Wednesday, April 2, 2014

IT News Head Lines (techPowerUp) 03/04/2014

techPowerUp!



(PR) ADATA Announces SP920 Series SSD
ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, today announced the launch of the Premier Pro series SP920 solid state drive (SSD). Designed to meet the high-performance requirements of multimedia file transfers, the SP920 comes in a 2.5" form factor, and is equipped with the latest generation Marvell controller implementing the SATA 6 Gb/sec specification.



SSD continue to become mainstream storage selections for a cross-section of user types, largely due to the higher demands placed on primary system disks by operating systems, games, and high definition media. The SP920 is designed for high performance across a wide range of demanding applications, but it is especially fast in the transmission of multimedia files (uncompressed data). 4 KB random read / write speeds are as high as 98,000/88,000 IOPS, with sequential read and write speeds of up to 560 MB/s and 500 MB/s, respectively. In addition to these impressive numbers, the SP920 maintains consistently high read and write speeds even when the disk is 90% full. This is in contrast to some solid state drives that suffer performance degradation as the drive nears capacity.


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(PR) AMD Amends Wafer Supply Agreement With GLOBALFOUNDRIES
AMD today announced that it amended its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. for 2014. Under the terms of the amendment, AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES agreed on purchase commitments for 2014 and established fixed pricing and other terms of the WSA which apply to products AMD will purchase from GLOBALFOUNDRIES.



Under this amendment AMD expects to pay GLOBALFOUNDRIES approximately $1.2 billion in 2014. These purchases contemplate AMD's current PC market expectations and the manufacturing of certain Graphics Processor Units (GPUs) and semi-custom game console products at GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2014. The 2014 amendment does not impact AMD's 2014 financial goals including gross margin.


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(PR) Sony MDR-ZX750BN Wireless Headphones Released in the US
Sony Electronics today announced the MDR-ZX750BN over-the-head headphones, offering music lovers wireless freedom, precision noise cancelling, superior comfort and unmistakable sound. The MDR-ZX750BN headphones are available now for about $199.99.



The MDR-ZX750BN headphones offer the flexibility of wirelessly connecting to your tablet or smartphone using Bluetooth with Near Field Communication (NFC) while also reducing 98% ambient noise. Audiophiles will also enjoy strong bass response thanks to large 40mm drivers with Beat Response Control.







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(PR) AMD and Mentor Graphics Accelerating Open-Source Development for Embedded Systems
AMD today announced a multi-year agreement with Mentor Graphics Corporation to expand availability of open-source embedded Linux development for heterogeneous and multi-core processors from AMD. Dedicated to providing embedded developers with a more manageable and focused open source framework, the agreement will provide embedded developers with more supported processor options, robust development tools, and greater speed in open platform development.



As a Yocto Project compatible product, Mentor Embedded Linux will now bring standardized features and tools, and ensure quick access to the latest Board Support Packages (BSPs) for AMD 64-bit x86 architecture beginning with the upcoming AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-a-chip (SoC) (codenamed: "Steppe Eagle") and AMD Embedded R-Series APU/CPU (codenamed: "Bald Eagle").


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Radeon R9 295X2 Pictured in the Flesh, Specs Leaked
Here it is, folks! The first pictures of what you get inside the steel briefcase AMD ships the Radeon R9 295X2 in. AMD got over the stonewall of having to cool two 250W GPUs with a single two-slot cooling solution, by making it an air+liquid hybrid. The cooler appears to have been designed by any of the major water-cooling OEMs (such as Asetek, Akasa, etc.), and most likely consists of a pair of pump-blocks plumbed to a single 120 x 120 mm radiator, over a single coolant loop. The coolant channel, we imagine, could be identical to that of the ROG ARES 2 by ASUS. There's also a 90 mm fan, but that probably cools heatsinks covering the memory, VRM, and PCIe bridge. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which as you'll soon find out, are running at off-specs.



The Radeon R9 295X2, codenamed "Vesuvius," runs a pair of 28 nm "Hawaii" chips, routed to a PLX PEX8747 PCIe bridge. Each of the two have all 2,816 stream processors enabled, totaling the count to 5,632. The two also have 352 TMUs, and 128 ROPs between them. The entire 512-bit memory bus width is enabled, and each GPU is wired to 4 GB of memory totaling 8 GB on the card. Clock speeds remain a mystery, and probably hold the key to a lot of things, such as power draw and cooling. Lastly, there's the price. AMD could price the R9 295X2 at US $1,499, half that of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN-Z. In that price difference, heck, even for $500, you could probably buy yourself a full-coverage water block, and a full-fledged loop, complete with a meaty 3 x 120 mm radiator.




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(PR) Axiomtek Releases the IMB211 Industrial-Grade ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Axiomtek, one of the world's leading designers and manufacturers of innovative, high performance and reliable PC-based industrial computer products, announced the arrival of the IMB211, an industrial-grade ATX motherboard with a full-range of integrated peripherals for general industrial and embedded applications.



The IMB211 is based on 4th Generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3/ Celeron processors in LGA1150 socket with Intel Q87 Express chipset. Four 204-pin DDR3-1333/1600 slots provide a maximum memory capacity of 32 GB to improve overall system performance. This industrial-grade high performance motherboard also supports Intel Active Management Technology 9.0 (iAMT 9.0), SATA RAID, and triple-display capability through DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI-I interface. The board helps users to deploy more responsive, high-performance, graphic performance systems for advanced communication, gaming, industrial and automation applications.


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More Details of Radeon R9 295X2 Emerge
More details of AMD's upcoming dual-GPU graphics cards based on the "Hawaii" silicon emerged, in the run up to its April 8 launch. That's right, AMD plans to launch the card exactly one week from now. The card will bear the name Radeon R9 295X2, after all. The $3,000 pricing set by NVIDIA for its GTX TITAN-Z graphics card will be taken advantage of AMD, which will splurge on stuff such as a metal briefcase to ship the card in (with two combi-locks no less!), possibly high-quality (expensive) cooler shroud materials, and more. The card will be cooled by an air+liquid hybrid cooling solution, much like the ASUS ROG ARES 2. A factory-fitted (AIO) liquid cooling loop will handle the two 250W GPUs, while a fan-heatsink will cool the memory, VRM, and PCIe bridge chip. AMD will not chase down the ludicrous 12 GB memory amount of GTX TITAN-Z despite its wider memory bus, and will instead equip it with 8 GB (4 GB per GPU). And lastly, the card will have a total of five display outputs, including four mini-DP and one dual-link DVI-D (digital-only).







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Available Tags:SSD , AMD , Sony , Wireless , Radeon

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