Intel has released Optane P5810X - the last SSD with 3D XPoint memory

Intel has quietly and publicly started shipping the Optane P5810X SSD.
For the technology giant, this is likely the last series of solid state drives based on 3D XPoint nonvolatile memory.Image source: Intel Recall that in July this year Intel decided to phase out such devices and thereby get rid of this area of its business.
In 2020, Intel announced that it lost more than $500 million on the production of 3D XPoint memory and Optane drives based on them.The series of Intel Optane P5810X SSDs include models with capacities of 400 and 800 GB.
They come in 2.5-inch U.2 form factor and are equipped with PCI Express 4.0 x4 interface.
The manufacturer claims sequential read speed of 7200 MB/s for both models, and sequential write speed is 5,400 MB/s for the 800 GB version and 6,000 MB/s for the 400 GB model.
Performance in random read and write operations is 1.5 and 1.38 million IOPS, respectively.
Latency in these operations is 5 ns.
In regards to SSD lifespan, their DWPD (number of full writes per day) is 100.
A five-year manufacturer's warranty is claimed for the devices.Nothing is known about the cost of Optane P5810X SSDs.
It is also unclear how long the company plans to supply them.

Sony and Western Digital unveil first SSD certified for PlayStation 5

Sony and Western Digital have announced the first solid state drive (SSD) certified for use in PlayStation 5 gaming consoles.
Novelty under the name SN850 NVMe M.2 SSD for PS5 was released as part of a series of gaming products WD_Black.Image source: Western DigitalThe device is made in M.2 2280 format with dimensions of 22 × 80 mm.
For data exchange uses PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.
There is a cooling radiator, which helps to increase stability under high loads.Novelty presented in two capacity options - 1 and 2 TB.
The former has a sequential write speed of 5,300 Mbytes/s, the latter has a sequential read speed of 5,100 Mbytes/s.
The sequential read speed of the drives is the same - up to 7000 Mbytes/s.To use the products you need to update the firmware of your PlayStation 5 console to version 21.02-04.00.00 or later.
After installing the drive and powering up the console, you will need to format the SSD.WD_Black SN850 NVMe M.2 SSD for PS5 solutions are available for order now.
The 1TB version is priced at about $170 and the 2TB version is $280.
This is more expensive than the regular WD_Black SN850 drives, which are also supported by the PS5 console.

Some Steam Deck will receive slower SSD - Valve assured that this does not affect the performance of games

As reported by HardwareLuxx, May 28 Valve introduced changes to the SSD specifications for the older versions of the Steam Deck console: now devices can come with drives that run two times slower than originally announced.
It should be noted that the Russian page of the device these changes are not - in Russia the console is not officially delivered.Image source: steamdeck.comThe English Steam Deck page now states that the two older versions of the console comes with 256-and 512 GB NVMe SSD drives with PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2 interfaces.
It is emphasized that Valve has tested both of these drives and \"saw no difference in gaming performance between x2 and x4\".The manufacturer did not specify the reasons why they had to change the characteristics of the device, but according to the specifications of the standard, PCIe Gen 3 x2 interface can provide speed up to 2048 Mbytes / s, and it is, for example, four times faster than the SSD interface with SATA.
On the other hand, the PCIe Gen 3 x4 version offers an additional two-fold speed increase, but you can take advantage of this advantage only on a very small number of games.Valve stressed that the specification changes affected only NVMe-drives, and the budget model with 64 GB eMMC it did not touch, and high-speed MicroSD slot also remained the same for all three options.
Unfortunately, there is no way to find out in advance which drive comes with which version.

Enthusiasts have figured out how to insert a larger SSD into Steam Deck - Valve warns it could break the console

Valve has responded to online instructions for modifying the Steam Deck portable gaming console to install a non-standard, larger SSD.
Image source: ValveName, the portable console is sold in versions with a 64GB eMMC flash module or a 256GB or 512GB NVMe SSD PCIe 3.0 x4.
The latter two use the M.2 2230 (22 × 30 mm) standard model.Enthusiast Belly Jelly showed that instead of the M.2 2230 solution, the longer M.2 2242 (22 × 42 mm) drive fits nicely into the console, giving you more options for upgrading your storage.
True, this modification requires a slight bending of the heat spreader and removal of one of the thermal gaskets.
And as Valve has now stated, such tampering could result in console failure.
\"Please don't do that.
The integrated circuitry of the charging circuitry gets very hot, so you should not move nearby thermal pads.
Also, most M.2 2242 drives use more power and get hotter than what the console is designed for.
This modification may seem to work, but it will significantly shorten the life of the Steam Deck,\" according to the report.
To recap, the Steam Deck has a 7-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1280 × 800 pixels, flanked by gaming controls.
It comes with AMD's Zen 2 quad-core hybrid processor with RDNA 2 integrated graphics, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless adapters.

Microsoft will ban installing Windows 11 on HDDs in off-the-shelf PCs next year

Microsoft has urged PC and laptop OEMs to stop using conventional hard drives as the primary media from which to boot Windows 11 operating system in 2023 and instead equip their systems with solid state drives.
Tom's Hardware reached out to Microsoft for comment on the issue, but analysts at Trendfocus, citing PC makers, said they had nothing to say on the matter at this time.
Curiously, the system requirements of Windows 11 itself does not specify the need for an SSD.
Instead, Microsoft simply reports the need for a medium with 64 GB or more of free space to install and use the OS.
However, the SSD is required to use DirectStorage fast boot technology as well as the Windows subsystem to run Android apps on this OS.
Nevertheless, it is unclear whether Microsoft plans to officially change the system requirements for Windows 11 after 2023, and whether it is going to specify them to make SSDs mandatory.On the one hand, the transition to SSDs makes sense.
Unlike conventional hard drives, these drives do not create noise and run much faster than conventional HDDs.
However, despite the reduction in the price of SSDs in recent years, even the most affordable models of these media are now generally more expensive than HDD models with the same capacity.
If we compare SSD and HDD with 1TB capacity, a gigabyte of memory in an HDD costs about $0.05, an SSD with SATA III interface costs $0.08, and an M.2 NVMe format drive costs $0.14.
So a 1TB hard drive costs $45, a SATA III SSD costs $75, and an M.2 NVMe SSD costs $150.Image source: Tom's HardwareMany PC and laptop manufacturers already equip their systems with SSDs without any insistence from Microsoft.
But there are exceptions.
In emerging markets, where low- and mid-end offerings are ample, computers are often equipped with SSDs to cut costs.According to John Chen, vice president of Trendfocus, replacing a 1TB hard drive would require a system with an equivalent SSD of only 256GB.
Switching to a 512GB SSD would make the entire system more expensive.
Many customers who care about storage capacity will not accept this compromise.
\"Microsoft originally intended to make the switch from HDDs to SSDs this year.
At least that's what the OEMs are saying.
However, in the end, this plan was pushed back to next year.
Most likely in the second half of the year.
OEMs are now trying to negotiate with the company about possible exceptions.
For example, they are discussing the possibility of postponing the transition to SSD in the desktop segment or emerging markets until 2024.
In general, things could still change,\" Chen commented.It is still unclear what measures Microsoft plans to take against those PC and laptop OEMs who refuse to follow its wishes.
According to Trendfocus, the media type change will hit demand for hard drives next year anyway.

HighPoint unveils RAID controllers for eight M.2 NVMe drives - speeds up to 28 GB/s

HighPoint has announced new SSD7140A and SSD7540 PCIe expansion cards designed to build RAID arrays from M.2 NVMe SSDs, the former working with PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, the latter with PCIe 4.0 x16.
Both support installation of up to eight SSDs.Image source: HighPointA HighPoint SSD7140A and SSD7540 cards can be combined in RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 10.
The first type is designed for maximum performance, the second for data backup, and the third is a combination of the first two.
Also offered is support for JBOD mode, which allows you to combine all installed drives into a single disk volume.The controllers used in the expansion cards support the installation of up to eight M.2 SSDs.
However, only four fast SSDs are sufficient for maximum throughput.
Each NVMe drive uses four PCIe lines.
Each expansion card offers support for 16 lines.
An additional four M.2 slots on the expansion cards allow for more total array capacity.
The dimensions of the HighPoint SSD7140A and SSD7540 expansion cards are 285 × 111 × 21 mm.
They are equipped with cooling systems consisting of large aluminum radiators and two fans.
The size of the latter is not specified, but they are probably up to 40mm in diameter.Since the HighPoint SSD7140A has a PCIe 3.0 interface, it can only provide a maximum data transfer rate of up to 14,000 Mbytes/s.
The HighPoint SSD7540 with the PCIe 4.0 interface offers double that, at 28,000 Mbytes/s.
However, you can combine two expansion cards of the same model into a Cross-Sync configuration, nearly doubling the speed, if desired.
So with two PCIe 3.0 cards, you can get transfer speeds of up to 28,000 Mbytes/s, and for the PCIe 4.0 model, almost 56,000 Mbytes/s.The HighPoint SSD7140A has a recommended price of $729.
The HighPoint SSD7540 with PCIe 4.0 interface is priced at $1099.
Both novelties can work in Windows and Linux operating systems.

ASUS to release ROG Strix SQ7 NVMe SSD with read speeds up to 7,000 Mbytes/s

Last month, ASUS hinted that it would release its first M.2 format NVMe SSD, to be named the ROG Strix SQ7.
Now the Taiwanese manufacturer has finally shared the specifications of its debut SSD.Image source: ASUSThe drive will be based on a Phison E18 controller with PCIe 4.0 x4 support.
The company specified that it will use 3D TLC NAND flash memory chips in the ROG Strix SQ7.
According to TechPowerUp, the published images of the device can be determined that the SSD uses 176-layer 3D TLC NAND memory from Micron.
The novelty will also get a buffer of DDR4 memory.Image source: ASUSASUS ROG Strix SQ7 will provide sequential read speed up to 7000 Mbytes/s, and sequential write - up to 6000 Mbytes/s.
In other words, it will be a flagship SSD model.
Unfortunately, the company did not specify the performance of new items in random read and write operations.Image source: TechPowerUpThe ROG Strix SQ7 is claimed to support TCG Opal and AES-256 encryption features for security.
The new product will also come with Backup Now EZ 5 software, which is a comprehensive data backup solution.
The manufacturer also mentioned about ROG Strix SQ7 compatibility with PlayStation 5 game consoles.Information about the cost and arrival date ROG Strix SQ7 company did not report.
At the moment, it is known that only one ROG Strix SQ7 model with a capacity of 1TB will be on sale.

Phison shows how PCIe 5.0 storage works with read speeds above 12GB/s

Phison has shown a prototype NVMe SSD based on the PS5026-E26 with PCIe 5.0 x4 interface announced earlier this year.
The chip will be used in high-performance gaming M.2 SSD models, as well as in enterprise applications.Picture source: PhisonAccording to the PCIe 5.0 x4 interface, bandwidth of 15.8 GB/s in both directions, SSDs using this interface will be significantly faster than current PCIe 4.0 solutions.
In addition, next-generation SSDs based on future-oriented controllers with PCIe 5.0 support will offer higher storage capacities and greater reliability than current solutions.
Phison showed an NVMe-drive based on PS5026-E26 controller, equipped with 1TB of Micron 3D TLC NAND memory.
The SSD had a maximum sequential read speed of 12,457 Mbytes/s and a maximum write speed of 10,023 Mbytes/s (CrystalDiskMark data).
As for the 4K random read and write performance, it achieves 1.31 and 1.16 million IOPS, respectively.
These numbers are significantly higher than most consumer SSDs with PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.
The first generation Phison PS5026-E26 controller features Arm Cortex-R5 cores, as well as dedicated CoXProcessor 2.0 cores.
The controller can work with any type of 3D NAND flash memory, which meets Toggle 5.0 and ONFi 5.0 specifications, and operates at up to 2400 MHz.
As Phison is positioning this controller as the foundation not only for consumer SSD models, but also for enterprise-level solutions, the chip also offers support for features such as PCIe Dual Port for U.3-format drives, single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) features, and Zone Namespaces (ZNS) capability.The company has not announced when the first consumer drives based on the PS5026-E26 controller will go on sale.
However, the manufacturer said last year that the first SSDs supporting PCIe 5.0 x4 interface should hit the market in the second half of 2022.