Storage
Crucial has started to tease the T700, the company's first mainstream PCIe 5.0 SSD. Not to be confused with the Terminator T-700, the T700's product page has already gone live but still lacks some of the M.2 2280 SSD's finer details. However, it does show some basic specifications that suggest that the T700 will deliver higher performance than rival first-generation PCIe 5.0 drives. Different as they may look, the first wave of SSDs all have something in common: they leverage Phison's PS5026-E26 PCIe 5.0 controller and its eight-channel design. There are other PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers for storage vendors to pick from, including Silicon Motion's SM2508 or InnoGrit's IG5666. However, the E26 has become the de facto PCIe 5.0 controller for PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The T700...
New Enterprise SSD Controllers From Silicon Motion, Phison, FADU
In the past month, three SSD controller designers have announced new enterprise NVMe SSD controllers, bringing a wave of new competition to the high-end enterprise/datacenter SSD market. FADU is...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020Xilinx and Samsung Launch SmartSSD Computational Storage Drive
At Samsung's Tech Day 2018 they debuted a collaboration with Xilinx to develop Smart SSDs that would combine storage with FPGA-based compute accelerator capabilities. Their proof of concept prototype...
25 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020Highpoint Updates NVMe RAID Cards For PCIe 4.0, Up To 8 M.2 SSDs
HighPoint Technologies has updated their NVMe RAID solutions with PCIe 4.0 support and adapter cards supporting up to eight NVMe drives. The new HighPoint SSD7500 series adapter cards are...
31 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020IBM at FMS 2020: Beating TLC With QLC, MRAM And Computational Storage
Two years ago we reported on IBM's FlashCore Module, their custom U.2 NVMe SSD for use in their FlashSystem enterprise storage appliances. Earlier this year IBM released the FlashCore...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020Western Digital at FMS 2020: Zoned SSDs, Automotive NVMe And More
At Flash Memory Summit this week (online for the first time), Western Digital is showing off three new SSD products and have outlined the company's areas of strategic focus...
12 by Billy Tallis on 11/11/2020Kioxia Announces XG7 PCIe 4.0 Client SSDs
Last week, Kioxia rounded out their lineup of PCIe 4.0 enterprise and datacenter SSDs with the announcement of the XD6. Now, they're bringing PCIe 4.0 support to their client...
9 by Billy Tallis on 11/9/2020Micron Announces 176-layer 3D NAND
Just in time for Flash Memory Summit, Micron is announcing their fifth generation of 3D NAND flash memory, with a record-breaking 176 layers. The new 176L flash is their...
29 by Billy Tallis on 11/9/2020Kioxia Announces XD6 Datacenter SSDs: PCIe 4.0 and EDSFF At Scale
Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) is announcing the new XD6 series datacenter NVMe SSDs, featuring PCIe 4.0 support and using the EDSSF E1.S form factors. The XD6 is Kioxia's first...
10 by Billy Tallis on 11/3/2020Sabrent Rocket Nano Rugged IP67 Portable SSD Review: NVMe in a M.2 2242 Enclosure
Portable bus-powered SSDs are a growing segment of the direct-attached storage market. The ongoing glut in flash memory (and the growing confidence of flash vendors in QLC) has brought...
11 by Ganesh T S on 10/30/2020Crucial Portable SSD X6 and X8 2TB Review: QLC for Storage On-the-Go
Bus-powered portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the consumer-focused direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down...
22 by Ganesh T S on 10/21/2020Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers
Silicon Motion has announced the official launch of their first generation of PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controllers. These controllers have been on the roadmap for quite a while and...
23 by Billy Tallis on 10/20/2020Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SDXC UHS-I 128GB Memory Cards Capsule Review
Samsung had last revamped their SDXC cards lineup back in 2014 to delineate them into the standard, PRO, and EVO categories. Since then, the company slowly phased out the...
21 by Ganesh T S on 10/14/2020Western Digital Launches New WD Black NVMe SSDs And Thunderbolt Dock
Today Western Digital is announcing a major expansion of their WD Black family of gaming-oriented storage products. In a digital event later today on Twitch, Western Digital will introduce...
40 by Billy Tallis on 10/8/2020Marvell and HPE Introduce NVMe RAID Adapter for Server Boot Drives
In 2018 Marvell announced the 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe Switch: the first—and so far, only—NVMe hardware RAID controller of its kind. Now that chip has scored its first major (public...
29 by Billy Tallis on 10/6/2020USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 State of the Ecosystem Review: Where Does 20Gbps USB Stand in 2020?
USB has emerged as the mainstream interface of choice for data transfer from computing platforms to external storage devices. Thunderbolt has traditionally been thought of as a high-end alternative...
81 by Ganesh T S on 10/5/2020SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD v2 and WD My Passport SSD (2020) Review
External bus-powered storage devices have grown both in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Thanks to rapid advancements in flash technology (including the advent of...
7 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020Western Digital Unveils USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD v2
The SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD released in 2019 has been one of the top performers in the external flash storage market segment. Putting a high-end WD Black SN750-class...
14 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2020Patriot PXD 1TB M.2 PCIe Type-C External SSD Capsule Review
High-performance bus-powered direct-attached storage units have become very popular, thanks to the advent of high-speed interfaces and technologies such as USB 3.2 Gen 2, NVMe, and 3D NAND flash...
5 by Ganesh T S on 9/29/2020Seagate Unveils CORTX Object Storage Software with Lyve Drive Rack Hardware Reference Design
Seagate has unveiled CORTX, an open-source S3-compatible object storage software, today at their Datasphere virtual event. The source for this software-defined-storage (SDS) platform is hosted on Github. Seagate has...
6 by Ganesh T S on 9/24/2020ADATA External and HP Portable SSDs Review: Featuring the ADATA SE800 and HP P700
Portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down the cost...
13 by Ganesh T S on 9/24/2020