Kingston continues the strive for balance between budget, performance and accessibility with both new and classic products

Kingston is still the crowned industry leader of memory components in the world, spanning across portfolios of both volatile and non-volatile products. How did they manage to stay on top for so many years? The answer is simple: Create products based on what customers need by considering factors that are practical and relevant to the problem at hand. As such, we’ll be taking a look at some of the recent items introduced by them.

Launched during the Q2 of this year in Malaysia, the NV1 PCIe NVMe SSD is the latest product substantial storage solution sitting within the comfort zone of even the most budget spenders in the market due to its focus on providing the most bang-for-the-buck value on a dollar per GB storage scale. With access speeds of 2.1GB/s reads and 1.7GB/s writes that start from RM269, it has been shipped under high demands from users around the world, particularly those looking for flash-based backup storage with the M.2 2280 form factor.

For those who can shell out a bit more funds, the KC2500 PCIe NVMe SSD delivers even more performance by manufacturing the product with 96 layers of 3D TLC NAND flash governed by a Silicon Motion controller for a top-class 3.5GB/s reads and 2.9GB/s writes access speed under the PCIe Gen3x4 protocol. Systems that constantly move large files will notice almost no performance throttle thanks to the onboard DRAM cache that sustains the immense performance and overall endurance. Workflow improvements in workstations, media servers, and high-performance computing environment without the need to approach industry-leading hardware is where the KC2500 shines the most.

Sticking to the topic of workstations, the Kingston Workflow Station and Readers is the brand’s answer to the longing problems of most content creators out there: Insufficient ports for the sheer number of external devices needed to be connected to their PC and laptop. Starting off with the Workflow Station Dock, it is fitted with 4 USB-C 3.2 docks that a wide range of Readers standards of USB miniHub (USB-A + USB-C), SD, and microSD to quickly move files from all 4 storage at once at blazing fast speed. As the Readers are fully modular and be removed with ease, content creators will only need to bring around the Station Dock and the required Readers to any remote location and work onsite instantly.

Pricing and Availability

All of the products from Kingston are readily available for purchase in Malaysia at the following RRP.

• Kingston NV1 PCIe NVMe SSD: Starts from RM269 (500GB)
• Kingston KC2500 PCIe NVMe SSD: Starts from RM249 (250GB)
• Kingston Workflow Station and Readers: RM403 (Dock), RM105 (SD / microSD Reader)

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NVIDIA’s Omniverse opens new doors in key industries and workflows

 Computex, the world’s largest tech conference, kicked off on June 1 with talks from industry leaders. NVIDIA Omniverse General Manager Richard Kerris delivered his speech on the topic “The Metaverse Begins: NVIDIA Omniverse and a Future of Shared Worlds.” Read his key insights below.

3D workflows are essential for every industry

Early this year, NVIDIA  revealed the company’s plans on creating a “metaverse”, artificially created environments where companies can simulate the future before acting on it. According to Kerris, the amount of digital space to be used by the metaverse would recreate New York City and Shanghai, with “digital twins” of “every single factory and every single building”. By visualizing it in a synthetic world first, companies would get to analyze decisions before actually acting on it in the physical world.

NVIDIA is already using its Omniverse 3D modeling software to remake factories and machinery in a virtual world. It continues to be essential across all sorts of industries, including architecture, automotive, science, healthcare, and robotics, among others.

Challenges brought about by 3D workflows

Because 3D design is an extremely complex matter, it is often faced with a number of challenges. Design teams are often plagued with incompatible tools, tedious import-export processes, mistakes, and time lost. Projects are also getting bigger as demands for computer-heavy technologies increase. In addition, the remote work setup brought about by the pandemic has made 3D collaboration exponentially harder. 

Omniverse: A response to challenges

These challenges are where Omniverse comes in. Based on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description, Omniverse was created to find a way to communicate all the different types of things that are going on in a 3D world across different use cases. 

NVIDIA’s Omniverse offers a common way to communicate all the things that you’re doing on the 3D platform. Its five main components—Nucleus, Connect, Kit, Simulation and RTX Renderer—and third-party digital content creation tools enable large teams in different departments to work on the same thing. 

Nvidia is not the only company building applications on the Omniverse platform. Third-party companies, such as Bentley, Autodesk, Adobe, Blender, and many more are connecting their products to the Omniverse and are now starting to build their digital twin on the platform. 

An Omniverse for everyone

Anyone working using his or her own workflow can download NVIDIA’s open beta Omniverse. Meanwhile, many major companies use Omniverse Enterprise with enterprise support, installation, and support for NVIDIA’s certified EGX systems.Whether you’re an individual creator or a member of a team in a large enterprise, NVIDIA has an Omniverse for you and invites you to download Omniverse beta and experience it for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkcl34FWeJA

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Accelerating Ubiquitous Intelligence: Arm discusses requirements of complex AI and ML workloads

 Rene Haas, President of Arm’s IP Products Group (IPG), addressed the topic of “Accelerating Ubiquitous Intelligence” in his keynote at the 2021 COMPUTEX Forum—the annual Taipei computing conference. He starts off the topic with Arm’s involvement in supplying the world with solutions based on the company’s design and in the near future, all digitally shared data will be securely processed, transmitted, and stored from the start until the finish line. Aside from recapping the Armv9’s major architecture and features from the 1st keynote, he also shared the new era of computing is approaching where AI and ML will be the key to every compute environment enabled by specialized processing in which Armv9 is designed to do so from the beginning where he used the flagship Cortex-X2 as an example that brings high CPU and GPU performance while raising the longevity of battery life, a next-generation improvement if you will.

Contributing to specialized processing also requires the software part to be optimized, dynamic, and richer than before. Therefore, Haas introduced the Total Compute solutions that span across tools, IPs, and applications that help partners to develop mature products from the more consumer TV, smartphones, and laptops down to industry use HPC, cloud computing, etc. He also elaborated on the recent announcement of NVIDIA’s Grace CPU that is fully dedicated to AI and ML usage alongside several HPC developer kits.

Lastly, Haas rounded up everything in a simple message: No devices should be left behind, even the smaller and cost-sensitive components can be made smarter and more capable to serve all data at the closest proximity and Armv9 is the key to unlocking the limitless potential of AI and ML.

Interested in finding out all the technical details? Check out the full keynote below.

https://youtu.be/2Smn6MKJCfE

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Samsung Introduces Its First ZNS SSD With Maximized User Capacity and Enhanced Lifespan

Samsung today unveiled its new enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) featuring Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology — the PM1731a. Leveraging ZNS, the SSD will maximize available user capacity and offer an extended lifespan in storage server, data center and cloud environments.

“Samsung’s ZNS SSD reflects our commitment to introducing differentiated storage solutions that can substantially enhance the reliability and lifetime of server SSDs,” said Sangyeun Cho, senior vice president of the Memory Software Development Team at Samsung Electronics. “We plan to leverage quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology in our next-generation ZNS drives to enable higher thresholds for storage performance and capacity in the enterprise systems of tomorrow.”

ZNS allows data to be grouped based on their usage and access frequency, and stored sequentially in independent zones within an SSD. Without the need to move and rearrange data, ZNS SSDs can significantly reduce the number of write operations, lowering the drive’s write amplification factor (WAF) — the amount of actual writes performed by the drive compared to writes initially instructed by the host system. The closer the WAF is to one, the more efficient the SSD and the longer it will last.

Based on ZNS, the new Samsung SSD can achieve a WAF close to one, a major improvement over typical server SSD values between three and four. This will make the drive last up to four times longer than conventional NVMe SSDs, making it a greener, more sustainable solution for server infrastructures. ZNS also allows users to take advantage of the SSD’s full capacity by eliminating the need for overprovisioning, which would have required reserving some storage space for background tasks. These improvements will enable enterprise customers to handle big data and artificial intelligence applications with much greater efficiency.

Built upon Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND, the 2.5-inch PM1731a will come in two terabyte (TB) and four TB models. The SSD will feature dual ports, ensuring the drive is fully accessible for continuous operations and minimizing downtime. This is essential for enterprises and public cloud companies who run mission-critical, data-intensive applications, and cannot afford any pause in the continuity of their businesses.

Samsung has been actively engaging in several open-source projects to help expand the ZNS ecosystem. The company will make its ZNS technology available to xNVMe, which provides software libraries and tools to improve the performance of NVMe devices. The company is also participating in the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) community created by Intel, enabling SPDK users to implement ZNS more easily.

Samsung plans to mass-produce ZNS SSDs in the second half of the year and continue working with global enterprise storage companies to optimize its ZNS drives across various customer environments.

 

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Kingston Technology New Gaming Brand: Kingston FURY

Kingston today announced the name of its new high-performance, enthusiast and gaming brand: Kingston FURY. Building on the incredible success of the HyperX memory products, Kingston has rebranded its DRAM, flash and SSD gaming line into Kingston FURY, investing resources and knowledge from its core business to create the next generation of performance products.

Kingston FURY continues the evolution of leading-edge, high-performance, enthusiast and gaming memory solutions from the largest independent memory manufacturer in the world, backed by three decades of Kingston engineering, testing, manufacturing and customer service expertise. The company’s leadership position in the DRAM industry demonstrates it has the passion, commitment and resources to make Kingston FURY the leading high-performance, enthusiast and gaming memory solution in the market.

The Kingston engineering expertise which is behind the numerous overclocking records and awards that the HyperX memory line has gathered since 2002 continues into the new era of high-performance DRAM and flash solutions. Behind the scenes, it has always been Kingston: Kingston engineering, Kingston testing, Kingston manufacturing and world-renowned Kingston customer service.

“We are extremely proud to debut the new Kingston FURY brand representing the highest-performing memory modules for PC enthusiasts and gamers,” said Kingston. “Kingston’s core strength and global leadership as a manufacturer of quality DRAM and flash solutions brings resources and enthusiasm to the brand and firmly demonstrates our dedication to both performance and reliability.”

Kingston will soon unveil its full line of Kingston FURY DDR4 and DDR3 offerings, and in Q4 will launch highly-anticipated DDR5 memory modules currently undergoing compatibility and qualification testing with motherboard vendors. 

Kingston FURY will consist of the following product categories: 

• Kingston FURY Renegade: High-performance speeds and low latencies for insane performance. Top-of-the-line performance leader (in RGB and non-RGB) with DDR4 frequencies up to 5333MHz.

• Kingston FURY Beast: Kingston’s popular enthusiast and gaming memory is the perfect high-performance, cost-effective upgrade (in DDR3 and DDR4 RGB and non-RGB), with speeds up to 3733MHz. 

• Kingston FURY Impact: Powerful SO-DIMM performance boost for laptops, NUCs and other small form-factor PCs (in DDR3 and DDR4) with speeds up to 3200MHz. 

The name leverages the already popular FURY memory product category (established in 2014) and has earned the right to carry the torch, expanding the Kingston tradition of delivering high-performing and ultra-reliable DRAM in the market for PC enthusiasts and gamers. With Kingston’s commitment to gaming, the company will soon make global announcements of numerous esports teams joining the Kingston FURY team.

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