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Samsung today announced it is mass producing the world's smallest 512GB PCIe SSD that comes in a single ball grid array package and weighs less than a dime.

Samsung's PM971-NVMe SSD is aimed at ultra-thin notebooks and was manufacturing by combining 16 of Samsung's 48-layer 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash chips, one 20-nanometer 4Gbit LPDDR4 mobile DRAM chip and a high-performance Samsung controller.

The new SSD is just 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm in size and weighs about one gram, less than half the weight of a U.S. dime (2.3 grams).

The single-package SSD's volume is approximately a hundredth of a 2.5-in form factor SSD or hard disk drive, and its surface area is about one-fifth of an M.2 SSD, which is a little larger than a postage stamp. The PM971's diminutive size allows for much more design flexibility for computer device manufacturers, Samsung said.

"The introduction of this small-scale SSD will help global PC companies to make timely launches of slimmer, more stylish computing devices, while offering consumers a more satisfactory computing environment," Jung-bae Lee, senior vice president of Samsung's Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering Team, said in a statement.

Unlike traditional notebook SSDs, which are based on serial ATA connectivity and come in 2.5-in form factors, NVMe PCIe SSDs have multiple I/O lanes and install directly on a computer's motherboard. That markedly increases throughput.

The PM971-NVMe SSD easily surpasses the speeds of SSDs that use the SATA 6Gbps interface; the PM971 has read and write speeds of up to 1,500MBps and 900MBps, respectively. The diminutive Samsung SSD has random read and write speeds of up to 190,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) and 150,000 IOPS, respectively.

Samsung said its SSD can transfer a 5GB-equivalent, full-HD movie in about 3 seconds or download it in about 6 seconds.

To achieve its level of performance, the PM971-NVMe SSD uses Samsung's TurboWrite technology, which the company first unveiled in 2013 in its 840 EVO internal 2.5-in SSD. TurboWrite creates a high-performance write buffer to which new data is first written.

TurboWrite allows a host system to first write data to the drive's single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash high-performance buffer at accelerated speeds; during idle periods, the data is moved from the buffer to the primary storage region of the SSD. In short, the TurboWrite feature is meant to simulate the performance of an SLC NAND flash in the multi-level cell (MLC) NAND.

Along with a 512GB capacity version, the PM971 SSD will be manufactured in 256GB and 128GB capacities. Samsung will start shipping the new SSDs to its computer-maker customers this month.

Tags: news

Samsung announces the smallest SSD storage disk in the world

By Unknown → jeudi 2 juin 2016

When Nvidia launched the GTX 1080 earlier this month, it established its new Pascal-derived GPUs as leaders in the top of the market. Now, as expected, the GTX 1070 has dropped, piledriving both Nvidia’s previous cards and every top-end GPU AMD has to offer.

First, let’s hit the technical specifications. The GTX 1070 packs 1,920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units, and 64 ROPS. That works out to 75% the cores and texture units of the larger GTX 1080, but the pixel fill rate is theoretically the same between the two cards, since they have the same number of ROPS. Base clock is 1.5GHz with boost clocks up to 1.68GHz and 8GB of 8Gbps GDDR5 memory (the GeForce GTX 1080 uses 8GB of 10Gbps GDDR5X memory). Memory bandwidth is 256GB/s, which puts the new GTX 1070 in between the older GTX 980 (224GB/s) and the 980 Ti (336GB/s).

Overall performance, meanwhile, is simply excellent. Over at Tom’s, Chris Angelini shows the GTX 1070 taking second only to the 1080 in Battlefield 4, Project Cars, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Division, Witcher 3, and Grand Theft Auto V. AMD fights back in games like Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman, but the GTX 1070’s base price is $379 while the Founder’s Edition is $449. The Fury X, Fury, and Radeon Nano are all substantially above this, at $500+.

The 1070 draws over 100W less power than the Titan X while outperforming it in the majority of titles. That’s a stellar achievement for Nvidia and a huge win for gamers.

The 1070 is the new card to beat

This is the part of the review where we normally cover what’s likely coming from AMD to counter the new 1070/1080 challengers. In this case, however, I don’t expect AMD to launch a card that goes head-to-head with Nvidia because the firm has made it clear that Polaris 10 and 11, which launch in the not-so-distant future, are targeting different price points. With that said, however, these new GPUs are a line in the sand that AMD will have to contend with — and it better have brought its A game when Vega launches at the end of 2016. AMD can stake out a profitable position in the midrange and budget spaces with a new Polaris and probably win some market share in mobile, but the halo effect from the 1070 and 1080 could be significant.

The uglier and inconvenient truth for AMD, however, is that until it launches Vega, it’s going to be stuck with the Fury X, Fury, and Fury Nano to anchor its high end — and the GTX 1070 has just blown those cards out of the water. With the GTX 1070 Founder’s Edition coming in at $449 and the base card at $379, AMD needs to slash the price on Fury X to between $350 and $400 in order to compete. That would make the Fury a $300 – $350 card, and likely push the Nano into similar territory.

Now, a Fury X at $350 would still be an extremely potent graphics card, but it’s not clear if that kind of pricing is feasible given the difficulty of building HBM cards and the overall interposer price. While AMD has argued that HBM is more cost-effective than GDDR5 at the highest performance levels, there’s a reason why the company is using GDDR5 for its Polaris hardware — there’s a point at which HBM simply doesn’t make financial sense. Given Fiji’s large die size, there’s also a minimum point at which AMD can sell the card and still break even. This could limit how much AMD cuts prices, but price cuts for the Fury family are almost certainly inbound. One way or the other, this is going to put deep pressure on AMD’s entire GPU product line — if the Fury X is slashed to $350-$400 to hold its value against the 1070, that means the R9 390X needs its own price cut as well. Presumably AMD will cut cost on the Fury family, launch Polaris, and then retire all the GPU models obviated by this two-tier approach.

Final note: When the Oculus Rift and Vive launched, we recommended taking a wait-and-see approach before investing in current hardware for the purposes of gaming in VR. That approach has been thoroughly vindicated by the performance of both the GTX 1080 and 1070. The 1070 in particular beats the Titan X, can leverage the same VR-improving technologies as the 1080, and yet costs less than half as much as Titan X (and significantly less than the GTX 980 Ti). In games that support Nvidia’s GameWorks VR, the gap between Titan X and 1080/1070 should be even larger, and anyone who bought a VR-ready system with a GTX 970 or 980 class card in it is likely kicking themselves now. Yes, faster GPU tech is always under development, but sometimes the leaps between product generations are larger than others. The 1080 / 1070 improvements are quite significant — now is a much better time to buy into VR than just a few months ago.

Tags: news

Nvidia’s new GTX 1070 freezes out Fury trashes Titan X

By Unknown → mercredi 1 juin 2016

Tags: reviews → sphone

Review HUAWEI HONOR 6

By Unknown → mardi 31 mai 2016

Tags: reviews → sphone

Review HUAWEI 6P Nexus

By Unknown → lundi 30 mai 2016

Tags: reviews → sphone

Review Huawei P9

By Unknown → dimanche 29 mai 2016

If three makes a trend, then it's official: The global banking system is under attack.

The methods used by hackers to attack banks in Vietnam and Bangladesh appear to have been deployed over a year ago in a heist in Ecuador.

The January 2015 attack on Banco del Austro is described in a lawsuit filed by the bank in a New York federal court. It ended with thieves transferring $12 million to accounts in Hong Kong, Dubai, New York and Los Angeles, according to court documents.

The existence of the lawsuit was first reported Friday by the Wall Street Journal, just one week after global banking communications network SWIFT instructed clients to secure their local computer networks.

SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, warned customers that two previous attacks against banks in Bangladesh and Vietnam appeared to be "part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign."

The hacks targeting banks in Asia follow the pattern described by Banco del Austro:

Attackers used malware to circumvent a bank's local security systems.
They gained access to the SWIFT messaging network.
Fraudulent messages were sent via SWIFT to initiate cash transfers from accounts at larger banks.

Related: Casinos, money laundering and wire transfers: Inside a global bank heist

The attacks underscore the vulnerability of smaller banks that can't afford cutting-edge defenses. If hackers are able to break into a weaker bank, they can fabricate transfer requests in order to pull money out of a bigger bank.

"Unfortunately, this risk with SWIFT is nothing new, as technology has evolved, and hackers have gotten more sophisticated," lawyers for Banco del Austro said in a March 31 court filing.

A SWIFT spokeswoman said Friday that the network had not been made aware of the Banco del Austro incident.

"We need to be informed by customers of such frauds if they relate to our products and services, so that we can inform and support the wider community," Natasha de Teran said. "We have been in touch with the bank concerned to get more information, and are reminding customers of their obligations to share such information with us."

SWIFT said last week that its network and core messaging services have not been compromised by the attacks.

Related: Banking industry fears hackers can too easily attack the global financial system

In the case of Bangladesh Bank, hackers used the tactic to transfer money out of its accounts at the New York Fed. Investigators have yet to publicly identify any suspects in the case.

Banco del Austro's funds were being held in accounts at Wells Fargo (WFC). The lawsuit filed by the Ecuadorian bank accuses Wells Fargo of failing to recognize and stop the fraudulent transfers.

Wells Fargo rejected those claims.

"Wells Fargo properly processed the wire instructions received via authenticated SWIFT messages and Wells Fargo's computer systems were not compromised in any way," a spokeswoman said.

"Wells Fargo is not responsible for the losses suffered by Banco del Austro and intends to vigorously defend the lawsuit."

-- Jose Pagliery contributed reporting.

Tags: sec

Hackers stole millions in third attack on global banking system

By Unknown → mardi 24 mai 2016

If the best thing about owning a smartphone is actually using it, then easily the worst part is when you have to stop for a charge. Powering a phone back to good health can take hours, or if you're really lucky, just under an hour. But Oppo wants to change that with its Super VOOC Flash Charge technology, which is said to fully charge a 2,500mAh-packed smartphone in just 15 minutes flat.

Unveiled at MWC 2016 in Barcelona, Oppo detailed what makes Super VOOC Flash Charge so dang super. By improving on the original, which offered up to two hours of phone use after a five minute charge, the new tech can provide 10 hours in the same amount of time. You've got a few minutes to spare, right?

Super VOOC Flash Charge, while not the friendliest phrasing to roll off the tongue, is said to be able to play nicely with both microUSB and USB-C devices. In theory, this would include the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Google Nexus 6P alike, but it's possible that this technology might only work with Oppo phones.

Quick! Charge

It works by feeding a custom charging algorithm to your device. The current used is 5V and is dynamically controlled to send pulses of electricity at a low-temperature to charge as quickly as possible.

Oppo plans to unleash Super VOOC Flash Charge this year at some point, but it's currently not clear exactly when and where it will be available.

Tags: phones

Oppo's new tech can fully charge a phone in 15 minutes

By Unknown → lundi 16 mai 2016