Kingston Digital Europe Ltd, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the launch of the Kingston DataTraveler 109. The Kingston DataTraveler 109 is a slim, stylish USB Flash drive available in seven fun colours, and comes with urDrive, a free preloaded application that helps organise your files, photos, videos music and more.

“Kingston’s DataTraveler 109 is a fashionable USB Flash drive that makes it fun to connect and share photos, music, videos and more with friends and family,” said Krystian Jaroszynski, product marketing manager Flash, Kingston Technology. “Most USB Flash drives offer passive storage, which simply allows users to store and retrieve their data. urDrive offers engaged, active storage that allows users to easily access and organise files, view photos and even play music, all on the USB drive.”

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LSI Corporation today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce, Inc., the leading provider of flash storage processors for enterprise and client flash solutions and solid state drives (SSDs). Under the agreement, LSI will pay approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees.

SandForce’s award-winning products include flash storage processors at the heart of PCIe flash adapters and SSDs. Flash storage processors provide the intelligence required to deliver the performance and low-latency benefits of flash storage in enterprise and client applications. With market-proven, differentiated DuraClass™ technology, SandForce flash storage processors improve the reliability, endurance and power efficiency of flash-based storage solutions.

The acquisition greatly enhances LSI's competitive position in the fast-growing server and storage PCIe flash adapter market, where the WarpDrive™ family of products from LSI already uses SandForce flash storage processors. The complementary combination of LSI’s custom capability and SandForce’s standard product offering propels LSI into an industry-leading position in the rapidly growing, high-volume flash storage processor market space for ultrabook, notebook and enterprise SSD and flash solutions.

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ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash application products, is expected to introduce its first micro SDHC UHS-I memory card in early November, aiming at the growing market of consumers who use smartphones and tablet PCs to enjoy real-time audio and video. The company brings a strong professional NAND Flash research and development team to the task of upgrading audio and video applications for smart mobile phones and tablet computers, and MicroSDHC UHS-I memory cards have the highest competitive advantage as regards cost effectiveness.

With the spectacularly increasing computing power of smart phones and tablet computers, the ability to simultaneously enjoy multiple applications such as web-browsing, 3D gaming and full-HD video recording/play-back requires unprecedented high IOPS performance on removable memory cards. Skip-free 1080p resolution video recording and fast application installing and launch are heavily affected by fast access speed of uSD cards. To address these needs, latest smart phones have already started supporting SD 3.0 UHS-I interface, which is four times the speed of SD 2.0 interface.

In view of this, ADATA will be introducing its first microSDHC UHS-I memory card, with read speeds of up to 20MB/second. The company is stressing random write (IOPS) speeds up to 50, with random read speed (IOPS) up to 500. This represents more than a tenfold improvement in small random file operation performance compared to the current uSD cards.

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CDRLabs kicks off the week with a review of Plextor's new 256GB M2P series SSD, the PX-256M2P. Powered by Plextor's True Speed technology, this limited-edition SSD leverages high quality components like Marvell's server-grade 88SS9174 controller chip and Toshiba's 32nm Toggle NAND flash to deliver up to 500MB/s read and 440MB/s write transfer rates. The PX-256M2P also features exclusive firmware with Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling, and Bad Block Management to maintain original performance levels, even after intensive use and long periods of operation.