storage News - Page 5 of 10 - CNX Software

January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

QNAP preps Rockchip RK3588 AI NAS and Intel NAS with hot-swappable E1.S SSDs

QNAP has been teasing two potentially interesting NAS coming up soon: the TS-AI642 AI NAS leveraging the 6 TOPS NPU in Rockchip RK3588 Arm processor for image and facial recognition, and the TBS-574X NAS powered by an Intel Core i3-1220P Alder Lake CPU and taking up to five hot-swappable E1.S NVMe PCIe SSDs. Details are limited since neither device is available yet, but both NAS are equipped with relatively powerful Arm and Intel processors and offer some innovative features. QNAP TBS-574X NAS with Rockchip RK3588 Preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core 64-bit Arm processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz, 6 TOPS NPU Storage – 6x SATA III bays Video Output – 2x HDMI 2.1 ports Networking – Built-in 2.5GbE, PCIe Gen 3 slot for 10GbE module The main highlight is the 6 TOPS AI accelerator that boosts the performance of the […]

December 26, 2022December 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Achronix Speedster7t AC7t1500 FPGA is now available for high-bandwidth applications

Speedster7t 7t1500 VectorPath Accelerator Card

Achronix Semiconductor has recently announced the general availability of the Speedster7t AC7t1500 FPGA designed for networking, storage, and compute (AI/ML) acceleration applications. The 7nm Speedster7t FPGA family offers PCIe Gen5 ports and GDRR6 and DDR5/DDR4 memory interfaces, delivers up to 400 Gbps on the Ethernet ports, and includes a 2D network on chip (2D NoC) that can handle 20 Tbps of total bandwidth. Achronix Speedster7t highlights: Two-dimensional network on chip (2D NoC) enabling high bandwidth data flow throughout and between the FPGA fabric and hard I/O and memory controllers and interfaces MLP (Machine Learning Processors) blocks with arrays of multipliers, adder trees, accumulators, and support for both fixed and floating-point operations, including direct support for Tensorflow’s bfloat16 format and block floating-point (BFP) format. Multiple PCIe Gen5 ports High-speed SerDes transceivers, supporting 112 Gbps PAM4 and 56 Gbps PAM4/NRZ modulation, as well as lower data rates Hard Ethernet MACs that support […]

November 30, 2022November 29, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Radxa Taco – A Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board made for NAS with 5x SATA ports

Radxa Taco Raspberry Pi CM4 NAS Carrier Board

The Radxa Taco is a carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4 and compatible system-on-modules that is designed for NAS applications with five SATA ports for 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives, 2.5GbE and GbE networking, M.2 sockets for expansion, and more. The new board is the successor of the Rock Pi SATA HAT designed for the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC or Raxda Rock Pi 4 single board computers and supports more SATA drives, M.2 NVMe storage, optional WiFi 6, built-in RTC support, and so on. Radxa Taco specifications: Supported SoMs Raspberry Pi CM4 or CM4 Lite Radxa CM3 based on Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor Maybe others Storage 5x SATA interfaces for 2.5-inch HDD or SSD up to 15mm thick, support for 3.5-inch drive via cables, software RAID 0/1/5 1x M.2 M Key 2280 socket for NVMe SSD MicroSD card slot Networking 2.5GbE RJ45 port Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port Optional WiFi 6 […]

November 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Bedrock V3000 Basic fanless industrial computer is powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 processor

SolidRun Bedrock V3000 Basic is an industrial fanless computer based on the new AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 Zen3 processor family designed for storage and networking applications. More specifically, the embedded computer is based on the AMD Ryzen Embedded V3C48 octa-core/sixteen-thread processor with up to 64 GB DDR5 memory, support for up to three M.2 key-M 2280 NVMe SSDs, and impressive network connectivity options with two SFP+ cages capable of 10 Gbps speeds, four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, and optional support for WiFi 6, 4G and/o 5G cellular connectivity. Bedrock V3000 Basic specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 family with up to 8C/16T Zen3+ cores @ up to 3.8 GHz; TDP: Up to 45W System Memory – Quad-channel DDR5-4800 up to 64 GB ECC / non-ECC via 2x SODIMM socket. The RAM is conduction-cooled Storage 1x M.2 key-M 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x 4 socket, conduction-cooled, with optional power-loss protection 2x […]

November 3, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Andes unveils AndesCore AX65 Out-of-Order RISC-V core for compute intensive applications

Andes Technology has unveiled the high-end AndesCore AX60 series out-of-order 64-bit RISC-V processors at the Linley Fall Processor Conference 2022 with the new cores designed for compute-intensive applications such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual reality, datacenter accelerators, 5G infrastructure, high-speed networking, and enterprise storage. AndesCore AX65 is the first member of the family and supports RISC-V scalar cryptography extension and bit manipulation extension. It is a 4-way superscalar core with Out-of-Order (OoO) execution in a 13-stage pipeline and can fetch 4 to 8 instructions per cycle. The company further explains the AX65 core then decodes, renames, and dispatches up to 4 instructions into 8 execution units, including 4 integer units, 2 full load/store units, and 2 floating-point units. The AX65’s memory subsystem also includes split 2-level TLBs (translation lookaside buffers) with up to 64 outstanding load/store instructions. Up to eight AX65 cores (or should that then be […]

September 28, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

AMD launches Ryzen Embedded V3000 Zen3 processors for storage and networking applications

AMD has just launched the Ryzen Embedded V3000 family of processors with four to eight Zen3 cores, a DDR5 memory interface, twenty PCIe Gen4 lanes, and two 10GbE interfaces that make it ideal for storage and networking applications, especially since there’s no GPU at all. The new embedded processors succeed the Ryzen Embedded V2000 Zen2 family introduced two years ago, and the Ryzen V1000 processors in 2018. For some reason, AMD decided to compare the new V3000 processors against the latter and claims up to 124% greater CPU performance, 50% improved memory transfer rate, twice the number of CPU cores, and improved I/O connectivity. There are five Ryzen Embedded V3000 SKUs at launch with the V3C48, V3C44, V3C18I, V3C16, and V3C14 whose key differences can be found in the table below. The AMD Ryzen Embedded V3C18I “industrial” processor also works in sub-zero temperatures for automotive and industrial applications. Shared specifications […]

July 4, 2022February 12, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Mini review of ORICO “USB 4.0” M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure

Orico USB 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure review

ORICO has sent me a sample of a USB 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure for review, which was timely as I did not have a fast USB storage option for testing. In this post, I’ll check out the hardware, show how to install an NVMe SSD, and test performance in UP Xtreme i11 mini PC since it happens to come with a USB4 port. ORICO USB 4.0 M.2 SSD enclosure specs and unboxing The exact model I received is the ORICO M234C3-U4 with a Rose Gold aluminum enclosure (107x50x17mm), supporting M.2 M-Key and B+M Key 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 SSDs (more on that later), and offering up to 40 Gbps through its USB 4.0 port. The device ships with a USB Type-C to USB Type-C/Type-A cable, a thermal pad, a heatsink, two screws, and a multilingual user manual. There’s only one USB Type-C port one the device. M.2 NVMe SSD […]

June 22, 2022June 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Imagination unveils IMG RTXM-2200 32-bit RISC-V real-time “Catapult” CPU

Imagination IMG RTXM-2200 32-bit RISC-V real-time CPU core is the first member of the company’s Catapult family comprised of four distinct RISC-V families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs. The company says it’s a highly scalable real-time, deterministic, 32-bit embedded CPU, that is feature-rich and flexible in design for mainstream devices, but, excuse the pun, leaves most of the details to your imagination… The new core will mostly be used as a helper core (aka co-processor) in more complex SoCs for 5G modems, cellular base stations, networking solutions for data transfer, packet management, and storage controllers, but may also find its way into smart meters. In all fairness, we do have some limited technical details with L1 cache sizes up to 128KB, I/D TCM sizes up to 128KB, and PMA regions. The real-time core will also include optional features such as single-point […]