DDRdrive uses PCIe and DDR RAM to increase speed of mainstream solid state disks

They need to come out with this now! Booting a computer from windows in 10 seconds! Yes please! Heres a video of Gigabyte's I-ram in action:

TomsHardware reports from the CES 2007 show:

If you are wondering about the other type of SSDs, powered by SDRAMs, we have been waiting for some products, especially the DDRdrive, but haven't heard anything about a public display yet. Of course, the recent speed hype in the performance memory segment will continue - with Patriot showing 1302 MHz DDR2 modules. Also, Rambus will promote its XDR memory modules by having a Playstation 3 console ready for action at its booth.

From Tomshardware original article:

Gigabyte's i-Ram and HyperOs Systems' HyperDrive III solid state disk recently gave us a first impression that solid state storage is making its way into the mainstream: And there is more to come in the near future: DDRdrive will soon release a PCI Express device that uses external power to ensure the memory will not lose its stored data.

Video: Remote Controlled airplane with on board camera

Bezos unleashes space rocket prototype

From Cnet:

After years of secrecy surrounding his space exploration venture (Blue Origin), Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is pumping up his aspirations with a first-generation suborbital space rocket and an open plea to hire aerospace engineers.

Videos:

Here is a video of the launch. Maximum altitude on this first development flight was about 285 feet.

This on-board video shows a landing gear and a thruster. You can see small movements of the thruster as it vectors to control the vehicle

SanDisk Unveils 32GB Drop-In Replacement Solid State Drive for Notebooks

From Gizmodo and Cnet:

SanDisk is looking to replace that spinning, power-hungry hard drive in your laptop with a 1.8-inch solid state 32GB flash drive. The company says its cool-running SSD Ultra ATA 5000 1.8" drive is a drop-in replacement for those old-fashioned mechanical hard disks. It packs the performance, too, with a 62MB-per-second read speed while using less than half the battery power of conventional discs.

Its most impressive spec is its random read rate of 7300 inputs and outputs per second, 100 times faster than most hard disks, letting the thing boot Microsoft Windows Vista in 35 seconds. That's about 28 seconds faster than a garden-variety hard disk can do. It's much smaller than the 2.5-inch 32GB flash drive Samsung introduced last March, but it's still rather pricey, adding around $600 to a laptop in which it resides. Going out to equipment manufacturers now, the company says we'll be seeing notebooks with this drive inside by the middle of this year.

Video: First video footage of Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout helicopter UAV landing

Video footage of the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Navy Fire Scout unmanned helicopter on its maiden flight surfaced this week.

The US Navy's vertical take-off and landing tactical unmanned air vehicle (formerly the RQ-8A) made its first flight at the Webster Field annex of Patuxent River Naval air station, in St. Inigoes, Maryland.

Navy blog site Naval Open Source Intelligence has obtained a copy of the previously unavailable Northrop Grumman video sequence and posted it on the file sharing site YouTube.

During flight test, three scenarios were tested including a landing on a ship. Other software tests included the command for launch abort.

Samsung readies flash memory for 32 GB solid state disk

From Tomshardware:
Seoul (Korea) - Samsung said that it has begun sampling of 50 nm NAND flash memory chips that are required to build the long announced 32 GB 2.5 GB solid state disk (SSD). The flash drive is expected to replace traditional hard drives in higher end notebooks and offer significant advantages in data transfer rates as well as power consumption.

The new memory chips bump the density of the previous NAND flash generation from 8 Gb(it) to 16 Gb. In a 16 x 16 Gb configuration, the device will reach the originally promised capacity of 32 GB. Previously promised prototypes of the 2.5" SSD used 4 Gb and 8 Gb chips, which resulted in capacities of 8 GB and 16 GB, respectively.

The company first announced plans to ship a SSD in March 2006 and since then has provided very few updates on the likely availability of the drive - other than the device will be introduced around the launch date of Windows Vista. Samsung recently received the Windows Hardware Qualification Lab (WHQL) for the SSD; mass production of the 16 Gb chips is planned to ramp in the current quarter.

The manufacturer claims that its upcoming 1.8" and 2.5" SSDs will reach data read speeds of 57 MB/s and a data write speed of 32 MB/s, which would be more than double the performance levels of a typical 1.8" hard disk drive. In a recent test conducted by Tom's Hardware Guide, a 32 GB Samsung SSD posted impressive performance numbers, but did not quite match the firm's claims: Read speed came in at about 50 MB/s and write speeds averaged 29 MB/s.

The test also found that the SSD consumed only 0.9 watts under full load - less than half what a traditional notebook drive consumes. In idle mode, the drive asked for only 0.05 watts, which is only 10 - 16% the power consumption of an idle hard drive. Samsung claims that the power characteristics can extend the battery running time of a SSD-based notebook by up to 30 minutes when compared to a system with a common hard drive.

Features of Windows Vista, including system acceleration that leverages excess capacity in SDRAM and Flash memory devices, will allow chip manufacturers such as Samsung to play a much more important role in the storage market than in the past. For example, Samsung said that it will be offering a 2.5" 4 GB SSD that will work alongside a hard drive and support Vista's "Ready Boost" feature. 4 GB, according to Samsung, are enough to process about 4000 requests per second - requests that typically would be sent and served by the hard drive.

The Korean semiconductor company is also a driving force in developing a market for hybrid hard drives - hard drives that combine NAND flash memory with traditional hard drive technology. Earlier last year, Samsung told TG Daily that hybrid hard drives would be shipping "in large quantities" in January 2007. Specifications of the devices have not been revealed yet, but prototypes used NAND flash with capacities of 128 KB and 256 KB. Samsung promises that this will be enough to enable notebooks to run up to 30 minutes longer and boot up to 50% faster than comparable devices with a common hard drive.

First post of 2007: Tech Predictions from "Wired"

Google Stock Hits $1,000 per Share

Internet Traffic Doubles ...
to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.

BitTorrent on TiVo
Speaking of, digital video recorders get BitTorrent baked in, bringing internet video to the living room.

Spam Doubles
No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work.

Second Life Ends a Life
Skullduggery in Second Life -- probably digital adultery -- ends in a real-life murder.

Year o' the Laptop
Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks.

Print to Web
A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.

Semel Says 'Sayonara'
Yahoo CEO Terry Semel discovers he wants to spend more time with his family.

Apple Goes Apple
The entire Beatles catalog is licensed exclusively to iTunes for a year.

HD-DVD Wins
HD-DVD is the clear winner over Blu-ray in the DVD format wars. Oh yeah, and the PS3 is a bust.

Implantable Contact Lenses
Synthetic corneas will be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, allowing the shortsighted to have artificial contact lenses transplanted right into their eyes. No more popping out!

Digg Becomes the New Friendster
Digg holds out for a big payday but ends up like Friendster (i.e., no friends).

No More Dads
Artificial gametes made from female eggs are sold over the internet, making fathers biologically irrelevant.

PaedoSpace
Sex offenders start their own social networking service. It's popular on Capitol Hill.

Life on Mars
One of the Mars rovers lasts another year on the red planet (making it four years total). The other plunges into a crater.

Greenland Becomes Green
As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.

Raelians Need Not Apply
A human embryo is cloned for real.

First AT&T, Then Google
A whistle-blower reveals that the National Security Agency has been wiretapping Google for some time.

Google Goes G-Man
Google gives up search queries to the feds. Likely scenario: The FBI asks who's been searching for terms like "dirty bomb" and Google hands over all the IP addresses.

Don't Don't Be Evil
Google drops "Don't be evil" as its corporate mantra. Evil has its justifications, but no one likes a hypocrite.

DNA Database for Athletes
To stamp out doping, the Olympic Committee orders all athletes to submit DNA samples to a global database, which matches blood found in doping forensics to cheats. Forensics include needles, tubes, bags of blood and skin cells on stacks of 100-euro notes seized at doping clinics.

Online Sitcom Picked Up by Network
Encouraged by the news, the internet becomes home to 5,000 clones of Friends, shot by friends using their friends but unwatched even by their friends.

They're Watching You
Congress passes a law requiring internet service providers to keep logs of all web traffic and e-mail for three years.

NYT Goes Free
The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it's more lucrative to be the internet's paper of record than charging readers for individual stories. Thankfully, Thomas Friedman's clichés and mixed metaphors remain behind the pay firewall for at least two weeks.

MySpace Spaces Out
MySpace splinters as teens head for niche sites. New services that control profiles across multiple social networking sites begin to take off.