IT distributor Dowoo Information said on Thursday it signed an official distribution agreement in South Korea with ZHITAI, the consumer storage brand of NAND flash memory maker YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies), and will launch a next-generation PCIe SSD lineup in the country.

The products to be launched in South Korea are the PCIe 5.0 SSDs TiPro9000 and TiPlus9100, and the PCIe 4.0 SSD TiPlus7100s.

The flagship TiPro9000 is an SSD that applies the latest 5th-generation PCIe interface and YMTC’s next-generation Xtacking 4.0 TLC NAND. It offers up to 14,900MB/s read speeds and up to 13,800MB/s write speeds. It includes a DRAM cache and can be used for AI workloads, video editing, content creation and high-end gaming environments.

The performance model TiPlus9100 is a PCIe 5.0 SSD that supports up to 12,000MB/s read speeds and up to 10,700MB/s write speeds. It applies a single-sided PCB design to provide compatibility with laptops and SFF (small form factor) systems.

The company said competition in the next-generation storage market is also intensifying as the latest AMD and Intel platforms support PCIe 5.0 SSDs. ZHITAI is competing with global premium SSD brands based on its own NAND flash technology. It plans to roll out a range of storage lineups in South Korea sequentially within the year, starting with these three models.