Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user-friendly designed PC components, today unveiled MX JET PRO Series 2.5" SSD which makes MLC (multi-level cell) NAND-based storage an affordable offering for mainstream users demanding the latest technology and top performance. Based on JMicron JMF616 controller, MX JET PRO Series delivers blazing fast, smooth and stutter free performance.

The new MX JET PRO Series of SSDs is the latest addition to the Mach Xtreme lineup of solid state drives. MX Technology has worked very closely with JMicron on this series to get most out of this new sophisticated controller. As a result, MX Technology releases the best-in-class drive. MX JET PRO is based on the advanced JMF616 controller coupled with 128MB onboard cache and the latest firmware to ensure top performance while maintaining an attractive price point that is truly within the reach of a wide range of DIY users.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the addition of the Zephyr series to its family of solid-state-drives (SSDs). The Zephyr series of SSD offer improved system responsiveness with quicker boot times and shorter application loading times over traditional hard disk drive storage solutions.

Patriot's Zephyr series, available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, is designed around the latest generation controller from JMicron: JMF612. With a controller level cache of 64MB DDR2, the Zephyr series provide stutter-free performance and offer speeds of up to 240MB/s Read and 180MB/s Write. To maintain performance integrity over the life of the drive, the Zephyr series SSDs include native support for the TRIM command in Microsoft Windows 7.

MSI seems to have finalized design of its first motherboard based on the AMD 890FX chipset, the 890FXA-GD70. A possible prototype of this, then called the 890FX-GD70, was pictured back in early December, 2009. The 890FXA-GD70 has five PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots in all. Their electrical configuration, when all are populated, could be x8, x8, x8, x8, 1.1 x4, or x16, NC, x16, NC, 1.1 x4, supporting ATI CrossFireX. A PCI-E x1 and PCI make for the other two expansion slots. A large rectangular heatsink cools both the AMD 890FX chipset, and the 8-phase VRM, while a heat pipe connects this to the heatsink over the SB850 southbridge chip. The CPU is connected to four DDR3 memory slots with one-sided retention clips that don't come in the way of graphics cards in the first slot.

The SB850 gives out six SATA 6 Gb/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10, JBOD support, while a JMicron made controller gives out an additional SATA 3 Gb/s port, an IDE connector, and possibly an eSATA connector. Connectivity options include 8+2 channel HD audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF connections, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, two USB 3.0 ports (and a number of USB 2.0 ports), FireWire, and eSATA. This motherboard is ready for upcoming Phenom II X6 and Phenom II X4 processors, apart from existing processors in the AM3 package. It should be released in time for the six-core chips, late April.

Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the addition of the Reactor Series and Nova Series to its family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Both the Nova Series and Reactor Series provide the performance benefits of solid-state technology at an attractive cost per gigabyte.

The Reactor Series, including 60GB and 120GB drive capacities, is built using the new JMicron JMF612 controller. This second-generation controller from JMicron incorporates 128MB of DDR2 cache memory for stutter-free performance. The 120GB Reactor Series SSD delivers speeds of up to 250MB/s read and 170MB/s write, while the 60GB Reactor Series SSD features speeds up to 250MB/s read and 110 MB/s write.

ASUS seems to be ready with one of its first motherboards based on the AMD 890GX chipset. This socket AM3 series of motherboards seems to come in two variants: M4A89GTD Pro and M4A89GTD Pro USB3 (with the latter having support for USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connectivity. An early development version of this motherboard was displayed at this year's CES event. Fresh pictures show a production-grade model, complete with chipset and VRM cooling, as well as a box design.

The M4A89GTD Pro / USB3 is a socket AM3 motherboard with a 10-phase CPU VRM supporting future AMD CPUs with 140W TDP, 2-phase memory VRM powering the four DDR3 DIMM slots, AMD 890GX chipset with faster DirectX 10.1 compliant graphics, and AMD SB800 southbridge. The SB800 provides six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, while an additional JMicron-made controller gives out the IDE connector (and possibly the lone eSATA port). Expansion slots include two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated), two PCI, and one each of PCI-E x1 and PCI-E x4. Connectivity includes 8+2 channel HD audio with optical SPDIF output, gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ports (on the USB3 variant), FireWire, and display connectivity including DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. The M4A89GTD Pro / USB3 is expected to be launched a little ahead of AMD's launch of its six-core Phenom II X6 processors.

At the ongoing CES event, ASUS displayed some of its upcoming motherboards which included the M4A89GTOD PRO, an ATX form-factor model based on the AMD 890G chipset. The AMD 890G seems to be a successor to the AMD 790GX, in being a performance integrated graphics part. It integrates a DirectX 10.1 compliant IGP while supporting discrete graphics with 2-way ATI CrossFireX.

The M4A89GTOD PRO comes with an expansive feature-set thanks to the AMD 890G. The more interesting component being the AMD SB800 southbridge chip, which is on its way to being one of the first PC motherboard chipsets to natively support SATA 6 Gb/s. The chip doles out six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, while doing away with its on-die IDE controller. An external JMicron-made storage controller compensates with an IDE connector, a SATA 3 Gb/s port (colored black) and perhaps an eSATA port (at 3 Gb/s speeds), too.

PhotoFast's solid-state drive (SSD) development has been on a roll in the last year or so. The company has been coming up with new SSD designs on a regular basis. Its latest doing is the G-Monster "Quad-Drive". Simply put, this SSD encloses four PhotoFast CFast (compact-flash derived standard) cards driven by a JMicron RAID controller, which then connects to the host machine over standard SATA II interface, and is seen as a single drive. Internally, the controller lets you configure the cards in RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD modes. With the default configuration, the drive boasts of speeds of up to 250 MB/s read, and 170 MB/s write. Its price is yet to be known, as the product is on its way to the markets.

Apparently JMicron is on its way to perfect solid-state technology, as the company is working on a new NAND flash controller for use in solid-state drives that may halve their prices. Named JMF612, this chip will use an ARM9 core in a 289-ball TFBGA package with 32 KB of ROM and 128 KB of RAM at its core, and will support the use of up to 256 MB of DDR or DDR2 DRAM as an external cache. It will work specifically with new 34 nm and 32 nm NAND chips, have Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and will aslo support 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) disk encryption. Supported interfaces by the new controller will include SATA 3.0 Gbps and USB 2.0 for data transfers or firmware updates. JMicron will be showing engineering samples of the controller at Computex 2009. Mass production of the new chip is expected to start in July. Once in production, the cheap and fast JMF612 could contribute to a massive 50% drop in prices of solid-state drives, but this could happen as late as the end of the year sources indicate.