western digital 3d nandWestern Digital Corp., a global data storage technology and solutions leader, today announced that it has successfully developed its next-generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS4, with 96 layers of vertical storage capability. Sampling to OEM customers is expected to commence in the second half of calendar year 2017 and initial production output is expected in calendar year 2018. BiCS4, which was developed jointly with Western Digital's technology and manufacturing partner Toshiba Corporation, will be initially deployed in a 256-gigabit chip and will subsequently ship in a range of capacities, including a terabit on a single chip.

"Our successful development of the industry's first 96-layer 3D NAND technology demonstrates Western Digital's continued leadership in NAND flash and solid execution to our technology roadmap," said Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president of memory technology at Western Digital. "BiCS4 will be available in 3-bits-per-cell and 4-bits-per-cell architectures, and it contains technology and manufacturing innovations to provide the highest 3D NAND storage capacity, performance and reliability at an attractive cost for our customers. Western Digital's 3D NAND portfolio is designed to address the full range of end markets spanning consumer, mobile, computing and data center."

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 In addition to a new metallic look, the drive offers intuitive WD Discovery™ software to help consumers easily back up photos, videos and important documents shared and created across multiple social networks, cloud services and devices. The My Passport Ultra drive is the ideal storage solution for consumers who want to consolidate and preserve all aspects of their digital lives.

wd my passport ultra gold silver

Today's consumers have multiple social media accounts, and according to Parks Associates research, use an average of three public cloud services per household like Dropbox, Google Drive™ or Microsoft OneDrive, all of which increases their digital footprint. With so many ways to create, share and store content, there is a growing need for solutions that enable consumers to consolidate all of this crucial data. The My Passport Ultra drive with WD Discovery software makes it easier than ever to back up content from popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. With a few simple steps, users can download all of their content, including tagged photos and videos from Facebook, onto the drive. WD Discovery software is also an excellent way for users to keep a local copy of files they've stored on their favorite public cloud services.

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Toshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced development of the world’s first BiCS FLASH™ three-dimensional (3D) flash memory with a stacked cell structure. The newest BiCS FLASH™ device is the first to deliver 4-bit-per-cell (quadruple-level cell, QLC) technology, advancing capacity beyond that of triple-level cell (TLC) devices and pushing the boundaries of flash memory technology.

Toshiba QLC 3D Flash

Multi-bit cell flash memories store data by managing the number of electrons in each individual memory cell. Achieving QLC technology posed a series of technical challenges, as increasing the number of bit-per-cell by one within same electron count requires twice the accuracy of TLC technology. Toshiba Memory has drawn on its advanced circuit design capabilities and industry-leading 64-layer 3D flash memory process technology to create the QLC 3D flash memory.

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toshiba logoToshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has developed a prototype sample of 96-layer BiCS FLASH™ three-dimensional (3D) flash memory with a stacked structure, with 3-bit-per-cell (triple-level cell, TLC) technology. Samples of the new 96-layer product, which is a 256 gigabit (32 gigabytes) device, are scheduled for release in the second half of 2017 and mass production is targeted for 2018. The new device meets market demands and performance specifications for applications that include enterprise and consumer SSD, smartphones, tablets and memory cards.

Going forward, Toshiba Memory Corporation will apply its new 96-layer process technology to larger capacity products, such as 512 gigabit (64 gigabytes) and 4-bit-per-cell (quadruple-level cell, QLC) technology, in the near future.

The innovative 96-layer stacking process combines with advanced circuit and manufacturing process technology to achieve a capacity increase of approximately 40% per unit chip size over the 64-layer stacking process. It reduces the cost per bit, and increases the manufacturability of memory capacity per silicon wafer.

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MacSales.com, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today the availability of the new OWC 2.0TB Aura Pro Solid State Drive for mid-2012 to early 2013 Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display. One of the fastest internal SSDs available on the market, the Aura Pro SSD is also compatible with 2010-2012 MacBook Air.

macsales aura pro ssd

Aura Pro SSD Also Available with Envoy Pro Enclosure

The Aura Pro 2.0TB SSD upgrade frees up and boosts capacity on the internal hard drive – at over five years of MacBook Pro ownership. The Aura Pro drive is also available as a kit with an Envoy Pro enclosure to immediately reuse an Apple internal hard drive, creating a new external USB 3.1 Gen1 portable drive.

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Beijing Memblaze Technology Co., Ltd. today announced the launch of its next generation of PCIe NVMe SSD products, PBlaze 5 700 and 900 series, for hyper-scale data center deployment and for enterprise mission critical applications, respectively. PBlaze5 utilizes high-quality 3D Enterprise-level TLC NAND and supports NVMe 1.2a, with SSD user capacities up to 11TB.

Memblaze PBlaze5 ssd

PBlaze5 comes in 2.5-inch U.2 and HHHL add-in card form factors and provides high performance 6GB/s read bandwidth (128KB) and >1M IOPS random read (4KB), with typical read write latency of 90/15μs. PBlaze5 U.2 interface is hot plugable, hot removable and hot swapable, effectively reducing data center operation complexity.

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NVM Express, Inc., the organization that developed the industry standard NVM Express (NVMe) specification for accessing solid-state drives (SSDs) on a PCI Express (PCIe®) bus as well as across Fabrics, today announced the completion and release of its NVMe 1.3 specification. NVM Express has delivered on its commitment to Enterprise, Cloud, and Client customers by adding capabilities that meet the unique needs of each of these market segments, including Virtualization and Streams. The reach of the interface has expanded its support for the Mobile sector by adding the Boot Partitions feature, which enables bootstrapping of an SSD in a low resource environment. These features have been added while maintaining low latency and high performance – making an NVMe device ready to take advantage of next generation bus speeds, including PCIe 4.0. The NVM Express 1.3 specification is available now for download.

“NVM Express is taking the solid-state drive ‘world by storm,’ accelerating on a trajectory to go from the first units shipped in 2H’2014 to become the highest volume SSD interface in 1H’2018 based on gigabytes shipped – surpassing both SATA and SAS,” said Amber Huffman, president of NVM Express. “As demonstrated by revision 1.3, the NVM Express working group is laser-focused on the specification’s continued evolution to address the dynamic workloads and scenarios that NVMe serves.”

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At COMPUTEX 2017, Vinpower Digital had a number of optical storage products on display, including new drives from Piodata, Plexdisc and Optiarc. Yes, thanks to Vinpower, the Optiarc brand is back in a big way with its 5200 series of DVD writers. The line includes the 5290S and 5290S-PLUS which are capable of 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. The two drives are also built using the true Japanese design and parts lists for a stronger and more reliable system.

Optiarc 5290S Plus Overburn

The big difference betwen the 5290S and 5290S-PLUS is that the latter supports Vinpower's unique DVD+R DL overburn feature. Originally available on the Opticarc 5280S-CB, this overburn feature lets you burn 8.7GB worth of data onto a single 8.5GB DVD+R DL disc. 

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Synology Inc. launched the new DiskStation DS1517 and DS1817, powerful and scalable 5-bay and 8-bay desktop NAS. DS1817 is the first Value series equipped with built-in 10GbE LAN ports and an expandable RAM module, delivering future-proof, high-speed storage for professionals and growing small/medium-sized businesses.

synology diskstation DS1817 nas

DS1817 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor with RAM module expandable up to 8GB. Thanks to the built-in 10GbE interfaces, DS1817 can achieve outstanding sequential throughput performance exceeding 1,577 MB/s reading and 739 MB/s writing when using RAID 5. The built-in 10GBASE-T ports and 1GBASE-T LAN ports pave the way for businesses to upgrade to a 10GbE environment, and provide the support of Link Aggregation and failover.

DS1517 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and four Gigabit LAN ports featuring failover and Link Aggregation. It delivers sequential throughput performance over 449 MB/s writing and 436 MB/s reading when using RAID 5.

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ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the industrial-grade IM2P3388 PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive. It employs 3D MLC NAND Flash and an SMI controller to deliver performance several times faster than SATA III SSDs, with read up to 2500MB/s and write reaching 1100MB/s. The M.2 2280 form factor fits easily in the IT setup of industrial and enterprise users, while the IM2P3388 can withstand a wide temperature range, shocks, and vibration. The IM2P3388 is offered in up to 1TB and supports a range of features such as S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, power fail protection, and secure erase.

adata IM2P3388 pcie ssd

Ultra-fast 3D MLC NAND M.2 SSD
The IM2P3388 complies with NVMe 1.2 specifications to provide performance optimized for low latency, big bandwidth PCI Express 3.0 x4 (four lanes). Users tap up to 2500MB/s read and 1100MB/s write, greatly accelerating data transfers to help increase productivity and efficiency. ADATA is offering the IM2P3388 in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. All models carry premium 3D MLC NAND that has been carefully sorted, tested, and verified to the highest standards. SLC and DRAM caching provide speed boosts for sustained performance during even the most intense activity sessions, preventing bandwidth or IOPS drop offs.

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