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Kingston Creates Self-Destructing USB Device
January 22, 2016 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Kingston has taken the covers off its 2016 range at CES in Las Vegas and the most notable device on the list is the ‘self-destructing’ latest DataTraveler 2000 USB hard drive.
What makes it interesting is that it has a built-in keypad that allows it to be PIN protected when inserted into any device and can be set to ‘self-destruct’ after 10 incorrect log-in attempts. Better still, it comes with an aluminium cover to prevent the self-destruct accidentally being triggered in your bag.
Compatible with USB up to 3.1, it offers speeds of up to 135MBps read and 40MBps write. It is also designed to be OS independent, and includes up to 256-bit AES protection without any drivers on the host device.
“We are excited to add DataTraveler 2000 to our existing line-up of fast and encrypted USB flash drives for organisations and SMBs,” said Valentina Vitolo, flash business manager at Kingston. “It is the perfect option to deploy in the workforce where a uniform encrypted data storage solution that works on many different operating systems is in use.”
The device will be available later in the quarter. Prices are to be announced, but capacities will range from 16GB to 64GB.
Next up is the KC400, the latest addition to the SSDNow range powered by an eight-channel Phison controller and quad-core internal processor. It will be available is capacities from 128GB to 1TB with speeds of 550/540MBps read/write on the 256GB drive.
The MobileLite range of WiFi-enabled SD card readers has been expanded with the addition of the Wireless G3 and Wireless Pro. The G3 offers a 5600mAh onboard battery to charge mobile devices via the mobile app, and makes it even easier to transfer to and from mobile devices.
Both offer wireless 802.11ac connectivity, while the Pro edition adds an extra little something in the form of a 64GB flash storage option. Both have USB 3.0 and SD card slots, with an adapter for microSD. There’s also an Ethernet port so you can use it as a hotel room hotspot.
Last up, following on from the success of the HyperX CloudII headset, Kingston has released a special edition for Xbox One users which has garnered the moniker of ‘official’. It adds an inline volume control and comes in a hard-shell case.
This year’s offerings are less focused on the traditional Kingston flash product lines, and once again don’t increase capacities.
Courtesy-TheInq
Courtesy-TheInq
Qualcomm Has A Snapdragon CPU For Cars
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Qualcomm has told the assorted throngs at CES about a new Snapdragon 820 Automotive family of products. It will come in two flavors – a standard 820A and an 820Am that adds an LTE modem.
The chip is designed for in-car navigation and infotainment systems running QNX, Linux, and Android. It has wireless capabilities and can connected to your phone. The LTE version will link to the Internet.
They can manage multiple displays to run the screen in your dashboard and an infotainment screen in the back seat. It also offers support for high-resolution 4K displays for when some company inevitably decides to cram a high-res, high-density screen into one of its cars.
The 820A chips are close cousins ofthe the Snapdragon 820 SoCs that will start shipping in phones later this year and use Qualcomm’s custom-made 64-bit Kryo CPU cores, an Adreno 530 GPU, a Hexagon 680 DSP all cooked up with a 14nm manufacturing process. They will also use the Snapdragon X12 LTE which can manage 600Mbps down and 150Mbps up when the wind is behind it and it is going downhill. There are all the usual 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other features.
Qualcomm said that it used a “modular approach” in designing the chip, which means that the cars infotainment system can be upgraded with hardware and software updates, thereby enabling vehicles to be easily upgraded with the latest technology.
Car makers could theoretically swap out the chip or the entire package without needing to worry about software changes. Qualcomm specifically mentions upgrading LTE connectivity over the lifetime of the car to keep up with the capabilities of cellular networks.
Qualcomm says the 820A family will begin sampling in Q1 of 2016.
Courtesy-Fud
Is Qualcomm Dropping Kryo?
The Blog site Fudzilla has confirmed that the Kryo core might be the last custom developed CPU core from Qualcomm, at least for now.
The next generation SoC from Qualcomm, let’s call it Snapdragon 8×0, will use ARM Cortex cores. Our industry sources are confident that company’s leadership has put a great deal of pressure on Qualcomm QTI to reduce the cost of R&D and custom CPU core costs an arm and a leg. Using Cortex Cores is cheaper than developing a custom ARM based CPU such as Kyro.
Creating a custom ARM based CPU core is intensive too and Qualcom still has to build a Modem, GPU, DSP, camera ISP, Video processing unit as well connectivity inside of the SoC to provide the differentiating factor to the competition. It just appears that the Core itself probably does not need looking at.
But the move will hardly help Qualcomm compete in hostile and aggressive mobile SoC manufacturers’ competition.
Apple and Samsung have their own CPU cores. Huawei uses Cortex architecture but has its own SoCs for the 100 million phones it sold this year. These are businesses that are either very hard or impossible for Qualcomm QTI SoCs to get. Every Samsung SoC manufactured and sold in Samsung phones is one less for Qualcomm.
MediaTek might be the winner in this case, as MediaTek makes rather unique processors that are designed to compete well against those who use close-to-reference Cortex ARM solutions. MediaTek is the only deca core in three cluster architecture but we still have to see it in action before we pronounce anyone winner or loser.
Qualcomm will have to focus on its strengths of its late 2016 successor to Snapdragon 810. The strengths of Qualcomm lay in superior modem performance and a great Adreno GPU. However they will lose an advantage of a custom core that might bring a bigger difference from the competition.
This is certainly not something we expected but it is happening.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-qualcomm-dropping-kryo.html
Is Intel Trying To Destroy Micron?
Wall Street analysts have downgraded Micron technology’s value after Intel’s announcement that it will expand investment in NAND.
Intel plans to invest up to $5.5 billion over the coming years to use its Dalan, China, facility to expand its NAND manufacturing capacity. Initial 3D NAND production is expected to commence in second-half 2016 in Dalan.
Barrons has said that with pricing pressure already present in DRAM, Intel’s move puts Micron in a state of uncertainty.
This is a little odd given that Intel and Micron are chums, but Barron’s Rajvindra Gill said that the move will reduce Chipzilla’s dependence on Micron.
More than half of output is expected to use 3D NAND in the next two to three years and Intel’s focus on the technology reduces its reliance on Micron as a supplier while transforming it into a competitor, Gill said.
Micron be the last one standing when the mergers and acquisitions the industry is seeing and be an industry also ran.
Intel’s focus on the non-volatile memory market could put the pricing and supply/demand environment under pressure.
Micron has already had difficulties setting up 3D NAND versus its peers and now has another significant challenger entering the market, Gill said.
Intel’s move to NAND places a major Micron customer at risk. While Intel noted that its relationship with Micron remains strong and that it will continue to focus on 3D Xpoint, we believe the IM Flash Agreement could be at risk.
With Intel producing more NAND on its own, it could look to lower its reliance on the joint venture.
Intel has a right to sell its portion of the joint venture to Micron. If Intel elects to do so, a closing date would be set within two years. Sales to IM Flash sales to Intel were $101 million in the third quarter, or 8 per cent of trade NAND revenue.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-intel-trying-to-destroy-micron.html
Samsung Producing NVMe PCIe SSDs
Samsung Electronics has started mass production of what it claims is the industry’s first Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) PCIe solid state drive (SSD), which has an M.2 form factor for use in PCs and workstations.
Samsung said in an announcement that it is “the first in the industry” to bring NVMe SSDs to OEMs for the PC market.
The SM951-NVMe operates at low power in standby mode and is the most compact of any NVMe SSD out there, according to the firm.
“Our new NVMe SSD will allow for faster, ultra-slim notebook PCs with extended battery use, while accelerating the adoption of NVMe SSDs in the consumer marketplace,” said SVP of memory marketing Jeeho Baek.
“Samsung will continue to stay a critical step ahead of others in the industry in introducing a diversity of next-generation SSDs that contribute to an enhanced user experience through rapid popularisation of ultra-fast, highly energy-efficient, compact SSDs.”
Samsung has added an NVMe version of the SM951 SSD after making a AHCI-based PCIe 3.0 version available since early January. This, Samsung said, will form an even stronger SSD portfolio.
The new NVMe-based SM951 SSD boasts a sequential data read and write speed of up to 2,260MBps and 1,600MBps respectively, while taking advantage of the firm’s own controller technology.
“These performance figures are the industry’s most advanced, with speeds four and three times faster than those of a typical SATA-based M.2 SSD which usually moves data at up to 540MBps and 500MBps respectively,” Samsung added.
The drive achieves these high speeds by using four 8Gbps lanes of simultaneous data flow. This allows for a data transfer rate of 32Gbps and a maximum throughput of 4GBps, giving the new drive a huge advantage over SATA-based M.2 SSDs, which can only transfer data at up to 600MBps.
When it comes to random read operations, the SM951-NVMe can process 300,000 IOPS operations, which is more than twice as fast as the 130,000 rate of its AHCI-based predecessor, Samsung said, while being more than three times faster than the 97,000 IOPS of a SATA-based SSD.
“Meeting all M.2 form factor requirements, the drive’s thickness does not exceed 4mm. [It] also weighs less than 7g, which is lighter than two nickels and only a tenth the weight of a 2.5in SSD. Capacities are 512GB, 256GB and 128GB,” Samsung explained.
Samsung said that the company plans to incorporate 3D V-NAND technology into its NVMe SSD line-up, which could see even higher densities and performance.
Earlier this week HP unveiled the HP Z Turbo Drive G2, a storage solution featuring Samsung’s NVMe SSDs to process large datasets.
The HP Z Turbo Drive G2 PCIe SSD is said to deliver four times traditional SATA SSD performance at a similar cost to previous devices. This will allow workstation users to “super-charge” the productivity and creativity of workflows, according to HP.
HP Has Two More Tablets In Route
HP is about to put out two tablets later this year.
The names are expected to be the HP Pro Slate 10 EE G1 and HP Pro Tablet 10 EE G1 and they were found on the world wide wibble by Notebook Italia,.
Both tablets are powered by an Intel quad-core Bay Trail Atom Z3735F processor. Accompanying the processor package is 2GB of RAM, as well as 32GB of internal storage. Both the Pro Slate and Pro Tablet come with 10.1-inch displays, as well as 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC.
The Pro Slate sticks with Android, while the Pro Tablet opts for Windows 8.1. The tablets mean they will each come with a stylus, but it would appear that the stylus is just a stand in for your finger, rather than doing anything useful.
Pro Slate will set you back $400.00 and Pro Tablet cost $499.
HP has yet to officially announce either device.
Dell Unveils 720TB Storage Server
Dell has unveiled the DCS XA90, an “ultra-dense” storage server capable of holding 720TB of data in a single 4U chassis.
Described by CEO Michael Dell on stage at the Dell World conference as “the power of a diesel truck in a Mini Cooper”, the DCS XA90 storage server means that a single Dell modular data centre of these units would hold 220PB of data, nearly a quarter of an exabyte.
“In a world where we could download our memories into those servers, we could house the experiences of about 90 people, an entire neighbourhood of digital lives,” said Dell.
He explained that the development of the DCS XA90 was driven by the demand for data storage that is “speeding us towards an exascale future”.
“That is what drove Dell to develop the DCS XA90 for our customers seeking extreme storage density and flexibility as they build out the cloud infrastructure of the future,” Dell added.
The DCS XA90 also packs two independent server nodes featuring Intel Xeon E5-2600v3 processors into each chassis, which Dell said makes it better for data-intensive analytics as well as archival storage.
As part of the announcement, Dell also revealed its PowerEdge FX architecture, a 2U enclosure with six PowerEdge server, storage and network IOA sleds built specifically to fit into the FX2 chassis and support varying workloads.
Due to ship in December, the PowerEdge FX architecture is described as “next-generation convergence” and a game changer in the IT industry, offering the flexibility to build configurations to meet requirements while simplifying management.
“There are other vendors who talk about convergence purely by doing an architecture rack,” said Dell’s server marketing vice president Ravi Pendekanti .
For example, HP’s Moonshot platform “just puts a bunch of blades together”, while Oracle’s Exadata platform “does one thing, and one thing really well, which is run Oracle’s enterprise applications”, he said.
The PowerEdge FX, which stands for ‘flexible infrastructure’, comprises a specially designed 2U rack-mount FX2 enclosure that can be filled with a choice of sled modules offering differing capabilities, enabling customers to adopt a building block approach to their infrastructure.
At launch, the sleds comprise a handful of full-width, half-width and quarter-width compute modules that allow customers to pick the performance and density required for applications such as web hosting, virtualisation or running databases, plus a half-width storage sled that can provide direct attached storage for the compute nodes.
HP Increases SlateBook Pricing
Hewlett-Packard’s SlateBook 14 laptop with Google’s Android OS has started shipping on schedule, but it’s priced at $429, which is $30 more than the company had said it would cost.
The laptop, which has a 14-inch screen and Android 4.3, was announced in June. At the time, HP said it would be priced at $399.
It is available on HP’s website.
The SlateBook 14 was introduced after customers told HP they wanted laptops with Android. The laptop has an interface similar to that on Android tablets and can adjust mobile apps to run on the larger touchscreen. Users will also be able to sync laptop data with mobile devices and vice versa.
The laptop is also for those who rely on the Web for most of their computing, much like Chromebooks. It has a few advantages over Chromebooks, with support for key Android apps such as Skype. Android also boasts better wireless printing support than Chromebooks.
The laptop weighs 1.68 kilograms and offers nine hours of battery life, according to specifications on HP’s website.
It has a quad-core Tegra 4 processor, 2GB of DRAM and 16GB of storage. Connectivity features include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. It also has a webcam, USB 3.0 port and a micro-SD slot for expandable storage.
It could be a strong multimedia laptop with a 1920 x 1080 pixel screen and an integrated graphics processor that can handle 4K video. TVs can be connected to the laptop through an HDMI port.
What Do Smaller Controllers Mean?
If you want a wearable Internet of Things, the electronics have to be as tiny and as energy efficient as possible. That’s why a new microcontroller by Freescale Semiconductor is noteworthy.
The company has produced the Kinetis KLO3 MCU, a 32-bit ARM system that is 15% smaller than its previous iteration but with a 10% power improvement.
Internet of Things is a buzzword for the trend toward network-connected sensors incorporated into devices that in the past were standalone appliances. These devices use sensors to capture things like temperatures in thermostats, pressure, accelerometers, gyroscopes and other types of MEMS sensors. A microcontroller unit gives intelligence and limited computational capability to these devices, but is not a general purpose processor. One of the roles of the microcontroller is to connect the data with more sophisticated computational power.
The Kinetis KLO3 runs a lightweight embedded operating system to connect the data to other devices, such as an app that uses a more general purpose processor.
Kathleen Jachimiak, product launch manager at Freescale, said the new microcontroller will “enable further miniaturization” in connected devices. This MCU is capable of having up to 32 KB of flash memory and 2 KB of RAM.
Consumers want devices that are light, small and smart. They also want to be able to store their information and send it to an application that’s either on a phone or a PC, Jachimiak said.
This microcontroller, at 1.6 x 2.0 mm, is smaller than the dimple on a golf ball, and uses a relatively new process in its manufacturing, called wafer level chip scale packaging. The process involves building the integrated package while the die is still part of a wafer. It’s a more efficient process and produces the smallest possible package, for a given die size.
Micron Ships Hybrid Memory Cube
Micron Technology has announced that is is currently shipping 2GB Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) engineering samples that represent a dramatic step forward in memory technology and are designed for applications that require high-bandwidth access to memory like data processing, data packet buffering or storage.
According to Micron, the Hybrid Memory Cube uses advanced through-silicon vias (TSVs)-vertical conduit that connect a stack of individual chips in order to combine high-performance logic with Micron’s DRAM. The current engineering sample features a 2GB memory cube that consists of four 4Gb DRAM dies. It provides 160GB/s of memory bandwidth while using up to 70 percent less energy per bit when compared to currently available technologies.
Micron expects 4GB HMC engineering samples to be available in early 2014 while volume production of both 2GB and 4GB HMC is scheduled to begin later in 2014.