TUL brought a couple of new graphics cards to the market with the PowerColor PCS+ HD7950 and PowerColor HD7950. The two cards have almost identical specs. Both have 1250MHz memory speed; 3GB of GDDR5 memory with 384-bit memory bandwidth; support for CrossFireX; and DL-DVI-I, HDMI, and two mini DisplayPorts.

The standard card has a core clock of 800MHz while the PCS+ is at 880MHz, and the latter has dual fans, as well. They also both feature PCI-E 3.0 support and AMD’s PowerTune, Eyefinity 2.0, HD3D, and APP Acceleration technology.

A leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards, today announces the graphics solution for no-compromise gamers: the PowerColor HD7950 series. Armed with 28nm GCN architecture, PowerColor lined up PCS+ and standard editions to fulfill every hungry gamer’s demand. Both editions support the latest PCI Express 3.0, easily maximizing performance by doubling the bandwidth of previous generation, delivering ground-breaking gaming experience like never before.

The PCS+ HD7950 has factory overclocked setting at 880MHz core and 1250MHz memory speed, with dual 92mm ultra huge fan and 3 units 8mm large heat pipes design, easily dissipating the heat from pure cooper base which fully covers the GPU, providing 15% lower temp. and 20% quieter noise level. The HD7950 clocks at 800MHz core and 1250MHz memory speed, ready to tackle all the demanding game titles.

The HD7950 series takes advantage of AMD PowerTune technology, maximizing performance by dynamically increasing GPU engine clock, enabling higher clockspeeds when it needed; also, with the latest AMD Eyefinity 2.0 technology and HD3D technology, gamers can get a lifelike gaming experience through the 16k x 16k maximum display group resolution. Furthermore, with the support of AMD APP Acceleration, the latest HD7950 series can offload computing from CPU to GPU, speeding up the daily applications and increasing the efficiency.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/TUL-Announces-a-Pair-of-Powercolor-HD7950-Graphics-Cards/

Marvell Friday launched what it’s calling the industry’s first PCI Express (PCIe) NAND flash controller, which it describes as a building block that allows solid state drive (SSD) and system manufacturers to scale products up or down in capacity and performance using commodity hardware.

Marvell’s new 88NV9145 (9145) flash controller is an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that uses a PCIe switch to create a scalable flash card for businesses. SSD or system manufacturers can add two to 16 of the 9145 controllers and consumer-class NAND flash and incrementally scale their product for different applications.

Each 9145 ASIC, or native PCIe-to-NAND flash controller, can support up to 128GB and can achieve up to 93,000 4K random read IOPS and 70,000 4K random write IOPS.

Marvell’s new 99NV9145 native PCIe NAND flash controller. At the top of the module is the PCIe slot.

For example, a manufacturer could plug four 9145 controllers into a PCIe switch and build out an entry-level PCIe NAND flash card that offers around 150,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) for gaming systems or workstations. Or 16 of the controllers could be placed on a PCIe switch for about 1.4 million IOPS, which could be used for enterprise-class OLTP databases, according to Shawn Kung, director of product marketing for Marvell’s storage business.

“We’re not reinventing PCIe-native SSDs, we’re re-architecting them,” Kung said. “The ultimate benefit to CIOs is that by providing architecture that leverages low cost, high performance native PCIe-to-NAND, it achieves price performance level not seen before.”

Mark Peters, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, said what sets Marvell’s new flash module apart from others on the market today is its ability to scale to address multiple business applications.

He criticized other NAND flash system manufacturers for being mostly focused on performance rather than tailoring their products to meet more general needs.

“People are saying, I don’t need a 6.9-liter twin-turbo intercooled engine in my car to go to [the grocery store]. Please sell me the 4.2-liter gas hybrid to do that,” he said. “And, Marvell is saying if you want, you can also scale it to a 6.9 liter engine when you want it. That’s really smart.”

Eight Marvell 9145 controllers on an engineering evaluation reference board. The 9145 controller uses PCIe 2.0 x1 to talk to the PCIe switch that is on the reference board. And the switch talks to the host server CPU via PCIe 2.0 x8 in this reference design

Because Marvell’s chip is an ASIC and not a more typical and expensive field-programmable gate array chip (FPGA), it can be used to build PCIe cards at one-tenth the cost, according to Kung.

“FPGA’s are why you see PCIe SSDs going for $10,000 or more,” Kung said. “This is not a case of 10% off of a FPGA-based controller card. This is at least a magnitude of order difference in price.”

The controller supports a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface, ARM-based processor, external Double Data Rate (DDR) interface and four NAND flash channels with up to four Chip Selects per channel. The four chip select channels allow up to four NAND flash devices to be connected to the same computer bus.

The 9145 controller supports industry standard flash interfaces such as ONFI2 and Toggle mode, and all NAND types, including multi-level cell, single-level cell and enterprise multi-level cell.

David Raun, vice president of business development at PLX Technology, a maker of component switches, said that by enabling customers to build native PCIe SSDs without any SAS/SATA protocol overhead, the 88NV9145 “represent the future of SSD market growth.”

Source:http://www.itworld.com/storage/238409/marvell-unveils-first-pcie-scalable-nand-flash-controller

Intellectual Ventures LLC is a privately held company notable for being among the top five patent holders in the U.S.A. It has more than 35,000 intellectual property assets under its ownership in the USA and worldwide with a broad technological market coverage including agriculture, automotive, communications, computer hardware, construction, consumer electronics, ecommerce, energy, financial services, health technologies, information technology, life sciences, materials science, medical devices, nanotechnology, physical sciences, security, semiconductors, and software fields. Intellectual Ventures has acknowledged it intentionally withholds the true scope and nature of its IP portfolio. Its licensing transactions and interactions are protected by strict nondisclosure agreements, and the structure of its business activities makes it difficult to get a handle on the full extent of its activities. For example, our focus has identified more than 800 shell companies that Intellectual Ventures has used to conduct its intellectual property acquisitions, and it has taken considerable effort to identify these. The range and scope of its activities are so vast that it is difficult to conceptualize the reach of Intellectual Ventures. Intellectual Ventures saw $700 million in licensing revenue in the year 2010. The firm’s total licensing revenue to date amounts to roughly $2 billion.

Key findings:
The structure of the Intellectual Ventures network of operations makes it tremendously difficult to detect and trace the company’s activities. Intellectual Ventures has acknowledged that it uses shell companies for purchasing and holding patents, although it has not publicly identified the number of shells or their names. We identified more than 800 shell companies associated with Intellectual Ventures. And also IP activity based on publication year and priority year is observed and the trend shows that there is considerable growth. Citation analysis of assignees and technologies is carried out and the following results are recorded. Top cited patents list has also been furnished in the report.

This present report analyses consist of a brief introduction to the Shell companies. Detailed Class based taxonomy is also furnished. The report also consists of some key findings regarding Major shell company patents, IP activity over the years based on earliest priority year, publication year etc.

Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/intellectual-ventures—patent-and-technology-landscape-report-136250133.html

When a broken computer comes into Paul LaGrange’s classroom, he turns it over to a group of his students.

The team of six students at Marysville Arts and Technology High School work to find the reason why the machine isn’t functioning and start repairs.

Sometimes the problem is easy to diagnose. Other times the fix requires more research, said sophomore Jon David Pressman, 15.

“If you don’t know, you just have to fumble around, check things, change things, tweak things, go on the Internet and search,” he said. “Google is definitely your friend.”

Marysville School District board member Chris Nation asked LaGrange if his students would be interested in fixing computers for One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit organization that works to give laptops to children in developing countries. LaGrange and his students in July started repairing laptop computers for the nonprofit. The group repaired a dozen computers and used parts from two other laptops, LaGrange said. His students wanted to keep their new computer repair lab running after those computers left the school.

Now the students who run the Marysville Computer Repair Lab take in donated computers and fix them for donation to nonprofit groups during their Computer Applications class. They also offer free computer repair labor for people who can’t otherwise afford it.

Since the beginning of the school year, students have worked with hardware from Compaq, Gateway, Dell and MCI computers, LaGrange said.

“They’ve had a variety of different pieces of hardware, different components and different configurations and at the same time they’re learning how to give that back to the community,” he said.

People have learned about the computer repair lab through word of mouth, LaGrange added. The lab has so far accepted six donated computers and received seven computers for repair. As of Monday, three of the donated computers were fixed and two computers that came in for repair were waiting to be looked over, LaGrange said.

One donated and repaired computer was donated to a local church preschool.

Jon David said he hopes more donated and fixed computers go out the classroom door soon.

“I would like to see more (computers) go to nonprofits,” he said. “Right now we’re doing a lot of fixing and I’d like to see more shipping done.”

So would his classmate, Emmanuel Harley, 16, who started at the repair lab at the beginning of the school year because he thought it looked like fun. When he’s not fixing computers, Emmanuel spends class time digitalizing the pages of a math book for a special needs student in the Marysville School District.

The class is his favorite, Emmanuel said. He thinks a career in the computer industry could be for him.

“It’s definitely an evolving industry, but that’s why I love it,” he said.

LaGrange said he is proud of his students.

“They are working as a group and they are learning what they’re interested in,” he said. “They’re also seeing how that plays into a large group here and how their skills are needed by other people in the world.”

Source:http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111108/NEWS01/711089914