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...
Dressed to Impress: Team Group’s T-Force Delta Max RGB SATA SSD
RGB LEDs are used for thousands of enthusiast-class products these days, so in many cases manufacturers compete against each other in terms of style and try to make their...
16 by Anton Shilov on 8/30/2019Micron’s Fab 10 Expansion Completed: 96-Layer 3D NAND Production Starts in 2019
Micron this week hosted a grand opening ceremony of its Fab 10 Expansion in Singapore. The new cleanroom is not expected to increase the company’s production capacity in terms...
21 by Anton Shilov on 8/16/2019Marvell at FMS 2019: NVMe Over Fabrics Controllers, AI On SSD
Prior to Flash Memory Summit, Marvell unveiled their first generation of client SSD controllers supporting PCI Express 4.0. During the show itself, their focus was much more on the...
5 by Billy Tallis on 8/16/2019FMS 2019: EDSFF Form Factors Update - Long, Short, & Everything In-Between
What began as Intel's Ruler concept for a new SSD form factor blossomed into the Enterprise and Datacenter Small Form Factor family of standards, with the version 1.0 specs...
1 by Billy Tallis on 8/16/2019SK Hynix Re-Enters Retail SSD Market, Launches Gold S31 SATA Drives
Coming off of the heels of last week’s Flash Memory Summit, today a familiar entity is throwing its hat back into the ring for retail SSDs: SK Hynix. This...
17 by Ryan Smith on 8/15/2019ADATA Expands XPG SX8200 Pro Range with 2 TB Model
Over the past few months we have seen a number of companies announcing high-end 2 TB PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2-2280 SSDs, which was not particularly surprising given positioning of...
19 by Anton Shilov on 8/12/2019Samsung Preps PM1733 PCIe 4.0 Enterprise SSDs For AMD's "Rome" EPYC Processors
With the launch of AMD's new second generation "Rome" EPYC processors, AMD's numerous hardware partners have been lining up to announce their own wares built around the new processors...
45 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2019Phison Previews Next-Gen PCIe 4.0 SSD Controllers: Up to 7 GB/s, NVMe 1.4
At FMS 2019, Phison shared the specs for its next generation of client SSD controllers. The PS5018-E18 high-end controller will be made using a FinFET process technology and promises...
27 by Billy Tallis & Anton Shilov on 8/9/2019Western Digital Reveals Ultrastar DC SN340 SSDs for Read Intensive Workloads
Western Digital has introduced its new accelerator drives designed for very read-intensive workloads. The key feature of the Ultrastar DC SN340 Very Read Intensive (VRI) SSDs is their low...
5 by Anton Shilov on 8/7/2019Western Digital Unveils Ultrastar DC SN640 SSDs: Up to 30.72 TB Capacity
Western Digital has announced its new family of enterprise SSDs aimed at mixed-use-case workloads. The new drives use in-house developed components and come in EDSFF E1.L, U.2, and M.2-22110...
14 by Anton Shilov on 8/7/2019Samsung Unveils 6th Generation V-NAND Memory with Up to 136 Layers
Samsung on Tuesday introduced its sixth-generation V-NAND memory, which in a bid to further improve capacity and density, features over 100 active layers. To make V-NAND with over 100...
41 by Anton Shilov on 8/6/2019Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor
Today at Flash Memory Summit, Toshiba is debuting a new form factor for NVMe SSDs that is small enough to be a removable alternative to soldered-down BGA SSDs. The...
28 by Billy Tallis on 8/6/2019Everspin’s STT-MRAM Now Supported by Cadence’s DDR4 Controllers
Cadence and Everspin on Monday announced that Cadence’s DDR4 IP and verification IP now support Everspin’s 1 Gb STT-MRAM. Cadence’s support will make it easier for chip designers to...
4 by Anton Shilov on 8/5/2019Memblaze’s PBlaze5 X26: Toshiba’s XL-Flash-Based Ultra-Low Latency SSD
With the annual Flash Memory Summit kicking into high gear this week, Memblaze will be showcasing one of the industry’s first ultra-low latency NVMe SSDs based on Toshiba’s XL-Flash...
6 by Anton Shilov on 8/5/2019Toshiba Launches XL-FLASH 3D SLC NAND
Last year at Flash Memory Summit, Toshiba announced XL-FLASH, a specialized low-latency SLC 3D NAND flash memory that is their answer to Samsung's Z-NAND (and to a lesser extent...
16 by Billy Tallis on 8/5/2019Phison to Showcase PS5013-E13T BGA SSD: Up to 1.7 GB/s At Under 2 W
Phison said this week that it will demonstrate its next generation turnkey BGA SSD at the 2019 Flash Memory Summit next week. The tiny drive uses a 324-ball BGA...
24 by Anton Shilov on 8/2/2019Liqid to Demonstrate Element LQD4500 PCIe 4.0 x16 SSD: 32 TB At Up to 24 GB/s
Liqid, a maker of SSDs for mission critical and performance-hungry applications, plans to demonstrate one of the world’s first PCIe 4.0 x16 solid-state drives at Flash Memory Summit next...
24 by Anton Shilov on 8/2/2019Western Digital: Nearly All NAND Capacities Resumed Normal Operations
Western Digital and its manufacturing partner Toshiba Memory Co. (TMC) had managed to resume normal operation of almost all of their joint production lines at their Yokkaichi Operations campus...
31 by Anton Shilov on 8/1/2019Marvell Announces Client SSD Controllers With PCIe Gen4
Last year Marvell announced updated client NVMe controllers that we have not yet encountered in the retail SSD market, but now that the transition to PCIe gen4 is underway...
17 by Billy Tallis on 8/1/2019Innogrit Debuts With Four NVMe SSD Controllers
A new SSD controller designer is coming out of stealth mode today. Innogrit was founded in 2016 by storage industry veterans with the goal of developing storage technology to...
5 by Billy Tallis on 8/1/2019