Just IT Hardware Blog

The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) has fined ELNA, Nichicon, Rubycon, and SCC for colluding on pricing for aluminum electrolytic capacitors. The total amount fined adds up to $15 million, which is the most the CCS has ever penalized. Investigations were initiated after Panasonic applied for immunity under the CCS leniency program, which prevents companies that report illegal activity from being incriminated. As a result, Panasonic was the only manufacturer who did not get fined. 1

Semiconductor manufacturing company Microchip recently introduced a new Serial EEPROM. This new device is able to utilize a bus that is single-wired using only 2 pins in accessing the device: SI/O and GRN. SI/O, which is the 1st pin, features a line that integrates power and data, This provides the needed power towards the device and also to the management of the data.

When PC gamers are building computers, many forget the importance of choosing a good motherboard to go along with their electronic Frankenstein’s monster. Motherboards can go for anywhere from $50 to $900 for the ROG Maximus VIII Extreme/Assembly by AsusTek Computer Inc. Here are the best gaming motherboards for three price ranges to choose from, according to Digital Trends.

When building an extremely well-built computer many aspects contribute to its maximum potential. From the components being installed to the screws binding everything together. Besides the smaller components, the real aspect behind a great computer is the motherboard. Motherboards are designed to fit many different users’ needs and tend more centered on a group of tasks ranging from gaming to downloading at faster speeds.  Often times users believe that looking for the right motherboard could be nerve wrecking but are quite simple when educated on the right ones. 

Creative Labs just recently released the Sound BlasterX AE-5. This is the most recent PCIe sound card. This sound card includes a high-quality DAC (digital-to-analog converter), RGB (red, green, blue) lighting controls, a headphone amp, as well as a radiant finish. Just like the Recon3D and Z-series, the Sound Blaster AE-5 contains the in-house Sound Core3D DSP (digital signal processor). The Sound Core 3D is updated with support for 44.1 and 88.2 kHz playback in direct mode and virtual 7.1 support. What has not changed is the similar silicon. This is also programmed differently in terms of the volume control. The volume control on the Sound BlasterX AE-5 is mapped to the DAC volume.

Dell the world’s leading enterprise IT Infrastructure Company, recently celebrated twenty years of precision work stations by rolling out a brand new, updated workstation portfolio which includes a special anniversary edition of its precision 5520 mobile workstation laptop. Dell has been active in the PC industry for over three decades and is a company that does not show any signs of slowing down any time soon. The brand-new precision 5520m is the thinnest, lightest and overall smallest mobile workstation laptop in Dell’s history.

Photographs are taken every second of the day all around the world. There are more photographs taken today than ever before. In the world of photography having the best memory card is essential. Samsung knew this and just released their new memory card that is going to throw all memory cards out of the game. Samsung just came out with a new memory card that is smaller and can hold more memory than the microSD cards. They are calling it the Universal Flash Storage UFS memory card. It can come with 256GB capacities and the size of a thumbnail.

A group of ARM hardware enthusiasts gathered at Linaro Connect to conceptualize a powerful ARM PC. In the end the group settled on building a computer like the Intel NUC—a mini-desktop with a powerful board computer in it. The session that was held is available on Linaro’s site and highlighted issues involved in building and supporting an ARM-based PC. There were concerns about whether ARM risk chips would deliver performance adequate to run powerful applications. Also concerns about components and about providing a Linux user experience acceptable to users.

Digital Trends by Jayce Wagner that talks how Toshiba just launched a new hard disk that has a storage space of 8TB which is on a 3.5 inch format. Within this series, there are also other storage amounts such as the 6TB and the 4TB. All of these spin at a rate of 7200RPM. The storage is great for the heavy computer user as well as being a solution for small businesses as well. Here is what Scott Wright, the director of HDD marketing for Toshiba America, has to say about the new hard disk launch.

Intel has announced the official Vulkan graphic API support for Skylake and Kaby Lake GPUs. Previously it was in beta for months. Other releases were also in different flavors of beta, but Intel’s 15.45.14.4590 driver is the first release added in full API support. The latest driver will only support Windows 10 on Kaby Lake, but the sixth-generation GPUs are supported in Windows 7,8.1, and 10. That points out the artificiality of the restriction. Kaby Lake and Skylake use identical GPUs. So, their graphic pipelines are alike.

Samsung had a two hour press conference on the design failure and manufacturing that caused the fires with their Note 7.

Toshiba corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate. Their headquarters are in Tokyo, Japan. They offer many services for people. some services include information technology, communications equipment, and systems. Electronic components and materials. Also, power systems, industrial and social infrastructure systems. Toshiba is known to be found in 1938. It is organized in a way to be able to have 4 groupings. Groups such as the Digital products group, the electronic devices, home appliances group and the social infrastructure group. It is considered the 7^th largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world.

Qualcomm Incorporated and ARM have worked together to design a 10nm server processor dubbed Falkor, a first for both companies. ARM, the mobile processor specialist is confident that this move will finally put them in a good position in the server processor market. According to an ARM executive earlier this year, the server business will experience growth within the next two years and it will become an important part of their own IP firm.

There was an article written by Dave Raffo, the senior news director, posted on Tech Target that talks about the top enterprise storage vendors to keep an eye on in 2017. The top enterprise storage vendors include (in no particular order): Dell EMC, Nutanix, Pure Storage, Veritas, Broadcom, Seagate, Western Digital, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, and Lenovo.

Nowadays, due to the continuous growth of hacking the basic network router cannot provide enough protection for video surveillance systems. Since technology is getting better the security world has been evolving in the past decades from change of the VCRs to IP cameras. So, with all this change, networks are in the search of finding more reasonable cost-effective routers to help protect from the growing hacking world. I think surveillance is one of the most important things for all businesses to have to protect and monitor whatever is going on at their business.

Teledyne Inc has just announced their decision to take over the Essex-based imaged sensor and space component specialist e2v technologies. The takeover will cost Teledyne approximately 620 million dollars but such is the price of absorbing an industry leader for imagers and space component like e2v. Not only limited to imagers, e2v also supplied radio devices and semiconductors for high-reliability industrial/defense applications and healthcare.

"The Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025” has been introduced by Future Market Insights.  Hard disk drives have similar properties as disk drives and hard drives.  They have been used for reading and writing data onto a hard disk which is the main data storage unit in the computer. What Global hard disk drives are based on are various types of hard disk drives, composed of unique factors of hard disk drive and the building of other applications of hard disk drives.  The HDD market has been able to witness first handedly the increase and the decrease of the market.

Intel along with every other tech company on the planet is gearing up their chip development in the quest for artificial intelligence. The company is betting heavily that the new chip technology will have mass appeal and world wide applications. On Thursday Intel announced that they will be developing new chips that can handle A.I. level workloads with the end game being A.I. however for the time being the chips will be released as specialized co-processors or primary chips in computers which will be completely separate from the major product lines. The thinking is that over time Intel will be able to further adapt and integrate these chips with A.I. features into everything from mainstream servers to PC chips and IoT. Due to the weakening PC market, Intel is aggressively pursuing other sectors in order to diversify.

Intel has been a leader and valued semiconductor chip maker, they also have invented the x86 series of microprocessors and these are found in most processors that you will find either in a laptop or a desktop PC. Intel Corporation has been supplying processors to computer manufacturing companies such IBM, Dell, Apple and other companies. They have been innovating their technology since day one and Intel is always working on improving their processing systems continuously to make better and faster operating systems for the modern world. The word is that Intel’s new processor called the Kaby Lake desktop processor is coming out sometime the following year and rumor says that Kaby Lake processing system is not going to be a magnificent upgrade from Skylake processing system. At the very least this will not show on desktop PCs.

On October 10^th 2016, there was an article posted by Jef Cozza on CIO Today which talks a about how Avaya is rolling out a new cloud networking platform, along with new Networking and Communications Hardware. It is said that this cloud network is focused on simplifying and accelerating the deployment and management networks. This was announced last week during the IP Expo in London. This platform includes a new type of network lifecycle management solution for both midsize business clients and enterprises.