Last year I was fortunate enough to be among the first to review the Samsung T3 Portable SSD. The drive was small, durable, fast, available in capacities up to 2TB, and relatively good looking making it not only my favorite portable SSD, but also my most highly recommended as well.

Of course, with Samsung’s annual release cycles, Samsung recently launched the new Samsung T5 Portable SSD which we’ll be reviewing today.

Kingston and Marvell are celebrating a great two years as a recent press release revealed that Kingston has shipped over 6 million Marvell powered SSDs.

Kingston and Marvell’s relationship didn’t begin until February of 2015 when Kingston shipped the first HyperX Predator PCIe SSDs featuring Marvell’s 88SS9293 controllers. Since then, Kingston has utilized Marvell’s 88SS1074 controller in the UV400 series SSD and will soon launch the UV500 series SSD carrying Marvell’s 88SS1074 paired with 3D NAND.

Kingston will show off their latest Marvell powered SSDs at FMS 2017.

Despite the global NAND shortage and the financial troubles Toshiba is experiencing as of late, the company recently announced the new TR200 SSD featuring their latest 64-Layer BiCS TLC 3D NAND.

The new Toshiba TR200 will be available in capacities of 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB. Performance is rated at up to 550MB/s sequential reads and 525MB/s sequential writes. 4K performance is rated at up to 80K/87K IOPS random reads/writes. The drive will feature an endurance of 60-240TBW and a warranty period of 3 years.

The Toshiba TR200 is expected to be showcased at the ChinaJoy show in Shanghai, China from July 27 to July 30, then at GamesCon in Cologne, [...]

Following Toshiba’s announcement of their QLC BiCS 3D NAND last month, Toshiba’s FlashForward NAND development joint venture partner Western Digital recently also announced their own 4-bit per cell QLC 3D NAND product which they refer to as X4.

According to the press release, the WD’s X4 features up to 64-layers of BiCS 3D NAND with a maximum die capacity of up to 768Gb (96GB) per die, or a 50% increase in storage capacity compared to previous generation 512Gb 3-bit per cell X3 NAND.

Currently WD hasn’t revealed any information on plans for future products based on the new NAND. WD will show off the new X4 3D NAND at FMS 2017 in [...]

Apple and Samsung aren’t exactly on the best terms, but sometimes you just have to set aside your differences to ensure that you’ll have enough NAND to produce your next generation of iPhones.

According to a recent report by Digitimes, Apple suppliers SK Hynix and Toshiba are both experiencing bad yields on their 3D NAND resulting in a shortfall of as much as 30%. In order to ensure an adequate supply of NAND, Apple has reportedly turned to Samsung which not only has relatively good 3D NAND yields, but also has the manufacturing capability to handle the increased demand.

Due to poor yields, global supply of NAND is expected to remain constricted [...]

Samsung announced today that its new fab in Pyeongtaek, South Korea has entered mass production and is shipping its first products to customers. The newly-opened plant which will be the largest single fab in the industry will focus on production of Samsung’s latest 4th generation, 64-layer 3D V-NAND. Samsung’s 64-layer TLC 3D NAND enables capacities of up to 256Gbit per chip bringing increased performance and storage capacity to consumer and enterprise devices. The new factory represents a major step towards Samsung’s goal of shifting 50% of its production to 64-Layer 3D NAND by the end of this year.

Within the next four years, Samsung is also [...]

Over the past few months, there hasn’t been a whole lot of good news coming out of Toshiba, but here’s a recent announcement that I think we can all appreciate. In a recent announcement, Toshiba shared news that they’ve developed the industry’s first 4-bit per cell, Quad Level Cell (QLC) BiCS NAND flash memory chips.

The new QLC NAND features a 64-layer cell structure and boasts up to 768Gbit / 96GB per die making it currently the densest dies on the market. By using 16 dies, Toshiba is able to cram as much as 1.5 TB in a single package. This is a 50% increase over a comparable TLC NAND package with the same number of dies.

“From SLC [...]

In a recent announcement, Samsung has begun volume production of its 4th generation, 64-layer V-NAND. The new 3D NAND flash chips are the successor to Samsung’s existing 48-layer V-NAND.

Storage capacity of the 64-layer V-NAND remains at the same 256Gbit density as the 48-layer V-NAND it’s designed to replace. The major difference with 64-layer V-NAND is the size of each chip as it’s physically smaller, allowing more chips to fit on a single wafer. This improves production efficiency as well as internal parallelism when it’s ultimately implemented on SSDs and other storage devices.

In addition to greater areal density, the new [...]

Samsung Electronics is poised to surpass Intel (aka Chipzilla) as the world’s largest chip manufacturer.

Analyst firm IC Insights predicted recently that if the current price of DRAM and NAND hold for Q2, Samsung could generate enough revenue to take the number one spot. The firm predicts that Samsung will achieve $14.9 billion in revenue, while Intel is predicted to reach $14.4 billion.

The increase in the price of NAND and DRAM is fueled by significantly increased demand amid a major industry-wide supply shortage. The depleted inventory and industry-wide transition to 3D NAND is significantly increasing the price of storage and isn’t supposed [...]

SK Hynix is making some major advances in NAND technology as it recently announced its first 256Gb 72-layer TLC 3D NAND flash memory. SK Hynix’s 72-layer 3D NAND follows their 48-layer 3D NAND product which was released just five months ago in November 2016.

According to SK Hynix, the new 72-layer TLC 3D NAND is capable of utilizing existing manufacturing lines allowing for 30% better manufacturing efficiency, 2x faster internal operation speed, 20% higher performance, and 1.5x cell density over previous generation 48-Layer 3D NAND.

The new SK Hynix 72-layer 3D NAND will go into mass production in the 2H2017 initially targeting business use. The [...]