Storage News - Page 6

Solidigm is one of the storage leaders in the NAND flash memory space, and its latest announcement is impressive for quad-level cell (QLC) SSDs for data centers. The new Solidigm D5-P5336 SSD starts at a capacity of 7.68TB, going up to a massive 61.44TB - an industry first and the world's highest capacity PCIe SSD.

For high-performance computing and data centers, it's an exciting proposition, up to 6X the storage capacity and significant reductions to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). And you're looking at impressive speed, too, with the new Solidigm D5-P5336 capable of delivering read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s.

"Modern workloads like AI and capabilities like 5G are rapidly reshaping the storage landscape," said Greg Matson, VP of Strategic Planning and Marketing at Solidigm. "Businesses need storage in more places that is inexpensive, able to store massive data sets efficiently and access the data at speed. The D5-P5336 delivers on all three -- value, density, and performance. With QLC, the economics are compelling -- imagine storing 6X more data than HDDs and 2X more data than TLC SSDs, all in the same space at TLC speed."

There's a potential issue with the ROG Ally's thermal design and cooling, at least in terms of its configuration, with owners reporting problems with microSD cards. ASUS has confirmed the issue with a statement on Discord noting that "under certain thermal stress conditions, the SD card reader may malfunction."

They are overheating to the point of no longer working or potentially ruining any cards that might be inserted into the microSD card reader on the ROG Ally gaming handheld. ASUS added that the issue falls within the RMA process and that the affected units will be repaired.

The issue points to a potential design flaw on the ROG Ally, which is highlighted in this YouTube video by CPPC TEK that points out that the SD card reader is located right next to where all of the power delivery happens on the PCB, one of the hottest spots on the board.

Sometimes a deal is too good to be true, which Roman 'der8auer' Hartung found out in his latest deep dive into a supposed Samsung 980 EVO M.2 4TB SSD purchased for around USD 44 from an AliExpress seller. The first red flag is naturally the price, but a bigger one would be that Samsung doesn't offer a Samsung 980 EVO - let alone a 4TB variant.

As expected, these drives are fake, with false branding, warranties, and other info - but it gets even worse once 'der8auer' decides to benchmark the drive using the popular CrystalDiskMark tool. Even though there was some good news with Windows recognizing the capacity of 3.72TB, things took a turn for the abysmal when the read speed was noted as 36.25 MB/s and the write speed an even worse 0.84 MB/s.

This makes the so-called NVMe storage solution sold as a Samsung SSD worse than a cheap USD thumb drive you can pick up for a few bucks. The thought of firing up or installing a game like Call of Duty Modern Warfare II on this (which has a 150GB install size) is enough to make you sweat.

A man has been caught by Chinese border security attempting to smuggle in 420 SSDs by strapping them to his body.

Hardware smuggling is becoming a real issue, or at least it is in China, as seemingly many individuals are attempting to get across as much hardware as they can in an effort to resell them to reseller sites for profit. According to Chinese news publication HKEPC, a man has been caught by Chinese authorities attempting to get 420 M.2 SSDs estimated to be worth around $33,000 across the border.

The publication didn't state what models of SSDs the man had strapped all around his body, but given the total estimated price of the haul, we can assume they would have been higher-end storage solutions. This isn't the first time someone has been caught smuggling hardware into China, as it was only in March this year that an individual was caught with 239 CPUs strapped to his body.

ADATA has launched its latest PCIe Gen5 storage solution, the LEGEND 970, and it features a robust active cooling solution with the company's "patented heat dissipation" technology. It achieves sequential read and write speeds of up to 10,000 MB per second, so it's speedy to boot.

With PCIe Gen5 storage pushing speeds to new heights compared to what was possible with PCIe Gen4 and Gen3, the additional cooling required to maintain reliable performance without overheating has resulted in several very different Gen5 solutions in recent months. Some with chunky heatsinks, and even others go as far as adding water cooling.

According to ADATA, "active cooling is required for timely heat dissipation during high-speed PCIe 5.0 data transmission" to ensure high temperatures don't impact performance.

SSD prices are down by 25% since March, according to a new report from Tom's Hardware, which has been keeping an eye on price tags in the US market (over a range of 60+ popular drives).

Indeed, Tom's Hardware previously observed prices falling between 15% to 30% from January to March, and now with these fresh drops of 25% (on average) midway through the year, SSD pricing really is a whole lot cheaper than the levels we saw at the start of 2023.

Looking at the 1TB SSDs Tom's tracks the prices of, some of the biggest falls come with Samsung drives. Notably the Samsung 990 Pro, which is half the price it was in March (dropping from $170 to $85). Samsung's 980 Pro SSD is also 40% less than it was three months ago (you can now pick it up for $60).

It was only a matter of time before Seagate launched its first PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, so this is not unexpected news. But with retail listings over at Amazon UK and B&H Photo (which have been taken down), we've got details on what to expect from the new Seagate FireCuda 540 SSD - the company's first Gen5 storage solution.

First, the company isn't looking to break records in terms of overall speed, with the 2TB variant of the FireCuda 540 listed as offering up to 10,000 MB/s sequential read/write speeds and up to an impressive 1.5 million random IOPS.

Seagate also notes that the FireCuda 540 4TB variant supports up to 3,940 TB of TBW (total bytes written), equivalent to writing and deleting 90% of the capacity every day for five years. This endurance rating is up there, especially compared to competing brands, and is backed by three years of Seagate's 'Rescue' data recovery service.

A few months ago, we reported on the new GALAX HOF Extreme 50 PCIe Gen 5 SSD, which aimed to bring some of that high-end HOF (Hall of Fame) style to its SSD line-up. With sequential read speeds of up to 10 GB/s, the HOF Extreme 50 SSDs, available in 1TB and 2TB variants, also feature a large copper heatsink and active cooling via a tiny fan.

Having chunky cooling on a PCIe Gen 5 SSD is, unfortunately, the norm and not the exception, thanks in part to the impressive speeds you're getting. Keeping the hardware cool and free from throttling is a genuine concern, and GALAX's HOF cooling reportedly keeps temps within the 40 to 45 degree Celsius range.

But GALAX has a new flagship PCIe Gen 5 SSD coming, the GALAX HOF Extreme 50S PCIe 5 SSD. And it looks like it's got the same active cooling setup. If you're wondering what the difference is outside of an 'S' being slapped on at the end of '50', let's dig in.

HPE Discover 2023 is taking place at the Venetian Conference and Expo Center in Las Vegas from June 20 to 22, and with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) solutions all about data, the inventors of NAND flash memory, KIOXIA, will be on hand to showcase its latest solutions.

Recently we reported on KIOXIA's new line of data center NVMe SSDs, the first EDSFF drives (Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor), using PCIe Gen5 technology for improved speed and performance. The good news is that the KIOXIA CD7 Series EDSFF E3.S Data Center SSDs will be at HPE Discover 2023, and KIOXIA will demonstrate them running "running real-world applications" on the HPE Alletra 4110 Gen 11.

EDSFF E3.S NVMe SSDs are the next evolution of the standard 2.5-inch form factor, providing more densely layered deployment (1.5 to 2X) in the same rack unit compared to more conventional 2.5-inch drives. KIOXIA notes that the smaller size also improves the cooling and thermal characteristics of the storage setup.

PCI-SIG has published specifications for PCI Express (PCIe) 7.0, and you're looking at some impressive speed increases when it's set to be released and finalized in 2025. But with that, we probably won't see PCIe Gen7 hardware until 2027, and PCIe Gen6 is right around the corner.

From the specifications released this week, PCIe 7.0 will be able to deliver 128 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 512 GB/s bi-directionally via an x16 configuration. This effectively doubles the speed with each new version as PCIe 5.0 tops out at 128 GB/s and PCIe 6.0 at 256 GB/s.

The specifications also mean that members have agreed to key features for the new PCIe 7.0 technology alongside the architecture - which will also support backward compatibility like existing PCIe specifications. Getting all technical, the impressive data transfer rate and bandwidth in PCIe Gen7 will use pulse amplitude modulation with four levels (PAM4) of signaling, 1b/1b flit mode encoding, and forward error correction (FEC).