Technology is in the process of bringing change to every piece of the health industry -- wellness, fitness, healthcare, medicine -- you name it. And as it always seems with introduction of new technologies, it's awe-inspiring how quickly they can transform entire industries yet, at the same time, make us realize just how far we have to go (or how far behind we really are). The health industry has been touched (and defined) by cutting-edge technology for years, yet its relics, legacy infrastructure, paper-pushing, and archaic procedures are as obvious today as ever before.]]>
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Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Can Technology Transform Education Before It’s Too Late?
As technology continues its march toward the Singularity, transforming the way we work, socialize and play at an increasing rate, there is one very important aspect of American society that lags behind: education.Many in Silicon Valley have strong opinions on how education should be improved, perhaps most notably Peter Thiel, who believes we are in a higher education bubble and should be encouraging kids to skip college and pursue entrepreneurship instead. I agree that Americans are placing too much emphasis on higher education, but I think the debate over Thiel’s statements misses a much deeper point. ]]>
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Monday, January 9, 2012
Apple Acquires Anobit: Bringing NAND Endurance Technology In-House
I'd seen speculation that Apple was going to drop $500M on Anobit over the past few weeks. Ars Technica also published a piece believing the acquisition to be true, and it looks like the office of Israel's Prime Minister tweeted a bit of a confirmation (Anobit is based in Israel). I looked at Anobit's extremely vague technology descriptions and dug a bit into their patent portfolio to better understand Apple's motivation behind the acquisition.
If you've followed our SSD coverage over the years you'll know that NAND endurance was a valid concern in the early days of consumer SSDs. When Intel arrived on the scene with the X25-M, its controller technology included a number of enhancements to work around common NAND errors and degradation over time. Other companies followed suit and eventually NAND error correction and reliability were major selling points of SSD controllers.
More recently, Micron announced that it would be baking ECC technology into a separate line of NAND called Clear NAND. Micron believes that in the future if you don't have access to a controller that does significant ECC or a NAND solution that includes active ECC technology that you won't be able to deliver competitive NAND based storage.
Today not much of this is necessary for consumer SSDs, even forthcoming 20nm IMFT NAND is still good for 3000 - 5000 program/erase cycles, which is more than enough for client use. However if you're using greater than 2-bit-per-cell MLC (e.g. 3-bit-per-cell MLC) then the need for better error correction is more urgent.
Smartphones and tablets need not-insignificant amounts of NAND (16 - 64GB for high end devices today, twice that next year). The cost of this NAND isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things, at the low end you're looking at several dollars and at the high end the cost is more than offset by the ridiculous increase in device pricing. The problem is not at the high end but what happens when you start selling cheaper phones. If we are indeed heading toward a future where mainstream computing is done on smartphones, then we're also headed toward a future where all smartphones need dozens of GBs of NAND on-board. That includes the ultra cheap devices as well as the high-end flagships.
Price sensitivity in these devices means that the high grade, compute NAND used in SSDs isn't what gets used by smartphone manufacturers. Instead you get the mid-grade stuff at best, but more likely you find some slow, 3-bit-per-cell NAND in the cheaper devices. There's no room (physically or budget) for sweet SSD controllers by Intel, Marvell or SandForce, thus NAND management is typically handled by an eMMC controller (or something similar) integrated into the phone/tablet's applications processor (e.g. Snapdragon, Tegra 3, A5, etc...).
Cheaper MLC NAND trades off endurance and performance for cost. How do you get to have your cake and eat it too? Well if you're set on using cheaper NAND, you have to do more processing on the controller side to clean up the data you're reading back from the shaky NAND. This isn't a problem on day one, but it becomes an issue over the months/years as you've written more data to the NAND. Cells have to be periodically refreshed, storing redundant data becomes necessary, the controller must recover/reconstruct lost data, etc... Every company has their approach to dealing with these problems. It was the first solutions to these problems that allowed consumer SSDs to use cheaper MLC NAND, and the solution to the smartphone/tablet issue is of a similar nature.
Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably.
Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant improvements in NAND longevity and reliability. At the high end Anobit promises 50,000 p/e cycles out of consumer grade MLC NAND, and in the smartphone/tablet space Anobit promises more useful lifespan out of 3-bit-per-cell MLC NAND.
As for why Apple would want Anobit, the potential reasons are huge. First the company was a cheap buy for Apple, although expensive if you look at the market as a whole (SandForce went for ~$370M). If all Apple gains from Anobit is bringing some smart NAND folks on staff the cost won't really break the bank. The obvious fit is to integrate Anobit's technology into Apple's ARM based SoCs. These SoCs already talk to NAND directly and integrating better error correction/reliability processing into the SoC just makes sense. For all we know, Apple already uses this technology in its SoCs and is simply acquiring Anobit to make it more difficult for competing SoC makers to do the same. Integration and assimilating value are the cornerstones of building a good SoC, this move makes sense (assuming Anobit's technology is actually good).
Note that if you look at the graph above, continuing to use 3-bit-per-cell NAND requires more than just standard ECC. It's clear Apple wants to continue to use value NAND in its devices, Anobit is simply a guarantee that it will be able to do so in the future.
At the other end of the spectrum, Anobit has enough technology to build a decent SSD controller (it already appears to do so for enterprise SSDs). If Apple wanted to really commoditize SSDs, it could use Anobit to produce its own SSD controllers. Apple would then simply buy NAND from memory vendors instead of the present day solution of buying a complete SSD solution for its Macs. This would shave a not insignificant portion of the BOM (bill of materials) cost of SSD production, which would help Apple transition to SSDs in more of its systems. This is more of a longshot as far as I'm concerned as, at least today, there are a lot of low-cost, competent controller makers in the SSD space.
Apple has been internalizing many of the pieces used in its SoCs over the past few years. It even owns a 9.5% stake in Imagination Technologies, the GPU company that supplies IP for Apple's SoCs. While I understand Apple's motives from the standpoint of a mostly vertically integrated hardware/software entity, there is a bit of defocus that comes with going too far down this path. I'm still not sold on the idea of Apple becoming a full fledged silicon vendor. It makes sense today, but as these SoCs become hugely complex, billion+ transistor devices I'm unsure if Apple wants to assume even more of the burden involved in bringing one of those parts to market.
Until we get to that point however, acquistions like Anobit come relatively cheaply for Apple and should help guarantee NAND reliability and performance for its more cost sensitive products (particularly as NAND geometries continue to shrink going forward). If Anobit's technology is up to muster, it should also mean that Apple will be able to continue to scale up NAND capacities in its devices without resorting to increasing device costs. NAND is ultimately driven by Moore's Law, however reliability doesn't follow the same curve by default. Integration of Anobit-like technologies are necessary to ensure it does.
]]>Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tagattitude Launches “NFC2.0″ Technology (And No, It’s Not Actually NFC)
Paris-based Tagattitude, an electronic transactions company, is today announcing the availability of something it calls "NFC2.0," which is a software-based NFC-like service. Similar to the technology known as NFC, or near field communication, Tagattitude's solution also lets you make contactless transactions over short distances. But with NFC2.0, no special hardware is required, and it will work on any major smartphone platform, including Android, iOS, RIM's BlackBerry and Nokia's Symbian.]]>
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Mobeam Raises $4.9M For Light-Based Communications Technology
Mobeam this morning announced that it has raised $4.9 million in a Series A round of funding from Samsung Ventures, Mitsui, yet2Ventures and other unnamed investors. The company has developed technology that enables mobile phones to interact with laser scanners used at retail and point-of-sale locations worldwide. Mobeam says it will use the capital to establish its patented light-based communications technology as a new industry standard, and work with consumer and retail brands to develop and launch mobile couponing, ticketing and other mobile commerce initiatives.]]>
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Monday, October 3, 2011
Technology Advancing Art: Photo Apps Are The Folk Art Of Our Generation
Around 2004-2005, puzzled non-tech journalists continually asked me why people were using MySpace -- this was before social networking was a common phrase, before moms & dads were using social sites, and before Facebook was open to the public. Back then I would answer something like "MySpace is email with pictures, on steroids." It was the simplest way for me to try and describe the value to an "outsider" who couldn't understand the growth of a service they didn't use. The three keys are, of course, 1) communication, 2) photos, and 3) acceleration of communication & of photo sharing (photo sharing itself being another form of communication). Notice I didn't mention music. Lot's of people mistakenly think MySpace grew because of music. I'll explain that some other time.Now a few days ago, serial entrepreneur and generally (from what I can tell), all-around-interesting guy Phil Kaplan (@pud) sent me a tweet:]]>
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Sunday, September 25, 2011
OCZ Technology 240 GB RevoDrive X2 Series PCI-Express x4 Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSDPX-1RVDX0240 (Personal Computers)
By OCZ
Buy new: $604.88
23 used and new from $469.90
Customer Rating:
First tagged by Steven Rosenlund
Customer tags: solid state drive(3), computer(2), sandy bridge, cpu, sad, pci-e ssd
Product Images
Review & Description
The RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD is an innovative storage solution for enthusiasts and prosumers to make the most of their desktops and workstations, upgrading the original architecture to deliver unprecedented speeds and higher capacities. The RevoDrive family gets its edge by eliminating the SATA II (3Gbps) bottleneck and leveraging a PCIe x4 interface, delivering superior speeds over 740MB/s sequential speeds and random small file writes up to 120,000 IOPS, nearly triple the throughput of other high-end SATA based solutions. The RevoDrive X2 uses an onboard RAID 0 design by employing four SandForce-1200 controllers to maximize data access and bandwidth. Unlike competing PCIe solutions the RevoDrive X2 is bootable, ensuring the satisfaction of quicker start-ups, load times, and computing, all while promoting cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient conditions compared to traditional mechanical hard drives. Available in 100GB to 960GB capacities, the OCZ RevoDrive X2 provides ample room for data warehousing, applications, multimedia files, and operating systems. The RevoDrive X2 is backed by a 3-year warranty and tech support for the ultimate peace of mind for your high-performance hardware investment.While the RevoDrive X2 will simply plug and play for the vast majority of platforms for these particular motherboards OCZ recommends the following: -Asus Crosshair IV – Please check with motherboard manufacturer for BIOS update to enable boot over PCIe. -Biostar T-Power I45: RevoDrive is only detected in Slot 1 AND only if a PCIe GPU is used. -DFI DK-X58-T3EH6: Not detected in PCIe Slot 2 (x4 slot). -EVGA X758 SLI – Please check with motherboard manufacturer for BIOS update to enable Boot over PCIe. -Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7 Not detected in slots 1,3,4 (it is detected in 2,5,6) -XFX 780i SLI – Bios must be upgraded to P09 (or later). Read more
Thursday, September 22, 2011
OCZ Technology ZS Series 650 Watt 80PLUS Bronze Performance Power Supply OCZ-ZS650W (Electronics)
By OCZ
Review & Description
The OCZ ZS Series PSU is an affordable solution for driving today's value-oriented gaming systems, and can power both NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX modes with an array of connectors. With the ideal combination of stability and sleek design, ZS is designed with gamers and modders in mind, sporting a compact form factor for compatibility with a range of case designs. Available in configurations ranging from 550W to 750W and backed with OCZ's 3-year Power Swap warranty, the ZS Series PSU gives you peace of mind to ensure stability, low noise, and efficiency of your home gaming system. Read more
Monday, September 12, 2011
Kingston Technology 2 GB Kit (2x1 GB) Memory for Select Apple Desktops Dual Channel Kit 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-G5400/2G
Kingston Technology 2 GB Kit (2x1 GB) Memory for Select Apple Desktops Dual Channel Kit 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-G5400/2G # Best Cheap Sale
#You can get best price for this brand Kingston KTA-G5400/2G and read review before you buy online#
- Includes two 1GB modules of 400MHz DDR Desktop memory for Apple
- Works with imac G5 1.6/1.8/2 ghz, Power Mac G5 1.8 ghz, dual 1.8ghz/2ghz, G5 dual 1.8 ghz to 2.7 ghz
- Memory designed, manufactured and tested to the specifications of each particular brand name computer system
- From the industry leader in PC memory
- 184-pin DIMM type
READ CUSTOMER REVIEWS CLICK HERE
If you are the one who love the best brand Kingston KTA-G5400/2G you must not miss this review of cheap Kingston Technology 2 GB Kit (2x1 GB) Memory for Select Apple Desktops Dual Channel Kit 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-G5400/2G. Read all the reviews or compare special prices for sale.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 22, 2011 08:40:09
Kingston Technology 4 GB Memory for Select Apple Imac's 4 Single (Not a kit) 1333 MHz (PC3 10600) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM KTA- MB1333/4G
Review of Kingston Technology 4 GB Memory for Select Apple Imac's 4 Single (Not a kit) 1333 MHz (PC3 10600) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM KTA- MB1333/4G # Best Cheap Sale
#You can get best price for this brand Kingston KTA-MB1333/4G and read review before you buy online#
- Includes one 4GB module of 1333MHz DDR3 Desktop memory for select iMac's
- Works with imac intel core i3/i5 21.5 inch and i5/i7 27 inch
- Memory designed, manufactured and tested to the specifications of each particular brand name computer system
- From the industry leader in PC memory
- 204-pin SODIMM type
READ CUSTOMER REVIEWS CLICK HERE
If you are the one who love the best brand Kingston KTA-MB1333/4G you must not miss this review of cheap Kingston Technology 4 GB Memory for Select Apple Imac's 4 Single (Not a kit) 1333 MHz (PC3 10600) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM KTA- MB1333/4G. Read all the reviews or compare special prices for sale.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 08, 2011 09:21:10
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
OCZ Technology 650 Watt 80 PLUS Bronze Performance ATX Power Supply OCZ-ZS650W (Electronics)
By OCZ
Review & Description
The OCZ ZS Series PSU is an affordable solution for driving today's value-oriented gaming systems, and can power both NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX modes with an array of connectors. With the ideal combination of stability and sleek design, ZS is designed with gamers and modders in mind, sporting a compact form factor for compatibility with a range of case designs. Available in configurations ranging from 550W to 750W and backed with OCZ's 3-year Power Swap warranty, the ZS Series PSU gives you peace of mind to ensure stability, low noise, and efficiency of your home gaming system. Read more
Friday, July 15, 2011
Kingston Technology 1 GB Memory for Select Imac G5 Desktops Single (Not a kit) 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-IMAC400/1G
Kingston Technology 1 GB Memory for Select Imac G5 Desktops Single (Not a kit) 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-IMAC400/1G # Best Cheap Sale
#You can get best price for this brand Kingston KTA-IMAC400/1G cheap Sale this blog#
Feature Review
- Includes one 1GB module of 400MHz DDR Desktop memory for Apple
- Works with imac g5 1.6/1.8ghz and 2ghz
- Memory designed, manufactured and tested to the specifications of each particular brand name computer system
- From the industry leader in PC memory
- 184-pin DIMM type
If you are the one who love the this brand Kingston you must not miss this review of Kingston Technology 1 GB Memory for Select Imac G5 Desktops Single (Not a kit) 400 MHz (PC 3200) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM KTA-IMAC400/1G. You can read all the reviews or compare special prices sale from
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jun 18, 2011 22:20:12
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Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Intel introduce new comer 22nm NAND Flash Technology
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Intel almost always stay in front in all technology. They can compete in computer hardware, tablet, and also for smartphone they don’t want lose too. Intel Corporation and Micron Technology Inc. has already announced that both of then introduced new NAND Flash 22nm process technology. This new 20nm process can produce up to 8-gigabyte multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash device, providing a high capacity, small form factor storage for saving all data such as music, document, file, database, picture etc.
This NAND Flash measures 118mm2 and enables a 30 to 40 percent of reduction form. This can be useful and can add more extra space for the other things such as larger screen, larger camera and larger facilities. The most important here is when there’s an extra space it can used to add more battery form, so the lifetime of the battery to serve the phone or etc can increase well.
This NAND flash will be in mass production about in a half of 2011. This NAND flash also will come up with bigger amount of data that is 16 GB up to 128 GB. So we just need to wait and see what Intel can do for this kind of sector.
So, for the final thoughts we as the consumer of their market really expect this NAND flash will have much larger amount of data and also has cheap price. And we also expect it will have better performance than SSD even in low cost.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Intel makes a Revolutionary 22nm Technology
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Wow! Intel once again makes a new penetration to their new 22nm process. They promise that on their new 22nm process processor will bring new technology and the latest feature. Intel's CEO Paul Otellini attracted some interest during yesterday's earnings conference call when he told analysts that the next generation of 22 nm of processors will feature a "revolutionary" process technology.
They also confident that this revolutionary on 22nm process will win the competition across all segment of computing. However, the CEO told Citigroup's Glen Yeung, that he really can't discuss the features and he would have to wait until the analyst day event in May. Just to make sure for the consumers that they really serious about this, Intel highlighted that it dramatically increased its capital expenditures and R&D spending up to $10.2 billion this year. And that’s why they really confident that someday it could be a big steps from Intel over the next 24 months.
And not stop till that one, Intel also want increase their development by doing a research for 14nm process and it’s the one effort to keep its rivals at a distance and cash in on its process technology advantage. Intel also noted that the first smartphone by Medfield will build in 32nm and it only takes 12 months. At 22nm desktop processor will ‘intercept’ the smartphone processor roadmap tablet/phone processor will move to 22 nm as well. For the first Intel 22 nm processors it will be launched about in Q4 of this year.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
OCZ Technology 240 GB RevoDrive X2 Series PCI-Express x4 Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSDPX-1RVDX0240 (Electronics)
By OCZ
Buy new: $569.99
Customer Rating:
First tagged by Steven Rosenlund
Customer tags: computer(2), sandy bridge, cpu, solid state drive, sad, pci-e ssd
Product Images
Review & Description
The RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD is an innovative storage solution for enthusiasts and prosumers to make the most of their desktops and workstations, upgrading the original architecture to deliver unprecedented speeds and higher capacities. The RevoDrive family gets its edge by eliminating the SATA II (3Gbps) bottleneck and leveraging a PCIe x4 interface, delivering superior speeds over 740MB/s sequential speeds and random small file writes up to 120,000 IOPS, nearly triple the throughput of other high-end SATA based solutions. The RevoDrive X2 uses an onboard RAID 0 design by employing four SandForce-1200 controllers to maximize data access and bandwidth. Unlike competing PCIe solutions the RevoDrive X2 is bootable, ensuring the satisfaction of quicker start-ups, load times, and computing, all while promoting cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient conditions compared to traditional mechanical hard drives. Available in 100GB to 960GB capacities, the OCZ RevoDrive X2 provides ample room for data warehousing, applications, multimedia files, and operating systems. The RevoDrive X2 is backed by a 3-year warranty and tech support for the ultimate peace of mind for your high-performance hardware investment.While the RevoDrive X2 will simply plug and play for the vast majority of platforms for these particular motherboards OCZ recommends the following: -Asus Crosshair IV – Please check with motherboard manufacturer for BIOS update to enable boot over PCIe. -Biostar T-Power I45: RevoDrive is only detected in Slot 1 AND only if a PCIe GPU is used. -DFI DK-X58-T3EH6: Not detected in PCIe Slot 2 (x4 slot). -EVGA X758 SLI – Please check with motherboard manufacturer for BIOS update to enable Boot over PCIe. -Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7 Not detected in slots 1,3,4 (it is detected in 2,5,6) -XFX 780i SLI – Bios must be upgraded to P09 (or later). Read more
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