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.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will launch a new line of high performance CompactFlash (CF) memory cards, the EXCERIA PRO 2 series, expressly targeting the digital single lens reflex camera market. The initial line-up of 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB cards will come to market in spring of 2013 and offer the world's highest level3 read and write speeds. EXCERIA PRO will position Toshiba to meet the demands of the high-end DSLR market, including high resolution image capture, sustained continuous shooting, HD video recording and high speed data transfers to other devices.

The EXCERIA PRO CF cards integrate Toshiba's high performance NAND flash memory and specially developed dedicated firmware. They achieve a read speed of 160 MB/s and write speed of 150 MB/s, the highest level yet reported.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that samples of two new large capacity nearline hard disk drives (HDDs) are available now. The 3.5-inch 7,200 rpm MG Series includes both SATA and SAS versions, "MG03ACA400" and "MG03SCA400" respectively, that deliver 4TB[1] of storage, the largest capacity yet offered by Toshiba. Samples of lower capacity models in each series are also available.

As business works to keep up with the explosion of unstructured data, large capacity HDDs are crucial tools in IT systems designed to organize and access fast growing reservoirs of valuable information. The massive capacities of the MG Series drives are suited to RAID storage and arrays, tiered virtual infrastructures for public and private cloud deployments, archives and disk-based backup.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that the company has developed a prototype memory element for a spin transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM) that achieves the world's lowest power consumption yet reported, indicating that it has the potential to surpass the power consumption efficiency of SRAM as cache memory.

Like all digital products, mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet PCs, rely on high-speed memory to supply the main processor with essential instructions and frequently requested data. Until now SRAM has provided the cache-memory solution. However, improving the performance of SRAM to match advances in mobile products results in increasing current leakage, both during operation and in standby mode, degrading power performance.

The European Commission has fined seven international groups of companies a total of € 1,470,515,000 for participating in either one or both of two distinct cartels in the sector of cathode ray tubes ("CRT"). For almost ten years, between 1996 and 2006, these companies fixed prices, shared markets, allocated customers between themselves and restricted their output.

One cartel concerned colour picture tubes used for televisions and the other one colour display tubes used in computer monitors. The cartels operated worldwide. The infringements found by the Commission therefore cover the entire European Economic Area (EEA). Chunghwa, LG Electronics, Philips and Samsung SDI participated in both cartels, while Panasonic, Toshiba, MTPD (currently a Panasonic subsidiary) and Technicolor (formerly Thomson) participated only in the cartel for television tubes. Chunghwa received full immunity from fines under the Commission's 2006 Leniency Notice for the two cartels, as it was the first to reveal their existence to the Commission. Other companies received reductions of their fines for their cooperation in the investigation under the Commission's leniency programme.

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE), Storage Products Division has today announced that the SlimFITT HDD is now available to buy from select distributors across the EMEA region. With 900 GB of capacity and a spindle speed of 10,500 RPM, the drive provides enterprises with a dependable, high speed drive for business critical data.

The SlimFITT model of the 2.5-inch (6.4 cm) SAS drive is mounted in a 3.5-inch frame making it ideal for blade and rack mount servers accustomed to larger form factor drives. Its small form factor has the added benefit of lower energy consumption, helping businesses to cut down on energy bills.

Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc., a committed technology leader, announces four new large capacity nearline hard disk drives (HDDs), including the first self-encrypting models in the company's enterprise capacity-optimized storage lineup. The 3.5-inch 7,200 rpm MG Series includes both SATA models - the MG03ACA400 and the MG03ACA400Y - and SAS models - MG03SCA400 and the MG03SCP400 - and all deliver 4 TB of storage, the company's largest capacity to date.

As businesses work to keep up with the explosion of unstructured data, large capacity HDDs are crucial for IT systems designed to organize and access the growing pools of valuable information. The massive capacity of the MG Series is perfectly suited for RAID storage and arrays, tiered virtual infrastructures for public and private cloud deployments, archives, and disk-based backup and data protection solutions. The robust 24x7 design and massive capacity provide the cost-effectiveness required for business-critical servers and external storage systems, including NAS, SAN and tiered storage deployments for large enterprises, as well as for direct-attached storage in general purpose servers and SMB-oriented systems and applications.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has resumed manufacturing at the Toshiba Semiconductor Thailand Co., Ltd. (TST) facility in Pathumthani, Thailand, in order to meet healthy demand for discrete products for smart phones and tablet PCs. Production resumed earlier this month and shipments will start today. Production will continue until TST opens its new facility in Purachinburi.

TST's facility in the Bangkadi Industrial Park, Pathunthani, was completely inundated in last year's floods, forcing suspension of operations. Assembly and packaging of the small signal devices and photocouplers the facility handled was transferred to other Toshiba facilities in Japan and Malaysia, and also outsourced as a means to respond to changes in demand. In April this year, TST decided to relocate its operations to the 304 Industrial Park in Purachinburi, which is outside of Thailand's major flood plain, leaving the now cleaned up Bangkadi facility vacant and available.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the wireless LAN embedded SD memory card "FlashAir." The FlashAir is a standard SDHC (High Capacity) card that incorporates a wireless LAN1 chip set plus antenna for wireless communications. For a limited time, Olympus will offer the FlashAir for free through a mail-in rebate when purchasing select Olympus Cameras. Rebate forms can be downloaded at www.getolympus.com/olympusimageshare.

"Sharing and transferring photos from a camera to all the various gadgets a consumer owns these days can be a tedious process," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of product marketing and development of branded storage products, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "To simplify this process, Toshiba has created the FlashAir, which allows photos to be transferred wirelessly from a digital camera to a Wi-Fi-enabled PC, tablet or smartphone, removing the need for cables or card removal."

Market research firm TrendForce released NAND flash shipment figures for 3Q 2012. The global NAND flash market is valued at US $4.626 billion, a healthy 6.6% growth over the previous quarter. A TrendForce DRAMeXchange report provided a break-down of shipments of NAND flash by manufacturers. Leading the pack is Samsung, with 41.2% market-share, registering a 1.8% QoQ growth. Trailing behind is Toshiba, with 24.7% market share, and a significant 12.9% QoQ growth. In September, Toshiba cut prices and scaled up production, which may have contributed to the growth. Micron holds 14.4% of the market with 2.8% growth, SK Hynix 11.6% with 6.4% growth (the company began mass-production of SSD-grade NAND flash this quarter), and Intel with 7.6% of the market-share, growing at 19.7%. Bear in mind, these numbers represent NAND flash components used not only in SSDs, but also USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.

QNAP Systems, Inc. announced today a major expansion of the number of compatible peripherals available for its family of Turbo NAS products. The major additions include a Seagate 2.5-inch 1TB internal SATA hard drive and 2.5-inch 1TB external storage device, two Arkeia Software 3rd party software apps and seventy network cameras.

Logitec introduced a NAS device of a different kind: an optical drive that acts as a WLAN hotspot, letting a wide range of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebooks access contents of DVDs, or write onto them. The drive works as a standard external DVD writer over USB 2.0 interface, using a single cable for both host connectivity and power. USB is the drive's only power source, so you'll need AC adapters or vehicle cigarette lighter adapter to use it without a host PC.

Its optical drive component is originally made by TSST (Toshiba-Samsung). It can write DVD ± R/+RW at 8X, DVD±R DL /-RW at 6X, DVD-RAM at 5X, and CDs at 24X. DVDs are read at speeds of up to 8X, and CDs at 24X. The drive ships with store links to apps on Apple App Store and Google Play, which let you download file-manager, and disc burning software for smartphones and tablets; as well as Nero Kwik Burn for PCs. Measuring 150 x 198 x 25 mm, the drives weigh about 430 g. The base model, which includes just a USB cable and AC adapter is priced at 6,980 JPY (US $88.2), and a variant that includes a vehicle power adapter for 8,980 JPY (US $113.4).

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced that its consumer line-up of Satellite laptops and Ultrabooks, Qosmio laptops as well as its All-in-One desktops featuring Windows 8 are available for pre-order starting today and will be widely available for purchase from select U.S. retailers and ToshibaDirect.com on October 26.

Toshiba's new laptops feature spacious touchpads with Windows 8 gesture support to allow users to perform gestures on the touchpad as they would on a touchscreen device. In addition, to help transition consumers to the innovative interface in Windows 8, Toshiba's new PCs come pre-installed with Toshiba Desktop Assist, a utility designed to give users easy access to their programs, control panel, as well as files and folders, similar to the Start Menu in previous versions of Windows.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 87.5 million units in the third quarter of 2012, a decline of 8.3 percent compared with the third quarter of 2011, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"A continuing slowdown in consumer PC shipments played a big part in the overall PC market decline," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "The third quarter was also a transitional quarter before Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system release, so shipments were less vigorous as vendors and their channel partners liquidated inventory.

Toshiba announced the new MQ01ABD series hybrid hard drives for notebooks. Built in the 2.5-inch 9.5 mm-thick form-factor, the drives embed a dual-platter hard drive with 8 GB of SLC NAND flash memory, and 32 MB cache for the hard drive component. The hard drive component has a maximum spindle speed of 5,400 RPM. Available in 750 GB (MQ01ABD075H) and 1 TB (MQ01ABD100H) variants, the drives support SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and Advanced Format. The company did not reveal pricing, as the two drives are being sampled from today.

Toshiba unveiled a fleet of new models in its Canvio line of consumer storage products. These include the new Canvio Slim line of compact portable HDDs, updated Canvio Desk series external HDD with increased capacity, and updated Canvio (mainline) portable HDDs. Measuring just 75 x 107 x 9 mm (WxDxH) and weighing 115 g, the Canvio Slim is designed to complement Ultrabooks. It embeds a 7 mm-thick 500 GB hard drive. Built with brushed-aluminum bodies, the Canvio Slim will be available in graphite-black (model: HD-SA50GK) and silver (model: HD-SA50GS). The Canvio Slim takes advantage of USB 3.0, with a single cable for power and host connectivity. The Canvio Slim is slated for late-October

Moving on, Toshiba's capacious Canvio Desk line is updated to include a 2 TB variant (models: HD-EA20TK (black) and HD-EA20TW (black&white)), along with the 1 TB variant. The Canvio Desk uses an external power supply, and uses USB 3.0 for snappy host connectivity. The Canvio Desk measures 167x 129 x 42 mm (WxHxD). These are slated for late-November. Lastly, Toshiba's mainline Canvio series of portable hard drives will be expanded to include 1.5 TB, 1 TB, 750 GB, and 500 GB models, with black, silver, and white color options. The 1.5 TB variant is 3 mm thicker than the others, which measure 119 x 79 x 13.5 mm (WxHxD). The new Canvio (mainline) drives join Canvio Slim for a late-October launch.

Toshiba Corporation announced today that it has settled claims of alleged antitrust violations in the LCD business brought by direct purchasers of LCD panels and certain products containing such panels. Toshiba will pay US$30 million, and the Plaintiffs will relinquish all claims for damages, fees, costs and other relief. The agreement is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco).

This settlement follows an $87 million July 3 jury verdict against Toshiba. While Toshiba expected to file a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and an appeal if necessary to overturn the jury verdict, Toshiba settled to avoid the inconvenience associated with further prolonged litigation. Toshiba admits no wrongdoing as part of this settlement, and it continues to maintain that it did not engage in illegal activity.

At this time, Toshiba does not plan to revise projections for fiscal 2012 business performance due to this matter.

Apparently, Toshiba's strategy of inflating NAND flash pricing by cutting down production by 30 percent, stimulating similar reductions across the industry, backfired. Taking advantage of Toshiba's production cuts, Micron Technology ramped up its production, gaining market share. The Idahoan company's increased market share at Toshiba's expense ensured that SSD makers with Toshiba NAND flash create variants of their products with Micron's chips. Toshiba's latest move, according to a TweakTown report, is to scale its NAND flash production back up, and cut NAND flash prices down by 20 - 25 percent. Such a price-cut could result in further SSD price-cuts across the board, as the industry would end up with large inventories of Toshiba- and Micron-branded NAND flash chips.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., (TAEC), a committed leader that collaborates with technology companies to create breakthrough designs, today announced that it will expand its family of EXCERIA memory cards with the addition of microSDHC versions. The new cards offer the industry's leading performance in this format - which is the smallest currently available.

The EXCERIA series, named to reflect a combination of "excellent" and "experience", offers cards fully compliant with the UHS-I Memory Card Standard. The minimum recording speed is compliant with UHS speed class 1 and SD speed class 10. These cards deliver the capacity, speed and performance needed to support the capabilities of the latest personal digital equipment, including HD video recording and continuous image shooting with digital cameras. Toshiba's EXCERIA family includes versions offering the world's fastest data transfer speed for an SD memory card.

Toshiba UK today announces the launch of the Satellite U920T - a new hybrid device combining the ease-of-use, wake up time and performance of an Ultrabook with a tablet's touchscreen interface and portability. The 31.8cm (12.5") touchscreen transforms easily from laptop mode to a tablet with a simple sliding motion that reveals a full size keyboard.

The Satellite U920T is perfect for users looking for a versatile computer in an extremely compact form. Offering the best of both worlds for both content consumption and creation, the convertible Ultrabook can be operated in tablet mode, or in a more traditional laptop position when required, such as writing lengthy emails or for web chats.

Toshiba UK today expands its range of high-performance Satellite P-series laptops with the launch of the Satellite P845. Building on the P series' premium design and power, it now features an Intel Core ultra-low voltage (ULV) processor - delivering more efficient power consumption and a longer battery life.

Perfect for movie enthusiasts, gamers, photographers or video editors looking for a portable laptop without compromising on performance, the Satellite P845 also lets users interact with games and multimedia content in a new way, using the highly responsive 35.6cm (14") capacitive touchscreen.

Toshiba UK today adds the Satellite U940 to its growing family of high powered, stylish and portable Ultrabooks. Encased in an elegant Ice Silver chassis, and featuring a 35.6cm (14") display, the Satellite U940 is the perfect choice for those looking for a lightweight laptop capable of running more demanding tasks - the perfect companion for taking on long journeys or using away from a mains power source.

Combining a 3rd generation Intel processor for Ultrabooks with dedicated graphics, the Satellite U940 offers a fast and responsive experience when performing everyday tasks, and is capable of running HD multimedia content smoothly. Integrated graphics also allow casual games to be played with ease, whether installed on the system or running from a browser. The slim chassis accommodates powerful stereo speakers enhanced by SRS Premium Sound 3D for a rich sound experience.

Toshiba announced the Canvio Personal Cloud, a small-scale desktop NAS device that comes with pre-installed media, and two variants - 2 TB and 3 TB. It features most common NAS features, including applications for iOS and Android that let you configure the device and access its data over local network or the internet. Internally, the Canvio Personal Cloud appears to use a single 3.5-inch SATA hard drive. It uses gigabit Ethernet as its only network interface, and features a USB 2.0 port that lets you add mass-storage devices and expand its storage. The 2 TB variant starts at US $220, while the 3 TB starts at $250. Market availability is expected to be some time in September.

Like its compatriot Sony, Toshiba has taken advantage of IFA 2012 to showcase a Windows 8 hybrid machine that can be used as a tablet or as an ultrabook, depending on its owner's needs. Known as the Satellite U925t, Toshiba's 'best of both worlds' mobile solution is just 0.78 inches thick, it weighs 3.2 pounds (~ 1.45 kg), and features a 12.5-inch sliding touchscreen (protected by Gorilla Glass), a backlit keyboard, an Intel Core i5 (Ivy Bridge) processor, a 128 GB SSD, a rear-facing 3-megapixel camera, and a HD webcam.

The U925t also has two USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI output, support for Intel's Wireless Display technology, NFC, and comes pre-loaded with a few branded apps like Desktop Assist, Toshiba Central, App Place, News Place and Book Place. Toshiba's creation is expected to become available on October 26th (Windows 8's launch day) priced just north of $1,000.

Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, today announced it is expanding its enterprise Solid State Drives (eSSD) family with the PX-Series, featuring three models targeted for various enterprise applications: boot, read-intensive, entry level servers; entry-to-mid-range application servers; and high-performance enterprise application servers. The PX-Series reflects Toshiba's continued storage innovation and coincides with the company's celebration of its 25th anniversary as the inventor of NAND flash technology. Each model is optimized for its target segment with NAND flash processes, capacity, interface support, and capabilities.