AMD has unveiled the company's strategy for its upcoming Polaris architecture-based Radeon RX series graphics cards, introducing levels of VR performance and future-proof technologies at a variety of price points. The Radeon RX 480 delivers premium VR capability at a price of starting at US$199 for the 4GB edition. Set for launch and availability on June 29, the Radeon RX 480 will deliver a solution for premium PC VR experiences, delivering VR capability common in US$500 GPUs. AMD expects that PC VR enabled by Polaris architecture-based graphics cards will drive a wide range of VR-ready desktops and notebooks, providing a catalyst for the expansion of the addressable market to an estimated 100 million consumers over the next 10 years.

Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing NVM Express (NVMe) PCIe solid state drive (SSD) in a single ball grid array (BGA) package for next-generation PCs and ultra-slim notebook PCs. The new BGA NVMe SSD, named PM971-NVMe, features a compact package that contains all essential SSD components including NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller. Configuring the PM971-NVMe SSD in a single BGA package was enabled by combining 16 of Samsung's 48-layer 256Gb V-NAND flash chips, one 20nm 4Gb LPDDR4 mobile DRAM chip and a high-performance Samsung controller. The new SSD is 20x16x1.5mm and weighs only about one gram. The single-package SSD's volume is approximately a 100th of a 2.5-inch SSD or HDD, and its surface area is about a fifth of an M.2 SSD. The PM971-NVMe SSD enables sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,500MB/s and 900MB/s respectively, when TurboWrite technology is used. The performance figures can be directly compared to transferring a 5GB-equivalent, Full-HD movie in about three seconds or downloading it in about six seconds. It also boasts random read and write IOPS of up to 190K and 150K respectively. The PM971-NVMe SSD line-up will be available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB storage options. Samsung will start providing the new SSDs to its customers in June worldwide.

Samsung Electronics has announced that it is mass producing what it calls the industry's first "through silicon via" (TSV) double data rate-4 (DDR4) memory in 128-gigabyte (GB) modules for enterprise servers and data centers. The 128GB TSV DDR4 RDIMM is comprised of a total of 144 DDR4 chips, arranged into 36 4GB DRAM packages, each containing four 20nm-based 8Gb chips assembled with TSV packaging technology. Samsung's 128GB TSV DDR4 RDIMM provides a low-power solution for next-generation servers with speeds at up to 2,400Mbps, while cutting power usage by 50%, compared to using the previous highest capacity DRAM modules - 64GB LRDIMMs, whose four-chip package stacks are hampered by power and speed limitations caused by their use of conventional wire bonding. Samsung added the company will continue to introduce TSV DRAM with higher performance. These will include modules with data transfer speeds of up to 2,667Mbps and 3,200Mbps that help to meet intensifying enterprise server needs, while expanding TSV applications into high bandwidth memory (HBM) and consumer products.