Articles about Vertex
Flashy startup E8 set to launch after cash injection
NVMe flash array startup E8 Storage has snagged a $12m B-round of funding.
The money comes from Accel Partners, which gets a board chair, and existing investors Magma Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures. It will be used to double the research and dev head count in E8's Israeli office, hire a sales and marketing team in the US …
Never mind the redundancies as Capita splashes cash on Barrachd
Everyone's favourite outsourcer Capita has snapped up business intelligence outfit and IBM VAR Barrachd for an undisclosed pile of cash.
The 38-strong Scottish biz develops bespoke BI software in the financial services, energy, and higher education sectors.
Barrachd was founded in 2007 and its name means "more" in Gaelic – a …
Ex-XIV execs expeditiously exit to expectant E8
Say hello to E8 Storage, a stealthy Israeli start-up founded by two XIV veterans.
CEO and co-founder Zivan Ori was an R&D manager at IBM-XIV for five years up until 2013. He spent 16 months as chief architect at Stratoscale – another stealthy storage start-up – then left to set up E8 in November 2014. Co-founder Alex Friedman …
Atlantis Computing CEO stands down
+Comment
After just four months as Atlantis Technology CEO and president, Jason Donahue has left, and has been replaced by founder and now ex-chief technology officer Chetan Venkatesh.
The company's management page now has Venkatesh listed as chief.
Atlantis has RAM-using server and VDI virtualisation software technology products called …
Sink your teeth into OCZ's ARC 100 SSD sizzler with tasty home-grown chips
Review
After Toshiba’s acquisition of the company, OCZ has in one fell swoop joined the elite band of SSD manufacturers who are in the extremely fortunate position of being able to source “in-house” all the internal chips that matter in a drive: namely, the NAND and the controller.
OCZ ARC 100 SSD
Teaming up with Tosh: OCZ's ARC …
Nvidia blasts sueballs at Qualcomm, Samsung – wants Galaxy kit banned
Nvidia claims to hold patents on core graphics processor technologies found in mobile phones and tablets, and is suing Qualcomm and Samsung as a result.
The graphics chip giant has filed lawsuits against the two semiconductor goliaths, seeking damages and an injunction blocking US sales of what Nvidia claims are the companies …
AMD slaps 'Radeon' label on Tosh flash: >Beard stroke< Hmm, cunning ...
X86 CPU and Radeon graphics chipper AMD has come out with an SSD line using Toshiba/OCZ componentry.
It's called the Radeon R7-Series, which us a sideways extension of existing graphics processor branding. The SSD uses 19nm Toshibs MLC flash and has been designed, we understand, for balanced read and write workloads. The …
Donahue grabs Atlantis double crown: Takes CEO and pres titles
Atlantis Computing, the ILIO VDI and USX VMware acceleration software company, has replaced its CEO. Jason Donahue will be taking over from Bernard Harguindeguy.
Donahue becomes CEO and president and joins the board. Chetan Venkatesh, the chief technology officer and founder of Atlantis, said: “Jason Donahue is someone who …
Sod Bitcoin - solving graph problems is the new GPU-flogger
HPC blog
These GTC conferences, the annual GPU-fest sponsored by NVIDIA, are my favorite events of the year. Why? It’s how the event is organized. At GTC, real-world researchers, analysts, and other customers present the vast majority of sessions, not corporate mouthpieces.
They talk about their projects, the challenges they’ve dealt …
OpenGL mobile graphics spec inches closer to desktop, laptop cousin
The Khronos Group has released the OpenGL ES 3.1 specification, bringing closer the day when handheld devices match mainstream desktops and laptops in graphics performance.
"The OpenGL family of APIs including OpenGL ES, OpenGL and WebGL have proven themselves as the foundation for 3D graphics on mobile devices, PCs and the …
OCZ and Toshiba drive out new RETAIL SSD line with Barefoot controller
CES 2014
Bankrupt hardware maker OCZ, whose assets are being bought by Toshiba, has a Vertex 460 enterprise SSD device in the pipeline, with a preview of it being shown at CES in Las Vegas.
According to The SSD Review the Vertex 460 features:
120, 240 and 480GB capacity points
Up to 95,000 random read IOPS
Up to 550MB/sec …
We love a flashy MODEL who's a KEEN READER – Toshiba
Toshiba has a new mid-range SSD built for medium spec read-intensive work that widens its 19nm NAND product range. The HK3R comes hot on the heels of the PX03SN and Tosh says it is optimised for read-intensive applications such as read-caching, error logging, boot, and low-duty storage applications requiring power-loss- …
OCZ successfully sells self to Toshiba
Death-row solid state disk vendor OCZ has sold its brains to Toshiba for $US35m.
OCZ's been limping along for ages and last week declared bankruptcy and said Toshiba was the most likely source of cash to give its long-suffering institutional investors something with which to light their cigars.
The Japanese concern has indeed …
OCZ goes titsup, flogs own corpse to Toshiba
Solid state disk maker OCZ Technology Group has gone titsup and filed for bankruptcy.
The company has been in a mess for years, having recently 'fessed up to all manner of balance sheet borkedness and corrected its last four years' worth of financial emissions. Other efforts to right the ship included a big restructure that now …
OCZ balances books, files results following 4-year omnishambles
SSD supplier OCZ Technology Group has finally filed its fiscal 2013 year results after having to correct the four previous years' results, showing how inadequate financial controls nearly caused the company to collapse.
As it is, the consumer and enterprise SSD supplier has been facing a Nasdaq delisting and severe financing …
Dell crams baby small-biz data center into a tower chassis
It is refreshing to see that someone pays attention in the server racket. It is also annoying that it has taken a top-tier server maker so long to get a true system out the door that is suitable for small and midrange businesses. But Dell may have finally done it with its PowerEdge VRTX.
A typical branch or SMB data closet
A …
It's all gone to Schmitt: New OCZ boss rips 'n' replaces execs
Flash storage biz OCZ's new CEO has replaced almost a dozen executives - and he's banging on about quality as he strives to resuscitate the near-dead OCZ flash business.
OCZ over-extended itself drastically under founder and previous CEO Ryan Petersen, who was ousted last year, leaving the company with far too many under- …
Troubled OCZ brings forth consumer SSDs with Vector
SSD supplier OCZ, hard hit by an erring CEO and now under new management, has launched its first consumer SSD using in-house controller technology, the Vector.
OCZ's roller coaster ride story from start-up glory to sick ward candidate can be found here. New CEO Ralph Schmitt announced the product but it was mostly developed …
Samsung SSD 840 series storage review
When Samsung launched its first true consumer SSD, the 470, it was met with a generally good reception. Yet the timing of its release pretty much coincided with the arrival of drives using the second generation of LSI’s SandForce controller and its 6Gb/s SATA 3 interface. Hence, the 470 having a 3Gb/s SATA 2 interface was no …
Swiss boffins slap together homegrown zBox4 supercomputer
Students and a few wandering professors at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich had a perfect weekend when they scraped together the funds to buy the parts for their zBox4 homegrown supercomputer and assembled the two-rack beast.
This is the fourth generation of homegrown machines that the ITP …
Flash slash at OCZ: New CEO cuts nearly 200 jobs, 150 products
OCZ, the flash storage start-up that over-extended itself by pumping out new SSDs before securing a reliable flash NAND chip supplier, has had excess products - and 198 staffers - dumped by incoming CEO Ralph Schmitt.
Founder and CEO Ryan Petersen resigned back in September,
Schmitt was appointed in October to clean up OCZ's …
Plextor M5 Pro 256GB SSD review
Some companies make a real song and dance about the launch of a new product, others just seem to launch something without hardly making a ripple. Plextor sits firmly in the latter category, which is something of a surprise considering its latest Pro SSD range, the M5 series, features not one but two new technologies that are, …
Deep, deep dive inside Intel's next-generation processor
At Intel's developer shindig last week, chippery engineers spent a goodly amount of time conducting tech sessions that detailed the company's upcoming 4th-generation Core microprocessor architecture, code-named "Haswell."
We thought that you, inordinately intelligent and tech-savvy Reg reader, might enjoy a deep dive into their …
OCZ chief dashes as flash cash stash bashed
Solid-state drive maker OCZ Technology's chief executive Ryan Petersen has jumped ship, leaving top marketing boy Alex Mei to man the tiller for now.
Mei will hang onto his job as chief marketing officer until a permanent CEO is picked, the company said in a canned statement. OCZ stock has been steadily falling after four …
Crucial v4 256GB budget SSD review
The latest addition to Crucial’s range of SSD’s, the v4 series isn’t, as you might expect, the follow up to the company’s highly successful m4 series but a different animal entirely. It's so different in fact, it makes you wonder what was Crucial’s thinking behind it.
Crucial v4 256GB (CT256V4SSD2) SSD
Practical electronics …
Plextor joins titans of MLC flash at the 90,000 plus club
Plextor has joined OCZ and SMART in the 90,000+ club, the providers of elite MLC SSDs that exceed 90,000 random read IOPs per second.
Fast single-level cell (SLC) flash is used to drive SSDs at speeds beyond 100,000 IOPS doing random reads of 4K data blocks. Multi-level cell (MLC) flash, with 2 bits per cell, is slower, shorter- …
Intel 330 120GB SSD review
When Intel launched the SSD 520 series of drives it caused quite a kerfuffle. The company had abandoned using one of its own controllers or even a Marvell controller, as found in the 510 series. Instead, the ubiquitous LSI Sandforce SF-2281 controller was utilised but with Intel’s own hand firmly in charge of the firmware. …
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD review
Time was, when OCZ was typically first out of the gate with a range of SSDs based on any new incarnation of SandForce controllers. Yet, the first generation of the company’s popular Vertex drives were powered by Indilinx’s Barefoot controller. Now, with the fourth generation of Vertex drives, OCZ has completed the circle and …
Serco ate our IT supplier: Now what? – London boroughs
IT services relationships at the London tri-borough group of Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea are likely to become more complex following the acquisition of Westminster's IT supplier Vertex by Serco.
Serco said the acquisition last week, for £55m, brings it additional skills and capabilities to …
Serco gulps more gov contracts with VDS gobble
Services and systems colossus Serco has taken charge of more government contracts by buying out Vertex Public Sector's data division: Vertex Data Science (VDS).
Serco splashed £55.5m in cash on the division - bringing in 3,000 employees and scooping its meaty government contracts, including administering child maintenance grants …
OCZ's new Vertex 4 SSD: Faster... and slower
OCZ has a new SSD that's both faster and slower than the previous model. That's what can happen when you swap controllers on an SSD.
A year ago the hustling and bustling SSD supplier introduced its Vertex 3 with a bought-in SandForce SF-2281 controller inside. Since then LSI has bought SandForce and OCZ has bought its own …
OCZ dazzles CeBIT with flashy Kilimanjaro package
CeBIT
OCZ doesn't just give us teasing hints about future flash products, it tells us about them at trade shows. CeBIT was no exception, with OCZ unveiling its Kilimanjaro controller; SSD Lightfoot with its Thunderbolt interface; and Vertex 4 SSD with its Everest controller.
Vertex 4 is a coming 2.5-inch SSD with a 6Gbit/s SATA …
OCZ refunds punter for dud drive shortly after El Reg steps in
OCZ promises to refund purchasers of failed solid-state drives, but at least in one case it seemed unable to do so - until Vulture Central poked its beak in.
Dorothy Perry had three OCZ Agility SSDs fail over a period of about two years. The bricked flash drives wouldn't even show up in her PC's BIOS or that of another PC she …
DIY virtual machines: Rigging up at home
Sysadmin blog
A brief look at virtual machines for home use resulted in several requests for system specifications and configuration details. It seems some of you would like to take a go at replicating my setup.
The hardware is simple. The motherboard is an ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe, with an Intel Core i5 2500 CPU, two 8GB Corsair SODIMMS and an …
OCZ conquers Everest, flashes 3-bit NAND at world
OCZ is showing the first mainstream computer flash drive using 3-bit NAND at CES 2012.
Flash comes in single-level cell (SLC) form, the fastest, longest-lived and most expensive, and also a 2-bit multi-level cell (MLC) variant which is slower, has a shorter working life but is less expensive than SLC. TLC is an extension of …
Samsung SSD 830
Review
When it came to putting together a list of SSDs together for your latest upgrade, one name that you could easily overlook until recently was Samsung. Compared to its rivals in the marketplace the company hardly trumpeted its solid state storage products.
Samsung SSD 830 solid state drive
Samsung's SSD 830: 256GB is an …
OCZ wheels out lower octane SSD for Sunday drives
OCZ has a new SSD product and brand, Petrol, which uses cheaper asynchronous NAND than last month's Octane with its synchronous NAND.
Both Petrol and Octane are 2.5in form-factor SSDs with a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, and use OCZ's own Indilinx Everest controller. Octane flash is 25nm IMTF 2-bit synchronous NAND, whereas Petrol …
Microsoft slips out Silverlight 5
In one of its quieter launches, Microsoft has made Silverlight 5 available for download, and rumors suggest this may be the last major upgrade for the code.
Among the full list of improvements are hardware decoding of H.264 unprotected content using the GPU, support for 64-bit browsers and a rewritten graphics stack using built- …
Defra gives IBM 21% MORE dosh this year
IBM has increased its dominance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) budget, after a 21 per cent increase in its income from the department. The firm now receives nearly a quarter of Defra's £398.7m spending with external suppliers.
Defra paid the firm £99.1m in 2010-11, according to figures …
Samsung brings out superskinny flash drives for ultrabooks
Samsung is shipping mini-Serial ATA interface solid state drives for ultrabooks, the attempt by Intel to spark a Windows equivalent of MacBook Air thin notebooks into being.
It has extended its PM830 range of 2Xnm class, 2-bit multi-level cell SSDs, with their 6Gbit/s SATA interface and 128, 256, and 512GB capacity points, by …
DWP cuts spending with top IT supplier HP by 4%
The Department for Work and Pensions has cut spending in 2010-11 with HP and BT, but increased it with Atos Origin.
HP Enterprise Services remains the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) second largest supplier, despite a drop in the government's spending with the firm. It received £629.4m in 2010-11, according to figures …
Applied Micro leaps ahead in ARM server race
Applied Micro Circuits, a company known for networking chips and for dabbling a bit in embedded PowerPC processors, has aimed a haymaker of an ARM server chip right at the cloudy jaws of Intel and AMD.
What's more, the specs divulged by Applied Micro – if all works according to plan – suggest that the x86 chip makers might end …
Kingston Technology HyperX 240GB SSD
Review
Following OCZ’s great success with its SandForce SF2281-based Vertex 3 solid-state drive, it seems everyone is jumping on the SandForce bandwagon now. I recently tested Patriot Memory’s Wildfire SSD from, and today I have the latest addition to Kingston Technology’s HyperX product line.
It too uses an SF2281 controller, which …
SMART unveils smarter, faster, fatter SSDs
Move over Violin, OCZ, Seagate, Intel, et al. SMART Modular Technologies is crowing that it's now number one in the notebook-format flash drive space, having just introduced its new Optimus solid state drive, which it calls "the world's fastest multi-level cell and highest capacity SAS SSD."
The 2.5-inch Optimus uses 2-bit …
OCZ jumps harder on enterprise PCIe bandwagon
OCZ has announced its third Z-drive refresh in two years, with the Z-Drive R4 going more than four times faster than the first version product.
The company has three PCIe flash drives: the RevoDrive is for workstations and NAS servers; the VeloDrive is for small and medium business and system integrators; while the Z_Drive is …
Patriot Wildfire 120GB Sata 3 SSD
Review
Patriot Memory’s latest Wildfire Sata 3 SSDs come with the promise of read and write speeds in excess of 500MB/s along with read and write IOPS in the 60K region. All of this blazing speed is available in 120GB (£240), 240GB (£420) and 480GB capacities – a 60GB version is in production, but not currently available in the UK. …
OCZ unsheathes Talos flash talons
OCZ's Talos flash drive is set to claw into the enterprise hard drive business.
The Talos C Series is OCZ's 3.5-inch enterprise flash drive, in contrast to the Vertex, which is a consumer drive.
Talos is a 3.5-inch, 2-bit multi-level cell solid state drive (SSD), coming in 230GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities. It can run at 50, …
OCZ fails to kill off Blue Screen Of Death issue
Despite firmware upgrades, some OCZ Agility and Vertex SSD users are still suffering Blue Screen of Death episodes.
We came across Vertex BSOD episodes in June and have been told by Gym Ratz, our poster, that he is still BSOD'd but that a replacement Crucial SSD is working perfectly.
To get my PC back in action and prove it …
OCZ Vertex bashes users with Blue Screen of Death
OCZ forum users are up in arms about their high-performance Vertex 3 flash drives causing Windows PCs to go into a blue-screen-of-death (BSOD) state, and further angered by OCZ's unconcerned response.
Poster GymRatZ told us: "I spent about 3 days attempting to get it recognised by Windows (7) 64 for install. Eventually after …
Crucial M4 256GB Sata 3 SSD
Review
Following on from its impressive debut in last month’s SSD roundup, it seems in order to look further into Crucial’s M4 SSD, specifically the 256GB version of this Sata 3 capable device.
Crucial M4
Crucial's M4 really shows what SSDs can achieve thanks to its Sata 3 interfacing
First off, the usual; Crucial has made the M4 …
