Late last year, we took stock of the the state of the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ecosystem. It was not a rosy outlook at that time. But since then, many vendors have introduced new products in the 20 Gbps-performance class, and host support has also started to look up. A few new enclosures in this speed class have also appeared in the market.

In parallel, we have seen 3D NAND layer counts go up and QLC become more prevalent. Capacities of SSDs and external bus-powered direct-attached storage (DAS) devices have increased, with 4TB being offered by almost all vendors. Consumer trends in terms of DAS workloads has also undergone some shifts.