Archive for the Category ◊ USB Technologies ◊

AMD Hudson Chipset to Get USB 3.0?
Friday, July 30th, 2010 | Author: Grace

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As Intel evidently won’t be offering USB 3.0 as chipset integrated feature until 2012, AMD is taking the opportunity to slap its nemesis in the face by integrating USB 3.0 into its upcoming mobile PC platform. The said platform is code-named Hudson D1 which serves as the southbridge chip for Ontario and Llano APUs – AMD’s CPU/GPU fusion. It is slated to ship in Q4 2010, and will primarily target at thin-notebooks and notebooks.
Rumor has it that AMD is in talks with NEC to license its proven USB 3.0 chipset in order to save R&D money into developing its own solution. NEC seems like an ideal partner as the fab manufacturer has the capacity to ramp up production as soon as orders are received. The talk comes at a time when Intel at last released xHCI spec 1.0 which finalizes the details of the register-level interface for host controller driver in software. The move by AMD will undoubtedly drive the cost per unit even lower to perhaps under $2, and will likely create an incentive for more first-tier manufacturers to adopt SuperSpeed USB.

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USB 3.0 RAID 2.5″ Enclosure
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 | Author: Grace

 

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Storage maven inXtron adds to its line of USB 3.0 devices with the Orbit. Not to be confused with the Altec Lansing Orbit speaker, this Orbit is a 2.5 hard drive enclosure built for two 2.5″ drives. They’ve developed this closely with Gigabyte, who is leading the way with many USB 3.0 implementations; and Silicon Image who is providing its SteelVine Series 3 Core storage technology. These drives can be configured to run in RAID configurations 0 and 1 as well as JBOD. RAID 1 mirroring is an ideal use for this device as a great method to handle drive failures for critical data. Unfortunately, even the best RAID 1 device sacrifices speed for security. Duplicating the data across disks is done real-time and can effectively take twice as long as normal.
RAID 0 is where this drive will really smoke. The USB 3.0 bandwidth can really be exploited with the dual write, striping operations permitted by RAID 0. USB 3.0 should provide plenty of power to be able to run both drives solely with bus power. There’s not much more detail at this time so release may be far off. Hopefully no more than a few months will pass before we can get our hands on one.

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Not to be Outdone, Asus Struts its SuperSpeed USB Stuff
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 | Author: Grace

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On the heels of the notice of Gigabyte’s mega-volume announcement, Asus has shot back with its own pedigree and the breadth of their commitment to innovation. The company has definitely been a major player in the adoption of new technologies and new form factors. Gigabyte may hold the title of most, but Asus asserts, and we agree, they have always been first. First motherboard with USB 3.0 certification from the USB-IF, first nettop with USB 3.0, first to integrate USB 3.0 into their full range of products, not a long list, but definitely an impressive reminder of how hard they have been working to make the best product possible.
Asus has always had our loyalty since the early days of consumer PCs. We’ve gladly ordered products that were the first and best in: tweaked motherboards, Dual CPU capability, SLI support, integrated IO systems, small form factor machines, the EEE PC. That list goes on quite a bit longer and reads like a greatest-hits list of personal computing. We expect sharks with lasers to be built in to their next system at this rate. If you have a few days, try a search for Asus on our site, and you can see for yourself how often we find them newsworthy. One thing is for sure, “new” and “hotness” are words that will be associated with Asus for a long time to come.

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If travel and photography are your thing, Panasonic has some gear you need. Matsuhita, a.k.a. Panasonic, submits for your approval the DMC-TZ10. This little 12MP point ‘n shoot packs an internal GPS system to tag each of your photos with longitude and latitude information, which is already consumed by online services like Picasa, Flickr and alike. GPS information is then instantly processed to show map locations and track trip trajectory. While they are plugging the heart of a navigation system into the camera, they keep most of the rest of one as well. The Lumix DMC-TZ10 camera contains a Navteq geo-location database with 500,000 points of interest, covering over 73 countries. Now your camera can let you know your whereabouts and maybe something else you might be near to go take pictures of (e.g. landmarks).
There’s also a slew of other more traditional features like a 25mm wide angle lens, which is capable of zooming up to 300mm. The Lumix DMC-TZ10 doubles as a high-def camcorder, recording video at 720p in AVCHD Lite with audio encoded in Dolby Digital. If you can upgrade to a SDXC, you can afford adjust your video bit-rate up to 17Mbps. Still sporting one of the best image stabilization systems, this new Lumix maybe bound to be even more popular than it’s predecessors.

UWB Becomes a Gigabit Specs, Benefits only WUSB
Saturday, January 30th, 2010 | Author: Grace

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UWB’s fate is pretty much tied to that of Certified Wireless USB, which is only communication protocol that still depends on the said radio technology. While there are already several WUSB devices, from video / audio adapters to hard drives and docking stations, on the market, the adoption rate is a far cry from that of other USB standards. The performance of these wireless peripherals is quite discouraging with real-world transfer rate averaging at just around 15MB/s. Native WUSB hosts can remove some overhead, and likely provide some speed boost, but significant improvement will only come with new specs, just like USB 3.0.
WiMedia Alliance, believed to be in the process of disbanding, has released version 1.5 of the common radio platform specs, which in a nutshell defines the foundation for Wireless USB. The upgrade now pushes speed from 480Mbps to 1024Mbps, doubling the available bandwidth for peripherals that stream 1080p video from a laptop to HDTV. Whether or not this will save WUSB remains to be seen, but the new specs certainly outpaces 802.11n in speed, yet slaughtered by upcoming WiGig 1.0 (7Gbps).