Everybody wants to talk about GPUs when discussing artificial intelligence, but all those AI models need somewhere to put their data. Storage may not get the same attention as processors and accelerators, but it is becoming just as important.
That is where Transcend sees an opportunity.
The company has unveiled a new family of industrial SSDs and memory cards built on 218-layer 3D NAND flash technology. While “AIoT” is one of those buzzwords vendors love to throw around these days, the underlying need is very real. Cameras, factories, vehicles, and industrial equipment are generating more data than ever before, and much of it now needs to be processed locally instead of being sent off to a distant cloud server.
Leading the lineup is the MTE740A, a PCIe Gen5 x4 SSD with NVMe 2.0 support. Transcend says the drive can deliver sequential read speeds up to 14,000MB/s and random read performance as high as 2.1 million IOPS. Those are the sorts of numbers aimed squarely at AI inference, analytics, and other data-hungry workloads.
Not every deployment needs bleeding-edge performance, however. Transcend is also introducing the PCIe Gen4-based MTE770A and the smaller MTE490A for embedded systems where every millimeter counts. The company is even keeping SATA alive with the SSD490K, something industrial customers with long hardware replacement cycles will likely appreciate.
The SSD family uses 218-layer NAND rated for up to 3,000 program and erase cycles. Reliability features include anti-sulfur resistors, Corner Bond technology, and gold-finger PCBs designed for harsher operating environments. TCG Opal 2.0 hardware encryption support is included as well.
Removable storage gets some attention too. The new SDC470T SD card and USD470T microSD card target surveillance systems and other write-heavy workloads that run around the clock. Endurance reaches as high as 1,460TBW, while power-loss protection and advanced error correction are intended to keep data safe when things do not go according to plan.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of the announcement is Scope Pro, Transcend’s monitoring software that allows administrators to remotely track the health of SSDs and memory cards. Rather than waiting for a drive to fail unexpectedly, IT teams can monitor wear levels and plan replacements before problems occur.
Storage may never be as exciting as the latest GPU launch, but AI infrastructure depends on moving, storing, and accessing enormous amounts of data as quickly as possible. As more AI processing shifts to factories, cameras, vehicles, and roadside equipment, storage vendors like Transcend suddenly find themselves in a much more important position.
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