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Phi: a wireless re-routing card that puts you in control of the airwaves (video)
For all the talk of convergence in mobile devices, there's relatively little chatter about the coming together of wireless signals themselves. In other words, why should we have a separate device to interact with each type of wireless signal? And so, with that intriguing question, begins the pitch for a new device call Phi. It's a $750 antennae-laden PCIe card that slots into a desktop and gathers up wireless signals that are flying around the home -- so long as they have a frequency below 4GHz and don't involve bank-busting neutrinos. The card then allows custom apps to re-direct those transmissions as you like: potentially acting as a "base station" so you can make free calls from your cell phone, or receiving over-the-air HD transmissions which you can play on your tablet, or doing whatever else hobbyists and devs can cook up. Phi is still version 0.1 and Linux-only while the startup behind it -- Per Vices -- looks for a Kinect-style blossoming of third-party interest, but with nothing less than a deity-like command over the domestic ether on offer, how could it ever fail?
OWC's Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD is Mac bootable, strictly neutral
If you've ever tried to jam a regular SSD into your Mac, then you'll know that many off-the-shelf drives feel like they're tailored and tested for, ahem, someone else. Not so with OWC's Mercury Accelsior, which claims to be the only Mac bootable and Mac supported PCIe SSD on the market. Regardless of which platform you use it with, however, the dual-SandForce card promises some neat tricks with its 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND. Sequential read and write speeds are around 50 percent higher than what you'd get from a regular SATA III drive, with the cheapest 120GB model ($360) offering 758MB/s reads and 743MB/s writes. Random performance is notched up too, with around 100K IOPS in both directions. The 960GB version costs a coldly precise $2,096, but still -- a potential side order for when the Mac Pro line finally gets another refresh?
Intel announces PCI-Express 910 SSD lineup for enterprise customers
See that SSD up there? For a moment, you might've thought it'd make the next great addition to your desktop rig -- and yeah, extra storage without any wires is a really cool idea -- but don't fool yourselves, because the Intel SSD 910 family of PCI-Express storage devices were built with enterprise in mind. Based on the company's 25nm MLC NAND flash technology, these devices will emphasize both speed and reliability, and will hit the market in both 400GB and 800GB configurations. Intel's own reports suggest the 800GB model will be the quicker of the two, which is said to offer sequential performance of 2,000MB/s read and 1,000MB/s write. Both the 400GB ($1,929) and 800GB ($3,859) models will be available mid-year. We've included the PR after the break, but those who'd like to get a bit more in-depth should hit up the links below.
Fusion-io announces ioFX, a super-SSD that's already garnered an Oscar
You've heard of Fusion-io, right? It produces super-SSDs with the teeth-whitening ioMemory that's so fast it can manage a billion input and output operations every second. Now it's bundling that gear into a workstation PCIe card for FX professionals and speed-conscious multi millionaires. Capable of delivering 1.5GB/s (we checked, GB/s) of bandwidth, it's capable of previewing 3D movie effects on the fly. The gear's even managed to cover itself in Academy awards after it was used by studio Pixomondo on the special effects for Martin Scorsese's "Hugo." A 420GB model will arrive in late Spring, setting you (or more likely, your departmental budget) back $2,495 with an inclusive one-year support contract.
Super Talent teases whip-fast RAIDDrive UpStream PCIe SSD
Super Talent's developed a PCI Express flash storage system that's far faster than your current SSD yet promises to be cheaper than the company's current PCIe offerings. The RAIDDrive UpStream uses a Sandforce controller to push around 1GBps of data at twice the speed of a SATA unit. Available to buy in 220GB, 460GB and 960GB editions, it sandwiches in four RAID drives to competitor OCZ's two, and is promised to be an "upsetter" by marketing director Peter Carcione. The company's hoping to get the devices into boxes and onto shelves by the end of April, for a price that's yet to be decided. Just remember, powerful SSDs are like having a butler: desirable, yes, but also a little pricey if your surname isn't Abramovitch or Buffett.
Ceton officially drops the InfiniTV 4 price to $199
A device that was selling for around $600 on eBay just two years ago, is now officially priced at $199 -- the second $100 price drop in the past eight months -- and is available immediately from some of your favorite online retailers. That means both the USB and PCIe versions of the CableCARD tuner that can record four HD channels at once, cost a mere $50 per tuner. While this makes it the cheapest per-tuner CableCARD tuner ever available, the dual tuner Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 at $149 retail ($112 street) still requires the lowest total entry cost into the PC CableCARD tuner market. We've come a long way since ATI offered a single tuner for $299, but the still-pricey cards make it easy to understand understand why TV manufacturers and other set-top box makers, like Boxee, can't hide the price of a CableCARD tuner in the cost of their products.
OCZ goes SSD crazy at CES, leaves no port unplugged
OCZ came rolling into CES this year with a pile of SSDs in tow. Most are pretty firmly aimed at the enterprise market but, what's impressive, is how the company has made sure to cover practically every interface . If you're looking to fill up some PCIe slots, the Z-Drive R5 and are R4 CloudServ have you covered. The former is based on the Kilimanjaro platform, designed with help from Marvell, and can deliver a staggering 2.52 million IOPS and 7.2GB/s. The latter is an evolution of the existing R4 line, but with nearly double the performance in a card that can carry up to 16TB of solid state storage. If rack-mount servers are more your style, the SATA 3.0-packing Chiron delivers a respectable 560MB/s and 100,000 IOPS in a 3.5-inch package. The most exciting item, at least for consumers, is the Lightfoot -- an external, compact SSD ready to take over your under-utilized Thunderbolt port. Lightfoot will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB sizes, though, price and release dates are still very much up in the air. Check out the gallery below and complete PR (with a few more products) after the break.
OCZ details Z-Drive R5 enterprise SSD, reckons it doubles speed of the R4
We've barely digested the carb-rich Z-Drive R4 and already OCZ wants to flaunt the next in its series of enterprise PCIe SSDs. The R5 sports an entirely new 'Kilimanjaro' controller platform (shown in the reference design above), developed in cahoots with Marvell and incorporated into each and every flash module that you might wish to add to the base card. These scalable controllers communicate directly with the host system, removing the need for an extra SATA RAID chip and thereby promising greater speeds -- especially as you pile on more modules. We won't get full specs until CES, but in the meantime OCZ has hinted at a doubling of the SandForce-based R4's performance, which could take us into the three million IOP realm. So long as the company also tackles the question of reliability on this new type of drive, then it'll likely be an easy sell. Check out the source link for more.
PCIe 4.0 inches towards reality, hits 16 gigatransfers per second (that's a thing, right?)
Don't get too excited just yet, but PCIe 4.0 is coming. PCI-SIG, the body that governs the standard, has announced the next evolution of the interface, which should start popping up in servers, desktops, laptops and even tablets around 2015. Sadly, details are pretty slim on the slot -- final specs aren't expected to be announced before 2014. All we know is that PCIe 4.0 will be able to perform 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), which tells us only slightly more than jack squat. It simply means that a PCIe 4.0 card will be capable of transferring 16 billion discrete chunks of data per second, twice that of PCIe 3.0. What that doesn't tell us though, is the size of those chunks. If they're the same size, 4.0 will provide double the current bit rate of 1 GB/s per-lane. If, for some reason, the channel width were halved there would be no speed increase -- but we seriously doubt that's the case. So, will we be looking at 32 GB/s PCIe 4.0 x16 GPUs in a few years? That is a definite maybe.
Angelbird's Wings PCIe-based SSD preview and benchmarks
Storage enthusiasts (yeah, there is such a thing -- what of it?) would probably tell you that PCIe-based SSDs are a dime a dozen these days. But in all seriousness, the prices we're seeing are proof that a few more competitors wouldn't hurt. A few weeks back, Austria's own Angelbird started to ship a solution that we first heard about during 2010, and we were fortunate enough to pop a Wings PCIe SSD RAID card into our Mac Pro for testing. For years, we've been booting this up and running every single application off of its stock HDD -- a 640GB Hitachi HDE721064SLA360 (7200RPM) -- as we surmise many of you desktop owners might be. Anxious to see if these are the Wings your existing tower needs to soar? Head on past the break for our impressions. %Gallery-134642%
MSI demos X79 motherboards with PCI Express 3.0 and UEFI BIOS at IDF 2011 (video)
While MSI wasn't quite ready to publicly divulge all the details of its forthcoming X79-based motherboards, it was more than happy to give us a teaser. We were shown three upcoming models from the company at IDF, all toting PCI Express 3.0 slots, overclocking buttons and that snazzy UEFI BIOS. The latter makes changing settings a snap, and is carried over from the company's existing Sandy Bridge boards -- it even comes with a button that launches a browser, but unfortunately the machines in the booth weren't configured to support it. We'll know more in Q4, but in the meantime a gallery awaits you below, along with a video after the break. Myriam Joire contributed to this report. %Gallery-134332%
Eyes-on with Thunderbolt on Windows at IDF 2011 (video)
Sure, you've seen the announcement of Thunderbolt on the PC, the chips that'll power it and a bevy of compatible accessories, but how about actual proof of Thunderbolt working on Windows? Hidden deep in the recesses of IDF's technical showcase, we found just that and immortalized it on video for all to see. Essentially the same Chipzilla demo as when we first witnessed the interconnect on Macs, we watched the playback of four 1080p streams devour over 700MB of throughput off a PCIe attached SSD. You know the drill, serious bit slinging awaits in the gallery below and video after the break. Myriam Joire contributed to this report. %Gallery-134134%
Angelbird's PCIe-based SSD: it's real, it's shipping, it's 800MB/s
Remember that 1GB/s PCIe SSD system from Angelbird we covered a year ago? Well, the company just let us know it's finally available. The performance claims are more modest than we saw in the beta phase, but we're not distraught: the new benchmark is 800MB/s reads and 750MB/s writes, achieved with a $3000 setup including four 240GB SSD modules mounted on a Wings PCI-e card with a 32GB SSD built-in. Need to hold something back for groceries? You can't reduce the number of SSDs without slowing everything down, but four 60GB drives on the cheapest Wings Lite PCIe card ought to satisfy most thrill seekers for just under a grand. We hope Smart Modular is paying attention.
Magma announces three-slot Thunderbolt expansion chassis
For those of you who need more expansion than what comes on the latest iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini, you might want to check out Magma's new ExpressBox 3T. The ExpressBox 3T is a Thunderbolt expansion chassis that allows you to connect up to three PCIe cards to any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. PCIe expansion cards are typically used by those that do high-end audio, graphics, or video editing. Many professionals will typically buy a MacPro for its expansion slots, but now with Magma's ExpressBox 3T expansion chassis, user can get the same amount of expansion, and throughput, on any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. No word yet on what the ExpressBox 3T might cost, but Magma has set up web page with a form interested buyers can fill out to be notified of further details when they become available.
Magma ExpressBox 3T gives you 3 external PCIe slots over Thunderbolt
Laptops aren't exactly renowned for their expandability, especially those beautiful slivers of aluminum from Apple. (Simply upgrading the RAM on your Air requires you break out the soldering iron.) Magma has a solution, the ExpressBox 3T. This silver case houses its own 220w power supply and a trio of PCIe 2.0 slots. Two of those slots are of the x8 variety (though one can hold an x16 card) while the third is scaled back to x4. And they all talk to your notebook via that wonderful little port known as Thunderbolt. It even comes with a carrying case which, we suppose, makes this hunk of metal "portable," but we certainly wouldn't want to lug it around very often. Sadly there's no info just yet about price or release date, but we do have a gallery of images below and the complete PR after the break. %Gallery-132908%
Sonnet announces RackMac mini Xserver, makes Apple desktop IT life seem more legit
We're sure a few of you have made that recently revamped Mac mini your office server, but now you can give it the look of a grown-up server room. Thanks to Sonnet, you'll soon be able to rack mount your Thunderbolt sportin' dainty PC within a 1U shell. The company has announced that, upon the system's expected arrival in November, it'll be decked out with a PCIe 2.0 X4 slot, a 75W power supply and a Thunderbolt daisy-chain port. This Apple speed-port adapter will enable use of that massive Thunderbolt display even in server or metadata controller mode. For more use scenarios, hit the full PR below or peruse the product page via the coverage link.
OCZ's Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD offers 2,800MB/sec, 500,000 IOPS, plenty of thrills
Hard to believe that we spotted OCZ Technology's original Z-Drive at CeBIT 2009. Just over two full years have passed, and already we've seen the 600MB/sec claims offered on that fellow eclipsed by a few successors. Today, the latest in the line is making its debut, with the Z-Drive R4 offering 2,800MB/sec and over 500,000 IOPS with a single SuperScale controller; step up to a dualie, and you'll see 5,600MB/sec transfer rates coupled with 1.2 million input-output operations per second. Not surprisingly, this guy's aimed squarely at enterprise users -- folks who can genuinely take advantage of the speed, and are willing to pay the unpublished rates (yeah, we asked!) that go along with it. It's retaining the PCIe-based form factor, and will be shipped in two standard configurations: a half height version designed for space constrained 1U servers and multi-node rackmount servers, and a full height version. Each of those will be made available with SLC / MLC NAND flash memory, and as with all of OCZ's enterprise kit, customer-specific configurations and functionality are available upon request. Full release is after the break, big spender.
MSI unveils Z68A-GD80 (G3) PCI Express 3.0 motherboard
The long-awaited debut of PCI Express 3.0 is finally here, and it's come aboard MSI's Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard. Rocking Intel's latest design standard, this board's packing two PCIe 3.0 -- one x16 and one x8 -- and three PCIe 2.0 slots, two USB 3.0 ports, and four DIMM slots. What's more, the board offers Click BIOS II, for a consistent interface whether you're tweaking at boot time or boosting clock speeds in Windows, and Virtu's switchable graphics. Unfortunately, for you mother lovers, there's still no word on pricing or availability for the Z68A-GD80 (G3). Full PR after the break.
OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2 review roundup: SSD melts faces with 1.5GBps read and 1.2GBps write speeds
Did our footage of OCZ's new RevoDrive 3 X2 whet your appetite for more info on the super speedy SSD? Well, your wish is the web's command, and we've got a full roundup of reviews that'll tell you all you need to know. After putting OCZ's latest through its paces, the consensus is that the SSD is seriously quick in remembering and retrieving data. According to Tom's Hardware, the RevoDrive 3 X2 -- with its max 1.5GBps read and 1.2GBps write speeds -- "smokes everything" they've had pass through their lab. However, AnandTech noted that such capacious bandwidth is "simply overkill" for most users, as the drive only really flexes its muscles once the queue depth increases from enterprise-level workloads. Several sites noted that the lack of TRIM support on Windows machines was also a concern, and that more cost effective (albeit slower) storage solutions can be had with a DIY RAID array of SATA SSDs. Of course, you don't have to take our word for it, get down to the nitty gritty in the links below. Read - Hot Hardware Read - AnandTech Read - Tom's Hardware Read - PC Perspective Read - The SSD Review
Sony's ultraslim 13-inch VAIO Z laptop revealed in Europe, packs external GPU for power on demand
Turns out those leaked shots we saw of Sony's new VAIO Z laptop were right on the money as the company showed it off officially today for the European press. The specs reveal a 13.1-inch "ultramobile" notebook that comes in at under 1.2kg with a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 1600x900 screen and sheet battery borrowed from the earlier VAIO S for up to 7 hours of computing. Onboard it features only Intel's HD Graphics 3000 solution but the VAIO Z beats other ultralights with its Power Media Dock, which contributes the power of an AMD Radeon 6650M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory connected via "the architecture codenamed Light Peak" -- Sony can't call it Thunderbolt -- when more polygons have to be pushed. The dock sports one USB 3.0 hookup plus additional USB, VGA and HDMI ports, and a slot for either a DVD or Blu-ray drive. There's no word on a price yet, but it is promised to ship by the end of July in Europe so if the full specs (included after the break) are appealing then you don't have much time to save up. Update: Head over to the Sony UK site to configure one yourself -- pricing starts at £1,434 ($2,294) with a Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and no PMD. The dock is a £400 ($640) option with no optical drive included, while upgrading to a 1080p 13.1-inch LCD is a mere £40 extra. %Gallery-127266%
