Storage News - Page 2

We might not know it yet but Chia cryptocurrency mining is most likely going to be the reason HDD and SSD shortages will happen, with Chia Coin -- a new cryptocurrency designed to be mined with SSDs and HDDs.

Chia was designed by the creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen -- with the blockchain farmed through Proof of Space, done on your HDD and SSD computing through already-in-storage models to which it then contacts Chia's servers for Proof of Time.

This is where the Onda B365 D32-D4 Magic Edition motherboard steps up to the plate, packing 32 x SATA ports that are ready for 32 x SATA-based HDDs or SSDs making it totally perfect to mine Chia. As for the motherboard, it is based on the Intel B365 chipset with 4 x DDR4 DIMMs and a single PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 x1 slot.

Seagate was originally founded back in 1979 and has since shipped an unimageable amount of storage -- a number that has tipped 3 zettabytes which is an industry-first.

The company took 36 years to reach 1 zettabyte of storage shipped, only another (just under) 4 years to hit 2 zettabytes and then just over another 2 years to reach the new 3 zettabytes milestone. It's a helluva lot of storage, with Seagate providing a great infographic that details that 3 zettabytes of storage can house over 30 billion (30,000,000,000) movies in glorious 4K resolution.

3 zettabytes of storage is enough for 1.5 quadrillion selfies (enough for nearly 200,000 of every single human being on the planet), 7.5 trillion MP3 songs, 60 billion video games (or 3 installations of Call of Duty) and 30 billion 4K movies which works out to around 5.4 million YEARS of binge watching.

ADATA has just revealed its new XPG GAMMIX S70 BLADE PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 2280 SSD, packing the PCIe 4.0 interface and some ridiculous speeds for even the craziest of demands.

The new ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 BLADE PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 2280 has huge sequential read speeds of up to 7400MB/sec (7.4GB/sec) and sequential reads of up to 6400MB/sec (6.4GB/sec) -- twice the speeds possible from the previous-gen PCIe 3.0 standard and an insane 15x the speed provided by SATA SSDs.

ADATA is making its new high-end XPG GAMMIX S70 BLADE PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 2280 SSD available in capacities of up to 2TB, with a large 5-year warranty on top. ADATA is using a slim temperature-resistant aluminum heat sink on the GAMMIX S70 BLADE SSD which "gets rid of heat effectively. So effective it can reduce temperatures by up to twenty percent. Plus, the heat sink looks cool too with its geometric ridges".

Micron has announced that it will be ceasing development of its 3D XPoint technology, something it had co-developed with CPU giant Intel.

The company has announced it will be increasing its investment into memory products around the Compute Express Link (CXL) and that it needed to move resources from 3D XPoint over to CXL-based products. Micron said in a statement: "Micron plans to apply the knowledge it has gained from the breakthroughs achieved through its 3D XPoint initiative, as well as related engineering expertise and resources, to new types of memory-centric products that target the memory-storage hierarchy".

Micron's bigger push into CXL-enabled memory products sees the interface running on the PCIe bus that enables flexible connections between compute, memory, and storage. The goal of CXL is to make more memory available to the user, and easier to manage -- memory not attached to the CPU, like traditional RAM is.

Silicon Motion has announce that it has kicked off development for PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers, preparing for the big next-gen wave of NVMe M.2 SSDs.

Right now the PCIe 4.0-based NVMe drives are maxing out at about 7GB/sec, so we should expect up to 14-16GB/sec or so from PCIe 5.0-based NVMe SSDs of the future. Most PCIe 4.0 SSDs come are on the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and can still pump away at 7GB/sec, so a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD should offer around 14GB/sec.

PCIe 4.0 x16 has up to 32GB/sec of bandwidth available while the next-gen PCIe 5.0 standard will double that up to a huge 64GB/sec that will leave 16GB/sec for the x4 interface -- perfect for next-gen PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs.

• Read more: PCIe 5.0 spec announced, touts 64GB/sec peak bandwidth (PCIe 3.0 has 16GB/sec, PCIe 4.0 has 64GB/sec)
• Read more: AMD will support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 in 2022, but Intel has DDR5 first

Corsair has just unveiled its new MP600 Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 SSDs, with 3 new entries: the MP600 CORE, MP600 PRO, & MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition.

The flagship liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition is a beast, the company's first-ever M.2 SSD with an integrated Hydro X Series XM2 Water Block. Corsair comes out swinging in 2021 with the liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition, with the XM2 Water Block also available to purchase on its own, and can be used on any M.2 SSD that comes in the 2280 form factor.

When it comes to performance on the new Corsair MP600 PRO, we're looking at read speeds of up to 7GB/sec (7000MB/sec) while writes scale up to 6.5GB/sec (6550MB/sec). Corsair makes it new MP600 PRO SSDs available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the company promising a larger 4TB model is on the way. If you want the liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition, then you're limited to just 2TB capacity unfortunately.

GIGABYTE has just announced its new PCIe 4.0-based SSDs with some ultra-fast speeds, with the new AORUS Gen4 7000s SSDs breaching 7GB/sec (7000MB/sec) reads.

The new AORUS Gen4 7000s SSDs are powered by the second-gen Phison PS5018-E18 controller, which is built on the 12nm node, has 1GB of DDR4 SLC caching, and 3D TLC NAND flash @ 1200MT/s so we're looking at up to 7GB/sec reads (7000MB/sec) and 6.85GB/sec (6850MB/sec) reads with up to 700K IOPS on random reads, and up to 650K IOPS for random writes (on the 2TB drive) while the 1TB drive drops to 5.5GB/sec (5500MB/sec) writes and up to 350K IOPs for random reads.

GIGABYTE starts off with the standard drive and its double-sided aluminum heat sink and Nanocarbon coating, something the company says uses the clearance area between the motherboard slots in order to maximize surface area. But the higher-end model has a "more extreme thermal solution" with integrated heat sinks, a higher double-sided heat spreader with Nanocarbon coating, and high conductivity pads.

MSI has just unveiled its very first SSD... and boy, what an SSD it is. We're talking about PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD goodness at up to 7GB/sec.

The new MSI GAMING SSD was teased by MSI Product Marketing boss Bryant Lin, who said: "and here's a surprise for some" people during his CES 2021 keynote speech. The new MSI GAMING SSD comes in up to a huge 4TB in capacity, with read speeds hitting 7000MB/sec (7GB/sec) and write speeds of up to 6900MB/sec (6.9GB/sec).

We should know more details about the lower capacity MSI GAMING SSDs in the coming weeks, but for now we're looking at a huge 4TB capacity in an ultra-fast 7GB/sec world.

Western Digital has just bumped up the maximum size of its external SSD offerings, boosting up its previously large 2TB external SSD up to a huge 4TB with its latest drive.

The new Western Digital's My Passport SSD is now coming in a 4TB capacity with a price of $680, offering up to 1050MB/sec (1.05GB/sec) reads and up to 1000MB/sec (1GB/sec) writes.

The new Western Digital's My Passport SSD will work with the new next-gen consoles as well, but you won't get full compatibility on them so be careful with purchasing these new drives for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S just for now. We are looking at the Western Digital's My Passport SSD coming with shock and vibration resistance, in color options that include gray, blue, red, gold, and silver.

• Read more: WD's new external SSD: huge 4TB capacity, up to 2GB/sec for $750

Western Digital has just bumped up the maximum size of its external SSD offerings, boosting up its previously large 2TB external SSD up to a huge 4TB with its latest drives.

The new and super-fast Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 4TB costs $750 but you'll get read and write speeds of up to a super-fast 2000MB/sec (2GB/sec). You can use the Western Digital's Black P50 Game Drive SSD 4TB on consoles as well, including the Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox consoles.

Now... there is an issue for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S owners with the new Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 4TB. You can connect the Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 4TB to the PlayStation 5, but you can only store PS4 games on it.