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Computex 2014 - LSI recently was purchased by Avago, who wasted no time selling the lucrative and successful SandForce and ASD (Accelerated Storage Division) to Seagate for a tidy sum. The elephant in the room is whether or not SandForce controllers are going to continue to be offered to SandForce's existing, and future, customers.

SandForce was the driving factor behind enabling a whole ecosystem of vendors and their respective SSD products. Seagate isn't necessarily in the component business, they tend to focus on providing complete solutions. This has created quite a bit of apprehension amongst SandForce customers. Until the sale is completed, and Seagate formally announces their buisnesss plan, there will continue to be a bit of uneasiness amongst current SandForce vendors.

Our meeting with SandForce representatives did much to allay the fears of many that SandForce controllers will be taken off the market. For SandForce, business is being conducted as usual and they are focused on executing their roadmap and providing support for their vast number of customers. It is full steam ahead on SF-3700, so lets take a closer look.

Computex 2014 ASUSTOR displayed seven new exciting NAS products at Computex 2014 this year. The first for are from the upcoming 7-Series, first shown at CES 2014. The seventh is a new rackmount in the 2-Series that promises to be a low cost solution for small office use but still delivers ASUSTOR features that make the products efficient and easy to configure.

The first two 7- Series products are rackmount units, one a 9-bay and the other a 12-bay. ASUSTOR chose Core i3 processors running at 3.5GHz for the AS7009RD and AS7012RD. The new AS7009RDX and AS7012RDX move to Xeon E3 processors running at 3.2GHz but with advanced Xeon features.

Here we get our first look at the new 12-bay model that features 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2x HDMI 1.4 ports on top of a number of other I/O connectors.

Computex 2014 They say necessity is the mother of all invention, and never was that more apparent than in the release of Tyans new FT68-B7910 server. The low pricing of many new SSDs, and the advent of TLC SSDs that are lowering prices even more dramatically, means we are likely to start witnessing more large scale deployments of flash into the server. Making this flash easily accessible is a challenge, many of the currnet high-density server designs load HDDs and SSD vertically in the rear of the chassis. TYAN has chosen a divergent approach and came up with a more efficient means of easily-accesible storage.

Here we can see an apparently normal 4U chassis with 32 2.5" drive bays. While this is an impressive amount of storage, removing the drive sleds illuminates the real innovation of this design.

At the rear of the drive channel we observe the SAS connectors offset in a dense alignment. These allow for two 7.5mm SSDs to be installed into each drive sled, effectively doubling he capacity of each 2.5" 15mm slot. Another advantage of this design is the ability to use standard 15mm HDDs as well. This opens the door for having several high-performance spinners and pairing theem with several bays of SSDs used for tiering and caching implementations. The great functionality behind the new Storage Spaces features in Windows Server 2012 could also deliver big advantages for this type of deployment.

Computex 2014 Tyan unveiled several of their latest servers specifically designed to address the HPC market. These servers leverage GPUs as co-processors to deliver astounding performance in a number of different chassis sizes.

This 4U high density platform utilizes a more traditional design but allows for 8 PCIe 3.0 slots to cram as many GPUs into a single chassis as possible. Dual onboard 10GbE also provides plenty of native communication throughput for most applications.

Moving to slimmer form factor we can see the two separate GPU bays in this slim 2U server chassis. The rear left and forward right compartments actually hold two GPUs each, which are mounted horizontally to provide the maximum amount of GPU power in a small space.

Popular electronics maker Samsung will team up with Barnes & Noble to create co-branded Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook tablets. The Samsung tablets will come pre-loaded with Nook software, so users will have full-featured devices as Barnes & Noble pulls the plug on trying to develop its own hardware. The Galaxy Tab 4 7" model will be available in early August.

This is a strong partnership for Barnes & Noble, the last remaining major book retailer in the United States, as the company tries to revamp its struggling e-reader. Barnes & Noble will continue to provide customer support for previous e-reader versions,

"Samsung has had a strong relationship with Barnes & Noble, offering the company's award-winning reading experience to users of Galaxy Tab products," said Tim Baxter, Samsung Electronics America President, in a statement. "Samsung is dedicated to providing consumers with choices that best fit their lifestyle. So, we are excited to be taking this next step with Barnes & Noble to offer Galaxy Tab 4 devices that are tailored to the needs of their customers and enhance the Nook reading experience."

A recently discovered Trojan targeting Google Android turns out to be a nasty piece of ransomware, encrypting files on a compromised user's device. The Android/Simplelocker ransomware demands a small payment of about $22 in that must be paid to the Eastern European cybercriminals behind the malicious software.

The Trojan scans for the following file formats on a phone's SD card: jpeg, jpg, png, bmp, gif, pdf, doc, docx, txt, avi, mkv, 3gp, mp4, which will be encrypted and made inaccessible.

"File-encrypting malware has proved to be a lucrative criminal enterprise so it is unsurprising that Android has become a new target," said Dr. Steven Murdoch, University of Cambridge security researcher, in a statement. "Smartphone users should be very cautious of installing software from sources other than the operating system-provided application store, and should pressure their phone supplier to promptly provide security updates to defend against known vulnerabilities."

The Xbox One has been criticized as not performing as well as the PS4 by some game developers. Microsoft is looking to unlock more performance for its new game console with a software update. The update will reportedly increase the GPU bandwidth inside the console.

The increased bandwidth will hit in the June system update. Along with more GPU bandwidth, the update will also bring with it external hard drive support. Microsoft's Phil Spencer announced that the update would be coming via a tweet.

Microsoft said, "In June we're releasing a new SDK making it possible for developers to access additional GPU resources previously reserved for Kinect and system functions. The additional resources allow access to up to 10 percent additional GPU performance. We're committed to giving developers new tools and flexibility to make their Xbox One games even better by giving them the option to use the GPU reserve in whatever way is best for them and their games."

No one likes having to fiddle with cords to charge their gadgets. There are charging accessories out there that allow you to charge your devices, like smartphones, by simply laying the device on a charge plate. A company called PowerbyProxi is showing off the next generation of wireless charging at Computex.

The company has bowls that you can throw multiple smaller gadgets into charge them at one time. The charging devices the company has shown off in the past were able to provide 3.5 to 5 watts of power. It's important to note that PowerbyProxi is a component firm and these devices are proof of concept.

That means they won't be available to purchase. The company works with firms like Samsung, TI, and others to use its components in products you can buy. PowerbyProxi's latest product is able to deliver 15W of power and will be backwards compatible with Qi devices. The bowl can also charge devices at a vertical height of about 1.25-inches meaning devices can be stacked.

Computex 2014 Sandisk had the revolutionary new ULLtraDIMM on display in the Supermicro booth at Computex 2014. The key to enabling such a radically new take on storage technology is the rapid uptake of an ecosystem of partners to quickly expand into wide market acceptance. The emergence of new platforms that are readily available from partners such as Supermicro is a big step forward for the ULLtraDIMM initiative.

The MCS (Memory Channel Storage) system, provided by Diablo, allows the NAND-based ULLtraDIMM storage device to communicate over the memory channels. This eliminates much of the bus contention and inefficiencies of the PCIe bus. Providing a direct connection to the CPU via the memory slot delivers game-changing performance, but unfortunately isn't a plug-and-play solution. Here we can see 4 ULLtraDIMM's working inside the Supermicro SuperServer 6027AX-72RF-HFT3. This server has an enhanced BIOS that allows for full utilization of the standard DDR channels for system storage.

Of course we would like to see some benchmarks running on the device live, but this was merely a static demo. Sandisk is forwarding us preliminary performance results in several application workloads, so look for preliminary performance benchmarks here at TweakTown soon.

Paramount's upcoming fourth Transformers film Age of Extinction probably didn't need any more pop culture tie-ins to bring the desired demographic into cinemas, but the news that music star Skrillex, aka Sonny Moore has joined the sound design crew probably won't hurt the film's chances.

According to an article on inthemix, Skrillex has committed to imbuing Transformers with "the craziest Skrillex sounds I could ever make", which will no doubt cause sub woofers everywhere to groan with terrifyingly deep, single digit Hz drops.

Whilst Linkin Park had previously contributed songs to the the first two Transformers films, there is no indication that Skrillex will contribute any fresh beats.

Computex 2014 Sandisk had the massive 4TB Optimus MAX SSD on display in their booth today, and we just had to take a look inside. The Sandisk Optimus still holds the performance crown for 6Gb/s SAS SSDs on the market, and the expansion to 4TB of capacity provides even more density.

Cramming 4TB of NAND goodness into a 2.5" 15mm form factor requires the use of several PCBs. Sandisk utilizes a ribbon-type connection between three PCBs, which then fold into each other to fit inside the chassis. Sandisk employs the same Marvell controller as previous Optimus SSDs, but the real secret sauce lies in their custom firmware, which enables Guardian Technology, a full suite of flash enhancements that extends NAND longevity.

The Optimus MAX uses a familiar 6Gb/s dual-port SAS connection, which allows speeds of up to 1 GB/s from one SSD.

Computex 2014 The SSD market is rapidly consolidating. Those who create flash, or who have strategic agreements with NAND fabricators, are beginning to take over the SSD market. For smaller companies the challenge is to find ways to innovate and stay relevant in the SSD market. Plextor, and their Lite-On counterpart, have some of the most experienced and advanced firmware engineering teams in the world. This allows them to deliver products that give them the edge on their competitors. Plextor is looking to leverage this considerable experience to weather the storms of SSD consolidation.

The latest addition to Plextor's arsenal is the PlexTurbo caching software. By utilizing system DRAM Plexotr creates a flexible cache pool that can boost performance of the underlying storage by leaps and bounds. Above we witness astounding system performance, 4.6GB/s read and 5.6GB/s write speeds, created by leveraging up to 16GB of system DRAM for a cache layer. Samsung has a similar solution, but a key difference is that Samsung limits the amount of system DRAM used for caching, primarily as a power-conserving measure in mobile applications. Plextor is essentially one-upping Samsung's offering by allowing users to allocate much larger chunks of DRAM for even more bleeding-edge speed.

DRAM caching brings along inherent risk during power loss, so stay tuned for Chris Ramseyers full review off the new Plextor software to see just how they address that issue.

Computex 2014: Areca Technology displayed their newest high-performance RAID controller at Computex 2014, along with their expanding line of Thunderbolt products. This new 12Gb/s RAID controller, the ARC-1883ix-24, can handle up to 24 SATA or SATA drives but has a few new features that will distance it far from any other RAID controller on the market.

Most RAID controllers ship with only 1GB of DDR cache, and for years Areca has led the high-performance RAID realm with their adjustable DRAM modules that allow up to 4GB of cache. The new 1833ix series allows up to a whopping 16GB of DDR3 cache on one controller. This necessitates the addition of a 6-pin connection to help power the controller, another first.

There are currently only two prototypes of this controller, and TweakTown has one for a world record attempt during Computex 2014. Stay tuned for more information on that once we begin our tests!

Popular mobile game Temple Run from Imangi Studios has been downloaded more than 1 billion times since it was released in August 2011, according to company officials. Originally developed by three people, the game has seen continued success as casual gaming still increases even higher in popularity.

Gamers have run more than 50 trillion meters in the game, playing 32 billion games, according to Keith Shepherd, co-developer of the game.

It's possible Imangi Studios, which has seen great success with Temple Run 1 and Temple Run 2, could develop a third game in the future. However, the studio currently has other mobile games currently in development, so no public announcements have been made just yet.

Computex 2014 ADATA was demonstrating a running demo of DDR4 memory at their booth today, here we can see several sticks of memory connected and running during the live demo.

The DDR4 sticks are running at 2133 speeds, and run at a low voltage of 1.2V which will lead to big power d savings. The CAS latency is CS15, and the 288-pin design will deliver 50% more bandwidth and 40% lower energy consumption.

Pairing the new DDR4 memory with speedy SSDs, such as this SandForce SF-37000 design shown with the board here, will provide ultimate performance from memory and the storage subsystem. With new SSD architectures and faster memory much of the bottleneck will be pushed back to the CPU and applications.

Computex 2014 - I've been a fan of LUXA2's audio products for a while now, but they were showing off some even more interesting things at Computex this year - starting with the Groovy A.

The LUXA2 Groovy A is a wireless stereo speaker that has a unique adjustable 15- to 30-degree sound angle, meaning you can sit it down, and then adjust it up to blast the audio into the room a little better. It has 7W of total output, a beautiful aluminum construction, a 2200mAh internal battery that should have you listening to tunes for hours and hours, wireless range of up to 10m, and more.

Something else that caught our eye over at LUXA2, was the new Groovy Duo Live Speaker System. It was definitely a unique design, with two 3W speakers for a total of 6W of output. There's dynamic dual Bluetooth Pairing mode to get them working together, making it a mini sound system for the home. Being able to reposition the speakers is a great advantage for the Groovy Duo system, as you can be surrounded in sound from different angles - depending on the room, and setup in your home or office.

A privacy campaigner for "Stop The Cyborgs" has come up with a novel way to prevent being recorded by a Google Glass wearing Glasshole - a simple program that knows when Glass is being used and prevents it from connecting to a network.

The program will no doubt be to the chagrin of the Valley's Glass-wearing enthusiasts, as it prevents it from connecting to the cloud completely. But Stop The Cyborg's Julian Oliver claims it's a hassle-free approach to gaining some privacy in public places.

"To say 'I don't want to be filmed' at a restaurant or playing with your kids is perfectly OK," he said, speaking with Wired. "But how do you do that when you don't even know if a device is recording? This steps up the game. It's taking a jammer-like approach."

America's Secret Service is on the hunt for software that can differentiate between tone on social media - including registering sarcasm.

In a work order posted this week, the agency is revealed to be searching for software able to monitor users in real-time, as well as collecting data - including the emotions of web users, and in multiple languages.

The work order claims it's important the software has the "ability to detect sarcasm and false positives."

Facebook's security infrastructure head has claimed his entire team wear "tinfoil hats" when it comes to privacy and promised end-to-end encryption that would kill government snooping on the social network.

Gregg Stefancik told journalists on a trip to Australia that Facebook is thoroughly rehashing its communications, with a view to making them secure. He said the company isn't there quite yet, however, encryption is a priority.

"We've prioritized encrypting the traffic that is most sensitive at Facebook, and we're working aggressively to get to the point where we can tell you we'll have it all encrypted between datacentres," Stefancik said.

Computex 2014 - Cementing themselves in the video card market and creating a name for themselves in the power supply market; EVGA now have their eye on the gaming peripheral market with the release of a mouse.

The Torq X10 Carbon was initially shown off at CES and it's taken almost 6 months for EVGA to finally bring the product to market. With a sleek software suite, though, and a great look and feel there's no denying that EVGA are ready to enter the gaming peripheral market with force. The new Torq X10 Carbon is a serious looking mouse with all buttons being customizable and LED lighting that can change color.

Along with the Torq X10 Carbon, though, we got a chance to check out a very early version of a full mechanical keyboard the company is working on. Sporting media keys, macros and an LCD screen across the top; the yet to be named keyboard is still a while away. It's clear that EVGA want to shake up the peripheral market; and with these products it's more then possible.