Storage News - Page 2

KIOXIA has just showcased its next-gen CM7 Series SSDs with their brute-force PCIe 5.0 SSD speeds, alongside AMD's new EPYC 9004 series processors.

The new KIOXIA CM7 Series SSDs support EDSFF E3.S and 2.5-inch1 (15mm, z-height) form factors and are designed to the NVMe 2.0 and PCIe 5.0 specifications, and are available in two configurations: Read-intensive 1 DWPD2 with capacities up to 30.72TB, and mixed-use 3 DWPD with capacities up to 12.80TB.

Not only that, but KIOXIA includes features like a dual-port design for High Availability (HA) applications, flash die failure protection that maintains reliability in the cases of die failure, and a Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) that supports TCG Opal and TCG Ruby, as well as a SED option of FIPS 140-35.

KIOXIA has announced that it has worked with Ampere to quality its fleet of CD6, CM6, and XD6 Series SSDs with platforms that are based on Ampere's Altra, and Ampere Altra Max Cloud Native Processors.

The certification testing itself was conducted by Ampere, to make sure that KIOXIA's SSDs were totally compatible, and were hitting max performance. Inside of the world's biggest and most demanding data center workloads are powered by Arm-based servers, which make it imperative (in the words of KIOXIA, but I do agree) that the SSDs inside of them are ready, more than ready.

KIOXIA has a gigantic fleet of SSDs for the data center market, with the company reiterating that the performance demands and latency sensitivities aren't an issue, but also for future enterprise infrastructure requirements. In order to meet the demands of the modern cloud ecosystem, Ampere designed a server microprocessor architecture from the ground up, with its AArch64-based processor pushing performance, scalability, security, and power efficiency that KIOXIA says is uniquely focused on today's hyperscale cloud and edge computing workloads and applications.

Silicon Motion bought a bag of next-gen goodies to show off at the 2022 OCP Global Summit event, where KIOXIA showed off its next-gen hardware on show, but Silicon Motion had some real delicious storage products being teased.

The new Silicon Motion SM8366 SSD controller in multiple different form factors

The next-gen Silicon Motion SM8366 SSD controller was there, with the PCIe Gen5 x4 SSD being NVMe 2.0 and OCP Data Center NVMe SSD 2.0 compatible, and programmable standard NVMe, HB-FTL, ZNS FW. But man, those reads are tasty AF... with the SM8366 pushing a huge 14GB/sec sequential I/O, we had some on-the-floor pics showing real-world 13.6GB/sec sequential reads... impressive.

During the show, Silicon Motion showed off an incredible 4K random read of 3.4M IOPS on its new SM8366 SSD controller... yeah, you read that right. 3.4M IOPS!

Silicon Motion was showing off its new SM8366 SSD controller in multiple form factors: U.2, E3.S, E1.S, E1.S 15mm, and E1.S 25mm. The final two in E1.S 15mm and E1.S 25mm have heat sinks, with Silicon Motion reaching out to me and ensuring their 15mm and 25mm offerings with their heat sinks help them provide the correct level fo performance and power scaling, and are compliant with the E1.S form factor specification.

KIOXIA continues to push forward with enterprise infrastructure dominance, announcing its next-gen XD7P Series SSDs.

The new KIOXIA XD7P Series SSDs are designed from the ground up for hyperscale and general server applications in the new Enterprise and Data Center Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E1.S form factor. KIOXIA's new fleet of XD7P Series SSDs is built on the second-generation of E1.S SSDs with Open Compute Project (OCP) Data Center NVMe SSD 2.0 specification support.

KIOXIA's new XD7P Series Data Center NVMe SSDs have improved performance, with up to 2x the sequential write performance and random read/write performance when it's put up against its predecessor. The new drives have been built for PCIe 4.0 and NVMe 2.0 specifications, while KIOXIA teases PCIe 5.0 with its up to 32GT/s of bandwidth per lane is still in development.

CFD Gaming has just unveiled their new PCIe Gen5 NVMe 2.0 M.2 SSDs that offer next-gen SSD speeds, if you've just upgraded your motherboard and CPU, that is.

The new CFD Gaming SSD PG5NFZ PCIe Gen5 NVMe 2.0 SSDs come in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities and are powered by Phison's new PS5026-E26 SSD controller, while underneath they're using Micron's new 3D TLC NAND flash memory, offering up to 10GB/sec reads, and up to 9.5GB/sec writes.

Uniquely, the company is using a tiny fan on top of the heat sink of all of their new PCIe 5.0-based SSDs... which will ensure that when the SSD is pumping away at 10GB/sec reads that it's staying nice and cool. Under the fan, the company is using a 20mm heat sink it calls "Phoenix".

MSI has just unleashed its next-gen SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS, a next-gen SSD that pushes read speeds up to a huge 12GB/sec with the latest PCIe Gen5 connectivity.

MSI's new mean-looking, but holy-heck-it's-fast SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS SSD

The new MSI SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS SSD slots into the next-gen PCIe 5.0 standard, but is backward compatible with PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 systems, while inside MSI is using high-quality 3D NAND flash and "advanced cooling". The new MSI SPATIUM M570 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 HS will be available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with varying prices (that we don't know just yet).

Inside, MSI is tapping the new Phison E26 SSD controller that features up to 12.3GB/sec (12,300MB/sec) sequential reads in CrystalDiskMark benchmarks, while writes are up to a huge 10.1GB/sec (10,100MB/sec).

GOODRAM has come out swinging at IFA 2022 this year unveiling its new IRDM Ultimate M.2 SSD, which offers up to 10GB/sec of read speeds in next-gen PCIe 5.0-capable motherboards.

GOODRAM's new IRDM Ultimate PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD, and it's beefy heat sink

The new GOODRAM IRDM Ultimate M.2 SSD is using Phison's new E26 SSD controller, powered with 3D TLC NAND flash, and capacities of 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. GOODRAM says that its new Gen5 SSD is still under development, but showed off its prototype IRDM Ultimate M.2 SSD at IFA 2022.

This isn't the first PCIe 5.0-capable SSD pushing 10GB/sec reads, and it won't be the last... we've seen Corsair show off its super-fast MP700 PCIe 5.0 SSD not so long ago pushing the same 10GB/sec reads. GIGABYTE has its new AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD that is offering a commanding 12.4GB/sec, and then there's the AORUS Gen5 AIC Adaptor which takes up to 16TB of next-gen SSDs with an incredible, absolutely out-of-this-world up to 60GB/sec (yes, sixty gigabytes per second) reads.

KIOXIA is at VMWare Explore this week showing off its new technologies, products, and form factors that will benefit the world of VMware applications, where the company says it will "help build the new multi-cloud world".

KIOXIA says that its families of SSD solutions will help partners enhance their multi-workload and multi-workspace IT infrastructures of today, while planning for the future. The company is showing off both what it has now, and what it has coming in the future, pointing to its new 24G SAS SSDs that will push super-high speeds to SAS architectures, next-gen PCIe 5.0 storage solutions that double the speeds over PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and new form factors that have more performance and density than ever before.

VMware Explore is being held in San Francisco's Moscone Center, where KIOXIA has some demo systems detailing its products and how it will be helping drive the future of the cloud.

Samsung Germany has asked a customer to physically smash his Samsung 980 PRO SSD with a hammer, or drill through it, before returning it for RMA... and we're totally not joking around.

It seems that things are serious in Samsung Germany when it comes to making sure your data is completely protected, where Igor's Lab reports on a story about a user that was sent through a bunch of hoops in order to get his Samsung 980 PRO SSD replaced. It started out with the usual serial number, proof of the failure itself, what steps you've done to try and fix it, and more.

A diagnostic scan through Samsung Magician was run, showing that the Samsung 980 PRO SSD had indeed had multiple errors on the NAND flash. From there, the drive is usually returned... but that's not what happened here. Samsung Germany and the customer in question talked over the phone, and after writing an explanation as to why the SSD couldn't be returned as it is, things got weird.

When Samsung started teasing their next-gen 990 PRO on their official Twitter, I was a little excited... another super-fast PCIe 5.0-based SSD was being unveiled... but nope: here's the Samsung 990 PRO, a new PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD.

The new Samsung 990 PRO SSD has been launched, rolling out with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and max reads of up to 7.4GB/sec (7450MB/sec) and up to 6.9GB/sec (6900MB/sec) writes. Samsung is offering its new 990 PRO SSDs in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB of LPDDR4 memory respectively across the drives.

Samsung is using its in-house SSD controller, and in-house Samsung V-NAND 3-bit TLC inside of the new 990 PRO SSDs, with pricing starting at $179 for the 1TB version, and $309 for the 2TB version. Samsung will launch the larger 4TB model of the 990 PRO in 2023, which is not a great thing to see when you're launching your new flagship SSD... the largest model is still months away.