In July, it is reported that Intel’s brand new SSD has a particularly nasty firmware bug that could reduce a new and shiny Intel 320 SSD, regardless of size, down to just 8MB. Today, Intel posted a firmware fix that addresses the Bad Context 13x Error. Intel describes the error as:

For users unfamiliar with the issue, an Intel SSD 320 Series drive may exhibit a drive capacity of 8MB and an electronic serial # field containing a message of “BAD_CTX 0000013x” caused by an unexpected power loss under specific conditions.  Once this error occurs, no data on the SSD can be accessed and the user cannot write to or read from the SSD.

For obvious reasons, Intel recommends that all users of the 320 Series of SSDs upgrade their firmware to the new version.

In order to provide the best user experience, Intel always recommends users download and install the latest firmware.  As with any storage device, Intel recommends users frequently back up their data and periodically check for firmware updates.  The Intel® SSD Toolbox provides a host of utilities to monitor your SSD, including displaying detailed information such as the currently installed firmware revision.

VR-Zone reports that Intel will ship its upcoming “Sandy Bridge-E” (LGA2011) Core i7 3820, 3930K and 3960X processors without a heatsink/fan combo in the box. The company will instead sell certified, compatible CPU coolers separately in a market that will already have readily available LGA2011-compatible solutions from big-name CPU cooler suppliers.

The report also suggests that users may want to look into liquid cooling with these three upcoming processors. Although the rated TDP is 130W, all three are reportedly consuming closer to 180W. Even more, Intel is supposedly telling power supply makers to verify that “their Sandy Bridge-E PSUs can cope with a peak current of 23A on the 12V2 rail and [be] based on an 80-percent or better efficiency rating of the PSU.”

In addition to reports of the shipment and TDP rumors, pricing for the three CPUs supposedly leaked over the weekend. The Core i7 3960X high-end Extreme Edition processor will be focused on the enthusiast and priced at a meaty $999 USD, and will reportedly sport 6 Cores/ 12 Threads, 15 MB of L3 Cache and a stock clock speed of 3.33 GHz (3.9 GHz turbo). The Core i7 3930K will be priced at $583 and the “entry level” Core i7 3820 will be priced at $294.

Beyond these three, the next wave of Sandy Bridge-E processors is slated to arrive in the first half of 2012. These will include the Core i7 3980X Extreme Edition flagship CPU, the Core i7 2800K which will replace the i7 2600K, and two others that will replace the 3930K and 3830 processors. So far it’s unknown if these processors will also ship without heatsinks and fans in the box.

As seen with the Pentium G6951 processor last year, Intel has released additional “upgrade cards” for three next-gen Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Less than a year ago, reports pointed to a scratch-off “upgrade card” Intel was selling that enabled additional features on the Pentium G6951 processor. For $50 USD, owners of that specific CPU could purchase the card at any participating retailer, download software straight from Intel, and then use the number printed underneath the scratch-off surface. This unlocked a full 1 MB of L3 cache and HyperThreading support.

Eleven months later, Intel has released three more scratch-off upgrade cards for second-generation Sandy Bridge processors including the Core i3-2312M processor, the Core i3-2102 processor and the Pentium G622 processor. All three receive increased-yet-unspecified clock speeds thanks to the upgrade, but the Core i3-2312M, its SKU changed to the i3-2393M after the upgrade, receives additional cache. Depending on the application, the revved i3-2312M will be 10 to 19-percent faster, the i3-2102 (or i3-2153) will be 11 to 15-percent faster, and the Pentium G622 (or Pentium G693) will be 15 to 23-percent faster.

Although Intel didn’t provide actual upgrade numbers, AnandTech speculates that the i3-2312M, which ships clocked at 2.1 GHz with 3 MB of L3 cache, may be cranked up to 2.5 GHz and an extra 1 MB of L3 cache. The i3-2102 (3.1 GHz, 3 MB) could be 3.6 GHz after the upgrade and the Pentium G622 (2.6 GHz, 3 MB) could be 3.2 GHz after the upgrade. These numbers are based on the performance gains Intel reported in its press release.

Right now it’s unclear how much these upgrade cards will cost although it’s assumed to be $50 as before. But as pointed out, this may be a costly upgrade for Pentium G622 users who originally paid around $65 for the CPU. Then again, these upgrade cards may be ideal for those who purchased OEM PCs and can’t physically upgrade the CPU without voiding the warranty.

SOURCE via Anandtech

Seagate said that it has shipped one million Momentus XT solid state hybrid hard drives for laptop PCs since spring 2010.

The company indicated that it will be following this path in the foreseeable time as a strategy to leverage fast flash memory in mass storage media while maintaining the low cost level of hard drive technology.

Seagate said that its XT drives have been shipping to Alienware, Asus, Dell, Sony and Toshiba. The 7200 RPM models integrate 4 GB of flash memory and are available with capacities of up to 500 GB. They promise up to 50 percent faster boot ups than traditional 5400 RPM drives.

Seagate stated that high-performance SSDs are still not an alternative for hard drives in mainstream mass storage as “they cost as much as 10 times more than hard disk drives of the same capacity, with the price of a 250 GB SSD outstripping even the cost of many laptop PCs.” According to the manufacturer, consumers are not willing to pay or simply cannot afford the higher price of the SSD. Of course, Seagate has a significant interest in the hard drive keeping its price/capacity advantage over flash as the hard drive and the technology enabling it is the company’s bread and butter.

Samsung Electronics just announced volume production of SSDs that support the SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s), with new high-performance PM830 SSDs up to 512 GB densities. The new drives are expected to replace SATA 3Gb/s-based SSDs by year-end.

“Samsung’s new line up of advanced SSDs will raise the performance bar to the next level for ultra-slim notebooks and tablets and accelerate growth of the market for high-performance SSDs,” said Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. “The industry is expected to quickly embrace SATA 6Gb/s-based SSDs, which also will help increase market interest in 256GB and higher densities significantly,” he added.

Samsung claims that its new 6Gb/s SSDs shortens system boot-up time to about 10 seconds, while its high-performance allows users to download up to five DVD video files in less than a minute. The drives also feature an AES 256-bit encryption algorithm

The new SSDs utilizes Samsung’s 20 nm class 32 Gb MLC NAND memory chip incorporating the toggle DDR interface with a proprietary NAND controller. This allows Samsung’s new SSD to boast sequential read speeds of 500 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speeds of 350MB/s.

Samsung’s SATA 6Gb/s SSDs are available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB densities.

On Tuesday, the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) made two announcements: the development of a new SATA Express specification that combines SATA software infrastructure with a PCI Express (PCIe) interface, and the SATA μSSD specification for producing a single-chip SATA implementation for embedded storage solutions.

On the SATA Express front, the new technology will provide a cost-effective means to increase device interface speeds to 8 Gb/s and 16 Gb/s – SSDs and hybrid drives will likely benefit the most. Devices that don’t require the speed produced by SATA Express will continue to rely on the current SATA technology.

“The SATA Express specification provides SSD and hybrid drive manufacturers the advantages of performance and scalability enabled by PCIe 3.0 – which is available now – and the ubiquity of SATA,” said Mladen Luksic, SATA-IO president. “We expect the SATA Express specification to be completed by the end of 2011.”

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The new GoFlex is available in two flavors, with 500 GB capacity for $120 and with 750 GB capacity for $140. The “Performance” part of the name stems from the fact that these USB 3.0 drives rotate their platters with 7200 RPM, and not with 5400 RPM as their USB 2.0 siblings do.

However, the big news in those drives is Seagate’s decision to bundle them with SafetyNet, which is a 2-year subscription to a data recovery service. Seagate considers the service as a bonus that provides “peace of mind” as far as the data security is concerned. I am not sure how much of a buying incentive the recovery service really is, but could be bringing in fence sitters who are storing valuable data on those drives – even if the SafetyNet program may not be exactly what you would want to have access to in the case of sudden data loss.

According to the terms of the program, customers have to call Seagate, talk to a tech rep, who then determines if the case is eligible for data recovery service and whether any data is likely to be recovered. The drive may have to be shipped to Seagate and you may have to wait two weeks until you get your drive and data, if it is recoverable, back.

A hard drive can fail at any time, but the industry tells us that the risk of a failure dramatically increases after about five years of operation, at which a data recovery service may really be something you would want to invest in (or buy a new hard drive). Personally, I always found hard drive failures (I had plenty of them over the past 15 years) a pain in the neck to deal with and the more recent ones ended up at a local data recovery service, which was able to recover my data (not always in its entirety) within a few hours and less than $100 per case.

SandForce said on Tuesday that it’s currently demonstrating the use of its latest SF-2000 series SSD controller with Toshiba’s new 24-nm MLC Toggle Flash memory in a 2.5-inch SSD form factor. The union is producing balanced read and write speeds up to 500 MB/s and up to 60,000 IOPS with Toshiba’s memory operating at 166 MT/s.

So what does this mean for consumers? The combination enables “SandForce Driven” SSD manufacturers to produce more affordable SSD products which will further accelerate adoption in the enterprise, client, and industrial computing markets that demand optimized reliability, performance, and power efficiency.

“Our award winning DuraClass technology includes a number of features enabling the industry’s highest level of reliability, endurance, performance, and power efficiency in a single SSD Processor solution,” said Thad Omura, vice president of marketing at SandForce. “We worked closely with Toshiba to expand DuraClass with additional advanced read recovery techniques vital to the successful operation of SSDs that use more aggressive NAND Flash process nodes.”

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) originally introduced the 24-nm toggle-mode double data rate (DDR) NAND flash memory modules just weeks ago, ranging from 2 GB (Q1 2012) to 128 GB (Q4 2011). According to the company, these modules feature the world’s smallest geometry e-MMC, one of the highest capacities achieved in the industry, and offer full compliance with the JEDEC e-MMC Version 4.41 standard.

“Toshiba was the first company to succeed in combining 16 pieces of 64 Gbit die in e-MMC to achieve 128 GB of memory by applying advanced chip thinning and layering technologies to realize individual chips that are only 30 micrometers thick,” the company said. “Full compliance with the JEDEC e-MMC Version 4.41 (V4.41) standard for embedded MultiMediaCards supports standard interfacing and simplifies product design-in, reducing development burdens on product manufacturers.”

For those who want to see the SandForce controller and Toshiba’s new NAND in action together, the demo will be shown during the Flash Memory Summit exhibition hours at booth #407-409 located in the Santa Clara Convention Center. The convention is currently underway and will conclude on Thursday, August 11.

Last week Village Instruments used its Facebook page to poll customers about a Thunderbolt version of its ViDock expansion for the PC and Mac platforms. The post claimed that if more than fifty people posted a comment in favor of the device, then development would commence. So far 509 people have responded.

“ViDock Thunderbolt is a go!” said CEO Hubert Chen last week. “Thank you to everybody in this wonderful community! Special thanks to Manu Marea, Nino Ri and Jim Atchue! My in boxes are flooded. Please allow me a day or two to get back to everybody and to work with engineering and production to make a project schedule for ViDock Thunderbolt.”

For the uninitiated, ViDock could likely be the answer for many laptop gamers who simply can’t afford to purchase the more expensive gamer-oriented configurations. ViDock is essentially an extension chassis that connects to a laptop via an ExpressCard slot and allows the consumer to use a discrete PCI Express-graphics card. Of course, this doesn’t help in dealing with upgrading the CPU at a later date, but at least the current laptop can be extended a few more years simply by swapping out the external graphics card for something newer.

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Typically when we mention the name AMD, we’re talking about processors, chipsets and GPUs. That said, it seems a little strange connecting AMD to actual DDR3 chips – even more so seeing the actual sticks being held by human hands. But they’re real, and apparently already on the market in some territories.

On Saturday, images of AMD Radeon-branded DDR3 modules — photographed in Japan — went live, but according to reports, the memory sticks actually went on sale in Canada a few weeks ago. That means they’re not only available to OEMs, but to retail consumers as well.

AMD’s website reports that the Radeon Memory will come in three flavors: the Enterprise Series, the ULTRA PRO Gaming Series, and the Entertainment Series. The Enterprise version is marked as “to be determined,” but the Entertainment version will operate at 1333 MHz with timings of 9-9-9; the ULTRA PRO Gaming version will operate at 1600 MHz with timings of 11-11-11.

Otherwise, all three versions will come in 2 GB sticks and a PCB height of 30.0-mm. The package itself will be a 240-pin socket type dual in line memory module (DIMM), and will be both lead-free (RoHS compliant) and Halogen-free.

“AMD Radeon DDR3 System Modules are ideally suited to our CPU and APU products,” the company said. “Components are tested to the highest industry standards on AMD platforms to guarantee reliability and performance.”