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...
ADATA Enters High-End Enterprise SSD Market With SR2000
Until now, ADATA's SSD portfolio has consisted of client-focused SSDs and industrial-grade models based on similar hardware but optionally rated for extreme temperatures, with only the occasional purely server-oriented...
4 by Billy Tallis on 7/3/2018Seagate Announces BarraCuda Consumer SATA SSD
Seagate has pretty much always been a major player in the storage market, where they're known primarily for their hard drives. They haven't been completely absent from the SSD...
21 by Billy Tallis on 7/3/2018The Kingston A1000 NVMe SSD Review: Phison E8 Revisited
Kingston's first low-end NVMe SSD is the A1000, using Toshiba's latest 64-layer 3D TLC NAND and the Phison E8 controller. The price isn't quite down to SATA SSD levels...
26 by Billy Tallis on 7/2/2018ADATA Readies XPG SX7100 Realtek RTS5763DL-Based SSD
While the number of companies participating in the SSD market is booming, ADATA ended up being only large SSD vendor that adopted Realtek’s first-generation RST5760 SSD controller for its...
3 by Anton Shilov on 6/27/2018Giveaway: Toshiba OCZ RC100 M.2 & XS700 USB-C 240GB SSDs
In the mood for some free hardware? Well then you're in luck: our awesome community team in conjunction with Toshiba is holding a giveaway for a quartet of the...
5 by Ryan Smith on 6/27/2018PNY Preps External Elite-X Portable SSD with USB-C 3.1 Interface: Up to 800 MB/s
PNY demonstrated its new external SSD at Computex earlier this month. The new Elite-X Portable SSD uses a USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface and a USB Type-C connector, thus...
22 by Anton Shilov on 6/26/2018AIC Shows Dual NF1 to U.2 SSD Adapter
After the official announcement last week of Samsung’s new 8TB NF1 drive, I went back through my Computex photo kit to dig out a couple of images I snapped...
3 by Ian Cutress on 6/25/2018New Realtek PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Controllers: RTS5762 & RTS5763DL up to 3.5 GB/s
The market of SSDs is expanding rather rapidly, which encourages new companies to enter the scene. Realtek introduced its first SSD controller two years ago targeting primarily entry-level PCIe...
12 by Anton Shilov on 6/25/2018AIC’s Grays Peak Server with Intel ‘EDSFF’ Ruler SSDs
In the consumer space, we get SATA drives, mSATA drives, M.2 drives, and for the high end, U.2 drives. By contrast, the enterprise space is expanding: U.2 is a...
7 by Ian Cutress on 6/25/2018Micron Non-Volatile Update (Q2'18): 96L 3D NAND in H2, 4th Gen 3D NAND Enroute, Sales of 3D XPoint Disappoint
Micron this week published its financial results for the third quarter of its fiscal 2018 (ended on May 31), which also included an update concerning its non-volatile memory products...
30 by Anton Shilov on 6/22/2018SilverStone Preps IP68 Water- and Dust- Proof Enclosure for 2.5-Inch Drives
Rugged as well as water/dust-proof hardware usually comes in specially designed factory-sealed enclosures and is sold at a premium. SilverStone believes that if an enclosure is made right, it...
4 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2018MSI’s Four-Way M.2 PCIe Card: It Looks Like a GPU
Having seen both ASUS and ASRock’s PCIe cards that support four M.2 NVMe drives each at a x4 connection at CES, and then GIGABYTE’s prototype card at Computex, there...
47 by Ian Cutress on 6/21/2018Samsung Kicks Off Mass Production of 8 TB NF1 SSDs with PCIe 3.0 x4 Interface [updated]
Samsung this week announced that it had started mass production of its new 8 TB NF1 SSDs. Samsung has been demonstrating prototype NF1 SSDs for slightly less than a...
21 by Anton Shilov on 6/21/2018The AnandTech Podcast, Episode 48: Computex 2018
Wrapping up Computex 2018 with discussions about AMD's Threadripper 2 with 32 cores, Intel's new limited edition Core i7-8086K, and that really odd 28-core 5 GHz demo where Intel...
23 by Ian Cutress on 6/15/2018The Toshiba RC100 SSD Review: Tiny Drive In A Big Market
The Toshiba RC100 is an NVMe SSD in the smaller-than-usual M.2 2242 form factor and making use of the NVMe Host Memory Buffer to improve the performance of this...
62 by Billy Tallis on 6/14/2018GIGABYTE Aorus PCIe x16 M.2: For Four NVMe Drives, X399 Compatible
Everyone has spare NVMe SSDs, right? Or perhaps users want to buy four of them? Intel was on a big push recently with its newest 380 GB Intel Optane...
19 by Ian Cutress on 6/13/2018Plextor Demonstrates 4-Way M9Pe Extreme SSD Solution: Up to 6.5 GB/s
Having worked with Marvell for many years, Plextor is tied closely to Marvell’s controller ecosystem since its proprietary firmware technologies rely on capabilities of the said controllers. In recent...
13 by Anton Shilov on 6/12/2018Micron’s 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND Demonstrated, Qualified by Maxio, SMI
Micron yet has to formally introduce its 3rd generation 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. But as we've spotted on the Computex showfloor, SSDs based on the new type of...
15 by Anton Shilov on 6/11/2018We Found a Prototype 4 TB Intel QLC SSD
The storage industry is getting exciting again. In order to increase capacity of NAND SSDs and lower costs, there are two different routes being taken: either increase the number...
47 by Anton Shilov on 6/9/2018RGB LEDs Everywhere: HyperX Teases Fury SSD with Lights
Kingston's HyperX teased a new Fury-branded RGB LED SSD at Computex. The company didn’t have set specifications for the new 2.5” SATA 6GB/s SSD (HyperX is still fine-tuning the...
26 by Joe Shields on 6/8/2018