Supercomputing 2014: The quest to understand the building blocks of the universe requires intense computing power, which in turn requires some of the fastest storage solutions available. CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, will begin colliding elements with the most energy ever achieved in a particle accelerator in 2015. This requires transmitting 170 petabytes datasets to far-flung research centers around the world. The University of Michigan and University of Victoria are utilizing SanDisk's Fusion ioMemory solutions to handle the influx of data at their multi-site supercomputing project.

The universities need to create a data transfer architecture with the capability to transfer figures across 100 computing centers at 100Gb/s speeds. This isn't typically a huge problem if there is a distributed architecture, but this particular deployment needs to provide that capability from a single server. SanDisk Fusion ioMemory products are stepping in to fulfil the extreme performance requirements, and they are demonstrating a data transfer from the University of Victoria campus to the WAN in the University of Michigan booth (#3569) at the Supercomputing 2014 conference.

OCZ Storage Solutions is leveraging their homegrown Barefoot 3 controller and firmware in tandem with Toshiba A19nm NAND for the new Sabre 1000 SSD Series. OCZ's move to their own proprietary SSD controller is a big step that provides them with tremendous flexibility to tailor their products for different segments. The OCZ Sabre 1000 is geared for read-intensive workloads in high-volume hyperscale deployments.

The Sabre 1000 comes in capacities of 240, 480, and 960GB, and provides an economical alternative for administrators with light and mixed workloads. The SSD features PFM+ (Power Failure Management Plus) that protects data in the event of host power loss. Another key feature is the value-added StoragePeak 1000 SSD management system. This friendly and easy-to-use GUI allows central monitoring and management of the SSD.

Performance varies based upon capacity, with top random read/write speeds weighing in at 98,000/23,000 IOPS. Sequential speed is also impressive at 550/515 MB/s read/write. The Sabre 1000 is geared for read-intensive applications such as read cache and indexing, VOD (Video On Demand), VDI, media streaming, and cloud infrastructures. We recently put the latest OCZ enterprise SSD through the paces in our OCZ Intrepid 3600 Enterprise SSD Review. Head to our IT/Datacenter section to view our library of competitive performance analysis of other leading enterprise SSDs.

Supercomputing 2014: In the world of HPC (High-Performance Computing) the bleeding edge is always the preferred route to realize insane computational power. HMC (Hybrid Memory Cubes) are the next big thing, and offer plenty of performance advantages over existing DRAM. The current generation of HMC technology sips power and provides more density and performance than existing memory technology. With 15 times the performance, 90 percent less space, and 70 percent less power consumption, it is easy to see why industry leaders are touting the advantages of HMC. The key to HMC adoption, as with any new technology, lies in the committees that establish industry-standard interface specifications.

The HMCC (Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium) was founded by Micron, Altera, Open-Silicon, Samsung and Xilinx in 2011 and has grown to more than 150 members. At Supercomputing 2014 the HMCC has announced the finalization and public availability of the HMCC 2.0 specification.

The new specification increases speed from 15Gb/s to 30Gb/s and migrates the associated channel model from short reach (SR) to very short reach (VSR). VSR is key to the eventual fusion of HMC into the CPU. The path to faster data processing, as with storage, involves getting closer to the CPU. The future integration into the CPU will expand upon the tremendous performance advantages of HMC. Imagine an L2 cache with 100 times the capacity.

We've been enjoying NVIDIA's G-SYNC technology for a while now, but AMD is about to join them with their own spin on the refresh rate magic; FreeSync. At the Future of Compute Event, AMD announced it had partnered up with Samsung on a slew of FreeSync-powered displays, which will hit the market in March 2015.

Samsung will release the UD590 in both 23.6-inch and 28-inch models, while there'll be a UE850 available in 23.6-inch, 27-inch and 31.5-inch models. Eventually, FreeSync will spill over onto Samsung's Ultra HD range of monitors, too. Vice President of Samsung Electronics Southeast Asia Headquarters, Joe Chan, said: "We are very pleased to adopt AMD FreeSync technology to our 2015 Samsung Electronics Visual Display division's UHD monitor roadmap, which fully supports open standards. With this technology, we believe users including gamers will be able to enjoy their videos and games to be played with smoother frame display without stuttering or tearing on their monitors".

Supercomputing 2014: Intel and SGI combined their talents to create an HPC monster that touts 30 million IOPS of 4k random speed with 180GB/s of sequential throughput. Scaling storage performance and capacity in tandem is an ongoing challenge in the enterprise storage world, and old interfaces have been the primary culprit hampering these objectives. A diminishing point of returns is reached as more storage devices are added to the server, and performance begins to decline as latency increases. This is a particular pain point when utilizing RAID and HBA architectures in tandem with 2.5" SSDs.

Enter the PCIe SSD. Moving flash to the PCIe bus provides better performance scaling, but many initial revisions of PCIe SSDs leveraged existing standards, such as AHCI, for host communication. This leads to performance degradation and excessive CPU overhead as performance scales. As explained in our Defining NVMe article, NVMe is a new storage protocol designed specifically for non-volatile memory. A slew of architectural refinements combine to provide the best performance possible over the PCIe interface. Intel's DC P3700 (covered in-depth in our Intel DC P3700 1.6TB NVMe Enterprise Review) is one of the fastest PCIe SSDs available, and the combination of NVMe and consistent performance provide enhanced scalability when deploying multiple units.

Intel and SGI decided to push the performance envelope by integrating a whopping 64 of the DC P3700's into a 32-socket server to test the limits of NVME scaling. The results are quite impressive, and the modified SGI UV 300H SAP HANA server surpassed 30 million IOPS in 4k random testing. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is the linear performance scaling in the graphic above. The solid blue lines denote the IOPS performance curve as more P3700's were added, and the dotted blue line is a trend line illustrating a theoretical linear progression. From the results we can see that the SGI beast barely deviates from the perfect scaling trend line. The throughput, tested with 128k sequential blocks, topped out just shy of 180 GB/s.

High-definition TV and display manufacturer AOC has announced its 34" Ultra-Wide Quad HD U3477PQU monitor, featuring a 21:9 display and 3440x1440 resolution. The 34" monitor has a 5ms response time, and the HD display is equivalent to two 20" displays side by side.

"IPS technology offers extended range for brilliant and consistent color, and wide viewing angles for natural transitions between hues delivering exceptional realism," the AOC press release says. "The display also includes picture-by-picture mode, which is ideal for displaying two sources of content on the same screen, while picture-in-picture is optimized for video chat. The display comes equipped with a wide range of connectivity options, including DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI, and MHL to easily connect to devices, peripherals, smartphones, and even a second computer."

The AOC 34" UltrawideQuad HD monitor will launch on December 8 and will have an $899 MSRP price tag.

A scam that allowed customers to purchase Sony PlayStation 4 consoles from $50 to $100 by creating fake ads online, has been nixed by Walmart. It's not surprising to hear Walmart moved quickly to prevent further lost revenue, especially as more satisfied customers boasted their success via social media.

"We can't tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers," Walmart said in a statement. "This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value."

However, Walmart will match rival sales listings from Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers on Black Friday, as retailers fight for consumers. It will be curious to see how Walmart decides to verify price matches, to better prevent future scams.

Just how much data does Netflix stream every month? A damn lot, that's how much. The US-based streaming company in the first quarter of 2014, streamed some 6.5 billion hours of videos, equating to over over 19.5 million terabytes of video streamed. With Netflix streaming 6.5 million terabytes per month, the company will have streamed 78 million terabytes before the end of the year.

Last year, Netflix streamed just 4 billion hours of video, with over 12 million terabytes of data in Q1 2013, so we're seeing quite the uptick in the amount of people using Netflix. But how will the company deal with things going into the future, as we move toward more 1080p streaming, and then 4K? HD uses around 3GB per hour, but if 4K is used, that goes right up to 7GB per hour. This would increase the total data streamed every three months to around 45.5 million terabytes.

After ten years in business, Wicked Lasers has a new owner. The company hasn't stated much other than what you see below, a new own and unfortunately, no more sales to the USA for products over 5mW.

The company has come under fire over the last few years from safety groups, people that don't like fun and even George Lucas. Without an official statement we don't know if the unwanted attention played a role in the decision to end US sales.

Wicked Lasers will no longer be shipping >5mW handheld lasers to US-Based cutomers starting Jan 1, 2015.

Pirated versions of Far Cry 4 are making the rounds on various sites and services around the world, but it is missing a very important part of the game: field-of-view adjustments. FOV controls are completely missing from the pirated versions of Far Cry 4 on the PC.

Why? Well, Creative Director on the game, the now infamous Alex "Low Res FTW" Hutchinson took to his Twitter account, saying: "PC players! If you're online complaining about the lack of FOV control ... You pirated the game". The proper copies of Far Cry 4 feature an FOV slider, but it's nice to see Ubisoft trolling pirates with taking a simple, but important version of the game out.