AKITIO announced today at the NAB show several new products to their already impressive Thunderbolt 3 line-up. New products include a Thunderbolt 3 10GbE docking station, an 8-bay hardware RAID enclosure, a dual-slot PCIe box, and a RED camera Mini-Mag reader. These new products are ideal for the content creator audience at NAB who have an insatiable appetite for fast, scalable storage and connectivity options to optimize workflow.

akitio thunderbolt3

The new Thunder3 Dock Pro features a 10GbE port, a DisplayPort port, three USB 3.1 ports, an eSATA port, an SD Card reader, a C-Fast card reader, and two Thunderbolt 3 Ports for daisy chaining. The Thunderbolt 3 ports provide 60Watts of Power Delivery (PD).

Storage hungry creators will love the new 8-bay Akitio OTTO, a 2.5"/3.5" drive enclosure that features a slot for a SAS/SATA controller card, thereby allowing it to be ordered either with hardware RAID SAS or with the non-RAID SATA options. The Akitio OTTO also features a DisplayPort port and two Thunderbolt 3 ports for daisy chaining. The OTTO will provide 60Watts of Power Delivery (PD).

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Consumers' video expectations are being shaped by the brilliant images promised by 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) video and beyond. However, the technical-based hurdles and data demands of higher quality video mean that the majority of users only have access to full HD or lower video technology. For nearly three years, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has been working in lock-step with its members, the world's best-known leaders in video, to develop a better quality internet video technology that benefits all consumers. Today, the Alliance is proud to announce the public release of the AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) specification, which delivers cross-platform, 4K UHD or higher online video, royalty-free – all while lowering data usage.

aomedia av1 logo

Whether watching live sports, video chatting with loved ones, or binging on a favorite show, online video is becoming a bigger part of consumers’ daily lives. In fact, video is so important to users that by 2021, 82 percent of all the world's internet traffic will be video, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index™, 2016–2021. To remove many of the hurdles required by older, optical disc-era, video technologies, AOMedia developed AV1 specifically for the internet video-era, paving the way for companies to make more of the royalty-free, 4K UHD and higher video devices, products, and services that consumers love.

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ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., a world leading memory brand, is proud to present the ED600 external hard drive enclosure, which offers users the convenience of portable external storage coupled with the speed and performance of solid state drives (SSDs). The ED600 is compatible with HDDs as well as SSDs, and can reach transfer speeds of up to 5Gb/s through its USB 3.1 interface. Not only is the ED600 strong and stylish, it is also extremely user-friendly; simply plug it in and wait three seconds for the installation to complete itself, without any need for extra procedures or tools.

adata ed600 hdd enclosure

The design of the ED600 is based on ease of use. Installing the device requires only three simple steps, which can be completed in three seconds by users, even if they are unfamiliar with computer hardware. The ED600 supports 7mm and 9.5mm thick 2.5-inch SATA HDDs and SSDs, and is compatible with both Windows and MacOS. It can be used with desktops, notebooks, and even game consoles. Furthermore, the safety lock on the ED600 prevents the drive from coming loose due to movement or impacts, which gives its users greater peace of mind.

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Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory storage products and technology solutions, announced today the launch of Nucleum, a 7-in-1 Type C USB hub. Nucleum is the ideal hub for newer MacBooks as it provides extra USB-C and USB-A ports as well as HDMI and SD/microSD card slots.

kingston Nucleum usb hub

Nucleum, with its multiple ports, is built to handle all of the familiar accessories consumers have such as mice, keyboards and even a second monitor. Users can be more productive as all seven ports can be engaged at the same time. Nucleum users can power up a MacBook® while also running an external hard drive and charging an iPhone® simultaneously.

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QNAP Systems (QNAP) today launched the all-new QBoat Sunny, a small and powerful single-board Internet of Things (IoT) mini server for IoT developers. QBoat Sunny can connect to versatile IoT development boards, devices and applications, and be used as a server for small-scale/private IoT applications, or a fog computing node/gateway in large-scale/public IoT environments. The high-performance QBoat Sunny can save significant bandwidth fees and cloud computing costs for developers, and integrate into various usage scenarios.

qnap qboat Sunny

QBoat Sunny provides unprecedented processing and storage performance with its Annapurna Labs AL-314 processor, 2 GB RAM and two M.2 SATA SSD slots (2260 and 2280 lengths). In addition, QBoat Sunny is equipped with three 1000BASE-T ports, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A ports, and a M.2 slot for wireless module installation (2230 length). QBoat Sunny utilizes QTS Lite, a lightweight version of QNAP's award-winning QTS operating system. QTS Lite not only preserves core functionality of QTS (including File Station, Storage Manager, Network & Virtual Switch and App Center) but also provides Container Station and QIoT Suite Lite for IoT developers. QBoat Sunny offers great hardware/software performance and expandability for building versatile IoT scenarios to streamline development and make IoT more accessible and fun for everyone.

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Do your hard drives become idle when you upgraded your computer? Instead of having them retired, with Apacer AD100 and AD300 external enclosures, they can serve new purposes! Equipped with SATA III and USB 3.1 Gen 1 high speed interface with UASP, both models come with enhanced transmission speeds that are up to 400MB per second. AD100 is built with high-strength steel and plastic for better protection. AD300, on the other hand, is crafted with aluminum alloy, complete with especially designed cooling holes for better heat dissipation. Both enclosures are built with tool-free designs for fast installation, easily turning the unused hard drives into external storage solutions.

apacer AD100 enclosure

A Reviver to the Unused Hard Drives with Top Performance
The brand new AD100 and AD300 external enclosures are designed especially for 9.5mm and 7mm 2.5-inch HDD/SSD. The SATA III and USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface with UASP significantly improve the transmission performance which is test proven to reach 400MB/s when operating with a SSD, representing a 73% increase in read speed compared to an enclosure without UASP. Also, the read speed can reach 100MB/s when operated with a conventional hard drive. AD100 and AD300 make your unused hard drives become high-speed portable storage solutions.

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The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced the pending release of the USB 3.2 specification, an incremental update that defines multi-lane operation for new USB 3.2 hosts and devices. USB Developer Days 2017 will include detailed technical training covering USB 3.2, fast charging advancements in USB Power Delivery, and other exciting topics.

While USB hosts and devices were originally designed as single-lane solutions, USB Type-C™ cables were designed to support multi-lane operation to ensure a path for scalable performance. New USB 3.2 hosts and devices can now be designed as multi-lane solutions, allowing for up to two lanes of 5 Gbps or two lanes of 10 Gbps operation. This enables platform developers to continue advancing USB products to fit their customers’ needs by effectively doubling the performance across existing cables. For example, a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will now be capable of realizing over 2 GB/sec data transfer performance over an existing USB Type-C™ cable that is certified for SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps.

“When we introduced USB Type-C to the market, we intended to assure that USB Type-C cables and connectors certified for SuperSpeed USB or SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps would, as produced, support higher performance USB as newer generations of USB 3.0 were developed,” said Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman. “The USB 3.2 update delivers the next level of performance.”

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NVM Express, Inc., the organization that developed the industry standard NVM Express (NVMe) specification for accessing solid-state drives (SSDs) on a PCI Express (PCIe®) bus as well as across Fabrics, today announced the completion and release of its NVMe 1.3 specification. NVM Express has delivered on its commitment to Enterprise, Cloud, and Client customers by adding capabilities that meet the unique needs of each of these market segments, including Virtualization and Streams. The reach of the interface has expanded its support for the Mobile sector by adding the Boot Partitions feature, which enables bootstrapping of an SSD in a low resource environment. These features have been added while maintaining low latency and high performance – making an NVMe device ready to take advantage of next generation bus speeds, including PCIe 4.0. The NVM Express 1.3 specification is available now for download.

“NVM Express is taking the solid-state drive ‘world by storm,’ accelerating on a trajectory to go from the first units shipped in 2H’2014 to become the highest volume SSD interface in 1H’2018 based on gigabytes shipped – surpassing both SATA and SAS,” said Amber Huffman, president of NVM Express. “As demonstrated by revision 1.3, the NVM Express working group is laser-focused on the specification’s continued evolution to address the dynamic workloads and scenarios that NVMe serves.”

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Creative Technology Ltd today announced at E3 2017 the latest addition to its Sound BlasterX Pro-Gaming Series, the Sound BlasterX AE-5. E3 is the world's premier event for computer, video and mobile games and related products, making it the perfect place to debut the next era of PC audio.

creative sound blasterx ae 5

The sound card features the world's best gaming headphone amplifier for PCs. The Sound BlasterX AE-5 delivers the ultimate audio performance with the full force of a 122dB 32-bit/384kHz ESS Sabre™ DAC, a kick-ass custom-designed 600Ω discrete headphone amp, audiophile-grade components, and proprietary Sound Blaster audio enhancement technologies.

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Patriot, a global leader in performance memory, SSDs, gaming peripherals and flash storage solutions, today announced the release of the Viper Gaming Headset Stand /USB 3.0 Hub providing users with additional, easy-access, USB ports and a convenient storage solution for their favorite headset.

patriot viper gaming heatset stand

Powered by a USB connection on the rear of the base, the Patriot Viper Gaming Headset Stand is equipped with three USB 3.0 ports and a 3.5mm audio and microphone jack for a seamless connection to USB storage solutions, gaming peripherals and audio/visual devices. Offering easy plug-and-play functionality, no software is needed and connected devices will be detected almost instantly. A power switch at the rear of the stand allows users to easily turn the device off without having to power down their PC.

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