SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
Details on Intel SSD 330 Series
It's been a busy spring for Intel. The Intel SSD 520 series was released in February, and a month later, Sandy Bridge EP was released. Only another month or...
15 by Kristian Vättö on 4/3/2012Intel SSD 313 Series Launched
A bit over a month ago, we reported that Intel's SSD 313 would be launching soon. We don't know when exactly the launch took place but the 313...
30 by Kristian Vättö on 4/3/2012LSI's Nytro MegaRAID Brings SSD Caching to SAS RAID Cards
At the beginning of the year LSI completed the acquisition of SandForce, the SSD controller maker we've been covering extensively since its arrival on the scene in late 2009...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/2/2012Marvell's 3rd Generation 88SS9187 SSD Controller
Today Marvell is announcing its third generation SSD controller with the 88SS9187. Its predecessor, the 88SS9174 was used in many drives including Crucial's m4 and Intel's SSD 510. The...
24 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/14/2012Micron Announces 2.5" PCIe SSD for Enterprise
Micron has announced the first 2.5" SSD which utilizes PCIe interface instead of the more common SATA interface. The 2.5" form factor allows for easy serviceability because the drives...
12 by Kristian Vättö on 3/7/2012Corsair Releases Accelerator Series SSDs
Corsair released a new SSD series today branded Accelerator. Like the name suggests, this series is aimed for caching purposes and is bundled with NVELO's DataPlex caching software. Corsair...
11 by Kristian Vättö on 3/6/2012OCZ Releases 180GB and 360GB Models of Agility 3
Today OCZ added two more capacities to their Agility 3 lineup: 180GB and 360GB. Agility 3 isn't the first SSD series to feature such SSD capacities, but more often...
26 by Kristian Vättö on 2/29/2012Intel Sells Some of Its IMFT Stake to Micron
Intel and Micron today announced that they have done some modifications to their agreements on their IMFT joint venture. In short, Intel is selling its stake in two fabs...
6 by Kristian Vättö on 2/28/2012ADATA Releases Three SSDs - Maximizing The Capacity of SandForce Drives
ADATA has released three new SSD lineups: XPG SX900, Premier Pro SP900, and Premier SP800. XPG is ADATA's high-end brand aimed at gamers and enthusiasts and SX900 is the...
32 by Kristian Vättö on 2/25/2012Understanding TLC NAND
In almost every SSD review we have published, Anand has mentioned how an SSD is the biggest performance upgrade you can make today. Why would anyone use regular hard...
91 by Kristian Vättö on 2/23/2012Intel 313 Series SSDs Launching Soon
Intel 313 Series SSDs (also known as "Hawley Creek") were originally scheduled for Q4'11 release but obviously they were delayed. VR-Zone is now claiming that the release will take...
16 by Kristian Vättö on 2/22/2012OCZ Octane 1.13 Firmware Update: Improving 4KB Random Write Performance
The one thing that OCZ has been missing for so many years is finally one of its staples: focus. The same company that dabbled in everything from brain mice...
24 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/9/2012A Look at Enterprise Performance of Intel SSDs
For the majority of the history of AnandTech we've hosted our own server infrastructure. A benefit of running our own infrastructure is that we're able to gain a lot...
56 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/8/2012Hitachi Releases Ultrastar SSD400S.B: 25nm SLC NAND Is Here
25nm MLC NAND has been in the market for roughly a year now and it is very common in today's consumer SSDs—there are only a few models using 3Xnm...
14 by Kristian Vättö on 2/8/2012Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce
Intel was rumored to be working on a SandForce based drive for several months now, but even the rumors couldn't encapsulate just how long Intel and SF has worked...
139 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/6/2012Micron CEO Steve Appleton Dies in a Plane Crash
Micron's long time CEO, Steve Appleton, has died in a plane crash at the age of 51 at the Boise Airport on Friday morning. He was reportedly flying a...
10 by Kristian Vättö on 2/4/2012Samsung Updates the Firmware of SSD 830 Series, Fixes BSOD Issue
This seems to be a month of SSD firmware updates. Less than two weeks ago, Crucial released a firmware update to fix the issue that caused BSODs after 5184...
24 by Kristian Vättö on 1/23/2012OCZ Releases Firmware Update for Octane, Increases Random Write Performance
OCZ released a firmware update for its Octane SSD series. The update carries a version number 1.13 and OCZ claims substantial random write improvements. To refresh everyone's memory on...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 1/23/2012TRIM Enabler 2.0 for OS X Lion Released
People are often concerned with the performance of their SSD; is it running as fast as advertised. TRIM is an essential part of keeping your SSD performance up (see...
32 by Kristian Vättö on 1/22/2012Kingston's SSDNow V+200: More Affordable SandForce
Last year Kingston introduced its HyperX line of SF-2281 based SSDs. HyperX marked the first time SandForce and Kingston ever worked together but the relationship continued. Kingston quietly introduced...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/19/2012