Samsung has launched the latest addition to its wide range of hard drives with the new SpinPoint N2 Series of 1.8" drives, ranging from 30GB to 120GB. Spinning at a rate of 4,200 RPM with 2-8MB caches, these drives are aimed mostly at ultra-portable laptops, ultra-mobile PCs and portable media players where a compact size is more important than overall performance. This means they could soon be finding their way into 120GB iPods and Zunes, a nice boost for hardcore music fans with enormous collections of songs. Samsung also commented on the pricing of Solid State Drives (SSDs) which are being viewed as the replacement for spinning hard drives within the next few years, particularly portable computers. Samsung's market research has suggested that by 2010 1.8" SSD drives could have come down in price to costing just 3x more per gigabyte than their spinning equivalents - still quite a considerable gap, but an improvement nonetheless.

Hybrid HDDs are increasingly starting to take place as a primary hard drives in the latest notebooks. Samsung has now announced its Q30 15.4" wide notebook that will feature the MH80 hybrid hard drive (256MB flash). Samsung announced back in early March that it had begun shipping its new MH80 Series hybrid HDDs which are available in capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB. These drives also come equipped with either 128MB or 256MB of onboard flash memory. Internal testing has shown that when compared to a traditional HDD, the hybrid-equipped Q30 has 26% faster writes, 71% faster reads, 30% lower boot times and a 10% increase in battery life. Besides the 80GB MH80 hybrid HDD, the Q30 also packs a 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 processor, 15.4" WXGA screen, NVIDIA GeForce 7400 mobile GPU with 256MB of RAM and a Super-multi dual-layer DVD writer.

Samsung Electronics, has developed the first all-DRAM stacked memory package using 'through silicon via' (TSV) technology, which will soon result in memory packages that are faster, smaller and consume less power. The new wafer-level-processed stacked package (WSP) consists of four 512 megabit DDR2 DRAM chips that offer a combined 2 gigabits (Gb) of high density memory. Using the TSV-processed 2Gb DRAMs, Samsung can create a 4GB DIMM based on advanced WSP technology for the first time. Samsung's proprietary WSP technology not only reduces the overall package size, but also permits the chips to operate faster and use less power.

Samsung has decided to let its designers get a little more creative than normal, which has led to the fabrication of these rather unusual concept PCs. Although they are unlikely to ever make their way onto the market, they're still quite interesting to look at as Samsung tries to offer a brief glimpse into the future of computing, and what it might look like. The first looks somewhat like a bent witch's hat, the second almost resembles a lamp with a pull cord on it, and the third seems to have some bizarre balls perched on top. All of them are obviously sporting the stylish Core 2 Duo sticker - but other than that, specifications are a mystery.Update: It turns out these concepts are actually the result of a Samsung and Intel PC design contest - the design with the 'balls' (which are supposedly a media player, a disk drive and a digital camera) came first, the tall lamp came second and the other finished third (it has a built in projector instead of a monitor).

Seoul, Korea - April 13, 2007 - Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., a leader in consumer electronics and digital media technologies, and the first company to introduce a Blu-ray disc player will introduce a dual format High-Definition (HD) optical disc player in time for the holidays.

Samsung's Duo HD player (BD-UP5000) will fully support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats and their interactive technologies, HDi and BD-Java. With the Duo HD consumers can enjoy additional studio content such as trailers, director's comments, more elaborate interactive menus and behind the scene footage. The new Duo HD joins Samsung's next generation DVD line-up which includes Samsung's second generation Blu-ray player available at retail this month. Together, these two models offer the consumer a strong line of High-Definition players to match Samsung's award winning, and best selling, line of HDTVs.

Seoul, Korea - April 11, 2007 : Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today announced its new 160GB hard drive using 2.5" disks. Capacity of the single-disk platform ranges between 60 and 160GB, while a dual-disk model is under development that will provide up to 250GB of storage space. Samsung has already shipped test samples of the SpinPoint M5 Series to OEM vendors and plans to begin mass production in mid-April.

The SpinPoint M5 series utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, and the disk drive design has been optimized to allow ultra-precision adjustment of the head parking ramp position for high-density recording.

Seoul, Korea - April 11, 2007 : Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today announced development of its 7200rpm premium 2.5" hard drive series, SpinPoint MP1. Samsung's SpinPoint MP1 Series provides the industry's highest storage density of 200 gigabyte (GB) at 7200rpm on a 2.5inch disk base with SATA interface. The MP1 series is designed for enterprise applications such as workstations, RAID (redundant array of independent drives) servers, and blade servers.

The SpinPoint MP1 Series utilize perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), a serial ATA 3.0 Gbps interface, and feature native command queuing (NCQ) for high performance. To protect the disk drive from vibration and shock, a rotary vibration controller (RVC) and an optional digital free-fall sensor (FFS) have been implemented.

Samsung Electronics today announced it will begin producing a 24-inch LCD panel with an LED backlight. The LED-backlit monitor panel has an color saturation level of 111% (of NTSC standard), compared to a saturation level of only 72% of NTSC for conventional monitors and will satisfy consumers used to the crisp colors prevalent in high-definition (HD) broadcasting, according to Samsung. The new monitor display also features Samsung's S-PVA (Super Patterned-ITO Vertical Alignment) technology that provides the widest viewing angle possible -180 degrees - at high contrast ratio over 1000:1. It also supports 1920x1200 WUXGA resolution, which is the computer equivalent to full HD resolution.

Consumers are already torn between choosing Blu-ray and HD DVD for their high definition format, but that's only the surface competition. If you dig a little deeper, you can find that there is another battle commencing between HDMI and DisplayPort, two different interface standards. Although HDMI seemed to the main choice among manufacturers, DisplayPort 1.1 has now been approved which could reignite the competition, giving yet more trouble for people moving to high definition. The main improvement of 1.1 is that it boasts High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) version 1.3, however groups backing HDMI still argue that HDMI can still do everything that DisplayPort can and more, urging manufacturers to stick to HDMI. But with the backing of large companies such as AMD, NVIDIA, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, DisplayPort won't be defeated too easily, and consumers could have some more HD headaches still to come. DisplayPort could well become the replacement for DVI among graphics card companies, whilst HDMI looks to have control of the TV based market.

Samsung Electronics, today announced its new SpinPoint S166 Series of ultra silent and high-speed hard disk drives. The new SpinPoint S Series of hard drives offer upgraded versions of Samsung's proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise. The new drives are fifteen percent quieter than other competing 80GB and 160GB models currently in the market. The S166 Series has a spin speed of 7,200rpm and provides an 8MB buffer. The Series features the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The drives are also available with a PATA interface for customers who require this application. The 3.5" SpinPoint S166 hard drives are currently shipping in 80GB and 160GB capacities and will be available worldwide in April. Pricing and market availability information will be provided on a regional basis.

Samsung Electronics, announced today that it has developed a 2.1" LCD panel for high-end mobile devices that will provide qVGA resolution and comes equipped with sensors designed to adjust brightness to optimize ambient lighting. Screen brightness is automatically adjusted to enhance readability under any lighting condition. Designed for use in high-end mobile phones, PDAs and portable media players, the new panel also has a temperature compensation sensor embedded in its LCD driver IC that maintains a steady operational mode regardless of any temperature change in the surrounding environment. The signal processing function within the display driver IC converts ambient light measurements from the sensors into pulse-width modulation signals. Those PWM signals then automatically signal the LED controller in the LCD backlight unit to adjust the screen brightness to provide optimal readability as outside lighting conditions change. Samsung's LCD Business is planning to produce the new 2.1" qVGA LCD with ABC capability in the second half of this year.

The CCDs (Charge Coupled Devices) currently used in digital cameras could soon be phased out if Samsung is successful with its new CMOS image sensor (CIS), which is the smallest in the world. The new sensor is capable of 8.4 megapixels and provides a signal to noise ratio comparable to current CCDs, giving good image quality for photographic purposes. Because it only uses a tenth of the power currently required for CCDs, it should quickly find its way into digital cameras and camcorders, along with mobile camera phones. Samsung has been investing a lot of money into improving its CIS technology as it aims to become more competitive, and its 8.4Mp offering should be available later this year.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., announced at its annual Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei that it has developed a 1.8"-type 64 Gigabyte (GB) flash-solid state drive (SSD). The new flash-SSD is based on an eight gigabit (Gb) single-level-cell (SLC) NAND, which provides significantly higher performance over conventional SSDs. The read and write performance of the new SLC flash-SSD have been increased by 20 percent and 60 percent respectively over the 32GB flash-SSD Samsung introduced last year, meaning that the new SSD's ability to outperform conventional rotating-media hard drives is even greater than had been anticipated.

During the ongoing CeBIT show in Hannover, Samsung Electronics is introducing a 30-inch LCD monitor that incorporates an LED as the backlight source. Featuring a 123% color production, 3000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 2ms response time and viewing angle of 170 degrees, this monitor has the perfect specs. The SyncMaster XL30 will come equipped with "Eyeone Design & Eyeone Photo" and "Natural Color Expert" software. Various input terminals such as USB terminal, DVI-D are available and the 30-inch monitor also features HDCP for viewing high-definition (HD) contents via DVI ports. At the show, Samsung is also launching the 19-inch SyncMaster 940UX LCD monitor we told you about earlier this year, that can be connected using only an USB port.

After Intel, Samsung, Seagate and Sandisk there is a new competitor in the Solid State Disk Business: Super Talent. In April they will start selling 1.8" (up to 32GB), 2.5" (up to 64GB) and even 3.5" models (max. 128GB). The prices are still not known but all versions will have a SATA interface.

Samsung Electronics, announced today that it has begun shipping samples of an eight gigabyte (GB) memory chip to major mobile electronics manufacturers - the highest density embedded flash memory developed to date. Samsung's high-density moviNAND memory solution consists of four 50-nanometer, 16Gigabit NAND flash memories, a high-speed MultiMediaCard (MMC) controller and associated firmware. It can store up to 2,000 songs or enough map data to implement global positioning system (GPS) and points of interest for the entire western world. In addition, it can also be used with removable media cards to permit virtually unlimited memory expansion.

Samsung has started shipping hybrid hard drives with 128 or 256MB flash memory to OEMs. The drive is available in 80, 120 or 160GB with 5400RPM and SATA interface. It should be available to retail shortly. These drives will become mandatory for Vista certification in June 2007, so expect all the major companies to feature such hard drives in their notebooks soon.

Samsung has been seen before as an official maker of Blu-ray hardware, and a supporter of the standard. So their announcement of an HD-DVD laptop took a lot of people by surprise. The Samsung M55 features a 17" widescreen capable of an impressive 1920x1200 resolution (more than enough for 1080p HD DVD's), powered by an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB GDDR3 graphics memory. The laptop also carries an HD-DVD player (of course), 2GB of DDR2 667 system RAM, a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, a 120GB hard drive, and support for all wireless standards, excluding 802.11N. All this is run with the help of Windows Vista Home Premium. The laptop will go on sale in Korea for KRW3m ($3,186/£1,627/€2,419).

Seoul, Korea - March 1, 2007: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 1Gigabit (Gb) DDR2 DRAM (dynamic random access memory) using 60 nanometer (nm)-class process technology.

The current record holder for the world's thinnest LCD screen is Samsung Electronics, with its screen being just 0.82mm thick. However, that is soon about to change as subsidiary company Samsung SDI is planning to produce a new LCD which will be a mere 0.74mm, easily enough to push its parent company into the number two slot. Although the new screen hasn't got beyond the prototype design stage yet, once it is released it could help to make the next generation of mobiles that little bit thinner. The thinnest LCD screen in mass production will soon become Samsungs 1.9mm offering, which should be available in handsets during spring, so phones sporting these sub-1mm screens could take some time to appear on shelves.

Samsung will unveil a new LCD that can be connected to a PC via an integrated USB port, according to an article published at heise.de. When connected to a PC via USB 2.0, the 19" Syncmaster 940UX using PVA panel and 1280x1024 standard resolution, appears as a removable storage device in Windows, which contains a setup routine that installs a virtual graphics card as well as a USB display driver. While a USB-connected LCD cannot be used as primary monitor, the new approach allows users to connect up to six LCDs (and up to three virtual graphics cards) as extended monitors to their PC. Unfortunately connecting multiple displays to USB ports is highly CPU dependent, and Samsung recommends a dual-core processor with a clock speed of at least 2 GHz. The Samsung 940UX could become available during the first half of 2007 and should cost less than 430 Euros (about $560).

Samsung Touts 4 GHz Memory for Graphics Cards

Getting more speed is always nice - and Samsung is about to break the speed barrier yet again, pushing GDDR4 chips to 4 GHz and beyond. At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Samsung presented its new GDDR4 memory chips that operate at about 40% higher speed than GDDR4 was initially estimated to, but use more power.

4 GHz GDDR4 memory chips are only "available" in 512 MB capacities and were manufactured using 80 nm process technology. They were designed for a power supply voltage of 1.4 V - 2.1 V, reports PC Watch web-site. The data rate of 4 Gb/s (4 gigabit per second, or 4 GHz) was achieved with devices operating at 2.0 V, which is higher than Samsung's current-generation GDDR4 chips that can function at up to 1.9 V officially.

GDDR4 memory at 4.0 GHz delivers bandwidth of 16 GB/s and if such chips were used in today's graphics cards that have 256-bit memory bus, this would result in peak data bandwidth of 128 GB/s, two times more than the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX (the only graphics card on the market that uses GDDR4) can offer. For tomorrow's graphics boards that will have 512-bit memory access Samsung's new chips would give peak memory bandwidth of 256 GB/s, which is nearly three times more than 86.4 GB/s that the currently highest-performance graphics card - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX - has.

Are we beginning to enter the era when GPU memory will be clocked many times higher than our CPUs?

Samsung Electronics Ltd., has introduced the world's first 1.8-inch hard drive with a 60GB per disk capacity and a super-slim form factor that is just 5-millimeters tall. Samsung's sleek new 1.8-inch N-series features 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB per disk capacities - the largest one-disk storage capacity offered by any drive on the market today. The new slim hard drive spins at 4200 rpm and according to Samsung is "among the quietest on the market today". The power consumption of the drive is rated at 0.3 watts in idle mode. Samsung's 1.8-inch N-series is currently shipping.

Samsung Electronics said it is aiming for stronger growth in its large-size panel shipments in 2007 compared to the overall panel industry. The company also said it is unlikely that large-size panel prices will undergo a significant price reduction during the year. The Korea-based company said its large-size panel shipments will grow 24% from 55.5 million units in 2006 to 68.9 million in 2007 while growth of global shipments will likely reach 22%, from 266 million to 324 million. The strong shipment growth will be mostly driven by a continued stress on larger-size panels and high value-added ones, the maker said. Read the full story here.

Samsung is clearly going after the iPod Nano with the Samsung K3. It is just 7 mm thick, sports a 1.8 inch OLED screen and blue, touch sensitive controls. The battery life is quite similar to the Nano as well - 25 hours.

There will also be a new Bluetooth enabled multimedia player which can handle a range of audio, video and photo formats and also play Flash games. It will last about 30 hours on a single charge for music and 6 hours for videos.