Intel Capital announced seven new investments Tuesday, including a storage systems company for Apple users and a cloud computing company.
"Innovation does not stop during economic slowdowns," Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement. "New technologies are the drivers of growth that help lead economies back to prosperity."
Investments as spelled out by Intel:
- Active Storage (Los Angeles) provides a media storage platform for Apple-based infrastructures. The company's hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) solutions are aimed toward the business and creative industries, particularly video post-production, broadcast, publishing, education and science. The company intends to focus this round of funding on R&D and sales and marketing.
- Joyent (Sausalito, Calif.) provides cloud computing infrastructure and services to help customers develop, deploy and manage Web applications and sites, and to improve data center performance. Joyent's cloud computing technologies offer better performance, utilization rates, savings and security. Joyent will use the funding to accelerate its product development and for increased global expansion.
- Crucialtec (Cheon-Ahn City, Korea) is a manufacturer of specialized input devices that utilize optical technology for mobile phones, smart phones, and IPTV (Internet Protocol television) remote controllers. Crucialtec's Optical Trackball enables users to enjoy the full internet experience with mobile products as they do with a PC. Intel Capital's investment will help with the development of a new generation of mobile solutions for the global market by providing Crucialtec with additional working capital.
- Gudeng Precision Industrial (Taipei, Taiwan) is a semiconductor front-end equipment manufacturer that helps customers enhance product yield and reduce production costs. Presently, Gudeng Precision is the world's leading photomask and wafer handling total solution provider, and the company's products are accepted and certificated by worldwide tier-one customers. Gudeng Precision will use the funding to expand business in China and enhance working capital.
- V-Cube (Tokyo) develops and markets Web-based videoconferencing systems. Its flagship "nice to meet you" service enables one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many interactive real-time communications and on-demand services over the Internet. Currently, V-cube is the largest service provider in Japan for Web-delivered visual communications. The investment will be used to further optimize the service for access from mobile Internet devices and Netbooks and to stream high-quality video over WiMAX wireless broadband networks.
- NeuString (Dubai, UAE) delivers predictive analytics software and consulting services to mobile network operators, helping companies to achieve greater financial performance. The NeuString Optiprizer software allows operators to optimize pricing, reduce leakage and get real-time reporting on operational metrics. The investment from Intel Capital will be used for sales and marketing build-out and new product development.
- Phoenix New Media (Beijing) provides dedicated and comprehensive portals to well-educated Chinese audiences of over 100 million. The portals, which are available on internet and mobile platforms, provide news and information generated from in-depth interviews, commentary columns, and social networks. The key features offered by Phoenix New Media help address Chinese netizens' diverse needs on information, expression, interaction and entertainment.
In addition, Onkyo, a Japanese company announced Monday that its board of directors has approved the issuance to Intel Capital of a bond having a face value of approximately $6.6 million, convertible into common shares of Onkyo at Intel Capital's option and a warrant to purchase common shares of Onkyo, Intel said. The convertible bond and the warrant would be issued to Intel Capital in December, subject to compliance with securities procedures and satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
The new deals total approximately $25 million, Intel said.
Intel will target solid-state drives for server computers in a tie up with Hitachi that was announced Monday night.
Intel solid state drive
(Credit: Intel)Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) said they will "jointly develop and deliver" Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations, and storage systems.
While Hitachi is a large supplier of hard disk drives, Intel manufactures and sells consumer and enterprise-class solid-state drives (and the flash memory chips inside the drives). The enterprise-class X25-E Extreme SSDs that Intel offers now are based on Serial ATA (SATA) technology. As are its consumer-class drives.
Solid-state drives are generally faster than hard-disk drives, particularly at reading data.
"The combination of a leading Enterprise drive supplier with a NAND technology and manufacturing leader will produce world-class solutions in terms of reliability, performance and system compatibility," the companies said in a statement.
The agreement is exclusive to the two companies with the first Serial Attached SCSI and Fibre Channel products expected to be available in early 2010. Both Serial Attached SCSI and Fibre Channel are interfaces typically used in servers.
The companies said the SSDs will not replace hard disk drives but complement them. "The new generation of solid-state drive technology complements existing enterprise-class hard disk drives and is intended for use in storage applications that require extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) performance and power efficiency," according to the two companies.
Hitachi GST said it will continue to provide its customers with both "traditional" hard-disk drives in addition to the SSDs.
The new SSDs will be "branded and exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST" and use Intel NAND flash memory and SSD technology.
Hitachi said it will use its expertise in drive firmware, reliability, qualification and system integration in combination with Intel's technology and manufacturing capabilities.
25GB in 70 seconds. That's the torrid transfer rate consumers can expect with devices based on the USB 3.0 specification, which debuted Monday.
USB 3.0 SuperSpeed logo as shown at WinHEC 2008.
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)As reported previously, the USB Promoter Group finalized the "SuperSpeed" USB 3.0 specification today and is doing a "comprehensive review" of the technology at a conference in San Jose, Calif.
Intel, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, and NEC are the leading players in the group.
Among the initial devices, external solid-state (flash) drives and hard drives are expected to be popular. "The first SuperSpeed USB devices will likely include data storage devices such as flash (solid-state drives), external hard drives, digital music players, and digitial cameras," the group said.
Products aren't coming until 2010, however. "It is anticipated that initial SuperSpeed USB discrete controllers will appear in the second half of 2009 and consumer products will appear in 2010," according to the group.
"The USB 3.0 Promoter Group is now accepting adopters of the USB 3.0 specification, which has been finalized at the 1.0 level," the group added.
As its name (SuperSpeed) implies, USB 3.0 is all about speed. About 10 times more speed, to be exact, than the 2.0 specification.
... Read moreLOS ANGELES--At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here, Microsoft talked about the future of USB 3.0 and how delays have hampered rollout of the specification.
Microsoft's talk Thursday was predicated on the expected finalization of the specification later this month. On Wednesday, Jeff Ravencraft of Intel said that he expects the final specification to be announced in San Jose, Calif., on November 17. Ravencraft is also the chairman and president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) industry trade association.
Microsoft is wrestling with when and how to implement USB 3.0
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)Microsoft expressed caution about USB 3.0--which is expected to offer 10 times the performance of USB 2.0--because finalization has taken so long. "Because the current USB 3.0 spec is currently not signed off, we're challenged and we won't have support for USB 3.0 in Windows 7 at RTM (release to manufacturing)," Lars Giusti of Microsoft said in a WinHEC session here titled "USB Technology Update and Windows Strategy."
"Our goal is to have the USB 3.0 specs signed off by the promoter's group sometime later this month. Hopefully," he said.
Delays have held USB 3.0 back, Giusti said. "That makes it challenging for several reasons. Since the spec isn't signed off we don't see any USB 3.0 hardware in the market or even prototypes available yet. With those two disadvantages we cannot develop, create, and design support yet for USB 3.0. But we are staffing up. We are making plans," he said.
He continued. "If you look at the USB 3.0 industry timelines and checkpoints, it really has been a very long, difficult and challenging three-year effort."
Giusti then made some predictions about the adoption of USB 3.0. "In 2009, the signed-off spec will be handed over to the implementers and those adopters that plan to productize USB 3.0," he said. "Our prediction tells us that in 2010 finally we'll see broad-scale product deployment of host controllers, devices, and systems that are USB 3.0 and SuperSpeed capable."
Currently, Microsoft is trying to figure out which operating systems will be USB 3.0-capable. "The Microsoft USB core team is currently evaluating which operating systems we should support USB 3.0 on. It's a difficult decision and a difficult choice 'cause there's all these moving parts," he said.
"Our early indications tell us that most partners think that we should support USB 3.0 on at least Windows Vista."
Performance comparison: transfer of 25GB HD movie (Source: Microsoft/WinHEC 2008):
- USB 1.0: 9.3 hours
- USB 2.0: 13.9 minutes
- USB 3.0: 70 seconds
2008 is the year of the solid state drive. That's what Sun Microsystems believes as reliability finally measures up to the rigorous requirements of server storage and the cost per gigabyte plunges.
On Wednesday, Sun announced that it is preparing to introduce solid-state drive (SSD) technology that "will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers." Sun said it is already shipping Solaris ZFS software "optimized" for SSDs.
Though Sun is not specifying suppliers, Intel confirms that it has collaborated with Sun on SSD development for servers. Intel is slated to bring out high-capacity SSDs in the second half of the year.
Sun follows storage vendor EMC, which announced integration of solid-state drives into its product portfolio in January.
Solid-state drives give "customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning (hard disk drive) disk offerings," according to a prepared statement by Sun.
Sun StorageTek server array
(Credit: Sun Microsystems)Solid-state drive suppliers Intel and Samsung have both discussed the huge potential for servers. Samsung said previously that companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS, or input/output operations per second. Hard disk drives typically achieve 120 to 150 IOPS, while SSDs are in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 30,000 IOPS, according to Samsung.
Intel also sees SSDs playing a role in the server market as a "performance accelerator." The chipmaker cited a streaming video example where 10 SSDs could essentially handle the same workload as 62 high-performance hard disk drives.
In addition to performance benefits, SSDs "save on energy costs compared to traditional Fibre Channel hard drives (and) decrease server and storage sprawl in already maxed-out data centers," Sun said. "SSDs consume around one-fifth of the power of both memory...and disk drives, have no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use."
Sun sees SSDs as a watershed technology. "Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency," said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Sun Systems Group.
Intel is targeting SSDs for consumer and server storage
(Credit: Intel)Plunging cost is another factor. "Enterprise-class Fibre Channel hard disk drives have only exhibited a 40 percent year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the Flash SSD price per gigabyte continues to fall between 50 to 70 percent annually," Sun said.
The Mountain View, Calif., company is expected to deliver Flash-based products to market in the second half of 2008. Sun did not cite price or capacities. Today, typical large-capacity enterprise SSD capacities start at 32GB but can range up to 512GB.
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