Big Blue says that the shiny new System z10 you just installed in your basement yesterday is officially obsolete and should be relegated to household media streaming/torrent duty in the wake of its replacement. Behold the zEnterprise System, and its central compute server the zEnterprise 196, capable of processing more instructions than your puny humanoid mind could ever dream of issuing. Don't look now, but your girly-man netbook just peed itself.
THERE HAVE LONG been rumors of a major player moving their data centers from x86 based PCs to the ARM architecture. It looks like the first big player to jump in to the market is going to be none other than Facebook.
OCZ'S REVODRIVE PCI Express based SSD was something of a surprise when it was announced and it's a fairly unique product in the market considering its competitive retail price compared to a standard SSD. However, it's now looking like OCZ is readying a new model called the RevoDrive-B which is yet another PCI Express based SSD, but with an extra trick up its sleeve, it's got a pair of SATA ports for drive caching.
BT junkies finding it hard to contain their excitement
The Association of People who Stockpile Digital Recordings of the Tasteful Expression of the Human Form, or APSDRTEHF (they are rumored to be voting on a new name in the near future), received word of an amazing feat of storage engineering today. Toshiba is presenting a paper at the 2010 Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego today outlining their research and successful implementation of a new technology that can cram a staggering 2.5 terabits of information into a single square inch of platter real estate. For the layman, that's about 300GB of information stored on a surface the size of a postage stamp.
MEASURING A MERE 16x20x1.85mm SanDisk's new iSSD or integrated SSD as it's also known as, is very possibly the world's smallest SSD. It's intended to be embedded in devices that support the standard SATA interface, such as tablets, smartphones and other portable computing devices.
MICRON AND INTEL has announced that they're the first to sample 25nm three bits per cell NAND Flash memory today, also known as TLC NAND Flash. The companies are getting ready to enter mass production later this year, for what the two are claiming is the industries smallest and highest capacity NAND Flash memory.
ONE OF THE claims Gigabyte makes in the press release with regards to its new USAP USB 3.0 drivers is that the new drivers will boost the performance of USB 2.0 storage devices as well. We thought we'd put this to the test to see how much of a difference it really makes.
HYNIX HAS FOLLOWED in Samsung's footsteps by starting mass production of "20nm class" NAND Flash memory. However, it seems like Hynix is first with 64Gbit NAND Flash using sub 32nm manufacturing technology.
HARD DRIVE DATA density has taken another leap forward, although this time it's thanks to Samsung, of all companies, as it latest EcoGreen F4 2TB hard drive features no less than 667GB of storage space per platter. That means that you only need three platters to create a 2TB drive, something Samsung's competitors have yet to accomplish.
IF YOU THINK USB 3.0 is fast, think again, Gigabyte has announced that it's delivering support for UASP or USB Attached SCSI Protocol which is set to boost the data transfer rate for compatible UASP devices by as much as 20 percent over the current USB Mass Storage specification that has been the standard so far.
IS THAT 32GB SSD getting a bit on the small side? Not to worry, Super Talent has announced that it's getting ready to ship its new UltraDrive MX range which tops out at no less than 480GB. That should be enough space to compete with most notebook hard drives at least, but the real question is, can you afford one?
ACCORDING TO Digitimes, AMD is getting ready to sign a deal with Renesas that will give AMD access to Renesas USB 3.0 implementation. This would allow AMD to quickly implement a stable USB 3.0 solution into its chipsets without having to spend time and money on developing its own solution and more importantly, software stack.
Grab a fifth or your favorite 70 proof or higher beverage and read on
Recently hard drives and the storage industry in general has been a tough thing to write about, because frankly, nobody really cares! It’s much more fun and exciting to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest multi-core CPUs running at orgasmic clock speeds, or exotic video cards that need their own power reactors but have enough FLOPs under the hood to calculate the single precision meaning of life. In fact the only time we give our trusty storage things a second thought (and exhaust our dictionaries of naughty words) is when they die and take our data along with them. Well, to help remedy this journalistic conundrum, we've developed a drinking game to aid in your consumption of this article. Every time you see a storage related suffix (MB, GB, TB, etc.) you take a shot. Ready? Good, because you’re up to three already.
CORSAIR HAS ANNOUNCED a couple of additions to its Force series of solid state drives which, at least in terms of capacity, are competing directly with Intel's offerings. The new drives are the F40, F80 and F160, all of which offer impressive performance figures, although the pricing is quite competitive considering all things.
85 percent more power efficient than the current model
WE BROKE THE news about Renesas new USB 3.0 host controller back in April. Back then we reported that the new controller was going to have a reduced power consumption, but at the time we didn't know by how much. Renesas has finally unveiled the new host controller and has managed to reduce the power consumption by 85 percent when no peripherals are attached to the controller's ports.
The Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium has its first meeting
TAIWANESE COMPANIES ARE always on the lookout for the next big thing and it seems like this time around they're taking a stab at cloud computing. The Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium was established back in April, but only had its first meeting as of yesterday. The TCCC as it's known as is a co-operation between the government funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and over 60 local Taiwanese technology companies.
Only for BD-R, but 100GB BD-RE discs are also coming
THE BLU-RAY DISC Association has announced that it has finally ratified the BDXL standard which means that we'll see 128GB writeable Blu-ray discs in the future. This is the good news, the bad news is that these are four layer discs which will require new drives to both write and read the new standard.
THE SD ASSOCIATION has announced new high-speed symbols for SDHC and SDXC cards which are once again meant to make our lives easier. The old Class 2, 4, 6 and 10 ratings will be kept for older memory cards that don't meet the new UHS or Ultra High Speed SD card standard. The new UHS speed classifications as plenty of room to grow, especially as we've only hit the first generation of SDXC cards.
SUPERTALENT JUST RELEASED something that the server world has been waiting for since the dawn of SSDs, a SAS SSD. The 2.5" ShuttleCraft SAS SSD is the first affordable drive that is going to change how servers use storage.
THE HOT CHIPS 22 conference has released their lineup of talks this year, and it once again looks really good. If you haven't been to one yet, it is one of the best conferences about chip architecture out there, and well worth attending.
Yes, that's GB, not Gb and it’s in a single package too
MOST SMARTPHONES ARE still only shipping with a measly 512MB of storage memory at best, there are exceptions, of course like Apple's iPhone and a couple of devices from Samsung to mention a few. However, Toshiba seems set on getting more storage memory into our mobile devices, as the company has launched 128GB e-MMC compliant NAND Flash memory chips today.
SEAMICRO IS A STARTUP that is attacking data center power use through a novel idea, optimizing hardware for a specific workload. For web serving workloads, the idea is simple, cram 512 Atom servers into a box with a virtual 'shared nothing' configuration.
SUPERMICRO WAS SHOWING off a bunch of high end servers and boards during Computex, most based around Magny-Cours, and a few Becton machines as well. Not to be outdone, they finally revealed a new line of modular racks.
THERMALTAKE HAD SEVERAL evolutionary cases, fans and docks at Computex, along with one really good new idea. If Thermaltake is a design trendsetter, and they usually are, look forward to cases with lots of HD docking bays. About time.
ONE PROBLEM WITH USB 3.0 is that, to date, there's no common pin-header layout for internal USB 3.0 connectors, but it appears that ASRock and ECS have taken things into their own hands and have come up with a suitable solution. Interestingly the two companies appear to be using exactly the same type of connector, although we don't know if the pin-out is the same.
Big Blue says that the shiny new System z10 you just installed in your basement yesterday is officially obsolete and should be relegated to household media streaming/torrent duty in the wake of its replacement. Behold the zEnterprise System, and its central compute server the zEnterprise 196, capable of processing more instructions than your puny humanoid mind could ever dream of issuing. Don't look now, but your girly-man netbook just peed itself.
THERE HAVE LONG been rumors of a major player moving their data centers from x86 based PCs to the ARM architecture. It looks like the first big player to jump in to the market is going to be none other than Facebook.
OCZ'S REVODRIVE PCI Express based SSD was something of a surprise when it was announced and it's a fairly unique product in the market considering its competitive retail price compared to a standard SSD. However, it's now looking like OCZ is readying a new model called the RevoDrive-B which is yet another PCI Express based SSD, but with an extra trick up its sleeve, it's got a pair of SATA ports for drive caching.
The Association of People who Stockpile Digital Recordings of the Tasteful Expression of the Human Form, or APSDRTEHF (they are rumored to be voting on a new name in the near future), received word of an amazing feat of storage engineering today. Toshiba is presenting a paper at the 2010 Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego today outlining their research and successful implementation of a new technology that can cram a staggering 2.5 terabits of information into a single square inch of platter real estate. For the layman, that's about 300GB of information stored on a surface the size of a postage stamp.
MEASURING A MERE 16x20x1.85mm SanDisk's new iSSD or integrated SSD as it's also known as, is very possibly the world's smallest SSD. It's intended to be embedded in devices that support the standard SATA interface, such as tablets, smartphones and other portable computing devices.
MICRON AND INTEL has announced that they're the first to sample 25nm three bits per cell NAND Flash memory today, also known as TLC NAND Flash. The companies are getting ready to enter mass production later this year, for what the two are claiming is the industries smallest and highest capacity NAND Flash memory.
ONE OF THE claims Gigabyte makes in the press release with regards to its new USAP USB 3.0 drivers is that the new drivers will boost the performance of USB 2.0 storage devices as well. We thought we'd put this to the test to see how much of a difference it really makes.
HYNIX HAS FOLLOWED in Samsung's footsteps by starting mass production of "20nm class" NAND Flash memory. However, it seems like Hynix is first with 64Gbit NAND Flash using sub 32nm manufacturing technology.
HARD DRIVE DATA density has taken another leap forward, although this time it's thanks to Samsung, of all companies, as it latest EcoGreen F4 2TB hard drive features no less than 667GB of storage space per platter. That means that you only need three platters to create a 2TB drive, something Samsung's competitors have yet to accomplish.
IS THAT 32GB SSD getting a bit on the small side? Not to worry, Super Talent has announced that it's getting ready to ship its new UltraDrive MX range which tops out at no less than 480GB. That should be enough space to compete with most notebook hard drives at least, but the real question is, can you afford one?
ACCORDING TO Digitimes, AMD is getting ready to sign a deal with Renesas that will give AMD access to Renesas USB 3.0 implementation. This would allow AMD to quickly implement a stable USB 3.0 solution into its chipsets without having to spend time and money on developing its own solution and more importantly, software stack.
Recently hard drives and the storage industry in general has been a tough thing to write about, because frankly, nobody really cares! It’s much more fun and exciting to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest multi-core CPUs running at orgasmic clock speeds, or exotic video cards that need their own power reactors but have enough FLOPs under the hood to calculate the single precision meaning of life. In fact the only time we give our trusty storage things a second thought (and exhaust our dictionaries of naughty words) is when they die and take our data along with them. Well, to help remedy this journalistic conundrum, we've developed a drinking game to aid in your consumption of this article. Every time you see a storage related suffix (MB, GB, TB, etc.) you take a shot. Ready? Good, because you’re up to three already.
CORSAIR HAS ANNOUNCED a couple of additions to its Force series of solid state drives which, at least in terms of capacity, are competing directly with Intel's offerings. The new drives are the F40, F80 and F160, all of which offer impressive performance figures, although the pricing is quite competitive considering all things.
WE BROKE THE news about Renesas new USB 3.0 host controller back in April. Back then we reported that the new controller was going to have a reduced power consumption, but at the time we didn't know by how much. Renesas has finally unveiled the new host controller and has managed to reduce the power consumption by 85 percent when no peripherals are attached to the controller's ports.
TAIWANESE COMPANIES ARE always on the lookout for the next big thing and it seems like this time around they're taking a stab at cloud computing. The Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium was established back in April, but only had its first meeting as of yesterday. The TCCC as it's known as is a co-operation between the government funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and over 60 local Taiwanese technology companies.
THE BLU-RAY DISC Association has announced that it has finally ratified the BDXL standard which means that we'll see 128GB writeable Blu-ray discs in the future. This is the good news, the bad news is that these are four layer discs which will require new drives to both write and read the new standard.
THE SD ASSOCIATION has announced new high-speed symbols for SDHC and SDXC cards which are once again meant to make our lives easier. The old Class 2, 4, 6 and 10 ratings will be kept for older memory cards that don't meet the new UHS or Ultra High Speed SD card standard. The new UHS speed classifications as plenty of room to grow, especially as we've only hit the first generation of SDXC cards.
THE HOT CHIPS 22 conference has released their lineup of talks this year, and it once again looks really good. If you haven't been to one yet, it is one of the best conferences about chip architecture out there, and well worth attending.
SEAMICRO IS A STARTUP that is attacking data center power use through a novel idea, optimizing hardware for a specific workload. For web serving workloads, the idea is simple, cram 512 Atom servers into a box with a virtual 'shared nothing' configuration.
SUPERMICRO WAS SHOWING off a bunch of high end servers and boards during Computex, most based around Magny-Cours, and a few Becton machines as well. Not to be outdone, they finally revealed a new line of modular racks.
THERMALTAKE HAD SEVERAL evolutionary cases, fans and docks at Computex, along with one really good new idea. If Thermaltake is a design trendsetter, and they usually are, look forward to cases with lots of HD docking bays. About time.
ONE PROBLEM WITH USB 3.0 is that, to date, there's no common pin-header layout for internal USB 3.0 connectors, but it appears that ASRock and ECS have taken things into their own hands and have come up with a suitable solution. Interestingly the two companies appear to be using exactly the same type of connector, although we don't know if the pin-out is the same.