT1-25SAT3-1T. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, the new Octane variant provides 1 TB of unformatted capacity. Based on the Indilinx Everest processor, the drive packs 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and utilizes 512 MB of DRAM cache. It is rated to provide sequential transfer speeds of up to 460 MB/s (reads), 330 MB/s (writes), with 4K read/write random access performance of up to 24,000 IOPS and 32,000 IOPS, respectively. All modern consumer SSD features are present, including TRIM, NCQ, ECC, and 256-bit AES data-encryption. Slated for mid-May, the Octane 1 TB by OCZ won't exactly be cheap.

Imagine a day without your smartphone, music player, tablet, or any of your other favorite portable devices -- these are examples of the scenarios that Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., (TAEC)*, a committed leader that collaborates with technology companies to create breakthrough designs, explores in its new NAND Flash Deprivation Experiment campaign. Launched to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Toshiba's invention of NAND flash, the campaign takes a look at what happens when people are deprived of NAND flash -- and all of the everyday devices they use that are enabled by it.

While SSDs with single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash are relegated to enterprise segment owing to their high-cost and write endurance (unless they are low-capacity cache SSDs), one company made efforts to bring them to the PC enthusiast market. SupperSSpeed took advantage of the fact that SandForce SF-2281 supports SLC NAND flash, backed it up with Intel-made 25 nm SLC NAND flash memory, and made it available in capacities common in the PC segment: 60 GB and 120 GB. The 120 GB variant packs cutting-edge 128 Gbit SLC NAND flash chips, while the 60 GB variant packs more mature 64 Gbit ones. Thanks to SandForce and its overprovisioning mojo, the drives lack external DRAM caches. Expreview put the two drives through its battery of tests, and concluded that these are the best SSDs in terms of transfer speed yield, and random-access performance, not to mention that by design, these drives have higher write endurance.More numbers follow.

MSC Vertriebs GmbH presents the first COM Express modules based on the 3rd generation Intel Core processor family (formerly codenamed 'Ivy Bridge'). The 3rd generation Intel Core processor family utilizes Intel's advanced 22nm process technology with three-dimensional transistors for higher performance at lower power. The new COM Express modules feature a further leap forward in computing power, graphics and video performance in comparison to modules based on the previous generation Intel platform. Important innovations of this new product generation are lower power consumption at higher clock frequencies and improved graphics and video performance. For the first time, the new Intel platform supports DirectX 11.

A 64 GB variant of Plextor's M3 SSD series surfaced in Japan, carrying the model number "PX-64M3". The series was originally designed to capture higher market price points. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, the PX-64M3 is driven by Marvell 88SS9174, packs 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and offers sequential speeds of up to 520 MB/s reads, and 175 MB/s writes, with up to 55,000 IOPS 4K random access and 40,000 IOPS 4K random writes. Slated for market release on April 21, the Plextor M3 64 GB is priced at 10,980 JPY (US $135).

Custodian of the Ultrabook specification, Intel pushed the storage industry to churn out slimmer devices to go with increasingly slimmer Ultrabooks sold by the various partner ODMs in the ecosystem. Even as HDD and SSD makers have only just come up with 7 mm-thick storage devices, Intel has a fresh list of changes it wishes to see with storage devices in the very near future, to be able to make it to the constantly-evolving Ultrabook specification. Intel wants near-future storage devices (SSDs and HDDs) to be no thicker than 5 mm.

Further, it wants to see the standard SATA host interface changed from "around" (out of) form, to "along" (inside) form host interface, which further slims down the drive compartment. These proposals were floated at IDF, Beijing. While coming up with slimmer SSDs was never really a tough task for SSD makers, as SSDs are essentially just millimeter-thick printed circuit boards with millimeter-thick components (controller logic, NAND flash memory, and ancillaries), it posed a huge technical challange to mechanical HDD designers, who have had to slim down key components that work to maintain inertial motion of spinning platters. This new proposal for 5 mm-thick HDDs could pose a newer, tougher desgin challenge.

Intel today finally announced its SSD 910 "Ramsdale" PCI-Express SSD family. This is Intel's first SSD in the PCI-Express add-on card form-factor. Like its 2.5" SSD 710 series, the SSD 910 utilizes HET-MLC NAND flash chips, arranged in four SSD subuits. SSD 910 design consists of three stacked PCBs, the one with the PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interface holds a PCI-Express to SAS bridge (essentially a RAID controller), and four SAS/NAND ASICs (SSD controllers). Each controller is wired out to its NAND flash memory chips, which are arranged in the other PCBs.

The PCIe-SAS bridge is made by LSI. The SSD 910 series comes in two variants based on capacity: 400 GB and 800 GB. The 400 GB variant has just two SSD subunits, and hence provides transfer rates (according to an older article) of 1 GB/s reads and 750 MB/s writes, with 90,000 IOPS reads, with 38,000 IOPS writes; while the 800 GB variant, with its four subunits, provides 2 GB/s reads with 1 GB/s writes, and 180,000 IOPS reads, with 75,000 IOPS writes. The launch price of the SSD 910 400 GB variant is US $1,929; while the 800 GB variant is priced at US $3859, at launch.

For those who thought with the Indilinx buyout and release of Everest and Kilimanjaro series NAND flash controllers, OCZ is on course of becoming a largely self-sufficient SSD industry player, here's a revelation. Its new Everest series silicon, used in recently-launched SSD families (such as Octane and Vertex 4), is essentially a re-badged Marvell controller (found on SSDs such as Crucial M4, Intel SSD 510), with custom firmware developed by OCZ. This discovery by Anandtech was confirmed by OCZ (Indilinx).

The Indilinx Everest (Octane and Petrol series) and Everest 2 (Vertex 4 series), are both re-badged Marvell chips with Indilinx firmware. Although it doesn't change anything, it perfectly explains how OCZ could come up with two "new" SSD controllers (Everest and Everest 2) almost instantly, after the Indilix acquisition. Everest 1 is essentially a higher-clocked Marvell 88SS9174, while Everest 2 could very well be a re-badged Marvell 88SS9187, according to the source.

Intel is on the brink of launching its new line of enterprise PCI-Express SSDs, codenamed "Ramsdale", carrying the market name "SSD 910 Series". The new SSD 910 series is coming to existence leapfrogging SSD 710 series, which was also codenamed "Ramsdale", but never made it to the market. The original Ramsdale SSD 720 was meant to be primarily based on SLC NAND flash memory with the probability of an MLC variant, Intel decided against launching it, probably because it was hedging its bets on 25 nm HET-MLC NAND flash, which provides endurance levels closer to SLC, while offering the capacity-advantage of MLC. The SSD 910 implements this new NAND flash standard that attempts to offer the best of both SLC and MLC.

The new SSD 910 will be available in two capacity options: 400 GB and 800 GB. Built as a PCI-Express expansion card, the SSD 910 consists of three stacked PCBs that hold SSD subunits and HET-MLC NAND flash chips, lots of them. Each of these subunits interfaces with the core logic over SAS. The core logic connects to the host over PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interface. The 400 GB variant provides sequential read speeds up to 1 GB/s, and up to 750 MB/s writes. The 800 GB variant provides up to 2 GB/s reads, with up to 1 GB/s writes.

Intel made its SSD 313 series official, its product page was activated, and ARK pages of its variants maintain the products are already launched. The SSD 313 series succeeds SSD 311 series, it consists of SSDs specifically designed for SSD-caching technologies such as Intel Smart Response Technology, and upcoming technologies that the upcoming "Ivy Bridge" platform brings with it, including "Rapid Start" and "Smart Connect". The SSD 313 Series is introduced in two variants, a 20 GB variant, and a 24 GB variant.

The 20 GB variant offers sequential performance up to 220 MB/s and 100 MB/s (read and write), while the 24 GB variant offers 160 MB/s and 115 MB/s, which might make one wonder about the need for a 24 GB variant, given that it's also slower at 4K random-seek performance 33,000 IOPS / 4,000 IOPS vs. 36,000 IOPS / 3,300 IOPS of the 20 GB. One reason behind the 24 GB variant's existence could be that a combination of different Intel technologies partition the SSD, taking away small amounts of capacity. The extra 4 GB of capacity might more than make up for the slightly lower performance. Both drives use SLC NAND flash chips, which are more durable than MLC NAND flash, and can take more rewrite cycles (something that factors in heavily for caching SSDs). Both drives are available in 2.5" SATA 3 Gb/s and mSATA 3 Gb/s form-factors. The 20 GB variant was earlier put to test.