Patriot Memory displayed its latest line of consumer SSDs in the 2.5-inch form factor, the Patriot Wildfire. The SSD uses the latest SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and is available in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB, and 240 GB. Wildfire could use any of the many SATA 6 Gb/s compliant SSD controllers out there, the most notable being SandForce SF-2582 and Marvell 9174, to provide transfer speeds in excess of 500 MB/s.

OCZ Technology also displayed its second generation Optical HSDL (high-speed data link) interface, and its first enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) that uses it. Last year, OCZ introduced HSDL as a replacement drive interface to SATA and SAS, to mainly serve the purpose of overcoming bandwidth bottlenecks. The first generation HSDL used an electronic link to the host card. The optical HSDL uses a fiber-optic cable to transfer data between the host and the drive.

The new interface is said to provide gains in access times, IOPS, and bandwidth in general. Fiber-optic cable also allows for better cable management (since it's thinner and round compared to serial cables (such as SATA, SAS), it probably also allows the cables to be longer, to help connecting a number of drives in a rack with the drive cage being at a distance from the host machine. Internally, the IBIS XL 3.5-inch form-factor SSD is a RAID 0 on a stick of two SSD sub-units. It can store up to 4 TB of data, and provide transfer speeds of 1800 MB/s (read) and 1700 MB/s (write), with 200,000 IOPS 4K write performance.

Super Talent is readying a new ultra high-performance "flash drive". In principle, it's a SandForce-driven SSD on a stick. The device consists of a SandForce SF-1222 SSD processor with MLC NAND flash chips occupying eight channels; the SF-1222 is connected to a SATA 3 Gb/s to USB 3.0 host bridge chip. While there have been such devices in the past, this is the first time anyone has put the SandForce controller into a device this compact.

Since the SF-1222 is operating with half its channels occupied, the performance is about half as well. A quick run of CrystalDiskMark yields about 143.3 MB/s sequential read and 63 MB/s writes.

Gigabyte's elusive LGA1366 motherboard part of the company's G1-Killer series of motherboards targeting gamers has finally seen the lens. The socket LGA1366 motherboard by Gigabyte is based on the Intel X58 + ICH10R chipset, and is given the brand name G1.Guerrilla. To quickly run you through its styling, "Guerrilla" strikes a chord with a very "jungle warfare" color-scheme, which is black+green. This seems to be the case with the G1.Guerrilla, which goes close to looking like an NVIDIA desktop board.

The CPU is powered by an 8+2 phase VRM, wired to six DDR3 DIMM slots for triple-channel memory; the northbridge heatsink looks like a modular rifle barrel, and the southbridge heatsink like a 5.56 mm magazine. There are three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots lending 3-way SLI and CrossFireX support, the usual two-port USB 3.0 + SATA 6 Gb/s duet, but a handful of interesting gamer-specific devices, such as the Killer 2100 hardware NIC, an HD audio CODEC that uses X-Fi MB software but high-grade electrolytic capacitors. The motherboard is out and out a gamers' motherboard. Gigabyte already has motherboards for overclockers which don't look very boutique but do the job, under its existing X58A UD5, UD7, and UD9 models.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced that it has developed a range of performance components that fully exploit the potential of the new Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor family, including the new LGA1155 Core i5 and Core i7 processors.

These components include the previously announced Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory modules, which operate with a low VDIMM voltage of 1.5V, and include XMP-certified performance profiles for Core i5 and Core i7 processors. In addition, Corsair is also announcing the next-generation Performance 3 Series, a new range of solid-state drives, based on the Marvell 9174 controller and designed to take full advantage of the SATA 6Gbps (SATA Revision 3.0) support native to the new Intel chipsets.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, will showcase the Company's latest SSD solutions at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6-8. OCZ's commitment to advancing flash technology for enterprise, professional, and consumer applications makes this year's CES an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the latest solid state storage solutions at the nation's most exciting CE tradeshow.

"We are pleased to introduce ground breaking solid state drive technology at this year's CES show, including next generation enterprise class SATA, SAS, Fibre Channel and PCIe SSDs that bring to the forefront both throughput levels and capacities that push speed, reliability and densities to previously unheard of levels," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "These exciting products represent OCZ's commitment to driving solid state storage innovation in both the client and enterprise space to the highest levels."
Introducing an array of next generation storage, as well as power supplies during the show, OCZ will continue to exhibit solutions designed for a wide range of customers including gamers and prosumers to enterprise and OEM. OCZ will showcase live SATA 6Gbps MLC-based Vertex 3 Pro SSDs, built with the next generation enterprise SandForce controller technology with incredible new performance of up to 80,000 IOPS* and 550MB/s transfer rates.

Western Digital today announced it is now shipping its new WD Scorpio Black 750 GB 7200 RPM 2.5-inch SATA hard drives for high-performance notebook computers and portable storage devices. One of the fastest hard drives on the market, WD Scorpio Black drives combine class-leading 7200 RPM spin speed and 16 MB cache to deliver maximum notebook performance. Now available in capacities up to 750 GB, the WD Scorpio Black hard drives provide creative professionals, gamers and PC enthusiasts with additional capacity they need to get their job done. Using Advanced Format (AF) technology, the WD Scorpio Black 750 GB hard drives also incorporate a variety of data-protection features to actively monitor and protect valuable data.

SAPPHIRE Technology, the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of graphics systems based on technology from AMD has just announced its first mainboard based on the exciting new APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) architecture from AMD. As a result of close collaboration with AMD, SAPPHIRE will introduce the SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W mainboard through its Global channel - heralding a new generation of low-power, fully featured PC solutions.

The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W is a mini-ITX mainboard featuring the E350 (Zacate) APU from AMD. Zacate is the first generation of APU - a combination of CPU and GPU computing technologies onto a single die to improve the performance of both visual and data-intensive tasks. For the first time it combines high-performance serial computing and parallel graphics processing cores on a single chip. The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W also uses the companion Hudson-M1 (A50M) Chip from AMD.

MSI, the global leading brand in motherboards, announced the launch of the upgraded version of IM-QM67 with the 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family (formerly codenamed "Sandy Bridge") to the Industrial Platform Computing (IPC) market segment. This motherboard supports multiple display outputs in a mini-ITX form factor board and utilizes Intel's 32nm process technology products for the highest HD graphic quality.

MSI debuts the IM-QM67 based on the Intel Core i7 and Core i5 processors and the Intel QM67 Express chipset to provide the latest slim form factor for embedded applications. The IM-QM67 supports 6 kinds of display outputs, including LVDS, eDP, VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DP and it has great 3D graphics performance and support for up to 1080P high definition video. The IM-QM67 also features support for Intel Active Management Technology 7.0, Direct-X 10 shader model 4.0, and full hardware acceleration.

Micron Technology, Inc. today unveiled a new portfolio of the industry's most advanced RealSSD solid-state drives (SSDs) for the fast growing flash-based notebook market. A new breed of notebooks are entering the market that have lightweight construction, snappier system responsiveness and a longer lasting battery-all made possible because of the innovations in flash-based storage products.

"SSDs are bringing excitement back into personal computing," said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. "Micron is accelerating this enthusiasm with our new RealSSD portfolio, providing even greater performance and higher capacities than our previous generation SSDs."

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today supercharges energy-efficient computing with the new ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 series powered by the AMD E-350 APU platform. The ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 series combines discrete-class graphics processing with a dual processor cores for the perfect synergy of CPU and GPU that delivers a perfect digital media experience with unprecedented energy-efficiency.

AMD Radeon HD 6310 discrete-class graphics processing takes charge of all digital media processing tasks to enable the ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 series to deliver stunning Blu-ray and smooth streaming high-definition video playback. The ZOTAC ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 series is a potent casual gaming platform capable of rendering stunning 3D visuals with Microsoft DirectX 11 technology.

Graphics card specialist Galaxy Tech is venturing into other kinds of gaming PC hardware. The company is ready with its first line of solid-state drives. The Galaxy SATA line of SSDs come in the 2.5" SATA 3 Gb/s form-factor, in capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. The SSD controller supports the TRIM garbage collection feature. Typically, these drives give read/write speeds of 240 MB/s (read) and 210 MB/s (write). The company did not give out any further information, but we hope to hear more at CES.

Intel Corporation announced today the Intel Solid-State Drive (Intel SSD) 310 Series, an ultra-small solid-state drive (SSD) that delivers Intel X25-class award-winning SSD performance, but in one-eighth the size. Measuring 51mm-by-30mm and only 5mm thick, the Intel SSD 310 is a fast, ultra-compact SSD that brings flexibility, ruggedness and scalability to innovative form factors and devices. It can enable highly responsive dual-drive notebooks, innovative single-drive tablets and low-power, rugged embedded industrial or military applications. When paired with a high-capacity hard disk drive (HDD) in a dual-drive system, the Intel SSD 310 can improve overall PC system performance by up to 60 percent.

A solid-state drive uses no moving parts, and thus is more durable and reliable than a mechanical HDD, while using less power and providing better system responsiveness. The Intel SSD 310 Series contains 34 nanometer (nm) Intel NAND flash memory and is available in an m-SATA form factor in 40 gigabyte (GB) and 80GB capacities.

Super Talent introduced its newest line of solid state drives (SSDs), under the UltraDrive MT series. The 2.5-inch form-factor SSDs make use of SATA 3 Gb/s interface, and are driven by an optimized Indilinx Barefoot controller. The drives make use of either SLC or MLC NAND flash chips. The read/write speeds on the UltraDrive MT is rated at 255 MB/s reads and 250 MB/s writes. The latest version of the Barefoot controller which is used in these drives support the TRIM garbage-collection feature that maintains write performance over time. UltraDrive MT should be available in typical capacities from 32 GB to 256 GB. The pricing, however, is not known.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced a SATA version of their new DuraDrive series SSDs.

Right on heels of our resent announcement of ZIF and PATA interfaces, the new DuraDrive AT2 now completes this family line by offering the same industrial grade durability, reliability and performance with the SATA II interface. The DuraDrive was designed for use in environments considered "too harsh" for a standard drive.

Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a global leader in storage and multimedia products, today announced the addition of low-profile mSATA and half-slim solid state drives (SSD) to its industrial product line. The new small footprint SSDs are designed especially for applications where a small form factor is desired, such as thin and light notebooks, netbooks, tablets, GPS, and mobile internet devices (MID).

No bigger than a business card, Transcend's two new SSD modules offer greater design flexibility and cost savings compared to most SSDs which typically use the larger 2.5" form factor. Despite their compact size, the mSATA and half-slim SSDs feature a high-bandwidth SATA 3Gb/s interface that helps to bring the performance advantages of SSDs to notebooks, mobile devices and other embedded storage applications.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, announced today that it has developed and started sampling 100, 200 and 400 gigabyte (GB) multi-level-cell (MLC) solid state drives (SSDs) for use as the primary storage in enterprise storage systems.

"As more and more server makers are adopting SSDs for use in eco-friendly platforms that consume less electrical power, the need for high-density SSDs in the server market is growing rapidly," said Byungse So, senior vice president, memory product planning & application engineering team, Samsung Electronics. "While Samsung is already well situated in the SSD market for enterprise servers with high-performance SSDs using single-level-cell (SLC) NAND flash memory, we are now expanding our line-up to include high-density SSDs using MLC NAND flash memory."

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today it has expanded its award-winning storage solution line with the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini bus powered portable hardware RAID storage solution. Featuring 14 pre-configured models with hardware RAID-1 "mirrored" redundancy for "live activity" data protection; or RAID-0 "stripe" for maximum data transfer speed, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini contains two 2.5" hard drives or OWC Mercury SSDs for up to 2.0TB of capacity, a "Quad Interface" of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, & eSATA connections for Plug and Play data transfer speeds up to 300 MB/s with Mac and PC computers.

Measuring the approximate size of a portable CD player - 5.6" (D) x 6.1" (W) x 1.1" (H) - the bus powered (no AC adapter needed) Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini's unique flat side by side two drive design enables it to fit into laptop, photography, and other gear carrying bags easily and without adding any bulk. With 14 models offering two 2.5" SATA hard drives with up to 2.0TB of capacity or two award-winning OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs with up to 800GB of capacity, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini delivers big storage performance in an under two pound, fanless solution.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced that it is moving towards publication of the next-generation flash memory standard, Universal Flash Storage (UFS). Major progress achieved at recent JEDEC committee meetings provides visibility on the anticipated UFS interface, which has been designed to be the most advanced specification for flash memory-based storage in mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers. Developed to help address the ever-increasing demand for improved device performance, UFS has been designed to initially enable data throughput of 300 megabytes per second (MB/s), and support command queuing features to raise the random read/write speeds. The standard will be finalized for public use within the next three months.

An explosion of data-intensive applications for mobile devices is driving the need for versatile storage solutions, and currently available flash storage options might not have the span to match overall system performance planned for future generation platforms. UFS will provide a dramatic change in architecture to increase performance while maintaining the benefits of low power consumption offered by existing solutions such as e•MMC.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced their newest USB 3.0 entrant, the USB 3.0 Storage Pod. With 3x the available power and a theoretical throughput that is 10x faster than its predecessor, USB 3.0 was made for external storage. Super Talent's new USB 3.0 Storage Pod unlocks the true performance of modern hard drives and enables them to reach speeds that were previously only obtainable on the SATA bus, yet remain fully backward compatible to the millions of USB 2.0 enabled products; something that eSATA was never able to do.

"The USB 3.0 Storage POD is going to change the perception of external storage. No longer should an external USB drive seen simply as second-class storage. Now you can upgrade the storage capabilities of your existing system without opening the case and in a convenient form factor that you can take with you anywhere"., - CH Lee COO of SuperTalent.

HighPoint Technologies announces an exciting update to the RocketRAID 2700 SATA Host Adapter Series with support for Port Multiplier (PM) storage enclosures. This is the industry's first PCI-E 2.0 x16 SATA Host Adapter to support PM enclosures. The RocketRAID 2700 SATA PM Series is designed for customers who place a premium on storage expansion and performance but demand affordability.

Extending its position in the enterprise storage market, Toshiba Storage Device Division announces its new family of enterprise-class solid state drives (SSDs). Developed to meet the market's demand for higher performance and lower power consumption, the new MKx001GRZB series combines Toshiba hard disk drive (HDD) expertise and its leadership as the inventor of NAND flash technology. The 2.5-inch small form factor drives use the latest 32 nanometer (nm) enterprise grade single-level cell (eSLC) NAND flash memory from Toshiba and 6 Gb/sec Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Samples will be available for customer qualification in the first quarter of 2011 and volume production will begin in the first half of 2011.

"Toshiba offers the industry's most comprehensive range of storage technologies and the resulting synergies distinguish us as a world-class total storage provider," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of enterprise marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division. "Toshiba stands alone in the market as the only SSD supplier that is vertically integrated for NAND flash and has deep enterprise HDD expertise. We possess one of the world's largest and most advanced NAND flash fabs, our own controller and firmware design teams, critical interface technologies, and established relationships with every major enterprise server and storage OEM. As a result, Toshiba is uniquely positioned to engineer solid state drives that deliver the performance, endurance, and reliability required for business critical applications."

Seagate today introduced Constellation.2, the industry's first 2.5-inch enterprise-class hard drive to reach a record 1TB capacity. The Constellation.2 drive is designed for server storage applications and offers a solid combination of high capacity, leading 6Gb/s performance, superior data integrity, and best-in-class low power consumption.

The Constellation.2 drive is designed for system builders and OEMs who want to offer competitive, feature-rich, bulk storage solutions for a sustainable future. The Constellation.2 drive is fit for use in a range of applications in Directed Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) environments, from small-to-midsized businesses to the largest enterprise data centers storing and hosting data to the cloud.

Flash storage specialist RunCore is readying a new 3.5" SATA solid state drive (SSD) that provides 1 TB of storage. The drive uses two SandForce SF-1200 controllers in internal RAID 0, the internal RAID controller makes use of SATA 6 Gb/s interface with the host, giving the drive transfer speeds of up to 500 MB/s. The two SSD units inside the drive are set to run in RAID 0, which is abstract to the host. The company is yet to finalize a release date or price.

Western Digital (WD) announced a new line of Caviar Blue line of 3.5" SATA hard drives that make use of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Caviar Blue strikes a balance between performance and energy efficiency, it's a middle-ground between the performance-oriented Caviar Black, and energy efficiency-oriented Caviar Green. The drive uses a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. The new lineup of Caviar Blue drives also support 4K sectors, also known as Advanced Format. The drives are available in capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB, and 500 GB, which feature 16 MB cache; 750 GB and 1 TB, which feature 32 MB cache. Fairly standard pricing which are on par with prices of existing price per gigabyte of Caviar Blue drives, can be expected.