Science and technology news blog

Samsung on March 7 shipped what it called the “world’s first hybrid hard drive” to the commercial marketplace, but it will get an argument from Dynamic Network Factory, which started shipping its own hybrid storage hard drive on Feb. 1.

Hybrid hard disks combine a standard disk drive with solid state—usually NAND flash-based—random-access memory in a design that is energy efficient.

Samsung’s MH80 Series hybrid hard drive is offered in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities, said a spokesperson for the company, which is based in Seoul, Korea.

The MH80 hybrid hard drive is currently shipping to select OEM customers and will soon be available in retail and commercial outlets, the spokesperson said. Details on pricing and availability will be released soon, the spokesperson said.

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With Apple’s products garnering so much attention these days, the company’s biggest competitors have been busily designing new gadgets to steal some of that limelight. Microsoft ’s Zune didn’t turn out to be the iPod killer that some had predicted it would be, but Samsung is ready to launch a new smartphone that it hopes will turn out to be an iPhone killer.

On Thursday, Samsung announced a new addition to its Ultra portfolio, offering similar features to Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone, which is scheduled to launch in June through Cingular . Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700 will formally debut at the 3GSM telecommunications event held next week in Barcelona.

In a published statement, Geesung Choi, president of Samsung’s Telecommunications Network Business, said the Ultra Smart F700 is a good example of how mobile phones will evolve in the future. Indeed, the new model does reflect an emerging smartphone trend toward large touch-screen displays. But for those who still want access to phone functions through a more traditional keyboard, the F700 offers a slide-out Qwerty keypad as well.

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Samsung said that it has created the first LCD panel that can produce independent images on each side of a mobile LCD display. Samsung’s new double-sided LCD can show two entirely different pictures or sets of visual data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen. Other conventional double-sided LCDs can only show a reverse image of the same video data.

This new development will replace two display panels with one, thereby reducing overall thickness of mobile products by at least 1mm. 

The breakthrough LCD product makes use of Samsung’s new double-gate, thin-film transistor (TFT) architecture. TFT gates are electronic components that convert the necessary voltage at the pixel level, which controls the liquid crystal alignment needed to reproduce on-screen images. Samsung’s new double-sided LCD has two gates that operate each pixel instead of one, so the screen on the front can display different images than the one on the back. The double-sided display makes use of Samsung’s proprietary Amorphous Silicon Gate (ASG) technology, which accommodates the increased number of TFT gates without increasing the size of the driver integrated circuits. Driver-ICs typically increase in size when more TFT gates are used. 

The new Samsung mobile display requires only one backlight, while competitive double-screen LCDs require two. One side of the panel operates in a transmissive mode, while the other operates in a reflective mode. By using a unique reflective design that utilizes the light trapped in the opposing screen’s transmissive mode, the reflective mode does not solely rely on external light sources such as the sun. 

The double-sided, dual image LCD’s efficient use of light to display images in both transmissive and reflective modes promotes slimmer, more cost-effective products. 

The new double-sided LCD is 2.6mm thick and 2.22” wide, with QVGA (240×320 pixel) resolution, and has brightness values of 250 nits for the front and 100 nits for the rear display. It will be exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens in Las Vegas on January 8.

DailyTech reported yesterday that Samsung developed a new 50 nanometer 16Gb NAND flash memory chips that provide 100% faster read speeds and 150% faster write speeds. The announcement sparked a lot of interest from consumers looking for larger and faster offerings than Samsung’s current 32GB Flash SSD drive.

SanDisk today entered the SSD fray with a 32GB drive of its own. The 1.8” SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 drive uses patented TrueFFS flash management technology and has a 2 million hour MTBF. The drive has no moving parts, so it is completely silent and weighs less than traditional 1.8” mobile hard drives. The drive also consumes 0.4W of power when active, versus 1.0W for a traditional mobile hard drive.

When it comes to performance, the SanDisk SSD Ultra ATA 5000 offers sustained reads of 62MB/sec and can complete random reads at 7300 IOPS (512-byte file size). The drive can boot Windows Vista Enterprise on a notebook in 35 seconds and has an average access time of 0.12 ms.

“Once we begin shipping the 32GB SSD for notebook PCs, we expect to see its increasing adoption in the coming years as we continue to reduce the cost of flash memory.  When these SSD devices become more affordable, we expect that their superior features over rotating disk drives will create a new consumer category for our retail sales channels worldwide,” said SanDisk CEO Eli Harari.

SanDisk leveraged technology from its acquisition of M-Systems in developing its new SSD drive. SanDisk gained a wide portfolio of 1.8”, 2.5” and 3.5” SSD drives when it acquired M-Systems.

SanDisk’s new SSD Ultra ATA 5000 drive is currently available to OEMs and is expected to add $600 to the price of a new notebook computer in the first half of 2007. That figure is expected to drop as the year progresses.

Samsung has announced a better way to speed up MP3 players, smartphones, handheld computers, and gadgets of nearly every stripe. The South Korean firm, with more than $50 billion in revenue and 125,000 employees across the globe, has designed a 1 gigabit mobile DRAM chip that’s smaller and more powerful than any current model.

DRAM, short for Dynamic Random Access Memory, is also used in notebooks and desktops. But Samsung’s new chip is designed for a device that fits in the hand—a digital camera, video camera, iPaq, or any one of the mobile gadgets that crowd today’s pockets, bags, and belts.

Less Is More

Samsung’s chip has on-board features that determine its temperature, which in turn lets it reduce the amount of power it needs in stand-by mode. As a result, the chip draws 30% less power than current mobile DRAM models. For users, the lower power consumption translates into benefits like more music for MP3 players and longer talk-time for cell phones.

But just as important as the chip’s low power consumption is its size. To achieve a full gigabit of storage, other designs stack two 512 megabit chips together (one gigabit is 1024 kilobits, or two 512 megabit chips). In contrast, Samsung’s DRAM is “monolithic,” meaning it is composed of a single unit, and it’s actually 20 percent thinner than stacked models.

The new chip can also be stacked to achieve 1.5 gigabit or even 2 gigabit densities. It can also be combined with well-known forms of mobile memory, such as Flash technology.

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Opera Mobile, soon to be a ubiquitous feature on Samsung handsets, offers keypad shortcuts that users can customize, an autocomplete function for URLs, and the unique ability to open as many as four windows at once. But perhaps the best-known feature in Opera Mobile is Small Screen Rendering, in which a full-sized Web page is sliced up and pared down to fit in a phone’s tiny window.
 
Hot on the heels of a new partnership with Nintendo to offer the Opera Web browser for the Wii game console, Opera has announced plans to put its browser on Samsung phones.

For a browser that has a small footprint, Opera Mobile packs a lot of features, including two rendering modes (“Fit To Screen” and “Desktop Display”); small buttons and scrollbars that leave space for a Web site’s content; and a customizable homepage that has a built-in search bar plus a list of the user’s 10 favorite Web sites.

But that’s just the start. Opera Mobile offers keypad shortcuts that users can customize; an autocomplete function for URLs; smooth scrolling; and the unique ability to open as many as four windows at once, jumping between them in the same way that users of Opera’s desktop browser can switch between open tabs. Each window can have its own display settings, including custom zoom.

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Samsung Electronics announced that it has developed a prototype fusion memory, named OneDRAM, that it claims significantly increases the data processing speed between processors in mobile applications. The company said it expects to introduce the product in handsets by the second half of 2007.

OneDRAM is expected to be specified in the design of handsets, game consoles and in other digital applications, especially those that use 3-dimensional (3D) graphics, the company highlighted.

The 512Mbit 133MHz device incorporates a dual-port approach to sharply decrease data processing time between processors, Samsung said. Due to rapidly increasing demand for multimedia features in mobile applications, designers have been specifying the use of two separate processors a communication processor and a media processor. The new OneDRAM will channel data between the processors through a single chip eliminating the need to also specify DRAM and SRAM chips for buffer memory.

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Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it developed the world’s thinnest mobile LCD panel at 0.82 mm. The company also developed a new mobile technology called i-Lens for integrating panel assembly into a single, thinner module that is more shock-resistant and easier to read than conventional panels.

Samsung Electronics President Lee Ki-tae Tuesday took the wraps off a handset that doubles as a terminal for the high-speed mobile Internet platform, WiBro. Samsung predicted that the versatile model- the SPH-P9000, with the moniker Deluxe MITs- will provide fresh momentum to WiBro, which debuted here earlier this year.

“This is a true convergence device capable of voice and Internet,” Lee said in a press conference held on the sidelines of the Samsung Mobile WiMax Summit 2006 in Seoul.

“The SPH-P9000 will help the fledgling WiBro take off in time with the expansion of its service areas,” said Lee, who is in charge of Samsungs mobile phone division.

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Samsung Electronics has unveiled its first 70-inch full-HD LCD for consumer TVs at Flat Panel Display (FPD) International 2006, one of the largest international events dedicated to flat panel displays in Japan.

The 70-inch LCD panel, the company claims, is the first TV display that can reproduce full HD video images at 120Hz. The new model with a refresh rate of 120Hz, which is twice the refresh rate of most LCD panels available today, offers crystal clear video reproduction for sporting events and other fast-action programs.

Samsung is aiming at competing with the largest PDPs and projection TV models world-wide with the mass-production of these 70-inch LCD panels. Commercial production of these LCD panels will begin in early 2007. Currently, the largest full-HD LCD TV panel in mass production is 65 inches.

At the FPD International 2006, Samsung also unveiled 4.8-inch and 7.0-inch displays with WSVGA resolution for use in ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) devices and mini-PCs. WSVGA (1,600 pixels per row by 600 rows) happens to be the optimal resolution for Internet browsing today.

The 4.8-inch displays sport an increased aperture ratio through application of single crystal-like silicon manufacturing process technology that improves electron mobility and enables smaller TFT geometries.

Samsung announced its plan to demonstrate 4th Generation (4G) mobile technology at the annual Samsung 4G Forum in Jeju Island, Korea, for the first time in the world. Demonstration will take place at the specially designed bus in mobile circumstances reaching 100 Mbps data transmission as well as at the display area inside forum venue to show speeds of 1Gbps of data transmission.

The bus demonstration will give participants a first-hand experience of this latest technology. A demonstration bus will be moving at speeds of 60 km/h to show multi-cell Handover* with data speed of 100Mbps. A live broadcast of the Forum, VOD, and internet access will be shown simultaneously in a demonstration bus allowing delegates to experience the stability and speed of 4G connectivity of 100Mbps data speed.

1 Gbps data speed under nomadic circumstances is 50 times faster than current Mobile WiMAX technology. It takes about 2.4 seconds to transfer 100 MP3 files(300MByte), 5.6 seconds to transfer 1 Movie(800MByte) at speeds of 1Gpbs. Samsung will demonstrate 1Gpbs data speed at nomadic circumstances by showing 32HD channel broadcast (20 Mpbs) download, Internet access and video telephony all at the same time. Furthermore, a 3.5 Gbps data transfer demonstration will be shown using 8X8 MIMO technology.

Samsung’s 4G technology demonstration is a next generation wireless communication service, a step up from last year’s Mobile WiMAX demonstration. Samsung has recently announced its plans to provide Mobile WiMAX systems and handsets to Sprint Nextel and lead the industry in next generation telecommunications technology. Additionally, Samsung has plans to commercialize Mobile WiMAX with nine major operators in seven different countries such as US, Italy, Brazil.

Samsung hosts an annual 4G Forum to discuss about technology development and standardization of future telecommunication technology. Around 175 high-profile industry representatives from 20 countries meet to discuss the key technologies for 4th generation mobile communications at the 4th Annual Samsung 4G Forum from August 30th to September 1st covering the “Service Requirements & Spectrum for 4G”.

ITU defines 4G technology as a future wireless telecommunications technology allowing data transfer rates of 1Gbps at nomadic circumstances and 100Mbps at mobile circumstances. The spectrums for 4G technology will be decided at WRC (World Radiocommunication Conference) in October of 2007. The 4G mobile communications format is expected to become commercially available around 2010.