Corsair Releases “World’s Fastest” 128GB Flashdrive

August 13th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: 128GB, flashdrive, performance, thumbdrive, usb

Corsair, longtime manufacturer of computer memory, has announced today what they claim to be the world’s fastest 128GB USB flashdrive to date – the Flash Voyager GT.

Corsair claims that their Flash Voyager GT can read at speeds of up to 32MB/sec and can write at 28MB/sec – apparently limited only by the 480MB/s throughput of USB2.0. The secret to the performance of the Voyager is its unique architecture, which uses a dual-controller to achieve above and beyond what more expensive, and smaller capacity SLC NAND flash memory can achieve using the cheaper, but considerably slower MLC NAND memory.

Despite a smart manufacturing technique, you pay what you get for. $399 is what it’ll take to get your paws on one of these impressive flashdrives.

I’ve got a feeling a high performance and high capacity drive like this could be ideal for users who want to boot a persistent OS off their flashdrive (such as with Ubuntu) and carry it around with them wherever they go.

It comes with a 10-year warranty, and is available from distributors worldwide.

[Product Page]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Intel Ships 1 million Nehalem Processors, 32nm Chips Coming Early

April 18th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: 32nm, chip, intel, nehalem, processor, q1, release, westmere

Intel chief executive Paul Otellini announced at the Intel Q1 2009 earning’s call that over 1 million Nehalem processors have been shipped worldwide since their first inception in November 2008. Otellini also announced that the the new 32nm “Westmere” processors will be available “earlier than expected”.

Paul Otellini claimed that the milestone was reached thanks to the introduction of it’s brand new Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 server processors, which made up for around 50% of the 1 million Core i7 / Nehalem based chips:

“the real interesting is what happens on the dual-processor server product. About half the volume that I referenced was in servers, about half of it was in the desktop machine.”

This comes as great news, considering Intel has been feverishly reducing its workforce in an attempt to curb expenses.

Other great news for OEMs and customers is the unexpected announcement that Intel’s 32nm processors (and Nehalem’s successor), codenamed “Westmere” are expected to ship early, or more precisely in Q4 2009:

“We have pulled in Westmere, our fist 32-nanometer product family, and will now be shipping those products later this year,”

said Otellini at the event.

This caused a bit of confusion however. Intel announced that the Westmere chips will be shipped in Q4 2009, but when asked about an official introduction / launch, Intel maintained the notion that that is a completely different story – yet the Westmere chips are slated for a 2009 introduction – leaving everybody a little confused.

Minor announcements from the event include an update on Intel’s Larrabee GPU, which should be ready in 2010 and is currently in debugging.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Intel Releases SSD Fix

April 14th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: firmware, fix, intel, ssd

Intel has released an updated firmware, fixing an internal fragmentation issue on its X25-M and X18-M solid-state drives.

Intel announced yesterday that the end-user firmware is available to OEM customers and those who purchased the drive separately.

This firmware update has several continuous improvement optimizations intended to provide the best possible user experience with the Intel SSD.

The flaw in the current firmware was first detected by PC Perspective in mid-February this year, whilst doing a long-term performance analysis. Although this may sound like a serious issue, Intel stated that most customers won’t ever be affected by the bug,

Keep in mind that the risk of a typical PC user experiencing this issue is very low.

Said Intel in the announcement of the release.

Grab the updated firmware here.

Popularity: 11% [?]

512GB SSD Debuts

April 11th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: data, hdd, solid-state, ssd, storage, super, talent

Super Talent, a new data storage start-up, has released a 512GB Solid-state drive (SSD) – allowing SSDs to compete directly with traditional hard drives.

There has always been one glaring reason not to switch to SSDs. Despite faster seek times, less battery usage and reliability there was always the issue of space. 1TB hard drives were readily available, but 128GB SSDs weren’t even on the horizon. Well, that’s all about to change thanks to the release of Super Talent’s  MasterDrive RX range, which comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB flavors. Sequential read performance for the new range is rated at a maximum of around 230MB/s.

Don’t expect to be able to plug one into your PC or laptop soon though. The large-capacity SSDs are aimed at high-end data storage options. The 512GB version will force you to shell out around $1,500 per drive in a batch of 1,000. That’s roughly enough to buy 17 terabytes of data with a traditional HDD.

Looks like SSDs still need to overcome the price factor, but the capacity gap is getting smaller and smaller all the time.

Popularity: 11% [?]

2Ghz Intel Atom Announced

April 8th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: atom, cpu, eee, idf, intel, mini, notebook, processor

Intel, whilst celebrating the one year anniversary of its popular mini Atom chip, has announced a 2Ghz version of the Atom is on its way to consumers.

“Today, we’re announcing two new products in the Atom family. The Z550,”

said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president of Intel at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing today,

“This is the first 2-GHz processor that will fit in your pocket.”

The second announced chip bares Z515 as the model name, and is rated at 1.2Ghz. Naturally, both chips are aimed at the growing MID (mobile Internet devices) market and as a result have been designed to be as energy-effiecent as possible in order to increase battery life. Hyperthreading has also been thrown in for extra performance.

The device is already available for developers to start developing the next generation of netbooks and mobile devices.

This means that Intel now has a high-end, mid-range, and low-end option of MIDs.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Intel Redesigns Chip Logos

April 7th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: brand, core, i7, intel, logo

Intel has launched a new logo or branding system for their Core range, including a new rating system.

The redesign, whilst not revolutionary, is a move to simplify Intel’s Core brand – potentially making it easier for future customers to buy an Intel processor that’ll suit their needs. That’s where the new rating system comes in. It classifies all Intel’s processors from 1 star to 5 stars (from worst to best respectively).

This is the old logo:

And this is the new “redesigned” logos:

This is the new rating system Intel is using to classify the performance of its processors:

[via CNET]

Popularity: 15% [?]

Nintendo DSi On Sale in US

April 5th, 2009 • 3 comments Featured, Hardware
Tags: ds, dsi, mobile, nintendo, portable

Nintendo starts selling it’s new offering into the portable gaming market today, the Nintendo DSi and successor to the Nintendo DS.

It’s not the first time the DSi has been on sale however – it launched in Japan in Fall. The successor to Nintendo’s insanely-popular DS, which sold over 100 million units, offers a number of improvements over its older brother.  Most importantly however is the fact that over 850 Nintendo DS games will be fully compatible with the DSi.

Other signifigant improvements include the ability to purchase and download games from the DSi store. Two cameras also make an appearance, a 3.0 megapixel camera for the front and a 0.3 megapixel camera facing backwards. The DSi also saw a RAM upgrade to 256mb and now supports a SD slot for AAC music files. Crucially, the DSi doesn’t support MP3 files. The iconic double-screen design of the DS has also seen a size upgrade in the DSi – at the expense of battery life, which is reduced when compared to the older DS.

The new console will cost around $170 and comes in blue and black (no white for US customers). Nintendo also stated that the reason the DSi didn’t debut in the US earlier was thanks to the current Nintendo DS still selling so rapidly that they were afraid of damaging the DS’ sales!

Nintendo are planning to compete directly with the Apple iPod touch, which is busy eating into DS games sales.

Popularity: 22% [?]

World’s Most Effiecent Supercomputer Put Into Action

April 2nd, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: computer, fujitsu, fx1, japan, server, supercomputer

The Futisu FX1 server rack. Source: Betanews.com

It’s called the Fujitsu FX1, and started work for the Japan Aerospace Explorations Agency on Wednesday.

Comprising of 3,008 nodes, each with its own personal Sparc64 VII quad-core processor, and 94 terabytes of memory it truly is a beastly machine. It’s not the impressive speed that makes this supercomputer so special however, despite being “15 times faster” than the previous supercomputer the Japan Aerospace Explorations Agency used.

The theoretical peak performance of the FX1 is 120 teraflops. Whilst running the Linpack benchmark, the FX1 achieved a peak performance of 110.6 teraflops, which means 91.2% of its theoretical performance – a feat of efficiency nobody has managed to reach before.  Fujitsu claims this is result was possible thanks to a combination of improving technology, the skill of its builders and a special middleware that keeps the hardware and software communicating effectively.

The FX1 will be used to run simulations of satellites being launched into space, in order to improve and test insulation methods to stop the satellite from being literally vibrated to pieces before reaching orbit.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Intel’s Nehalem Makes It’s Way to Servers

March 30th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: cpu, i7, intel, nehalem, server, xeon

Intel has announced that Nehalem-based Xeon processors are on their way to servers worldwide.

You may be familiar with the desktop range of “Nehalem” Core i7 processors from Intel, which are extremely fast. Intel is attempting to bring this new burst of speed and technology breakthrough to servers by creating Xeon processors based on the Nehalem architecture.

The new Xeon chips will have a lot of advantages over current processors, most importantly and integrated memory controller (for that extra “oomph”) and hyper-threading that can simulate up to 16 cores. That’s right, 16. As well as a feature called Turbo Boost (which desktop enthusiasts should be familiar with), which overclocks the processor as needed.

Quite a few companies have already jumped on the bandwagon as eager early-adopters, including Dreamworks and IBM, who are implementing them in all new servers they are currently providing.

Importantly however, nobody is expecting Intel to cause an uproar and rapidly take over the market, as they did with their Core 2 Duo range a few years back. Reason? Intel already has a massive market share in the server environment. Ashok Kumar says,

“We expect only an incremental upside on a unit basis”

Popularity: 19% [?]

nVidia Files Countersuit Against Intel

March 27th, 2009 • Featured, Hardware
Tags: core, court, i7, intel, legal, nvidia

nVidia has responded to Intel’s dispute last month, which saw Intel wishing to take nVidia to court regarding Intel’s “Nehalem” (Core i7) processors and nVidia’s right to manufacture i7 motherboards.

nVidia had no other choice, according to company CEO and president Jen-Hsun Huang:

“Nvidia did not initiate this legal dispute, but we must defend ourselves…Intel’s actions are intended to block us from making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide.”"

The dispute concerns a joint agreement by Intel and nVidia in 2004, which gave nVidia the legal right to manufacture motherboards for Intel’s processors. Last month Intel decided to sue nVidia, stating in their lawsuit that the 2004 agreement didn’t include Intel’s Nehalem processors.

Popularity: 17% [?]