The Deneva 2 and Intrepid are designed for slim servers, tablets, dual drive notebooks, and network security devices. The Deneva 2 mSATA series utlilizes MLC NAND Flash memory, a SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface and offers throughput rates with up to 80,000 random 4k write IOPS and 550MB/s of bandwidth. The mSATA has a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 2 million hours, supports TRIM and has a 3-Year Warranty with Dedicated FAE/FSE support (includes PM/engineer support through validation cycle).

The OCZ Intrepid mSATA Series features Indilinx Arowana Flash Translation Layer with Hyper-Queuing, resulting in increased sequential write speeds and IOPS. The Intrepid Series utilizes Indilinx Ndurance Technology for reduced write amplification and advanced over provisioning.

“OCZ Deneva 2 and Intrepid mSATA solid state drives provide OEMs with the flexibility to address storage and caching requirements within innovative form factors, including embedded and dual-drive devices and blade servers,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. “These new SSDs are available in a wide range of capacities and configurations to deliver exceptional scalability, performance, and endurance, all with a compact and energy efficient design.”

For more information on the Deneva 2 and Intrepid mSATA SSDs, please visit oczenterprise.com

Infineon says it is the first company to have successfully produced chips on 300mm thin wafers, which will be used for high-voltage semiconductors.

According to the manufacturer, these Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) offer the same behavior as those previously manufactured on 200 mm wafers (in diameter, not thickness), but will enable the company to produce the chips much more efficiently.

“Our engineers’ achievement marks a quantum leap in production technology,” said Reinhard Ploss, Operations, Research & Development and Labor Director at Infineon Technologies. “Innovation lays the foundation for profitable growth. Innovation secures our edge over the competition.”

300 mm wafers have been used for common chips such as CPUs for more than a decade, but certain individual segments still rely on 200 mm technology as the production volume does not justify a switch to the more expensive 300 mm technology.

However, Infineon had the advantage of already having a 300mm production plant; the thin wafers are produced in the former Qimonda DRAM plant in Villach, Austria.

SOURCE via Infineon

According to the company, there are now 200 million active Chrome users. Back in May of this year, the number was at 160 million. In December 2010, the company said it had about 120 million users.

Market share data from StatCounter estimates Chrome’s share at about 23.6% for September. Firefox was at 26.8% and IE at 41.7%. In October, it appears that Firefox will hold its market share stable, while Chrome will be climbing to close to 25% and IE may be dropping below 40%.

There is also indication that Chrome will soon be released for Android as early as next week as part of the Ice Cream Sandwich release. Google has not released usage numbers for Chrome OS, which could also be lifting Chrome numbers. However, Google CEO told investors during yesterday’s Q2 earnings call that the company is “beginning to see lots of interest and good uptake, both from the businesses and educational institutions.”

SOURCE via Seeking Alpha

We’ve already mentioned that Opera’s GPU-accelerated Opera 12 browser will soon be available, and well, it is already here. However, Opera did warn those who download the software that this is an alpha version and hiccups (and even blue screens) may occur. Those warnings are reasonable and not exaggerated to say the least. Opera 12.00 alpha is a very early preview that has plenty of issues and should not be used for everyday tasks.

What is new in this browser is acceleration for WebGL content as well as well as full hardware acceleration that goes beyond the previous software-accelerated backend Vega. When Opera says “full” hardware acceleration, it means “full”, as there is not just acceleration for features such as Canvas, but also renders the entire user interface of the browser on the GPU. There is only a hardware accelerated OpenGL backend available, however.

It is difficult to get an idea how well hardware acceleration will work in Opera 12. I noticed that benchmarks such as Webviz do not run at all in Opera 12 and the IE Fishtank WebGL port from Mozilla shows errors in Opera 12.00 alpha. However, the Asteroids Canvas 2D benchmark delivered a score of 2165 on my Phenom II X6 1055T system, which was up from 1580 of the previous Opera Next release without hardware acceleration. In comparison, Chrome 14 scored 2575, Firefox 7 1227 and IE 9.0.3 2864. In Microsoft’s Mr. Potato Gun test, 12 alpha scored 15,399 points versus 1141 of the non-accelerated version. However, Chrome scored 34,876, Firefox 7 34,988 and IE 9.0.3 52,344.

It is too early to draw any conclusions how fast Opera 12 will be in those tests, once the browser is more stable. So far, it is just a download for die-hard Opera fans. Originally, the hardware acceleration feature was promised to be released with Opera 11, which was announced in December of last year.

Based in Seattle, Washington, Kickstarter entrepreneurs Peter Seid & Phu Nguyen (Romotive) have created a cute, playful robot that uses your smartphone as its brains. Dubbed Romo, the robot features a motorized acrylic base with tank-like wheels that offer maximum mobility. Inside the base is basic analog circuitry that controls the robot using programmed frequencies.

As you can see from the video above, Romo comes along with several different apps and is open for further development. Since the robot is controlled via a 3.5mm audio input, any smartphone that is capable of emitting the right frequencies can be used with Romo. As far as battery power goes, Romo utilizes a lithium-ion battery that comes with a USB charger.

Romo began as an ambitious Kickstarter project hoping to raise $32,000 in funding in order to create the first production batch, but with over 30 days still left in their campaign, Romotive has already raised over $45,000. If you’re looking to get your hands on one of these cute creatures, all you have to do is contribute $78 or more here.

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Cadillac is updating its in-car entertainment system for 2012 with a smartphone-like multi-touchscreen, screen layout as well as some advanced features that are driven by a triple-core processor.

Called CUE, short for Cadillac User Experience, the system is based on an 8-inch capacitive touch screen on the front-end, as well as an ARM 11 triple-core processor that is used to run a Linux-based entertainment platform. Cadillac said that the processor is about three times as capable as the chip used in its current entertainment system and is able to process about 400 MIPS. According to the car manufacturer, CUE will support the parallel input of up to 10 Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices, USBs, SD cards and MP3 players.

The user will control input and output via a high-resolution touch screen that can supports touch gestures such as tapping and swiping. With the help of a proximity sensor, the interface layout changes as a hand approaches the display; integrated haptic feedback is designed to improve the usability of the system. Thanks to the more powerful processor, there are some advanced features in CUE, including natural voice recognition, which is, for example, used for responding to text messages that are translated between text and voice.

There was no information how much CUE will cost, but we know that the system will initially debut in the upcoming XTS and ATS sedans as well as in the SRX crossover.

Google is nuking its Twitter clone in a couple of weeks in favor of loving its new social website big-time. Friday Google said in a blog that it plans to kill Google Buzz and the Buzz API in a couple of weeks. The news isn’t surprising given that the Twitter clone really never caught on, and that Google’s new social site is “all the buzz” for the immediate future.

“In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+,” the company said. “While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.”

The news arrives after Google recently said that it plans to shut down additional services like Notebook, Aardvark, Google Desktop, Google Pack and more. Friday Google added that Google Labs, Code Search and the Code Search API will be discontinued in January 2012 as well as Jaiku, a product Google acquired back in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, and the social features in iGoogle.

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