SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
96-Layer 3D TLC Reaches Embedded & Industrial NVMe SSDs: Transcend Reveals MTE662T
Though, as always, it takes some time for newer technologies to filter down into the conservative embedded/industrial market, the time has finally come for 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. SSD...
5 by Anton Shilov on 2/3/2020SK Hynix to Cut CapEx, Accelerate Transitions, 1z nm DRAM & 128L 4D NAND in 2020
Following a massive revenue and profitability drop in 2019, SK Hynix has announced that it plans to cut down its capital expenditures. While the market has shown some signs...
6 by Anton Shilov on 2/3/2020Western Digital Roadmap Updates: Energy Assisted Recording, Multi-Stage Actuators, Zoned Storage
Between CES at the beginning of the month, a series of presentations at Storage Field Day last week and a quarterly earnings report this week, we've heard from just...
115 by Billy Tallis on 1/31/2020Western Digital and Kioxia Announce BiCS5 112-Layer 3D NAND
Western Digital and Kioxia have announced the successful development of their newest generation of 3D NAND flash memory. Their fifth-generation BiCS 3D NAND has commenced production in the form...
19 by Billy Tallis on 1/30/2020Enmotus MiDrive: Rethinking SLC Caching For QLC SSDs
For consumer storage, CES 2020 brought a new wave of competition for PCIe 4.0 SSDs and promise of faster portable SSDs, but the most intriguing product demo was from...
44 by Billy Tallis on 1/30/2020USB 3.2 Gen 2 Portable SSDs Roundup - Featuring the Samsung T7 Touch and the SanDisk Extreme Pro
External bus-powered storage devices have grown in storage capacity as well as speeds over the last decade. Palm-sized flash-based storage devices with a Thunderbolt 3 interface are capable of...
38 by Ganesh T S on 1/23/2020CES 2020: ADATA Preparing Three PCIe 4.0 Consumer SSDs
Among a mountain of new product announcements at CES, ADATA previewed three upcoming high-end consumer SSDs supporting PCIe 4.0. These will launch under their XPG gaming-oriented brand, and will...
29 by Billy Tallis on 1/17/2020Phison At CES 2020: Preparing For QLC To Go Mainstream
NAND flash memory prices are projected to climb in 2020. The manufacturing transitions to 96-layer 3D NAND and beyond are not going to increase bit output as quickly as...
10 by Billy Tallis on 1/17/2020CES 2020: Innogrit SSD Controllers Score Multiple Design Wins
Innogrit is one of the latest SSD controller designers to enter the market, having come out of stealth mode and announced their roadmap last August at Flash Memory Summit...
7 by Billy Tallis on 1/17/2020CES 2020: Patriot Goes Big on Bandwidth For New EVLVR 2 TB3 SSDs
At this year's CES, Patriot has introduced an enhanced version of its EVLVR (Evolver) Thunderbolt 3 external SSD. The new drive is set to offer radically improved sequential read/write...
5 by Anton Shilov on 1/10/2020CES 2020: Patriot Demonstrates PXD External SSD w/ USB-C
Among the many storage vendors at this year's CES was Patriot, who was showcasing its upcoming PXD external SSD. The device features a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface...
5 by Anton Shilov on 1/9/2020ASUS Going Fast: Quad PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD Storage Add-in Card Hyper M.2
One of the driving features of performance in the high-end desktop space is the creator community: the need for fast CPUs and fast storage is strong, regardless of cost...
19 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 1/9/2020Samsung Launches Portable SSD T7 Touch with Fingerprint Security
Samsung's mass-market external drive, the Portable SSD T-series, was last updated in August 2017 with the introduction of the T5 with 64-layer V-NAND. The Portable SSD T5 came with...
8 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2020Fire At Kioxia & Western Digital NAND Fab - Impact on Supply to be Minimal
Kioxia has reportedly informed its customers that a production tool at one of its fabs caught fire early on Tuesday. The fire was promptly extinguished and no casualties were...
6 by Anton Shilov on 1/8/2020CES 2020: Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Makes An Appearance
Samsung's booth at CES 2020 includes our first look at their next flagship consumer SSD, the 980 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD. This would appear to be Samsung's first client/consumer...
55 by Billy Tallis on 1/7/2020Samsung’s Fab in Hwaseong Suffers Power Outage
Samsung had to stop production of DRAM and V-NAND memory at its fab near Hwaseong, South Korea, due to power outage earlier this week. Damage caused by disruption of...
48 by Anton Shilov on 1/2/2020AnandTech Year In Review 2019: Solid State Drives
In 2019, flash memory prices have leveled out and have even crept back upward a bit, and new technologies have been slow to roll out, although we are currently...
42 by Billy Tallis on 12/31/2019Kioxia: 3D Stacked Storage Class Memory, like 3D XPoint, Isn’t the Future
One of the key battlegrounds of the next decade is going to be storage: density, speed, and demand. Naturally all the major players in the space want to promote...
23 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/30/2019OWC Releases Accelsior 4M2 SSD: Quad-M.2 For Over 6000 MB/s
Just in time for the launch of Apple's newly redesigned Mac Pro tower, OWC has introduced the ‘fastest SSD [they've] ever built’, the Accelsior 4M2. The high-end solid state...
24 by Anton Shilov on 12/23/2019Micron Obtains License to Sell DRAM & NAND to Huawei
The inclusion of Huawei into the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List and consequent restrictions to work with the Chinese giant clearly made it much harder for the U.S.-based...
12 by Anton Shilov on 12/19/2019