PC Tech World: flash

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Friday, April 12, 2013

Samsung puts 128-gigabit 3-bit cell flash into production, plans to build more memory cards

Samsung Mass Producing High-Performance 128-Gigabit 3-Bit Multi-Level-Cell NAND Flash Memory

SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing a 128-gigabit (Gb), 3-bit multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND memory chip using 10 nanometer (nm)-class* process technology this month. The highly advanced chip will enable high-density memory solutions such as embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs).

"The new chip is a critical product in the evolution of NAND flash, one whose timely production will enable us to increase our competitiveness in the high density memory storage market."

"By introducing next-generation memory storage products like the 128Gb NAND chip, Samsung is extremely well situated to meet growing global customer needs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics. "The new chip is a critical product in the evolution of NAND flash, one whose timely production will enable us to increase our competitiveness in the high density memory storage market."

Samsung's 128Gb NAND flash is based on a 3-bit multi-level-cell design and 10nm-class process technology. It boasts the industry's highest density as well as the highest performance level of 400 megabits-per-second (mbps) data transfer rate based on the toggle DDR 2.0 interface.

Utilizing 128Gb NAND flash memory, Samsung will expand its supply of 128-gigabyte (GB) memory cards, which can store as many as sixteen 8GB full HD video files. Samsung now will also increase its production volume of SSDs with densities over 500GBs for wider adoption of SSDs in computer systems, while leading the transition of main storage drives in the notebook market from hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs.

Demand for high-performance 3-bit MLC NAND flash and 128Gb high storage capacities has been rapidly increasing, driving the adoption of SSDs with more than 250GB data storage, led by the Samsung SSD 840 Series.

Samsung started production of 10nm-class 64Gb MLC NAND flash memory in November last year, and in less than five months, has added the new 128Gb NAND flash to its wide range of high-density memory storage offerings. The new 128Gb chip also extends Samsung's 3-bit NAND memory line-up along with the 20nm-class* 64Gb 3-bit NAND flash chip that Samsung introduced in 2010. Further, the new 128Gb 3-bit MLC NAND chip offers more than twice the productivity of a 20nm-class 64Gb MLC NAND chip.

Samsung plans to keep introducing leading-edge SSDs and embedded memory storage solutions with high-quality features, in accelerating the growth of the premium memory market.

"The new chip is a critical product in the evolution of NAND flash, one whose timely production will enable us to increase our competitiveness in the high density memory storage market."
"By introducing next-generation memory storage products like the 128Gb NAND chip, Samsung is extremely well situated to meet growing global customer needs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics. "The new chip is a critical product in the evolution of NAND flash, one whose timely production will enable us to increase our competitiveness in the high density memory storage market."

Samsung plans to keep introducing leading-edge SSDs and embedded memory storage solutions with high-quality features, in accelerating the growth of the premium memory market.

Source

By: Unknown On 9:24 AM

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Safari blocking outdated Flash plug-ins due to security holes

Adobe recently issued a security update for Flash Player which patches an exploit that gave hackers the ability to take over a vulnerable system. Not leaving things to chance, Apple is now rolling out a hotfix for Safari that blocks outdated versions of the tainted web plug-in. If your system hasn't been patched yet, you may receive a notification when attempting to access Flash-based content. The prompt will then advise that a new software version is available. If you're running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher and Safari is your browser of choice, you may want to nab this update from Adobe. Otherwise the next time you go online, the internet might be a far cry from what you're used to seeing.

Via: The Loop, MacRumors

Source: Apple

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Mimobot's US Presidents flash drives give Americans patriotic storage

Mimobot's Lincoln, Washington flash drives give Americans patriotic storage

We wouldn't have foreseen thumb drives figuring prominently into our President's Day observations, and yet... here we are. In sync with the holiday, Mimoco has kicked off a US Presidents collection of Mimobot storage that lets Americans carry their national pride on their USB 2.0 ports. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are the only current options -- what, no William Henry Harrison model? -- but the 8GB to 64GB of capacity should keep either stick useful once the novelty wears off. As long as you're prepared to spend between $20 to $130 to pick one up, either of the Mimobots is a decent choice for a drive. Just hurry if you want a flash-based replica of the country's key founder -- there's only 1,000 Washington drives to go around.

Source: Mimoco (1), (2)

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Custom ROMs for your Alltel RAZR MAXX are just a flash away

Verizon may take most of the headlines, but the Motorola RAZR MAXX (sans Droid) also made it's way to other carriers -- like Alltel. We love seeing the smaller carriers getting great Android phones like the MAXX, but folks who want to run a custom ROM are usually out of luck when this happens. Not so this time.

Forum Moderator, Alltel subscriber, and Android hacker cole2kb has you covered. He has taken the most popular ICS and Jelly Bean custom ROMs for the Verizon version of the RAZR MAXX and ported them over to Alltel. Getting them installed is as easy as flashing the original ROM and a small patch from recovery. He's even figured out how to get MMS working, so you're set there.

This is why we love Android. Users getting their hands dirty to bring more options to the folks who want them. Thanks, Chris -- and I'm sure plenty of folks on Alltel are thankful as well. Click the link below to get started.

Got ROMs? Flashable ZIPs for your Alltel MAXX!

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 12:55 PM

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Custom ROMs for your Alltel RAZR MAXX are just a flash away

Got ROMs? Flashable ZIPs for your Alltel MAXX!

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 9:03 PM

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Custom ROMs for your Alltel RAZR MAXX are just a flash away

Got ROMs? Flashable ZIPs for your Alltel MAXX!

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 10:08 PM

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Adobe's Flash Updater: Bloated, Confusing & Shady

Editorial Being one of the most prolific sources of security vulnerabilities in Windows and other platforms, Adobe Flash Player needs no introduction. In spite of that reputation, and the fact that the rest of the industry is moving away from Flash, Microsoft surprised many of us by bundling the software with its operating system for the first time with Windows 8. This is after previously announcing that they wouldn't allow Flash in the Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 -- a decision the company later reversed. I have to wonder if qualms such as these played a role in Steven Sinofsky's departure, but that's another discussion.

I was glad when the Adobe Flash Player Updater was released in March. Finally the day had come when our machines would be silently updated with the latest Flash version. In the past, when visiting a friend or relative, I?d always check Adobe or Mozilla's websites and update the software if necessary.

But as glad as I was about the new updater, many PCs I visited still had the old version of Flash, since version 10.2 or later with the built-in Flash Updater had never been installed on them. So, I kept updating machines... and then I started noticing that even systems with 10.2 or later weren't being automatically updated either.

After some time, it dawned on me why this was. When doing a full point release such as v10.4 to v10.5, the updater doesn't download the latest version and installs it silently even if set to do so. Instead, it brings up the update dialog as shown below when you start or restart your computer:

Now, anyone who knows end users knows this is bad, because they will just click the window away instead of heeding its warning. But it gets worse. If you actually click on the "download" button, the updater doesn't quietly install the latest version of Flash. Instead, it opens an Adobe Flash download page in your browser with bloatware like the Google Toolbar and McAfee Security Scan Plus preselected.

The pain doesn't end there though. The Flash Updater requires Administrator privileges, so if you're a normal user, you won't even see the prompt and the update won't be installed until 30 days later, according to Adobe. But I have seen countless installs "stuck" at interim versions only to pop up the download window when I logon as an Administrator, so I have my doubts about if this works in the majority of cases at all.

On top of this, Adobe Flash is split into two separate packages, one "ActiveX" version for Internet Explorer and another "Plugin" version for browsers like Firefox and Opera (Chrome has Flash built in). So if you download the Flash update through your browser, you will only be updating one of your installed versions, and since the updater simply uses your system's default browser for showing the download page, you will only be able to get one of the updates this way, while you have to download the other manually.

Below you can see the result of clicking the "download" button, which takes you from one full point release to another. Keep in mind this install is done by a download manager. How hard would it have been for it to update both Flash plugins!?

Why are they different then? That comes down to how the updater works. It creates a scheduled task that runs once per hour, but it can only do one update at a time.

In the same picture above there is a "check now" button. You might think this checks for updates but it doesn't. Instead, it brings up the same "About Flash" page I mentioned earlier, but with the same caveat as explained about the updater: it opens in your default browser.

While we're on the topic, how is it that my system needs to have several different updaters from the same company? Acrobat Reader is just as insecure as Flash!

Would it really be so hard to release one updater that handles all your software? I guess it boils down to whether or not your company likes to release bloated crap. To make a small comparison, here is the installed size of three file archivers, all of them the latest stable versions:

7-Zip x64 v9.20: 4.37MBWinRAR x64 v4.20: 4.45MBWinZIP x86 v17: 110MB

Would you be shocked if I told you these programs are listed from best to worst when it comes to the compression ratio they achieve? And also that when installing the last one, you have to be very careful not to get your system bloated with toolbars, since just like Flash it uses a download manager? And that the first one is free, while the others are not? (Don't get me wrong I love WinRAR and have a paid license as I simply like it more than 7-Zip, but that's my preference.)

Before Flash was released, the web didn't need powerful computers to be enjoyable, but today it does. This is in large part due to the laziness of Flash-focused developers. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted: "The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained."

There are plenty of alternatives for Adobe's other software. To handle PDF files, I can install a third party program like PDF-XChange Viewer (installed size is 17MB for the latest x64 version vs 135MB for Adobe Reader x86 v9.5.2 -- I may sound like a broken record, but guess which one offers better performance and more functionality?).

However, it isn't that simple with Flash. I have several friends that play Zynga's Flash-based games that have asked me why performance is so poor. I have tried to help them because they are of the more interesting gender, but I have always failed to achieve a substantial improvement.

And you know what, if Zynga released a native client for its crappy Flash games, they would run great on a Pentium 486, just like the 17-year-old SimCity 2000 does, which arguably has better graphics and more advanced mechanics, but I digress.

I have a wish for Christmas, Adobe: can you please fix your software updater so it works properly in 2013? Failing that, can the online community please move on to HTML5 and just let Flash die already?

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 12:53 PM

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Samsung's new 10nm-process 64GB mobile flash memory chips are smaller, faster, better

Samsung Introduces Advanced Memory Storage Solution for Slim Smartphones and Tablets
SEOUL, Korea on Nov. 15. 2012

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced a next-generation 64GB embedded multimedia card (eMMC) using 10 nanometer (nm)-class* process technology. The new 64Gb NAND memory went into production late last month.

Myungho Kim, vice president of Memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics noted, "The new high-speed, small form factor eMMC reinforces Samsung's technology leadership in storage memory solutions. We look forward to expanding our line-up of embedded memory solutions in conjunction with the new chip's design, in pursuing a system-level adoption of application processors and other key components that form the foundation for the most advanced mobile platforms. This will allow us to better attend to time-to-market demands enabling the design of more convenient features for next-generation mobile applications."

Embedded memory is the key memory component in popular mobile applications such as smartphones and tablets. Advanced high-performance, high-density eMMCs allow users to access high-density and high-resolution content such as full HD video on their latest mobile devices and provide a better user experience for web browsing, gaming and running rich applications.

Samsung is applying 64Gb high-performance NAND memory using its10nm-class technology to the new 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000 memory solution. The new embedded memory solution exceeds the performance levels of the conventional 64GB eMMC Pro Class 1500 based on an eMMC 4.5 interface.

The new high-speed eMMC will be submitted next year to the industry standards body JEDEC, (Joint Electron Engineering Council) for adoption as an industry standard.

Samsung's next-generation 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000 comes just five months after the company introduced its first embedded memory supporting the eMMC4.5 interface and delivers a 30 percent advantage in performance over that solution.

The 10nm-class technology based NAND also is process compatible to Samsung's advanced 20nm-class* 64Gb MLC NAND, which was first available last May, improving manufacturing productivity by 30 percent.

The new memory solution has a random write speed of 2,000 IOPS (input/output per second) and a random read speed of 5,000 IOPS. In addition, sequential read and write speeds are 260 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 50MB/s respectively, which is up to 10 times faster than a class 10 external memory card that reads at 24MB/s and writes at 12MB/s, greatly enhancing the smoothness of multitasking on mobile gadgets.

Current mobile applications show a distinctive trend to slimmer designs and larger display screens, while using advanced multi-core processors and high density (2 Gigabyte) LPDDR2 memory for higher performance, with larger batteries for longer usage on a single charge. This new chip accommodates the increasing size limitations of mobile form factors at the component level.

The 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000 measures 11.5mm by 13mm, which represents a 20 percent reduction in size over the conventional embedded memory form factor (12mm by 16mm).

For more information about Samsung memory, visit: www.samsungsemi.com or www.samsung.com/memory

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Samsung and the stylized Samsung design are trademarks and service marks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Sourse

By: Dilusha On 8:58 PM