Display panel maker AU Optronics, which supplies LCD panels to major monitor and TV manufacturers, is reportedly working on bringing Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) panels into the mainstream, and promises "affordable" 27-inch and 32-inch monitors beaming those many pixels by Q1 or Q2, 2014. AU Optronics, or AUO as it's known in the industry, supplies LCD panels to a variety of monitor manufacturers, including ASUS, BenQ, Philips, and even Samsung (which also makes its own high-end panels). Among the two panels AUO is working on, one offers sRGB gamut with Adobe RGB gamut coverage; both will be able to reproduce 10-bit with dithering. Given that these panels will be intended for monitors, there will be two major requirements - at least 60 Hz of refresh rate, and as low response time as possible.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a global leader in digital media and its convergence technologies, announced today a new slot-in, slim portable DVD writer, the SE-B18AB optical disc drive (ODD), that adds to its former version's sleek design and convenient functions.

The new SE-B18AB provides a metallic-finished surface which nicely matches today's slim laptop designs. With its stylish footprint and smart features, consumers will appreciate the SE-B18AB as an excellent laptop companion.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) today announced that its Samsung HDD division is shipping the new 2.5-inch Spinpoint M9T, which at 9.5 mm thin is the world's thinnest 2TB hard drive. Offered in capacities of 1.5TB and 2TB, the Spinpoint M9T mobile drive gives OEMs, channel system integrators and consumers a thin, high-capacity storage solution ideal for external storage, notebook integration and upgrades, desktop, and gaming system applications.

"The M9T combines the highest areal density shipping in a single storage device with an innovative design that fits into mainstream notebook applications. While other 2TB are solutions on the market are 15 mm thick, the vast majority of mobile devices are designed to use a 9.5 mm drive; with the M9T, those devices can now have 2TB of storage, enabling a richer computing experience," said Dave Frankovich, senior product line manager, Samsung HDD.

In addition to the HDPF-UT series portable HDDs, I-O Data rolled out the MF275XPBR 27-inch monitor. This rarity makes use of a Super PLS (plane-to-line switching) LCD panel made by Samsung, that's LED-backlit. PLS panels offer comparable viewing angles to conventional IPS panels, but with higher maximum brightness, and increased image quality. The display is, however, better suited for productivity than gaming, as you'll soon find out. It offers viewing angles of 178°/178° (H/V), 15 ms (yes, fifteen milliseconds) of response time, that can be lowered to only 8.3 ms using display overdrive; 300 cd/m² maximum brightness, 1,000:1 static and dynamic mega-contrast ratio; and full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) native resolution. Display inputs include DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. Miscellaneous features include stereo speakers, and an ECO Mode function that lowers power consumption by up to 30 percent. It is slated for a mid-November launch in the Japanese market.

Samsung began selling ATIV Book 9 Plus in the US, its flagship Ultrabook. This 13-incher features a high-resolution 3200 x 1800-pixel screen, and a wedge-shaped aluminium unibody chassis. The US version runs a Core i7 "Haswell" chip with Iris Pro graphics, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of SSD-based storage. No points for guessing which operating system it runs - Windows 8.1 Pro. Measuring 317.5 mm x 220.9 mm x 12.7 mm (folded), the ATIV Book 9 Plus weighs about 1.39 kg. It's priced at US $1,800.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced its fifth generation of green memory at the Memory Solutions Forum 2013 at the Shilla hotel in Seoul.

Under a "New Memory Paradigm" theme, Samsung introduced advanced memory solutions optimized especially for next generation data centers that use cloud computing based on a big data platform. This type of infrastructure is rapidly increasing in support of the mobile computing industry. The newly presented fifth generation green memory solutions will help to resolve key data center issues by achieving dramatic performance improvements, securing additional physical space for systems, and saving large amounts of power.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, today announced a private share redemption transaction with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the amount of 32.7 million ordinary shares, representing approximately 9% of Seagate's shares outstanding as of the end of the fiscal first quarter 2014. Following the transaction, Samsung will continue to own approximately 12.5 million shares of Seagate and Dr. Seh-Woong Jeong, Executive Vice President at the Systems LSI Division of Samsung Electronics will remain on the Seagate Board of Directors.

"We are pleased that Samsung intends to continue to be a long-term strategic shareholder and valued business partner with Seagate. Our success with the Samsung hard disk drive products that we acquired has exceeded our expectations and we are very encouraged with our joint product development for enterprise solid state drives. We look forward to continuing to benefit from Dr. Jeong's counsel and guidance as part of our Board of Directors and we are very optimistic about the future of our flash technology partnership," said Steve Luczo, Seagate Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced today the availability of the Samsung Shape Wireless Audio Multiroom speaker system (WAM750), enabling music lovers to enjoy tether-free entertainment in any room of the house, from various music sources. The flexible new speaker can be used alone or in combination with the Samsung Hub (WAM250) and additional M7 speakers to create a multi-room system.

Easy plug and play installation makes set-up a breeze: simply connect the M7 or optional Samsung Hub to a router, plug in, and download the free app to effortlessly control multiple speakers and audio sources from a smartphone. With the Samsung Hub (WAM250) consumers are able to connect additional M7 speakers in any room of their home while maintaining superior sound quality and eliminating the need to connect any of the speakers to a router. For one-to-one pairing of an M7 to a smartphone, Bluetooth with NFC functionality is also included.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that Samsung's SM1625 SSD, a high-performing solid state drive with high density and low power consumption has been certified by VMware as an optimized solution for VMware Virtual SAN. The SM1625 SSD, Samsung's first dual-ported SAS SSD with densities of up to 800 gigabytes (GBs), has been certified for VMware Virtual SAN for use in data centers and other enterprise applications. VMware Virtual SAN is a new offering that allows customers to pool server disks and flash resources to create a resilient, high-performance and dynamic shared storage solution for virtual machines.

"VMware Virtual SAN provides customers a simpler and more flexible tier of storage for their virtual machines," said John Gilmartin, vice president, Cloud Infrastructure Products, VMware. "By clustering flash and direct-attached storage, VMware Virtual SAN provides a shared storage solution that is high-performing, cost-effective, and seamlessly integrated into VMware vCenter Server. We are pleased to have Samsung's SM1625 SSD as a high-performance storage option for our joint customers."

Dell moved ahead of Samsung in the worldwide PC monitor market for the first time since 2007, shipping more than 5.0 million units in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13). Total PC monitor shipments for the quarter were 33.5 million units, which was 1.6 million units more than forecast but still represented a year-over-year decline of -0.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker.

"Dell grew its unit shipments by 12.7% compared to the first quarter of 2013, which vaulted the company into the number one position worldwide. However, Samsung continues to be the worldwide revenue leader, despite its declining shipment numbers," said Jennifer Song, Research Analyst, Worldwide Trackers at IDC. "On a geographic basis, China remained the largest market for PC monitors with 29.2% share, followed by the U.S. with 18.4% share. The number three market, Brazil, trailed by some distance with 4.3% share."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it is mass producing the most advanced DDR4 memory, for enterprise servers in next-generation data centers.

With the introduction of these high-performance, high-density DDR4 modules, Samsung can better support the need for advanced DDR4 in rapidly expanding, large-scale data centers and other enterprise server applications.

Samsung is going into IFA 2013 with a gargantuan lineup of displays and consumer electronics, two of which are bound to grab eyeballs by the bunch. The first of the two is a 31.5-inch ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels native resolution) PC monitor. Given its only other known specification, it will be geared more toward graphics professionals, than gamers. The display is said to offer 99 percent coverage of Adobe RGB colorspace. The other big (literally) display product on Samsung's booth will be a huge 98-inch video-wall, which is also ultra HD-capable. Video walls make for good commercial boards.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. is exhibiting its latest virtualization products and solutions at VMworld 2013, an annual conference for IT professionals focusing on virtualization and cloud computing. Samsung will be showcasing a number of virtualization products for the first time in the U.S. at VMworld, booth #1729, from August 25-29. These include the new NB-NH Cloud Stand, the all-new 21.5" NC221 and the rest of Samsung's 2013 NC Series zero client lineup of cloud displays, equipped with the new 2nd generation Teradici chipset (Tera2) processor for lower energy costs and greater power efficiency.

"Samsung is dedicated to supporting enterprise customers with products that offer businesses across vertical markets such as education, federal government, corporate, banking/financial and healthcare with secure and efficient ways to embrace cloud computing," said Tod Pike, senior vice president at Samsung's Enterprise Business Division. "Samsung continues to drive technology leadership in virtualization and cloud display by providing solutions like the NB-NH Cloud Stand that enable businesses to more easily deploy, maintain and manage user environments that are less vulnerable to security risks, while also freeing up valuable desktop real estate."

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today introduced the latest iteration of its professional grade Series 9 monitor, the SB971. Featuring quad high-definition resolution and wide viewing angles, the premium, hand-calibrated Series 9 SB971 was designed for users that require a richer viewing experience, such as photo enthusiasts and graphic artists.

"Graphic professionals, photo enthusiasts and other groups that meticulously edit visual content require a monitor with extremely accurate color rendering, immersive viewing angles and premium picture quality, and the SB971 meets these demands," said Mike Abary, senior vice president of consumer IT product marketing at Samsung Electronics America. "This new Series 9 product will join the recently introduced SC770 touch monitor and SC750 rotating monitor to round out Samsung's innovative lineup, offering every kind of user an ideal monitor for whatever their needs may be."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today introduced the first solid state drive (SSD) based on its industry-leading 3D V-NAND technology. Samsung announced its new SSD, designed for use in enterprise servers and data centers, during a keynote at the Flash Memory Summit 2013 here.

"By applying our 3D V-NAND - which has overcome the formidable hurdle of scaling beyond the 10-nanometer (nm) class*, Samsung is providing its global customers with high density and exceptional reliability, as well as an over 20 percent performance increase and an over 40 percent improvement in power consumption," said E.S. Jung, executive vice president, semiconductor R&D center at Samsung Electronics and a keynote speaker at the Flash Memory Summit. "As we pioneer a new era of memory technology, we will continue to introduce differentiated green memory products and solutions for the server, mobile and PC markets to help reduce energy waste and to create greater shared value in the enterprise and for consumers."

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today announced the U.S. launch of the ATIV Book 9 Plus and ATIV Tab 3. These two additions to Samsung's PC lineup represent the company's continued commitment to offering consumers choice and easy convergence between PC and smartphone devices.

In keeping with the iconic design legacy of the award-winning Book 9, the Book 9 Plus delivers an unparalleled and superbly vivid display, a 10-point touch-screen and enhanced performance in a beautiful and sleek form factor. The ATIV Tab 3 takes design cues from the popular Samsung GALAXY series and is the world's thinnest Windows 8 tablet. The Book 9 will be available for pre-sale in the U.S. on August 18 and the Tab 3 will be in stores beginning on September 1. Samsung also plans to introduce versions of both products specialized for business use in fall 2013.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, which breaks through the current scaling limit for existing NAND flash technology. Achieving gains in performance and area ratio, the new 3D V-NAND will be used for a wide range of consumer electronics and enterprise applications, including embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs).

Samsung's new V-NAND offers a 128 gigabit (Gb) density in a single chip, utilizing the company's proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array. By applying both of these technologies, Samsung's 3D V-NAND is able to provide over twice the scaling of 20nm-class planar NAND flash.

Today is the day the headphone becomes "smart" with the launch of Muzik, an innovative company inspired to transform the way music is experienced. Muzik, founded by disruptive innovator, Jason Hardi, is pioneering a new space called Social Smartware, coined to describe the seamless connection of consumer electronic devices, content and social media platforms to make music instantly discoverable and shareable in an effortless way. Muzik is launching a full line of smart audio products synced to their mobile Muzik ecosystem that will activate a new wave of innovation in the headphone space.

Muzik's game-changing lineup includes their marquee product: the smart, on-ear wireless headphone that combines high-fidelity audio in a simple, elegant sleek design with groundbreaking capacitive touch controls. They are the first headphones in the world that allow users to natively share what they are listening to on Facebook and Twitter or instantly send a song anywhere in the world.

German PC maker Deltatronic announced Silentium, a completely fanless all-in-one desktop. Its designers took advantage of the space behind the main body to deploy a large heatsink that passively cools its various hot components, like the chipset and CPU, which isn't a wimpy low-TDP Atom fare, but full-fledged a Core i7-3770T "Ivy Bridge" quad-core, backed by Intel Q77 Express chipset. The i7-3770T runs at a manageable 45W TDP. It features a 24-inch screen with 1920 x 1080 pixels native resolution, handled by Intel's integrated graphics. Other specs on the Silentium include 4 GB of DDR3-1600 memory, 128 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD, a DVD writer, a 4-in-1 card reader, a 0.3 MP webcam, 6W stereo speakers, and connectivity that includes Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, and gigabit Ethernet. The desktop uses a 120W external power brick. Available now, Deltratronic Silentium starts at 990 EUR.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has developed the industry's first 2.5-inch (SFF-8639) NVM Express (NVMe) PCIe solid state drive (SSD), to open up the high-end enterprise storage market. The newly developed high-speed 1.6 TB NVMe SSD provides a sequential read speed at 3,000 MB/s, which allows it to process 500 GB (gigabytes) of data (equivalent to 100 Full HD movies 5 GB in length) in less than 3 minutes. When compared to other products with similar specifications, this new SSD is 14 times faster than a high-end enterprise HDD for server use, and six times faster than Samsung's former high-end enterprise SSD storage.

The XS1715's random read performance reaches up to 740,000 IOPS (Input Output Operations Per Second), which is more than 10 times as fast as existing high-end SSD storage options. The new NVMe SSD XS1715 comes in 400 GB, 800 GB and 1.6 TB (terabytes) versions. It can also be found on the NVMe Integrators List (IL), which makes it an easy-to-manage and highly reliable solution for data center and server storage customers. System performance can be improved dramatically by upgrading to the NVMe SSD XS1715 from a 2.5-inch HDD or a 2.5-inch SATA SSD.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today held the 2013 Samsung SSD Global Summit at the Westin Chosun Seoul in celebration of the launch of its new solid state drive (SSD), the Samsung SSD 840 EVO. Along with the announcement of its latest SSD under the theme of "SSDs for everyone", the Samsung SSD Global Summit also explored the future of the global SSD market, which is quickly replacing the HDD market.

"After accelerating the growth of the SSD market by last year's launch of entry-level, high-performance SSDs we are introducing a much faster SSDs with up to 1 TB capacities offering consumers a wider range of choices," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung continues to enhance its SSD brand image by delivering the industry's highest quality solutions and continuously increasing its SSD market share by expanding the adoption of higher density SSDs especially in client PC segments"

Despite its $900-ish retail presence, AMD's 5 GHz eight-core processor, the FX-9590, was designed to be an OEM part, where OEMs could deploy the right motherboard and cooling solution for the 220W TDP chip. One of the first OEMs to [dare to] come out with one such contraption is Japan's Mouse Computer. The company's G-Tune Masterpiece a1500BA1 desktop includes an AMD FX-9590 processor, and Radeon HD 8990 (re-branded HD 7990 "Malta") graphics card as standard equipment.

The Masterpiece a1500BA1 uses a Cooler Master Seidon 120XL to tame the 220W AMD FX-9590, and an unannounced MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 motherboard to seat it. Other components include Kingston HyperX DDR3-1866 MHz 16 GB dual-channel memory, Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD, an additional 3 TB HDD, a Blu-ray writer, and an unknown 1200W 80 Plus Gold-certified PSU. Windows 8 64-bit comes pre-installed. Based on the 32 nm "Vishera" silicon, AMD FX-9590 is an eight-core processor in the AM3+ package, with 4.80 GHz nominal and 5.00 GHz TurboCore frequency. The 5.00 GHz Turbo state spools up for all eight cores. Backed by a 1-year warranty (besides individual component warranties), the Masterpiece a1500BA1 is priced at a staggering 449,800 JPY (US $4,500).

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today announced the U.S. launch of the ATIV Book 9 Lite. Taking a page from the celebrated and iconic design of the Book 9 family of PCs, Samsung continues to deliver on the promise of ATIV by offering consumers cuttingedge technology, seamless convergence and unparalleled style in a slim, compact form factor. The sophisticated, yet affordable Book 9 Lite gives users everything they need to stay connected, productive and entertained. It is now available for pre-sale in the U.S. and will be in stores beginning on July 28.

"With the ATIV Book 9 Lite, we created a device that fits the needs of a larger consumer base, while preserving the remarkable design and overall experience delivered by the Book 9 lineage," said Mike Abary, senior vice president of consumer IT product marketing at Samsung Electronics America. "To further streamline the computing experience and offer convenience to users, we built an integrated solution, SideSync, to bring together the mobile and PC ecosystems."

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today announced the current availability of two new consumer monitors: the Series 7 SC770 Touch Monitor, the company's first consumer multi-touch display; and the Series 7 SC750 monitor, featuring an ergonomic rotating display.

"As the market for devices continues to grow rapidly, consumers are expecting more in terms of performance, convenience and interactive functionality," said Mike Abary, senior vice president of consumer IT product marketing at Samsung Electronics America. "Samsung is building on our celebrated design heritage and expanding consumer options with our newest display lineup, specifically with Samsung's new Series 7 Touch Monitor. Users will find a differentiated touch-control experience through improved multimedia functionality, immersive viewing angles and innovative design."

Although NVIDIA's Tegra line of SoCs are among the best performing there are on the market; the high-end SoC market is dominated by Qualcomm and Samsung. These chips are built from scratch by the companies, but the underlying CPU and GPU architectures are licensed from ARM, and the likes of Imagination Technologies, respectively. Imagination's PowerVR graphics cores make up over 80 percent of the embedded GPU market-share. There's a big change of plans at NVIDIA. The company is beginning to think that its expertise in GPU is better proliferated in the mobile SoC space not by waiting for Tegra to gain a foothold, but by licencing its GPU IP (intellectual property) to whoever is willing pay up, much in the same way ARM and Imagination do.

NVIDIA spokesperson David Shannon, in a recent blog post, wrote: "our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market... We'll start by licensing the GPU core based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture, the world's most advanced, most efficient GPU. Its DX11, OpenGL 4.3, and GPGPU capabilities, along with vastly superior performance and efficiency, create a new class of licensable GPU cores. Through our efforts designing Tegra into mobile devices, we've gained valuable experience designing for the smallest power envelopes. As a result, Kepler can operate in a half-watt power envelope, making it scalable from smartphones to supercomputers."