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...

CES 2021: OWC Introduces 3.5" U.2 SSD Carrier

OWC is introducing the U2 Shuttle, a novel carrier module that packs four M.2 NVMe SSDs into a 3.5" U.2 form factor. The U2 Shuttle includes a PCIe switch...

5 by Billy Tallis on 1/14/2021

Phison at CES 2021: New USB SSD Controllers, Adds E21T For Low-End NVMe

At CES 2021, Phison gave us the usual updates on their SSD controller roadmap. The most significant new products coming this year are a pair of USB flash drive...

13 by Billy Tallis on 1/14/2021

CES 2021: OWC Envoy Pro FX - A Dual Mode (Thunderbolt / USB) IP67 External SSD

As part of its CES 2021 announcements, OWC provided details of the Envoy Pro FX - an IP67-rated dual-mode SSD capable of operating optimally with both Thunderbolt 3 /...

9 by Ganesh T S on 1/13/2021

ADATA At CES2021: XPG GAMMIX S70 PCIe 4.0 SSD Now Available

A year ago at CES 2020, ADATA previewed three upcoming PCIe 4.0 consumer SSDs planned for release in 2020. As with many things last year, that didn't go exactly...

4 by Billy Tallis on 1/12/2021

CES 2021: ADATA SE900G External SSD, With RGB

With a varied selection of announcements for CES 2021's new virtual format, ADATA has unveiled a new external solid-state drive with integrated RGB LEDs. The ADATA SE900G looks to...

1 by Gavin Bonshor on 1/11/2021

AnandTech Year In Review 2020: Solid State Drives

Solid state storage might not have been the most exciting tech sector to follow in 2020, but it certainly had its fair share of new technologies arriving, consumer-friendly price...

85 by Billy Tallis on 12/30/2020

Intel Announces New Wave of Optane and 3D NAND SSDs

Today Intel is announcing updates to most of their SSD product lines. Their products based on 3D NAND are being updated to use Intel's 144-layer QLC and TLC NAND...

70 by Billy Tallis on 12/16/2020

Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q USB / Thunderbolt 3 Dual Mode External SSD Review: Yin and Yang

The external storage market has shown renewed vigor in recent years, thanks in part to growth fueled by bus-powered flash-based storage solutions. The introduction of 3D NAND, coupled with...

14 by Ganesh T S on 12/14/2020

The Corsair MP400 1TB QLC NVMe SSD: A Quick Review

Following up from our recent look at 8TB QLC SSDs, today we're taking a look at the 1TB Corsair MP400. This is a QLC NVMe SSD using the Phison...

75 by Billy Tallis on 12/11/2020

Mushkin Announces 8TB M.2 SSD: ALPHA Series

Anyone in the market for high capacity 8 TB M.2 drives has so far only had one choice on the market. Today Mushkin is coming in as the second...

26 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/8/2020

SK Hynix Announces 176-Layer 3D NAND

SK hynix has announced their latest generation of 3D NAND, now featuring 176 layers of charge trap flash memory cells. SK hynix is the second NAND manufacturer to reach...

29 by Billy Tallis on 12/7/2020

QLC Goes To 8TB: Samsung 870 QVO and Sabrent Rocket Q 8TB SSDs Reviewed

Flash memory prices have been on a downward trajectory for years. A decade ago, this trend was helping SSDs establish a foothold in the consumer market—largely for enthusiasts. Now...

152 by Billy Tallis on 12/4/2020

EDSFF Form Factor Updates In 2020: New Versions, Growing Adoption

The Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor family of standards is now about three years old, and continues to evolve. The EDSFF form factor options are gaining traction in...

6 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020

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 11/25/2020

Xilinx 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 11/12/2020

Highpoint 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 11/12/2020

IBM 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 11/12/2020

Western 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 11/11/2020

Kioxia 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 11/9/2020

Micron 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 11/9/2020

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