Thursday, March 08, 2012

Birth of SSD with PCIe connector with 2.5 inch form factor.

PCIe 2.5 inch SSD - fruit of ssdformfactor.org:
Couple of years back came to know that ssdformfactor.org is formed to drive next generation connector architecture for storage devices because SSDs are almost immediately saturating whatever improvement SATA   and other Standard brings in.

SATA3 with 6gbps is saturated immediately by then Sandforce controller based SSDs in consumer market. Enterprise SSDs are different stories - few companies uses SATA based one others uses most popular high performing PCI Express card based solution to drive 100s of thousands of IOPS.

 Micron the company known in consumer SSDs space like crucial C300/M4 kind of SSDs owning it's own NAND fabs jointly with Intel revealed PCIe 2.5 inch SSD.

It is fruit of ssdformfactor.org which finished and approved version 1.0 of Spec. So, in coming months we will see SSDs which incorporate PCIe connector popping up. It is really going to be game changer for standard based storage solution.  Dell, in fact, partnered with Micron for the above mentioned drive and said they are going to use in their servers.

Apple's the new iPad

Apple ecosystem is maturing a lot. One of the best in class which makes entertainment/ content consumption roundtrip without much hassle of network fiddling unlike other's offering.
The new iPad Ups the ante, it supports LTE, Bluetooth 4 to wifi n in one end and gorgeous retina display on the user end.  Experience is function of coordinated/rhythmic working of various components working as whole results in more than sum of individual things.  And retina display needs big content whether it is movie or music or game or other app which needs very good network, better GPU, CPU, RAM and battery -- at the end how I experience it -- ( how immersive it is! ) simply hides what beneath it. So Apple still proved they go on creating better experience and people love to buy those experience.
It looks like and based on very recent new tablets unveiled -- from Asus to Lenovo, they look simply unmatched in whatever angle I review it.  Samsung has a chance to match and better Apple's new iPad. With new Google Play, better screen, better processor they can match it in spec and on round trip but not sure whether they will deliver it.

  

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Apple's Slide to unlock is prior art

Apple's slide to unlock (http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/6/2849051/slide-to-unlock-patent-apple-android-google) is prior art. If you happen to see old india door lock, it is just that in digital form.  Why apple?
I will post one of my antique house slide lock soon :). This kind of lock's can be found in old indian temple also.