MODDING: blogs

Three major camps have formed out of the 25 companies sued by SanDisk over NAND flash-related patent infringement, with Kingston Technology's camp taking the lead in fighting against SanDisk, according to sources at Taiwan memory makers. Of the various companies being sued, Kingston and Phison Electronics have taken the lead role in fighting the lawsuit. A second camp is being led by A-Data Technology, Afa Technologies and Skymedi and the third is led by Apacer Technology, Transcend Information and Silicon Motion, the sources revealed.

Reviewing relationships between companies in the same camp, most of them have pre-existing investment relationships, implying that they are unlikely to join other camps over the lawsuit, the sources noted. Some memory makers commented that SanDisk suit is primarily driven by Kingston's growing position in the NAND flash market, especially in Asia and emerging markets. Most involved companies think that the lawsuit is more a dispute between SanDisk and Kingston because Kingston is putting up the strongest opposition in fighting the allegations, while many of the involved parties are happy to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as their sales contribution from the US is relatively low.

Three major camps have formed out of the 25 companies sued by SanDisk over NAND flash-related patent infringement, with Kingston Technology's camp taking the lead in fighting against SanDisk, according to sources at Taiwan memory makers. Of the various companies being sued, Kingston and Phison Electronics have taken the lead role in fighting the lawsuit. A second camp is being led by A-Data Technology, Afa Technologies and Skymedi and the third is led by Apacer Technology, Transcend Information and Silicon Motion, the sources revealed.

Reviewing relationships between companies in the same camp, most of them have pre-existing investment relationships, implying that they are unlikely to join other camps over the lawsuit, the sources noted. Some memory makers commented that SanDisk suit is primarily driven by Kingston's growing position in the NAND flash market, especially in Asia and emerging markets. Most involved companies think that the lawsuit is more a dispute between SanDisk and Kingston because Kingston is putting up the strongest opposition in fighting the allegations, while many of the involved parties are happy to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as their sales contribution from the US is relatively low.

Three major camps have formed out of the 25 companies sued by SanDisk over NAND flash-related patent infringement, with Kingston Technology's camp taking the lead in fighting against SanDisk, according to sources at Taiwan memory makers. Of the various companies being sued, Kingston and Phison Electronics have taken the lead role in fighting the lawsuit. A second camp is being led by A-Data Technology, Afa Technologies and Skymedi and the third is led by Apacer Technology, Transcend Information and Silicon Motion, the sources revealed.

Reviewing relationships between companies in the same camp, most of them have pre-existing investment relationships, implying that they are unlikely to join other camps over the lawsuit, the sources noted. Some memory makers commented that SanDisk suit is primarily driven by Kingston's growing position in the NAND flash market, especially in Asia and emerging markets. Most involved companies think that the lawsuit is more a dispute between SanDisk and Kingston because Kingston is putting up the strongest opposition in fighting the allegations, while many of the involved parties are happy to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as their sales contribution from the US is relatively low.

Three major camps have formed out of the 25 companies sued by SanDisk over NAND flash-related patent infringement, with Kingston Technology's camp taking the lead in fighting against SanDisk, according to sources at Taiwan memory makers. Of the various companies being sued, Kingston and Phison Electronics have taken the lead role in fighting the lawsuit. A second camp is being led by A-Data Technology, Afa Technologies and Skymedi and the third is led by Apacer Technology, Transcend Information and Silicon Motion, the sources revealed.

Reviewing relationships between companies in the same camp, most of them have pre-existing investment relationships, implying that they are unlikely to join other camps over the lawsuit, the sources noted. Some memory makers commented that SanDisk suit is primarily driven by Kingston's growing position in the NAND flash market, especially in Asia and emerging markets. Most involved companies think that the lawsuit is more a dispute between SanDisk and Kingston because Kingston is putting up the strongest opposition in fighting the allegations, while many of the involved parties are happy to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as their sales contribution from the US is relatively low.

After all the buzz surrounding the low-cost Classmate PC laptop it designed for school kids in other countries, Intel is talking to computer manufacturers about offering an updated retail version in this country within months for less than $500.

We're expecting to see Classmate PC in the U.S. by the end of this year,” said Agnes Kwan, a spokeswoman with the Santa Clara chip maker. “In the past 18 months, we've been getting a really good response from customers . . . as well as from consumers asking about the product. We realized there was a big interest out there.” Although the second-generation laptop is expected to cost from $250 to $350 to make, it would be priced higher for retail sale after it's loaded with various software applications, Kwan said.

AMD is planning to launch a Radeon HD 3830 graphics chip for the mid-range/entry-level market, according to sources at graphics card makers. Cards are expected to launch in April or May. The 3830 will have a 128-bit memory interface, 320 stream processing units, 16 texture filtering units and 16 ROPs, and will support memory capacities up to 256MB. The card will be positioned between AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and 3650 and will target the gap between Nvidia's GeForce 9600GT and 8600GTS with a price lower than US$129.

Several graphics card makers already plan to launch overclocked versions of the card, boosting the core frequency to even higher levels, while using faster memory chips, noted the sources. AMD also notified its partners that if Radeon HD 3830 does not perform as it expected, the company might cut the price of its Radeon HD 3870, 3850 and 3830 some time in the second quarter in order to grab more market share, added the sources.

Kingston has just launched a family of 800MHz FB-DIMM memory modules, ranging in capacity from 512MB to 4GB, that are ideal for servers and high-performance workstations. Kingston is first rolling out industry standard ValueRAM FB-DIMMs, but has hinted that high-performance kits might be out in the near future. The kit with 2 x 2GB modules (KVR800D2D4F5K2/4G) offers a total memory density of 4GB with a MSRP of $260. Kingston is doing a $13 instant rebate on the kit right now which brings the price down to $247 plus shipping!

Today's dual XEON systems using the new 1600MHz front-side bus quad-core processors demand a robust memory solution to match processor bandwidth with
memory bandwidth,” said Louis Kaneshiro, senior technology manager, Kingston. “Our 800MHz FB-DIMMs deliver the blazing performance and reliability required
by high performance servers and workstations.” Delivering up to 25.6 GB/s bandwidth with four memory channels active, Kingston 800MHz FB-DIMMs match the
bandwidth needs of the latest XEON processors. The 2GB and 4GB 800MHz FB-DIMMs enable a flexible upgrade path while leaving plenty of headroom for future RAM expansion.

Never mind the debates about which is best: clamshells, candybars, sliders, and so on. There’s a wider debate going on - how large should a smart mobile device be? I argue that once you get beyond a certain size, you lose the ‘take it everywhere’ usefulness, you sacrifice robustness and you fail to achieve mass market sales.

Never mind the debates about which is best: clamshells, candybars, sliders, and so on. There’s a wider debate going on - how large should a smart mobile device be? I argue that once you get beyond a certain size, you lose the ‘take it everywhere’ usefulness, you sacrifice robustness and you fail to achieve mass market sales.

Never mind the debates about which is best: clamshells, candybars, sliders, and so on. There’s a wider debate going on - how large should a smart mobile device be? I argue that once you get beyond a certain size, you lose the ‘take it everywhere’ usefulness, you sacrifice robustness and you fail to achieve mass market sales.