108413 éléments (108413 non lus) dans 10 canaux
A little-known Chinese manufacturer, Sage Microelectronics, has managed to out-gun its much bigger rivals (Kingston, Sandisk and Samsung to name a few) by bringing to market the world’s first 10TB 2.5-inch (9.5mm) SSD.
The drive was first demonstrated last month at the China Data Summit 2015 in Beijing and comes months ahead of its previous launch target. Samsung is the only big SSD vendor that has announced an SSD larger than 10TB.
At 15.36TB, its PM1633a is the biggest drive ever announced, surpassing significantly the 10TB drives that Seagate and Western Digital are expected to unveil in 2016. But it has yet to be brought to market and is likely to be thicker than the industry-standard 2.5-inch thickness.
What makes the feat even more noteworthy is that it uses a single layer PCB where most would settle for a couple and used MLC rather than TLC NAND to improve the useful lifespan of the product.
In addition, the company engineering team, headed by Dr. Jeromy Luo and Professor Chris Tsu, have used a denser multi-chip packaging and tweaked the controller so that the SSD’s performance remains more or less constant over time, regardless of how full it is.
The flip side is that the SSD is likely to be far slower than the competition as it focuses on features rather than performance. It would still be far faster than the enterprise hard disk drives currently available on the market.
The average retail price of SSDs has been steadily falling over the past three years with the demand for solid state storage driving investment and the rapid transition to finer geometries, something that allows higher capacities to reach the market while still remaining in the black.
A consumer-grade 1TB SSD drive currently costs around £250 while a 4TB hard disk drive can be had for around £80.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Chinese tech behemoth, Huawei, came up with a technology that could revolutionize batteries, with smartphones likely to be the primary target.
In a test, two batteries, one apparently for a smartphone (3,000mAh) and one for a feature phone (600mAh) were charged up to 10x faster than traditional methods allowed.
Rough calculations show that the 3,000mAh battery could reach near full capacity in about 11 minutes. The technology, which could be used in a number of other products, is likely to attract the attention of laptop manufacturers and major battery makers like Foxconn Electronics.
Although it is far too early to speculate on the performance of batteries boosted with the heteroatoms technology used by Huawei, one can expect it to improve charging laptop times by a similar proportion, cutting that down to less than an hour in most cases.
For now, Huawei hasn’t said whether it will license the technology to other companies, including potential competitors, or when the product will appear in commercial products.
The video showed Huawei-labelled batteries in a commercial form factor, which means that they are almost certainly ready for mass production for existing Huawei smartphones; which again would imply that you will be able to swap them for existing batteries.
What’s more, the 3,000mAh battery had an energy density of more than 620Wh/L which is very close to the best performing Lithium Ion batteries on the market.
It suggests that Huawei has either managed to seriously beef up its research facility (including its Watt Lab) or has teamed up with a leading battery manufacturer. We suspect the first scenario to be the more likely given that Huawei researchers tinkered with the very fabric of the battery.
While laptops have comparatively lower than expected mAh rating, they provide the power at a much higher voltage compared to laptops (between 10.5V and 11.5V for most models) delivering a much higher Whr rating, up to 10x compared to smartphones.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Photo credit: Shmizla / Shutterstock
Microsoft recently announced two flagship devices, the Lumia 950 XL and the Lumia 950, both of which run its Windows 10 Mobile operating system and share many features: same screen resolution, same amount of onboard storage and system memory.
The 950 XL is certainly the better purchase out of the two models. Yes, it is bigger than the 950 and more expensive, but there’s three key features that will win businesses and individuals alike.
It has a bigger battery -- 3,340mah vs 3,000mah -- which, according to Microsoft’s own numbers, should allow users to squeeze that all-important extra hour when making calls or browsing the web.
The system-on-chip used by the 950 XL (the Snapdragon 810) runs about 10 percent faster compared to the one on the 950 (the Snapdragon 808) and has two extra cores, which should come handy in tackling demanding tasks.
Perhaps the most important point is that Microsoft is giving away a free Display Dock when one pre-orders a Lumia 950 XL. Microsoft has yet to give pricing details for this gadget but it is likely that it retails for far more than £50 (i.e. the price difference between the 950 XL and the 950).
And for any business users, this may well be the perfect accessory to match their new Lumia handset. The offer is valid for the purchase of the 950 XL and offer registration between November 20 2015 and January 31 2016.
Just connect your devices, keyboard, mouse and your monitor to it and it transforms into a fully-fledged desktop; your phone will automatically detect these and switch to Continuum mode, which brings up the familiar Windows 10 desktop.
More details about the Microsoft Display Dock offer can be found here.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.