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...
Silicon Power Goes Gaming: Unleashing XPower Turbine RGB Memory & SSDs
Silicon Power is best known for its reasonably-priced storage devices as well as various accessories for PCs and smartphones. But in an attempt to grow further, the company recently...
17 by Anton Shilov on 6/24/2019
Silicon Motion’s SM8108: A Next-Gen Enterprise SSD Controller w/ Dual DRAM & 3D QLC Support
Having secured strong positions on the market for consumer SSDs, Silicon Motion is now after the enterprise SSD market. At Computex, the company demonstrated a prototype of an SSD...
7 by Anton Shilov on 6/24/2019
Phison Demonstrates Turnkey SSDs Based on 3D QLC NAND
3D QLC NAND promises to become a significant phenomenon on the consumer SSD market thanks to its relatively low cost per gigabyte, further pushing down already dropping SSD prices...
12 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2019
SK Hynix Launches 2nd Gen Enterprise SSD: 72-Layer 3D NAND & In-House Controller
SK Hynix on Thursday introduced its 2nd generation enterprise-grade NVMe SSDs, which are based entirlely on the company's in-house SSD technology. The new drives offer 4 – 8 TB...
4 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2019
Phison Readies PS2251-17: A USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Controller for External SSDs
At this year's Computex trade show, Phison revealed that it is working on a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 controller for external SSDs. Dubbed the PS2251-17 (U17), the company expects...
8 by Anton Shilov on 6/19/2019
Spotted at Computex: An M.4 SSD with a PCIe 3.0 x8 Interface
M.2 SSDs nowadays are used for a wide variety of applications, whereas Samsung tried to promote its next generation small form-factor (NGSFF) for enterprise-grade solid-state storage under the M.3...
34 by Anton Shilov on 6/14/2019
NVMe 1.4 Specification Published: Further Optimizing Performance and Reliability
Just over two years after the last major update, a new version of the NVM Express (NVMe) protocol specification for SSDs has been published, bringing a wealth of new features.
14 by Billy Tallis on 6/14/2019
TeamGroup Cardea Zero PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD: Up to 1 TB
Also on display at the TeamGroup booth was its T-Force Cardea Zero PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 which uses the Phison PS5016-E16 controller which we saw frequently throughout Computex this...
13 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/12/2019
PNY 2 TB XLR NVMe SSD: PCIe 4.0 x4, Up to 4.8 GB/s
Since many high-end SSDs these days are bottlenecked by a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, next-generation drives featuring a PCIe 4.0 x4 connector were among the highlights of this year’s...
21 by Anton Shilov on 6/10/2019
Maxio Technology: New Line of Cheaper NVMe SSD Controllers
Known primarily for controllers designed for inexpensive SATA SSDs, Maxio Technology is now expanding into the space of higher-performance drives featuring a PCIe interface. At Computex, the company demonstrated...
8 by Anton Shilov on 6/7/2019
More 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Options: Patriot with Custom Firmware coming Q4
If you’ve been following our coverage of Computex, you may have seen that there have been several companies with PCIe 4.0 SSDs to show off. These designs have almost...
7 by Ian Cutress on 6/6/2019
Galax Goes White: A PCIe 4.0 2TB SSD with a White PCB
There were a number of PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the Computex show floor this year, mostly using the Phison reference design. Galax still used the turnkeys solution, but applied...
11 by Ian Cutress on 6/5/2019
Essencore 2 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Enters The Game
One of the underlying themes of this year’s Computex was the number of PCIe 4.0 SSDs on display (or lack thereof). At present it seems that only drives powered...
6 by Ian Cutress on 6/5/2019
The OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD Review: An NVMe Upgrade For Older Macs
Apple was an early adopter of PCIe SSDs, introducing them in 2013 when the NVMe specification was still in its infancy and before any M.2 NVMe hardware was available...
32 by Billy Tallis on 6/5/2019
Silicon Motion: PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD Controller in Development, Coming Q2 2020
Being the next step in PCIe, SSD controller makers are looking to release their PCIe 4.0 designs into the market. Silicon Motion is not an exception, with its upcoming...
27 by Anton Shilov on 6/4/2019
GIGABYTE’s PCIe 4.0 SSD Uses 77g of Copper Due to 8W TDP, up to 2TB
One of the hot ticket items at this year’s Computex was the range of PCIe 4.0 storage devices available. All of them except one was built on the Phison...
19 by Ian Cutress on 6/4/2019
A USB Stick as an SSD? A New Silicon Motion SM3282 Single-Chip Controller for USB SSDs
Silicon Motion has introduced its first single-chip controller for portable USB SSDs. The SM3282 promises to enable makers of portable drives to offer up to 400 MB/s sequential read...
46 by Anton Shilov on 5/31/2019
Phison’s PS5016-E16 & PS5019-E19: The First PCIe 4.0 Client SSD Controllers
In the recent years SSD controllers and NAND flash memory have become so fast that the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface used by M.2 SSDs has become a bottleneck for...
12 by Anton Shilov on 5/31/2019
ADATA Shows Off SMI’s Prototype PCIe 4.0 x4 512GB SSD: An SM2267 SSD
One of the world’s largest suppliers of memory modules and SSDs, ADATA is a company to watch when it comes to the latest technologies. This is certainly the case...
6 by Anton Shilov on 5/30/2019
GIGABYTE Shows PCIe 4.0 x16 Four-Way M.2 PCIe Add-In Card
We’ve seen some of these before – an add-in card that helps expand the M.2 capabilities of a system. Typically motherboards come with up to three M.2 slots, however...
9 by Ian Cutress on 5/29/2019
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
