Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 3-bit multi-level-cell (MLC) three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, for use in solid state drives (SSDs).

“With the addition of a whole new line of high density SSDs that is both performance- and value-driven, we believe the 3-bit V-NAND will accelerate the transition of data storage devices from hard disk drives to SSDs,” said Jaesoo Han, Senior Vice President, Memory Sales & Marketing, Samsung Electronics. “The wider variety of SSDs will increase our product competitiveness as we further expand our rapidly growing SSD business.”

The 3-bit V-NAND is Samsung’s latest second generation V-NAND device, which utilizes 32 vertically stacked cell layers per NAND memory chip. Each chip provides 128 gigabits (Gb) of memory storage.

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader in storage solutions, is expanding its business-class NAS portfolio with the WD Sentinel DX4200 storage server. The WD Sentinel DX4200 is a complete solution using Windows Storage Server, designed to meet the demands of today's small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) by combining Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 workgroup operating system and the Intel Atom C2338 Dual Core CPU.

With up to 16 TB of capacity, the WD Sentinel DX4200 enables small businesses to expand their office storage by upgrading the drives as the demands of their businesses grow. The WD Sentinel DX4200 is an ideal backup solution and provides SMBs the advantages of on-premise centralized storage.

CDRLabs has taken an in depth look at Crucial's MX100 SSD. This consumer-oriented drive offers powerful speeds and advanced features at a low cost per gigabyte. The MX100 combines Marvell's 88SS9189 controller with a custom firmware and Micron's new 16nm 128gb NAND to deliver up to 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write speeds. The MX100 also offers a long list of features including AES 256-bit encryption, thermal and power loss protection, TRIM support and active garbage collection. Additionally, it uses Native Write Acceleration to deliver consistent throughput by spreading the drive’s workload across several elements. It also employs technologies like Data Defense and Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN) to increase security and protection of data to a level that’s rarely found in consumer-class SSDs.

Mushkin, an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance and mission-critical computer products, today officially announced the worldwide launch of its latest addition to the Chronos Family of SSD products, Chronos G2.

Designed and assembled in the U.S.A., the new drive delivers random write performance of up to 90K IOPS and a maximum transfer rate of 555 MB/s. Available in capacities from 60 GB to 480 GB, Mushkin provides customers the option to enter the SSD world with a limited budget, with no compromise in performance. Customers can now build or upgrade a system economically, running the operating system and applications on a SSD, boosting performance substantially over a standard hard disk.