IDF 2013 - Today LSI announced that they will be demonstrating their NVM Express Solution for Next-Generation SandForce Flash Controllers at the 2013 Intel Developer Forum. LSI says that NVMe "is an optimized, high-performance, scalable host controller interface with a streamlined register interface and command set designed for enterprise and client systems using PCI Express (PCIe(R))-based flash devices"

"Personal computing platforms, big data applications and hyperscale web and cloud datacenters are driving IT adoption of PCIe flash devices to optimize the user experience and contend with faster and more efficient access to massive amounts of data," said Thad Omura, vice president of marketing, Flash Components Division, LSI. "LSI's host NVMe driver expertise and flash controller leadership is the ideal combination to enable industry-wide, volume adoption of PCIe flash storage."

"Flash controllers are the intelligence that manages flash memory in SSDs and are critical to delivering the performance, quality and reliability required to dramatically improve user experience for client and server applications," said Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "LSI has been a key contributor to the development of the NVMe specification and standard drivers that will help to unleash the full potential of PCIe SSDs and pave the way for broader industry adoption."

Today micron unveiled its new Serial NOR Flash Interface with Replay-Protected Monotonic Counter designed for use in Ultrathin Devices. This new NOR Flash Interface has already been validated for use in future Intel Ultrabook platforms. Micron says that with this announcement, it is well-positioned to support the growth of Ultrathin applications with its large portfolio of DRAM, NAND, NOR and SSD solutions.

"This first-to-market RPMC feature, developed by Micron for our SPI NOR device, is an additional demonstration of our commitment to continuously meet application requirements and customer needs," said Jeff Bader, vice president of Micron's Embedded Solutions Marketing. "Our NOR Flash excellence, coupled with the leadership and expertise of Intel, make this device the best-in-class solution for the Intel Ultrabook and other future Intel-based platforms."

Micron says that it's 64Mb density is the sweet spot solution currently available for immediate platform-enablement activities, and that its 64Mb RPMC-enabled SPI NOR device supports nonvolatile storage and authentication needs that are critical to the chipset security implementation for future Intel Ultrabook platforms and is compliant with Intel's Serial Flash Hardening Product External Architecture Specification.

Today is the day, where Apple has just unveiled its latest iPhone 5S smartphone which features A7 processor and Touch ID fingerprint scanner. The iPhone 5S is available in three colors: silver, gold and a "new space gray." They are all made from high-grade aluminum and chamfered edges.

We have the much-talked about A7 processor, which is a 64-bit processor - a first for smartphones. iOS 7 also runs in 64-bit, which is something we should have expected maybe. We have over 1 billion transistors working inside of the A7 processor, with the new chip and iOS 7 capable of running 32- and 64-bit apps, with all built-in apps being re-engineered to take support of the new 64-bit architecture.

Apple says the iPhone 5S is much faster when it comes to CPU performance, showing a chart stating it's 'up to 56x faster'. It also runs OpenGL|ES 3.0, like the refreshed Nexus 7 does.

The emerging markets have so far not been able to push the iPhone, but this is all set to change thanks to Apple's announcement today of the iPhone 5C smartphone. The iPhone 5C is a plastic-built smartphone, which takes a walk down the same lane as the Galaxy range of smartphones from Samsung. Apple says "it's made with all the incredible technology of the iPhone 5, more fun, more colorful."

The iPhone 5C arrives in five colors - green, white, blue, pink and yellow. The entire back of the iPhone 5C is made from a single part, as you can see in the shot above. The iPhone 5C features the same 4-inch Retina display, the same A6 processor that is found in the iPhone 5 and "console-level graphics."

On the back, we have an 8-megapixel iSight camera with backside illumination, and on the front we have a new FaceTime HD camera. We have the iPhone 5C supporting more LTE bands with "up to 100 Mbps download" and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n support. On a two-year contract the new iPhone 5C will cost you $99 for the 16GB model and $199 for the 32GB model.

By the end of this month, Apple will have passed the 700 million iOS devices shipped milestone, but before then we should expect the release of iOS 7, the company's next-generation mobile OS.

iOS 7 looks gorgeous when compared to iOS 6, and finally brings it up to the multi-tasking, gorgeous UI that we've come to expect from the various Android 4.x iterations of Jelly Bean (4.1, 4.2, 4.3). It looks great, and has some new features, such as Siri being able to search Tweets, as well as Siri being capable of searching Wikipedia, inline web search and photo search.

We have textured ringtones, and improvements made to system sound alerts. Apple has made it easier to share on iOS 7, with a new "Share Sheet" which lets you push out to Twitter or e-mail, as well as the ability to use AirDrop to share with people close to you over "P2P Wi-Fi". iOS 7 also has iTunes Radio, which Apple describes as "the best way to experience new music."

IDF 2013 - Today LSI announced that they will be demonstrating the performance of its 12Gb/s MegaRAID controller at this year's Intel Developer Forum being held in San Francisco, California. The demo will be taking place at LSI's booth (#614) as well as on display at other locations during the event.

The demonstration setup consists of a LSI 12Gb/s MegaRAID controller with an Intel Xenon E5-2600 v2 based server, and eight 12Gb/s HGST SAS SSDs. LSI says that this system delivers a throughput increase of over 50-percent compared to a 6Gb/s SAS system. LSI design this system to maximize storage performance for I/O intensive applications such as web cloud data centers and virtualized server environments.

"As storage needs grow, 12Gb/s SAS provides the performance gains necessary to help end customers optimize bandwidth-intensive applications including those for cloud and big data," said Kelly Bryant, vice president of marketing, RAID Storage Division, LSI. "Working closely with the storage ecosystem including Intel and HGST, LSI is committed to providing customers with 12Gb/s SAS solutions with leading performance and interoperability."

Today Arduino announced the launch of its newest development board based on the open-source Arduino architecture. The new Arduino Yun is the first member of what Arduino calls "a new groundbreaking line of Wi-Fi products that combine the power of Linux with the ease of use that Arduino is known for."

The new development board gets its name from the Chinese word for "cloud," which is well-deserved as the board is designed to make it easy for users to connect to complex web services directly from the Arduino. The Yun is a combination of the Arduino Leonardo which runs in Atmega32U4 processor and a Wi-Fi SoC which runs Linino, a MIPS GNU/Linux distro based on OpenWRT. A lot of people, including myself are calling this new development board Arduino's answer to the Raspberry PI, but the question is will it manage to lure away some of those who are already deeply ingrained into the Raspberry Pi ecosystem?

Additionally, this is the first Arduino development board that is manufactured in Asia, unlike all previous board which were manufactured in Italy. Arduino says that this was a necessity because of the tiny embedded Linux machine and Wi-Fi that is packed into such a small board like this. They say that it requires special equipment and expertise that are much easier and cheaper to find in Taiwan over Italy. The Arduino Yun will retail at a pricing point of $69 and is available now.

With the launch of their latest Adaptec Series 8, PMC delivers >700,000 4K random read RAID I/O/s unleashing the potential of 12Gb/s SAS SSDs. The Series 8 family is spread across five models based on PMC's 12Gb SAS RoC controller in a low profile form factor. Configurations include 16-port adapters that connect twice the drives of competing solutions, providing the flexibility to create hybrid storage arrays with any combination of SSDs and HDDs.

The fourth generation caching solution from Adaptec now includes tiering technology allowing customers to maximize their investment. maxCache Plus with Series 8 offers additional flexibility to configure all storage devices in a server environment, not just devices connected to PMC hardware enabling admins the ability to leverage their storage assets according to their performance capabilities.

"Enterprise datacenters and cloud environments have a need to accelerate application performance while coping with massive data growth cost effectively," said Jeff Janukowicz, research director for solid state storage at IDC. "12Gb SAS architectures and tiering technologies are poised to overcome these challenges and help unlock the potential of SSDs, which is one of the key reasons IDC expects shipments of SAS SSDs to grow at a 75% CAGR from 2012 to 2017."

The next-gen consoles are nearly here, with most people thinking that the minimum requirements on PC games were going to go through the roof: think again. DICE and EA have just released the system requirements for Battlefield 4, which aren't too bad at all:

Minimum:

Recommended:

The new iPhone should be unveiled today, with Apple unleashing the iPhone 5S to the world, but what should we expect? Between the iPhone 5 being released and today, we've seen some truly amazing smartphones released, with pretty much all of them being based from Google's mobile OS, Android.

What can Apple do to get customers back? They can't just unleash the iPhone 5S with the same 4-inch screen and not-even-HD 1136x640 display, can they? Well, I think they can. We should expect Apple to not shift from the 4-inch 1136x640 display from the iPhone 5... which is a disappointment. What will we see? I think we'll see an evolution of the iPhone, not a revolution, which is something we should be used to from the 'S' release of an iPhone, and from Apple as a company.

We should see the iPhone 5S feature the A7 processor, which should provide some more performance and hopefully improved battery life, which is something most people complain about on the iPhone 5. The fingerprint sensor is something I don't think we'll see - but is something we've heard quite a bit on lately. iOS 7 will most likely be the second biggest change to the iPhone 5S from the iPhone 5, but is that worth your money? Probably not.

If you didn't tune in to our first Podcast, you might want to check that out here, where we had Jim Handy from Objective Analysis on the show talking with us about the SK Hynix factory fires.

SK Hynix provided an update today, where it has said that the fab that was damaged by the fire is still being evaluated, but the second fab has been re-opened. The company said in a statement: "Our plan is to resume normal operations with full production capacity in the shortest time by ramping up operations in stages as soon as the damaged facilities are replaced."

Handy says that this seems to contradict earlier reports from the company, where it said it would see operations resumed quickly so that production volume wouldn't be impacted in the long-term. SK Hynix has said that it has inventory in Korea, where they said: "We will continue to make every effort to minimize the impact on supply with our inventories of finished products and completely processed wafers as well as production support from our headquarters."

Just when you thought the storage world was going a little quiet, Intel has come to the table and thrown everything on the ground to announce its new Intel Solid-State Drive Professional Family, which includes the Intel Solid-State Drive Pro 1500 Series.

The new drives are geared toward business-class clients, and are engineered specifically for "easy IT deployment and secure manageability, and offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with enhanced performance." The Intel SSD Pro 1500 Series has some nifty features, where it can protect your data from unauthorized access with its enterprise-grade security features.

These security features include hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption and industry-standard Opal key management protocols. Intel has designed the new Intel SSD Pro 1500 Series SSDs to work with its Haswell-based fourth-generation Core processors with Intel vPro technology.

Today, Newegg announced that it has won yet another battle in its ongoing fight against the notorious "patent trolls" Soverain Software and TQP Development. Newegg says that on September 4, 2013, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated an additional claim made by Soverian Software LLC on its "Shopping Cart" patent.

Additionally, the court denied Soverain's request for a rehearing of the initial January 22, 2013 decision that invalidated the balance of the asserted claims. As a result of this decision, Newegg says that all patent claims asserted by Soverain have been held invalid for being no more than obvious variations of old patents held by CompuServe technology.

Newegg says that it is looking forward to going to trial later this year against TQP Development LLC, a shell company affiliated with the notorious patent troll Erich Spangenberg. Newegg says that it hopes that Spangenberg will allow the patent to be tested by the court system this time around and feels that it will be the end to the "shopping cart" patent for good.

IDF 2013 - Today, Magma announced that it will showcase its PCI Express Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis at the 2013 Intel Developer Forum, which begins tomorrow in San Francisco, California. Magma will be demonstrating its Express Box 1T and Express Box 3T at the company's booth (#182) at the Moscone Center from September 10-12.

"Magma is honored to be invited to this year's IDF," said Tim Miller, president of Magma. "Our technology is a market leader. Our technology is a platform for Thunderbolt equipped devices and participating in IDF presents an opportunity to continue to expand the awareness of Thunderbolt by OEMs and consumers alike."

Earlier today, EVGA announced the launch of its newest mini-ITX chassis, the Hadron Air. Measuring in at a mere 12 inches tall by 6 inches wide, the Hadron Air is one of the smallest enthusiast grade mini-ITX chassis that I have ever seen.

EVGA says that although the Hadron Air chassis encompasses a small footprint, it packs a serious punch by providing enough room for two 3.5-inch HDDs or 2.5-inch SSDs and supporting graphics cards up to 267mm in length. An integrated Gold-Rated 500W PSU features 40A on the 12V rail, giving it enough power to handle whatever you can throw at it.

Additionally, EVGA has released a second configuration of the Hadron chassis that is designed to support liquid cooling. The Hadron Hydro is just a little bit taller than the Hadron Air to allow room for a liquid cooling radiator and supporting hardware. No information on pricing or availability was given at the time of release.

Today, Leica unveiled its new high-end, premium compact camera simply named "C." The camera features a 12-megapixel 1/1.7-inch CMOS sensor along with integrated Wi-Fi and NFC. A 3-inch TFT LCD is located on the back of the device for quick viewing of recently taken shots.

While it does have an LCD, Leica had enough forethought to include a viewfinder even though it is itself LCD-based. The C features an equivalent focal length of 28-200mm with an maximum aperture range of f/2.0 to f/5.9. The camera features several autofocus modes, including contrast detect, multi-area, face detection and a Live View mode.

Leica's new C has an ISO range of 80 all the way up to 12,800 and even features an auto mode that will set the ISO based on lighting conditions. The camera is able to shoot in JPEG, RAW, and MPO formats and includes optical image stabilization. The camera can also capture an impressive full HD 1920x1080@60FPS video in MPEG-4 and AVCHD formats with Stereo Sound.

Tonight will be one of the last nights that you will be able to catch a trio of heavenly bodies hanging out in the night sky in the same neighborhood. This evening's sky watchers in the northern hemisphere will be treated to Saturn, Venus, and the Crescent Moon all within a few degrees of each other.

Tonight around 45 minutes after sunset, you will be able to look toward the southwestern sky and see the waxing crescent moon. To the lower right, you will see a very bright star which is actually the planet Venus. Above Venus, you will see another brightly lit star that will actually be the planet Saturn. The distance between the moon and Saturn will be roughly 5 degrees, which is equal to about half your fist or 3 fingers held at arm's length.

This will also be one of the last spectacular shows Saturn provides us for the year, because in just a few weeks, it will have dipped below the horizon and become visible to those in the southern hemisphere. For those of you with medium power binoculars or a telescope of at least 30-power, you would be able to view Saturn's rings tonight, even with it so close to the moon. I plan on taking out my telescope and imaging gear and getting a couple nice still shots of the trio. If you get any good shots, post them up in the comments and I will share them on our TweakTown Facebook Page.

It appears that Facebook is going to jump into the professional social networking ring and go head-to-head with LinkedIn. A new report is showing off a new section that Facebook is said to be testing called the "Professional Skills" tab. Much like LinkedIn, it would allow users to list out their professional skill sets.

Unlike LinkedIn, however, when clicking on a person's professional skill, it will not take you to a page showing who endorsed you for that skill, but rather to other professionals who claim to possess the same skill. Additionally, the new professional skills tab will only allow you to add skills that have existing Facebook pages. This can be confusing as a quick search shows that skills such as "marketing" have several different pages created by the community.

Facebook has not announced a launch date for this feature, nor has any information on a beta program been released, but we expect some kind of announcement soon. With Facebook adding job-search features and other professional-style searches, users may want to rethink the content they post on the service or at least adjust their privacy settings to only display content they wish the public to see.

Today, CyberPower PC announced the debut of the ZeusBook Ultimate Series, a new laptop that is said to be the world's slimmest 17-inch gaming notebook. CyberPower says that the ZeusBook Ultimate measures in at under an inch thick and weighs less than six pounds total, which makes it not only slimmer, but also much lighter than similarly powered gaming notebooks on the market.

Offered in two different models, the ZeusBook Ultimate series features the latest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M graphics card and Intel's i7-4700HQ Haswell CPU clocked at 2.4GHz. 8GB of RAM is present alongside a 17.3-inch 1920x1080 LED display. CyberPower has really stepped up the network connectivity by installing an E200 KILLER NIC and a Wireless N 1202 Wi-Fi adapter, which will ensure fast and reliable connectivity during gaming and general use.

The ZeusBook Ultimate comes with Windows 8 64-bit pre-installed and has the ability to connect with three external monitors for a truly immersive HD gaming experience. The laptop is capable of supporting Super HD resolutions up to 3840x2160, which is four-times the resolution of a standard Full HD display. CyberPower has also managed to pack in some very impressive audio hardware into the ZeusBook Ultimate with the inclusion of HD Surround Sound speakers and a built-in subwoofer.

Today, Western Digital announced that it has acquired Virident Systems, a key player in the enterprise flash storage industry. The announcement says that the two companies have entered into a definitive merger agreement where Virident will be acquired by HSGT, a subsidiary owned by Western Digital.

"We have established a competitive position in the enterprise SSD space and with our recently announced acquisitions we are increasing our commitment to become an even more significant player in this high growth segment," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital. "Virident has a proven leadership team and a culture of innovation. Its combination of great people, leading products and advanced technology will enhance our increasingly strategic position in enterprise storage."

Western Digital has reportedly paid approximately $685 million in cash for Virident, of which $645 million represents the enterprise value of Virident. Western Digital says that Virident CEO Mike Gustafson will join HGST as a senior vice president and will head up the Virident team under HSGT President Mike Cordano.