Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announces its Super Hybrid drives for enterprise and desktop consumers.
The Super Hybrid is a group of SSDs and an HDD combined together that is connected to a system through a PCIe slot. This new product supports sequential read and write speeds of up to 800 MB/s with a cache of 192 GB.

In addition to the SX1000 and SX2000 series enterprise SSDs, ADATA showed off its latest consumer SSDs, under the XPG SX920 banner. Built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and available in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB capacities, these drives are based on a Marvell-made controller, driving 19 nm MLC NAND flash. These drives offer up to 530 MB/s of sequential reads, up to 480 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 80,000 IOPS 4K random writes. Most common client SSD features such as TRIM, NCQ, and SMART. The drives are backed by 3-year warranties.

Crucial started shipping its M500 line of consumer SSDs. Available in 2.5-inch SATA (7 mm-thick), mSATA, and NGFF M.2 form-factors, the drives combine Micron 20 nm MLC NAND flash with a Marvell-made processor. All three form-factors take advantage of 6 Gb/s SATA. The drive is available in 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB capacities for all three form-factors, while the 2.5-inch gets a 960 GB "terabyte-class" capacity option, as well.

Sequential read speeds on all capacities are as high as 500 MB/s, while sequential write speeds cap out at 130 MB/s and 250 MB/s for the 120 GB and 240 GB variants, respectively; and reach 400 MB/s on the 480 GB and 960 GB variants. The drives are backed by 3-year limited warranties, 1.2 million hours MTBF, and 72 TB total bytes written (TBW) write endurance (that's 40 GB per day). TRIM, NCQ, and SMART are standard issue. The 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB variants are priced at US $129.99, $219.99, $399.99, and $599.99, respectively.

More than 100 developer and adopter members of the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC) today announced they've reached consensus for the global standard that will deliver a much-anticipated, disruptive memory computing solution. Developed in only 17 months, the final specification marks the turning point for designers in a wide range of segments-from networking and high-performance computing, to industrial and beyond-to begin designing Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) technology into future products.

A major breakthrough with HMC is the long-awaited utilization of advanced technologies to combine highperformance logic with state-of-the-art DRAM. With this first HMC milestone reached so quickly, consortium members have elected to extend their collaborative effort to achieve agreement on the next generation of HMC interface standards.

In addition to its 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s TLC NAND flash SSD, Plextor showed off its upcoming SSD in the NGFF form-factor, designed for next-generation Ultrabooks. Based on the same Marvell 88SS9189 processor and triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory as its 2.5-inch cousin, the drive differs in being a 42 x 22 mm (LxW) NGFF module, with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface. The drives will be sold in 128 GB and 256 GB capacities, featuring 256 MB and 512 MB DDR3 DRAM caches, respectively. On offer are read speeds of up to 700 MB/s, writes of up to 550 MB/s, and maximum 4K random write performance of 100,000 IOPS. The NGFF drives should arrive around the same time as Ultrabooks based on 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors.

At CeBIT, Plextor showed off a yet unnamed line of consumer SSDs featuring 19 nm triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory. The series consists of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB variants, with 256 MB, 512 MB, and 768 MB of DDR3 DRAM cache, respectively. The three are driven by Marvell 88SS9189 processor, and are built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, with SATA 6 Gb/s interface.

The 128 GB variant offers sequential read speeds as high as 530 MB/s, with up to 380 MB/s writes, and 72,000 IOPS 4K random write performance. The 256 GB variant ups that with 540 MB/s reads, and 450 MB/s writes. Leading the pack is the 512 GB variant, with 540 MB/s reads, and 465 MB/s writes. The lineup is expected to be launched this August.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, showcases its PCIe and mini PCIe Flash Disk Modules.

Bypassing the SATA speed bottleneck, Super Talent's PCIe and mini PCIe FDMs offer huge performance gains with the ability to deliver read speeds up to 350 MB/sec and write speeds up to 220 MB/sec. The ultra-compact form factor is just right for solutions where space is limited, such as embedded applications, industrial PCs, all-in-one PCs, notebooks and netbooks.

Plextor, leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital storage devices, will introduce the M5M Solid State Drive at CES 2013. The streamlined M5M provides the same high-performance and reliability expected of a Plextor SSD in a space one-eighth the size of a standard 2.5 inch drive, making it especially well-suited for use in ultrabooks.

64/128/256 GB Versions. The M5M is an mSATA 6 Gb/s SSD following the JEDEC MO-300 form factor. It will be available during the first quarter of 2013 in 64/128/256 GB capacities. All versions feature sequential read speeds of 540 MB/s. The sequential write speeds for the three models are 160 MB/s, 320 MB/s and 430 MB/s respectively.Image courtesy of Anandtech.

One Laptop per Child Association (OLPCA), the world-renowned project to provide a modern education to children through a connected computing device, announced today that it will introduce at CES three new products. OLPCA will unveil for the first time the XO Learning System, an Android compatible software suite for child-centric learning, which is available by license to computer manufacturers, governments, NGOs and content providers such as book publishers. Tablets under such a license will be called the XO Tablet, the second product announcement. Third, OLPCA will show the fourth generation of its iconic green and white laptop with both a keyboard and a multi-touch screen using Neonode technology.

Every child has dreams and XO Learning directs the child's passion, creativity and energy for these dreams into a new user interface that has 12 dreams. Such dreams include "I want to be" an artist, a musician and a scientist. Each dream features a rich learning experience and applications, books, games and videos that allow children ages 3 to 12 to naturally explore their dreams and learn at the same time.

SanDisk is kicking off 2013 with the release of a new solid state drive, the Ultra Plus. This SSD has a 2.5-inch form factor (7 mm thickness) and features a Marvell controller, 19 nm MLC NAND memory, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, and a MTBF of 2 million hours.

The Ultra Plus is backed by a three-year warranty and comes in three capacities - 64 GB (520 / 155 MB/s sequential read/write speeds), 128 GB (530 / 290 MB/s) and 256 GB (530 / 445 MB/s). Amazon has SanDisk's SSDs priced at $120 (64 GB), $170 (128 GB) and $250 (256 GB).

Marvell today announced the availability of the Marvell DragonFly NVDRIVE, a turnkey enterprise-class PCIe SSD caching solution with built-in SSD modules that extends the company's award-winning DragonFly NVCACHE and NVRAM adapter product offerings first announced last August. Targeted for large-scale Internet and cloud computing datacenters, the DragonFly NVDRIVE dramatically scales both bare metal and virtualized server applications, including Web servers, OLTP and analytic databases, as well as NoSQL and big data distributed applications.

"The NVDRIVE is a game-changing extension of the popular DragonFly NVRAM and NVCACHE family. It delivers the same unprecedented application acceleration as the existing NVCACHE solution, but now seamlessly integrates with onboard SSD modules for plug-and-play ease of use," said Alan Armstrong , vice president of marketing of Marvell Semiconductor's Storage Business Group. "The innovative application of non-volatile DDR memory, highly optimized caching algorithms, and entry enterprise SSD modules creates a converged solution that is ideally suited for mixed-workload cloud data centers. The NVDRIVE raises the bar on affordability and performance, and its unique cache automation and consistent write latency capabilities will be sought after by both OEM and cloud computing customers who require predictable performance at reasonable costs."

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), a global leader in integrated silicon solutions, announced that on December 26, 2012, a jury in Pittsburgh delivered a verdict in a lawsuit brought by Carnegie Mellon University ("CMU") against Marvell and Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. ("MSI"), Marvell's U.S. operating subsidiary, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In the lawsuit, CMU asserted that Marvell infringed two CMU patents claiming a specific technique related to read channel detector technology that is not practiced by any Marvell chips.

Specifically, the patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 6,201,839 and 6,438,180. Marvell and MSI strongly believe the theoretical methods described in these patents cannot practically be built in silicon even using the most advanced techniques available today, let alone with the technology available a decade ago. Rather, Marvell and MSI use their own patented read channel technology developed in house. Nevertheless, the jury disagreed with Marvell and MSI's position and found that the patents were literally and willfully infringed and valid, and awarded damages in the amount of $1.17 billion.

Storage and application processor maker Marvell Technology has been ordered by a Federal Jury in the US state of Pennsylvania to pay a local university $1.17 billion in damages for patent-infringement. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) developed and patented a technology that "increases the accuracy with which hard disk drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks," which Marvell has been found to be infringing. Why $1.17 billion? Because these chips are an indispensable component in modern mechanical hard disk drives, made by both Seagate and WD, among others.

If and when US District Court Judge Nora Barry Fischer agrees with the Jury ruling that Marvell's infringements of CMU's patents are "willful," the fine could triple, according to K&L Gates. The jury found that Marvell sold "billions" of chips carrying the University's technology. What makes this verdict important for the PC industry is that since Marvell's HDD components are widely incorporated in HDDs across various brands, should CMU seek a sales-ban, it could potentially affect HDD production the way last year's unfortunate floods in Thailand did.

On taking apart the Acer S7 Ultrabook, The SSD Review discovered a strange new SSD form-factor, which bears the label of Lite-On, and carrying the model number "CMT-256L3M." This is perhaps the first mSATA SSD with two independent SSD subunits, one on each side. The mSATA interface itself is modified to have two SSD ports. The drive registers on the system BIOS as two individual drives, which is then run as a 256 GB (physical) RAID 0 volume by the BIOS and operating-system.

Each of the CMT-256L3M's two subunits feature a Marvell 88S9175 controller, which supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface, two 64 GB dual-channel 24 nm toggle NAND flash memory chips by Toshiba, and a Nanya-made DRAM cache chip. Putting the drive through sequential-friendly benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark shows a sequential read speed of the drive (combined with its two subunits) to be around 877 MB/s, with sequential writes up to 672 MB/s. Multi-subunit SSDs aren't new, most high-end consumer SSDs from the pre-TRIM, pre-SandForce era used to be dual- to quad-subunit drives. The CMT-256L3M is the first one in the super-compact mSATA form-factor, and its performance numbers could impress more Ultrabook designers.

Plextor, a leading developer of high-performance digital storage equipment, announces the release of the 100K Xtreme firmware update for its multi-award winning M5 Pro SSD. This update transforms the current M5 Pro into the M5 Pro Xtreme - the first truly professional SSD capable of delivering random-read speeds up to 100,000 IOPS along with improved maximum random-write speeds of 88,000 IOPS, a 470 MB/S sequential write speed, and an impressive 540 MB/S sequential read.

The Plextor M5 Pro has already been a success across the globe not only generating significant sales, but picking up large numbers of awards in reviews and the top position in group tests. Engineered to use the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller and Toshiba's new 19 nm Toggle NAND, Plextor expects further success with the drive's Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme version.

Marvell today announced the Marvell Avastar 88W8864, a wireless local area network (WLAN) system-on-chip (SoC) and the industry's first 802.11ac 4x4 solution built to improve the throughput of enterprise and retail access points (APs) and the robustness of wireless video distribution.

The widespread adoption of Wi-Fi enabled devices requires faster, more efficient and reliable wireless that enables quick and seamless connectivity. Compared to its predecessor 802.11n, 802.11ac offers up to a three times increase in Wi-Fi throughput and more than two times the power efficiency when processing high-speed loads.

Apricorn today announced the latest addition and now the fastest of its popular Velocity Solo Desktop SSD Upgrade line, the Velocity Solo X2. It's the first PCIe 2.0 x2 lane card available that is capable of delivering speeds upwards of 550 MBs when used with a single super fast SATA III (6 Gb/s) 2.5" SSD.

Taking advantage of two PCIe 2.0 lanes and using a Marvell 9182 chipset, the Velocity Solo X2 will enable desktop PCs and Macs to take advantage of the ever increasing speeds in the SSD market. Designed to fit into a PCIe 2.0 x2 slot or larger (typical installation will use a x4 slot), the Velocity Solo X2 enables users to easily add an SSD to their desktop system. Connection of the Velocity Solo PCIe 2.0 card to the SSD is via a super fast SATA III (6 Gb/s) connection. The Velocity Solo X2 also provides an additional SATA III data connection that can be used to connect to another SSD or HDD to provide expanded high speed storage.

"Education is the key foundation for the success of our future generation globally. I am very proud that Marvell has been a long-standing and passionate supporter of education and helping to build better and affordable technologies," said Weili Dai, Co-Founder of Marvell. "I believe it is important to help our teachers better connect with their students in the classroom with effective teaching tools to give students the power to learn, create, connect and collaborate in new ways. The Marvell SMILE Plug for 'Classroom 3.0' propels education into the 21st century with technology solutions - for both teachers and students - that give access to the best information and resources the world has to offer anywhere at anytime."

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that Joe Chen has been appointed as the new Vice President of Sales for the Greater China region, joining the company from Marvell Technology, a leading provider of storage, communications and consumer semiconductor products.

"Joe will play a key role in driving our sales strategy in the growing markets in Asia"
In this role, Chen will be responsible for sales in the Greater China region consisting of China and Taiwan. He will build and mentor a top-quality regional sales team, and grow and maintain successful and trusted partnerships with existing and new customers to expand the company's market share in Asia. Chen reports to Chuck Fox, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

Here are some of the first pictures of EVGA's upcoming Z77 Mini ITX motherboard. EVGA's newest creation is one of the first mini-ITX motherboards with CPU socket north of the chipset, clearly a response to community feedback. EVGA's Z77 Mini ITX is geared for overclocking, with the LGA1155 socket bolstered by an 8-phase VRM that uses International Rectifier PowIRphase driver-MOSFETs. The board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. The LGA1155 socket is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory; and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot.

In terms of storage connectivity, the EVGA Z77 Mini ITX is equipped with two each of SATA 6 Gb/s and SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and an mSATA 3 Gb/s slot wired to the Z77 PCH; and two eSATA 6 Gb/s driven by a Marvell-made controller. Display connectivity includes HDMI and mini-DisplayPort. High-bandwidth connectivity includes six USB 3.0 ports (four on the rear panel, two via headers), and two eSATA 6 Gb/s. 8+2 channel HD audio (Realtek ALC898 CODEC), gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports make for the rest of the connectivity. The board is driven by UEFI BIOS. Find more pictures at the source.

Plextor, a leading developer of high-performance digital storage equipment, today announced the M5 Pro Series Solid State Drive, a high-performance professional-grade SSD engineered using the latest Marvell 88SS9187 Monet controller. The M5 Pro provides a unique enterprise-grade double-data protection featuring random read/write speeds of up to 94,000/86,000 IOPS and sequential read/write speeds of up to 540/450 MB/s.

The M5 Pro has the ability to consistently deliver high read and write speeds for all forms of data and use the multi-core controller to handle extreme high loads. This makes the M5 Pro suitable for use in a heavy workstation, server role, or Raid 0 configuration setting. The M5 Pro also makes use of True Speed Technology to prevent the drastic performance drop seen in some SSDs after intense or long-term usage.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, will showcase the Company's latest enterprise and client storage solutions at Computex 2012 in Taipei, Taiwan June 6 through June 9 at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC).

Continuing to demonstrate leadership in both the enterprise and consumer markets, OCZ will display a comprehensive lineup of its innovative SSD products. For business, server, and OEM clients, OCZ will showcase PCI Express (PCIe) SAN acceleration and replacement solutions, and unveil the impending Intrepid 3 SATA III SSD Series based on the Everest 2 architecture. Live demos at the booth will include both the current industry-leading Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCIe SSD that delivers over one million IOPS, and the highly anticipated Z-Drive R5 Series based on the co-developed OCZ-Marvell Kilimanjaro platform that raises the bar in performance, reliability, and endurance. OCZ will also showcase the VXL Storage Accelerator software that enables large scale deployment of a virtualized environment for businesses to eliminate the need for costly tier-1 SANs in a wide range of enterprise IT infrastructures.

Intel unveiled its third socket LGA2011 Desktop Board driven by its X79 Express chipset, the DX79SR. This model is positioned a notch above the DX79SI, and a couple of notches above the DX79TO. It was first unsuspectingly revealed to the world not by Intel, but NVIDIA, in its GeForce GTX 690 press-shots. The DX79SR covers up a few design shortfalls of the DX79SI. It adds two additional SATA 6 Gb/s ports, driven by a Marvell SE9128 2-port controller, and two additional USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel. The total of four USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel are driven by an unknown 4-port USB 3.0 controller.

Apart from the two onboard connectivity additions, Intel will also include a USB add-on module which packs 802.11 b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth 3.0 interfaces. The package of the board itself will be beefed up a little, with the inclusion of a stylish mouse pad and a thermal probe. To accommodate these features, Intel made a few subtle changes to the board layout, the first and second PCI-Express x16 slots no longer have switches between them, and some capacitors appear changed. With all these, Intel believes it has a shot at capturing the US $299 price-point, which gives it a nice spread from the $249 DX79SI and the $199 DX79TO.

Apacer is working on a hard drive cache-SSD of its own, which is similar in principle to OCZ's Revodrive Hybrid. Called PHFD, the cache-SSD is a full-height PCI-Express 2.0 x1 add-on card, which seats a Marvell 88SE9130 (or similar) 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s controller, with one port wired to an onboard 32 GB SSD subunit, and the other port given out as a standard SATA port (to which you plug your system HDD). Marvell 88SE9130 includes a feature called HyperDuo, which is similar to Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST), it handles the SSD-caching on PFHD. Apacer's solution could end up being a cost-effective solution to systems without Intel RST.

A 64 GB variant of Plextor's M3 SSD series surfaced in Japan, carrying the model number "PX-64M3". The series was originally designed to capture higher market price points. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, the PX-64M3 is driven by Marvell 88SS9174, packs 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and offers sequential speeds of up to 520 MB/s reads, and 175 MB/s writes, with up to 55,000 IOPS 4K random access and 40,000 IOPS 4K random writes. Slated for market release on April 21, the Plextor M3 64 GB is priced at 10,980 JPY (US $135).