Storage

KIOXIA's open-source AiSAQ is a game-changer as it offers an all-in-storage solution for AI by offloading vectors in large datasets from DRAM to SSD storage. Coupled with KIOXIA's Memory-Centric AI technology that stores AI training data on external storage, you've got AI-driven image recognition technology that could transform logistics.

In partnership with Tsubakimoto Chain Co. (Tsubakimoto Chain) and EAGLYS Inc. (EAGLYS), KIOXIA's AI image recognition technology can automatically identify products moving through complex logistics workflows. Designed for the growing e-commerce market, which sees large logistics networks handling higher volumes and a wider range of products, this scalable technology enables organizations to adapt to changing conditions while focusing on efficiency, cost management, and quality.

How it differs from traditional AI image recognition is simple. Those systems require tuning or even retraining for new products, including seasonal items, whereas KIOXIA AiSAQ and Memory-Centric AI store all new product data in high-capacity storage for quick retrieval, without the need to retrain the base model.

Samsung has reportedly reached a technological achievement with its next-gen NAND flash storage, which lowers power consumption by an incredible 96% compared to NAND flash inside of devices today.

NAND flash storage is used inside of a multitude of things and it isn't slowing down, with NAND used in AI data centers, smartphones, and a bunch of other technology devices used today. NAND flash power consumption continues to increase with each iteration, but Samsung's new NAND flash storage is the future with incredible power efficiency.

In a new paper co-authored by 34 researchers titled "Ferroelectric Transistor for Low-Power NAND Flash Memory" which was published in the Nature academic journal, the research started over oxide semiconductors, with Korean outlet SEDaily reporting that these were "unsustainable" for high-performance chips because of their high threshold voltage.

According to Phison CEO Khein-Seng Pua, the severe shortage of NAND flash storage and SSDs has led to prices for TLC 1-terabit NAND doubling in the past six months from $4.80 USD to $10.70 USD. According to Phison's latest financial earnings, the company's October 2025 revenue increased by an impressive 90% year-over-year, driven by a substantial 280% rise in PCIe SSD controller shipments.

As we previously reported, this demand is driven by the AI boom, which is causing the industry as a whole to shift away from traditional hard-disk drives (HDDs) to faster solid-state drives (SSDs). Not to mention the expansion and creation of new data centers and hyperscale systems designed with AI performance and flash memory in mind.

Phison CEO Khein-Seng Pua previously stated that this demand could lead to a major issue with the supply of flash memory and SSDs, which could persist for at least a decade. His most recent comments reinforce this idea, with Khein-Seng Pua warning that new production capacity being built to handle the increased demand won't be online and operational until late 2027.

Samsung will be showing off its newest LPDDR6 memory and PM9E1 Gen5 SSD solutions at CES 2026, which is right around the corner.

CES 2026 isn't far away now, with the organization announcing some of its Innovation Awards for 2026, and two of them are from Samsung. These include the new LPDDR6 memory and PM9E1 Gen5 SSD, which Samsung will be showcasing at CES 2026 in January.

Samsung's new LPDDR6 memory will be using its in-house 12nm process node for LPDDR6, with speeds of up to 10.7Gbps, as well as 21% higher efficiency than LPDDR5 memory products. Right now, Samsung's current LPDDR5X is the fastest DRAM solution offered by the company, but LPDDR6 will bump things up with 11.5% higher transfer speeds, and more.

Sandisk's new Extreme Fit USB-C flash drives are compact, measuring 18.50 x 15.70 x 13.60mm and weighing just 3 grams. Small enough to plug into a laptop with no overhang, Sandisk's Extreme Fit flash drives have the look of a small wireless dongle (or button) with a reflective finish to make it stand out. Available in the standard capacities of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, there's also a 1TB option, which is massive for a flash drive.

In fact, this makes the Sandisk Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drive - 1TB model the smallest 1TB flash drive on the market, and with a price of $119.99 USD, it also won't break the bank. For those looking for some sizable and portable storage, you'd be hard-pressed to find something this compact. Naturally, you won't achieve SSD-like speeds, but the 400 MB/s read speeds align with the USB 3.2 Gen 1 specifications.

Like all flash drives, this makes it better suited for storing documents, photos, and videos, freeing up space on your local machine. Sandisk Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drives are compatible with a range of USB-C devices, allowing you to connect them to laptops, PCs, tablets, and other devices running Windows, macOS, or iPadOS that support USB-C storage.

We reviewed the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD earlier this year, where it earned an Editor's Choice award for being a "single-sided masterpiece of PCIe Gen5 engineering and a gaming juggernaut." And as the company's first consumer PCIe Gen5 SSD, the company knocked it out of the park with its pairing of Silicon Motion's SM2508 controller and KIOXIA's 3,600 MT BiCS 8 flash technology.

In terms of pure performance, it hit the advertised sequential read and write speeds of 14,800 and 14,000 MB/s, respectively. And even though the PS5 console is limited to PCIe Gen4 storage, the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD also delivered one of the fastest recorded speeds on the PS5 we've seen to date.

And with our review and testing focused on the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 4TB SSD, the largest capacity model available at the time, it's great to see that Kingston has just released an 8TB model. This makes it perfect for enthusiasts, creators, and gamers with large libraries.

PNY's new CS3250 M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen5 x4 SSD not only delivers cutting-edge Gen5 speeds across its 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, but also offers an affordable price point. With impressive sequential read and write speeds of 14,900 MB/s and 14,000 MB/s, respectively, the 1TB is available now for $125.99 USD, with the 2TB model priced at $219.99 USD.

PNY notes that the 4TB version is "coming soon," so we'll have to wait and see what the pricing is for the larger capacity variant. That said, it's great to know that we're now in the era where high-speed enthusiast-grade PCIe Gen5 storage is becoming increasingly affordable. And with that, PNY notes that the CS3250 is designed for AI applications, content creation tools, and PC gaming.

The PNY CS3250 M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen5 is also a modern Gen5 SSD that doesn't require active cooling, thanks to its "advanced thermal-coated controller," which helps keep operating temperatures down and extends the SSD's lifespan.

Corsair has just announced its new MP700 PRO XT Gen5 SSD (reviewed here) with uncompromising speeds, offering up to 14.9GB/sec read speeds and up to 14.5GB/sec writes.

The new Corsair MP700 PRO XT SSD comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with more capacities -- hopefully 8TB -- coming in 2026. It offers super-fast boot, load, and transfer times, with a power-efficient design that ensures top-tier performance with lower power draw and less heat. Corsair is using Phison's new E28 Gen5 SSD controller, providing the MP700 PRO XT with its wicked-fast read and write speeds, as well as great efficiency.

There's also support for Microsoft DirectStorage, letting Corsair's new MP700 PRO XT communicate directly with the GPU for even greater gaming speeds, loading times, and smoother in-game transitions. Corsair includes its in-house SSD Toolbox software and a 5-year warranty.

TEAMGROUP has just introduced its new T-Force Z54E Gen5 SSD, powered by the Phison E28 Gen5 SSD controller, with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with read speeds of up to 14.9GB/sec. Check it out:

The new TEAMGROUP T-Force Z54E Gen5 SSD is its new flagship SSD offering, with Phison's new E28 Gen5 SSD controller which is fabbed on TSMC's older 6nm process node. Phison says its new E28 controller is capable of up to 14.9GB/sec (14,900MB/sec) sequential reads, and up to 14GB/sec (14,000MB/sec) sequential writes, delivering best-in-class storage performance on mainstream platforms (desktop and laptop PCs).

We've already seen a handful of Gen5 SSDs offering huge speeds of between 10GB/sec and 14GB/sec (and just over), with the Samsung 9100 PRO and Kingston FURY Renegade G5 pushing 14.8GB/sec, but now TEAMGROUP has taken over with slightly faster read speeds at a huge 14.9GB/sec (100MB/sec more than Samsung and Kingston's Gen5 SSD offerings).

Last week, we reported on Phison's CEO discussing "severe shortages" expected to hit the NAND-based flash memory and SSD market due to a manufacturing shift prioritizing AI data centers and systems. This week, ADATA chairman Chen Lebai (via DigiTimes) has chimed in to confirm that DRAM, NAND Flash, SSDs, and even traditional HDDs are about to face an unprecedented and historic shortage as we head into 2026.

As foundries struggle to keep up with demand, including prominent players like Samsung Electronics, Micron, and SK Hynix, this will not only lead to rising prices but also make it much harder for consumers and non-AI-focused customers to get what they need. ADATA's chairman notes that when it comes to accessing stock for its own products, it's now competing directly with large cloud-based companies that are buying as much capacity as they can for their data centers.

He also states that this is the first time he has seen a situation where everything from DDR4 and DDR5 memory to NAND-based SSDs and traditional HDDs is experiencing simultaneous shortages. It has already reached the point where Chen Lebai is instructing his sales teams at ADATA to sell sparingly and focus on existing customers.

The 2025 Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit, which kicks off next week, is all about the industry coming together to showcase the latest advancements and share their insights in open-source hardware and software. Taking place at the San Jose Convention Center from October 13 to 15, as an Open Compute Project contributor and inventor of NAND flash memory, KIOXIA will be on hand to showcase its flash storage solutions and optimizations for data centers and AI.

From storage devices built using the company's latest BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology with PCIe 5.0 speeds, through to new open-source software optimizations that can improve the lifespan and performance of existing systems. Hardware-wise, the company will present its portfolio at its booth (#A51) with live demonstrations.

This includes KIOXIA's LC9 Series Enterprise SSDs, XD8 E1.S Data Center SSDs, and CD9P Series Data Center SSDs. The LC9 Series will be used to demonstrate fast retrieval of large datasets for AI with high-capacity QLC storage. XD8 E1.S Data Center SSDs will be used to showcase KIOXIA's new open-source RocksDB plug-in that improves the performance and lifespan of SSDs, while CD9P Series Data Center SSDs will showcase power-efficient data center NVMe SSDs.

KIOXIA's new RocksDB plug-in is designed for multi-SSD RAID configurations, which are becoming increasingly prevalent in the era of generative AI, cloud computing, and data centers that store massive datasets. The free and open-source plug-in is designed not only to improve the performance of these modern RAID setups but also to increase and enhance the lifespan of the flash storage being used.

KIOXIA notes that in a 4-drive RAID setup, the RocksDB plug-in reduces the write amplification factor (WAF) by 46% while increasing throughput by 8.22 times compared to MDRAID. Even in a 2-drive RAID setup, WAF is reduced by a third. Write amplification is a common issue with SSDs or Flash Storage, where more data is written than intended; reducing this is a significant win for both performance and SSD health.

RocksDB is also a widely adopted database for both generative AI and cloud applications, so KIOXIA's open-source plug-in seems like a must-have for systems with large amounts of historical data that require high-performance searches.

When it comes to the new AI era of edge computing, data centers, and cloud services, NAND-based flash storage sits alongside high-powered GPUs or graphics cards as two bits of hardware that are seeing unprecedented demand. In a recent interview, Pua Khein-Seng, CEO of Phison Electronics Corporation, a leader in all things flash storage, shared some insight regarding the forecasted NAND flash storage of 2026.

As seen over at the Taiwanese CommonWealth Magazine's tech column (via Tom's Hardware), Pua Khein-Seng notes that in addition to "severe shortages" next year, flash shortages "will be tight for the next ten years." That's a whole decade where it appears that buying SSDs and other NAND-based flash storage devices will become increasingly more expensive and difficult to source.

One of the reasons for the shortages stems from a shift toward HBM manufacturing for AI data centers and systems, where the margins are significantly higher. This leaves less room for older technologies, even though the demand for even PCIe Gen4 storage is increasing. Additionally, as companies shift toward more AI inference rather than training, the need for high-speed flash storage is rising.

After reviewing it earlier this month, where it earned an Editor's Choice award for "offering double the performance of all previous 8TB retail NVMe SSDs," Samsung has launched its new 8TB SSD 9100 PRO - available in two models, one without a heatsink and one with a Heatsink.

Like the previous 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB Samsung SSD 9100 PRO models, the 8TB version is a PCIe Gen5 SSD offering blazingly fast read and write speeds of 14,800 and 13,400 MB/s, respectively. As an SSD for consumers, this new model targets data-intensive workloads, including video editing, AI, and gaming. Samsung notes that the heatsink variant is also optimized for the PlayStation 5; however, there you are limited to slower PCIe Gen4 speeds.

As an 8TB Gen5 option, though, it's an impressive SSD with a Total Bytes Written (TBW) rating of 4,800, alongside random read/write IOPS of 2,200K and 2,600K, respectively. As the largest-capacity SSD in Samsung's lineup, it also features a larger cache with an impressive 8GB of LPDDR4X and comes with a five-year limited warranty.

Samsung will be unleashing monster-fast Gen6 SSDs onto the market in 2027, teasing it'll have new Gen6 SSDs in 512TB capacity in less than two years.

During the GMIF Innovation Summit 2025 event in Shenzen, China, SSD manufacturers have come out of the woodwork teasing their next-gen SSD technologies. The enterprise and HPC server segments will see multiple new technologies unleashed in 2026/2027 that will help unlock even higher speeds across the board (CPU, GPU, networking, storage) with PCIe Gen6 SSDs being a big part of that.

Samsung VP & Chief Technology Officer of its Memory Business Unit, Kevin Yoo, said that his firm is working on next-gen CXL 3.1 and PCIe 6.0 CMM-D products which should be available next year. Yoo teased that Samsung's next-gen PM1763 Gen6 SSD solution will be launching in early 2026, offering double the performance, improved power efficiency, and 25W power consumption. The company is also preparing its 7th Gen Z-NAND with GIDS for 2026, too.

The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X gaming handhelds are set to launch on October 10 (check out our report on pricing and availability here), and they will debut with a custom version of Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system optimized for Xbox and PC gaming.

This collaboration between ASUS and the Xbox team has been in development for a considerable time. It marks a shift toward a future where Xbox hardware will encompass everything from a console to PC, gaming handheld, and mobile device connected to the cloud. With ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds right around the corner, Sandisk has announced that it's releasing two officially licensed storage expansion options for the handhelds.

First, there's the Sandisk microSD Card for ROG Xbox Ally (X), available in 512GB ($69.99 MSRP), 1TB ($149.99 MSRP), and 2TB ($299.99 MSRP) capacities, which allows gamers to store and play games directly off the card. With support for up to 50 modern AAA-sized games and read speeds of 200MB/s, these microSD Cards also ship with a lifetime limited warranty and are designed to withstand shocks, drops, and x-rays.

In the AI era, it's not uncommon to consider petabyte-sized storage capabilities in a wide range of data centers, designed for running AI workloads and cloud-based computing. However, when it comes to petabyte-sized storage capabilities orbiting the Earth, on the Lunar surface, or somewhere in deep space, it is no longer the realm of science fiction.

Axiom Space and Spacebilt Inc. have announced that they are collaborating with a range of technology leaders to bring "optically-interconnected orbital data center (ODC)" infrastructure and technology to the International Space Station, or ISS, in 2027.

One of the partners for this exciting and ambitious project is Phison Electronics, where Pascari enterprise-grade SSDs will deliver over one petabyte of storage to the Axiom Orbital Data Center Node (AxODC). These will be paired with PIC64-HPSC processors from Microchip to enable AI acceleration and high-end computing in space.

NVIDIA wants to co-develop new SSDs with KIOXIA that would be close to 100x faster in read speeds than current SSDs, and use them inside of AI servers to partially replace HBM as GPU memory expanders.

In a new report from Nikkei, we're hearing that KIOXIA is looking to partner with NVIDIA to commercialize new SSDs by 2027 with nearly 100x faster read speeds, to use inside of AI servers and to partially replace HBM as GPU memory expanders. KIOXIA has previously said that by 2029, almost half of NAND memory demand is projected to be AI-related.

Nikkei reports that NVIDIA is aiming for 200 million IOPS, with KIOXIA planning to use two SSDs to achieve that, which will also be on the next-next-generation PCIe 7.0 standard. Masashi Yokotsuka, Executive Vice President of KIOXIA said: "we will collaborate with the world's largest GPU manufacturer to achieve super performance in GPU systems".

Flash memory and SSD technology are now the standard for high-capacity internal and external storage solutions. What sets TEAMGROUP's new T-CREATE EXPERT P34F Find My External SSD apart from the pack can be found in its name. According to the company, it's the world's first external SSD with built-in location tracking.

However, it's an external SSD designed for Apple devices and users, as its seamless location tracking is compatible with the Apple 'Find My' app. When paired with a compatible Apple device, you can get "precise location tracking and audible alerts" for the T-CREATE EXPERT P34F to pinpoint its exact location. This makes it an excellent choice for Mac, iPad, and iPhone users who require additional on-the-go storage.

A very cool design touch for the T-CREATE EXPERT P34F Find My External SSD is that it also has a small internal speaker that "emits sound alerts within range." TEAMGROUP notes that adding location tracking to an external SSD not only reduces the risk of loss but also enhances security.

Earlier this month, reports began to emerge on social media that a pair of Windows 11 security updates (KB5063878 and KB5062660) were causing issues with SSDs. The first reported case involved a user attempting to install a significant update to the Cyberpunk 2077 game. Additional reports alleged that for large transfers of over 50GB on an SSD that is more than 50% full, the drive could either disappear or outright fail.

From there, it looked like DRAM-less SSDs from a wide range of companies, including many powered by a Phison controller, were affected by this Windows 11 security update. This led to both Microsoft and Phison responding with word that they were investigating the issue and the reports.

Last week, Phison released a statement that said that after conducting over 4,500 hours of testing, it was unable to replicate reports of SSDs failing due to the recent Windows 11 security updates. And now, Microsoft has confirmed (via BleepingComputer) that its investigation has also failed to find any link between the recent Windows 11 update and reports of SSDs failing.