According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced to present the latest gaming products at COMPUTEX 2022. The innovations include its flagship gaming solutions powered by Intel 12th gen processors. The perfect combination of the IF Design Awarded Z690 AORUS XTREME motherboard, high-end key components, and big size monitors provide remarkable gaming experience. The Project Stealth kit enables an easy and simple assembly experience with special interface and cables hidden design while further enhances the system airflow for optimized cooling effect. Meanwhile, the new gaming PC, Model S delivers powerful, cool, and silent operation even on 3A games with its slick and neat aesthetics.

Moreover, the latest AMD Socket AM5 motherboards including gaming series of X670 AORUS XTREME, MASTER, PRO AX and X670 AERO D for designers will be first exposed in this exhibition as well. Users can take a sneak peek at the advanced design and extensive features of PCIe 5.0 graphics slot, M.2 Gen5 interface, exclusive PCIe/M.2 EZ-latch on GIGABYTE motherboards.

Silicon Power unleashes its newest PCIe 4.0 SSD, the UD90, featuring storage capacities up to 1 TB with 3D NAND flash technology. Give your system the power of PCIe 4.0 with the budget-friendly UD90. Providing the best bang for your buck, it reaches read speeds up to 4,800 MB/s and write speeds up to 4,200 MB/s. It also boasts 2x faster data transfer rates than its predecessor, PCIe 3.0, for sustained use and dependable performance. With this much efficiency, the UD90 allows you to maximize your creative output at an unbeatable value.

Don't lose your train of thought with slow load times! Designed with content creators in mind, the UD90 is built to handle the demanding levels of multi-tasking that's required of creative production, effortlessly. With support for NVMe 1.4 and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, the UD90 offers uninterrupted productivity via higher performance and lower latency for seamless execution across applications.

Taiwanese ASMedia appears to become the first peripheral chipset company to launch a USB4 host-controller chipset, based on reports from an event the company held this week. ASMedia is at least the first company to get certified by the USB-IF, as its ASM4242 host-controller is the first of its kind to get certified. The ASM4242 was certified alongside the ASM2464PD device controller, although it's unclear exactly what type of device controller this is, but the PD in the model name indicates that it has native support for USB PD power delivery, without the need of any additional chips. This should allow for simpler implementation, as well as it would be saving some PCB space that the extra components no longer take up.

The ASM4242 is said to have a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and does as such support up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth. As this is a two port controller, it's still not quite enough to enable both ports to operate at the full 40 Gbps that USB4 Gen 3x2 supports, but it should be enough for most consumer implementations. ASMedia has also added support for DP Alt Mode and USB4 is of course also backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3. ASMedia is already sampling its partners. We should hopefully get a better look at what ASMedia is working on next week, but DigiTimes mentions that ASMedia has also developed PCIe 5.0 controllers of some kind and have finished the tape-out of said products.

SK hynix Inc. today announced availability of the "Platinum P41" PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD that distills technical excellence driven by unmatched speeds and reliability. The Platinum series represents the company's flagship retail lineup geared towards gamers and content creators looking to turbo-boost PC performance. Launched as SK hynix's first PCIe 4.0 SSD built with advanced 176-layer NAND flash memory, the Platinum P41 is now available for purchase on Amazon in the U.S. in 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB capacity options.

Designed to excel among PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the Platinum P41 offers sequential read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 6,500 MB/s with an industry-leading endurance rating of up to 1,200 TBW. The Platinum P41 also provides further assurance of reliability with an SK hynix in-house "Aries" controller, which in itself contributes to the superior read/write speeds.

ADATA Technology (Taiwan Stock Exchange: 3260.TWO), a manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, mobile accessories, gaming products, electric power trains, and industrial solutions today announced the LEGEND 850 PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The new LEGEND 850 delivers a new level of performance for advanced design applications, such as 3D modelling and animation.

The ADATA LEGEND 850 gives users a major upgrade in performance with sequential read and write speeds of 5,000/4,500 MB per second. This makes it up to 3 times faster than a standard PCIe Gen3 SSD and 9 times faster than a SATA SSD. What's more, it supports the latest Intel and AMD platforms, desktop and notebook PCs, and is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 for added convenience.

With Gigabyte and more recently MSI offering internal consumer SSDs, it now looks like ASUS is getting ready to join the fray. There's no shortage of companies that are selling SSDs and most are based on very similar hardware and firmware, so the question is what ASUS is going to bring to the market to differentiate itself from the competition. The company hasn't provided any real details at this point in time, beyond a picture posted on its Taiwanese Facebook page.

The picture doesn't give away a ton of details, but what's clear is that ASUS aims to use its ROG gaming brand for the first product that ends up under the Strix sub-brand. The first drive will be called SQ7 and it's a standard M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive that not unsurprisingly uses four PCIe lanes and will come in at least a 1 TB size. It's possible that ASUS will launch its new SSD either during its "Boundless" event on the 17th of May, or during Computex, which kicks off on the 24th of May.

Update: Based on the sharp-eyed observations of our Editor-In-Chief, its highly likely that the ASUS ROG Strix SSD will be based on Phison's E18 controller, paired with Micron's 176-layer NAND, using Phison's reference PCB design. This means that ASUS would go straight after other high-performance drives, like the Kingston KC3000, Corsair MP600 Pro LPX and MSI's Spatium M480. Keep in mind that not all early product shots are of the actual product though, so we're just going to have to wait and see what ASUS brings to the table.

Apacer, a leading manufacturer of storage and memory, has launched a god-tier M.2 Gen4 x4 SSD, the AS2280Q4U. 7,400/7,000 MB/s read-write speeds mean you can load a world in a moment. The SSD is protected by heat dissipation fins that keep temperatures low and performance sky-high. It meets the M.2 SSD requirements for PS5 in all respects, making it a simple solution to gain extra storage space on PS5. And a 5-year global warranty makes it an easy choice for both gamers and digital content creators like animators, YouTubers and video editors.

AS2280Q4U's blazing-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 interface is fully compliant with the NVMe 1.4 standard. With sequential read/write performance of up to 7,400/7,000 MB/s, it is twice as fast as a Gen3 SSD, and 15 times faster than a SATA SSD, providing unparalleled performance for gamers and video creators.

Next week at Dell Technologies World, KIOXIA America, Inc. will be on hand to demonstrate how its innovative solid state drives (SSDs) are accelerating customer application performance and enabling product breakthroughs. From SSDs designed with PCIe 5.0 technology that boost power and performance to the industry's first lineup of Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S SSDs, best in class drives from KIOXIA are used in a number of Dell product lines.

KIOXIA, the inventor of NAND flash, sits at the forefront of flash storage and SSD innovation. Achievements such as the introduction of 3D flash memory, XL-FLASH storage class memory, and new form factors and interfaces underscore the contributions the company has made toward enabling next-gen applications - and transforming the digital world.

GRAID Technology has announced the SupremeRAID SR-1010, which it claims is the "world's fastest NVMe and NVMeoF RAID card for PCIe Gen 4." A PCIe 4.0 evolution of the SupremeRAID SR-1000, the new SupremeRAID SR-1010 upgrades the on-board GPU RAID accelerator from the Nvidia T1000 (Turing) to an Nvidia RTX A2000 (Ampere) GPU. The improved hardware leverages the PCIe 4.0 protocol to achieve RAID speeds in excess of anything you've seen before, with sequential reads rated at 110 GBps and sequential write performance of 22 GBps. Read and write IOPS are set at 19M and 1.5M, respectively.

The change in GPU and PCIe interface means the upgraded SupremeRAID SR-1010 offers a 19% performance boost in read and an 83% write performance increase compared to the model it replaces. The GRAID SupremeRAID SR-1010 offers support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and RAID 10 arrays with support for a maximum of four groups, and is capable of managing up to 32 NVMe SSDs under Linux and Windows Server 2019 and 2022 (though performance there takes a big haircut). Availability is pegged for May 1st, but GRAID didn't provide a sticker price for its GPU-powered RAID solution.

Today Solidigm is expanding its performance-optimized D7 Product Series with new solid-state storage drives (SSDs)—the D7-P5520 and the D7-P5620—for data center and enterprise use. These drives are optimized for real-world compute and storage server workloads and are available in an extended range of form factors and capacities. They offer accelerated performance and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) by enabling a smaller storage footprint and lower power consumption. The D7-P5520 (designed for read-intensive and light mixed workloads), and the D7-P5620 (designed for mixed workloads), are the first family of products being introduced by Solidigm, which launched as a standalone company in December 2021.

The D7 Series comprises the industry's most advanced PCIe 4.0 SSD family of products given their capacity offerings, breadth of form factors and optimized performance capabilities. These SSDs are optimized for real-world workloads and reflect insights gained from deep technical engagements with leading cloud service providers, OEMs, and storage innovators. Designed and tested with zero tolerance for data errors, consistently durable IOPS and QoS, and with near-zero lifetime performance degradation, they can be deployed with the utmost confidence.

In a move that bolsters its comprehensive PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive (SSD) portfolio, Kioxia Corporation has introduced the KIOXIA XG8 Series of client SSDs for high-end notebooks, desktops, gaming systems, workstations, as well as data center boot applications. Designed to bring next-generation performance to demanding client environments, the XG8 Series enables power users to take advantage of PCIe Gen4 x4 speed and ample storage space.

The XG8 Series is available in an M.2 type 2280 form factor and supports optional security features using the latest TCG Pyrite 2.01 and TCG Opal 2.01 standards to ensure data is kept secure at home, in the office or on the road. In addition, the XG8 Series features end-to-end data path protection for greater data integrity.

AMD is preparing to launch its highly-anticipated AM5 socket for the next generation of motherboards. And today, thanks to the sources over at Tom's Hardware, we have information regarding memory support for B650 and X670 motherboards. According to the report, both B650 and X670 chipsets will limit the user's memory option to the latest DDR5 memory standard, making it impossible for users with already existing DDR4 memory to perform a seamless upgrade to a new platform. So far, we don't have a lot of details about Zen4's integrated memory controller, and we can't be certain if it supports DDR5 only or carries legacy DDR4 support. However, it seems like B650 and X670 motherboards will have no plans to enable the DDR4 standard memory usage.

Additionally, the report confirms that the B650 chipset is connected to the AM5 socket via PCIe 4.0 x4 connection and has eight lanes of PCIe 4.0 (four of which are for M.2 SSD), four SATA, and lots of USB ports. Documents suggest that the chipset-socket connection is available using PCIe 5.0 for some AM5 processors, so we have to wait and see how it works. As far as high-end X670 is concerned, this chipset is a combination of two chipset dies, presumably a combination of two B650 modules. This doesn't work as the older north/southbridge type of a solution but rather doubled connectivity of a single B650 chipset. We have to wait for the official launch to confirm this information.

EK, the leading computer liquid cooling solutions provider, is introducing a new vertical GPU mounting bracket. This is an evolution of the EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder and it is called EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder EVO - Gen4 Riser. It is the most secure and rigid vertical GPU mounting mechanism, as it stands out for the way it uses two ATX motherboard mounting points to additionally secure the graphics card. Not only is this unique holder implementing unique mounting technologies, but it also uses thicker materials than other competitive solutions on the market. The list of upgrades to the original design also includes the offset-ability, PCIe 4.0 riser cable, EK-Matrix 7 compliance, and compatibility with EK-Quantum Vector Active Backplates.

Displaying your water-cooled graphics card or, alternatively, a GPU with a standard massive air cooler has become more and more popular over the years. One way to do this is to use the special aftermarket brackets that allow mounting the GPU vertically if the case is not already equipped with vertical PCIe slots. However, the user often faces issues with how these solutions work since they don't offer enough support, allowing the GPU to move around, sag, and stay crooked. This can significantly impair the aesthetics of said PC, which is a major problem as improving the looks is the main purpose of this bracket. Things can be even more challenging with liquid cooling, especially when installing fittings and tubing to a vertically placed GPU. Not to mention trying to ship a PC with a vertically mounted GPU.

Pictures and details of Intel's next NUC, that goes under the codename Wall Street Canyon has made its way onto the internet and besides the expected upgrade to Intel's 12th generation of Core processors, there aren't any huge changes, but there are at least a few interesting differences. The most obvious one being that Wall Street Canyon has two USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports around the front, instead of one USB-A and one Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port around the front of the current model. It's not clear if this is due to a technical limitation of Thunderbolt 4, or if Intel decided it was more useful to keep the two Thunderbolt ports around the back for most of its potential customers. Regardless, this is where the two Thunderbolt 4 ports now reside, alongside two HDMI 2.0b ports, with the mini-DP port having been dropped altogether.

Other connectivity options include 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, a USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps) and a USB 2.0 port around the back, as well as a 3.5 mm audio jack around the front. The Wall Street Canyon NUC is also said to have models with Qi charging for mobile devices. As far as CPU choices go, the base model should be an Intel Core i3-1220P, ranging to the top model with a Core i7-1270P, or in other words, most of the 28 W TDP Alder Lake-P processors. Wall Street Canyon has space for one internal 2.5-inch drive, as well as a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, a shorter M.2 2260 slot for a SATA based drive and an Intel AX211 WiFi and Bluetooth module. The two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots support memory speeds of up to 3200 MHz. No word on pricing as yet, but we'd expect the pricing to be similar, if not slightly higher than the current models

MSI is launching a new blazing fast model to its SSD product line - SPATIUM M480 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PLAY, exceeding all performance requirements for PlayStation 5 use. MSI SSDs enhances our company's identity as a high-performance PC brand by expanding our ecosystem and covering the high-performance storage category. These SSDs are built with high-quality, high-density 3D NAND flash that delivers great performance with up to 7000 MB/sec read. On SPATIUM M480 PLAY, the sleek dual finish aluminium heatsink is designed to fit the PlayStation 5. This improves heat-dissipation to sustain transfer speeds across all platforms for professionals, content creators, and gamers. Other performance-improving technologies include DRAM cache buffer and an SLC cache.

SPATIUM M480 PLAY is the optimal product made for console gaming in the SPATIUM lineup with four storage capacities - 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB. This brings next-level storage performance to players for PlayStation 5, content creators, and PC gamers. Expanding the storage device on the PS5 is a simple upgrade that allows for lightning-fast save and load times for large game files.

As industries compete to capitalize on the abundance of data generated by intelligent, connected devices, implementation of an intelligent data strategy has become even more critical. Edge computing has played an instrumental role to address this demand, but the edge itself has continued to evolve with the ever-growing need for even more demanding, real-time computing. Rugged edge computing enables applications that require real-time, low latency data processing and storage to function reliably in volatile environments that are not friendly to regular systems.

Trends and technologies such as Industry 4.0, AIoT, and 5G are driving the need for improved intelligence at the rugged edge. Businesses and organizations want more computing power at the edge because of the benefits it provides to their operations. NVM Express (NVMe) is an essential enabling technology for rugged edge computing, reducing latency and accelerating data processing to the point where connected devices can operate anywhere to perform machine learning, artificial intelligence, and inference computing. Real-time data access and analytics are turning rugged edge computing into a competitive necessity across all sectors and industries.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today, announces the latest TB560-BTC PRO mining motherboard. Designed to support Intel's 10th/11th generation processors in the LGA1200 package, the new TB560-BTC PRO mining motherboard brings outstanding utility to your next mining station.

Capable of supporting upto 12 graphic cards, the TB560-BTC PRO motherboard carries 11 PCIe 3.0 x1 Slots designed to extract the best performance out of modern-day graphic cards used in mining operations. Additionally, it also carries a faster PCIe 4.0 x16 Slot that users can utilize the maximum performance from a single GPU assisted by Intel's 11th Generation Core processors performing at the highest level at relative ease.

AMD today announced a new addition to the Instinct MI200 family of accelerators. Officially titled Instinct MI210 accelerator, AMD tries to bring exascale-class technologies to mainstream HPC and AI customers with this model. Based on CDNA2 compute architecture built for heavy HPC and AI workloads, the card features 104 compute units (CUs), totaling 6656 Streaming Processors (SPs). With a peak engine clock of 1700 MHz, the card can output 181 TeraFLOPs of FP16 half-precision peak compute, 22.6 TeraFLOPs peak FP32 single-precision, and 22.6 TFLOPs peak FP62 double-precision compute. For single-precision matrix (FP32) compute, the card can deliver a peak of 45.3 TFLOPs. The INT4/INT8 precision settings provide 181 TOPs, while MI210 can compute the bfloat16 precision format with 181 TeraFLOPs at peak.

The card uses a 4096-bit memory interface connecting 64 GBs of HMB2e to the compute silicon. The total memory bandwidth is 1638.4 GB/s, while memory modules run at a 1.6 GHz frequency. It is important to note that the ECC is supported on the entire chip. AMD provides an Instinct MI210 accelerator as a PCIe solution, based on a PCIe 4.0 standard. The card is rated for a TDP of 300 Watts and is cooled passively. There are three infinity fabric links enabled, and the maximum bandwidth of the infinity fabric link is 100 GB/s. Pricing is unknown; however, availability is March 22nd, which is the immediate launch date.

AMD places this card directly aiming at NVIDIA A100 80 GB accelerator as far as the targeted segment, with emphasis on half-precision and INT4/INT8 heavy applications.

WDC recently stated that certain materials were contaminated in late January at NAND Flash production lines in Yokkaichi and Kitakami, Japan which are joint ventures with Kioxia, according to TrendForce's investigations. Before this incident, TrendForce had forecast that the NAND Flash market will see a slight oversupply the entire year and average price from Q1 to Q2 will face downward pressure. However, the impact of WDC's material contamination issue is significant and Samsung's experience during the previous lockdown of Xi'an due to the pandemic has also retarded the magnitude of the NAND Flash price slump. Therefore, the Q1 price drop will diminish to 5~10%. In addition, according to TrendForce, the combined WDC/Kioxia NAND Flash market share in the 3Q21 was as high as 32.5%. The consequences of this latest incident may push the price of NAND Flash in Q2 to spike 5~10%.

The contaminated products in this incident are concentrated in 3D NAND (BICS) with an initial estimate of 6.5exabytes (approximately 6,500M GB) affected. According to TrendForce, damaged bits account for 13% of the group's output in 1Q22 and approximately 3% of the total output for the year. The normal production schedule for the entire line has yet to be confirmed. It is worth noting that the damages announced by WDC likely do not account for total losses stemming for this event and the number of damaged Kioxia parts has not been aggregated, so the total number of affected bits may increase further.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today, unveils the brand new TZ590-BTC motherboard. Designed based on the Intel Z590 chipset that runs Intel 10th and 11th gen processors, BIOSTAR's new TZ590-BTC motherboard targets the mid-range audience of casual gamers, content creators, and users looking to build an HTPC for casual-content consumption. The TZ590-BTC also specializes in crypto mining with native inbuilt functionality to support this claim.

Available in a full-ATX form factor, the new TZ590-BTC motherboard provides a strong feature-rich base for users, with functionality such as PCIe 4.0, PCIe M.2 4.0. An 11 Phase power design controlled by BIOSTAR's signature DIGITAL PWM technology keeps everything running smooth and safe. 4x DDR4 RAM slots that support up to 3600 (OC) with a maximum capacity of 128 GB come in handy for all purposes. The TZ590-BTC has 8x PCIe 3.0x1 Slots, ideal for BITCOIN and ETHEREUM mining, as well as a single PCIe 4.0 x16 Slot targeting exceptional performance.

MSI is announcing the launch of a new Gen4 PCIe NVMe model to its SSD category - SPATIUM M450 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2. This new product allows MSI to continue to refine its identity as a high-performance PC brand and grow its product ecosystem by expanding SPATIUM, our high-performance storage category. Our SSDs are built with high-quality, high-density 3D NAND flash that deliver the best compromise of performance and endurance for professionals, content creators, and gamers.

SPATIUM M450 was developed to meet the expectations of mainstream SSD consumers. Its PCIe 4 interface offers fast speeds up to 3600 MB/sec sequential read and 3000 MB/sec sequential write speeds that allow users to enjoy rapid file transfers and short loading times. Available storage capacities are 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB. M450 supports a comprehensive range of data error correction features including LPDC ECC and E2E Data Protection, providing a high rated TBW (Terabytes Written) for excellent durability and longevity backed with a limited 5-year warranty.

Update Feb 22nd: We've posted our in-depth review of the MSI Spatium M450.

AMD announced the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 at CES just a few days ago. These new entry-level cards debut the company's first 6 nm GPU, codenamed "Navi 24"—the smallest chip from the RDNA2 family. Navi 24 is barely the size of a motherboard chipset, roughly 100 mm² in die size. The chip only features a 64-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, needing just two memory chips to achieve 4 GB of memory size. While AMD has been fairly quiet about it, people quickly found out that the Navi 24 GPU only uses a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface. While the physical connector is x16, there is only enough signal traces for x4.Even the most updated 2.43.0 public version of GPU-Z misreports the bus interface as PCIe x16 4.0 though, which will certainly lead to confusion in the reviewer community who trust GPU-Z to report the correct specs and speeds for their articles. Maybe that's the reason why AMD has decided to not send us a sample this time—a first in 15 years.

Update Jan 20th: GPU-Z 2.44.0 has been released, which properly reports the PCIe bus configuration of RX 6500 XT.

EK, is launching a stand-alone PCIe 4.0 X16 riser cable. This premium high-speed cable is compatible with all modern motherboards. That includes those based on Z590, Z690, X570, and B550 chipsets. It was tested with both the RX 6000 series AMD GPUs and RTX 30 series NVIDIA GPUs. Although a true PCIe 4.0 riser cable, it is 100% compatible with PCIe 3.0 standard.

This high-speed 4.0 GPU riser cable features improved individual PCIe laneway shielding that blocks unwanted external EMI/RFI and interference between channels. EK-Loop PCI-E 4.0 Riser Cable is designed to match the PCIe impedance differential of 85 ohms. Signals that are traveling between the motherboard and the GPU are matched at the proper frequency without any capacitors in the cable that would introduce a potential point of failure and result in a less compact riser.

The all-new XPOWER XS70 PCIe 4.0 SSD from Silicon Power (SP) is about to take gaming to new highs with its thrilling performance and unique design that will give hardcore gamers the boost to take on opponents for hours on end.

With a standard data transfer rate that's 2x faster than the 3.0 version, the XS70 PCIe Gen4 x4 with 3D NAND flash memory and NVMe 1.4 support is exactly what serious gamers need to crush the competition. Mind-blowing continuous read and write speeds up to 7,300 MB/s and 6,800 MB/s, respectively, enable the XS70 to push the limits of what an SSD can do so you can break new records.