Over the past couple of years, Frore Systems has demonstrated several ways that its AirJet solid-state active cooling systems can be used to improve cooling in fanless devices like laptops, tablets, SSDs, and edge computing devices. But there are a subset of those applications that need their cooling options to also be waterproof, and Frore is looking to address those as well. To that end, this week Frore introduced its AirJet Mini Sport, a waterproof, IP68-rated solid-state cooling device that is aimed at use in smartphones and action cameras.
Introduced at MWC Shanghai to attract attention of China-based handset vendors, edge and industrial computing devices, and action cameras, the AirJet Mini Sport is an enhanced version of Frore's AirJet Mini Slim. This version has been fully waterproofed, offering IP68-level protection that allows it to work while being submerged in over 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. Internally, the AirJet Mini Sport can effectively dissipate 5.25 Watts of heat by generating 1750 Pascals of back pressure, while consuming 1 Watt of energy itself.
Elsewhere, Frore claims that the AirJet Mini Sport can be used to provide 2.5 Watts of cooling capacity to smartphones. Which, although not enough to cover the complete power consumption/heat dissipation of a high-end SoC, would have a significant impact on both burst and steady-state performance by allowing those chips to run at peak clocks and power for longer periods of time.
To ensure consistent performance of Frore's AirJet Mini Sport in diverse environments, the cooling device includes features such as dust resistance and self-cleaning. In addition, just like AirJet Mini Slim, the Sport-badged version its own thermal sensor to control its own operation and maintain optimal performance. As a result, Frore claims that smartphones and action cameras with the AirJet Mini Sport can achieve up to 80% better performance.
"We are excited to announce the waterproof AirJet Mini Sport," said Dr. Seshu Madhavapeddy, founder and CEO of Frore Systems. "Consumers demand increased performance in compact devices they can use anywhere, on land or in water. AirJet unleashes device performance, now enabling users to do more with their IP68 dustproof and waterproof devices."
Air CoolingKioxia's High-Performance 3D QLC NAND Enables High-End High-Capacity SSDs This week, Kioxia introduced its new 3D QLC NAND devices aimed at high-performance, high-capacity drives that could redefine what we typically expect from QLC-based SSDs. The components are 1 Tb and 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND ICs with a 3600 MT/s interface speed that could enable M.2-2230 SSDs with a 4 TB capacity and decent performance. Kioxia's 1 Tb (128 MB) and 2 Tb (256 TB) 3D QLC NAND devices are made on the company's BICS 8 process technology and feature 238 active layers as well as CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) design, which implies that CMOS (including interface and buffers circuitry) is built on a specialized node and bonded to the memory array. Such a manufacturing process enabled Kioxia (and its manufacturing partner Western Digital) to achieve a particularly high interface speed of 3600 MT/s. In addition to being one of the industry's first 2 Tb QLC NAND devices, the component features a 70% higher write power efficiency compared to Kioxia's BICS 5 3D QLC NAND devices, which is a bit vague statement as the new ICs have higher capacity and performance in general. This feature will be valuable for data centre applications, though I do not expect someone to use 3D QLC memory for write-intensive applications in general. Yet, these devices will be just what the doctor ordered for AI: read-intensive, content distribution, and backup storage. It is interesting to note that Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC NAND, optimized for performance, has a 30% faster sequential write performance and a 15% lower read latency than the 2 Tb 3D QLC component. These qualities (alongside a 3600 MT/s interface) promise to make Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC competitive even for higher-end PCIe Gen5 x4 SSDs, which currently exclusively use 3D TLC memory. The remarkable storage density of Kioxia's 2Tb 3D QLC NAND devices will allow customers to create high-capacity SSDs in compact form factors. For instance, a 16-Hi stacked package (measuring 11.5 mm × 13.5 mm × 1.5 mm) can be used to build a 4TB M.2-2230 drive or a 16TB M.2-2280 drive. Even a single 16-Hi package could be enough to build a particularly fast client SSD. Kioxia is now sampling its 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND BiCS 8 memory with customers, such as Pure Storage. "We have a long-standing relationship with Kioxia and are delighted to incorporate their eighth-generation BiCS Flash 2Tb QLC flash memory products to enhance the performance and efficiency of our all-flash storage solutions," said Charles Giancarlo, CEO of Pure Storage. "Pure's unified all-flash data storage platform is able to meet the demanding needs of artificial intelligence as well as the aggressive costs of backup storage. Backed by Kioxia technology, Pure Storage will continue to offer unmatched performance, power efficiency, and reliability, delivering exceptional value to our customers." "We are pleased to be shipping samples of our new 2Tb QLC with the new eighth-generation BiCS flash technology," said Hideshi Miyajima, CTO of Kioxia. "With its industry-leading high bit density, high speed data transfer, and superior power efficiency, the 2Tb QLC product will offer new value for rapidly emerging AI applications and large storage applications demanding power and space savings." There is no word on when the 1 Tb 3D QLC BiCS 8 memory will be sampled or released to the market. SSDs
Micron Expands Datacenter DRAM Portfolio with MR-DIMMs The compute market has always been hungry for memory bandwidth, particularly for high-performance applications in servers and datacenters. In recent years, the explosion in core counts per socket has further accentuated this need. Despite progress in DDR speeds, the available bandwidth per core has unfortunately not seen a corresponding scaling. The stakeholders in the industry have been attempting to address this by building additional technology on top of existing widely-adopted memory standards. With DDR5, there are currently two technologies attempting to increase the peak bandwidth beyond the official speeds. In late 2022, SK hynix introduced MCR-DIMMs meant for operating with specific Intel server platforms. On the other hand, JEDEC - the standards-setting body - also developed specifications for MR-DIMMs with a similar approach. Both of them build upon existing DDR5 technologies by attempting to combine multiple ranks to improve peak bandwidth and latency.
G.Skill on Tuesday introduced its ultra-low-latency DDR5-6400 memory modules that feature a CAS latency of 30 clocks, which appears to be the industry's most aggressive timings yet for DDR5-6400 sticks. The modules will be available for both AMD and Intel CPU-based systems.
With every new generation of DDR memory comes an increase in data transfer rates and an extension of relative latencies. While for the vast majority of applications, the increased bandwidth offsets the performance impact of higher timings, there are applications that favor low latencies. However, shrinking latencies is sometimes harder than increasing data transfer rates, which is why low-latency modules are rare.
Nonetheless, G.Skill has apparently managed to cherry-pick enough DDR5 memory chips and build appropriate printed circuit boards to produce DDR5-6400 modules with CL30 timings, which are substantially lower than the CL46 timings recommended by JEDEC for this speed bin. This means that while JEDEC-standard modules have an absolute latency of 14.375 ns, G.Skill's modules can boast a latency of just 9.375 ns – an approximately 35% decrease.
G.Skill's DDR5-6400 CL30 39-39-102 modules have a capacity of 16 GB and will be available in 32 GB dual-channel kits, though the company does not disclose voltages, which are likely considerably higher than those standardized by JEDEC.
The company plans to make its DDR5-6400 modules available both for AMD systems with EXPO profiles (Trident Z5 Neo RGB and Trident Z5 Royal Neo) and for Intel-powered PCs with XMP 3.0 profiles (Trident Z5 RGB and Trident Z5 Royal). For AMD AM5 systems that have a practical limitation of 6000 MT/s – 6400 MT/s for DDR5 memory (as this is roughly as fast as AMD's Infinity Fabric can operate at with a 1:1 ratio), the new modules will be particularly beneficial for AMD's Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000-series processors.
G.Skill notes that since its modules are non-standard, they will not work with all systems but will operate on high-end motherboards with properly cooled CPUs.
The new ultra-low-latency memory kits will be available worldwide from G.Skill's partners starting in late August 2024. The company did not disclose the pricing of these modules, but since we are talking about premium products that boast unique specifications, they are likely to be priced accordingly.
MemoryMicrochip recently announced the availability of their second PCIe Gen 5 enterprise SSD controller - the Flashtec 5016. Like the 4016, this is also a 16-channel controller, but there are some key updates:
Microchip's enterprise SSD controllers provide a high level of flexibility to SSD vendors by providing them with significant horsepower and accelerators. The 5016 includes Cortex-A53 cores for SSD vendors to run custom applications relevant to SSD management. However, compared to the Gen4 controllers, there are two additional cores in the CPU cluster. The DRAM subsystem includes ECC support (both out-of-band and inline, as desired by the SSD vendor).
At FMS 2024, the company demonstrated an application of the neural network engines embedded in the Gen5 controllers. Controllers usually employ a 'read-retry' operation with altered read-out voltages for flash reads that do not complete successfully. Microchip implemented a machine learning approach to determine the read-out voltage based on the health history of the NAND block using the NN engines in the controller. This approach delivers tangible benefits for read latency and power consumption (thanks to a smaller number of errors on the first read).
The 4016 and 5016 come with a single-chip root of trust implementation for hardware security. A secure boot process with dual-signature authentication ensures that the controller firmware is not maliciously altered in the field. The company also brought out the advantages of their controller's implementation of SR-IOV, flexible data placement, and zoned namespaces along with their 'credit engine' scheme for multi-tenant cloud workloads. These aspects were also brought out in other demonstrations.
Microchip's press release included quotes from the usual NAND vendors - Solidigm, Kioxia, and Micron. On the customer front, Longsys has been using Flashtec controllers in their enterprise offerings along with YMTC NAND. It is likely that this collaboration will continue further using the new 5016 controller.
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