Phison Electronics, a leading provider of NAND controllers and NAND storage solutions, today announced it has introduced a full range of UFS (Universal Flash Storage) controllers (PS8325, PS8327, PS8329, PS8361). Phison's new UFS solutions support entry-level, middle, premium and flagship smartphone devices to achieve maximum performance in mobile storage and enhance user experiences.

As smartphone devices require higher performance, the storage devices of many entry-level 5G models have transitioned from eMMC to UFS 2.2 storage, and even flagship models of 4G phones have begun adopting the UFS 2.2 specification. Compared to the half-duplex mode of eMMC, the full-duplex mode of UFS 2.2 significantly increases read speeds by three times, not only handling smartphone functions that require processing large amounts of data (such as high-resolution recording and video playback), but also consuming lower power under the same performance speed as eMMC. This helps improve the battery life of smartphones and tablets, meeting the high-performance and low-power consumption needs of mobile devices.

Ugreen, a leading brand in consumer electronics.They'll be unveiling their rendition of NAS devices along with vehicle accessories to complement their portable power station, aptly titled the PowerRoam series, at CES 2024 (booth No.22733), running from January 9-12, 2024 in Las Vegas.

At the forefront of Ugreen NAS product line is the flagship product: NASync DX480T Plus. The DX480T Plus is the smallest in the NAS line at 7.0 x 5.6 x 2.0 inches and developed with an emphasis on high-performance and portability. SSD storage spaces allow for up to 16 TB of fast, all-flash storage space. An expandable RAM drive provides up to 32 GB of memory for high-speed processing, and powering the homemade Ugreen OS Pro (UGOS Pro) is Intel's very own 12th gen Core i5 10 Core processor. Boosting data and media transfer speeds are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports providing up to 40 Gb/s of transfer speeds, making it one of the smallest, fastest NAS devices around.

Seagate Technology, a world leader in mass data storage infrastructure solutions, today announced the latest Seagate Exos CORVAULT 4U106 mass data storage system. Offering capacity of 2.5 PB, the high-performing multi-petabyte block storage system offers higher rack density, extended lifecycles, and less power per petabyte, lowering total cost of ownership (TCO).

The Seagate Exos CORVAULT 4U106 features Seagate's high capacity Exos hard drives, which, combined with self-healing technology, create the most efficient petabyte storage building block for scale-out data center architecture, reducing storage networking resources up to 50% and improving total rack power efficiency up to 30%. The self-healing capabilities of Seagate's Autonomous Drive Regeneration (ADR) and Advanced Distributed Autonomic Protection Technology (ADAPT) help reduce downtime and optimize data center resources such as maintenance and human intervention and, in turn, carbon footprint and e-waste.

CORSAIR, a world leader in enthusiast components for gamers, creators, and PC builders, today announced the launch of the MP700 PRO, its fastest PCIe Gen 5 M.2 SSD to date. Available in capacities up to 4 TB, with three different cooling options, the MP700 PRO sets a new standard for next-generation storage, with sequential read and write performance reaching a phenomenal 12,400 MB/sec and 11,800 MB/sec respectively—that's up to 75% faster than PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

On top of the impressive sequential throughput, the random read and write performance of up to 1.5 million read and 1.6 million write input/output operations per second (IOPS) put the MP700 PRO way ahead of the best PCIe Gen 4 drives. The MP700 PRO is backward compatible with PCIe 4.0 motherboards, making this an upgrade that will last you for years to come. Native support for Microsoft DirectStorage ensures that you'll get the most from the latest games, while copying files in Windows and loading applications has never felt so fast.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the MP700 Pro is now live]

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is expanding its AI reach with the upcoming support for the new NVIDIA HGX H200 built with H200 Tensor Core GPUs. Supermicro's industry leading AI platforms, including 8U and 4U Universal GPU Systems, are drop-in ready for the HGX H200 8-GPU, 4-GPU, and with nearly 2x capacity and 1.4x higher bandwidth HBM3e memory compared to the NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU. In addition, the broadest portfolio of Supermicro NVIDIA MGX systems supports the upcoming NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip with HBM3e memory. With unprecedented performance, scalability, and reliability, Supermicro's rack scale AI solutions accelerate the performance of computationally intensive generative AI, large language Model (LLM) training, and HPC applications while meeting the evolving demands of growing model sizes. Using the building block architecture, Supermicro can quickly bring new technology to market, enabling customers to become more productive sooner.

Supermicro is also introducing the industry's highest density server with NVIDIA HGX H100 8-GPUs systems in a liquid cooled 4U system, utilizing the latest Supermicro liquid cooling solution. The industry's most compact high performance GPU server enables data center operators to reduce footprints and energy costs while offering the highest performance AI training capacity available in a single rack. With the highest density GPU systems, organizations can reduce their TCO by leveraging cutting-edge liquid cooling solutions.

With a simple mod, Storage Review got a Valve Steam Deck handheld gaming console to work with the world's highest capacity SSD, the mammoth 61.44 TB variant of the Solidigm D5-P5336. At its core, the Steam Deck is a highly compacted x86-64 PC powered by an AMD Ryzen mobile processor that features an industry standard PCIe interface, which it uses for an onboard M.2-2230 NVMe SSD. Storage Review used a simple adapter that converts M.2 to U.2—the interface of the D5-P5336—and the Steam Deck just worked.

Out of the box, the Steam Deck uses Valve's SteamOS, although it's fairly straightforward to install Windows, and get the Steam application to present its user interface (with which you can play just about any Windows PC game that's not yet available on SteamOS). A quick benchmark with KDiskMark (the Linux analog of CDM) sees the D5-P5336 post sequential read speeds of 3.6 GB/s, with 2.8 GB/s sequential writes. There's a catch here, though. It's not practical to lug the D5-P5336 along with your Steam Deck, the Solidigm drive is designed for servers, and besides the U.2 connection, requires a power input that a U.2 enclosure can provide.

Today, IBM introduced the new IBM Storage Scale System 6000, a cloud-scale global data platform designed to meet today's data intensive and AI workload demands, and the latest offering in the IBM Storage for Data and AI portfolio.

For the seventh consecutive year and counting, IBM is a 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Leader, recognized for its vision and execution. The new IBM Storage Scale System 6000 seeks to build on IBM's leadership position with an enhanced high performance parallel file system designed for data intensive use-cases. It provides up to 7M IOPs and up to 256 GB/s throughput for read only workloads per system in a 4U (four rack units) footprint.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today announced TVS-h674T / TVS-h874T Thunderbolt 4 NAS. By employing a Network Attached Storage (NAS) designed exclusively for creators and video productions on existing file-based workflows, users may enjoy boosted productivity and safeguard precious creative works with amazing efficiency.

• TVS-h674T-i5-32G: 6-bay 3.5" SATA HDD Thunderbolt NAS; 12th Gen Intel Core i5 6-core/12-thread Processor; Intel UHD Graphics 730; 32 GB DDR4 RAM
• TVS-h874T-i7-32G: 8-bay 3.5" SATA HDD Thunderbolt NAS; 12th Gen Intel Core i7 12-core (8P+4E) /20-thread Processor; Intel UHD Graphics 770; 32 GB DDR4 RAM
• TVS-h874T-i9-64G: 8-bay 3.5" SATA HDD Thunderbolt NAS; 12th Gen Intel Core i9 16-core (8P+8E) /24-thread Processor; Intel UHD Graphics 770; 64 GB DDR4 RAM

Solidigm today announced the D7-5810, an enterprise SSD for extremely intensity write workloads. Such a drive would be capable of write endurance in the neighborhood of 50 DWPD. For reference, the company's D7-P5620, a write-centric/mixed workload drive for data-logging, and AI ingest/preparation, offers around 3 DWPD of endurance, depending on the variant; and the read-intensive drive meant for CDNs, the D5-P5336, offers around 0.5 DWPD. Use cases for the new D7-P5810 include high performance caching for flash arrays dealing with "cooler" data; high-frequency trading, and HPC.

Solidigm D7-P5810 uses SK hynix 144-layer 3D NAND flash that's made to operate in a pure SLC configuration. The drive comes in 800 GB and 1.6 TB capacities, and offers 50 DWPD over an endurance period of 5 years (4K random writes). More specifically, both models offer 73 PBW (petabytes written) of endurance. The drive comes in enterprise-relevant 15 mm-thick U.2 form-factor, with PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface, with NVMe 1.3c and NVMe MI 1.1 protocols.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced that it has donated a command set specification to the Linux Foundation vendor-neutral Software-Enabled FlashTM Project. Built to deliver on the promise of software-defined flash, Software-Enabled Flash technology gives storage developers control over their data placement, latency outcomes, and workload isolation requirements. Through its open API and SDKs, hyperscale environments may optimize their own flash protocols, such as flexible direct placement (FDP) or zoned namespace (ZNS), while accelerating adoption of new flash technologies. This unique combination of open source software and purpose-built hardware can help data centers maximize the value of flash memory. KIOXIA has developed working samples of hardware modules for hyperscalers, storage developers and application developers.

"We are delighted to provide command set specifications to the Software-Enabled Flash Project," said Eric Ries, senior vice president and general manager of the Memory and Storage Strategy Division for KIOXIA America, Inc. "This is an important step that allows the ecosystem to bring products to market, and enables customers to extract the maximum value from flash memory."

The ASUSTOR Xpanstor 4 is here! The all-new four bay expansion unit adopts USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C for extra speeds. The Xpanstor 4 doubles connection speeds from 5 Gbps to 10 Gbps through its USB port and is also backward compatible with USB 3.2 Gen 1. In addition, the Xpanstor 4 also supports MyArchive cold backup technology which now supports scheduling to make 3-2-1 backups even easier. In terms of intelligent control, when a connected NAS enters sleep mode or shuts down, the Xpanstor 4 will simultaneously enter sleep mode and dim lights to save energy and hard drive longevity.

The smart fan design also automatically adjusts speeds according to hard drive temperatures to maintain balance between performance and noise. In addition, the Xpanstor 4 also has a specially designed cable for securing it to the device to avoid accidental disconnecting of the device. The Xpanstor 4 is equipped with four hot-swappable hard drive bays, and can be used like any other drive in ADM. Use the Xpanstor in a variety of ways that include using the extra bays as MyArchive backups or RAID volumes with the full suite of ASUSTOR data protection features to help your workflow as your needs grow.

Cerabyte/Ceramic Data Solutions Holding GmbH, a German storage technology startup, is hyping up its nanolayer-based storage method: "creating the most reliable data storage ever. Data is safe in a wide temperature range of -273 °C (-460 °F) to 300 °C (570 °F) and even in corrosive or acidic atmosphere. Also radiation and an EMP can't destroy information stored on (our system)." The firm's leadership is comprised of self-described "pioneers," with a goal to disrupt the storage market (worth $500 billion)—they want to reduce data center storage total cost of ownership (TCO) by 75 %, while introducing their environment friendly solution that: "requires 99 % less energy. Sustainable long-term data storage is one of the most urgent problems in our world. Cerabyte is the solution for reducing 99% of CO2 emissions generated by conventional cloud data storage."

A product preview showcases the potential of multiple CeraMemory cartridges (2025-30) in a rack formation capable of storing between 10 PB and 100 PB of data, and their CeraTape (2030-35) series offering up to 1 EB capacity per unit. Cerabyte representatives are set to discuss their technologies at the 2023 Storage Developer Conference, scheduled to take place later this month (September 18 to 21). Their "Ceramic Nano Memory - Data Storage for the Yottabyte Era" abstract is available to view in advance of the upcoming meet up in Silicon Valley.

The Power of Small: Evolution of Data Storage—since computers were built, making them smaller has never stopped. This is especially evident in the industrial sector, where compactness is highly valued. As a crucial component of computers, data storage has undergone a process of miniaturization as well, leading to the era of M.2 interface SSDs. While some ultra compact fanless PC and rugged mobile PC may adopt smaller embedded storage, such as eMMC (Embedded MultiMediaCard), they significantly lag behind M.2 PCIe SSDs in terms of performance. Therefore, M.2 PCIe SSDs have emerged as the superior choice for those seeking top-notch performance and efficiency in their computing experience.

Introducing the Cervoz T425 SSD: Unleash Power in a Tiny Package
To embrace this remarkable trend, Cervoz presents the latest T425, a new M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD. Designed with a compact M.2 2230 form factor (22 mm x 30 mm), it supports both A and E key configurations and utilizes PCIe Gen 3 x2 lanes for high-speed data transfer. With impressive sequential speeds of up to 815 MB/s read and 760 MB/s write, along with storage capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 512 GB, the T425 is the ultimate solution for enhancing the performance of embedded computing systems with space constraints.

Kaleidescape, maker of the ultimate movie platform, has announced the availability of its new Terra Prime movie server product line. Terra Prime features an all-new board design with faster processing power and faster network - the only dedicated movie server with 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. The new servers are available with either high-capacity hard drives or fast solid-state drives. "Kaleidescape's new Terra Prime movie servers support lightning-fast movie downloads and can serve more Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies concurrently to multiple screens," said Tayloe Stansbury, Kaleidescape chairman & CEO.

Kaleidescape Terra Prime SSD Movie Servers
Terra Prime SSD movie servers are the fastest and quietest movie servers available, ideal for yachts and large installations. Terra Prime SSD downloads Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies in as little as four minutes and serves up to 25 simultaneous playback zones. Terra Prime SSD 31 TB stores approximately 500 Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies and the 8 TB model stores roughly 125 Kaleidescape high-bitrate 4K movies.

Verbatim, a global leader in data storage and computer peripherals, is pleased to announce its participation in this year's IFA exhibition in Berlin (01-05 Sept 2023). Attendees at the Verbatim stand, located in Hall 10.2, Booth 112, will have the opportunity to explore an impressive selection of new storage products and mobile and desktop accessories designed to enhance everyday practicality, efficiency, and peace of mind.

Innovative SSDs take centre stage
Verbatim will be proud to demonstrate its new Vi12000 Generation 5 PCIe NVMe M.2 internal SSD, one of the fastest internal SSDs on the market, with read / write speeds of 12300 MB/s and 11,888 MB/s respectively. Alongside this flagship product, Verbatim will also present an assortment of internal and external SSDs, including the Vi7000G internal SSD, tailored for gaming enthusiasts and compatible with PlayStation 5 consoles.

FUJIFILM Corporation (President and CEO, Representative Director: Teiichi Goto) and IBM today announced the development of a 50 TB native tape storage system, featuring the world's highest native data tape cartridge capacity. Fujifilm has commenced production of a high-density tape cartridge for use with IBM's newest enterprise tape drive, the TS1170. The sixth-generation IBM 3592 JF tape cartridge incorporates a newly developed technology featuring fine hybrid magnetic particles to enable higher data storage capacity.

Innovations in achieving 50 TB Native Capacity
Fujifilm has succeeded in achieving this innovative cartridge capacity by evolving the technologies developed in previous tape generations. This involved enhancing both the areal recording density (the amount of data that can be recorded per square inch) and the overall recording area (the surface area capable of recording data).

GIGABYTE Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announced today the latest AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD with an M.2 2280 form factor. Harnessing the power of a PCIe 5.0 controller with ultra-fast 3D-TLC NAND Flash, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD delivers a boosted performance of more than 70% over PCIe 4.0 SSDs with easy installation and superb capability. Equipped with the ultimate thermal design of M.2 Thermal Guard Extreme, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD becomes the perfect choice for power users, content creators, and gamers.

With PCIe 5.0 support on new motherboard platforms, the bandwidth and transfer performance are raised to the next level. The AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD is equipped with the latest Phison PS5026-E26 8-channel controller, providing users with superior control of random read speeds. Along with an over 232-layer stack structure of 3D-TLC NAND Flash and a built-in LPDDR4 cache design, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD unleashes the full potential of PCIe 5.0 performance with 12 GB/s ultra-fast access speed, which is more than a 70% increase compared to its predecessor. Furthermore, with AORUS optimized Direct Storage support, the AORUS Gen5 12000 SSD brings next-level performance with optimized stability.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced a new VMware vSAN solution optimized to run enterprise class hyperconverged virtualized workloads. As virtualized workloads become more advanced, processing power and storage performance requirements increase, requiring greater capacity to meet application SLAs and maximize virtual machine density. This solution also utilizes the latest Intel AMX accelerator for AI workloads.

When compared to the Supermicro X11 BigTwin, benchmark testing conducted by Supermicro showed up to 4.7X higher IO throughput and 8.2X lower latency on the HCIBench benchmark, up to 4.9X faster image classification inference throughput on the ResNet50 model and up to 4X faster natural language processing throughput on BERT-Large model. In addition, the superior power and efficiency of the Supermicro X13 BigTwin architecture can deliver up to 3X cost and performance improvement within the same node footprint compared to a similar deployment based on older generation Supermicro systems, creating a compelling case for organizations to upgrade their aging infrastructure.

Lenovo Group today announced first quarter results, reporting Group revenue of US$12.9 billion and net income of US$191 million on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) basis. Revenue from the non-PC businesses accounted for 41% of Group revenue, with the service-led business achieving strong growth and sustained profitability - further demonstrating the effectiveness of Lenovo's intelligent transformation strategy.

The Group continues to take proactive actions to keep its Expenses-to-Revenue (E/R) ratio resilient and drive sustainable profitability, whilst also investing for growth and transformation. It remains committed to doubling investment in innovation in the mid-term, including an additional US$1 billion investment over three years to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployment for businesses around the world - specifically AI devices, AI infrastructure, and AI solutions.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today launched the Kingston IronKey Keypad 200C, a hardware-encrypted USB Type-C drive that ensures both security and convenience at your fingertips. Now, users can achieve seamless data protection and effortless compatibility without the use of adapters when using USB-C equipped devices.

KP200C offers FIPS 140-3 Level 3 (Pending) certified military-grade security in an OS-independent alphanumeric keypad for easy-to-use PIN access. It incorporates XTS-AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption with Brute Force password attack protection and BadUSB protection with digitally signed firmware ensuring an unparalleled level of safeguarding for your valuable data. With the Multi-PIN option (Admin/User), the keypad can be used to set up an easy-to-remember alphanumeric PIN for the Admin or User accounts. Admin can restore a User PIN to provide access to the drive if the User PIN is forgotten.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that focuses on providing innovative storage products for homes and businesses, recently released new design NAS series F2-212, F4-212 and U4-212, support TRAID, BTRFS file system, Snapshot and TFSS providing stronger data backup and better home multimedia experience, which perfectly meet the requirement of personal and home users. Among the 3 models, the sample of F2-212 for review will be firstly available soon in August.

More Modern Exterior Design
The 212 NAS series adopts brand-new design elements and color matching, and has a more fashionable and modern appearance design, better heat dissipation, lower noise, and more convenient installation and use.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

MaxLinear, Inc., a leader in data storage accelerator solutions, today announced the production-release of the OCP 3.0 storage accelerator adapter card for Panther III. The ultra-low latency accelerator is designed to quicken key storage workloads, including database acceleration, storage offload, encryption, compression, and deduplication enablement for maximum data reduction. The Panther III OCP card is ideal for use in modern data centers, including public to edge clouds, enterprise data centers, and telecommunications infrastructure, allowing users to access, process, and transfer data up to 12 times faster than without a storage accelerator. The OCP version of the card is available immediately with a PCIe version available in Q3 2023.

"In an era where the amount of data generated exceeds new storage installations by multiple fold, Panther III helps reduce the massive storage gap while improving TCO per bit stored," said Dylan Patel, Chief Analyst at SemiAnalysis.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced the availability of the first hardware samples that support the Linux Foundation's vendor-neutral Software-Enabled Flash Community Project, which is making flash software-defined. The company is expecting to deliver customer samples in August 2023. Built for the demanding needs of hyperscale environments, Software-Enabled Flash technology helps hyperscale cloud providers and storage developers maximize the value of flash memory. The hardware from KIOXIA is the first step to putting this working technology in the hands of developers.

The first running units will be showcased in live demonstrations in the KIOXIA booth (#307) next week at Flash Memory Summit 2023 (FMS 2023). This new class of drive consists of purpose-built, media-centric flash hardware focused on hyperscale requirements that work with an open source API and libraries to provide the needed functionality. By unlocking the power of flash, this technology breaks free from legacy hard disk drive (HDD) protocols and creates a platform specific to flash media in a hyperscale environment.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD and Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD, two new performance offerings in the Crucial Pro Series product portfolio, designed for content creators such as photographers, videographers, designers, or any performance-seeking consumer. Both drives utilize Micron TLC NAND and leverage a revolutionary single-ASIC portable storage architecture to enable a breakthrough, ultra-compact, lightweight form factor and allows Micron to ship the most capacity per square millimeter in the industry. With either the Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro, users can safely store, transport and backup important videos, photos, files and more on the go, without cloud or internet access at lightning-fast speeds.

"We recognize that fast, efficient workflow processes are essential to the success of videographers, photographers and other content creators," said Jonathan Weech, senior director of product marketing for Micron's Commercial Products Group. "We designed and built our two new portable SSDs, the Crucial X9 Pro and the Crucial X10 Pro, to specifically address these demanding workloads. With more photos and videos being taken than ever before, consumers are looking for ways to save, preserve and protect their digital lives reliably and quickly. These two new Crucial Pro Portable SSDs are a great choice for anyone who needs dependable, fast, high-capacity storage."