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).

HighPoint Technologies, Inc., an industry leading Storage HBA and RAID solutions manufacturer, will unveil a new series of Thunderbolt based Storage Controller Boards at the NAB 2012 tradeshow. This ground-breaking new product series aggregates Intel's revolutionary I/O technology, with HighPoint's extensive SAS, SATA and USB 3.0 design and manufacturing expertise, delivering innovative, highly versatile development platforms for storage solution providers.

Thunderbolt's revolutionary connectivity technology, presents great opportunities for HighPoint and solution providers the world over. For 2012, we are expanding our comprehensive product portfolio to include a new series of Thunderbolt based Storage expansion and controller boards.

For those who thought with the Indilinx buyout and release of Everest and Kilimanjaro series NAND flash controllers, OCZ is on course of becoming a largely self-sufficient SSD industry player, here's a revelation. Its new Everest series silicon, used in recently-launched SSD families (such as Octane and Vertex 4), is essentially a re-badged Marvell controller (found on SSDs such as Crucial M4, Intel SSD 510), with custom firmware developed by OCZ. This discovery by Anandtech was confirmed by OCZ (Indilinx).

The Indilinx Everest (Octane and Petrol series) and Everest 2 (Vertex 4 series), are both re-badged Marvell chips with Indilinx firmware. Although it doesn't change anything, it perfectly explains how OCZ could come up with two "new" SSD controllers (Everest and Everest 2) almost instantly, after the Indilix acquisition. Everest 1 is essentially a higher-clocked Marvell 88SS9174, while Everest 2 could very well be a re-badged Marvell 88SS9187, according to the source.

Lite-On, renowned as an Optical Storage innovator, has today announced its first solid state drive (SSD) for the UK. The E200 SSD is aimed at small/medium business users, with a design which is easily integrated into existing systems for minimal disruption and with a fast, consistent and reliable performance over time - at an affordable cost.

"With the E200 we aim to challenge the concept that SSDs are an unaffordable luxury for SMB; our aim is that smaller companies will be able to experience the increased speed and performance that a fast SSD provides," says Maarten Souren, Marketing Manager at Lite-On.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression, announced today that the Islamic Development Bank has fully funded the initial distribution of 5,000 XO laptops to primary school children in the West African nation of Cameroon. The project will initially span 51 schools in six regions; planning is underway to extend the deployment across the entire country.

The Islamic Development Bank is a multilateral financing institution whose purpose is to foster the economic development and social progress of its 56 member countries - of which Cameroon is one. The Cameroon project represents the first time that the Islamic Development has financed an OLPC deployment.

On the opening day of the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression, announced that Uruguay will be the first country in the world to receive the newest model XO children's laptop.

Uruguay began working with OLPC in 2007 and by mid-2010 achieved complete laptop saturation, providing XO's to all 570,000 primary school children in the country. The project recently ordered 60,000 XO 1.75's in order to take advantage of the many breakthrough hardware and software features in the new model.

Marvell today announced mass deployment of the Marvell 88SS9187 SATA controller fueled by high performance embedded processor technology. The 88SS9187 features a 6 gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) SATA Revision 3.1 compliant host interface optimized for the fast-growing solid state drive (SSD) sector, offering many game changing benefits to the consumer, mobile and enterprise markets. A significant number of high-profile SSD manufacturers are set to deploy Marvell's newest solution immediately, with additional partners expected to integrate 88SS9187 implementations later this year.

Marvell's newest SSD controller boasts an open, world-class architecture that supports industry-standard, high-speed NAND Flash interface up to 200 MB/s per channel. The 88SS9187 also offers a groundbreaking correction capability thanks to its high performance ECC engine with Adaptive Read and Write Scheme and on-chip RAID functionality to allow use of the latest generation of NAND Flash devices in the fast-growing SSD markets.

Buffalo Inc. has today announced the SSD-NS/PM3P series solid state drives featuring a Marvell controller and Toshiba-made MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory. These SSDs have a 2.5-inch form factor, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, 256 MB (on the 128 GB model) or 512 MB (256 and 512 GB drives) of DRAM cache, TRIM and NCQ support, they deliver transfer speeds of up to 500 MB/s, and are backed by a three-year warranty,

Buffalo's drives come bundled with a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch adapter and are priced at $300 (128 GB), $588 (256 GB) and $1,112 (512 GB). The 128 GB and 256 GB models will go on sale in Japan in mid-March while the 512 GB SSD will follow soon.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated mobile devices graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for 2011.

We found that shipments during the fourth quarter of 2011 of GPUs in mobile devices (tablets and smart phones) had a CAGR for the year (Q1 to Q4) of 18%. Samsung's sales surged in Q3 and Q4 giving them the highest CAGR for the year (39%), Followed by Apple (26%), and Qualcomm (16.5%) which was already enjoying high shipment rates.

In terms of shipments Qualcomm led the pact and ended up with 31% market share for the year, followed by Apple (23%) and TI (17%).

AREA PC also introduced the RAIDJet SD-PESA3-2RL, a cheap 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s RAID card. The card uses a Marvell-made SATA 6 Gb/s RAID controller that gives out two ports, and connects to the host of PCI-Express 2.0 x1. RAID 0 and 1 are the only modes possible. The controller supports standard AHCI/RAID drivers. The card has a half-height PCB, making it compatible with low-profile PCs. It will be available as low as 2,980 JPY (US $38).

In its CeBIT invitation circular, Patriot Memory unveiled names of three new client SSD product lines, which it will launch in Hanover. These include new high-performance client SSD lines, the Wildfire Pro, and Wildfire SE; and a new mainstream client SSD line called Magma. With no other details, we're left to only speculate. Patriot's flagship SandForce SF-2281 driven Wildfire series features among some of the highest performing SATA 6 Gb/s client SSDs. The Wildfire Pro and SE, in all probability, could be higher-performing parts, with higher sequential speeds, and random access performance. With Magma, Patriot could design a client SSD using a controller of another make than SandForce; probably Marvell, or even OCZ-Indilinx.

Marvell introduced its latest line of SATA 6 Gbps controllers, under the 88SE92 Series. The series includes the 2-port 88SE9220, 4-port 88SE9230, and 4-port 88SE9235. All three take advantage of the new PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface. PCI-Express x2 (2 lanes) has till now only been hypothetically possible, since PCI-SIG has no slot specification for it. With increasing need for system bandwidth while keeping pin-counts and package sizes low by onboard controllers (such as SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0), PCIe 2.0 x2 has emerged as a viable solution based on the proven PCIe 2.0 specification, as PCIe 3.0 is yet to attain maturity in the industry. PCIe 2.0 x2 gives the controller system bandwidth of 1000 MB/s per direction, 2000 MB/s total. This ensures that a connected SATA 6 Gb/s device doesn't face a bottleneck at a given time, something which was impossible on older PCIe 2.0 x1 chips.

This system bandwidth bottleneck alleviation also allowed Marvell to add support for up to 4 SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the 88SE9230 and 88SE9235. All three controllers further support port multipliers. Among the three, the 88SE9230 is the top-of-the-line chip, supporting Marvell RAID software, HyperDuo (Marvell's in-house SSD caching technology), RAID 0, 1, 10 modes, AHCI, and 128/256-bit AES native encryption. The 88SE9235 is a cost-effective variant of the 88SE9230, it lacks RAID, and only features AHCI/IDE modes. It also lacks native encryption. The 88SE9220, the 2-port controller, otherwise supports all the features of the 88SE9230, except of course support for RAID 10 (since it's not possible with just 2 member disks).

Plextor, leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, announces the release of its latest Solid State Drive, M3 Pro, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today.

The new M3 Pro Series offers improvements to the current M3S, including a significant boost in sequential and random read/write speeds. Other changes include high-grade 24 nm Toggle Flash, firmware updates, and a new 7 mm height form factor to fit ultra-slim notebooks.

On site at the Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas, the OCZ Technology Group (OCZ for short) has revealed to the world its newest portable storage solution, the Lightfoot solid state drive featuring Thunderbolt support.

Encased in a metal shell (resembling that of the OCZ Enyo), the Lightfoot makes use of a Marvell controller, is capable of transfer speeds of up to 750 MB/s and is set to be available in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities. Unfortunately OCZ didn't say when Lightfoot will ship or how much it will cost.

Marvell, a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced new education solutions designed to enable "Classroom 3.0," a connected, secure learning environment that simplifies and speeds the deployment of technology to students around the world. Marvell's collaboration with Stanford University has resulted in the Marvell SMILE Plug, the first plug development kit designed to turn a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment. Designed to engage students in critical reasoning and problem solving, the SMILE Plug creates a "micro cloud" within a classroom that is completely controlled by the teacher. Marvell also announced that it has extended its relationship with the One Laptop per Child Association (OPLC) on a number of new products, including the upcoming OLPC X0 3.0, a low cost, low power tablet designed for education.