New ultra-compact SSDs enable smaller, lighter, faster mobile computing and IoT devices

Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced the availability of the state-of-the-art BG3 series, its next generation single-package BGA SSD product line based on their latest 64 layer, 3-bit-per-cell TLC BiCS FLASH. Designed to fuel the future of mobile devices, their BG3 SSDs deliver better performance and a smaller footprint than traditional SATA-based drives. Moreover, with its cost-effective DRAM-less design, the unique series enables a high quality user experience at a fraction of the power requirement of other NVM Express[3] (NVMe) SSDs[4]. The company’s series leverages the HMB feature in NVMe Revision 1.2.1 to maintain high performance without integrated DRAM by using host memory for flash management purposes. This powerful combination allows devices to harness the performance of NVMe storage while maximizing footprint and affordability to deliver a next-generation mobile experience to end users. Both fast and economical, these miniaturized SSDs also offer data center and enterprise applications an alternative solution for server boot storage. With style and portability top of mind for today’s laptop and tablet manufacturers, the series was designed specifically to enable even slimmer and more power efficient devices. By eliminating DRAM from its design, the series offers what is claimed to be the world’s thinnest SSDs available at just 1.3mm high and delivers lower power consumption to maximize battery life. "Toshiba’s third generation BG SSDs are ideal for mobile and IoT computing and datacenter use alike,” says Paul Rowan, general manager at Toshiba Electronics Europe, SSD Business Unit. "Especially in datacenters the deployment of BG3 can greatly reduce both capital and operation expenses as the new BG3 series bridges the power and price gap between enterprise SATA and mainstream client NVMe SSDs while still providing boot storage with improved power consumption and compact footprint,” he concludes.