Netgear preps four-bay, six-bay ReadyNAS Ultra products

Netgear has announced a new range of NAS devices that supposedly mark the "beginning of the end of local storage" – a bold claim from the company's CEO, to be sure. Along with the features you might expect to find on networked storage, the ReadyNAS Ultra line can stream media to any TiVo device, DLNA-certified machine, and mobile devices including iPads, Blackberries, and Android devices via Orb technologies.

The series is comprised of two models, one with four bays and another with six. The Ultra 4 ships with dual 2TB hard drives and is priced at $899, while the Ultra 6 packs 6TB of storage for $1,349. Both carry a 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6. Preorders should be open relatively soon with units set to ship mid-July. A two-bay system, presumably the Ultra 2, is due in October.

AMD readies new six-core processor for late Q3

AMD is reportedly getting ready to launch its fourth hexacore desktop processor to the market. Although the existing Phenom II X6 1090T should remain its fastest Phenom II X6 offering until "at least" early 2011, word is that a new low-end model is set to arrive late this quarter. The 1045T will come clocked at 2.7GHz, 100MHz faster than the 1035T, featuring the same Thuban-based 45nm design and an optimized TDP rating of 95W (the six-core family originally debuted with 125W TDPs).

The new six-core part will be able to go as high as 3.2GHz when its Turbo Core dynamic overclocking technology kicks in. Otherwise, specs should look familiar to those of its predecessors with support for DDR3-1333 memory and a total 9MB of cache. As The Tech Report points out, the 2.6GHz Phenom II X6 1035T is currently confined to pre-built PCs from the likes of HP and Gateway. It's unclear if the 1045T will suffer the same fate or if it will be sold separately at retail.

As you might expect there was no mention of pricing. Currently, the top of the line 3.2GHz AMD Phenom II X6 1090T is available for just under $300 at Newegg while the 2.8GHz 1055T can be had for $200.

Microsoft readying a multi-touch Arc mouse?

A new product listing for what is being called the "Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse" has prompted speculation that the software giant may be whipping up a rival to Apple's Magic Mouse. The device is listed with the product code RVF-00003 and has an MSRP of around $70 (the same as Apple's device), according to Long Zheng of istartedsomething. Zheng also notes that Microsoft registered the domain "arctouchmouse.com" in March, which is currently redirecting to Bing – a common practice for the company's placeholder sites.

You may recall a project from late 2009 that Microsoft was calling Mouse 2.0. As part of that research, the company was working on designs for a prototype multitouch mouse – one of which is pictured above. That specific unit featured a curved design similar to the existing Arc models, and it used FTIR to track multiple contact points. There's no telling if this is what's coming to market, but any new multitouch peripheral from Microsoft could bring some attention to development for native Windows touch applications, and we can't complain about that.

Microsoft intros InstaLoad battery technology, forgoes polarity

Microsoft has announced a new battery technology called InstaLoad that lets users install batteries in any direction, without regard to polarity. "Never again will people have to squint to see battery installation diagrams - the device simply works regardless if the battery is installed positive-side-up or positive-side-down," the company said.

Along with making life easier to consumers, Redmond believes InstaLoad could be handy in many industries, including law enforcement, military, construction, outdoor sporting, and camping. The technology is compatible with popular off-the-shelf disposable and rechargeable batteries in sizes such as CR123, AA, AAA, C or D.

Microsoft is offering a royalty-free license program to suppliers and manufacturers of accessibility products for people with hearing, vision or learning disabilities. You can find more information on other licensing options in the press release. Third parties are supposedly "lining up to endorse the technology" for use in their own products.

Two such companies are Duracell and flashlight-maker AE Light. There's no information on when we'll see InstaLoad used in products by those companies – or any others for that matter.

MSI intros new Fuzion motherboards with Lucid Hydra chip

MSI has launched two new motherboards, the P55A Fuzion and 870A Fuzion, which come with the Lucid Hydra 200 chip. The Hydra technology is similar to CrossFire or SLI, except graphics cards from two different companies (i.e. Nvidia and ATI) can be linked together in a hybrid configuration. In other words, just about any two cards from either camp can be paired up to boost performance.

As indicated by their names, one is for Intel's LGA1156 processors and the other supports Socket AM3 chips. Both have two PCIe x16 2.0 (full bandwidth) and PCIe x1 slots, four DIMM slots, six SATA 3Gb/s ports, two SATA 6Gb/s ports, six USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, 7.1 channel audio, gigabit Ethernet, as well as MSI's "Military Class components" and OC Genie overclocking tool. It's worth noting that the 870A Fuzion can also unlock "unused" cores in AMD processors.

The new Fuzion boards should be available soon and are priced at a surprisingly reasonable $190 (Intel) and $160 (AMD), considering the Big Bang Fuzion's hefty $350 fee.

AMD announces power-efficient Opteron 4000 series chips

AMD today launched its first platform specifically engineered for cloud computing. The Sunnyvale-based chipmaker says its Opteron 4000 series was designed from the ground up for hyperscale data centers comprised of 1P and 2P machines, but the company kept SMB customers and embedded systems in mind too.

Codenamed "Lisbon," the 45nm processors are said to be the most power efficient in their class, consuming less than 6W per core and averaging from 32W to 75W, depending on the product. There are nine chips in total with four or six cores running between 1.7GHz and 2.8GHz, all of which have 6MB of cache per die.

One of the beefier models, the hexa-core 4164EE, consumes 133W at full load and 63W during active idle – a 24% reduction from the older 2419EE, which uses the same fabrication technology and runs at 171W/83W. AMD says such an improvement can save nearly a million dollars a year in a 10,000-server farm.

The new Opteron processors are available worldwide immediately, with prices starting at only $99. Acer, Dell and HP designing servers that include the chips. Looking ahead, the company expects its forthcoming "Bulldozer" technology to succeed existing 4000-series CPUs.

Samsung reveals new 512GB toggle-mode NAND SSD

Samsung is preparing to unleash its first solid-state drive that makes use of its toggle-mode DDR NAND flash memory. Aimed at the premium notebook segment, the new entrant parades both high speed and capacity. The 512GB drive is rated for a maximum read speed of 250MB/s, while sequential writes max out at 220MB/s – quick enough to store two DVDs in just a minute.

Internally, the drive is comprised of 30nm 32Gb chips that can run at 3.3V or 1.8V, and it features a new low-power controller designed specifically for toggle-mode NAND. Samsung says the controller analyzes frequency of use along with user preferences to activate a low-power mode, which could give notebooks an extra hour of battery life or more.

Additionally, the drive makes use of 256-bit AES encryption so you can lockdown your data with peace of mind. Volume production is planned to kick off next month, but there's no information regarding a retail launch date or price – presumably because the drive will mostly ship to system builders.

Toshiba announces industry's first 128GB NAND flash memory module

Toshiba has launched a new 128GB embedded NAND flash memory module said to be the industry's highest capacity to date. Using 32-nanometer fabrication, it crams 16 8GB NAND chips along with a dedicated controller into a tiny 17x22x1.4-milimeter package. Toshiba says it applied various chip thinning and layering technologies to accomplish such a feat, with the individual chips being only 30 micrometers thick.

For comparison, WolframAlpha states that the average strand of human hair is 80 micrometers thick, while a US dollar bill is over 100 micrometers – so they're some mighty slim chips to say the least.

The new NAND memory is aimed at a wide range of consumer goods, such as smartphones, tablet PCs, and digital video cameras. No buyers have been named, but you can expect Apple to make it to that list at some point, being the largest customer of flash memory.

Samples of the 128GB product are expected ship by September and full-blown production should begin in the fourth quarter. A 64GB chip built with the same technology will begin sampling a bit earlier in August, but it will enter mass production along with the 128GB variant.

OCZ launches new enterprise Deneva SSDs

Discontent with the plethora of solid-state drives it already has on the market, OCZ has pushed out a new enterprise line based on SandForce's SF-1000 family. The Deneva SSD series makes use of the SF-1500 controller and are said to be "the first to deliver Tier-0/1 Enterprise level reliability using a range of lower cost flash technologies including eMLC and MLC in processes as low as 3xnm." The use of MLC NAND is interesting, considering that most enterprise-grade SSDs rely on SLC flash memory.

OCZ says its Deneva drives offer customers a high degree of flexibility because they can be designed to use a variety of interfaces, including SATA, SAS, FC, and PCIe, along with an assortment of form factors and custom firmware. Other enterprise-specific features include emergency power loss protection with supercap, best-in-class endurance, as well as top-notch encryption and ECC protection. Drives in the series have a max read/write of 285MB/s and 275MB/s with 4KB random writes up to 50,000 IOPS.

MSI claims the BIOS has its days numbered, this time for real

Depending on your background you may hate the BIOS, you may completely disregard its existence, or perhaps you have grown accustomed to it and learned how to tweak it. The motherboard BIOS has evolved over the last decade to accommodate many enthusiast-oriented settings, while at the same time it has changed very little.

This is certainly not the first time someone claims the BIOS as we know it is going the way of the dodo, and then nothing happens. Back in 2003 I wrote a short piece titled "Writing an end to the bio of BIOS," describing Intel and Microsoft’s work on a replacement called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) that was set to become the new industry standard. Except for Itanium-based machines, Linux and Intel Macs, you know how that went for the average Windows computer.

Now MSI is claiming that a new revision of the same initiative (UEFI) will start to appear on motherboards before the end of the year, bringing a point-and-click interface to newer platforms beginning with Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge chipset. UEFI is supposed to bring more flexibility compared to the aging BIOS, the former is developed in the C language while the legacy BIOS uses Assembly. But perhaps most importantly, storage giant Seagate has hinted that the adoption of UEFI will be "essential" for using hard drives larger than 2TB, a kind of limitation not seen before by the BIOS. Considering that 1TB hard drives are going for as low as $40 these days, it won't be long until multiple terabyte drives become mainstream.

Manufacturers have often claimed that EFI adds an unnecessary layer of complexity given the little improvements it brings, but in the era of 32nm transistors that can switch on and off over 300 billion times in one second, how difficult can this truly be? Without meaning to open the boot time floodgates, I'll just say I wish we already had an instant booting computer that welcomed you with a full resolution splash screen and not the legacy VGA-res boot screen we've been looking at for over two decades.

Bonux's Android set-top box is pretty much Google TV lite

Bonux's Android set-top box ain't shipping till the year's end, either. Tucked away in a small corner of Computex was the gem you see above: an Android 2.1-based set-top box designed to bring... well, Android to your television. The white mockup box was strictly in place to demonstrate the software, and the inability to find a live internet connection on the floor crushed their desires to demonstrate connected extras. Essentially, this STB would scale a mobile OS up to TV size, which isn't exactly the most elegant of solutions. That said, it does "work," and the idea of using Android to pull in local media and web content may tempt those who aren't willing to deal with the expense and complications of snagging a full-blown HTPC. We were told that the box could play back nearly every major file format known to man, and the HDMI output ensures broad compatibility with practically every HDTV ever sold.

When speaking with company representatives at its booth, they asserted that their goal was to shrink the white box down to the size of the black unit sitting beside it, or something barely larger than a deck of cards. If all goes to plan, they should be shipping worldwide by the end of this year, but they stated that it would be awhile before Froyo (Android 2.2) was supported given the intrinsic need for more potent hardware. Speaking of which, they've yet to actually nail down a final processor, and they're still debating whether they'll have WiFi as an option. In the end, consumers should expect "between one and three" variants (including one with an integrated TV tuner, possibly), and a retail starting price of around "$120 to $130." So, found that patience you were looking for yet?

Manufacturers push for USB 3.0 adoption, Intel holds it back

With Computex 2010 underway, several manufacturers have taken the occasion to launch new USB 3.0 peripherals in hopes of increasing sales as the new interface slowly gains traction. Among them is Iomega, which today revamped its eGo line of portable and desktop hard drives with a total of five new drive models, including a pair equipped with SuperSpeed USB 3.0. Kingston showed off an upcoming external SSD that hooks up to the next-gen interface, while SuperTalent continued to expand its USB 3.0 flash drive lineup with the new Express RAM Cache model.

But while each of them is doing their part in helping bring this technology to mainstream ground, it seems Intel is not very interested in giving them a hand. Initially expected to hold back adoption until 2011, unconfirmed reports now claim Intel will not be packaging USB 3.0 support into its chipsets until 2012. The SuperSpeed specification was introduced in November of last year and already there are plenty of vendors shipping USB 3.0 motherboards based on NEC's controller. AMD plans to integrate this chip in its reference designs and other cheaper alternatives are on the way too.

Given that vendors like Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock are already building USB 3.0 into their products, it's hard to see why Intel would have any problems supporting the standard. Perhaps it's not so much a technical matter but rather the chipmaker pursuing its own agenda -- that is, trying to make the market more receptive to Light Peak. The optical cable interface does have its advantages over USB 3.0 so we're interested to see how things play out.

AMD shows off Fusion APUs, on track for H1 2011 release

Nearly four years after first revealing plans for its next-generation Fusion processors, AMD has finally conducted the first public demonstration of its CPU-GPU hybrid, running Aliens vs. Predator in DirectX 11 mode and doing some hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer. The company was careful to reveal as few specifics about the chips as possible, but said two versions of Fusion are being prepared for release in the first half of 2011.

A mainstream version called Llano will feature four cores and 4MB of L3 cache, while a low-power version dubbed Ontario will offer two cores and just 1MB of L3 cache. Both chips are now available to select customers in sample quantities. AMD's Rick Bergman didn't specifically name the APU demonstrated, but described it as a "low power Fusion processor" so we assume it was the dual-core Ontario part. To put the chip's capabilities into perspective, Bergman noted they were using the same game AMD used last fall to demonstrate their high-end discrete GPU.

For those unaware, Fusion basically combines the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), video processing and other accelerator capabilities in a single-die design. This is a much more sophisticated approach than Intel's at present, which adds a separate 45nm GPU to the processor package. AMD said it is working with several companies to optimize software for its APUs, and announced the AMD Fusion Fund to jumpstart this effort.

OCZ unveils "affordable" PCI-Express SSD, RevoDrive

OCZ took the opportunity at Computex 2010 to showcase its latest additions to its already broad solid-state drives lineup. Dubbed RevoDrive, this new product is designed to slip into a PCI Express x4 slot and employs two SandForce SF-1222 controllers in RAID mode for maximum performance -- up to 540MB/s reads and 530MB/s writes, as well as 75,000 IOPS. It's a compact version of last year's Z-Drive for high-performance gaming PCs and workstations.

OCZ calls this bootable drive "affordable", though it stops short of revealing the actual price tag (or an expected release date, for that matter). It should be available in capacities ranging from 120 to 480GB using the less expensive NAND flash memory when it finally launches. The company also showed off new 1.8-inch Vertex 2 and Onyx II SSDs aimed at ultrathin notebooks, netbooks, nettops, and tablets. These drives will be available "in a range of capacities" featuring a SATA 3Gb/s interface and Windows 7's TRIM feature. Unfortunately, again, OCZ gave no pricing or release details.

Hitachi intros industry's quickest, most capacious 7mm HDDs

Hitachi today added several new ultra-slim hard drives to the Travelstar and CinemaStar Z series, which measure 7mm-thin and seem to break all sorts of records. Hitachi's press release says the family is home to the world's most capacious and fastest spinning 7mm drive, the Travelstar Z7K320, which offers 320GB of storage with a spindle speed of 7200RPM.

It also features 16MB of cache, uses SATA 3Gb/s, and consumes only 1.8W of power when active and 0.8W when idle. Additionally, the Travelstar Z7K320 offers up to 18% more performance than the 5400RPM Travelstar Z5K320, which features 8MB of cache, and consumes only 1.6W of power during read/write and 0.55W when idle.

Hitachi's CinemaStar drives are "specifically designed" for A/V streaming devices, such as set-top boxes, PVRs, portable video players, DVR-enabled TVs, and video surveillance systems. The fifth-generation 2.5-inch 5400RPM Z5K320 features 8MB of cache along with an "improved protection scheme for power fluctuation and enhanced Thermal Fly-Height Control for improved error rates."

The drives are expected to reach mass production in August, but there's no official release date or pricing at this point.

Intel intros new Atom processors, Oak Trail platform, more

Intel has made a few Atom-related announcements today at Computex, including a new dual-core netbook Atom, and four other Atom processors. The company said it would ship dual-core Atom processors for netbooks sooner than expected, and they're already in production. New devices with the dual-core netbook chips should be available by this holiday season.

Although the company previously contested that single-core Atoms were sufficient for netbooks, it now believes that the featherweight mobile PCs can benefit from having dual-core processors. "As the web content and the browser content becomes richer, the dual-core will bring a better experience when enjoying rich content or multiple windows," Intel said.

The company also announced four new Atom processors that support DDR3 memory including the single-core N455 and N475 for netbooks, along with the single-core D425 and dual-core D525 for compact desktops. The N-series processors begin shipping today, while the D-series chips will be available starting June 21.

Meanwhile, Intel showed a reference design for a 14mm-thick netbook using a new thermal "technology concept" called Canoe Lake, as well as a Moorestown variant of the Atom dubbed Oak Trail. The platform uses less power and requires only half the physical footprint of existing Atoms, while supporting 1080p playback and operating systems including Windows 7, MeeGo, Android, and Chrome OS.

Qualcomm announces dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon CPUs

Qualcomm today announced its first dual-core Snapdragon processors, which should bring a significant upgrade to the existing 1GHz single-core part found in such devices as the Nexus One, Droid Incredible, and Evo 4G smartphones, HP's Compaq Airlife 100 and Lenovo's Skylight smartbooks, as well as Dell's Streak 5 five-inch tablet.

The new processors will add support for 1080p video playback, 24-bit WXGA 1280x800 displays, OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 visual effects, and low-power GPS and audio engines. The MSM8260 is for HSPA+ networks (that's AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, namely), while the MSM8660 is designed for multi-mode HPSA+/CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. B networks.

The company's MSM8260 and MSM8660 chips run at up to 1.2GHz and can boost all-around performance by dedicating a processing core to background tasks – old news for full-fledged computers but an exciting proposition for smartphones as they increasingly become multitasking devices.

The new parts could also find their way into smartbooks and tablets as well, and the company says it's "excited by the innovation our customers are already showing as they begin designing products based on our dual core MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets."

Intel announces 50-core Knights Corner HPC processor

Although Intel drove another nail into the coffin of its Larrabee discrete GPU project last week, the architecture itself is very much alive. A variant of the architecture is being used for High Performance Computing applications and it's said to leverage both Larrabee and Intel's many cores research projects. Called the Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture, it will first appear in a 22nm product codenamed Knights Corner that scales to more than 50 processing cores.

MIC-based products will be aimed at segments such as exploration, scientific research and financial or climate simulation, and although a majority of applications will still run best on the company Xeon server processors, MIC chips will "help accelerate select highly parallel applications," Intel said in a press release today.

The chipmaker hasn't provided a release date, but it's currently shipping development kits codenamed "Knights Ferry" to select industry players. In the second half of this year, the company will deliver an "extensive range of developer tools" for its MIC architecture.

Asus announces two Eee Pad models and an e-book reader

After teasing its entry into the burgeoning tablet market for months, Asus today unveiled its first Eee Pad tablets running Windows software and an e-reader, dubbed Eee Tablet, with a note-taking function. The announcement included the 10-inch EP101TC running Windows Embedded Compact 7 (an updated version of Windows CE), and the 12-inch EP121 running Windows 7 Home Premium on an Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor.

Asus claims the device can be used as a multimedia player, e-reader, Web browser, or, with the help of a keyboard docking station, a full-featured PC. The company didn't share much in the way of specs -- after all, the Eee Pad won't be on the market until early 2011 -- but said the "ultra-slim and light" device will include a webcam, USB port, HDMI-out, SD slot, and should offer 10 hours of battery life. Prices are expected to range between $399 and $449. Unfortunately, their rumored Google-android tablet was nowhere to be seen.

As for the Eee Tablet, Asus describes it as "one of the world's most accurate and sensitive digital note taking devices" which will give users the feel of writing on paper. It will be available in September for $199 to $299, and will feature an 8-inch grayscale display, two-megapixel camera to snap photos of slides or other subjects for notes later on, an electronic notepad, Wi-Fi, a media player and a battery life of 10 hours.

Hitachi-LG to launch SSD-equipped optical drives in August

Hitachi-LG has lifted the veil on an interesting new product called the HyDrive that combines an optical drive with embedded NAND flash memory functioning as an SSD. The idea is to pave the way for thin netbooks, tablets and ultraportables that can fit an optical drive without needing a second drive bay. HyDrive units will initially be available in 32GB and 64GB capacities, with up to 256GB and SATA III 6Gbps configurations coming next year.

In terms of performance, the SSD component has a peak read speed of 175MB/s and writes at a maximum of 60MB/s. The first-generation HyDrive products will come in 12.7mm thick form factors and will unfortunately not fit into most conventional laptops. Instead, they will be targeted towards HPTCs and other small form factor PCs, at least until they are shrunk down to 9.5mm thick next year by embedding the SSD component directly within the PCB assembly.

Hitachi says its hybrid drive will first be seen in August inside the Moneual Family PC 102. ASUS' N61DA notebook and future Eee Top all-in-ones will also feature the drive after testing is completed, and all of AMD's new 8-series system chipsets already support the technology. No pricing details or stand-alone kits were announced.