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The era of 1TB microSD cards has begun
While processors can no longer keep up with Moore's law, memory manufacturers keep cramming more storage into ever-smaller spaces. Micron and Western Digital have both unveiled 1TB microSD memory cards that will let you significantly ramp up your smartphone storage, for a price. The products are arriving not long after Lexar started selling the first-ever 1TB SDXC memory cards.
Intel's first 'ruler' SSD holds 32TB
Intel has unsheathed its first "ruler" SSD, a bizarre device with a 12-inch long housing and colossal amount of storage. Intel created the new form factor last year to cram as much storage as possible into a "1U" server form factor, with optimal thermal efficiency. The DC P4500 is the first drive with that design and fits 32TB into one twentieth the space that regular hard disks would take up, while consuming a tenth the power.
World's largest SSD capacity now stands at 100TB
That didn't take long -- just a month after Samsung released a record-setting 30TB SSD, a rival has claimed the throne. Nimbus Data has unveiled the ExaDrive DC100, which crams 100TB of 3D flash memory into a standard 3.5-inch SATA form factor. For context, that's 20 million songs (if you assume 5MB each) in a device small enough to fit into your home PC. Not that you're about to buy one, unfortunately.
Intel's push for petabyte SSDs requires a new kind of drive
There aren't many ways to make data center storage exciting, but mentioning a drive that could hold up to one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) comes close. Intel is making the case to swap out old disk-based drives in data centers with SSDs, and as part of that it's showing off a new "Ruler" form factor. Instead of molding to the 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch size of traditional drives or just the dimensions of a PCIe slot, its long skinny shape fits into a standard rack mounted server. As TechGage notes, with regular 10TB hard drives, slapping together a petabyte's worth would fill up a 100-bay 4U server. The new Ruler drives aren't available yet, but Intel claims it will offer them with both its Optane and 3D NAND SSDs in the "near future."
WD's next-gen SSDs add even more speed and capacity
Hard disk specialist Western Digital (WD) acquired SSD maker SanDisk last year for a colossal $19 billion, and now we're getting some idea as to its strategy. The company unveiled two new lineups -- branded under each company's names -- that feature the first SSDs to use 64-layer 3D NAND chips developed by SanDisk. The new, higher capacity chips will allow for "lower power consumption and higher performance, endurance and capacities," Western Digital wrote in its press release.
