ADATA Technology, a manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, mobile accessories, gaming products, electric power trains, and industrial solutions, plans to release next-generation SD Express cards by Q2 of 2021.

With the rise of social media influencers, user-generated content, and the deployment of 5G networks worldwide, content creators and others seek high-capacity, high-performance, and portable memory products to meet their needs. To this end, the SD Association (SDA) released SD7.0, which introduced two major new functions, which include the incorporation of the PCIe and NVMe interfaces into SD memory cards for a significant upgrade in read/write speeds. These new SD cards will be known as SD Express cards. ADATA will be launching a new SD Express memory card by Q2 of 2021.

Samsung is reportedly readying the 870 EVO line of SATA SSDs, with the drives succeeding the 860 EVO series. While there's no word on the type of NAND flash chips used with these drives, it's very likely that they feature a new generation 3D TLC (3 bits per cell) NAND flash memory, as QLC (4 bits per cell) has been marketed by Samsung under the 870 QVO series, which the company launched back in July 2020. The new-gen 3D TLC NAND could enable the 870 EVO drives to reach capacities as high as 4 TB, and offer slightly higher sequential transfer rates, with WinFuture.de reporting up to 560 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 530 MB/s writes, compared to 550/520 MB/s for the 860 EVO series. Being based on TLC (3 bpc) should also give these drives higher write endurance than the 870 QVO series.

In the upstream semiconductor industry, the major foundries such as TSMC and UMC are reporting fully loaded capacities, while in the downstream, the available production capacity for OSAT is also lacking, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Given this situation, suppliers of NAND Flash controller ICs such as Phison and Silicon Motion are now unable to meet upside demand from their clients. Not only have many controller IC suppliers temporarily stopped offering quotes for new orders, but they are also even considering raising prices soon because the negotiations between NAND Flash suppliers and module houses over 1Q21 contracts are now at the critical juncture. The potential increases in prices of controller ICs from outsourced suppliers (IC design houses) are currently estimated to be the range of 15-20%.

With regards to the demand side, demand has risen significantly for eMMC solutions with medium- and low-density specifications (i.e., 64 GB and lower), for which NAND Flash suppliers have mostly stopped updating the NAND Flash process technology, while maintaining support with the legacy 2D NAND or the 64L 3D NAND process. This is on account of strong sales for Chromebook devices and TVs. As older processes gradually account for a lowering portion of bit output proportions from NAND Flash suppliers, these companies are exhibiting a lowered willingness to directly supply such eMMC products to clients. As a result, clients now need to turn to memory module houses, which are able to source NAND Flash components and controllers, to procure eMMC products in substantial quantities.

The percentage distribution of 2021 NAND Flash bit demand by application currently shows that client SSD accounts for 31%, enterprise SSD 20%, eMMC/UFS 41%, and NAND wafer 8%, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. TrendForce expects NAND Flash ASP to undergo QoQ declines throughout 2021, since the number of NAND suppliers far exceeds DRAM suppliers, and the bit supply remains high. As Samsung, YMTC, SK Hynix, and Intel actively expand their NAND Flash bit output in 1Q21, the oversupply situation in the industry will become more severe, with a forecasted 6% QoQ increase in NAND Flash bit output and a 10-15% QoQ decline in NAND Flash ASP in 1Q21.

Greenliant has secured major design wins with its EnduroSLC solid state drives (SSDs) in a wide range of demanding, extreme environment applications for customers that need best-in-class reliability and product longevity. Greenliant's proprietary EnduroSLC Technology substantially enhances data retention and extends the write endurance of 1-bit-per-cell SSDs with advanced hardware ECC capabilities and NAND flash management algorithms. EnduroSLC SSDs not only offer superior data retention capabilities under complex temperature conditions, but also support 50K, 100K and industry-leading, ultra high 250K+ program-erase (P/E) cycles, which are at least a 5x improvement over pseudo-SLC (pSLC) SSDs and a 50x improvement over MLC NAND-based products.

For systems that are in remote locations and costly to maintain-from satellite to subsea communications-customers recognize the value of EnduroSLC SSDs; they can reliably operate and retain data for long periods of time in harsh conditions. Long-life, write-intensive products, such as transportation black box recorders and industrial data loggers, have also benefitted from the enhanced features of EnduroSLC SSDs. EnduroSLC storage products are designed with Greenliant's advanced SATA, NVMe PCIe and eMMC controllers, operate at industrial temperatures (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius) and are backed by the company's Long-Term Availability program (http://bit.ly/SSD-LTA-program), providing an extra level of support.

Total NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion in 3Q20, a 0.3% increase QoQ, while total NAND Flash bit shipment rose by 9% QoQ, but the ASP fell by 9% QoQ, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The market situation in 3Q20 can be attributed to the rising demand from the consumer electronics end as well as the recovering smartphone demand before the year-end peak sales season. Notably, in the PC market, the rise of distance education contributed to the growing number and scale of Chromebook tenders, but the increase in the demand for Chromebook devices has not led to a significant increase in NAND Flash consumption because storage capacity is rather limited for this kind of notebook computer. Moreover, clients in the server and data center segments had aggressively stocked up on components and server barebones during 2Q20 due to worries about the impact of the pandemic on the supply chain. Hence, their inventories reached a fairly high level by 3Q20. Clients are now under pressure to control and reduce their inventories during this second half of the year. With them scaling back procurement, the overall NAND Flash demand has also weakened, leading to a downward turn in the contract prices of most NAND Flash products.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced the SM8266, a complete enterprise-grade 16-channel PCIe 4.0 NVMe hardware plus firmware turnkey SSD controller solution. Customers can rapidly develop and bring to market enterprise SSDs for data centers by using our complete development platform that includes a turnkey NVMe firmware stack and hardware reference design kit.

"Our solution is the only complete PCIe Gen4 turnkey solution available today from an established merchant controller supplier," said Nelson Duann, Silicon Motion's Senior Vice President of Marketing and R&D. "Since the introduction of our PCIe Gen3 turnkey solution, we have established a longer track record of supplying turnkey solutions in terms of customer adoption and sale volume than any other company. Our Shannon Systems team is already custom designing enterprise-grade NVMe, Open-Channel and Key-Value SSDs using SM8266 for hyperscale customers' data centers with production expected in 2021."

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of quality, high-performance PC components and peripherals. Sharkoon Technologies now presents the RGB Slider, a new midi ATX case with a compact format. The case has a minimalist and simple design, and despite its low price range, it still has special features such as a side panel made of tempered glass and a front panel with an integrated RGB LED strip.

Thanks to its black finish and simple form, the RGB Slider makes a straightforward and unobtrusive impression. For subtle visual variation, the matt black front panel contains an RGB LED strip that can be illuminated in 14 preset color modes via the built-in addressable RGB controller. The lighting of the RGB LED strip can be freely adjusted through compatible mainboards with a 5 V-D-coded-G or 5 V-D-G pin header and using software such as ASUS Aura Sync, MSI Mystic Light Sync, Gigabyte Fusion and ASRock Polychrome SYNC. The integrated RGB controller also allows the connection of further RGB components.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces the all new P500 Portable series SSD. Designed with the latest cutting-edge technology, the all new P500 Portable series SSD from BIOSTAR is fast, efficient and durable, with an aluminium casing engineered to dissipate heat fast, protect from electrostatic discharge, provide structural rigidity and look stylish while doing it.

The sleek refined design language of the P500 Portable series SSD is further defined by its inbuilt RGB indicator light system with a unique smart switch that works by tilting the device in an angle of 45 degrees or above which in turn will automatically turn off the RGB lights of the SSD unit and turn the lights back on again when the device is laid flat on a surface. This smart switchless design further enhances the device's protection against electrostatic discharge and data loss.

HighPoint Launches the Industry's first 8-Port PCIe 4.0 x16 M.2 NVMe RAID Controller -the SSD7540. Powered by a cutting-edge Gen4 switch chipset and the latest iteration of HighPoint's blazing fast NVMe RAID engine, the SSD7540 is capable of delivering unbeatable Gen4 transfer performance while supporting up to 64 TB of storage.

The SSD7540 boasts the highest port-count and performance capability of any single-controller M.2 NVMe RAID solution in today's marketplace. Each of the eight independent M.2 ports can support any off-the-shelf Gen4 or Gen3 NVMe SSD, up to 8 TB in size. The SSD7540's NVMe RAID engine and has been fine-tuned for native PCIe Gen4 hardware platforms, and can take full advantage of the dedicated PCIe Gen 4 x16 host connectivity to deliver 28,000 MB/s of transfer performance.

Building on a unique and diverse product portfolio across HDD and flash, Western Digital today announced a suite of new NVMe SSDs for enabling next-generation, data-centric architectures for data centers, industrial IoT, automotive and client applications. The new family includes the Ultrastar DC ZN540 ZNS NVMe SSD for designing a more efficient data center storage tier with competitive TCO; the Western Digital IX SN530 Industrial SSD for the extreme environments of industrial and automotive applications; and the 2 TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD for speeding up PC performance. Leveraging Western Digital's unique vertical integration capabilities - from designing and manufacturing its NAND flash to developing its own in-house SSD controllers and firmware - the new products underscore the company's continued strength and commitment in driving storage innovation for new system architectures, applications and use cases for global customers across cloud, OEM, enterprise, channel and retail end-user markets.

The amount of data created over the next three years will be more than the data created over the past 30 years, according to IDC. Billions of connected systems will generate a myriad of contextualized data sets from smart video to consumer and sensor data, which must be captured, transformed and analyzed to bring value to industries, businesses and people. Legacy architectures cannot keep up with today's data-intensive environments. The challenge is how to efficiently and cost-effectively build the data infrastructure that will keep up with data demands of the zettabyte-scale era. Storage is critical and fundamental to creating these new architectures and extracting value from data.

Phison Electronics, the industry leader in flash controller technology, is delivering the storage industry's fastest PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe SSD solution, its second generation PS5018-E18 (E18) PCIe 4.0 controller. The E18 succeeds the PS5016-E16 released in late 2019.

Phison designed the new E18 from the ground up on the efficient TSMC 12 nm process node. This provides SSD manufacturers with a state-of-the-art controller solution in an increasingly competitive field. The controller utilizes Phison's proprietary CoXProcessor 2.0 technology, an innovative SSD architecture that enables E18 to deliver exceptional performance and power efficiency. Phison architecture is also primed for AI-assisted storage, where its distributed architecture uses many small cores to perform the workload in parallel. The E18 is ideal for gamers, content creators, and computing enthusiasts, which demand the best experience. This ultra-low latency is possible only with NVMe SSDs.

KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) announced another significant technological contribution to cloud data center infrastructures. Today, the company expanded its broad portfolio of client, enterprise and data center SSDs with the addition of the XD6 Series. KIOXIA's E1.S form factor XD6 SSDs are the first Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) E1.S SSDs to address the specific requirements of hyperscale applications, including the performance, power and thermal requirements of the Open Compute Platform (OCP) NVMe Cloud SSD Specification.

Designed to maximize system density, efficiency and simplicity, KIOXIA's EDSFF E1.x SSDs represent the future of flash storage for servers in cloud and hyperscale data centers. As defined by the EDSFF consortium and leveraging the OCP NVMe Cloud SSD Specification, the flexible, efficient, small form factor E1.S replaces the M.2 form factor and delivers greater density, performance, reliability, and thermal management. E1.S is also designed to be hot pluggable for increased serviceability, which is another benefit over M.2.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today announces the launch of the ADATA SE770G RGB external solid state drive (SSD). Performance-driven and bold, SE770G features USB3.2 Gen 2 and Type-C connectivity, read/write speeds of up 1000/800 MB/s, and a spacious panel of RGB lighting.

The SE770G isn't the typical run-of-the-mill external SSD. With a spacious panel of RGB, it will light up workspaces at home and on the go with a glorious cube-patterned effect. In the past, external SSDs were relegated to the shadows while other RGB-adorned peripherals and devices took the spotlight on peoples' desktops. With the SE700G, it is now the time for external SSDs to shine.

Greenliant has started sampling its DRAM-less NVMe M.2 2280 ArmourDrive solid state drive (SSD) modules to customers requiring data storage with fast access speeds, while using less power than other PCIe-interface SSDs. The new 88 PX Series NVMe M.2 2280 ArmourDrive SSDs use high-quality, industrial 3-bit-per-cell (TLC) 3D NAND flash memory and support a broad range of capacities from 128 GB to 2 TB. See NVMe M.2 ArmourDrive product information at http://bit.ly/NVMe-M2-SSD

Forward Insights predicts that the NVMe PCIe SSD market will grow from $10.5B in 2019 to $29.2B in 2024. To address this demand and diverse customer requirements, Greenliant has expanded its NVMe M.2 ArmourDrive portfolio to offer 2280 form factor SSDs both with and without on-board DRAM. The DRAM-less NVMe M.2 2280 ArmourDrive products support the PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface and can reach up to 2,500/2,100 MB/s sequential read/write performance. Available in commercial (0 to +70 degrees Celsius) or industrial (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius) temperature, DRAM-less NVMe M.2 2280 ArmourDrive SSDs provide high reliability and low latency to a wide variety of applications, including industrial automation, cloud computing, security, networking, broadcasting and transportation.

OWC, the premier zero-emissions Mac and PC technology company, and a respected provider of Memory, External Drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions, and performance upgrade kits, announces the new OWC Envoy Pro Elektron USB-C Bus-Powered SSD. This new portable drive puts pro-grade speeds, dust and waterproof ruggedness, and universal compatibility in the palm of your hand.

The OWC Envoy Pro Elektron is the fastest, toughest mini-sized SSD in the universe. Pocket-sized tiny, this USB-C bus-powered drive is crushproof, dustproof, and waterproof for editing/saving personal and work files anywhere at up to 1011 MB/s real-world speed. That's like transferring 91 high res photos per second or a 5 GB movie in less than five seconds. The sleek, cool running aircraft-grade aluminium storage solution with drive status LED operates silently without a power adapter. With the included USB-C cable and Type-A adapter, the OWC Envoy Pro Elektron is plug and play compatible with Macs or PCs produced over the last decade, current models, and well into the future; as well as iPad Pro and Chromebook tablets.

Phison was first to market with a PCI-Express gen 4.0 client-segment NVMe SSD controller, the E16 series, which let it bag design wins with several DIY gaming PC SSD manufacturers. Not to be left behind by PCIe gen 4.0 controllers by its competitors, such as SMI, Marvell, Samsung, etc., offering higher performance than the E16, the company is designing a newer generation controller for high-performance client-segment SSDs, under the E18 family. TweakTown has access to early performance figures of a drive in production with this controller. The CrystalDiskMark screenshot shows the drive's sequential transfer rates to be 7381.21 MB/s reads, and 7025.86 MB/s sequential writes, making the E18 among the fastest PCIe gen 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD controllers known.

SK hynix and Intel today announced that they have signed an agreement on Oct. 20, KST, under which SK hynix would acquire Intel's NAND memory and storage business for US $9 billion. The transaction includes the NAND SSD business, the NAND component and wafer business, and the Dalian NAND memory manufacturing facility in China. Intel will retain its distinct Intel Optane business.

SK hynix and Intel will endeavor to obtain required governmental approvals expected in late 2021. Following receipt of these approvals, SK hynix will acquire from Intel the NAND SSD business (including NAND SSD-associated IP and employees), as well as the Dalian facility, with the first payment of US $7 billion. SK hynix will acquire from Intel the remaining assets, including IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&D employees, and the Dalian fab workforce, upon a final closing, expected to occur in March 2025 with the remaining payment of US $2 billion. Per the agreement, Intel will continue to manufacture NAND wafers at the Dalian Memory Manufacturing Facility and retain all IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers until the final closing.

Plextor late last week unveiled the M8V Plus line of mainstream SATA SSDs in the 2.5-inch and M.2-2280 form-factors. The M8V Plus is an incremental update of the original M8V series from 2018. What's new is the implementation of KIOXIA-sourced 96-layer TLC NAND flash replacing 64-layer chips from Toshiba. The M8V Plus series comes in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB variants, while the original M8V came in 128-thru-512 GB variants.

The Silicon Motion SM2258 controller under the hood of the M8V Plus, has been updated to its latest revision, and supports Plextor-innovated Plex Compress technology. This feature uses the controller's idle time to compress files that haven't been accessed for over 30 days. The Plex Turbo feature, which is essentially variable-size SLC cache, has also been improved to be larger in size. On-paper performance hasn't changed, with the company claiming up to 560 MB/s sequential reads, up to 520 MB/s sequential writes, up to 90,000 IOPS 4K random access for the 256 GB and 512 GB variants; and up to 88,000 IOPS random access for the 1 TB variant. The company rates write endurance for the 256 GB variant at 140 TBW, 512 GB variant at 280 TBW, and 560 TBW for the 1 TB variant. All three variants are backed by 3-year warranties. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Western Digital Corp. is helping gamers enhance their setups and adapt to the evolving gaming landscape heralded by the next generation of games with today's introduction of three new and upcoming products for its WD_BLACK portfolio of storage solutions. These include its first NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) with next-gen PCIe Gen 4 technology, a fully bootable Gen3 x8 add-in-card and a Thunderbolt 3-powered NVMe SSD gaming dock, each offering eye-catching RGB lighting options.

"As game developers move towards creating immersive titles that require higher performance, consumers need to equip themselves with the best tools to stay up-to-speed," said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Consumer Solutions, Western Digital. "Innovative, high-performance storage solutions are essential to keep up with this ever-changing landscape. Our latest WD_BLACK products have been purpose-built to allow gamers to meet the increasingly high standards of future games and gaming platforms. We've optimized these products to not only provide more storage for gamers but to elevate the gaming experience as a whole."

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today introduced the industry's first native NVMe RAID 1 accelerator, a state-of-the-art technology for virtualized, multi-tenant cloud and enterprise data center environments which demand optimized reliability, efficiency, and performance. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first of Marvell's partners to support the new accelerator in the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device offered on select HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Apollo systems.

As the industry transitions from legacy SAS and SATA to NVMe SSDs, Marvell's offering helps data centers fast-track the move to higher performance flash storage. The innovative accelerator lowers data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading RAID 1 processing from costly and precious server CPU resources, maximizing application processing performance. IT organizations can now deploy a "plug-and-play," NVMe-based OS boot solution, like the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device, that protects the integrity of flash data storage while delivering an optimized, application-level user experience.

Addlink announced N10/N50 addNAS SSD product line. Aim at home, Soho, or small and medium business (SMB) NAS applications. addNAS N10 & N50 SSD, high-end SATA III & M.2 PCIE Gen 3 x4 SSD, are designed to meet 24/7 workload and requirements of NAS device as caching, tiered storage, or all-SSD array.
Today's NAS often comes with 2.5 GbE/10 GbE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and higher connectivity interface which allows greater performance from system. In addition, with SSD prices continuing to become more affordable, there is never been a better time to replace traditional hard drivers with using SSDs.

addNAS SSD operates at higher speeds and with significantly better response times and lower latency compared to traditional hard drive. It consumes less power, causes nearly no noise and heat. No moving parts for shock/drop resistant. Addlink addNAS SSD use the controller that support the advanced error-correcting code (ECC) technology combines LDPC with RAID protection, wear leveling, and bad block management. Together, with these technologies extend the P/E cycle endurance of the SSD Drive.

Western Digital announced a media event dated October 8, 2020, in which it's expected to announce the next generation of WD_Black line of gaming-grade storage products. Over the years, the WD_Black brand evolved from representing the company's fastest client-segment hard drives to gaming-grade client-segment products, including the company's fastest internal NVMe SSDs, external SSDs for game consoles, and fast external HDDs. Western Digital is expected to unveil its next-generation WD_Black NVMe SSD succeeding the SN750, which could possibly leverage PCI-Express Gen 4. We know this from the three motifs in the teaser image, which denote a desktop PC, notebook, and a console. The media event will be livestreamed on Twitch.

Western Digital Corp. today released two new SanDisk portable SSDs that offer nearly 2x the speed over previous generations. The SanDisk Extreme and SanDisk Extreme PRO portable SSDs are purpose-built to keep up with today's high-quality content demands. Professional photographers, videographers and enthusiasts capture and keep life's best moments every day and they need reliable solutions that perform on the move at astonishing speeds.

With capacities up to 2 TB, the new NVMe drives are perfect for creating amazing content or capturing and moving incredible 4K and 8K footage with ease. The flagship SanDisk Extreme PRO portable SSD features a forged aluminium chassis made to stay cool under the pressure of a heavy workload and a durable silicone design to withstand the rigors of production. The drives also help keep content safe with password protection and an upgrade to 256-bit AES hardware encryption.

Synology Inc. launched the 3.84 terabyte SAT5200 2.5" solid state drive. Designed for Synology users requiring high capacity and reliable storage arrays, all the while sustaining high performance low-latency operations for mission critical work. With the increasingly demanding environment in storage, the SSD is created with enterprise grade endurance and reliability to help businesses and users tackle intensive workloads with robust data protection.

"Part of designing a reliable storage system requires that companion drives that can consistently sustain heavy read and write operations without any performance degradation. Our SAT5200 SSDs are built specifically to tackle low-latency and consistent performance requirements demanded by our SMB and enterprise customers," said Julien Chen, Product Manager for Synology solid state drives.