Kingston has launched an Wi-Fi enabled external storage device, Wi-Drive, with a storage space of 128GB.The previous versions had 16, 32 and 64GB capacities.
   The Wi-Drive is a pocket-sized portable storage is designed for tablets and smartphones without a microSD support and has four hours of battery life. The 128GB version is already available on Amazon at a price of $176.
   The Wi-Drive App is available on Google Play, Amazon Appstore and Apple App Store.
by byetech

   Mushkin has announced that it has completed the first mSATA SSD with a storage capacity of 480 GB.
   The SSD is part of Atlas series of solid state drives and will be commercially available in January, next year at a price of $500, which is a little more than a dollar per GB.
   Mushkin has offered until recently, for portables, SSDs with up to 240GB, and the 480GB SSD launch is an important step in the evolution of the storage solutions in this range.
by byetech

source funnyandspicy.com

   The South Korean company, Samsung, prepares a new smartphone with 50% more amount of RAM than the high-end phones that you can find now on the market.
   A  prototype with 3GB of RAM has appeared in a picture on internet, without any details about smartphone's specifications.
   According to some rumors this model might come with some new features, that could need a higher amount of memory.It is expected to make its appearance in early 2013.
by byetech

   The first DDR4 modules have been in testing for quite some time now and even the first memory controller’s designs are ready for mass production, but DRAM makers are now yet willing make the switch.
   DDR3 modules are dirt cheap right now and this is really not desirable not for the DRAM makers nor for the module manufacturers, but the industry is simply not ready for DDR4 and won’t be for the next 12 months.
   In a very interesting and informative meeting we had with Kingston’s European Product Development Manager, Mr. Stephane Rizzetto broke the news to us.
   DDR4 will not land on the PC market during the next year.
   Neither Intel nor AMD will have any kind of platform for the new memory type, no matter what market segment is in question.
   Some were hoping that the expensive LGA2011 platform from Intel will receive an upgrade or an annoyingly slightly different LGA2012 will bring the much awaited upgrade, but this will not happen.
   Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 now brings support for 4TB of RAM memory for a single server and DDR3 is now cheap enough to be able to fill the market’s virtualization needs.
   AMD and Intel are taking different routes to improve performance of their platforms.
Intel is likely to use Crystalwell cache-like concept and AMD is working hard to make the iGPU and CPU collaborate better with simultaneous memory access for the two.
   When it is finally introduced, DDR4 will be less interesting for desktop PC enthusiasts as it will likely not offer any significant improvement over DDR3 2133 MHz and will also be considerably more expensive.
   What DDR4 will actually bring is high module density, with modules starting at the 8 GB mark, and 16 GB ones being available at launch.
source(via)Softpedia

click on picture to enlarge

   The company’s new A10 “Trinity” APUs will come with a new and interesting RAM drive technology. This is the first time a processor manufacturer has officially supported such an implementation.
   Fabless CPU and GPU designer, Texas-based AMD has partnered with Patriot Memory to start making and selling AMD-branded and optimized memory modules.
   The modules are already present on the market and, while they’re not the best-selling modules available, they do provide AMD customers with a certified and optimized DRAM option that also comes with support for automatic overclocking through specific AMD settings support.
   Now the company will bundle a special utility with its APUs that will allow the user to create a RAM partition with a capacity of up to 64 GB.
   The user can copy its game directory onto this partition or any other program that he uses frequently and will benefit greatly from the faster data transfer.
   This way, any type of disk file handling such as game load time, game level time or large file professing will be greatly accelerated with performance increases that will reach and surpass the 500% mark.
   RAM drives have existed for quite some time now and the software needed to implement them has been available for years, but this is the first time AMD or any CPU maker has supported such an implementation.
   AMD’s official support will ensure stability and reliability as well as prolonged life span of your SSD or your hard drive.
  As the durability of SSDs is probably the main issue of this market sector, using AMD’s RAMDisk could really make a difference by increasing the performance level significantly beyond what the SSD was able to deliver as well as reducing the wear on the NAND flash inside it.
source(via)Softpedia

   Toshiba has announced two new 2.5-inch hybrid storage devices, offering higher read and write speeds for laptops and desktops.
   The new equipment that integrates a high capacity hard drives and a NAND flash memory into a single unit will be available in two versions: 1 TB and 750 GB.
   The new devices 1TB - MQ01ABD100H and 750GB-MQ01ABD075H use hard drives to provide a large storage space and 8GB NAND flash memory as cache memory to support high data transfer speeds. Therefore, during read and write is about three times faster than other Toshiba  hard disk drives with equivalent capacity.
   Toshiba says that in the case of the desktops, the new hybrid storage devices reduce application startup time  by 40%.
by byetech

   JEDEC is an international organization that encompasses many memory chip manufacturers, module manufacturers and other technology companies.
   The organization develops and sets the standard specification in the DRAM memory field, and now it has officially launched the DDR4 standard.
   This means that now DDR4 mainboards and memory modules will start appearing from various manufacturers as there currently is a standard that will ensure compatibility between the different devices.
   Many believe that DDR4 will not be too popular during the next 12 months as DDR3 has greatly surpassed its specifications, and this will make initial DDR4 implementation look less impressive than DDR3-based ones.
   Also, just like any new technology, DDR4 modules will initially be quite expensive when compared with DDR3 DIMMs so there will be yet another factor working against widespread DDR4 use.
Even so, many difference companies are hard at work developing DDR4-based technologies and we’ve already reported here about Cadence’s first DDR4 memory controller that’s manufactured in TSMC’s 28nm technology.
   Intel is also preparing its own DDR4 memory controller that will likely be integrated in future Haswell processors, but even Intel is not gearing for a 2013 launch.
   The Haswell DDR4 version will likely land on the market in 2014 with an LGA2011 implementation or something similar.
   DDR3 memory was officially standardized back in 2007, but work on DDR4 started way back in 2005 while being initially projected for a 2008 launch.
   The roadmap and development plan has been changed in 2010 and only in 2011 did we start to see the first samples of DDR4 technology.DDR4 DIMMs will have 284 pins while DDR3 standard modules only have 240 pins. The SO-DIMM version will feature 256 pins while the DDR3 SO-DIMMs have only 204 pins.
   On the power consumption side, DDR4 DIMMs will need 1.2 volts while standard DDR3 modules use 1.5 volts.
   High-density modules using 3D chips manufactured using TSV technology will also make an appearance in 2014, but one of the most important aspects is the point to point nature of the standard.
   This means that a single module will likely be directly connected to a single memory channel.
source(via)Softpedia

   The mobile devices and tablets available on the market provides an internal storage of up to 64GB, this quantity is rarely implemented and the prices are too high. Samsung claims that this will be changed soon, once its new NAND chips will hit the market.
   The company announced that its new, NAND Embedded Multimedia Card (eMMC), with a capacity of 128GB has entered in mass production, which will be available soon to the integrators who want to offer tablets or mobile devices with more storage space.
   These chips use memory modules with capacities of 64GB are made with ​​a 20-nanometer technology that Samsung has announced this summer.
  The performance of thenew Samsung memory modules are good, they promised speeds of 140MB/s read and 50MB/s write, five times higher than Class 10 MicroSD external memory and the random access performance is 3500 IOPS read and 1500 IOPS write.The size of the new eMMC is 12x16mm, small enough to not cause problems to the integrators.
by byetech

  The new generation of AMD servers includes storage space for 1408 HDD or SSD with a total capacity of 5 million GB. SM15000 was developed by AMD with SeaMicro technologies, a company acquired earlier this year for $ 334 million U.S. dollars.
  The new SM15000 was developed as a solution for storing of large volumes of information in the cloud and is compatible with platforms like Hadoop and Cassandra that  typically uses hundreds of computers.

  This AMD system can include up to 64 chips called "compute card", each with up to 8 processors. At the moment it only uses Intel Sandy Bridge processors, but in November will be available with AMD Piledriver and Intel Ivy Bridge.
  The AMD initiative is an alternative that significantly reduces the space required for storage in a modern data center .

IBM has confirmed that it will buy Texas Memory Systems to bolster its offerings in the flash-memory sector.
IBM said that Flash was crucial for new servers and mobile products. It did not say how much it paid for the company. Texas Memory, based in Houston, Texas, has provides enterprise-grade SSDs, as well as application-specific digital signal processors. One of its main customers has been Dell.
IBM's acquisition of well-regarded Texas Memory comes six months after Intel and Micron Technology upgraded their six-year-old partnership. Texas Memory's portfolio speeds IBM's path into mobile sectors. It also will help IBM's PureSystems initiative which aims to make Big Blue gear interoperable with customers' products.
Texas Memory has a proprietary technology, Enterprise MLC flash, which is especially suitable for enterprise for use in data warehousing, content-delivery networks and other read-intensive environments. Over time, IBM plans to integrate Texas Memory products into storage, software, server and Pure Systems products,
source(via)Fudzilla

Hard drive manufacturers Seagate Technology and Western Digital have reported great financial results after such a prolonged hard disk drive “crisis.”
There was always talk about the fact that hard disk drives are so cheap, that the profitability of the manufacturers is getting low enough to limit the R&D investments they would otherwise make.
Many industry insiders were talking about overstocking and lowering profits. The situation was bleak. One year ago, Samsung wanted to get rid of their HDD division, despite the fact that the products developed there were quite good. The F1 and F3 lines of desktop HDD are very good performers to this day, and they’ve been since way back in 2008.
Seagate jumped at the opportunity and snatched Samsung’s hard drive division for almost 2 billion dollars, back in April 2011.
Hitachi was also doing quite alright. They had good mobile HDDs and the very successful 1000.C hard disk drive line that excelled when dealing with multi-threaded work. Still, the marketplace for HDDs was so difficult that they’ve announced they’ll be selling their hard drive division to Western Digital.
The Thailand flood came and went and we were left with the hard drive “crisis”. While the hard drives were almost never “out of stock” the prices increased even by 300%.
Months passed by, but there seemed to be no end to the hard drive crisis, despite the fact that both manufacturers were announcing the restoration of the plants affected by the waters.
In a report from earlier his year, we found out that Seagate even managed to increase its HDD shipments with around 2% when compared to the previous year. Where exactly was that “crisis?”
Now Seagate proudly announces it has decided to spend 2.5 billion dollars to repurchase a considerable amount of its outstanding ordinary shares. Spending 2.5 billion dollars less than a year after buying Samsung’s HDD division for another 2 billion doesn’t really seem like a company “suffering” from a “crisis.”
Western Digital, too, has just announced its fiscal third quarter financial results. Despite recently acquiring HGST (that’s Hitachi’s HDD division) in March last year and also “suffering” from a “difficult crisis,” they’ve made a net income of 146 million dollars, or 62 cents per share.
"Our third quarter performance demonstrates the potential of the new Western Digital, with just three and a half weeks of HGST results combined with the standalone WD business," said John Coyne, CEO of Western Digital.
By their reasoning: bad market plus low margins plus the HDD crisis equals big profits.
Good job if we may say. We finally have a humongous duopoly in the hard drive market too. This is probably the most desirable situation for the end-users paying 300% more money for last year's technology.
We shall now wait and see when the prices go back to where they were one year ago, if ever.
source (via )softpedia.com

Western Digital is now officially the largest manufacturer of hard drives in the world.

The statute was obtained by acquisition of the Hitachi Global Storage Technologies portfolio for $ 3.9 billion U.S. dollars in cash and 25 million shares, valued Wednesday at $ 0.9 billion . To facilitate the transaction, Western Digital has signed a 5 year loan for $ 2.5 billion U.S. dollars.
After the transaction, Hitachi represents about 10% of the stock WD and get the right to nominate two representatives to the board of the company. From the opposite camp, Western Digital had to give up some elements of the merger to satisfy the European Commission, but instead receive resources to unseat rival Seagate, becoming the largest manufacturer of hard drives in the world.

(by byetech staff)

Last year Thailand was hit by terrible floods.Because there are factories of the most important producers of hard drives, their crisis has begun .This was translated into price increases and insufficient stocks. Seagate says that the hard part begins just now. WD confirmed.
The companies say that is expected a deficit of 150 million units in 2012.Western Digital, Seagate's No. 1 competitor, says they will not be able to achieve production volumes before the catastrophe until third quarter of 2012.
The forecasts says that they have delivered only 119 million hard drives in the fourth quarter of 2011 when the demand was 175 million.
All this not only brought the price increases but also cuts in the periods of warranties.
( by byetech staff )

US computer chip giant Intel lowered its fourth-quarter outlook on Monday, citing a hard disk drive shortage caused by flooding in Thailand.
Intel said it expected revenue of between $13.4 billion and $14 billion in the fourth quarter, down from its previous forecast of between $14.2 billion and $15.2 billion.
"Sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter," Intel said in a statement.
"However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages."
Intel said it expects disk drive supply shortages to continue into the first quarter of next year, "followed by a rebuilding of microprocessor inventories as supplies of hard disk drives recover during the first half of 2012."
Months of flooding this year shut down many hard disk drive factories in Thailand, which supplies about 40 percent of the world market for the crucial components.
source AFP.com

The latest in predictions about the Thailand floods has been made, and this one is a fairly bleak forecast regarding the personal computer market.
There will be much lower PC sales in the first three months of next year because of hard disk drive shortage.
Had there not been any floods in Thailand to shut down HDD and HDD component factories, there would have been no such problem.
Alas, misfortune struck and the storage drive shortage is proving to be quite serious.
Thus, since the majority of PCs use the platter spinners, they, too, will be unable to reach the levels of shipments they would otherwise have.
Not that there is anything new to this. After all, that HDDs and everything relying on them would go through harsh times was stated again and again over the past month.
Now, though, IHS iSuppli provided an actual estimate of by how much the PC sales would be crippled.
The figure is of 3.8 million for the first quarter of 2012 (the January-March period), as the predicted 88 million shipments for Q1 have been revised to 84.2 million
“The PC supply chain says it has sufficient HDD inventory for the fourth quarter of 2011. However, those stockpiles will run out in the first quarter of 2012, impacting PC production during that period,” said Matthew Wilkins, senior principal analyst of compute platforms at IHS.
The global growth of the PC market will drop from 9.5% to 6.8% next year as, instead of 399 million, only 374 million computers are set to be shipped.
Western Digital (the greatest supplier of HDDs) and Nidec (the main maker of HDD motors and other components) were the most severely hit, hence the consequences.
The companies are both supposedly recovering as fast as possible, but the damage has already been done.
source softpedia.com

click on picture to enlarge

Japanese buyers always seem to get cool hardware and gadgets to play around with way before those of us living in other parts of the world have a chance to, and these 4TB hard drives from Hitachi are no different.
Codenamed HDS5C4040ALE630, the HDDs haven’t yet been announced by the company, yet these have somehow managed to make it on the shelves of retailers in Japan where they are priced at 26,800 yen (about US $ 345 or 259 Euro).
Outside of the 4TB of storage space, the drives also get 32 MB of buffer memory, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and makes use of the CoolSpin technology meaning that their platters operate at around 5900 RPM, according to Tech Power Up.
When will these appears in other parts of the world is anybody’s guess at this time, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that their launch will bring cheaper 2TB and 3TB HDDs to us all.
source softpedia.com

click on picture to enlarge

The main advantage that companies have been saying will be possessed by TLC (triple-level cell) solid state drives (SSD) is the decrease in price, something OCZ wants to make the best of.

Simply put, TLC NAND-based consumer solid state drives will be 30% less pricey than what we have today, and that is compared to MLC drives, which are supposed to be the (much more) affordable option right now.

Unfortunately, SSDs of this sort will have a lower life expectancy, of as little as four years, so don't expect the drive to outlast you.

Nonetheless, OCZ is determined to try its hand, especially since more advanced forms of the technology are due out in 2012 (next year).

After all, HDDs aren't going to be very easy to get for a while (probably), so cheap SSDs could become an appealing alternative, provided capacities are up to par.
source softpedia.com