BIOS-locked laptops are sometimes sold at bargain prices due to the operational restrictions this kind of firmware security puts on the device. Can AI tools be used to bypass this security measure? The answer looks like a yes, as Reddit_2049 on the Claude AI subreddit recently shared the process that successfully unlocked their HP 15-dw1036ne.

A new owner of a BIOS-locked laptop will typically not be able to bypass a password or PIN at startup, nor be able to adjust any BIOS settings. It depends on what kind of lock has been implemented. There was a time when removing the CMOS could reset the BIOS and break these chains, but for a long time, laptop makers have had far stronger security.

The particular laptop model with a BIOS lock to bypass by the Redditor was the HP 15-dw1036ne, a 10th-gen Intel processor-packing laptop from the turn of the decade. This looks like a consumer laptop, so we reckon it will have had a power-on password set by the previous owner, which somehow didn’t get communicated to Reddit_2049 through the used/recycled electronics ownership chain. However, it isn’t explicitly stated what kind of BIOS lock faced the Redditor, so it could have been a BIOS admin lock. These locks aren’t as stringent or formidable as those possible with HP’s commercial laptops, which can even tie BIOS locks to the system TPM…

Back to the HP 15-dw1036ne unlock process, and it came with BIOS version F.68. The Redditor had access to a CH341A chip flasher and code disassembly tools, but said the system would throw up a ‘BIOS Corruption Detected’ message if any modification was detected. That’s a check that makes hacking it all the more difficult. This is where Claude Code stepped in.

Looking for previous examples and details of someone successfully unlocking this specific HP laptop’s BIOS was fruitless. So, Reddit_2049 asked Claude Code to pick through their backup BIOS dump and try to unlock it. Long story short, it worked.

Three levels of patches

The Redditor shared a few technical details about the three levels of patches that were required to unlock the BIOS. These include: finding the RSA-2048 DXE-FV signature check bypass, and 55 hidden setup fields, as well as revealing advanced BIOS configuration tabs. But most important to know is that Claude Code wrangled these bits and bytes, so Reddit_2049 now has a fully open BIOS on their HP laptop.

A Python script that completes the whole process on this particular HP laptop is shared at the bottom of the Reddit post. This will back up your current BIOS, implement all three patches, and leave your HP 15-dw1036ne unlocked.

Please be warned that this script might not work with your laptop, even if it's an HP, even if it’s a 15-dw1036ne, or even if there are other differences like board revision. However, this example shows that laptops with locked BIOS access/features and no specific known bypass method can now be fully unlocked thanks to AI.

Kioxia and SanDisk have begun sample shipments of their ninth-generation BiCS FLASH, a NAND flash technology that blends legacy architectures with modern enhancements to create a bridge between the current BiCS8 generation and the forthcoming BiCS10. While BiCS10 is expected to deliver higher capacities through a cutting-edge 332-layer design, BiCS9 takes a more cost-optimized approach, targeting enterprise SSDs built for AI workloads and mid-tier storage solutions where efficiency and performance balance are key.

What sets BiCS9 apart is its hybrid construction, achieved through CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) technology. In this process, the logic and memory cell wafers are fabricated separately under optimized conditions before being bonded into a single, high-performance package. This innovation allows Kioxia to mix and match mature cell structures—such as a 112-layer BiCS5 or a 218-layer BiCS8—with a modern I/O interface. The result is a chip capable of delivering Toggle DDR 6.0 speeds of up to 3.6 Gb/s, with peak speeds reaching 4.8 Gb/s under controlled testing conditions.

Despite employing fewer layers than BiCS8 or the next-gen BiCS10, BiCS9 still brings meaningful upgrades. Write performance is up by 61%, read speeds improve by 12%, and power efficiency rises by 36% during writes and 27% during reads compared to previous 512 GB TLC designs. An 8% increase in bit density further underscores the careful engineering that allows BiCS9 to deliver strong performance without inflating costs.

A Switch 2 owner has had their console “restricted by Nintendo” after installing a Switch game they bought on the used market. Quinn Nelson, the creator behind popular YouTube channel Snazzy Labs, fell foul to the long arm of Nintendo law, and now assumes the “old copy of Bayo 3 on eBay” they bought must have been dumped/ripped by its previous owner and got flagged by big N’s anti-piracy servers.

Nelson kindly posted the above warning as a PSA (public service announcement) for other Switch 2 owners who may be considering building their game library via the used market. “Be EXTREMELY careful buying used Nintendo Switch games,” they stress. Nintendo’s action, represented by the screen, doesn’t just disable access to the possibly duped and redistributed copy of Bayo 3. All access to Nintendo’s online services have been cut off.

“The use of online services on this console is currently restricted by Nintendo”

The above foreboding message effectively signals a ban on the particular console from online services operated by Nintendo. The move isn’t tied to the user account, but Nelson’s “1-month-old $450 Switch 2 is BANNED” from a lot of the online fun available. To be clear, if this happens to you, the physical cartridges that you own will remain playable, without updates, and some previously downloaded digital games may remain accessible.

Other social media users were quick to reassure Nelson of two things. Firstly, hardware bans received for using second-hand game carts that have been cloned by tools like MIG Flash are not uncommon. And, probably more importantly, Nintendo is receptive to owners who can provide corroborating evidence that they are innocent of Nintendo-flavored piracy. We reported on exactly such a case, only last week, with a happy ending for the innocent Facebook Marketplace-sourced used-game buyer.

All that seems to be required to iron out this digital wrinkle is some online correspondence with Nintendo and some kind of paper trail (or screenshots) showing that the offending game cart was bought used without any awareness of bad provenance.

Nelson has publicly dabbled in MIG Flash game dumping

Not all social media responses to Nelson’s situation were supportive, though – this is X in 2025., afterall A particular point was raised by Centro LEAKS, a Pokémon leaks, rumors and news site, which highlighted Nelson’s previous posts, one mentioning that he intended to run “my MIG Flash game dumps” on the Switch 2.

Taking your first steps into the world of Linux can be a scary proposition. After all, we have a whole new world of terminal commands, desktop environments and applications to learn. Thankfully Linux installation has improved leaps and bounds from the earliest text based installers used in the late 1990s (Where I started my journey with Mandrake, Corel Linux) via graphical installers in the early 2000s (Ubuntu, Open Suse). From the 2010s we have seen better graphical installers providing clearer and easier means to install the latest Linux distro.

The first steps into Linux now fall under two paths.: a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi or more traditionally a dual boot setup, where Windows and Linux are installed to the same machine, often on the same boot drive. Using a custom boot menu, GRUB, we can choose between the two operating systems when we power on our PC.

In this how to, we shall learn how to dual boot Linux with Windows, using Ubuntu and Windows 11.

Before we kick-off, a word of caution. Ensure that you have backed up your drive before moving forwards. There is always a chance that you will accidentally overwrite your drive.

How to Create a Linux Install USB

Our Linux distro is typically downloaded as an ISO image (ISO originally being used to reference CD / DVD sized images) of a live Linux OS that we can test on our machine. To use the ISO with a UEFI / Secure Boot system we need to use Rufus, a popular free utility that writes ISO files to USB Flash drives.

Our goal is to create a bootable USB stick containing our chosen Linux OS. A minimum capacity of 8GB is recommended for your USB drive.

What you will need to dual boot Linux and Windows

• Computer running Windows 10 or 11 (see how to get Windows 11 for free)
• USB Flash drive, 8GB or larger
• Linux distro (we chose Ubuntu)

1. Download and install Rufus for your operating system.

2. Insert a USB drive into your machine and open Rufus.

3. Select your USB drive using Device, and then click SELECT and select the Linux OS that you wish to install. In our case it was Ubuntu.

4. Select the GPT partition scheme and click START to write the OS to the USB drive. GPT is the latest partition scheme and necessary for installing Ubuntu on a UEFI system. It is gradually replacing MBR.

5. When prompted select “Write in ISO image mode” and click OK.

6. Read and understand the prompts to ensure that Linux OS will be written to the correct drive. There is no going back should you make a mistake.

7. Click CLOSE to exit Rufus and remove the USB drive from the machine.

How to Install Linux for Dual Boot

The Linux installer has come a long way. Gone are the old days of scary user interfaces and in their place are inviting and easy to use installers that guide you through the process. We’re going to use the Ubuntu 22.04.1 installer to split our 256GB NVMe drive in half. Giving Windows and Ubuntu enough space for a basic dual boot install. Then we will follow a typical Ubuntu installation.

1. Insert the USB drive into your computer and boot from it. Each computer is a little different, Some will offer a function key to select a boot device, some need to be selected from the BIOS.

2. From the GRUB menu select “Try or Install Ubuntu” (or your Linux OS of choice) and press Enter . The GRUB menu is a custom boot menu used on Linux devices. It can also be customized to show a background image.

3. When prompted, click Try Ubuntu to load the OS into RAM as a “Live Distro”. Live Distros give us enough of the operating system to test on our machine without making any changes to the system. They are also useful as recovery devices to boot broken computers.

4. Test your hardware to make sure that everything you need is working. Check audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc before moving onwards.

5. Double click on the Install icon to launch the installer application.

6. Select your language and click Continue.

7. Configure your accessibility requirements and click Next.

8. Select your preferred keyboard layout and click Continue.

9. Choose how you connect to the Internet and click Next to move on. If you have wired or Wi-Fi Internet access, choose the most appropriate method. Later, part of the install process will require Internet access to download software updates.

10. Select an Interactive Installation and click Next. Interactive installations will prompt the user for input as the install progresses. The automated install option is used for users who have a configuration script that automates the process.

11. Select either Default or Extended and click Next. The Default option will install just the basic applications (file manager, web browser, and some basic utilities.) This is useful for creating a base install for use in specific projects. If you require more apps, such as office tools, image editors etc, opt for the Extended selection. This option is also useful for those new to Linux.

12. Tick the boxes to choose whether you require proprietary software and click Next. Ubuntu comes with no proprietary software as part of the ISO image, but here we can install software and drivers that make Ubuntu easier to use.

13. Select “Install Ubuntu alongside Windows Boot Manager” and click Next. Any other option will either delete the entire contents of the drive, or require manual configuration, so take great care.

14. Ensure that the correct drive has been selected, and slide the slider to adjust how much space each OS will have.

15. Select No Encryption to install Ubuntu without any form of drive encryption. Otherwise select Encrypt with a passphrase to encrypt your disk. Click Next to move on.

16. Create a new user and give your machine a relevant hostname. Click Next to continue. This will be the default user for the operating system, so make sure that it is relevant. The hostname identifies the machine, and if you have many machines on the network, it will make it easier to identify your machine.

17. Set your location and click Continue.

18. Review your choices and click Install to begin.

The installation will take a few minutes to complete.

19. Click on Restart Now to reboot your computer.

20. Remove the USB drive and press Enter when prompted.

How to set up your BIOS for your first Linux dual boot

The first boot of a Linux dual boot system requires a little fine tuning in our BIOS. We need to tell the system to boot from our Linux install, which will trigger the GRUB menu to load. From there we can select an OS to boot from. Each BIOS is a little different, so use these steps as a general guide and refer to the manual for your motherboard for more specific information.

1. Open your BIOS menu. See our story on how to enter your BIOS if you don’t know how to do this already.

2. Select the Boot menu.

3. Select UEFI NVMe Drive BBS Priorities.

4. Set Boot Option 1 to be the Linux install.

5. Check that the change has been made, then save and exit the BIOS.

6. The system will now boot to GRUB, choose your Linux OS and press Enter. If we leave GRUB for 10 seconds, it will choose the default option, typically Linux.

7. Boot to the Linux desktop and check that everything is correct.

8. Reboot to GRUB and select Windows to check that everything is working.

Today, Newegg offers the TeamGroup MP44L M.2 2TB SSD at one of its best prices. Typically, it costs around $139, but right now, it's discounted to just $99, putting the price at around 4 cents per GB. The purchase also includes a free 32GB USB flash drive, but it's marked as a limited offer, so it's unclear how long it will be available.

We had the opportunity to review the 2TB edition of the TeamGroup MP44L SSD in 2022 and loved our experience overall, giving it a final rating of 4 out of 5 stars. The drive is power efficient, runs cool, and has performance that stands out against other SSDs in its class.

The TeamGroup MP44L has various capacities, but this offer applies to the 2TB edition. All drives in this line feature an M.2 2280 form factor and are built around the Phison E21T controller. The 2TB model can reach read/write speeds as high as 4800/4400 MB/s.

This SSD is compatible with PCIe 4.0 x4 interfaces, which isn't the latest protocol, but it is still useful for most users. It's supported by Newegg's 30-day return policy and a 5-year manufacturer's warranty from TeamGroup, which voids if the drive reaches 1200 TBW.

Check out the TeamGroup MP44L 2TB SSD product page at Newegg for more details and purchase options.

Kioxia, in partnership with Sandisk, revealed its 10th generation 3D NAND flash memory technology in a press release that coincided with the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2025. The new flash delivers up to 33% better performance and enhanced bit density, interface speeds, and power efficiency compared to prior generations.

Kioxia's new 3D flash memory features a CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA), which is created by bonding a CMOS wafer and a cell array wafer, which are manufactured separately. This isn't anything new, as it was also featured in Kioxia's 8th generation 3D NAND products. However, the larger highlight is the new interface standard, Toggle DDR6.0, which allows for up to a 4.8 Gb/s NAND interface speed.

Kioxia claims that speeds are up to 33% faster than its 8th generation technology as a result, in part due to the increased number of memory layers, which now sits at 322, in comparison to the 8th generation's 218 layers, representing a total increase in layers of 38%.

While 322 layers remain quite a distance from the company's goal of creating a 1,000-layer 3D NAND by 2027, it is still an impressive feat. The 322-layer 3D NAND also improves bit density by 59%, Kioxia claims.

Extrapolating some of the data offered by Kioxia can some insight. With bit density improved by 59%, you can assume that Gen 10 has a density-per-square of 36.2 Gb per millimetre squared. Assuming it'll have an 8-bit bus width, this allows us to convert the 4.8 Gb/s interface speeds to a comparative 4800 MT/s.

The updated NAND also features Power Isolated Low-Tapped Termination technology (PI-LTT), which further reduces power consumption by 10% for input and 34% for output. Kioxia states that the focus on power efficiency is a result of the power demands of AI technology.

Hideshi Miyajima, Chief Technology Officer at Kioxia shared in the press release: "With the proliferation of AI technologies, the amount of data generated is projected to increase significantly and so is the need for increased power efficiency in the modern data center."

Miyajima continued to explain that demand for "lower power consumption products including SSDs" will lay the groundwork for the "development of AI."

Interestingly, Kioxia and Sandisk also shared plans for its 9th generation 3D NAND flash technology, but its capabilities have not been specified to the degree that its 10th generation product has enjoyed.

With that in mind, there are also no current indications for when Kioxia and Sandisk might begin volume production of the new standard. But, given the fact that its upcoming 9th generation products have also been announced, it's safe to assume that the 10th generation is still a way off from mass production and sale.

SanDisk on Wednesday introduced an interesting new memory that could wed the capacity of 3D NAND and the extreme bandwidth enabled by high bandwidth memory (HBM). SanDisk's high-bandwidth flash (HBF) memory enables access to multiple high-capacity 3D NAND arrays in parallel, thus providing plenty of bandwidth and capacity. The company positions HBF as a solution for AI inference applications that require high bandwidth and capacity coupled with low power requirements. The first-generation HBF can enable up to 4TB of VRAM capacity on a GPU, and more capacity in future revisions. SanDisk also foresees this tech making its way to cellphones and other types of devices. The company hasn't announced a release date yet.

"We are calling it the HBF technology to augment HBM memory for AI inference workloads," said Alper Ilkbahar, memory technology chief at SanDisk. "We are going to match the bandwidth of HBM memory while delivering 8 to 16 times capacity at a similar cost point."

Conceptually, HBF is similar to HBM. It stacks multiple high-capacity, high-performance flash core dies interconnected using through-silicon vias (TSVs) on top of a logic die that can access flash arrays (or rather flash sub-arrays) in parallel. The underlying architecture of HBF is SanDisk's BICS 3D NAND using the CMOS directly bonded to Array (CBA) design that bonds a 3D NAND memory array on top of an I/O die made using logic process technology. That logic may be a key to enabling HBF.

"We challenged our engineers and said, what else could you do with this power of scaling," said Alper Ilkbahar. "The answer they came up with […] was moving to an architecture where we divide up this massive array into many, many arrays and access each of these arrays in parallel. When you do that, you get massive amounts of bandwidth.  Now, what can we build with this? We are going to build high bandwidth flash."

Traditional NAND die designs often treat the core NAND flash memory array as planes, pages, and blocks. A block is the smallest erasable area, and a page is the smallest writable area. HBF seems to break the die into 'many, many arrays' so they can be accessed concurrently. Each sub-array (with its own pages and blocks) presumably has its own dedicated read/write path. While this resembles how multi-plane NAND devices work, the HBF concept seems to go far beyond them.

For now, SanDisk says that its 1st-Gen HBF will use 16 HBF core dies. To enable such devices, SanDisk says that it has invented a proprietary stacking technology that features minimal warpage to enable stacking 16 HBF core dies, and a logic die that can simultaneously access data from multiple HBF core dies. The complexity of logic that can handle hundreds or thousands of concurrent data streams should be higher than that of a typical SSD controller.

Unfortunately, SanDisk does not disclose the actual performance numbers of its HBF products, so we can only wonder whether HBF matches the per-stack performance of the original HBM (~ 128 GB/s) or the shiny new HBM3E, which provides 1 TB/s per stack in the case of Nvidia's B200.

The only thing we know from a SanDisk-provided example is that eight HBF stacks feature 4 TB of NAND memory, so each stack can store 512 GB (21x more than one 8-Hi HBM3E stack that has a capacity of 24 GB). A 16-Hi 512 GB HBF stack means that each HBF core die is a 256 Gb 3D NAND device with some complex logic enabling die-level parallelism. Funneling hundreds of gigabytes of data per second from 16 3D NAND ICs is still quite a big deal, and we can only wonder how SanDisk can achieve that.

What we are sure about is that HBF will never match DRAM in per-bit latency, which is why SanDisk stresses that HBF products are aimed at read-intensive, high-throughput applications, such as big AI inference datasets. For many AI inference tasks, the critical factor is high throughput at a feasible cost rather than the ultra-low latency that HBM (or other types of DRAM) provides. So, while HBF may not replace HBM any time soon, it might occupy a spot on the market that requires high-capacity, high-bandwidth, NAND-like cost but not ultra-low latency. To simplify the transition from HBM, HBF has the same electrical interface with some protocol changes, though HBF is not drop-in compatible with HBM.

" We have tried to make it as close as possible mechanically and electrically to the HBM, but there are going to be minor protocol changes required that need to be enabled at the host devices," said Ilkbahar.

SanDisk didn't touch on write endurance. NAND has a finite lifespan that can only tolerate a certain number of writes. While SLC and pSLC technologies offer higher endurance than the TLC and QLC NAND used in consumer SSDs, this comes at the expense of capacity and adds cost. NAND is also typically written to at block granularity, whereas memory is addressable at the cache line level (i.e. typically 128KB for NAND blocks versus 32 bytes for a cache line). That's another key challenge.

SanDisk has a vision of how its HBF will evolve over three generations. Nonetheless, for now, SanDisk's HBF is largely a work in progress. SanDisk wants HBF to become an open standard with an open ecosystem, so it is forming a technical advisory board consisting of 'industry luminaries and partners.

Storage mainstay Seagate has been churning out hard drives and SSDs for decades, as well as innumerable portable hard drives. But it’s largely left portable SSDs to its premium, Apple-focused LaCie brand. But today the company is announcing its Ultra-Compact SSD, an external solid-state drive available in 1TB and 2TB capacities that, with its slender design and built-in USB-C port, looks like a high-end flash drive, rather than a traditional portable SSD.

These kinds of drives, sometimes called SSD sticks, that pack SSD-like performance and a built-in USB port for cable-free use, have become increasingly common in the last couple of years, with the SK Hynix Tube T31 being our current favorite of what we’re still classifying as the best flash drives.

We’ll have to do some testing to find out if Seagate’s drive deserves a spot on the above list, but its pretty external shell aside, it has some interesting things going for it that may make it worth considering even if it isn’t the fastest performer. Like many other Seagate products, the Ultra-Compact SSD ships with three years of the company’s Rescue Data Recovery service, as well as six-month trials of cloud backup and image organization services. That’s not going to be important for everyone, but the data recovery service will certainly appeal many who’ve lost irreplaceable data to a drive crash in the past.

Dropbox Backup and Mylio Photos+ image organization and backup services.

Seagate-Ultra Compact SSD specs

Design of the Seagate-Ultra Compact SSD

With a single-piece aluminum silver shell (with plastic plugs on the font and back) and a 2.7 x 0.7 x 0.34 inches, Seagate’s drive looks and feels great. The cap over the USB-C port is all rubber, but it stays on much better than most plastic flash drive caps. And if you’re worried about scratching up the metal, the company also includes a gray rubber sleeve that matches the cap. That does add a little bulk to the drive, but it’s still small enough that it shouldn’t interfere with nearby ports like many competing high-end stick SSDs or flash drives.

Seagate points out that the drive is made up of at least 35% recycled materials (likely the aluminum), and it’s rated for drops up to 3 meters and sports IP54 dust and water resistance. Those specs are likely only while using the sleeve, but the drive feels plenty rugged without it for travel in typical conditions.

Software and included extras

The Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD ships with Seagate’s Rescue Data Recovery service for three years, which families or users dealing with truly irreplaceable data will no doubt find appealing. That said, my personal history with drives like this tells me it’s far more likely that you’d lose a drive this than have it randomly fail and lock you out of data access. If you’re worried about losing things like family photos, a cloud backup of what’s on the drive might be more useful.

Speaking of that, the drive also ships with a six-month trial of Dropbox Backup and the Mylio Photos+ image organization and backup service. I don’t expect these are going to sway many potential buyers, but at least the trials aren’t the more typical 90-day variety. Six months will likely give you enough time to decide whether or not a service is worth paying for.

Comparison products

As a 2TB device in a flash drive form factor, the Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD doesn’t have a ton of direct competition, as many competing drives like the SK Hynix Tube T31 and Kingston DataTraveler Max) both top out at 1TB. The Transcend ESD310 does go up to 2TB though, and is selling for the same $179 price as the MSRP of the 2TB Seagate drive. And while it’s significantly wider, the ADATA SC750 is also available at 2TB for as little as $119. You’ll find all of these drives and more in our benchmark charts below.

Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Landing more or less in the middle of our competing cable-free flash drive and SSD comparisons, this isn’t a great showing for Seagate’s drive. But the drive is still much closer to the best drives here than the worst.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 10GB dataset. We copy 1,204 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.

Again the Seagate drive fails to impress here, at least on read speeds. But its write speed of nearly 512 MB/s puts it in 4th place among the other drives tested here. And 570 MB/s mixed-file reads is still is still a solid showing for a drive this small.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

While again not the fastest of the bunch, Seagate’s Ultra-Compact SSD manages a balanced read and write speed both easily above 1,000 MB/s (so above its rated speed) in this test. Only our favorite SK Hynix Tube T31 is markedly better on both fronts. But remember, its capacity tops out at 1TB.

On the flip side, there’s little positive to say about the Seagate drive’s small file write results here, other than they aren’t dramatically worse than the worst competing drives in our testing pool. If you’re looking for an external drive to directly run an operating system or demanding programs off of, there are lots of better options.

Bottom line

There’s lots to like about the design as well as the bundled data recovery features of Seagate’s Ultra-Compact SSD. And its performance, while far from class-leading, is still good enough to please mainstream consumers – especially those stepping up from a portable hard drive or an old space-cramped flash drive for backing up key files.

But apart from its compact size and spacious 2TB option, there’s little to set it apart from the pack unless you count its bottom-rung small file performance – which to be fair won’t matter much to those just looking to move files on and off the drive for backup or other sneakernet purposes. And when you consider Adata’s SC750 was faster on nearly all of our tests for $60 less, Seagate’s compact metal shell and three years of data recovery service need to do a lot of heavy lifting to make Seagate’s drive appealing.

Still, with a decent price drop over its initial MSRP, it could be worth considering. It has the nicest design of any of these stick SSDs I’ve used yet, and its performance is still good enough for my typical tasks, like moving test result files and game files between PCs.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs

MORE: Best SSD for the Steam Deck

You may know that it's possible to use a Raspberry Pi as a USB HID, but you can take this a step further by integrating that functionality with WiFI. Maker and developer The Feral Engineer has taken this idea a step further by using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W as a flash drive that can be updated to over WiFi.

With devices like embroidery machines or even 3D printers, it's common to require the use of a USB flash drive to access files for stitching, printing or whatever task the machine does. However, this can be a cumbersome process if you have to frequently move the flash drive back and forth between your PC and the device just to load files. That's where this project comes into play.

The Feral Engineer also points out that plugging and unplugging a flash drive over and over can cause the port to wear out, which is not ideal on an embroidery machine that costs around $2,000. Creating a single-point setup for the Pi to fill in was the perfect solution for his problem. Instead of plugging a flash drive in over and over again, he could plug this in once and use WiFi to update the files and digitally simulate a disconnect and reconnect.

You don't need too much power for a project like this, so The Feral Engineer is using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for both its power efficiency and wireless network capabilities. It connects directly to the embroidery machine using its USB Type-A port. You could recreate this project for a 3D printer assuming it also has a USB port for file loading.

You don't need any special software to pull off this project, but it does take a fair bit of work to get the device set up properly. The main operating system it's using is Raspberry Pi OS Light. The Pi is then programmed into gadget mode and setup so that the embroidery machine can recognize it as a USB device that is also accessible as a network device. There are a few guides referenced in the video that break down how this is pulled off, and we definitely recommend checking them out—one is from the official Raspberry Pi MagPi website and the other is from Silver Seams.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check out the full build guide shared to The Feral Engineer's official YouTube channel.

Secure data solutions provider iStorage has released what it claims to be the world's first FIPS 140-3 Level 3 flash drives. Also sold under its Kanguru brand, the iStorage datAshur PRO+C & PRO+A Encrypted Flash Drives feature PIN protection and military-grade hardware encryption and come in 32GB to 512GB capacities. You can grab the iStorage datAshur PRO+C drives right now on Amazon.com, starting from $96 for a 32GB model, and up to $259 for a 512GB stick. Yes, there is quite a premium to pay for this level of security.

"Achieving FIPS 140-3 Level 3 validation for the datAshur PRO+C and PRO+A adds tremendous credibility to the iStorage/Kanguru brand," wrote John Michael, CEO of iStorage/Kanguru. "This milestone underscores our commitment to providing the most secure data storage solutions for the U.S. government, corporations and organizations worldwide." Indeed, there are quite a few FIPS 140-3 Level 3 Pending drives around, as the Amazon listing for this one is still described, but iStorage seems rightly proud to have the devices mentioned above now certified by NIST.

So, what's the big deal with FIPS 140-3 Level 3? The current flash drives favored and trusted by government agencies, defense contractors, financial institutions, and healthcare providers to safeguard highly confidential and classified information are FIPS 140-2 certified. However, NIST is pushing for the transition to FIPS 140-3 modules by September 2026 - when FIPS 140-2 will be sunsetted.

FIPS 140-3 is built on the earlier standard but adds technologies such as tamper-evident and tamper-resistant mechanisms, updated cryptographic algorithms, improved key management practices, protection against side-channel attacks, and modular testing capabilities. It is also compliant with international regulations and standards, such as GDPR and HIPAA.

From the imagery, you can see that the datAshur PRO+C flash drives come with a keypad for entering the required eight to 15-digit PIN. Until unlocked, all the data stored is protected behind AES-XTS 256-bit hardware encryption. The red and green LEDs and icons make it quite clear when the drive is locked or ready for data transfers. Locking, unlocking, and drive usage is OS agnostic.

These flash drives don't just offer great security, they are also quite rugged and protected against the elements. For example, the keypad buttons are said to be wear-resistant, key components are epoxy coated, the device is "crush resistant," and the whole thing is certified for dust & water resistance (IP57).

As for performance, these drives are pretty quick at transferring your sensitive files, though they might pale in comparison to the Best Flash Drives in our recent roundup. The iStorage product page says users will experience up to 310 MB/s read and 246 MB/s write speeds.

The iStorage datAshur PRO+C listed on Amazon is available in 32GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. Special orders for other capacities can be made directly via iStorage.

SK hynix has announced the mass production of the world's first 321-layer NAND flash. According to the press release, the company will supply customers with its 321-high NAND flash featuring 1TB capacity starting in 1H 2025.

SK hynix's 321-layer high NAND flash is built on a technology the company dubs the "3 plugs" process. This technology is purportedly known for its excellent production efficiency, and "...electrically connects three plugs through an optimized follow-up process after three times of plug processes are finished." "For the process, SK hynix developed a low-stress material while introducing the technology that automatically corrects alignments among the plugs."

SK hynix also uses the same development platform for its 321-layer NAND as its previous generation 238-layer flash, yielding a purported 59% improvement in 321-layer production. The move to 321 layers has purported improved data transfer speeds by 12% and read performance by 13% compared to the previous generation. Power efficiency has also been increased by more than 10%.

321-layer NAND flash is currently the highest-layer flash in the industry. Samsung is the closest so far, with its 280-layer NAND flash, but it is actively working on 300-layer and even 400-layer flash to compete with SK hynix. Micron, YMTC, and Kioxia are the furthest behind, with 232-layer and 218-layer architectures at the time of writing.

Samsung's next-generation 300-layer NAND flash will purportedly be produced differently from SK hynix. It will use a "double-stack" technique, which involves placing one 3D NAND stack on a 300 mm wafer and building another stack of flash on top of the first one. SK hynix's solution is purportedly more efficient and involves using three layers.

One thing is for sure, with enough Raspberry Pi you could heavily automate a smart home so crazy that Captain Picard would blush. We've seen tons of cool smart home creations like this ChatGPT smart fridge project or this Fallout-themed home automation terminal. But it's the little things that really make a difference, like Thinklearndo's latest Pi-powered creation—a keyholder that automatically backs up data from any flash drive you connect to it.

Not everyone keeps a flash drive on hand and but for those that do, it can be a very personal device with tons of important information. But what happens when that data is lost or stolen? That's what inspired Thinklearndo's latest creation which will create backups of your data instantly each night when you plug your flash drive to this Pi-powered keyholder.

To use the system, all you have to do is plug in your keychain flash drive into the USB port on the keyholder. An LCD screen lets you know when it's ready to receive a new connection and when the backup is complete. When it's time to take your keys in the morning, there is a button you can press so you can know that it's safe to remove the flash drive. According to Thinklearndo, the backups run overnight and over Wi-Fi.

The main board powering this project is a Raspberry Pi 3A+ but you could definitely use the latest Raspberry Pi 5 or even something smaller like a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. However, Thinklearndo has made a special PCB that fits both the Pi 3A+ and the LCD snugly into place. All of the hardware, including the LCD screen, is housed inside of a 3D-printed shell. Some buttons are thrown in as well as hooks on the bottom to hang your keys.

As of the software used in this project was made open source and is available for anyone to explore over at GitHub. What's neat about the Raspberry Pi and projects like this is that you could double up the functionality by putting something else on the Pi. Raspberry Pi OS is super flexible so adding in something like a temperature monitor would be useful in a smart home setup.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check it out in greater detail over at Reddit.

Microsoft makes it easy to create a bootable USB Flash drive for Windows 10 or 11. For each OS, a nifty little all-purpose tool works to install whichever Windows version it knows about. Because it’s bootable, it also serves quite nicely as a bootable recovery drive, should you be unable to start up from the usual boot/system drive.

That means you can instruct your PC to boot to the USB drive by interrupting the normal boot sequence. Then, by targeting this drive as your boot source, you can run the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) it contains to conduct repairs on any Windows PC or do a fresh install (see how to get Windows 11 for free or cheap). This is extremely handy when a PC experiences a BSOD or won’t boot and you need to fix the problem or access files on the boot drive even when Windows won’t run.

Meet the Microsoft Media Creation Tool (aka MCT) 

There’s a separate download page for each Windows version – that is, one for Windows 10, and another for Windows 11. Even so each of the relevant links on those pages reads “Create Windows X installation media,” where X can be 10 or 11 as the target dictates. For both OSes the idea is to download the Media Creation Tool of choice, namely:

• MediaCreationTool_Win11_23H2.exe (Windows 11 version)
• MediaCreationTool_22H2.exe (Windows 10 version)

For either OS, you need only navigate to the appropriate link (specified above), insert a target Flash or other USB-attached drive into your PC, then download and run the tool. Depending on version, the corresponding MCT filename should show up in your Downloads folder. You can run the tool against your target drive (feel free to bail out fo File Explorer to make sure you pick the right target). Here’s what that looks like for Windows 11 (it’s nearly identical, but slightly different for Windows 10). For brevity, I skipped the “Getting a few things ready” screen and went straight to notices and licenses stuff.

Click Accept when prompted. The MCT will continue on “Getting a few things” ready. (Which I also skip.) Then, you’re asked to select language and edition as shown next:

Select “UFD (USB Flash Drive)” and click Next. 

Select your target UFD for MCT. On the test PC from which the next screencap comes, it’s the only valid choice so it’s also the only option showing: Drive E.

At this point, the MCT again says it’s “Getting things ready” then “Downloading Windows X” (10 or 11) with a progress bar to tell you how far it’s along. When it gets to 100%, the MCT then verifies what it’s downloaded with another progress bar. On my test PC, verifying took longer than downloading – that’s not unusual. Then comes what we’re waiting for, Creating Windows X media (also with progress counter), as shown for 11 next:

This can take a while, depending on the targeted device. I used a 2014 vintage Mushkin Atom USB 3.0 UFD, and it took about 10 minutes to get through the process. When the media is done and dusted, you’ll get a “ready” notification like this one:

When MCT finishes creating the media, it provides a “ready” notification. Click Finish to complete the job.

When you click the “Finish” button, MCT performs some miscellaneous cleanup tasks, then closes its window. You may now use the media you’ve just created. Here’s what it looks like in File Explorer:

Booting Your Windows Install UFD

As a Windows PC is booting, you may be able to interrupt the boot sequence before the Windows loader gets going by striking a function or special key on that machine. On my newer Lenovo PCs, the BIOS tells me that striking the proverbial “any” key will interrupt initial boot-up. If I take that route, I must then strike the F12 function key to get to an alternate boot menu. On newer PCs (less than 5 years old) it will probably be necessary to turn off Secure boot in the UEFI before you can actually target the UFD during the startup process.

If you can boot into Windows, you can force your PC to boot off the USB drive on restart. If search Settings for “Advanced startup” you can get to that setting which also features a “Restart now” button. Click that button, and your PC will restart immediately and offer the Recovery environment as an option upon start-up. Either way, as long as you’ve got the USB drive plugged into a USB port as the system restarts, you will then be able to boot from that device into WinRE. If you boot to this drive, you can also use it to perform a clean install of Windows on your PC by running setup.exe from the drive’s root folder. It will take over from there.

On the other hand, if you want to, you can upgrade and repair your PC using whichever version of Windows is present on your USB flash drive. Simply run setup.exe from the root folder to launch the upgrade process, and the software will take it from there.

Securely disposing of files so a storage drive can be recycled or trashed is a common concern among business and enterprise customers, especially those dealing with sensitive information — fortunately for those people, Verity Systems is now offering its MediaGone 500 SSD & Flash Media Shredder at a discounted to $12,614 from its original $14,499 MSRP. This is a surprisingly straightforward pricing model for a product in its category, considering the vibrating HDD "Diskmantler" death cage we've previously discussed doesn't even list a price; it just tells you to ask for a quote. A lot of enterprise hardware is sold in this manner, so it's a little more surprising to see the upfront pricing and applicable discounts.

The MediaGone 500 SSD & Flash Media Shredder is designed to shred SATA SSDs, NVMe SSDs, USB Flash Drives, smartphones, and even optical discs. The device meets the DIN 66399 shredding security standard at levels E-4, T-4, and O-4. The web page also has a full list of storage destruction mandates from various government organizations that the MediaGone 500 meets.

To those with enterprise or industrial-scale flash storage destruction needs, particularly while meeting security standards, the MediaGone 500 shredder is proudly touted to destroy "100 SSDs, 500 Flash drives, or 45 mobile phones per hour". This destruction process can be watched in real-time with LED illumination once started, and the machine can be set to shred debris into coarse cuts or fine cuts, depending on user preference. 

The LED touchscreen also doubles as a camera view into the waste bin compartment when using the device in its "Trolley" configuration. Those using the "Tabletop" configuration will still have a 1-gallon waste disposal tray, but Trolley seems to be the best choice for the intended heavy-duty use cases here. Devices like this are sometimes only rented or used for one-off occasions rather than purchased in full, though, so there may indeed end up being end users who only destroy about a gallon's worth of tech and call it a day.

In a rather unexpected turn of events, Western Digital (WD) has teased the industry's first 2Tb 3D QLC NAND device at an investor conference ahead of its official announcement. The new flash memory could potentially reshape the high-capacity solid-state drives market, enabling much faster and larger SSDs that consume less power. The device uses the proven 218-layer BiCS8 production node and is so tiny it can fit on a fingertip. WD also shared plenty of comparative performance data, touting power, density, and I/O performance gains over competing flash.

"I am really excited to share with you a preview of the BiCS8 2Tb 3D QLC die," said Robert Soderbery, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Western Digital's Flash Business. "We have designed this die to meet the data center and AI storage needs. We are going to shortly announce this product, but I want to share it with you today. This happens to be the world's highest-capacity memory die."

A 2Tb (256GB) 3D QLC NAND die is indeed a huge achievement, as the 'base' product that Western Digital introduced on its 218-layer BiCS8 production technology is a 1Tb 3D TLC device. At this point, we have no idea about the exact architecture of the 2Tb IC, such as the speed of its interface (it is probably fast), or the number of planes, or its latency. However, the company did share detailed comparative performance and power metrics (below), and given the fact that the company positions the device for data centers in general and AI storage needs in particular, one can make some assumptions about its performance targets. 

Now, a 256GB 3D QLC NAND device would allow manufacturers to build a 1TB SSD using just four memory ICs and a 2TB drive using eight devices, which greatly lowers their costs. Creating a 16-die package would enable a stunning 4TB in a single chip package.

Thus, assuming that Western Digital (and its manufacturing partner Kioxia) can produce these 2Tb 3D QLC NAND ICs in high volume and with decent yields, the new device can redefine the cost of high-capacity solid-state drives.

As you can see in the album above, WD says its QLC die density is 15 to 19% denser than the competition. It also claims to be 50% faster than competing NAND (I/O speed) while requiring 13% less power to program per gigabyte of data than competitors. You can also see the method the company uses to create the die — WD creates a die with only the CMOS control circuitry and another with the stacked memory cells, then flips the latter over and bonds the two devices together using hybrid bonding technology (much like Chinese fab YMTC's Xtacking tech).

"We typically show you a wafer, but I felt like the view of a wafer does not quite convey what we have achieved," said Sodebery. "So, if you allow me for a quick second, I want to show you the die. I have one here. Please zoom in [on] what I am holding on my finger here. This is the size of the die, much smaller than my fingertip." 

Western Digital plans to formally announce its 2Tb 3D QLC NAND device soon, so we'll likely learn more detailed specifications soon.

At its suite here at Computex, SK hynix showed off a  Haechi H02 SSD cooler for the PS5 Slim, a 2TB model of the Beetle X31 portable SSD (to be available both in silver and gold finishes now), and a limited edition of the Tube T31 stick drive, one of the best flash drives, with art that depicts characters from the game “Lies of P.”

It also seems that SK hynix and Hitach-LG Data Storage (HLDS) are deepening their partnership. The two companies collaborated on the development of the Tube T31 and its PS5 coolers, and HLDS has developed its own branded flash.

The companies plan to use the flash in mainstream storage products, like SATA and M.2 SSDs and external storage drives. Some of these products will be branded Super Multi, a name from the heyday of LG optical drive days.

Some of these example drives are labeled solely with Super Multi logos, while others feature SK hynix and Super Multi branding. So it seems, unlike Plextor, at least one optical drive brand is still alive and kicking, with the help of one of the biggest names in DRAM and solid-state storage.

Packaging for the upcoming PCIe 5.0 SK Hynix Platinum P51 M.2 drive was also shown, promising read speeds of up to 13,500 MBps and writes of up to 11,500 MBps. The drive is set for launch in Q4 of this year, but the company was just showing off the box.

Samsung is currently in a negotiation deadlock with the Nationwide Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) — the union representing more than 28,000 Samsung workers — and the union has scheduled a one-day strike on June 7. While it may not feel like a major disruption, especially as strikes in other companies could last several weeks or months, chip production is a totally different story.

That’s because semiconductor factories take a substantial amount of time to start up. For example, Samsung lost over $36 million when a Korean factory lost power for just 28 minutes, killing 3.5% of global flash production for March 2018. Another Samsung factory experienced a one-minute outage in 2019, and it took three days to resume production. The company also lost almost $290 million in 2021 when it had to shut down its Austin, Texas plant for a month due to the cold snap affecting the power grid. This exacerbated chip shortages at that time, as the company had trouble restarting production.

These events show how fragile semiconductor production is, and some media outlets are asking if this strike will impact the global chip supply. However, TrendForce, a semiconductor industry market research firm, says, “This strike will not impact DRAM and NAND Flash production, nor will it cause any shipment shortages. Additionally, the spot prices for DRAM and NAND Flash had been declining prior to the strike announcement, and there has been no change in this downtrend since the announcement.” (via The KoreaTimes)

The NSEU announced the strike on May 29, 2024, nine days before the planned date, and since the spot prices haven’t increased the consensus seems to be that this one-day strike will not materially affect the global chip supply situation. However, Samsung will definitely be hit by massive losses if we reference the company’s prior experience with disruptions.

We just hope that Samsung and the NSEU settle this labor dispute sooner rather than later, especially as AMD ordered its 3nm chips from the South Korean firm recently. It’s also reportedly struggling with its HBM3E chip production, which could push Nvidia towards Micron and SK Hynix. If the company doesn’t find a good middle ground between its workers' demands and its income targets, then further disruptions could come later to the third-largest chip maker in the world (after TSMC and Intel), which could affect our fragile global chip supply.

When you buy a flash drive, you certainly want capacity, performance, and resiliency in that order. However, there is a flash drive that offers exactly opposite features: an 8KB (yes, eight kilobytes, 8192 symbols) capacity, but that capacity can last for 200 years—just in case one needs to preserve it this way. It is priced at €29.95 with taxes and has a blue LED, which is essential, so I tell you.

The Blaustahl USB storage device by Machdyne features 8KB of FRAM and is designed for long-term text storage, potentially lasting over 200 years. It incorporates a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, making it suitable for various secure storage applications in case it can fit into a tiny amount of storage space.

The device uses FRAM (Ferroelectric RAM), known for its ultra-low power consumption, rapid write speeds (like if you do care at 8KB), and extremely high write endurance, capable of one million billion read/write cycles. It makes it superior to EEPROM and NOR flash in terms of performance, though it comes at an unbelievably high cost. The Blaustahl includes 4MB of NOR flash for firmware and a USB Type-A male port that requires no additional drivers on most operating systems.

What can you store in an 8KB device? Well, a few pages of text, depending on the formatting. Speaking of text, in a bid not to embarrass yourself among your ancestors, the Blaustahl features a built-in text editor accessible through serial communication programs like PuTTY and Tera Term. On second thought, this makes it ideal for secure storage of passwords, cryptocurrency keys, notes, and geocaching data—if you are brave enough.

But then again, it is FRAM. FRAM stands out for its longevity and endurance compared to other storage solutions. It can retain data for over 200 years at 35°C, outperforming NOR flash, which lasts up to 200 years, according to the manufacturer, and NAND flash, which lasts between 16 to 20 years under similar conditions. EEPROM also offers good data retention but with longer write times and fewer write cycles compared to FRAM, yet at 8KB you do not care anyway.

There is good news, too: future firmware updates are expected to include encryption features, further enhancing the device's security. The firmware, schematics, and enclosure design files are all accessible on GitHub, allowing users to explore and modify the device to suit their needs.

SK hynix is evaluating Tokyo Electron's (TEL) latest cryogenic etching tools, which operate at -70C temperatures, to enable new flavors of 3D NAND with more than 400 layers. Cryogenic etching tools 'drill holes' three times faster than conventional tools, a capability that will be instrumental for 3D NAND with over 400 active layers, reports The Elec.

Instead of importing the actual equipment to South Korea, SK hynix is sending test wafers to Tokyo Electron labs in Japan. This method enables the 3D NAND maker to effectively assess the technology's potential without shipping actual tools to SK Hynix and installing them into fabs. The new etching system operates at a chilling temperature of -70°C, which is a stark contrast to the 0°C to 30°C range of current etching processes.

The report says TEL's next-generation etching machine can make a 10-µm-deep etch with a high aspect ratio in just 33 minutes, over three times faster than existing tools. This achievement is not only a major technical improvement but also greatly increases 3D NAND production efficiency, which could reshape the production timelines and output quality of 3D NAND devices.

When it comes to producing 3D NAND, some may say that 'etching vertical holes' is simple — but it is not. In fact, etching deep memory channel holes with good uniformity is a challenge, which is why the industry has adopted double stacking and even triple stacking (building two or three separate stacks instead of one with a 'deep' channel hole) for 3D NAND. 

SK hynix's 321-layer 3D NAND products are said to use a triple-stack structure. With the adoption of TEL's new etching equipment, it will be possible to build a 400-layer 3D NAND device in a single or double stack, which means higher production efficiency. The decision on whether future products with more than 400 layers will transition to a single or double stack will depend on how reliably the tool performs and whether it can reproduce its results consistently.

A significant environmental advantage of TEL’s equipment is its use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) gas, which has a global warming potential (GWP) of less than 1. This is a drastic reduction compared to the traditionally used perfluorocarbons like carbon tetrafluoride (CF4) and octafluoropropane (C4F8), which have GWPs of 6030 and 9540, respectively. As a result, the potential adoption of TEL's new tool reflects a growing industry trend towards greener manufacturing practices.

While SK hynix is testing the etching tool by sending wafers to Tokyo Electron, Samsung Electronics is concurrently evaluating the same technology by importing a demo version of the tool. The results of these tests will determine the future adoption and potential standardization of cryogenic etching technologies in semiconductor manufacturing in general.

The Nintendo 64 has no shortage of flash carts, considering it was released in 1996. However, the recently released SummerCart64 breaks from the rest by being both fully open-source and having hardware that adds 64DD game compatibility to the cartridge. SummerCart64 is the lovechild of Mateusz Faderewski, aka Polprzewodnikowy on GitHub, and it has a dedicated web page with official documentation and purchase links.

Before that, though, let's talk a bit about what's actually on offer here. For example, why should Nintendo 64DD compatibility matter to anybody in 2024? Well, it was truthfully a limited-life add-on with many canceled projects... but what it did get in its Japan-only release was quite ambitious, and foreshadowed console gaming advancements to come.

So, the Nintendo 64DD got 10 exclusive games or expansions to existing games during its brief run in Japan. Thus, Nintendo 64DD hardware is very much the purview of enthusiasts and game preservationists these days—  but the open-source SummerCart64 helps make those games more accessible than ever. Now, your regular old Nintendo 64 should be able to play those games on authentic hardware.

That's the other side of flash cartridges and console modding, in general. Very often, this hardware has legitimate reasons to exist beyond simply facilitating piracy. For example, a Wii with a broken disc drive (easy if dropped in use) would be unable to play games at all without modding it to run games stored on USB storage.

The easiest way to get your hands on the SummerCart64 is likely through the Phenom Mod store page. If you already have access to a nice 3D printer,  you can print your own shell to save $16, at the time of writing.

So, besides 64DD compatibility (which again, only applies to 10 games), what else makes SummerCart64 so cool? SummerCart64 supports all regions of N64 games with automatic NTSC/PAL switching, and it has seamless integration with PC for homebrew N64 game/app development. It's likely an ideal choice to pair with the likes of Smash Remix and other cutting-edge N64 mods and homebrew. For a 1996 console, the N64 hardware is sure looking lively.

Following last year's reports of a "potential" NAND shortage, and with the recent Taiwan Earthquake further disrupting the tech industry's supply chain, Western Digital has officially informed its partners that it will "continue to implement price increases on flash and hard drive products this quarter." These increases started on April 8th [h/t Trendforce, original source TechNews.TW].

The following screenshot shows the official letter that was sent to partners and provided to TechNews.TW. The original coverage posits that the booming AI market is most likely responsible for the surge in demand that WD refers to in the message.

Scott Davis, Senior VP of WD's Channel and Regional OEM Sales, likely sent this notification to direct business partners. However, it's certainly just as important for consumers moving into 2024. Higher-than-expected demand combined with supply constraints have pushed us out of the era of dirt-cheap storage now, as was rumored last fall. Hopefully, the increased prices won't last too long.

TechNews.TW's sources point toward HDD pricing increasing by as much as 10%, with a minimum 5% pricing increase expected. There are no hard numbers for NAND flash pricing, but NAND prices were already heading up and we expect further pricing increases could be in line with HDDs, if not worse.

Trendforce's coverage points to its own Q3 2023 revenue data, where WD is the third-largest NAND flash manufacturer, with Samsung and SK hynix taking the top two spots. Phison's CEO warned back in March that the ever-rising prices of SSDs could "hobble NAND flash industry with reduced demand." That doesn't seem to be the case for now, but it will take time for the effects of the price increases to propagate through the chain.

Last year saw prices on the best SSDs fall to under $100 for decent quality 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 models, with even higher-end options like the WD Black SN850X and Samsung 990 Pro falling below $125. Currently, the WD Black SN850X 2TB costs $156 while the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB costs $176. Larger 4TB drives were going for as little as $160, compared to today's $209 for the Silicon Power UD90 4TB.

Hopefully you were able to take advantage of the low prices while they lasted. We warned in November that Black Friday / Cyber Monday might be the last chance for a a dirt-cheap SSD, and that has proven to be the case. This statement from Western Digital only points toward pricing getting worse before it gets better. While we wait for prices to come back down, check our routinely updated SSD and HDD Deals, where we'll try to help you make the most of these market conditions.

Samsung has unveiled a new Compute Express Link (CXL) Add-in Card called the CXL Memory Module-Hybrid for Tiered Memory (CMM-H TM), which adds additional RAM and flash memory that can be remotely accessed by CPUs and accelerators. The expansion card comes with a mixture of high-speed DRAM and NAND flash and is intended to provide a cost-effective way to boost memory capacity for servers without using locally installed DDR5 memory, which often isn't an option in oversubscribed servers. 

Samsung's solution runs on the Compute Express Link (CXL), an open industry standard that provides a cache-coherent interconnect between CPUs and accelerators, thus allowing CPUs to use the same memory regions as connected devices utilizing CXL. The remote memory, or in this case, a hybrid RAM/flash memory device, is accessible over the PCIe bus, which comes at the cost of ~170-250ns of latency, or roughly the cost of a NUMA hop. CXL was introduced in 2019 and is in its third revision, featuring PCIe 6.0 support.

The CXL spec supports three types of devices: Type 1 devices are accelerators that lack local memory, Type 2 devices are accelerators with their own memory (like GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs with DDR or HBM), and Type 3 devices consist of memory devices. The Samsung device falls into the Type 3 category. 

CMM-H TM is an offshoot of Samsung's CMM-H CXL memory solution. Samsung says it is the world's first FPGA-based tiered CXL memory solution and is designed to "tackle memory management challenges, reduce downtime, optimize scheduling for tiered memory, and maximize performance, all while significantly reducing the total cost of ownership."

This new CMM-H isn't as fast as DRAM; however, it adds a beefy slab of capacity via the flash but hides a lot of latency with a clever memory caching feature built into the expansion card. Hot data is moved to the card's DRAM chips to improve speed, while less used data is stored in NAND storage. Samsung says this behavior happens automatically, but some applications and workloads can give the device hints to improve performance through an API. Naturally, this will add some latency for cached data, which isn't ideal for all use cases, particularly those that rely on tight 99th percentile performance. 

Samsung's new expansion card will provide its customers with new ways to expand their server's memory capacity. This new design paradigm is becoming more important as more advanced large language models continue to demand more memory from their host machines and accelerators. 

Typically, the more charges a NAND flash cell can hold, the less durable it is in terms of program/erase cycles. But 3D NAND material innovations, advancements of NAND controllers, and error correction algorithms can significantly increase the number of P/E cycle a NAND flash cell can sustain. This is what happened with Yangtze Memory Technologies Co.'s X3-6070 3D QLC device that boasts the endurance of 3D TLC ICs, ITHome reports. 

YMTC's X3-6070 3D QLC NAND device belongs to the company's fourth Generation products and features 128 active layers as well as Xtacking 3.0 architecture with a 2400 MT/s interface. While 128 active layers do not seem like a record by today's standards, one of the key part about this 3D QLC NAND device is that the manufacturer claims rather significant endurance of 4,000 program/erase cycles for this IC. The fast interface supported by these devices makes them suitable for the best SSDs featuring a PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 interface. 

Back in the day, it was believed that 3D TLC NAND could sustain 1,000 to 3,000 P/E cycles, but advancements of materials, controllers, and ECC methods increased that number to 4,000 P/E cycles and beyond. 3D QLC NAND was originally thought to be capable of 100 to 1,000 P/E cycles, but all makers of memory increased that number, as well. YMTC is perhaps the only company to advertise that its 3D QLC NAND is as durable as 3D TLC NAND, other makers of flash memory are surely also making progress in this direction.

Without any doubt, 4,000 P/E cycles is a great achievement for YMTC's X3-6070 3D QLC NAND memory devices. It remains to be seen how competitive these flash memory ICs are considering the fact that they have 128 active layers, whereas YMTC's competitors offer QLC 3D NAND devices with 176 or more active layers. 

YMTC currently uses its X3-6070 3D QLC NAND memory for its PC41Q consumer-grade solid-state drive. This SSD boasts a sequential read/write speed of 5500 MB/s and a data retention period of one year at 30 degrees Celsius, which is on par with TLC solid-state drives. With endurance of 4,000 P/E cycles, Yangtze Memory is looking forward to use 3D QLC NAND flash for enterprise-grade storage devices.

The massive Las Vegas Sphere, whose exterior doubles as the most giant LED screen ever, has drawn much attention since it first appeared. However, a Sphere Entertainment blog post only recently provided a more detailed explanation of how it works. The Sphere, run by Sphere Entertainment Co., and Hitachi Vantara, a subsidiary of Hitachi focused on data processing, cloud storage, and other infrastructure concerns recently provided far more information about how Hitachi Vantara's infrastructure and software to stream such high-resolution video.

The Sphere measures 580,000 square feet, while the inner side measures 160,000 square feet. The Sphere is capable of some truly outstanding visuals. From planets and moons to trippy art pieces, the outside of the Sphere is more than well-equipped for its high-res projection purposes. Since it was activated for the first time on July 4, 2023, with a high-res view of Earth, it has consistently been praised for its novelty—though one day it may become a Times Square-esque advertiser's surface, which is much less exciting.

Reportedly, both the internal and external screens support 16K resolution video output. They each rely on a collection of 27 nodes, each streaming at 4K through Hitachi Vantara's software, with a whopping 4 Petabytes (1 Petabyte = 1000 TB) of flash memory capable of 400 GB/s speeds. Full 4:4:4 chroma subsampling is also used, and reportedly, the displays can achieve a latency of around five milliseconds or less.

If all of this display spec sounds ridiculously overpowered for modern cameras, movies, and games that aren't running anywhere near 16K resolution...you're right. However, this problem is being addressed by appropriately optimizing existing display content and by Sphere Entertainment's very own "Big Sky" camera, which can capture up to 18K resolution. While your indie filmmakers aren't getting their hands on this, there are, fortunately, solutions to the technical challenge of hitting 16K resolution.

While the outside of the Sphere is the most obviously impressive part at a glance, footage from inside the Sphere has also been shared on Twitter and should provide some highly immersive cinema experiences. The internal video clip we've linked highlights a sense of feeling tiny within the dome while consuming content since it all ends up "wrapping" around the viewers. It'd be like if a movie theater started treating their screens like ultrawide multi-monitor setups.

Correction, March 18, 2024: This story initially suggested the Sphere was a joint project between Sphere Entertainment Co. and Hitachi. Rather, the Sphere is run solely by the former, using tech by Hitachi Vantara. We regret the error.

Although NAND manufacturers have recently been enjoying high revenues thanks to higher prices, Phison CEO K. S. Pua says further price hikes could seriously reduce demand (via Digitimes). Instead of allowing demand to outstrip supply, Pua says manufacturers should try and meet demand with increased production.

The recent price increases for NAND flash, and by extension SSDs, is a reaction to the experience NAND manufacturers had in 2022 and 2023. While the COVID-19 pandemic fueled strong demand for computer components, this demand significantly fell once things (mostly) got back to normal. But NAND companies like Samsung and Micron didn't anticipate such a sharp decline in demand, and so had way more supply than they actually needed. Consequently, prices had to come down in order to boost demand and offload all the excess NAND.

The industry saw big losses because of this, prompting Pua to say that if prices needed to go down further, then it would risk industry-wide bankruptcies. However, that didn't happen as excess supply was successfully cleared out, production was cut, and demand began to rise once more. Q4 of last year saw substantial recovery for the NAND market, and 2024 is expected to be even better thanks to steady price increases on SSDs.

However, it seems that Phison's CEO is concerned that if prices go too high, that demand will begin to falter once more. There is some logic behind this line of thought; all computing devices need a storage medium and solid-state storage is the most popular option now. So even if prices go up, people still need to buy them. But, there's undoubtedly a price where consumers would rather get less storage in order to save money, and perhaps not buy any secondary storage at all.

Pua suggests that NAND manufacturers should end the production cuts and start meeting demand, instead of permitting low supply and high demand to boost prices. Of course, since flash memory makers just got out of a downturn caused by oversupply, they're probably wary of the same thing happening again. After all, the global economy isn't in great shape, and if things take a turn for the worse, demand for computer parts (including SSDs) would probably go down just as NAND supply goes up.

Industry analysts predict 2024 will be a year of substantially higher SSD prices, and that's on top of price increases that have been happening since late 2023. Should this trend continue, we may very well see if Pua's prediction comes true and whether SSDs hit a price that consumers agree is too high.

Developer terminatorul has shared a UEFI driver to enable ReBAR (Resizable Base Address Register) on systems packing Nvidia Turing architecture graphics cards. Owners of GeForce GTX 16- and RTX 20-series GPUs were shut out from using ReBAR until now.

NvStrapsReBar patches your motherboard's UEFI firmware to set the BAR size. It can be set to auto-configure or adjusted manually. However, frequently rewriting data to the firmware isn't without risks. The developer explains that ReBAR is usually enabled via a vBIOS update, but an independent hack can't work this way because Nvidia digitally signs and encrypts its graphics cards' VBIOS.

The new NvStrapsReBar third-party UEFI driver is currently only intended for power users and tinkerers, as there is a small but significant risk of motherboard bricking. We also advise potential users to look at the scale of potential gains in the games they might be running with ReBAR active — it doesn't always deliver a benefit.

AMD democratized ReBAR under the banner of Smart Access Memory (SAM) with the introduction of its Zen 3 Ryzen 5000-series CPUs and RDNA 2 RX 6000-series GPUs back in 2020. It was a feature that has technically existed since PCIe Gen 2.0, but the PC industry largely ignored it. Once SAM was publicized, alongside some worthwhile performance gains, we started to get wider industry ReBAR support.

Nvidia eventually offered an RTX 30-series patch to add ReBAR support, and the RTX 40-series has had it since launch, but it neglected earlier GeForce series. It's potentially nice to get some level of support, at least unofficially, for these still useful Turing gaming GPUs. There remain some technical reasons why the NvStrapsReBar mod doesn't extend support to GTX 10-series Pascal Nvidia graphics cards — the developer did try.

The essence of ReBAR is that it allows the drivers and system to optimize resources. Previously it was set-and-forget at a VRAM chunk size of 256MB, but modern systems can do much better. ReBAR isn't a sure-fire performance improvement in every game / app, though. Testing on Radeon GPUs reveals gains between 5% and 24% in specific titles, but there are cases where it doesn't deliver any benefits at all, or might even degrade performance. Hence, AMD and Nvidia have Resizable Bar profiles for each game. Intel's Arc A-GPUs should always have ReBAR enabled, according to Intel.

If you're interested in trying ReBAR with your Turing GPU, please carefully follow the instructions provided by terminatorul. You can also check here for a comforting list of reportedly working CPU / motherboard / graphics card combos.

Flash NAND producer Kioxia has announced that it is preparing the BG6 Series of client SSDs. These are touted to deliver an impressive 1.7x performance uplift compared to the previous gen (BG5). Kioxia boasts that the BG6 Series SSDs also double the max capacity to 2TB, while maintaining the compact M.2 2230 form factor. It will also be making M.2 2280 single-sided form factor versions of the BG6 available.

Kioxia BG6 M.2 2230 SSDs use the PCIe Gen4 x 4 interface and are claimed to deliver data transfers speeds of up to 6.0 GB/s read and 5.3 GB/s write, with I/O performance of up to 900,000 IOPS. The only hardware change flagged by Kioxia — which may well be instrumental to the new faster performance, increased density, and plus improved power efficiency — is the transition to the firm's 6th Generation BiCS Flash 3D NAND chips. These new drives are DRAM-less, but use Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology for caching.

For a better perspective on the new generation Kioxia BG6 M.2 2230 drives, let's compare the specs with the previous gen model and the recently announced Sabrent Rocket Q 2230 devices.

As we mentioned when Sabrent recently launched its Rocket Q devices with 2230 form factor, it is good to have another contender in the market. The availability of the highest capacity 2TB M.2 2230 devices has been poor, but back in Feb. we reported that Framework started using its buying muscle to help secure stock of 2TB M.2 2230 SSDs for Steam Deck upgraders. Framework started sourcing Western Digital SN740 2230 drives, which offer up to 5.15 GB/s transfers and 800,000 IOPS, depending upon capacity.

Kioxia isn't yet talking about pricing for its BG6 M.2 2230 SSDs, but says it will start sampling them with OEMs in H2 this year. If you're currently looking for a new SSD, check out our list of best SSDs.

Some us remember a time when every operating system booted off of a floppy disk. However, for decades now, almost every computer stores its OS on an internal drive such as a hard drive or SSD. But what if you just want to try out Windows 11 on your computer, without actually installing it? Enter Live11, which has just been made available for download, and runs Windows 11 Pro, without writing a single file to disk.

Live11 is a new lightweight Windows 11 live disk from NTDEV, the developer behind Tiny11. After downloading the image that NTDEV has posted to the Internet Archive, you can write to a USB Flash Drive, a microSD card or even, if you still have an optical drive, a DVD-R. In fact, NTDEV deliberately got the disk image down to 4.4GB, which fits within a DVD's 4.7GB capacity.

Live disks, also known as live DVDs or live CDs, have been common in the Linux world for a while, where they have been used to let users try out a Linux flavor before deciding whether or not they want to install it. However, running a Windows 11 live disk is more interesting than useful.

You can use Live11 to see the Windows 11 UI on a PC that you're considering upgrading from Windows 10, but it's not a very realistic simulation of what it would be like to run the OS for real. As it's a stripped down version of Windows 11, it's going to use less resources than a real installation. Also, it can't save settings or permanently install apps, because it doesn't actually write to disk. If you want a persistent version of Windows that you can put on a USB Flash drive, see our tutorial on how to create a portable Windows 11 disk. 

Hands on with Live11

To see what Live11 is like, I downloaded the ISO and booted it in a virtual machine, using VMWare Workstation 16. According to NTDEV, you can run Live11 in a variety of virtual machines or boot a whole computer from it, but it won't run on Oracle VirtualBox. It requires no disk space at all, but you will need at least 8GB of RAM. You do not need TPM or a Microsoft account, both of which are normally Windows 11 system requirements.

The first thing I noticed is that Live11 uses the Grub4DOS boot manager, which gives you only one choice Live11. 

Live11 then makes you go through a somewhat shortened version of the Windows 11 installation process every single time you boot it. It first asks you which country you're in, which keyboard you want and then which privacy settings you wish to turn on. It then checks for updates and makes you wait a minute or two while it "installs." NTDEV told us that they deliberately made the installation questions part of the boot process so that users would know that this is an unmodified version of Windows 11.  

Live11 is a read-only experience, even if you put it on a rewriteable USB Flash drive. It actually installs itself into a 3.99GB RAM disk, which has 319MB of free space you can use for data during your session, but it may get filled up with temporary files. After the "install," I was presented with Windows 11 Pro's default desktop with the familiar blue flower wallpaper.  I was automatically logged in with a local account under the username Administrator.  The build of Windows 11 Pro in the ISO, at present, is 22621.1555.

There are only a few apps preloaded, including Notepad, Paint, the Snipping Tool and the Terminal. Microsoft Edge is not installed, but you can run a Portable version of Mozilla Firefox if you open it from the live disk. It's a shame that there's no browser preloaded as it's annoying to have to navigate to the disk to find the executable for Firefox and, every time you open it, it wants to ask you some installation questions such as whether you want to pin it to taskbar. You can ignore these prompts and just start browsing.

With no programs running, the OS only used 1.89GB of RAM (on top of the 4GB reserved by its RAM disk). It ran smoothly in my VM, which I had given 16GB of RAM and four CPU cores. I was able to access the local, 60GB SSD I had assigned to my VM, but I had to mount and format it first. Since this is considered local storage, anything I stored on it would remain for future sessions. 

Considering that there's only about 300MB free on the C drive, if you download anything at all, you'll need to download it to a different drive. Even without any files downloaded, I found that my C drive was pretty much full, just from the act of running portable Firefox (which presumably used some virtual memory and maybe some cache space). I asked NTDEV if it's possible to make the RAM disk larger than 4GB and they said that it would be if I extracted the relevant VHM file from the Live11 ISO, expanded it and recreated the ISO. 

NTDEV also told me that it comes with VM drivers preinstalled. So, though it launched at 1024 x 768 resolution, I was able to change it to up to 3840 x 2160 or even higher if I wanted. If you are using a real PC rather than a VM, your choice of resolutions will likely be different.

Overall, I was impressed with the speed of Live11 and how quickly and easily it opened the few apps it had. If you want to try it out, you can download the latest ISO and give it a shot. We should note, though, that this is not an officially supported Windows image and comes with no warranties or support.

As weak demand persists, market researchers at TrendForce expect the average selling price (ASP) of NAND Flash to decline a further 5-10% in 2Q23. There appears to be a pivot point in the second half of the year where supply and demand could be balanced and a turnaround could happen. A lot rests on manufacturers cutting back on production, plus shipments of NAND Flash packing products like servers, smartphones, and computers.

Even if things fall favorably for the NAND Flash industry, TrendForce’s best estimate is that 3Q23 will be a stable period, with the chance of a rebound in 4Q23. The report from TrendForce comes hot on the heels of the terrible financial report shared by memory giant Micron. In case you missed that, Micron’s YoY revenue dropped nearly 53% on reduced take-up of its NAND and DRAM products. Micron’s forecast was similar to TrendForce’s in at least one respect, with a gloomy prediction for 2Q23.

TrendForce doesn't offer a lot of positivity with regard to client SSDs – consumer devices sold as PC components or through PC-makers. Inventories of PCIe Gen 3 SSDs are being actively whittled down, while take-up of PCIe Gen 4 drives are slower than some expected. And the decline in QLC NAND pricing has dragged down TLC NAND as well. 

It will be difficult for NAND makers to cut prices further, but they are still expected to drop 5-10% in the coming quarter. There remains some hope that at some point in the second half of 2023, the industry will see positive momentum on dependent markets like laptops and smartphones – with new generation devices helping shift more NAND.

Enterprise SSDs have a rosier outlook this year. TrendForce says that Chinese demand will be strong due to government initiatives that have recently been approved. Moreover, the launch of AMD Genoa is a positive for server makers and thus NAND suppliers. Nevertheless, NAND Flash makers are in a weak negotiating position, so TrendForce is also predicting an enterprise SSD price decline in the order of 8-13% in 2Q23.

There are similar stories to be told in the eMMC (smartphone / laptop), and UFS NAND (smartphone) markets. However, UFS demand is looking more positive, with the introduction of UFS 4.0 for flagship smartphones, and expectations of a healthy mid-year and peak season for new / refreshed devices in 2023.

TrendForce’s report doesn’t specifically mention any underlying causes of the supply and demand issues we are now seeing, although some are pretty obvious. Memory is dealing with the same issues that the wider PC and tech industries are tackling, like inflation and its impact on disposable income, the Ukraine war, and the pandemic tech sales boom in preceding years. While that's not great for business, in the short term it should mean increasingly enticing SSD deals for those looking to increase storage in their PCs and game consoles. 

Remember back when Windows 11 launched and there was a concern about how the default of enabling Virtualization Based Security (VBS) and HyperVisor-Enforced Code Integrity (HVCI) might impact performance? There was a lot of noise made, benchmarks were run... and then we all moved on. Flash forward to 2023, and I recently discovered that sometime in the past few months, the PC I use for the GPU benchmarks hierarchy had it turned on, which could have been the result of mucking about with Windows Subsystem for Linux while trying to get Stable Diffusion benchmarks on various GPUs. (We have an article on how to disable VBS should you want to).

Correction (3/22/23): An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a Windows update had enabled VBS on my PC. However, we have since learned that Windows updates do not enable VBS, so it must have been something else I installed or enabled. Whatever the case, most new PCs ship with VBS on and clean Windows 11 installs have it enabled also.

This defaulting to VBS on, everywhere, worried me, because I'm already in the middle of retesting all the pertinent graphics cards for the 2023 version of the GPU hierarchy, on a new testbed that includes a Core i9-13900K CPU, 32GB of DDR5-6600 G.Skill memory, and a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G 4TB M.2 SSD. Needless to say, you don't put together best-in-class parts only to run extra features that can hurt performance.

Except... I did. When I put together the new testbed for the coming year back in November, just before the RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX/XT launches, I was under a time crunch. I got Windows 11 installed and updated, downloaded the rather massive 1.5TB of games that I use for testing onto the SSD, and got to work — all with VBS enabled. Having now caught my breath and with a bit of extra time, I belatedly realized my error, if you can call it that.

So I set about testing, and retesting, performance of the fastest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090, with and without VBS enabled. After all, we're now two new CPU generations beyond what we had at the Windows 11 launch, and with faster CPUs and new architectures, perhaps VBS has even less of an impact than before. At the same time, we're also using new GPUs that deliver substantially more performance than the RTX 3090, which was the fastest GPU back in 2021, which could make CPU bottlenecks and extras like VBS more of a hindrance than before.

You can see our test PC hardware, using Nvidia's 528.49 drivers (which have now been superseded, thrice). Let's get straight to the results, with our updated test suite and settings that consist of a battery of 15 games, at four different settings/resolution combinations. We're going to summarize things in a table, split into average FPS on the left and 1% low FPS (the average FPS of the bottom 1% of frametimes) on the right.

To be clear, all of the testing was done on the same PC, over a period of a few days. No game updates were applied, no new drivers were installed, etc. to keep things as apples-to-apples as possible. The one change was to disable VBS (because it was on initially, the Windows 11 default).

Each test was run multiple times to ensure consistency of results, which does bring up the one discrepancy: Total War: Warhammer 3 performance is all over the place right now. I don't recall that being the case in the past, but sometime in February or perhaps early March, things seem to have changed for the worse. I'm still investigating the cause, and I'm not sure if it's the game, my system, or something else.

Taking the high level view of things, perhaps it doesn't look too bad. Disabling VBS improved performance by up to 5% overall, and that dropped to just 2% at 4K ultra. And if you're running this level of gaming hardware, we think you're probably also hoping to run 4K ultra. But even at our highest possible settings, there are still some noteworthy exceptions.

The biggest improvement overall comes in Microsoft Flight Simulator, which makes sense as that game tends to be very CPU limited even with the fastest possible processors. Turning off VBS consistently improved performance in our RTX 4090 testing by around 10%, and the 1% lows increased by as much as 15%.

Not coincidentally, Flight Simulator is also one of the games that absolutely loves AMD's large 3D V-Cache on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Our CPU tests use a different, less demanding test sequence, but even there the AMD chips with large caches are anywhere from about 20% (Ryzen 7 5800X3D) to 40% (7900X3D) faster than the Core i9-13900K. Perhaps VSB would have less of an impact on AMD's X3D CPUs, but I didn't have access to one of those for testing.

Another game that tends to bump into CPU bottlenecks at lower settings is Far Cry 6, and it also saw pretty consistent 5% or higher increases in performance — noticeable in benchmarks, but less so in actual gaming. Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled also still saw about 5% higher performance. That's perhaps because the work of building the BVH structures for ray tracing calculations happens on the CPU; many of the other ray tracing games also showed 5% or higher increases.

What about games where VBS didn't matter much if at all? Bright Memory Infinite (the standalone benchmark, not the full game) showed almost no change, and Minecraft only showed a modest improvement at 1080p with our more taxing settings (24 RT render chunk distance). A Plague Tale: Requiem, Borderlands 3, Forza Horizon 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 also showed less impact, though in some cases the minimum FPS may have changed more.

(And again, I'm not really saying anything about Total War: Warhammer 3 as performance fluctuated far too much. Even after more than 20 runs each, with and without VBS, there was no clear typical result. Instead of a bell curve, the results fell into three clumps at the low, mid, and high range, with the 1% lows showing even less consistency. Removing TWW3 from our geometric mean only changes the 1% low delta by less than two percent, though, so I left it in.)

The biggest deltas are generally at 1080p, and it didn't seem to matter much whether we were running "medium" or "ultra" settings. That's probably because ultra settings often hit the CPU harder for other calculations, so it's not just a case of higher resolution textures or shadows.

But the question remains: to VBS or not to VBS? Especially for my GPU testing. The good news is that it's pretty much a never-ending process, since new drivers and game patches seem to routinely invalidate older results. I could switch at some point to having VBS off, and maybe I will. But that retesting is also the bane of GPU benchmarks.

Windows VBS: The Bottom Line

So, should you leave VBS on or turn it off? It's not quite that clear cut of a question and answer. The actual security benefits, particularly for a home desktop that doesn't go anywhere, are probably minimal. And if you're serious about squeezing every last bit of performance out of your hardware — via improved cooling, overclocking, and buying more expensive hardware — losing 5% just to some obscure "security benefits" probably isn't worth doing, so you could disable VBS.

Still, having VBS turned on is now the default for new Windows installations (and I'm pretty sure one of the various Windows Updates that came out in late 2022 may have also switched it back on if it was disabled). So you can argue that Microsoft at least thinks it's important and it should be left on. However, the fact that Microsoft also has instructions on how to go about disabling it indicates the performance impact can be very real.

It's also worth noting that the 5~10 percent drop in performance remains consistent with what we measured way back in 2021 when Windows 11 first launched. Nearly two years of upgraded hardware later, sporting some of the most potent components money can buy, and we're still looking at a 5% loss on average in gaming performance. For a top-tier gaming setup, that's almost as much of a performance gain from a traditional CPU architecture update — though Raptor Lake and Zen 4 provided much bigger increases than in the past.

For a lot of people, particularly those with less extreme hardware, the performance penalty while gaming will more likely fall into the low single digit percentage points. But if you're trying to set a performance record, it could certainly hold you back. And now we're left wondering what new vulnerabilities and security mitigations will come next, and how much those may hurt performance. Progress isn't always in a single direction, unfortunately.

Windows 95 was certainly a breakthrough moment in operating system design, bringing so many of the things we take for granted today to PCs, such as the desktop and the Start button. This week, Microsoft announced the latest 22H2 updates for Windows 10, and gave us a flash of a possible Windows 12 at the Ignite conference — and it might make you wonder if Windows 95 really was all that innovative (or if nostalgia has rose-tinted your memories). 

Well, now you can find out: Slack developer Felix Rieseberg has created a cross-platform Windows 95 that runs as an app, and it’s just reached version 3.1.1. (Thanks to Betanews for bringing this to our attention.) 

And yes, it can run Doom. 

It’s all done through the magic of Electron, GitHub’s open-source software framework used to create desktop apps out of web technologies such as CSS and JavaScript, which is what Rieseberg has used here. Download the .exe file (for Windows — Linux and Mac versions are available). It simply executes without an installation, and pops up the familiar, if old-fashioned, desktop with a welcome message open in Notepad.

Installed software includes Netscape Navigator, as well as classic games such as Wolfenstein 3D, A10 Tank Killer, and Doom. This project displays Electron’s capabilities for creating cross-platform apps with versions for Windows (32-bit, 64-bit, ARM64), Mac (Intel, Apple M1), and Linux (64-bit, ARM64, ARMv7). 

It runs reasonably well — though the author admits it would be even better as a native app. In a cursory test, we found the mouse pointer to be erratic, and Doom got stuck on the menu screen.

As the third release of the portable OS, this Windows 95 sees an update to Electron v18, and also moves to a newer version of the v86 virtualization app that emulates an x86 processor. The new version uses the WebAssembly language and also fixes a few bugs. You can even add new apps to by mounting hard drive images — though if you’ve got a project-critical Windows 95 app, you’re better off with a VM or even an old PC. If you’re using Linux, you can run it in Docker.

On his GitHub page, Rieseberg apologizes for what he’s done, and adds: “Bear in mind that this is written entirely in JavaScript, so please adjust your expectations.” The app is available under an educational license, and has no approval from Microsoft. Download it from GitHub.

TL;DR How to Bypass Windows 11's TPM, CPU and RAM Requirements

• Bypassing Windows 11's hardware requirements is trivial, there is even an official means, but that requires TMP 1.2.
• Install Windows 11 using a clean install, then edit the registry as part of the install process.
• Create a custom Windows 11 USB install drive (using a tool like Rufus), which can then be used to automatically bypass the requirements.

Microsoft's strict hardware requirements to install Windows 11, which includes TPM 2.0 means that upgrading older computers to the latest OS will be met with "this PC doesn't currently meet Windows 11 system requirements" error message, but we can bypass this and the other requirements by performing a clean install and editing the registry during the setup process or we can use a tool like Rufus to create a custom Windows 11 installation USB stick.

Fortunately, there are several simple ways you can get bypass Windows 11's TPM, RAM and other requirements. If you're doing a clean install with a Windows 11 ISO, you can edit the registry in the middle of the setup process and tell it to skip requirement checks. We'll show you how to modify the registry in the first section below.

If you don't want to have to modify the registry mid-install, you can create a Windows 11 USB install disk that will bypass Windows 11's TPM requirement, and its need for 8GB of RAM and a supported CPU. Using a free tool called Rufus and at least a 16GB Flash drive, you can either perform an in-place upgrade of Windows 10 to 11 or a Windows 11 clean install while getting around these minimums. In the second section of our tutorial below, we'll show you how to use Rufus to create a requirement-free Windows 11 install disc.

If you have Windows 10 or an earlier build of Windows 11 installed on a PC that didn't meet the requirements (perhaps a VM), you try to update to a new build with Windows Update and you get the "doesn't meet requirements" error message, there's a workaround for that. As we'll detail in the third section below, a script from AveYo's Media Creation tool github page will allow you to bypass Windows 11's TPM requirement even with Windows Update.

Note that Microsoft also has also created an official registry hack to bypass TPM 2.0 and CPU requirements for an in-place upgrade. However, this method still requires at least TPM 1.2 so, if you have no TPM at all, it's worthless. We'll talk about this at the bottom, in case you want to try it.

Also note that, by default, Microsoft's OS wants you to set it up with a Microsoft account. However, we have another tutorial on how to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft Account by using a few tricks.

How to Bypass Windows 11's TPM Requirement Using Registry Hacks

If you just have a regular Windows 11 install disk or ISO, you can bypass the Windows TPM and RAM requirements by making some registry changes during the install. Note that this method only works on a clean install and does not allow you to bypass the requirement for at least a dual-core CPU.

1. Boot off of your Windows 11 install disk. If you don't have one, see our story on how to download Windows 11. The first screen should ask you to choose the language of your install (which will probably be correct).

2. Hit SHIFT + F10 to launch the command prompt.

3. Type regedit and hit Enter to launch registry editor.

4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup.

5. Create a new registry key under Setup and name it LabConfig. To create a registry key, right click in the right window pane and select New->Key. Then enter the key name.

6. Within LabConfig, create DWORDs values called BypassTPMCheck and BypassSecureBootCheck and set each to 1. To create a new DWORD value, right click in the right window and select new DWORD (32-bit) Value then name the key, double click to open it and set it to 1.

If you also want to bypass the RAM requirement, add a DWORD values for BypassRAMCheck.

7. Close regedit and the command prompt.

You should be able to continue with your Windows 11 installation as normal.

How to Bypass Windows 11's TPM Requirement Using Rufus

With Rufus, a free utility, you can create a Windows 11 install disk on a USB Flash drive with settings that disable the TPM, RAM and CPU requirements. You can either boot off of this USB Flash drive to do a clean Windows 11 install or run the setup file off of the drive from within Windows 10 to do an in-place upgrade.

For most people, this method is ideal, but there are a couple of disadvantages. First, it requires a 16GB or larger USB Flash drive. Second, because it's on a Flash drive, it's more difficult to use for installing Windows 11 on a virtual machine where an ISO file would be ideal.

1. Download the latest version of Rufus and install it on your machine. At the time of writing the latest version is 3.19 which includes the Extended Windows 11 Image support.

2. Insert a blank 16GB or larger USB stick then open Rufus.

3. Select the USB device that you want to install Windows 11 to.

4. Ensure that Boot Selection shows “Disk or ISO image” and click DOWNLOAD.

5. Select Windows 11 and click Continue.

6. Select the latest release and click Continue.

7. Select the edition and click Continue.

8. Select your preferred language and click Continue.

9. Select the architecture (most likely x64) and click Download. A new window will open asking where to save the ISO image. Save it to your Downloads folder. You can also download the image using a browser if you wish.

The download will take several minutes to complete.

10. Click on the Image option drop down and select Extended Windows 11 Installation to disable TPM, Secure Boot and the 8GB of RAM requirement.

11. Double check that the correct drive has been selected and click on Start to begin the installation.

The write process can take some time, depending on the USB drive being used, but when done the drive can be removed and used to install Windows 11 on an older computer or even in a virtual machine.

12. Install or upgrade to Windows 11. Run setup on the USB drive, if you ware doing an in-place install from an existing Windows 10 installation. Boot off of the drive if you are doing a clean install. Note that you may need to disable secure boot in your BIOS (see how to enter your BIOS) if it gives you a problem.

How to Bypass Windows 11 TPM Check From Windows Update

If you want to use Windows Update rather than creating an install disk, you'll need a method that runs in Windows and fools the updater into thinking you meet the requirements. This may be more important if you are trying to use Windows Update to upgrade to a new build of Windows 11, perhaps an Insider Build, on a computer that already bypassed the requirement.

For example, when we joined the Windows Insider program on one of our Windows 11 VMs (which clearly did not have TPM), we got the dreaded "Your PC doesn't meet the requirements" error. But using AveYo's Media Creation Tool workaround script solved the problem. Here's how to make it happen.

1. Navigate to the Skip_TPM_Check_on_Dynamic_Update.cmd source code on AveYo's Media Creation Tool Github.

2. Click the "Copy raw contents" button in the upper right corner of the code box.

3. Create a new file on your desktop and name it skip_tpm_check.cmd. Make sure that you are able to view file extensions and the file extension is really .cmd, not .txt or else it won't run.

4. Open skip_tpm.cmd for editing, using notepad or another text editor.

5. Paste in the code you copied from github.

6. Save and run the skip_tpm.cmd file.

7. Click Yes if prompted by User Account Control.

You will now see a message saying "Skip TPM on Dynamic Update" has been installed. If you run the program again, it will disable the utility.

Windows Update should now be able to either update your existing Windows 11 Build or even perhaps upgrade you from Windows 10 to 11.

How to Bypass Windows 11 TPM the Official Microsoft Way

Knowing that some users will want to install Windows 11 on systems that don't meet all of its hardware requirements, Microsoft has provided a registry hack that loosens them up somewhat. Using this hack, you can install on a system that has at least TPM 1.2 and has an unsupported CPU. That said, we recommend the scripts above because they don't require you to have TPM of any kind.

1. Open Regedit.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup.

3. Create a DWORD (32-bit) Value called AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU if it doesn't already exist.

4. Set AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU to 1.

5. Close regedit and restart your PC. You should now be able to upgrade to Windows 11 from within Windows 10 by using installation media (provided you created it).

More Windows 11 Tutorials:

• How to Get a Windows 11 ISO File and Do a Clean Install
• How to Enable God Mode in Windows 11 or 10
• How to Uninstall Windows 11 and Return to 10
• How to Clean Install Windows 11, No Product Key Required
• How to Install Windows 11 in a Virtual Machine

Whether you're building a new Windows PC or just want to make a completely fresh start on your existing computer you will need to download Windows 11, create an install disk and use it to write the the new OS to your boot drive. In order to create a bootable install disk, you will need to download a Windows 11 ISO file that you can burn to a USB Flash drive or use as a standalone file if you are installing Windows in a virtual machine.

Whether you have a valid product key or not (see how to get Windows 11 for free or cheap), downloading a Windows 11 ISO never costs anything and there are two main ways to do so. First, you can download a Windows 11 ISO directly from Microsoft or use the company's Media Creation Tool to download the software and write it directly to a USB Flash Drive.

Second, you could use tools from a site called UUP dump to download the files from Microsoft's update servers and build a custom ISO that's fully up-to-date with an insider build that's even newer than release build.

Below, we'll show you all the ways you can download a Windows 11 ISO and write it to an installation disk.

How to Get a Windows 11 ISO

Before you can begin your install, you need to download a Windows 11 ISO file. If you've installed Windows 10 or even a build of Linux before, you'll know that ISO files are disk images you can use to create a bootable USB Flash drive, write to an optical disc or boot a virtual machine off of.

Downloading a Windows 11 ISO From Microsoft

The easiest way to get a Windows 11 ISO is by downloading one directly from Microsoft.

1. Navigate to the Windows 11 ISO page.

2. Select Windows 11 from the menu under "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (multi-edition ISO for x64 devices)" if your computer has an Intel or AMD processor. If you have a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, click the link next to "Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64 devices are available here."

If you want to go straight to creating a USB Flash drive, you can download the Windows 11 Installation Media tool from here. See the section below for step-by-step details on how to do that.

3. Click Download Now

4. Select your language and click confirm.

5. Click the download button that appears.

The ISO file will now download to your computer.

Create a Windows 11 Install Disk with Media Creation Tool

If you don't want to keep a copy of the latest Windows 11 ISO on your storage drive and just want to have a bootable USB Windows 11 install disk, the easiest way is to use Microsoft's media creation tool. Here's how.

1. Connect a USB Flash drive to your PC. It must be at least 8GB and have no data on it you want to keep. This process will overwrite the whole disk.

2. Navigate to Microsoft's Windows 11 Download page.

3. Click Download Now under Create Windows 11 Installation Media to download the Media Creation Tool.

4. Launch the Media Creation Tool.

5. Click Accept when shown the license agreement.

6. Select your language and Edition and click Next. The default choices will probably be correct.

7. Select USB flash drive and click Next. You can also select ISO file here and create an ISO file instead if you don't have a drive ready.

8. Select your USB Flash drive (if there's more than one choice) and click Next.

You will now have to wait several minutes while your computer downloads Windows 11.

9. Click Finish when it says your USB Flash drive is ready.

Creating a Windows 11 ISO with UUP Dump

If you download a Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, you'll always get the latest release version, but what if you want to do a clean install from a Windows 11 Insider Release Preview, Beta or Dev channel build? A very helpful site called UUP Dump allows you to download any build as an ISO file you can use for installation.

The ISO files actually come directly from Microsoft's servers as UUP Dump just gives you a batch file that downloads all the necessary files and turns them into an ISO. Here's how to use it.

1. Navigate to uupdump.net.

2. Scroll down to find the recent build you want. You almost certainly want the amd64 (aka x64) version of any build. That's unless you have a laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon powered

Or, alternatively, you can click the x64 button next to the build version you want. There are four choices:

• Latest Public Release Build: This is the release, not necessary to get from UUP Dump.
• Latest Release Preview Build: This is the closest Insider build to being final.
• Latest Beta Channel Build: A level between the newest and most polished versions.
• Latest Dev Channel Build: Close to the newest, but still pretty reliable.
• Latest Canary Channel Build: The very latest but not necessarily stable.

3. Select the language and click Next.

4. Choose the edition(s) you want and click Next. By default, your ISO will contain both Windows Home and Pro versions, but you can save space by picking just one of them.

5. Select "Download and convert to ISO" and check "Include updates" and then click "Create download package." A small zip file will download to your PC. This is not the Windows 11 ISO, but it will be used to download it.

6. Unzip the file and place its contents in a dedicated folder. Make sure the folder name has no spaces in it.

7. Double-click uup_download_windows.cmd in the folder with the downloaded files.

8. Click "Run Anyway," if Windows warns you that this is an unrecognized app.

9. Click Ok if warned by Windows User Account Control.

A command prompt window will open, running a batch file that downloads all the necessary files from Microsoft and creates the Windows 11 ISO file for you. This process will take several minutes or perhaps longer, depending on your Internet connection.

10. Press 0 to exit when the script finishes downloading the Windows 11 ISO.

A Windows 11 ISO file will appear in the folder where you placed uup_download_windows.cmd.

The ISO file it creates will allow you to install Windows 11, even if you don't have TPM.

Making a Bootable Windows 11 Install Disk

Unless you're just installing Windows 11 onto a virtual machine, you will need to create a bootable Windows 11 install disk from the data in your Windows 11 ISO file. For that, you'll need an empty USB Flash drive that's at least 8GB.

To write or "burn" your ISO file to a USB Flash drive, it's best to use Rufus, a free, third-party utility that will take care of arranges the partitions properly and making the disk bootable. You can also use Rufus to bypass Windows 11's TPM and Secure boot requirements if you choose.

1. Connect your USB Flash drive. Please note that you will be erasing all the data on it.

2. Download and launch Rufus (it does not install).

3. Select your USB drive if it's not already selected by default.

4. Click Select and choose the ISO file from your storage drive.

4. Click Start at the bottom of the window.

5. Create a second partition and format it as NTFS. It should take all the remaining disk space.

6. Check remove requirement for TPM, 4GB and data collection if you want. These are optional, but recommended and you must click Ok.

7. Click Ok if warned that the process will destroy all data on your USB Flash drive.

Rufus will now take a few minutes to drive to your drive. When it is done, you will have a USB Flash drive that can boot to install windows.

Installing Windows 11 on the Target PC

1. Boot your target PC off of the USB installation drive. You may need to hit a key or re-arrange the boot order to boot from USB.

2. Select your language (if it's not already selected) and click Next.

3. Click Install now.

4. Enter your product key or click "I don't have a product key" if you don't have one. You can always enter it later or use Windows 11 as inactivated.

5. Select the Windows edition if given a choice of editions.

6. Accept the license agreement and click Next.

7. Select Custom Install if prompted.

8. Choose the installation drive and click Next.

The installer will copy some files and may reboot at this point.

9. Select your country or region (if it's not selected) and click Yes. Also, select your keyboard layout when prompted.

10. Name your device and click Next.

11. Sign in with your Microsoft account or see our article on how to install Windows 11 with a local account.

12. Create a PIN for quick logins.

13. Click "Set up as new device" (or you can restore a previous config).

14. Click Skip if asked to customize your user experience. This is not necessary.

15. Click Next on the Microsoft Account and OneDrive screen.

16. Click Skip for Now if Windows tries to get you to sign up for Xbox Game Pass

Windows should now reboot and give you the desktop. Note that this install process may vary based on when you install and what version.

Verbatim has created a new storage device category – the portable write-once SSD. Described as a "long-life SSD," the new Verbatim SWOVA128G comes packing 128GB of NAND flash-based storage, a USB 3.2 Gen1 interface (for data and bus power), and a reassuring ten-year warranty.

The design brief behind the new SSD seems worthy enough. This Verbatim WOV series device is pitched as a solution to accidental file deletion, accidental file overwriting, complex and unfamiliar backup solutions, or SSDs wearing out.

Verbatim says it uses high-quality industrial Flash NAND, which has passed strict selection standards. The NAND is good for ten years or more when stored in environments at 55 Celsius or less. Other than this single hardware consideration, the rest of the special sauce that makes this a write-once long-life SSD relies on the Verbatim software.

To use the SWOVA128G, you will perform data writes in Windows 10 or 11 (but not S-Mode versions). These are the only two OSes that support the writing of data to this device, and .NET 4.8 must be installed. Verbatim doesn't describe or provide screenshots for the process of saving your write-once data on the SSD. We think it will be accessible in Explorer; however, we can't rule out a dedicated writing app with its own interface – something like a CD burner program of old.

Reading of data from the SWOVA128G is very simple. Verbatim says that any device that can read an exFAT file system can read files and folders from the disk. This includes Macs, ChromeOS, iOS, Android devices, and Windows 8.1, 10 or 11 without the Verbatim software installed. Unfortunately, Verbatim didn't mention Linux compatibility, but we don't know if this is intentional or an oversight.

You can't benchmark this drive without errors, but Verbatim has tested it and asserts that it can read at 540MBps and write at 180MBps.

Disclaimers in the Small Print

It is natural to wonder about the robustness and durability of data on this write-once drive – and whether it is tamper-proof. Verbatim's product page has several small print disclaimers, indicating that the write-once feature isn’t intended to be tested to destruction by elite hackers but should stand up to ordinary users in an office environment.

On the one hand, the number of product disclaimers is a little worrying, but it displays honesty. However, we must point out that Verbatim admits that "we do not guarantee that files, etc. cannot be deleted or overwritten," and that "we do not guarantee that files on the SSD cannot be corrected or deleted." Moreover, the ten-year period doesn't guarantee your data, but rather to replace a faulty drive -- but this is standard for a storage device guarantee.

The Verbatim SWOVA128G looks like it will be released in Japan first. From the product page discussing example usage scenarios, it might have particular appeal in Japan, as it is said to be "compliant with the revised Electronic Bookkeeping Law" in that country. Japanese law requires electronic transactions that can "ensure truth," "ensure visibility" and be retained for at least seven years. A file system tool provided by Verbatim can verify the data on the drive with a recording log that maintains the file name, date and time, hash value (SHA-256).

At the time of writing, we don't have pricing and availability for the Verbatim SWOVA128G or information about if/when it will be sold in the west.

If you need durable and capacious portable storage in the near future, it might be worth a look at our recent review of the Samsung T7 Shield 2TB Portable SSD, with shock, water and dust-resistance, as well as encryption.

In early February we reported on contamination issues affecting NAND flash production lines owned by Kioxia and WD. At least seven exabytes of NAND flash had to be scrapped or recovered, and factory capacity was underutilized for the best part of a month.

Thankfully, the above accident is in the rear view mirror. However, pricing and supply impacts are due very shortly, as inventory buffers from Kioxia and WD's NAND flash customers have been used up.

Now market researchers at TrendForce have had time to weigh up the situation, and have reiterated their earlier view that NAND flash prices will spike 5 to 10% in Q2. TrendForce have also had time to gauge the movements in supplies and markets affecting the consumer, eMMC and enterprise segments and have some predictions for each of these. In short, price inflation won't be as bad for the consumer and eMMC segments as for enterprise, according to TrendForce's new report.

Consumer SSDs may get off lightly with just a moderate to 3~8% price increase. Behind these mitigated figures are the observation that "the Russian-Ukrainian war has compelled PC OEMs to adopt a conservative stocking strategy for orders in 2Q22," highlights the report by TrendForce. Moreover, the demand for PCs, laptops and mobiles has been hit by overall inflation, reducing demand for what are non-essentials to some people.

eMMC and UFS storage gets off as lightly as the consumer SSD segment with expected 3~8% pricing uplifts. Similar reasons apply, and this increase isn't too bad due to weakened demand for tech like TVs, Chromebooks, and tablets.

Lastly, TrendForce considered the enterprise SSD market and says "procurement capacity and orders for servers and hyperscale data centers grow and lead times on Enterprise SSD products balloon due to material contamination at Kioxia and WDC." THus this market could see prices rise up 5~10% in the coming quarter.

Of course the above figures are not set in stone, even though Q2 is just one full day away, the predictions apply over the three months. There could be movements either way. On one side ,industries can be hit by more man-made or natural calamities. On the other, demand for certain products could weaken considerably as markets saturate, trends change, and we move towards a different post-peak-pandemic world.

DigiTimes today reported that DRAM prices are expected to rise throughout 2021 as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron maintain flash memory production levels despite increasing demand.

The report claimed that suppliers are cautious about building additional DRAM capacity which could result in limited global bit output growth. Demand for flash memory is expected to rise in the coming months.

DigiTimes reported that for the first quarter of 2021, spot prices for speciality DRAM chips have risen and supply has fallen short of demand. Things aren't expected to improve in upcoming quarters.

The report meshes with comments made by Micron CFO David Zinsner at a Morgan Stanley technology conference on Wednesday. Zinsner said he expects supply to be taut all year, according to Seeking Alpha, which "bodes well" for DRAM pricing.

Micron previously said that first quarter memory bit shipments would be reduced by the power outage and earthquake that affected two fabs in Taiwan in December 2020. Those reductions were all but guaranteed to result in higher DRAM prices.

Sources believe speciality DRAM prices will continue to rally through 2022 because currently quotes for wafers are far lower than the $3,000 peak set in 2018. 

DRAM pricing can be hard to predict, especially that far into the future. Does this seem like the year for anything to happen as expected in a market so volatile that a one-hour-long power outage at a single fab can raise prices?

Supply constraints have already limited the availability of CPUs, GPUs, and the devices they're found inside. Now manufacturers will have to contend with limited flash memory supply, too, and it's hard to see how that "bodes well" for anyone other than the companies enjoying these increased prices while they last.

The end has finally come for Adobe Flash on the Raspberry Pi. What once powered many memes and early Internet games is no more. With the latest update to Raspberry Pi OS, Adobe Flash has been removed from the official Raspberry Pi operating system but this brings about an issue of its own.

Adobe Flash was once the darling of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. Embedded games, interactive interfaces and full blown applications were built with Flash, but over time it became bloated, buggy and a security risk. The removal of Flash from Raspberry Pi OS has been on the cards for quite some time and with the January 11 update they have finally removed it. The removal of Flash does have one impact on Raspberry Pi OS. The popular Scratch 2 programming application will now no longer work as it relies upon Flash. So before you update your Raspberry Pi to the latest OS, ensure that your projects work with the Scratch online editor.

Looking through the release notes, the other changes to Raspberry Pi OS in this release are largely bug fixes for the new PulseAudio configurations introduced in the December 2020 update. There are a few fixes for the Chromium web browser, notably removal of artifacts in Google Maps 3D view.  An updated Linux Kernel, now 5.4.83 and updated Raspberry Pi firmware keeps your Pi securely up to date. 

Raspberry Pi OS is available from the Raspberry Pi website, where it can be downloaded as a disk image, or via the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.

Today, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced an end of year update to its 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS, formerly Raspbian. This update sees improvements to Chromium, PulseAudio becoming the default audio server, and printing is made much easier. The update also provides configuration options for the Raspberry Pi 400 and the new Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan.

Starting with improvements to the Chromium web browser (now version 84), thanks to the Raspberry Pi team's work, we finally see hardware-accelerated video playback for YouTube videos and streaming media services. The team also improved video conferencing clients such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, a welcome addition given the world that we now live in. The final note for Chromium is that version 84 of the browser will be the last to come with Adobe Flash Player. Adobe will retire the player at the end of 2020.  

The PulseAudio audio server replaces the long-standing ALSA server. With PulseAudio, we see the ability to play audio from multiple sources at once and native support for Bluetooth audio (unlike ALSA, which uses a third party bluez-alsa package to achieve this). 

Simon Long, Senior Principal Software Engineer, explains that the transition to PulseAudio should be seamless for the end user, "The good news for Raspberry Pi users is that, if we’ve got it right, you shouldn’t even notice the change. PulseAudio now runs by default, and while the volume control and audio input/output selector on the taskbar looks almost identical to the one in previous releases of the OS, it is now controlling PulseAudio rather than ALSA. You can use it just as before: select your output and input devices, adjust the volume, and you’re good to go."

Printing in Linux is handled via CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. With this latest update, we see CUPS pre-installed along with a printer config GUI tool to configure your printer over USB or a network connection easily.

Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan Updates

The Raspberry Pi 400 was quite a surprise, and we loved the new form factor, but one issue that it shares with the Raspberry Pi Zero range of boards is a single status LED to show power and "drive" activity. With the latest Raspberry Pi OS update, we see an option in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool that allows users to choose between a simple power LED or to have the LED show drive activity.

A further update to the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool also sees an extra option in Performance for the new Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan. With this option, we can set the temperature at which the fan is triggered and set the GPIO pin used to control the fan.

The latest version of Raspberry Pi OS can be downloaded directly from the Raspberry Pi website. If you have the Raspberry Pi Imager tool, you already have the update ready to download and flash to a micro SD card. If you would like to update an existing install, there are full instructions on the Raspberry Pi website.

Update 10/19/2020 02:21 PT: We've added information about the PCIe interface and GPIO for the Compute Module 4 IO Board.

October 19, and the Raspberry Pi team have announced another version of their Compute Module range of boards. Powered by the same System on Chip (SoC) as the Raspberry Pi 4 and introducing a new form factor, the Compute Module 4 comes in a whopping 32 variants. The Compute Module 4 now becomes the most powerful Compute Module in their range and starting from just $25.

• 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU
• VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x
• 4Kp60 hardware decode of H.265 (HEVC) video
• 1080p60 hardware decode, and 1080p30 hardware encode of H.264 (AVC) video
• Dual HDMI interfaces, at resolutions up to 4K
• Single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface
• Dual MIPI DSI display, and dual MIPI CSI-2 camera interfaces
• 1GB, 2GB, 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM
• Optional 8GB, 16GB or 32GB eMMC Flash storage
• Optional 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 5.0
• Gigabit Ethernet PHY with IEEE 1588 support
• 28 GPIO pins, with up to 6 × UART, 6 × I2C and 5 × SPI

The Compute Module 4 does away with the SODIMM form factor found in previous models in favor of a smaller board measuring just 2.1 x 1.5 inches (55 x 40 mm).
There are 32 variants of the Compute Module, ranging from $25 for a Lite version with no onboard storage and just 1GB of RAM to $90 for 32GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. The Compute Module 4 is the first time ever there are versions of the Compute Module with WiFi (2.4 and 5GHz) and Bluetooth. An external antenna kit is also available for projects encased in a metal case, or where extra help is needed to obtain a connection.

Compute Module 4 IO Board Introduces Support for PCIe

In order to develop using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 we need a carrier board, which breaks out all of the GPIO access and enables the module to talk to external components. Using a high density connector, another change to the design used in previous models, the module connects to the Compute Module IO Board enabling developers to use the hardware ready for embedding in their own bespoke PCB project. the Compute Module IO Board is $35 or available in a package from $60.

Another departure from previous models is the GPIO layout. Previous models have broken out every GPIO available, many more than the typical 40 found on most Raspberry Pi boards.  With the Compute Module 4 IO Board we see a HAT compatible 40 pin GPIO along with a Power over Ethernet (PoE) header. A coin cell battery holder indicated that the Compute Module IO Board also features a Real Time Clock (RTC) used to save the time and date when there is no network connection in use. An RTC does not feature in other models of Raspberry Pi, rather it relies on a network connection and the use of NTP to ensure that the date / time is correct.

• Two full-size HDMI ports
• Gigabit Ethernet jack
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• MicroSD card socket (only for use with Lite, no-eMMC Compute Module 4 variants)
• PCI Express Gen 2 x1 socket
• HAT footprint with 40-pin GPIO connector and PoE header
• 12V input via barrel jack (supports up to 26V if PCIe unused)
• Camera and display FPC connectors
• Real-time clock with battery backup

The eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted the PCIe Gen 2 x1 socket. This is the first "official" breakout of PCIe on a Raspberry Pi. Previously enthusiasts have taken to hacking the Raspberry Pi 4 PCIe interface for use with the VL805 USB 3.0 controller. With the Compute Module 4 we have official and easy access to the PCIe interface, enabling add on cards to be used with the board. 

Right now the boards are available for pre-order, starting from $25 for the 1GB Lite version, up to $90 for 8GB RAM and 32GB flash storage. Add to this $35 for the IO board and a top spec kit will retail for approximately $125.

Overclocking your brand new RTX 30 series GPU is a risky move but someone has already done this, hardwareluxx reports a ROG Strix RTX 3080 BIOS has been flashed to use the BIOS for an RTX 3080 TUF Gaming using a new version of NVFlash that includes support for Nvidia's new Ampere graphics cards.

NVFlash is a BIOS flashing tool that allows you to either install a new BIOS from the manufacturer of your card or, in the case of hardcore overclockers, use a BIOS for a more-powerful graphics card and flash it to your model. This is quite common with the Pascal and Turing generations of cards, flashing a BIOS with a less restrictive power limit onto a lower-tiered card can extend your overclocking capabilities. In-fact before Nvidia's Pascal generation, you could manually edit your own BIOS, which is the preferred method for increasing overclocking performance in the first place. However, Nvidia caught onto the matter and decided to shut it down completely with Pascal GPUs and onward, encrypting the BIOS to prevent modifications.

Now, all we're left with is flashing the graphics card BIOS, since we aren't modifying the actual BIOS, this is still something we can do to hopefully get higher clock speeds. Technically as long as you grab a BIOS from another card with the same GPU (say RTX 3080 Founders Edition to RTX 3080 TUF Gaming) that can work. 

But should you do it? Probably not, flashing a BIOS from one card to a different card is obviously very risky and not something the cards were designed to do. In a worst-case scenario, your graphics card will be completely bricked, and the warranty rejected because you tampered with your card. Hardcore overclocking is the only real reason to do it, and if you don't mind risking your GPUs life in the process the performance gains could be incredible.

There are many 512GB USB flash drives on the market, but very few come in a small presentation like PNY's Elite-X Fit offerings. As per a ComputerBase report, the Elite-X Fit is now available with a 512GB capacity.

The Elite-X Fit measures 2.16 x 1.52 x 1.55 cm, so it isn't a lot longer than the typical USB Type-A connector itself. The drive adheres to the USB 3.1 Gen 1 specification and, according to PNY, the Elite-X Fit 512GB (P-FDI512EXFIT-GE) delivers read speeds up to 200 MBps. PNY rates write performance as 30 times faster than USB 2.0 (3 MBps), which works out to 90 MBps.

Given the Elite-X Fit's dimensions, the SanDisk Ultra Fit is the only competitor within the same size class. The Ultra Fit, however, comes with a 2.97 x 1.42 x 0.51cm footprint, so the Elite-X Fit is a tad shorter. 

SanDisk advertises the Ultra Fit 512GB with a read speed up to 130 MBps. However, the manufacturer doesn't commit to a write speed, instead just touting performance up to 15 times faster than a normal USB 2.0 flash drive. By SanDisk's standards, USB 2.0 flash drives write up to 4 MBps, which would put the Ultra Fit's write performance to around 60 MBps. In summary, PNY's drive reads 53.8% and writes 50% faster than SanDisk's drive.

PNY sells the Elite-X Fit 512GB for $99.99 on the brand's online store. The Ultra Fit 512GB typically costs $10 less unless it's on sale. The Elite-X Fit 512GB is backed by a limited one-year warranty, which is a bit short considering that SanDisk offers a five-year warranty on the Ultra Fit.

Along with releasing a new 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4 model yesterday, the Raspberry Pi Foundation made a couple of noteworthy changes to its OS strategy. The company changed the name of its first-party operating system from Raspbian to "Raspberry Pi OS" and released a 64-bit OS beta to go with the existing 32-bit platform.

The newly-christened Raspberry Pi OS has a few new features, which the Pi Foundation highlighted in a blog post today. A new, preloaded Bookshelf app provides a huge library of works from the Raspberry Pi Press—including a complete collection of MagPi, HackSpace, and Wireframe magazine issues. You also get access to a number of free books.

In an effort to improve accessibility for sight impaired, Raspberry Pi OS also has a new feature called Magnifier. It helps enlarge elements on the screen to improve visibility. The new tool is available in the Recommended Applications under Universal Access.

The team also implemented a new questionnaire that will appear when launching Chromium from a newly installed image. It's a brief option survey of questions they hope will provide insight into what the user base is looking for in the OS. To read more about the new features, visit the official Raspberry Pi website.

The update fixes a few bugs but inadvertently created a new issue with the USB bootloader beta. The new Raspberry Pi OS beta uses incompatible *.elf files that will cause a USB boot drive not to boot anymore. The solution is to grab the older *.elf and *.dat files from Raspberry Pi's May 22nd firmware github repo.  Check out our article on how to boot a Raspberry Pi 4 Off a USB SSD or Flash Drive to see both how to do it and how to fix the problem. 

To updated your existing install to the new version of Raspberry Pi OS, you just need to enter the following commands in a terminal window.

sudo apt updatesudo apt full-upgrade

You will then need to reboot. The magnifier doesn't install automatically with the update so you'll need to enter the following command to activate it.

sudo apt install mage

Phison has announced that its SSD controllers now support 3D NAND flash chips manufactured by Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd (YMTC), as per DigiTimes today. This latest development unlocks the door for SSDs with Chinese-made NAND to penetrate the storage market.

YMTC has been recruiting strategic partners to build its own ecosystem. Before the latest announcement, the Chinese manufacturer had already partnered with Adata and Silicon Motion. The addition of Phison is a key one, since Phison (like Silicon Motion) specializes in SSD controllers, which is a crucial component in SSDs.

YMTC was previously playing catch up to the other top NAND players on the market. However, the company's strong determination eventually led to the NAND maker transitioning from 64 layers to 128 layers, while entirely skipping the 96-layer phase.

According to DigiTimes, Phison's complete portfolio has been validated to support YMTC's 64-layer and looming 128-layer 3D NAND chips, with the latter based around YMTC's Xtacking 2.0 technology. 

Consumer storage is just a stepping stone though. Phison expects its partnership with YMTC to eventually extend to high-end storage, such as industrial embedded and enterprise products.

Having Adata on YMTC's side should certainly prove beneficial for the chipmaker. Adata, like countless other SSD vendors, doesn't make its own NAND chips and depend on third-parties, like Micron, Kioxia, Intel and etc 

YMTC's offerings look competitive on paper, and with the right pricing and incentives, we can expect other SSD manufacturers to eventually board the YMTC train.

With many people stuck at home, the desire for an at-home media center is greater than ever. But what if you could add an open-source user interface (UI), or ditch the one built into your TV, with the help of Raspberry Pi? With Plasma Bigscreen, a new AI voice and KDE open-source development released this week, it's possible to use your Raspberry Pi 4 as a center of your media hub. 

"Plasma Bigscreen powers the interface on a single-board computer and uses the Mycroft AI voice assistant to provide a smart TV platform," it says on KDE.org. "Plasma Bigscreen will deliver not only media-rich applications, but also traditional desktop applications redesigned to fit the Bigscreen experience.

Plasma Bigscreen is described as a free open-source UI experience for big-screen TVs. The Pi version is still in its  beta stage, so expect a few bugs as well as improvements along the way. The UI is catered specifically to a TV experience—it even supports remote control operation. To make things a little more modern, you can also use voice controls to navigate.

The Plasma Bigscreen image is easily flashed onto a microSD card like most other Pi operating systems. It uses Wi-Fi to update and download content for streaming. 

Plasma Bigscreen also supports major streaming apps, which the OS calls "skills." This includes YouTube and Netflix. In addition to streaming, it can play a variety of compatible games and even functions as a web browser.

If you're interested in checking out Plasma Bigscreen, now is a good time. As of this week, you can download the beta image and flash it to a fresh SD card for your Pi 4. For more details and updates on Plasma Bigscreen, check out the project's official website. 

With the Internet of Things (IoT) continuing its massive growth, it's only natural that end users expect the hardware these devices run on to get more powerful. GlobalFoundries is looking to address this on the storage side, announcing today that its embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) has entered production on its 22nm platform known as 22FDX. 

GlobalFoundries eMRAM is meant to replace the aging NOR flash, a type of embdeed flash storage used in many devices, by offering performance, reliability and power consumption improvements. It'll also target artificial intelligence (AI), self-driving cars and other newer microcontroller uses. GlobalFoundries didn't name specific products that would leverage its eMRAM but said that it's "working with several clients with multiple production tape-outs scheduled in 2020."

The new eMRAM is said to be highly robust with data retention of up to 10 years with devices kept within -40 degrees Celsius to 125 degrees Celsius temperatures and an endurance of 100,000 cycles. 

Those are significantly higher figures than what's offered by NAND memory in SSDs nowadays, but eMRAM isn't about replacing NAND. Instead, it targets NOR flash (eFlash) in devices where the system code is stored and may regularly be rewritten through updates or logging. 

We saw with Tesla what happens when the flash memory isn't durable enough. Examples like these emphasize the importance of highly durable, non-volatile memory in applications such as AI and autonomous cars. 

Increases in write speed are primarily due to the nature of the technology. Built on a magnetoresistive principle, writing to the storage material doesn't require an erase cycle prior to writing the intended data, thus drastically increasing write speeds. Macro capacities range from 4 - 48Mb and will be available as drop-in kits for partners.

"We continue our commitment to differentiate our FDX platform with robust, feature rich solutions that allow our clients to build innovative products for high performance and low power applications," Mike Hogan, senior vice president and general manager of Automotive and Industrial Multi-market at GlobalFoundries, said in a statement. 

"Our differentiated eMRAM, deployed on the industry's most advanced FDX platform, delivers a unique combination of high performance RF, low power logic and integrated power management in an easy-to-integrate eMRAM solution that enables our clients to deliver a new generation of ultra-low power MCUs and connected IoT applications."

GlobalFoundries isn't the only party to be working on eMRAM though. Samsung started mass production of eMRAM about one year ago but on a 28nm platform, and Intel has been working on a slightly different technology called SST-MRAM.

GlobalFoundries is currently working with clients and will start delivery throughout 2020. Production of the 22FDX eMRAM will take place at the 300nm Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.

At CES 2020, the Korean semiconductor company SK Hynix Inc plans to expand the company’s reach in the consumer market. SK Hynix will have its latest SSDs, the Gold P31 and Platinum P31 PCIe NVMe SSDs, on display.

SK Hynix has been a major supplier of components to various OEM computer manufacturers over the past decade, but the recent release of the SuperCore series Gold S31, a SATA SSD, marked the company’s entrance into the consumer market in the USA.

The company will introduce two new PCIe NVMe SSDs into the mix that cater to those seeking higher performance for gaming and multimedia editing workflows. Both drives are built using the company’s latest 128-Layer '4D NAND' flash. The new flash is making its way to market rather quickly, as SK Hynix just announced it six months ago.

SK hynix didn't reveal any further details about the SSDs, though. The company designs and manufactures DRAM, NAND, and SSD controllers in-house, giving it an edge over many of its competitors that use off-the-shelf components. Considering the company manufactures DRAM, it is unlikely that the SSD controller design will lack a cache, but we are still waiting for feedback on specifics.

If you are attending the CES and want a first-hand look at the new Gold P31 and Platinum P31 PCIe SSDs, stop by SK Hynix’s booth (#13529) in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central LLCC Hall.

Adobe Flash will officially keel over in 2020. Its presence on the web might be forgotten even sooner than that, however, because Google announced yesterday that its search engine will stop indexing Flash content by the end of the year.

The question used to be "if a tree falls in the forest but nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Now, it's "if something exists on the Internet but Google doesn't index it, does it really exist?" Search has become the default way of finding stuff online--Flash's disappearance from Google's results basically makes it invisible.

Here's the good news: Google isn't removing websites that have Flash content from its search results. That would be a disaster, because people who operate sites that still rely on Flash probably wouldn't be technically savvy enough to understand why they've disappeared from Google. The pages containing Flash content will remain.

Instead, "in Web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content," Google explained. Google will also "stop indexing standalone SWF files." But the search tool assured us that "most users and websites won't see any impact from this change" to Google Search.

This isn't Google's only method of helping Flash along its journey into the afterlife. The plugin's disabled by default in Chrome, and the company plans to completely remove support for Flash from its browser by the end of 2020. (These changes also affect the Chromium-based version of Edge that Microsoft's been developing.)

Many have acknowledged that Adobe ending Flash support marks the end of an era. Google said in its blog post that the plugin "was the answer to the boring static web, with rich animations, media and actions" and was "a prolific technology that inspired many new content creators on the web." But now it's time for Flash to fade away.

If you're the type to dabble with Raspberry Pi, but wish there were alternatives to muck about with, you may be in luck. A new alternative to the diminutive computer is available via Khadas: the VIM3, which comes in both Basic and Pro versions priced at $99 and $139 respectively. Khadas, which manufactures single-board computers (SBCs) similar to that of the Raspberry Pi itself, has both models of its VIM3 lineup of SBCs available for purchase now, with shipping scheduled for mid-August. 

Initially, Khadas is offering the boards in two configurations, with additional options and more powerful versions coming at a later date. The Khadas VIM3 Basic comes rocking 16FB eMMC Flash and 2GB LPDDR4 RAM, and it's $99. The Khadas VIM3 Pro doubles the storage and RAM on board for just $139.99. 

The VIM3 uses an Amlogic S992X system on a chip. It's the very same, in fact, as the one the Odroid-N2 uses, which includes four Cortex-A73 performance cores, a Mali-G52 Mp4 GPU, and two Cortex-A53 efficiency cores. You can use your VIM3 to code 4K 10bit video at 75 fps, if you so choose. Khadas will let you utilize Android Pie, LibreElec, and Ubuntu XFCE 18.04 in terms of available OS options you can use. 

Keep in mind that neither will come with a USB-C adapter or cable and you may have to pick up additional accessories depending on which model you choose. But if you're looking to go down a different DIY avenue in terms of experimenting, Raspberry Pi-style, these Khadas SBCs look like an interesting starting point. 

Why would you want one of these over a Raspberry Pi? Well, the Khadas VIM3 includes USB 3.0 support, the aforementioned 4K output, and a few other features that the Pi models prior to the new Raspberry Pi 4, have not. However, a Pi (including the new Raspberry Pi 4, if you can find it), is cheaper, so there's your trade-off. 

If you're interested in picking them up, lock in your pre-order now, as these prices have gone up from the initial production batch's pricing of $69.99 and $99.99 and it's possible they could raise further in the future.