12/05, 6:00pm
Two-port card supports single disk and RAID
HighPoint Technologies is now shipping a USB 3.0 card designed specifically for Mac Pros and OS X 10.7 Lion, the RocketU Dual USB 3 for Mac. The two-port PCI-E 2.0 card supports both single disk and RAID configurations (0, 1 and JBOD) and is optimized for USB 3 hard drives and SSDs. The card features dual type-A ports, is fully backward-compatible with USB 1.1 and USB 2 devices and can be installed into any free PCI-E slot.
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11/30, 4:40pm
PCI Express 4.0 to hit 16GTps speeds, due 2016
The PCI Special Interest Group is working on the PCI Express 4.0 standard, which would double the maximum transfer rates to 16 gigatransfers per second. PCIe 4.0 would be the last standard based on copper, with a move to optical board superseding it. Detailed requirements are still up in the air, but the speed targets are thought to need new chips to properly feed boards longer than 10-12 inches.
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07/15, 1:25am
Sonnet describes new gear at show, Sept. 8-13
Sonnet Technologies is announcing plans to preview a set of upcoming Thunderbolt-based storage products at IBC2011. The broadcast media tradeshow is in Amsterdam, September 8-13. On display, located at Sonnet's stand 7.G03, will be the Fusion D800TBR5 8-drive RAID 5 storage unit. Also at the show will be the Echo Express PCIe 2.0 Expansion Chassis, which allows users to plug in high-performance PCI Express 2.0 adapter cards to any Mac with a Thunderbolt port.
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11/11, 9:35pm
Up to 10X throughput improvement
Apricorn today debuted its SSD-based Mac Array, a turnkey virtual memory expansion kit that uses a single PCIe X4 slot and a total of 512GB of SATA SSD drives to dramatically outscore traditional 7200rpm SATA disk drives, and even more remarkable increases in video or graphic rendering times. The array takes moments to install and is preconfigured for Mac and RAID 0 (striping), including a custom SATA PCIe host card on board.
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11/30, 1:45pm
PCIe-SATA II host adapter
NitroAV.com on Friday released NitroAV SATAStar Plus, a new host adapter for Macs that delivers 3Gb/sec SATA II performance. The company says the card is "the industry’s first" native PCIe chipset based 4-Port external host adapter and that it is specifically designed for the ultra fast PCIe bus on Apple's high-end MacPro desktops and PowerMac G5 PCIe-based desktop computers (as well as compatible Windows and Linux systems). The 4-Port PCIe provides maximum bandwidth for data throughput with its native PCIe host connection. Leveraging the Silicon Image 3132 chipset, it is compatible with 4x, 8x and 16x PCIe slots.
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