MINISFORUM has recently unveiled a new high-performance Mini PC, the HX100G, now available in their official store. This compact system boasts the powerful combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS flagship processor and Radeon RX 6650M graphics card, making it an ideal choice for gamers, designers, and creative professionals. The sale price for the barebone version is set at $719, the 32 GB RAM+1 TB SSD version is set at $905, and the 64 GB RAM + 1 TB SSD version is priced at $995. As an iterative upgrade to the HX99G, the HX100G features an enhanced CPU in the form of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS. Manufactured using a 4 nm process, this processor boasts 8 cores, 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.8 GHz, and a maximum boost clock of 5.1 GHz. With a TDP ranging from 35 W to 54 W and a generous 16 MB of L3 cache, it also integrates the Radeon 780M integrated GPU, utilizing the FP8 slot. Compared to the 6900HX, the HX100G demonstrates an 8% improvement in single-core performance and a 16% improvement in multi-core performance.

The HX100G is equipped with the AMD Radeon RX 6650M dedicated graphics card (GDDR6 8 GB), supporting AMD Smart Access Memory technology. With a TDP of up to 100 watts, it meets the demands of 1080p high-quality AAA gaming and excels in professional photo editing, 4K video editing, and complex 3D rendering tasks. One of the notable advantages of the HX100G is its robust expandability. Featuring two DDR5 memory slots, it supports a maximum of 64 GB dual-channel memory, with DDR5 clocked at 5600 MHz—an impressive 47% increase over the HX99G's 4800 MHz. In addition to the default M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD slot (supporting up to 2 TB), an extra M.2 2280 SSD slot is provided, supporting NGFF SATA or NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs for further expansion.

Samsung is giving finishing touches to a new line of PCI-Express solid-state drives (SSDs) that offer performance that matches or beats the current SSD 950 Pro series, at lower price-points, the 960 EVO. These drives leverage the company's 48-layer 3D-VNAND flash memory, and the new "Polaris" SSD controller by Samsung, to serve up performance that beats the 950 Pro. Samsung could transfer some of the cost-savings in using the inexpensive flash standard to the consumer, highlighted by the company's decision to brand these drives "EVO."

Tom's Hardware discovered that the Samsung PM961 drives are analogous to the 960 EVO, featuring identical components - the "Polaris" controller, and 48-layer TLC 3D-VNAND flash chips . These drives come in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, with sequential transfer rates of up to 3000 MB/s reads, with up to 1150 MB/s writes; up to 360,000 IOPS 4K random-read, and up to 280,000 IOPS 4K random-write. The 960 EVO will ship in M.2 NGFF-2280 and PCIe add-on card form-factors, with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 bus interfaces. The drives will support the NVMe protocol.

Intel plans to launch the first consumer SSD based on its new 3D Xpoint memory technology, a successor to NAND flash which promises exponential gains in performance and capacity, some time in 2016. The Intel-branded drive will be called Intel Optane, will come in modern form-factors such as M.2/NGFF, SATA-Express, PCI-Express (add-on card), and will take advantage of the new NVMe protocol.

Early prototypes of Optane demoed at IDF already offer up to 5.5 times the throughput of NAND flash-based DC P3700 series SSDs, and we're only talking about single-queue performance. Compared to the queue depth of just 32 commands for AHCI, NVMe offers command queue depth of a staggering 65,535 commands. Since Micron Technology is the co-developer of 3D Xpoint, it's likely that we'll also see Micron/Crucial branded drives based on this tech.

Innodisk ,the service-driven flash provider, announces an update of its 3ME embedded flash series with the launch of the new 3ME3 DRAM-less SSDs for industrial, embedded and enterprise applications. The 3ME3 series of SSDs offers strong real world performance in sequential and random I/O using custom firmware and synchronous NAND. The DRAM-less design achieves 100% data integrity in the face of power loss and allows space saving form factors including mSATA, M.2, SATADOM, CFast, and SATA Slim.

DRAM-less design not only prevents data loss from sudden power failure, but makes for a smaller SSD. The 3ME3 series is able to pack a reliable and high performance SSD into small form factors. The absence of volatile memory buffers means power loss is easily handled by Innodisk's iDataGuard technology. A new generation of custom firmware along with the use of synchronous NAND flash allows Innodisk to achieve high real world performance. Moving to a page based algorithm for fine-grained wear leveling and write optimization lets the 3ME3 series to achieve 10/20K Random IOPS.

Team Group Inc., the world's leading memory brand has announced today the launch of our solid state drive TM4PS4/TM8PS4. This next generation high speed SSD M.2 (also known as the Next Generation Form Factor, NGFF), provides your mobile computing devices an excellent data saving performance with ultra compact size and lightweight for convenient portable use.

The Team M.2 SSD is exactly designed according to the M.2 specification. TM4PS4/TM8PS4 adopt a new generation of SATA III 6Gb/s transmission interface which has a stunning data transfer performance and compatibility. For different environment usage, TM4PS4/TM8PS4 comes in two sizes, 22x42mm and 22x80mm. It is designed for excellent performance and to satisfy all kinds of specification requirements for consumers' motherboards, notebooks, mobile devices and developing embedded devices.

Since the PCIe SSD was adopted by Apple as a standard accessory in MacBook Air in 2013, its excellent flash storage performance featuring high-speed transmission has led the competition to follow, including the fully PCIe SSD-supported Microsoft Windows 8.1 operating system and the new generation Intel CPU chip. According to a survey conducted by the global market research firm TrendForce, the transmission speed of PCIe G2 (PCIe Generation 2.0) surpassed that of SATA III SSD in 2014. Moreover, several high-end notebooks are expected to replace SATA III SSD with PCIe SSD since Apple and Microsoft are boosting the market demand. With the price gap between them shrinking, PCIe G2 will potentially become the mainstream specification in the PC SSD market in 2015.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, updates its NGFF SSD series. Super Talent next generation form factor SSDs are internally mounted high performance storage solutions utilizing M.2 connectors. These devices are designed to be used for embedded applications and mobile computing in a variety of industries.

"Super Talent's NGFF SSDs are used extensively in today's rapidly expanding ultra-lightweight computing sector. The small form factor and high performance speeds make them a highly sought after storage solution for mobile computing," said VP of Engineering, Shimon Chen.

KINGMAX announces M.2 SSD high compatibility interface. The common interface M.2 SSD that made its debut in 2013 has started to enter the application market recently. The major memory manufacturer KINGMAX is now officially announcing the release of a new M.2 SSD product to manufacturers.

M.2 SSD (originally known as NGFF) evolved from the Mini PCI-E (PCI Express mini Card) specifications, and supports PCI-E and SATA interfaces simultaneously. This device covers a wide variety of products and allows great flexibility in connection designs. It also has powerful bandwidth expansion capabilities and is gradually become the main storage equipment of ultra-lightweight mobile computing products.

Addonics Technologies (www.addonics.com) today announced the M2/SSD/HDD Duplicator -- a family of high-speed duplicators designed for making multiple copies of M2 (NGFF) SSD or 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD media from a single master drive. Each duplicator comes bundled with a 2.5" M2 (NGFF) flash drive kit that turns a M2 (NGFF) card into a 2.5" SATA SSD. You can mix and match the M2 (NGFF) SSD, 2.5" SSD or standard SATA hard drives into the duplicator, which makes it a handy tool for transferring content between multiple media formats.

There is no computer needed or complex software required to operate any Addonics duplicator. Just open the doors on the drive bays, load the master media into the source bay and the target media of capacity equal or larger into the target bays, lock the drive doors and push the start button to start the copying process. Designed with snap-in drive bays, drives can be easily added or removed without any special tool, just like an ordinary cassette tape.

Mushkin unveiled its second-generation Scorpion line of PCIe SSDs, which made its debut in June, 2013. A prototype of the series was shown at the 2014 International CES. The second-generation Scorpion leverages LSI's SandForce 3700 controller, which features both SATA 6 Gb/s and PCI-Express 2.0 x4 interface. In this implementation, the chip is wired to the latter, and is seated on a half-height add-on card with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 bus interface. The drive is bootable. All eight ONFI channels on the controller are populated by Toshiba-made 20 nm MLC NAND flash chips.

The controller is so highly integrated, that there are virtually no other components on the card, than itself, and the NAND flash chips. There are traces on the card for three large capacitors, which the controller can use for its bad power protection mechanism. When it senses a power failure or erratic power, the capacitors will supply enough power for the drive to finish its last safe write operation, and power down, to prevent data loss. In terms of performance, the controller offers sequential transfer rates as high as 1800 MB/s. Mushkin also showed off an M.2 drive based on the same controller, but with just four of its eight ONFI channels populated, which shouldn't be a problem, given that M.2 interface, with its two notches only offers 6 Gb/s interface speeds.

In addition to the HyperX Fury series, Kingston showed off one of the first client SSDs in the 2.5-inch SATA form-factor that's based on the new SandForce 3700 controller platform by LSI. The drive is unnamed as of now, but will feature in the company's SSDNow family of client SSDs. The controller features pins for both SATA 6 Gb/s and PCI-Express 2.0 x4. On drives built in the PCIe add-on card form-factor, the controller offers sequential transfer rates as high as 1,800 MB/s. SATA 6 Gb/s should certainly bottleneck it, but it could also be one of the fastest drives in its form-factor. The dual interface makes the controller ready for the SATA-Express form-factor, with backwards compatibility for SATA 6 Gb/s; as well as NGFF. Kingston didn't reveal launch details.

ADATA Technology has announced its presence at the 6th annual Accelerating Innovation Summit (AIS 2013) as a gold sponsor. Responding to the latest industry and market needs, ADATA will display two potent solid state drive (SSD) offerings: the SX1000L server SSD and the company's groundbreaking PCIe based SSD solution. These storage systems are designed for both server applications, and for system integrators to effectively manage the rising data challenges faced by today's organizations and systems planners.

The SX1000L server SSD is a 2.5" form factor SATA 6Gb/sec solution that is provided with customized over-provisioning and high data compression efficiency. With the majority of data in enterprise environments being compressible, the SX1000L provides sustained performance, as well as superior endurance and reliability. Sequential read speeds reach 550 MB/sec, and sequential write is as high as 500 MB/sec, with IOPS of 75K and 45K (Maximum 4K random read and write, respectively).

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its Super Talent PCIe DX1 SSD. The Super Talent PCIe DX1 is 22.00mm x 80.00mm x 3.5mm. Although small in form factor, it is lightning quick when it comes to speed to match and satisfy the demands of a server or mobile environment. Next generation mobile computing can take full advantage of performance with these space saving SSDs. The 128 MB internal cache on the Super Talent PCIe DX1 further speeds up application load times and the overall unit is easily mounted without any cables.

Plextor (www.plextor.com), leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, gave a sneak preview of the upcoming M6 Drive and M.2 form factor SSD solutions at the IFA show in Berlin.

Plextor M6 Series
The M6 is the anticipated successor to the Plextor M5 Series. The M6 is a 2,5", 5 mm solid state drive for the consumer market and is scheduled to come in the following versions: a version for the high performance segment, the Pro version; and a version to cater the needs of average computer users, the S version. The M6 features the next generation of Plextor's proprietary TrueSpeed technology that works in tandem with the Marvell 88SS9187 controller for enhanced performance and reliability.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its NGFF SSD lineup.

Super Talent's NGFF lineup is based on the M.2 form factor for next generation notebooks. NGFF DX1 is 22.00 mm x 80.00 mm x 3.5 mm that supports speeds of up to 480/400 MB/s sequential read and write with a SATA-III interface. These space saving SSDs are the perfect solution for next generation mobile computing. The NGFF DX1 also has an internal cache to further speed up application load times and is easily mounted without any cables.

Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced the ratification of its revision 3.2 specification. The latest specification includes SATA Express, a new specification that enables the coexistence of SATA and PCIe storage devices, as well as enhancements in power management, new SATA form-factors, and optimizations for solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs).

"SATA technology continues to evolve to accommodate ever-changing storage industry requirements," said Mladen Luksic, SATA-IO President. "The updates featured in the revision 3.2 specification, such as SATA Express and enhancements for emerging solid state hybrid drives, are driven by current market trends. These new features demonstrate SATA-IO's ongoing commitment to providing low-cost, high-performance storage solutions."

According to a leaked SSD product stack roadmap by Intel, scored by VR-Zone, the company is close to launching its next-generation performance-segment consumer SSDs, the SSD 530 series. The line succeeds Intel's SSD 520 and SSD 525 series, features the latest 20 nm MLC NAND flash, but the same LSI-SandForce SF-2281 controller (probably the latest revision, backed by a better firmware). According to the roadmap, the series should have debuted back in June, which never happened. Apparently, it's off by a month, and Intel moved its launch window to some time between the 8th and 12th of this month.

Intel's SSD 530 series will be available in three form-factors, including the familiar 2.5-inch SATA (7 mm-thick), NGFF M2, and mSATA. The drives will be available in 80 GB, 180 GB, 240 GB, and 360 GB for the M2 and mSATA form-factors; and 180 GB, 240 GB, 360 GB, and 480 GB for the 2.5-inch form-factor. At this point, nothing is known about their rated performance or pricing. Elsewhere in the lineup, SSD 335 series will continue throughout the year, going into Q1 2014, as Intel's mid-range SSD offering.

Impressed with the SX2000 enterprise SSD? Wish you could have those speeds on a consumer device? The AXNP280E from ADATA could soon become an option. This NGFF (next-generation form-factor) SSD is based on a client variant of the LSI-Sandforce SF-8639 controller, which interfaces with the system over PCI-Express 2.0 x4, and offers sequential transfer rates as high as 1,800 MB/s reads and writes, with up to 200,000 IOPS 4K random access, and features essential to client SSDs, such as TRIM and NCQ. Unlike the 2.5-inch SX2000, the AXNP280E is a little constrained with space, and comes in just 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB variants. The latter was on display.

Crucial started shipping its M500 line of consumer SSDs. Available in 2.5-inch SATA (7 mm-thick), mSATA, and NGFF M.2 form-factors, the drives combine Micron 20 nm MLC NAND flash with a Marvell-made processor. All three form-factors take advantage of 6 Gb/s SATA. The drive is available in 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities for all three form-factors, while the 2.5-inch gets a 960 GB "terabyte-class" capacity option, as well.

Sequential read speeds on all capacities are as high as 500 MB/s, while sequential write speeds cap out at 130 MB/s and 250 MB/s for the 120 GB and 240 GB variants, respectively; and reach 400 MB/s on the 480 GB and 960 GB variants. The drives are backed by 3-year limited warranties, 1.2 million hours MTBF, and 72 TB total bytes written (TBW) write endurance (that's 40 GB per day). TRIM, NCQ, and SMART are standard issue. The 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB variants are priced at US $129.99, $219.99, $399.99, and $599.99, respectively.

In addition to its 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s TLC NAND flash SSD, Plextor showed off its upcoming SSD in the NGFF form-factor, designed for next-generation Ultrabooks. Based on the same Marvell 88SS9189 processor and triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory as its 2.5-inch cousin, the drive differs in being a 42 x 22 mm (LxW) NGFF module, with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface. The drives will be sold in 128 GB and 256 GB capacities, featuring 256 MB and 512 MB DDR3 DRAM caches, respectively. On offer are read speeds of up to 700 MB/s, writes of up to 550 MB/s, and maximum 4K random write performance of 100,000 IOPS. The NGFF drives should arrive around the same time as Ultrabooks based on 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors.

Intel's next-generation SSD 530 series, which sees a single product line covering 2.5-inch and compact form-factors, arrives in the second quarter of 2013. The new series is being designed to offer high-performance even at smaller card form-factors, which is particularly important for the ultra-thin/Ultrabook ecosystem. The drive has been pictured in the newer NGFF (next generation form-factor), which is designed to be even smaller than mSATA.

While mSATA drives typically measure 51 x 30 mm, NGFF measures 42 x 22 mm. NGFF is a single interface featuring pins for both SATA and PCI-Express x2 or x4, and cards designed around its specification can either be SATA SSDs, or other bandwidth-heavy devices (such as 802.11ac WLAN controllers). Cards can even be designed to have an SATA SSD subunit on one side, and a PCI-Express device on the other, saving swathes of PCB real-estate in the process. The form-factor even supports double-sided SSDs such as this one from Lite-On, which features an independent SSD subunit on each side, which is striped in RAID 0. The NGFF Intel SSD 530 family will be introduced in Q2-2013, in two capacities - 80 GB and 180 GB.