Corsair has teased its fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD yet in an M.2 form factor. The company published some initial details about its upcoming product in a short video. However, the video has been taken private, indicating that the launch date may be at a later stage of the year. Thanks to Overclock3D, we saw its looks and got a slight peek at the product. Called the MP700, the SSD is supposedly boasting a fantastic 10 GB/s read capability. The write section is also impressive, with the NVMe SSD capable of reaching around 9 GB/s of what we suppose is a sustained write speed. It uses 3D TLC NAND Flash and supports Microsoft DirectStorage technology for faster load time. Below is a quote from Corsair about the MP700.

CorsairExperience the performance of PCIe Gen5 storage in your system, with up to 10,000MB/sec sequential read and 9,500MB/sec sequential write speeds for amazingly fast save, boot, and load times.
The high-bandwidth NVMe 2.0 interface and high-density 3D TLC NAND flash memory offer outstanding performance and longevity. Slot the MP700 directly into your motherboard thanks to its M.2 2280 form-factor, while a stylish aluminum heatsink helps manage temperatures and reduce throttling. Microsoft DirectStorage enables unprecedented load times when playing compatible games.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, announces the launch of the T9-450 and T12-450 high-speed network storage server featuring 10 GbE networking capabilities which are designed for professionals that require high-speed, large-capacity for applications like virtualization, databases, image and video content creation, and others.

TerraMaster T9-450 and T12-450 come in a compact design for its class making it ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses with limited space for professional data storage devices. The T9-450 and T12-450 are also designed for high-capacity storage configurations, supporting up to 20 TB HDD models and a total capacity of 180 TB and 240 TB, respectively. Its compact design and high capacity support makes the TerraMaster 450 Series ideal for creative professionals and growing businesses.

Micron Technology, Inc.,, today announced it is shipping the Micron 2550 NVMe SSD to global PC OEM customers for use in mainstream laptops and desktops. The 2550 is the world's first client SSD to ship using NAND over 200 layers. Delivering performance that eclipses the competition through its density and power advantages, the 2550 provides users with responsiveness and the low power consumption needed to extend battery life for work and home PCs.

"We focused on delivering a superior user experience for PC users with this SSD," said Praveen Vaidyanathan, vice president and general manager of the Client Storage Group at Micron. "The new 2550 SSD builds on our established and broadly adopted PCIe Gen4 architecture. It also incorporates Micron's industry-leading 232-layer NAND and focuses on thermal architecture and power design. These capabilities deliver impressive application performance and phenomenal power savings."

Mythical landscapes and fearsome Norse gods and monsters lay in wait as Kratos and Atreus explore the Nine Realms in the highly anticipated God of War Ragnarök, coming this November. The follow up to PlayStation's critically acclaimed God of War title is certain to capture the imagination and excitement of gamers, and it has inspired Seagate to offer a new special edition external hard disk drive (HDD) Game Drive featuring one-of-a-kind artwork inspired by the game.

Adding to Seagate's expanding line of PlayStation storage for gamers, the new officially licensed Seagate special edition God of War Ragnarök Game Drive for PlayStation 5 (PS5) and PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles features a stunning design based on the title and customizable LED RGB light. The external 2 TB HDD expands storage capacity letting players spend less time managing console storage and more time gaming.

Solidigm has introduced the P44 Pro solid-state storage drive (SSD), a high-performance client SSD for today's most demanding workloads. With blazing-fast speed and excellent power efficiency, the P44 Pro is the world's premier SSD for enthusiasts. The P44 Pro delivers spectacular PCIe Generation 4.0 performance, with up to 7,000 MB/s sequential read speeds. It provides a superb combination of speed and efficiency in Solidigm testing, meeting or exceeding published performance specifications while drawing just 5.3 W. The P44 Pro is available in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities.

"Our flagship client SSD, the P44 Pro, is built with our cutting-edge NAND technology. Combined with our powerful software, it delivers the high performance users require in demanding applications. The P44 Pro is the most powerful client SSD Solidigm has launched to date and the premier enthusiast SSD on the market," said Sanjay Talreja, General Manager, Client Storage Group. "This drive delivers quick launch and load, and the fast save desired by gaming enthusiasts and content creators. With excellent power efficiency, the P44 Pro minimizes throttling that can come from excessive power and heat - resulting in consistent peak performance."[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the Solidigm Introduces the P44 Pro is now live]

Back in March 2022, Microsoft formally debuted the DirectStorage 1.0 API that enables direct interactions between a GPU and a storage device; thereby reducing the processing load of the storage stack on the CPU and main memory. This release, however, lacked a killer feature that's available to consoles—asset decompression. With the lukewarm response from game developers to DirectStorage 1.0 for PC, Microsoft has finally updated the API, introducing the feature with DirectStorage 1.1.

With this feature, your GPU can not only directly fetch game assets from the storage device (an SSD that uses either NVMe or AHCI protocols), but also pull them in their natively-stored compressed state. These assets are then decompressed by the GPU using compute shaders, and the decompressed assets remain in the video memory. This will directly impact game loading times, as asset decompression no longer involves the CPU. Its impact on the game's framerate will be minimal, as the API mainly accelerates game loading times, not gameplay itself. Game assets are organized pieces of data such as textures, 3D model files, music, sound effects—pretty much all of the individual pieces of content that make up a 3D scene.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, networking solutions, and green computing technology, is announcing its most advanced GPU server, incorporating eight NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Due to its advanced airflow design, the new high-end GPU system will allow increased inlet temperatures, reducing a data center's overall Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) while maintaining the absolute highest performance profile. In addition, Supermicro is expanding its GPU server lineup with this new Universal GPU server, which is already the largest in the industry. Supermicro now offers three distinct Universal GPU systems: the 4U,5U, and new 8U 8GPU server. The Universal GPU platforms support both current and future Intel and AMD CPUs -- up to 400 W, 350 W, and higher.

"Supermicro is leading the industry with an extremely flexible and high-performance GPU server, which features the powerful NVIDIA A100 and H100 GPU," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO, of Supermicro. "This new server will support the next generation of CPUs and GPUs and is designed with maximum cooling capacity using the same chassis. We constantly look for innovative ways to deliver total IT Solutions to our growing customer base."

Folio Photonics, a leading pioneer of immutable active archive, today announced that it has achieved a significant breakthrough in multi-layer optical storage disc technology that will enable an unprecedented level of cost, security and sustainability advantage. Leveraging patented advancements in materials science, Folio Photonics has developed the first economically viable, enterprise-scale optical storage discs with dynamic multi-layer write/read capabilities, which will enable the development of radically low-cost/high-capacity disc storage.

"Folio Photonics is on a path to engendering far greater data densities than was thought possible several years ago," said John Monroe, lead analyst at Furthur Market Research and former VP analyst in the data center infrastructure group at Gartner. "Using next-generation materials, patented polymer extrusion, and film-based disc construction processes (distinct from mere optical layering), in concert with customized optical pickup units (OPUs), Folio Photonics appears poised to deliver a new optical technology that enables eight or 16 film layers per side per disc, as opposed to only three optical layers per side per disc for archival discs today, with a roadmap to add additional layers over time."

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in NAND Flash controllers and solid-state storage devices, today announces it will be showcasing its unique suite of SSD controller solutions for Datacenter, Notebook PCs and Automotive / Industrial SSDs during the Flash Memory Summit from August 2-4 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, booth #311.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled an array of next-generation memory and storage technologies during Flash Memory Summit 2022, held at the Santa Clara (California) Convention Center, Aug. 2-4. In a keynote titled "Memory Innovations Navigating the Big Data Era," Samsung spotlighted four areas of technological advancement driving the big data market—data movement, data storage, data processing and data management—and revealed its leading-edge memory solutions addressing each field.

To maximize data center efficiency in an increasingly data-driven world, Samsung introduced a next-generation storage technology, "Petabyte Storage." The new solution will allow a single server unit to pack more than one petabyte of storage, enabling server manufacturers to sharply increase their storage capacity within the same floor space with a minimal number of servers. High server utilization will also help to lower power consumption.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced the launch of its X1 controller based solid state drive (SSD) platform that delivers the industry's most advanced enterprise SSD solution. Engineered with Phison's technology to meet the evolving demands of faster and smarter global data-center infrastructures, the X1 SSD platform was designed in partnership with Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions. The X1 SSD customizable platform offers more computing with less energy consumption. With a cost-effective solution that eliminates bottlenecks and improves quality of service, the X1 offers more than a 30 percent increase in data reads than existing market competitors for the same power used.

"We combined Seagate's proprietary data management and customer integration capabilities with Phison's cutting-edge technology to create highly customized SSDs that meet the ever-evolving needs of the enterprise storage market," said Sai Varanasi, senior vice president of product and business marketing at Seagate Technology. "Seagate is excited to partner with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology to provide the industry with increased density, higher performance and power efficiency for all mass capacity storage providers."

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced the launch of the second generation of XL-FLASH, a Storage Class Memory (SCM) solution based on its BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology, which significantly reduces bit cost while providing high performance and low latency. Product sample shipments are scheduled to start in November this year, with volume production expected to begin in 2023.

The second generation XL-FLASH achieves significant reduction in bit cost as a result of the addition of new multi-level cell (MLC) functionality with 2-bit per cell, in addition to the single-level cell (SLC) of the existing model. The maximum number of planes that can operate simultaneously has also increased from the current model, which will allow for improved throughput. The new XL-FLASH will have a memory capacity of 256 gigabits.

MaxLinear Inc. today announced the availability of Panther III, the latest in the company's Panther series of storage accelerators. The company is showcasing this product at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA, August 2 - 4. Booth 111. Businesses need immediate access to larger and larger amounts of data and, at the same time, are faced with security and CAPEX costs challenges. With its 16 nanometer (nm) DPU architecture, Panther III provides breakthrough data reduction, encryption, deduplication, and data protection and sets a new standard in storage acceleration with a high throughput of 200 Gbps and ultra-low single-pass transformation latency.

Panther III opens new opportunities within the storage market, including all-flash-array and non-volatile memory express (NVMe) systems. As with previous generations of Panther products, Panther III offers powerful data reduction technology that intelligently offloads the CPU to open all tiers of storage to their full bandwidth potential with no CPU or software limitations. These capabilities enable intelligent and faster dataset delivery, high-performance analytics, and improved workload accuracy in fast-growing Edge to disaggregated computing of the public cloud.

When it comes to data, everything is growing - quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Extending its innovation and technology leadership across its portfolio, Western Digital today announced that it is now shipping new 22 TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold HDDs for IT/data center channel customers; WD Red Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What's Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry's highest areal density at 2.2 TB per platter, delivering 22 TB CMR HDDs for its customers.

With only three major players left in the hard disk drive market-Seagate, Toshiba and WDC-the shipment of hard drives ought to be fairly stable, but demand is down across all manufacturers by anything from close to 30 percent to around 40 percent in the case of Toshiba. According to data from Trendfocus that was posted by Storage Newsletter, demand is down across all market segments or at best case flat compared to last year. Nearline enterprise drives remained flat at around 19 million units compared to last year, but performance enterprise storage is down to around 2.5 million units for the last quarter.

On the desktop and consumer electronics side of things, things are even more dire, with both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive shipments dropping by 30 and 40 percent respectively. Around 13 million 3.5-inch hard drives and 11 million 2.5-inch drives were still shipped in Q2, but with lower demand for computers and more and more computers moving to SSDs, hard drives have been relegated to backup duties when it comes to most consumer purchases. Seagate was the company least affected by the drop in demand, but is still seeing close to a 30 percent drop in demand, with WDC second at over 30 percent and Toshiba, as mentioned, by maybe as much as 40 percent, which doesn't bode well for the company, as it's the smallest manufacturer of hard drives.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announces the addition of the DataTraveler Max Type-A. It joins DataTraveler Max, the USB Type-C model, to complete the Kingston DT Max series of next-gen, high performance USB flash drives. Both drives leverage the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard.

The DataTraveler Max (DT Max) series delivers record-breaking speeds up to 1,000 MB/s read and 900 MB/s write to make them some of the fastest USB drives on the market and the first of its kind. DT Max is designed with portability and convenience in mind. DT Max Type-A features a merlot and black design with Type-A connector, while the original DT Max features an all-black design with Type-C connector to differentiate the drives at first glance. The unique ridged casing protects the connector when it is not in use and is easy to move in a single motion. Seamlessly transfer and store large digital files such as HD photos, 4K/8K videos, music and more with top speeds and high capacities up to 1TB3. The addition of a keyring loop and LED status indicator makes the drive ideal for users who need storage on-the-go.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash and storage solutions, and Cigent Technology, Inc., the leader in embedded cybersecurity technology, today announced an innovative partnership program called Cigent Secure SSD Ready. This strategic partnership embeds select Phison storage devices and controllers with Cigent's built-in cybersecurity enhancements - features that Phison's storage partners can easily switch on and resell as an option to their global channel partners and customers.

"We couldn't be more excited about our exclusive partnership with Cigent to equip selected Phison products with the most secure storage solution on the market," said Sebastien Jean, CTO, Phison. "Phison OEM partners and PC OEMs now have a turnkey solution that provides unparalleled storage-based data security across the entire storage ecosystem/PC supply chain."

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today unveiled two new PCIe Gen4x4 Enterprise Class SSDs: the EPR3750 in M.2 2280 form factor and the EPR3760 in M.2 22110 form factor. The EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs are backward compatible in PCIe Gen3 M.2 slots at even faster speeds while offering significant performance enhancements when matched with PCIe Gen4 chipsets. Also, the EPR3750 and EPR3760 SSDs provide a faster quality of service (QoS) command execution with Enterprise SSD firmware. Workstation and Server boot applications require consistent and predictable performance from storage. Phison's new SSDs are ideal to use as boot drives in workstations, servers, and in Network Attached Storage (NAS) and RAID environments.

DataLocker, Inc., a leading provider of encryption solutions, today announced that the company's recently announced DataLocker Sentry K350 encrypted flash drive is in stock and now available for order with expanded storage capacities up to 512 GB. The company first introduced the K350 in Q4 of 2021 as an expansion of the product line aimed at bridging the gap of managing encrypted USB devices with the flexibility to connect to any machine that supports USB Mass Storage regardless of the operating system, all developed around DataLocker's "Simply Secure" design principles.

The new firmware release for K350 enables boot of operating systems while keeping the device under full management control, critical functionality for administrators of air gapped and microsegmented machines across industries. The Sentry K350 is the industry's only platform-independent and OS agnostic keypad flash drive which incorporates an OLED display and represents the next generation of encrypted data storage products. In addition to the display's true alpha-numeric password-based authentication, the Sentry K350 offers users a full-featured, visual-based menu-driven system to easily change passwords, set password policy and enable other security features without needing to consult a user manual. Further enhancing the feature set is the achievement of the FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification, the MIL-Std810G, and an IP67 rating making it both secure and rugged enough for any environment.

SD Association (SDA) today announced three advanced security features in the new SD 9 specification: Boot support, Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Storage and Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) authenticated memory. SD 9 gives device manufacturers the ability to use an SD memory card for all memory and storage needs, simplifying future device upgrades or repairs and enhancing security capabilities for applications when the cards are tightly bound to specific hosts. SD 9 defines Fast Boot and Secure Boot capabilities giving cards the ability to serve as a device's boot code memory while offering a simple fast boot code uploading process along with secured methods of providing future boot code updates. SD 9 adds TCG secured storage by adding self-encrypted drive functionality. The specification defines RPMB as a secured hidden memory accessible only through a secured authentication process, while also providing a secured boot code update process, plus write-protect and replay protection security mechanisms.

Devices ideally suited for the new capabilities defined by SD 9 include Chromebook computers, tablets, drones, surveillance cameras, dash cameras, gaming consoles, virtual reality (VR) headsets/glasses, small IoT modules and wearable medical devices, to name a few. SD 9 also helps product manufacturers meet new right to repair regulations and simplifies upgrade and repair processes for devices installed in locations without internet connectivity. "SD memory cards are a compelling choice for both storage and memory because they will boot devices, are capable of delivering SSD performance levels and simplify device repairs or upgrades," said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, SDA president. "The SD 9 specification gives product manufacturers a compelling array of choices when defining memory and storage needs of devices." The optional features defined in SD 9 are available to both microSD and full-sized SD memory card form factors. The features are applicable across all capacity types, from SD to the forthcoming SDUC memory cards. Importantly, these features will be supported by SD Express, capable of delivering SSD performance levels up to 4 GB/sec. The SDA has prepared a whitepaper providing more details about the compelling new features defined by SD 9 for SD memory cards.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced new client solid-state drives (SSDs) that bring NVMe performance to client computing applications, freeing laptops, workstations and other portables from legacy architectures that can rob devices of battery power, performance and productivity. The Micron 2300 SSD combines the power and density needed to drive compute-heavy applications in a compact form factor with the reduced power consumption modern mobile users demand. For the first time, Micron brings together NVMe performance and low-cost quad-level-cell (QLC) NAND in the Micron 2210 QLC SSD. It combines fast NVMe throughput and Micron's leadership in QLC technology to offer flash capabilities at hard disk drive-like price points while reducing power consumption by 15 times when compared to hard drives.

"Ninety percent of client platforms will ship NVMe SSDs within the next year, and the market is fast bifurcating into mainstream and value market segments," said Roger Peene, vice president of marketing, Storage Business Unit, Micron. "Our two new client SSDs, the 2300 and 2210, are optimized for each segment. The 2300 offers outstanding power performance, while the 2210 delivers compelling price performance by using Micron's industry-leading QLC NAND." Both SSDs introduced today are built on Micron's innovative 96-layer 3D NAND technology to deliver power savings, right-sized capacity and compact form factors that enable flexible designs. They also deliver enhanced client security features and capabilities for protecting data, with TCG Opal 2.0 and TCG Pyrite 2.0 support.

Samsung and Western Digital today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that implies that the two companies will join their efforts to create next-generation data placement, processing, and fabrics (D2PF) storage technologies. The MOU states that the two companies will collaborate on creating Zoned Storage devices, including ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) SSDs and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs. The ZNS SSD initiative is a challenge of creating entirely new SSDs that work on the ZNS principle instead of traditional block-based drives. Opposite to data in traditional SSDs written in blocks, ZNS SSDs will place data into zones and have software understand where each bit of information is written without excessive read/write action. Another benefit of ZNS is that managing data allows less garbage collection, thus higher efficiency.

Software adoption for ZNS makes it hard, and Samsung's conjoined efforts with Western Digital aim to simplify it. Western Digital notes that "In addition, this collaboration is expected to serve as a starting point to expand zone-based (e.g. ZNS, SMR) device interfaces, as well as future-generation, high-capacity storage devices with enhanced data placement and processing technologies. At a later stage, these initiatives will be expanded to include other emerging D2PF technologies such as computational storage and storage fabrics including NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)." So, with further development of ZNS, Samsung and Western Digital will collab on more advanced storage options as well.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the new QXP-1600eS-A1164 quad-port external SATA expansion card. Designed for QNAP TL series SATA JBOD, the QXP-1600eS-A1164 is compatible with QNAP NAS, Windows /Ubuntu PCs and servers with a PCIe port. Each SATA lane directly connects to a single SATA drive to deliver excellent transfer performance.

"The new QXP-1600eS-A1164 SATA expansion card doesn't need any drivers and provides a more convenient solution than its previous generation. It can be used with a QNAP TL SATA JBOD for expanding the capacity of NAS or PCs to provide future-proof scalability." said Candice Chiang, Product Manager of QNAP. The QXP-1600eS-A1164 can be used with QNAP SATA JBOD (supported from QTS 4.5.4 or QuTS hero h4.5.4), including setting RAID parameters and creating a storage pool using the Storage and Snapshots app. When the QXP-1600eS-A1164 is installed in a Windows or Ubuntu device, the QNAP JBOD Manager desktop utility can be used to quickly obtain and view information about the JBOD status, health, fan speed, and check for firmware updates.

Excelero, a Tel Aviv-based provider of high-performance software-defined storage, is now a part of NVIDIA. The company's team of engineers—including its seasoned co-founders with decades of experience in HPC, storage and networking—bring deep expertise in the block storage that large businesses use in storage-area networks.

Now their mission is to help expand support for block storage in our enterprise software stack such as clusters for high performance computing. Block storage also has an important role to play inside the DOCA software framework that runs on our DPUs.

Continuing to lead the way forward for UFS technology, KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of the industry's first Universal Flash Storage (UFS)3 embedded flash memory devices supporting MIPI M-PHY v5.04. The new lineup utilizes the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and is available in three capacities: 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB. The new devices deliver high speed read and write performance and are targeted to a variety of mobile applications, including leading-edge smartphones.

The new KIOXIA devices are next-generation UFS (MIPI M-PHY 5.0), which has a theoretical interface speed of up to 23.2 Gbps per lane (x2 lanes = 46.4 Gpbs) in HS-GEAR mode. Sequential read and write performance of the 256 GB device is improved by approximately 90 percent and 70 percent, respectively, over previous generation devices. Also, random read and write performance of the 256 GB device is improved by approximately 35 percent and 60 percent, respectively, over previous generation devices. This next generation of UFS provides significant increases in performance, enabling next-generation smartphones and other products to enhance their capabilities and end user experiences in the 5G era and beyond.