Seagate Launches 2TB Enterprise Class Drive With 6Gb SAS

Scotts Valley, California-headquartered Seagate Corporation has announced the launch of a 2TB Enterprise-Class (ES) drive that features 6Gbps SAS interface. The drive has been christened “Constellation”. The drive is offered with either a 3 Gbps SATA interface or a 6 Gbps SAS 2.0 interface.

A fourth-generation enterprise-centric device, the drive is touted as the industry’s first such drive by the company. Constellation is best suited for enterprise apps where data demand is extremely high. The 6 Gbps SAS helps in very high data integrity thanks to its error detection and correction (IOEDC/IOECC).

Measuring 26.1 mm(H) X 101.6 mm (W) X 146.99 mm (L), the device weighs 710 gm. The cache has a capacity of 16MB. The drive spins at 7,200 RPM, and can sustain data transfer at a rate of 150 Mbps. With an average latency of 4.16 ms, random read seek time of less than 8.5 ms and random write seek time of less than 9.5 ms, the product has one of the best performances for its particular category.

Constellation requires an average idle power of 8.0 W, runs on an average operating power of 12.2 W, and requires 11.2 W for seek.

Read more about an industry-first achievement by Seagate, here.

Adobe Releases Photoshop Version For Android

San Jose, California-headquartered Adobe Systems has announced the release of its popular Photoshop software for the Android developer community. The software is now available on Android 1.1. Additionally, Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 is available now, which means that Android users can edit and share their photos with greater convenience.

The Photoshop.com editor can now be embedded into any application that requires image touch-up and editing capabilities. So users can with a click fix their photos on any image-rich sites such as fashion galleries, social media sites, jewelry designs, modeling, and the like.

The product has features such as “Vibrant”, which can boost photo colors, and “Pop” which brings a pop-art style to the images. Tools such as “Soft Black and White” and “Warm Vintage” can add a classic and gracefully-aged look to photos. There are other similar tools which are equally effective in their own ways, such as Vignette Blur, White Glow and Rainbow. Like in any other standard software, changes made to a file can be undone at any point of time, so the original photo remains safe.

Further details of the product are available at: http://mobile.photoshop.com/android/developers.html.

Read more about yet another integration happening between mobile phones and traditional desktop softwares, here.

Aperture 3 From Apple Has Powerful Features

The latest release of Apple’s photo editing and management software, Aperture, is packed with over 200 new features.

The product is proving to be a boon for professionals who need to edit massive libraries of photos. It has several features that were available in erstwhile versions of iPhoto 09 such as Faces and Places; so iPhoto users can easily migrate to and adopt Aperture 3 with a zero learning curve.

“Faces” uses the technology of face-detection and recognition; and users can now index their photos by the people in the photos, to create a great album. The feature allows users to view faces across the entire photo collection, as well as to restrict the view to specific selected projects. Faces that have been detected but haven’t been tagged / named too appear separately.

“Places” uses the technology of geocode GPS to tag photos location-wise. Locations can be assigned by dragging and dropping the photos on the underlying map. At the same time, location information from GPS-enabled cameras, tracking devices etc can be captured by Aperture 3.

The “Brushes” feature enables users to professionally touch their photos by painting the effects onto the image.

Read more about the latest software gizmo released by Apple for photo editing, here.

Broadcom Launches BCM96519 For Carrier Transport Network

A new multi-line digital subscriber line (DSL) terminal solution has been launched by Broadcom. The Irvine, California-headquartered company has announced the availability of BCM96519 to customers in the Ethernet-based wireless and wired backhauling application domain. Compared to copper-based transport and backhaul systems, the new solution is expected to increase the throughput of Ethernet connectivity over copper by almost 10-fold, touching speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

With mobile services now moving towards high throughput-demand apps such as mobile TV, live video sharing and high-resolution 3D gaming, a high-tech backend solution was needed that can provide multi-megabit per second (Mbps) backhauling links that can support 3G and 4G base stations (also called Node Bs or BTSs or Base transceiver stations).

The BCM96519 solution has the capability to feed IP service routers and remote DSL access concentrators at a high data rate and with low complexity. This enables this solution to complement the existing product portfolios of vendors. The BCM96519 is compatible with co-located ADSL and VDSL2 loops, and does a better job, according to a company press release, than legacy E1/T1 and G.SHDSL technologies.

Read more about the latest launch of a new solution that boosts connectivity throughput, here.

A New ATI Firepro Graphics Driver From AMD

A new version of the ATI Firepro graphics driver, version 8.702, has been offered for download by Sunnyvale, California-headquartered AMD Inc. This download is available here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx.

Here are some apps where the new version has been tested:

- Version 8.702 has been found to have more than 25% better performance for users such as those operating in Dassault Systems CATIA, Autodesk 3DS Max and PTC Pro/Engineer environments.
- This version has enabled rendering of images with 10-bit per component color for Adobe Photoshop CS4 users. An enhanced end-to-end 10-bit color workflow has become possible. (This requires 10-bit monitor for true 10-bit color display.)
- In line with the surge in 3D technology, blue-line stereo for synchronizing 3D glasses has been supported in the new version. Previously, stereoscopic displays did not have this level of support. Blue-line stereo support is available on all the latest versions of Windows OS.
- The new version now enables DisplayPort audio, with support for 5.1 Dolby Digital and 5.1 DTS surround sound. 8-channel and 2-channel uncompressed audio is now supported on ATI Firepro V3750, V5700 and V7750.

Read more about a faster and more efficient driver download from AMD, here.

Next Page »