WD Introduces Red: NAS Optimized HDD Line
WD did everyone a favor when they reorganized their products under color-coded branding a few years ago. With the Blue (mainstream), Green (quiet and cool) and Black (performance) lines well laid out, consumers have a much easier time picking out the right drive for their application, rather than pouring over spec sheets and complex model numbers. And now there's another line to add to that list: Red. Designed specfically to be used in 1-5 bay NAS devices, the Red line has hardware and software features that make it suited for that particular climate, while delivering impressive performance and reliability. WD has worked with major NAS manufacturer's to ensure compatibility with as many common NAS products as possible, and has a list of the tested devices here.
The secret sauce in these drives is the firmware, or as WD is calling it NASware. NAS devices in the home are often used for bulk storage of media, they may have some shared documents and be used as back-ups, too; but they're most often used to store movies, music and images. ATA streaming command is featured in NASware, to alter the behavior of the drive while streaming media, in an effort to ensure smooth playback, even while serving mutliple streams. They've also included error correction optimizations to prevent a drive from dropping out of a RAID array while it chases down a piece of corrupt data. The downside is that you might see an artifact on the screen briefly while streaming a movie, the upside is that you won't have playback pause for a few seconds, or for good depending on your configuration, while the drive drops off the RAID to fix the error.Then there's the matter of performance. With quoted performance of around 150 MB/s these drives are nudging into Black territory. WD's new balance mechanism contributes to this. By actively balancing the drive during use there's no need to slow the drive down to prevent damage, so performance remains high. There's also a reported power savings, which WD says will make up the price delta for these drives over the rest of the line through your power bill. Speaking of price, the MSRP for the 3.5" 1TB, 2TB and 3TB drives are $109, $139 and $189, respectively. And these drives are available at your favorite e-tailer starting today. Ganesh is patiently awaiting our review samples so he can put them through the ringer and see how they do.
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Android 4.1 hits AOSP, Verizon Galaxy Nexus regains AOSP Support
Also among the things changed today is renewed AOSP support for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus with CDMA/LTE, codename "toro." Previously AOSP support was limited due to the presence of a proprietary rotation sensor by Invensys and CDMA/LTE binaries for provisioning on Verizon. JBQ notes that Google can now distribute the binaries required for the CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus. Note that the Sprint "toroplus" Galaxy Nexus is still not an AOSP-supported device.
Factory images aren't available yet for the Nexus devices, but will no doubt pop up in the usual place after the OTA push begins later this month.
Source: Android Building
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Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Goes Gold; GM Released To Developers
For retail users, as per Apple’s earlier announcement the retail release of 10.8 is still expected this month. It will retail for $20.
Source: MacRumors
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Windows 8 To RTM In August, Retail In October
As it currently stands Microsoft is on track to have Windows 8 reach Release To Manufacturing (RTM) in the first week of August. Retail availability will follow in turn in late October, in order to give Microsoft time to certify additional language packs and to give OEMs time to prepare Windows 8 systems. Unsurprisingly this roughly parallels Windows 7’s release schedule, which saw it go RTM in late July and hit retail in late October, which ended up working out rather well for Microsoft and their partners.
As for those of you on the inside track looking to test Windows 8, while Microsoft hasn’t announced the complete release plans for MSDN and TechNet, Enterprise Software Assurance customers are being told that they’ll have access as early as August. MSDN, TechNet, and Software Assurance typically receive software at roughly the same time, and the release of Windows 8 is widely expected to be similar.
Source: Microsoft
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Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook Review: The Steady March of Progress
First generation technology is seldom perfect, and the fruit of Intel's ultrabook initiative was no exception. While vendors came out in force with some fairly impressive pieces of hardware, these first shots at the form factor all came away lacking in some way. Be it thermal performance, general performance, build quality, or display quality, no matter where you looked you were forced to make some kind of compromise. Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture wasn't horribly suited to the tasks, either, but it was also clear that at least another generation of processors would be more ideal to the increased thermal constraints of the platform.
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Boston Releases Servers Based on Calxeda's ARM SoCs
Calxeda EnergyCore SoC
Boston has released its Viridis server which uses Calxeda's ARM System-on-Chips (SoCs). Each SoC consists of four ARM Cortex-A9 cores and up to 48 SoCs can be installed into a standard 2U enclosure. The SoCs come on what Boston calls POCket boards. There are four SoCs per board and each board also has four miniDIMM connectors and four SATA ports (one per SoC). The POCket board is a separate PCB which looks a lot like a PCIe card. Every board has a 10Gbps Ethernet link which is the interconnector between the main motherboard and POCket board.Boston Viridis Specifications | |
SoC | Calxeda EnergyCore (4x per POCket board, 48x per enclosure) |
Architecture | ARM Cortex-A9 |
Number of cores | 4 per SoC (192 in total) |
Frequency | 1.1 - 1.4GHz |
Memory | 4GB per SoC (192GB in total) |
Storage | 1x SATA per SoC (48 in total) |
Form Factor | 2U |
Using ARM architecture obviously limits software selection (e.g. Windows of any flavor is not supported). Boston is, however, stating that Ubuntu 11.10 is supported, along with popular software such as Perl, Python and MySQL. How well these applications are optimized for the architecture remains to be seen, but any significant ARM threat to the x86 server space is likely to benefit enterprise customers across the board. Competition in high margin businesses is never a bad thing.
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Corsair Releases Force Series GS SSDs
Corsair Force Series GS Specifications | ||||
User Capacity | 180GB | 240GB | 360GB | 480GB |
Raw NAND Capacity | 192GiB | 256GiB | 384GiB | 512GiB |
Number of NAND Packages | 12 | 16 | 12 | 16 |
Number of Die per Package | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
Sequential Read | 555MB/s | 555MB/s | 555MB/s | 555MB/s |
Sequential Write | 525MB/s | 525MB/s | 530MB/s | 455MB/s |
Max 4K Random Write | 90K IOPS | 90K IOPS | 50K IOPS | 50K IOPS |
Street Price | $175 | $220 | $320 | $450 |
The biggest ddifference between the GS and most SF-2281 SSDs is the inclusion of 180GB and 360GB models. There are actually a few other 180GB SandForce SSDs including Intel's 330 and 520, OCZ's Agility 3 and Mushkin's Chronos; but 360GB is a much more uncommon capacity. The only other 360GB 2.5" SSD available at NewEgg is OCZ's Agility 3, although it's out of stock at the moment. Building 180GB and 360GB drives isn't rocket science thanks to the flexibility afforded by SandForce. SF-2200 controllers have a total of eight channels but they can also run in 6-channel mode. To achieve capacities of 180GB and 360GB, you simply run the controller in 6-channel mode and equip the PCB with twelve NAND packages. With twelve dual-die (16GB) NAND packages, the raw NAND capacity is 192GiB. Subtract the space taken by RAISE and over-provisioning and you're left with a usable capacity of 180GB. The 360GB model simply has twice as many NAND die per NAND package, hence doubling the capacity.
Corsair's Force GS is available immediately and at least NewEgg is already listing the drives on their site (check the street price links above). Pricing is quite fair as we are looking at less than $1 per GB at all capacities.
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Microsoft's Ballmer Promises to Leave No Stone Unturned in Battle against Apple
Ballmer says Microsoft is focusing on Surface for now
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Steve Wozniak talks Megaupload, Praises Microsoft Surface in Chile
Woz wants a Surface tablet
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Intel Backs ASML for Next-Generation Chipmaking Technology
Intel takes a 15% stake in ASML
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Microsoft Plans to Acquire Perceptive Pixel Inc. for Multi-Touch Displays
Microsoft could definitely benefit from PPI, since it has an entire new line of Windows Phone 8 and Surface tablet devices being released this year
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Quick Note: Best Buy Axes 2,400 Jobs
Best Buy recently announced that it will be cutting 2,400 jobs
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UK Judge Rejects Apple's Patent Claims, Says Galaxy Tab "Not as Cool" as iPad
Ban is rejected, judges say no one is mistaking Samsung's tablets for Apple ones
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Too Large to Manage? 1.3M Cell Phone Snooping Demands Filed in 2011
U.S. surveillance of citizens explodes with a wealth of records requests
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Vanity Fair: Poor Management is Behind Microsoft's "Lost Decade"
Stack ranking and the inability to move up to new technologies were Microsoft's largest problems
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Report: Samsung RT Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) Tablet to Land in October
Android leader is impressed with Microsoft commitment
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California, Federal Gov't to Split $7.9B USD Cost of High-Speed Rail Bid
New rail line will allow trips between the Bay Area and LA in under 3 hours
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Amazon's New Kindle Fire Display Specs Leak
The new Kindle Fire's resolution will be 1280x800
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BMW's $50k ActiveHybrid 3 Gets Official
Hybrid has a 2.5 mile all-electric range
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Ford C-Max Tops Toyota's Prius v, Achieves 47 MPG City
Ford C-Max has 2-year payback period
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HP Unveils New AIO PCs for Businesses, Consumers
New AIOs for home and office
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