Fujitsu announced the release of its Primergy BX620 S4 blade server, which is designed to facilitate system expansion and reconfiguration while reducing the workload for systems administrators during server consolidation. The Primergy BX620 S4 is being offered in Japan starting immediately and will be gradually offered in other markets, noted the company.Powered by Intel Xeon L5320 1.86GHz processors, the new server can accommodate up to ten industry-standard LAN ports, among the highest number in the industry, thereby simplifying network design during server consolidation. When the server is connected to a storage area network (SAN), Fujitsu's Systemwalker Resource Coordinator Virtual server Edition V13.2 can handle storage, thus enabling plug-and-play configuration changes without affecting the SAN environment.Fujitsu's new server also improves utilization and availability while reducing running costs, electrical consumption, and administrative costs, enabling customers to realize significant reductions in total cost of ownership (TCO), according to Fujitsu.Fujitsu's new blade server has expandable LAN ports that simplify network setup and is designed so that administrators can change server configuration without affecting the SAN environment. When combined with the company's own middleware, the Systemwalker Resource Coordinator Virtual server Edition V13.2, it provides the higher availability and more efficient utilization that is expected for server consolidation with blade servers, claims Fujitsu.The Primergy BX620 S4 blade server has an optional 4Gbps Fibre Channel expansion board.The Fujitsu Primergy BX620 S4 blade serverPhoto: Company

Silicon Storage Technology (SST) has announced that its NANDrive storage solution is one of the first ATA solid-state storage devices to receive Windows ReadyBoost certification from Microsoft. When enabled as a Windows ReadyBoost device, the NANDrive achieves much faster application load time and system responsiveness, especially in low-memory conditions and after a resume from hibernate, in notebook and desktop PCs, according to the company.SST NANDrive leverages the company's innovative controller technology to manage all NAND flash complexities, resulting in an easy-to-integrate mass data storage solution that uses a fraction of the power that a hard disk drive requires while still maintaining high performance when enabled as a solid-state drive.Windows ReadyBoost is a new feature in Windows Vista that enables PCs to enjoy greater system responsiveness. With the Windows ReadyBoost feature, frequently used application data is copied into nonvolatile memory, such as NANDrive, resulting in much faster application load time and system responsiveness. During ReadyBoost certification testing, NANDrive achieved high performance results of 50% above certification requirements, demonstrating its suitability for compute-intensive applications such as laptop PCs and mobile multimedia devices. In addition, the NANDrive family, with the industry's first 8-bit hardware ECC engine and SST proprietary programmable firmware with multi-tasking NAND interface, helps solve the slow performance problem that is typical when using lower cost multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash.SST NANDrive family spans densities of 128MB to 8GB, all with the same common ball layout, giving customers a wide range of easily upgradeable solid-state storage options. The first NANDrive device to receive certification for ReadyBoost is the 512MB SST85LD0512T.

Lanner Electronics has announced the FW-8890, a 2U rackmount appliance for enterprise-grade network applications. Combining an Intel 5000P server-grade chipset and two Dual- or Quad-Core Xeon sequence processors enables the FW-8890 to deliver unparalleled performance which is backed up by Lanner's ODM service to ensure both flexibility and smooth integration, highlighted the company."The FW-8890 redefines the design of high-performance network security hardware," stated Lawrence Chao, Executive Vice President. "It integrates an Intel 5000P chipset, an onboard Cavium VPN accelerator, and a PCI Express network traffic bus, allowing our customers to deliver faster, feature-rich applications – which are simultaneously flexible, expandable, and easy to maintain."The FW-8890 builds upon the architecture of earlier generations by offering a PCI Express (PCIe) network traffic bus, up to 12 Gigabit RJ45 or SFP fiber ports, a PCIe enhanced north-southbridge link, four hot-swappable SATA bays, and eight FB-DIMMs. These enhancements give application designers both greater freedom in building today's network appliances and ample headroom for satisfying future hardware demands, Lanner pointed out.The FW-8890 network appliance is designed for multi-service communication applications – such as Business-to-Business Gateways, Unified Threat Management Appliances, and Triple Play Servers. By employing the FW-8890 in multi-service applications, customers can optimize data density, reduce operating costs, and improve business continuity with an energy-efficient network infrastructure, noted Lanner. Features of the FW-8890 Item Detail Quad-core processing Delivers better performance on multiple applications at a substantially reduced power envelope Intel Core microarchitecture Supports better system utilization, boosts application responsiveness, and increases performance headroom for single and multi-threaded applications. Onboard Cavium Nitrox CN1010 VPN Accelerator Increases total system throughput by processing high level IPsec and IKE, IPv6, SSL and Wireless LAN security protocol macro commands to reduce host I/O traffic and dramatically offload the system processor Up to 12 enterprise grade Intel Gigabit NICs High network throughput scans more packets per second with fail-over bypass support Intel Virtualization technology Enables migration of more environments including 64-bit applications and operating systems to virtual environments Intel's sub 65W dual-core processors Low-power SKUs improve data center density and thermal mechanics Expansion options Lanner offers an extensive line of PCI-X and PCIe VPN and content inspection network accelerators Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, May 2007Further product information is available on the Lanner website. The FW-8890 is available for immediate evaluation.Lanner Electronics FW-8890, a 2U rackmount appliance for enterprise-grade network applicationsPhoto: Company

Fujitsu announced the development of its MHY2 BH series of 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) with a storage capacity of 250GB in a slim 9.5mm profile.Fujitsu's new series of HDDs utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording to deliver 250GB of storage capacity and is intended for use in notebook PCs, compact desktop PCs, and consumer electronics devices, according to the company. With an idle acoustic noise level of 2.4bels and low power consumption, operating at 1.9W or less when reading or writing data, the MHY2 BH series is also among the best-in-class in terms of noise and energy efficiency, stated Fujitsu. The new HDDs are also RoHS compliant.Sales of the new MHY2 BH series will begin during the company's second fiscal quarter of 2007, targeting global markets for consumer electronics products and notebook PCs.The Fujitsu MHY2 BH series of 250GB 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs)Photo: Company

Hitachi Data Systems has introduced the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform (USP) V an intelligent storage services platform, which it claims is able to significantly outperform competing storage systems.The USP V offers 3.5 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) of maximum performance, and, fueled by its next generation large-scale heterogeneous virtualization layer and Hitachi architectural innovations, substantially increases virtualized storage port performance for external storage by up to 500% over its predecessor, highlighted Hitachi. Hitachi has also announced a 4Gb/s fiber channel switch (FSW) backplane for enterprise-class storage platforms, making Hitachi the only company with a switched internal architecture and a unique switched backplane architecture as well, providing customers with a fast, cost-effective way to process and transfer data through a storage controller engine, claimed the company.The USP V facilitates linkages across a spectrum of enterprise, mid-range and low-end storage systems, delivering unified, advanced storage services that span multi-dimensional virtualization, provisioning, partitioning, and replication capabilities-in effect enhancing the value of clients' existing storage environments, noted Hitachi. With the refined fourth generation massively parallel crossbar switch architecture as its engine, the USP V delivers 3.5 million IOPS, an advantage of between 75-500% over other enterprise storage systems in the market and a substantial 40% increase over the current Hitachi Universal Storage Platform, said Hitachi.Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VPhoto: Company

GeCube has announced its ATI Radeon HD2000 family of graphics cards, including its high-end HD2900XT and HD2600 and HD2400 cards for the mainstream market, while TUL has also announced the launch of its related high-end graphics card.The announcement of products from both companies comes on the heels of AMD's launch of its ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processing units (GPUs), which was launched as a challenge to Nvidia's GeForce 8 series. The 2900, 2600 and 2400 GPUs were previously referred to by their codenames R600, R610, and R630, respectively.The HD2900XT is GeCube's premium product based on ATI's new generation Radeon HD2000 series. The HD2900XT is based on the R600XT, supports 512MB of GDDR3 memory and has a 512-bit memory bandwidth. The HD2900XT also offers native CrossFire technology and comes with built-in support for HDMI and 5.1-surround sound. The dual-link DVI is also compatible with HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection), HD-DVD and Blu-ray for resolutions up to 1080p. The core and memory timings are 740MHz and 1.65GHz, respectively, allowing the card to provide the latest 24X anti-aliasing and high speed 128-bit HDR (High Dynamic Range). The architecture is designed with 320 unified stream processors and physics processing support.The HD2600 series uses the ATI Radeon RV630XT chipset equipped with 512MB GDDR4 high-speed memory and X-Turbo2 silent fan technology, while the HD2400 uses the ATI Radeon RV610 chip equipped with 256MB DDR2 memory and has built-in HDMI. Both the GeCube HD2600 and HD2400 cards support the latest UVD (Universal Video Decoder) video processing technology, which means 1080p/1080i (HD2600), Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are all supported. All GeCube HD2000 series products also currently support the latest DirectX10 technology. TUL also announced its next-generation high-end graphics card, the PowerColor HD 2900 XT, based on the R600XT. The PowerColor HD 2900 XT features support for 700 million-transistor clocks at 740MHz and 512MB GDDR3 memory running at 1650MHz. The card also supports DirectX 10 games, and comes with built-in HDMI for single HD display and audio connection.TUL's PowerColor HD 2900 XT is currently available in the market, with a worldwide launch price of US$399 (NT$16,500), while GeCube stated that the 2900 XT is also already available in the market at a price of NT$14900. GeCube's launch dates and pricing for the 2600 and 2400 cards have not been confirmed yet, the company indicated. PowerColor HD 2900 XT hardware specification Item Detail Chip R600XT Core clock 740 MHz Memory clock 1650 MHz Memory type GDDR3, 512MB Memory bus 512-bit Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, May 2007 Hardware specification: GeCube HD2900XT, HD2600, HD2400 Product Name GC-HD2900XT-VIE3 GC-RX26XTG4-E3 GC-HD24PLG2-D3 Chip R600XT (80nm) RV630XT (65nm) RV610LE (65 nm) Core/Memory speeds 740MHz /1.65GHz 800Mhz/TBD TBD Memory bus 512 bit 128 bit 64 bit Memory type GDDR3 512MB GDDR4 512MB DDR2 256MB Interface PCI Express x16 PCI Express x16 PCI Express x16 DVI Dual DVI (2 dual link, HDCP) Dual DVI (2 dual link, HDCP) Yes (dual link) Multi-VPU Support Native CrossFire thru interconnected cable Native CrossFire thru interconnected cable Yes (software mode) Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, May 2007

Micron Technology announced that its 1Gbit DDR3 have been validated with Intel desktop platforms. This DDR3 is being fabricated on Micron's 78nm 6F² process, which results a smaller die size premium over DDR2 compared with 512 megabit (Mb) products. offer lower power on modules that can utilize either 512Mb or 1Gb and meet the minimum system density requirements of 1GB. Micron's DDR3 products support data rates of 800 megatransfers per second (MT/s) to 1,066 MT/s with clock frequencies of 400MHz to 533MHz, respectively, doubling the speed from DDR2. The DDR3 supply voltage has been reduced from 1.8V to 1.5V, reducing power consumption by up to 30%. Evaluation samples of Micron's 1Gb DDR3 components are available to select customers with production expected to begin early next year. Micron's 1Gb DDR3 components will be available in various output configurations (x4, x8 and x16), and will be fully compliant with the most recent JEDEC DDR3 specifications. These components will support module densities from 512MB through 4GB and a variety of module types, including UDIMMs, SODIMMs, and RDIMMs. A 2Gb DDR3 device is also expected to be available from Micron early next year, the company added.

Samsung Electronics has announced that 21 of its DDR3 solutions have been validated on Intel's reference platform to work with Intel's next generation (Bearlake) chipsets. This is the largest number of DDR3-based solutions to have passed the validation program.Samsung's Intel-validated solutions include 13 modules and eight monolithic devices in combinations of 512Mb/1Gb densities with speeds of 800 or 1066Mb/s.Samsung said it has worked very closely with Intel to develop the most advanced and comprehensive set of DDR3 memory solutions as early as possible in preparation for the next generation of Intel chipsets.Samsung Electronics will exhibit at Microsoft's WinHEC 2007 Conference on May 14-15 a high-performance desktop PC installed with 8GB of memory, consisting of four 1333Mb/s 2GB DDR3 memory modules. This 1333Mb/s 8GB configuration is currently the fastest speed and largest density for a DDR3 chip, making it the optimal memory solution for PCs with advanced gaming features, said Samsung.DDR3 memory will provide at least twice the bandwidth of today's primary memory- DDR2-with data transfer rates now up to 1.6Gb/s. This will enable much improved 3D graphics, which will directly benefit users of the new Windows Vista operating system.DDR3 also improves the efficiency of multi-threading operations, which will enhance the performance of multi-core systems. DDR3 not only allows for higher system performance, but it also uses only 1.5V of power compared to the 1.8V of DDR2, thereby extending battery life in notebooks. To further optimize system thermal management, DDR3 modules can utilize a thermal sensor on the DIMM.Samsung DDR3 modulesPhoto: Business Wire

Elpida Memory has received Intel's validation for its DDR3 main memory based on the G33 chipset (Bearlake) reference platform. The testing validates that Elpida's DDR3 memory can run on Intel's reference platform and recognizes the excellent quality and reliability of Elpida products, said the memory maker.Since completing development of its DDR3 SDRAM in August 2005, Elpida has been delivering DIMM samples and developing high-speed, low-power circuit technologies. Elpida has taken advantage of its development of DDR3 memory to proceed with the start-up of the DDR3 memory platform based on close cooperation between Intel and Elpida which has already resulted in the shipment of tens of thousands of sample DIMMs to Intel for validation testing.Elpida believes that securing the Intel validation has demonstrated that it can quickly enable its next-generation DDR3 memory platform.The first application of DDR3 memory will be in high-end desktop PCs but is likely to later replace DDR2 memory in notebook PCs and servers.Elpida is now shipping SO-DIMMs for notebook PCs and is preparing for volume shipments of registered DIMMs for servers by making this product available to chipset vendors and major customers for evaluation.Also, not only has the DDR3-1066 received Intel's validation but also operations of DDR3-1333 have been confirmed. The 1Gbit DDR3 memory using 70nm process technology will be coming soon, and will enable higher speed products like the DDR3-1600.Elpida DDR3 memoryPhoto: Business Wire

BenQ has introduced the 14-inch Joybook S41 notebook based on Intel's new Centrino platform (Santa Rosa). The notebook will launch in Taiwan by the end of May.The Joybook S41 adopts the Intel PM965 chipset with support of Intel Core 2 Duo processors.The Joybook S41 uses the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GS discrete graphics card with 1GB TurboCache technology for the multimedia output which provides an HDMI (high definition multimedia interface)..The notebook features a 14.1-inch widescreen LCD display using UltraVivid technology to increase brightness and lower the reflections. BenQ Joybook S41 specifications Item Detail CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 Chipset Intel PM965 VGA Nvidia GeForce 8600M GS (Maximum 1GB TurboCache) Memory DDR2 from 512MB up to 2GB Display 14.1-inch (WXGA 1280×800) Source: BenQ, compiled by Digitimes, May 2007BenQ Joybook S41Photo: Company