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LSI and Intel put 1TB worth of SSD cache on a Nytro MegaRAID board
RAID cards are one of the more difficult things in the technology world to get excited about. Especially since most of these discrete add-on boards are really aimed at enterprise users, not media centers or gaming rigs. But, we've got to hand it to LSI and Intel for knowing how to make a splash. The companies caught our attention by slapping a pair of 512GB SSDs on a Nytro MegaRAID PCIe card. While there are a couple of models of the controllers, it's the RCS25ZB040LX specifically that's carrying the 1TB of flash storage. The media isn't meant for installing programs or archiving data, though, instead its dedicated cache for the controller. All that blazing fast SLC flash should help speed up any task that is reliant on frequent random reads. We don't think you'll be picking up one of these SandForce-powered bad boys for your personal server though, even an entry level version with 100GB of SLC will set you back $1,795.
Kingmax intros speedy, SandForce-packing SATA III Client Pro SSD
Kingmax is known for pushing the limits now and then with its flash storage, so we're intrigued when it puts out a high-end solid-state drive for the mainstream. Its new SATA III Client Pro SSD lives up to that bill with the combination of a SandForce controller and faster flash memory that can reach some heady speeds for gamers and simple speed freaks alike. With the right drive and ideal conditions, we're looking at a brisk 550MB/s for sequential reads, 520MB/s for similarly ordered writes and a very capable 85,000 IOPS when writing at random. Kingmax isn't directly providing prices or release details, but it's offering capacities from 60GB to 480GB as well both laptop-focused (SMU32) and desktop-friendly (SMU35) kits. The Client Pro-inclined can find the full nuts-and-bolts details after the break.
Rambus planning appeal after losing ITC patent case against LSI and STMicroelectronics
Rambus has lost the ITC dispute it filed with most of the electronics industry back in the day. Only LSI and STMicroelectronics remained as respondents after the company negotiated settlements with Freescale, Broadcom, MediaTek and NVIDIA. In its decision, the court found that some of the patents were unenforceable, while others ceased to be under the "clean hands" doctrine because Rambus had allegedly destroyed relevant documents. Company general counsel, Thomas Lavelle, has said in a statement that its next move might be to make an appeal to the Federal Circuit -- where it's hoping for better luck.
LSI acquires SandForce for $370 million, looks to step up its SSD game
SandForce has been behind many an SSD in its day, but it looks like it's finally about to settle down, and get hitched. Yesterday, LSI announced plans to acquire the flash storage company, as part of a $370 million agreement. The deal brings SandForce's processors and energy efficient DuraClass technology under LSI's roof, giving the semiconductor designer some new flash firepower and an extra boost into a burgeoning market. Tangible results, of course, remain to be seen, though it's certainly not the first time these two have danced. SandForce, after all, provided the motor for LSI's WarpDrive lineup, and will presumably do much more, once the deal goes through. Pending regulatory approval, the acquisition should be finalized by the first quarter of 2012. Full PR after the break.
Panasonic's 1.4 GHz dual-core Smart TV chip is industry's fastest, should load Netflix quicker
The next step for Panasonic's UniPhier family of processors for HDTVs and Blu-ray players has been unveiled, taking form as a 1.4GHz ARM Cortex-A9 based design that it claims is the industry's fastest for TVs. The MN2WS0220 will begin sample shipments this month and it can handle two HDTV streams, plus internet content and smart TV apps all at once while cutting power consumption from the previous generation by 40%. This follows in the footsteps of Toshiba's Cell-based CEVO TV processors that also bring multiple cores and high speed memory to bear. The other question of course is backwards compatibility, while some of the new Viera Connect apps for 2011 were also compatible with 2010 HDTVs, it'll be interesting to see if Panasonic's platform can take advantage of the new chip without making televisions that are currently on shelves obsolete, or if it considers joining forces with the Google TV cadre for apps like SlingPlayer and OnLive.
Rambus files ITC complaint against just about everyone, wants to stop sale of just about everything
Rambus, which modestly describes itself as "one of the world's premier technology licensing companies," has meekly asked the International Trade Commission to block import and sale of an amazing array of products from companies including Broadcom, Freescale, LSI, MediaTek, NVIDIA, and STMicroelectronics -- the latter of which was sued by Caltech only yesterday. But wait, there's more! Rambus also indicates that other "companies whose products incorporate the accused semiconductor products" have also been named, selling things like "personal computers, workstations, servers, routers, mobile phones and other handheld devices, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, motherboards, plug-in cards, hard drives and modems." That should just about cover 95% of what's available at your local electronics store, and certainly puts our holiday wish lists in legal limbo.This is a follow-up to earlier disputes involving the company, particularly with NVIDIA, which will continue via patent infringement lawsuits filed in US District Court against those corporate entities mentioned above. Beyond that, Rambus is hoping that the ITC stops import and sale of any and all infringing products post-haste. That seems awfully drastic, but for its part Rambus indicates it has been trying with all its might to negotiate licenses with these supposedly dirty dealers and that it was told "the only way they would get serious is if we sued them." So, place your bets because here we go.[Thanks, Antonio]
LSI's WarpDrive SSD is a steal at $11,500
We want one of these so bad. The LSI WarpDrive SLP-300 packs 300GB of solid state storage onto a PCI Express card and promises up to 240,000 sustained IOPS (Input / Output Operations Per Second), with 1,400MBps sustained throughput -- about double the performance of OCZ's substantially cheaper RevoDrive X2. According to LSI, you would need over 400 regular hard drives in 36U of rack space and 300 times the power to match the WarpDrive for sheer IOPS. Sure, LSI recommends all sorts of fancy server applications to put this $11,500 card to good use, but we've been noticing some serious browser launch lag time lately... and we're worth it.
Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive review
Earlier this year, Seagate promised to flip the 2.5-inch HDD industry upside-down, but it wouldn't do so by using an SSD in sheep's clothing. Rather, it'd be doling out a new breed of hard drive, one that actually has a pinch of pure, unadulterated NAND inside for picking up the pace in certain scenarios. The idea of a hybrid hard drive isn't totally new, but the Momentus XT is one of the first hybrid HDDs to actually make it out of the lab and into the hands of consumers. The most intriguing aspect of the drive is the price -- at around $130, it's just under half as pricey as Seagate's conventional 500GB Momentus 7200.4. That uptick in price isn't nothing, but it's still far less than what you'd pay for a 2.5-inch SSD with half the capacity. We've already shown you the benchmarks, so we figured we'd slap this bad boy in our main rig for a few weeks to see if we actually noticed any real-world performance increases to justify the cost. Head on past the break for our two pennies. %Gallery-99124%
Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive
Just as we surmised, Seagate is taking the wraps off its new hybrid drive, with OEM shipments of the Momentus XT starting today. Hailed as the fastest 2.5-inch laptop drive on the planet, this here device marries a 7200RPM hard drive (250/320/500GB) with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and 32MB of cache, and the company's Adaptive Memory technology allows it to store frequently used information on the latter for ultra-speedy access. It can boot up to 100 percent faster than a conventional 5400RPM hard drive, and thankfully for us all, it utilizes a standard 9.5mm-high form factor that the vast majority of laptops use. Seagate also affirms that the drive "operates independently of the operating system and the motherboard chipset," but we're going to hold tight until we see the first real benchmarks (it'll soon be an option in ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop) before getting all hyped up. In related news, the outfit also announced the world's highest capacity 7200RPM drive at 750GB, with the Momentus 750GB boasting SATA 3Gbps support, an NCQ interface, 16MB of cache and "silent acoustics." No price is mentioned, but you can bet a hefty premium will placed on something this capacious. The full presser, another image and a specs sheet awaits you beyond the break. Update: The reviews are already pouring in, and at just $155 for the 500 gigger, it's receiving a fair amount of praise.
Seagate's 'game-changing' storage tech coming to ASUS ROG G73Jh laptop
Well, well -- what's this? Wouldn't you like to know. What it is, fine people, is the "device that becomes you, so you become faster." Seriously, that's the teaser line that Seagate's feeding the press this fine morning, inviting us to join the company as it reveals the next "game-changing" device meant to boost system performance by a staggering 150 percent. Judging by the image above and the fact that ASUS' ROG G73Jh gaming laptop will be first to house it, we're guessing it's a breed of SSD this world has never seen. We're told that the mystery product will be 20 percent quicker than a 600GB 10,000rpm SATA drive, 80 percent faster than a conventional 7200rpm HDD and able to boot "within six seconds of an SSD drive." It'll also be able to "learn about its user to dynamically decrease disk time, boot time, and application load time," and if you're lucky, it may just cleanse that work coat of yours, whip up a nutritious breakfast and convert your clunker into a hovercraft. We'll be finding out a lot more come May 26th -- till then, try not to gnaw your nails past the cuticle. Update: Sounds like Seagate may finally be ready to launch that "pie in the sky" mutant hybrid SSD technology that we first caught wind of back in 2008. Dare we say, the Momentus XT Hybrid? Thanks, Sneakz and Khattab! [Thanks, Michael]
Seagate teams with LSI to enter PCIe-based SSD game
Seagate didn't bother serving up a gaggle of new wares at CES this year, but judging by its release shot out today, it's hoping to make a serious splash in the SSD market a bit later on. Thanks to collaboration from LSI, the outfit is expected to deliver its own line of PCI Express-based solid state storage solutions. We're guessing these devices will be similar in scope to the PCIe SSDs already outed by Fusion-io and OCZ Technology, but at least initially, they'll be aimed squarely at the enterprise market. We're hoping that's just a beta test (of sorts) and that performance-minded desktop users will be able to snap one up at their local Best Buy in short order -- too bad we've no assurance that these will be priced within the realm of feasibility, though.
NEC develops processor for 12 megapixel camera phones
No sooner than we get wind of a possible Samsung 12 megapixel camera phone does NEC reveal a linear shift-invariant (LSI) chip that, along with the proper CMOS sensor, can bestow onto mobile devices the power to shoot 12 megapixel imagery, as well as output full-HD video. Dubbed the CE143, it's being touted by the company for Its focus speed and signal-to-noise reduction 6db greater than with what's currently in the market. The chip will integrate with an image stabilizer, shading correction, and other essential point-and-click tools. Manufacturers should expect to get some hands-on time when samples begin shipping out in March. Keep a lookout for this one at Mobile World Congress later this month.
Major storage vendors agree to disk encryption standards
We've seen quite a few hardware-encrypted disks hit the scene lately, but to be honest, we've always thought they were a risky investment, since all the systems were proprietary -- we wouldn't want to store our encryption-worthy data on a disk that can't be read at all in a few years, after all. That's happily about to change, though -- the Trusted Computing Group has just announced that virtually every drive maker has agreed on a set of 128-bit encryption standards covering SSDs and HDDs. That's Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Wave Systems, LSI, and ULink Technology, if you're keeping score at home (and we know you are). Ideally this means that we'll see easy cheap disk encryption filter onto mainstream consumer storage, which would basically invalidate all those "I'm stealing this hard drive out of your laptop and using it to log into your Facebook account" crimes of passion we know the kids are into these days. Best part? Fujitsu, Seagate and Hitachi are all already shipping drives that support the TCG standards.[Via Digg]
JVC announces MPEG-2 / H.264 dual codec LSI chip
As the camera / camcorder world continues to embrace video sharing sites, it's no surprise to see this little critter emerge from the labs of JVC-Victor. The pictured dual codec LSI chip handles both MPEG-2 and H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC formats, theoretically cutting out the painful encode process from YouTube uploads. Granted, most of the technobabble behind the thing is lost in machine translation, but we do get the idea that it'll start showing up in the outfit's Everio line shortly.[Via AkihabaraNews]
Panasonic could beat Intel on 45nm chip release
Intel has been touting its 45-nanometer chips for what seems like ages, but if all goes as planned, Panasonic will actually beat the chip giant to the punch by releasing products to the commercial market over a week earlier. Apparently, the six new Blu-ray recorders we spotted at CEATEC will utilize the firm's new generation "UniPhier system LSI based on the 45-nanometer process technology," and sure enough, those units are slated to hit Japan on November 1st -- a full ten days before Intel will reportedly get its Yorkfield crew out to the mainstream. Bet you didn't see that coming, now did you?[Via RegHardware]
NTT DoCoMo cooks up low-power chip for Super 3G
In technology, speed is almost universally the enemy of power, and that rule certainly holds true in the world of cellular data standards. You heard it from His Steveness himself -- one of the main reasons we don't have a 3G iPhone on store shelves is because he isn't happy with battery life on HSDPA chipsets yet (consumers' opinions be damned, apparently), and in general, runtimes on 3G handsets large and small flag their 2G cousins, sometimes by a significant margin. Happily, the wiz kids at NTT DoCoMo are on the case, crafting Super 3G / LTE chipsets on 65nm dies capable of burning through 200Mbps at "sufficiently low power consumption" for mobile use. There's still no word on when NTT DoCoMo (or anyone else, for that matter) will be launching a commercial network at LTE speeds, but the company's hailing this latest batch of chips as a "milestone" on that journey -- and let's be honest, odds are good that Japan's gonna be rocking this stuff years before the rest of us anyhow.[Via PhoneMag]
NEC develops M2 LSI chip to conserve energy in cellphones
Hot on the heels of a snazzy new CMOS sensor and newfangled plastics, NEC's engineers are cranking out yet another innovation to make our next phone a lot more useful (for a whole lot longer). The M2 system LSI chip can purportedly "drastically cut the energy used by a cellular phone" by halving the energy needed by each element on the chip. Notably, the firm has suggested that a cellphone battery currently lasting seven hours would be able to maintain that life even if "twice the power is required for high-speed telecommunications." A host of sophisticated technologies and software regulations are behind all the energy conserving magic, but the news you care about is that NEC plans to start shipping samples of the ¥5,000 ($41) device in the very near future, and it should hit a variety of 3G handsets by the year's end. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
NEC integrates more components into 'system-on-glass' LCDs
NEC's relatively low-key system-on-glass technology is getting a substantial upgrade today, as the company announced that it has "developed an LCD module that incorporates all chips, including the LSI, with memory on the glass substrate." Current LCD modules have the pixel-driving chips right on the glass with LSI / memory embedded on a "separate board and attached to the module," but this new approach enables the firm to cram DRAM, DACs, and other necessary functions onto a polysilicon thin film right on the glass. The prototype device is a 1.1-inch TFT LCD display with 160 x 120 pixels and DRAM that can store a meager 230-kilobytes on data, and while the company is unsurprisingly dubbing it the "world's first" of its kind, the commercial realm won't be seeing an end product for a good "two to three years."[Via Nikkei]
DTS licenses DTS HD Master Audio technology to ten IC producers
Although Dolby's TrueHD may be a more well-known moniker, it looks like you'll be hearing (quite literally) a lot more of DTS in the coming months. The firm has landed a deal with no less than ten integrated circuit (IC) manufacturers to incorporate its DTS HD Master Audio and / or DTS HD High Resolution Audio technology (not to mention the DTS HD LBR and encoder / transcoder jazz) into forthcoming chips. These microchips -- designed by Analog Devices, Broadcom, Cheertek, LSI, Matsushita, MediaTek, NEC, Renesas, Sigma Designs, and Sunplus Technology -- will contain DTS's high definition audio standards and will eventually find their way into next-generation HD DVD and Blu-ray players, AV receivers, and pre-packaged home theater systems. Additionally, the technology could even slither into the PC and automobile markets. While neither specific end products nor release dates were mentioned, we do know that devices coming out "in 2007" will be sporting the new protocols, and hey, we've got no qualms when it comes to options in audio (or video).
Sanyo developing earphone LSI chip that doubles as a microphone
We've got phones so tiny we can barely dial our intended contacts, Bluetooth headsets that allow calls to be placed by just lifting a hand, and now Sanyo Semiconductor is giving the couch dweller in us all another glimpse of jubilation with its latest chip. Although typical BT earpieces combine a speaker and microphone for an all-in-one conversation solution, even the tiniest of units aren't exactly discrete, and if your surroundings happen to drown out your voice, your only solution is to escape the racket or yell louder. Sanyo is hoping to ease the frustrations of current handsfree applications by creating an LSI chip that can be worn in one's ear and yet still transmit outgoing audio. The device operates by picking up the faint diaphragm movements that occur whenever you utter even a whisper, and magnifies the vibrations into spoken words that your recipient can comprehend. While the eardrum emits voice signals "at a strength of about one-30th that of the voice itself," the circuity can reportedly transform comments made under your breath into phrases heard loud and clear. The company isn't handing out release details nor giving any indications on how much these will cost, but it looks like we'll all be one step closer to double-agent status should these ever hit store shelves.
