Wazzup Pilipinas News and Events

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

WD Demonstrates World’s Fastest 4 TB Hybrid Drive at Storage Visions 2015

Wazzup Pilipinas!

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader in storage solutions, demonstrated the world’s fastest 4 TB hybrid drive at the SATA-IO booth (#205) at Storage Visions 2015 last January 4 and 5 in Las Vegas, NV. WD’s prototype drive utilized the SATA Express PCI-e interface, 4 TB 3.5-inch hybrid hard drive, and up to 128 GB solid state drive to deliver compelling performance and GB-per-dollar solutions for desktop and gaming applications.

The two WD SATA Express interface demonstrations at Storage Visions 2015 included commercially available motherboards from WD partners ASRock and Gigabyte. These systems demonstrated cabled SATA Express PCI-e interconnect flexibility and configuration options for single-volume caching and RAID.

Heavy desktop usage scenarios will benefit from larger cache sizes (64 GB will be demonstrated) by enabling retention of key hot data across multiple applications, which improves overall performance. In WD’s labs, WD’s SATA Express 4 TB drive with 64 GB cache achieved a PCMark8 benchmark score of 4459, demonstrating near-SSD performance at an optimized GB-per-dollar value.

“WD is committed to working with the industry to push the boundaries of what you might expect from a traditional hard drive,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president, Storage Technology, WD. “By moving to PCI Express, the industry marries the world’s most popular storage bus with the world’s most popular computer bus. This union provides a solid growth path to innovate new capability, while preserving the ability to plug legacy SATA drives into new SATA Express based computers.”

Wazzup Pilipinas!

I rarely write about buffet or pica-pica food served during media events but after recently attending one at this restaurant called Pink Panda South East Asian Diner, I really have to make an exception.

We were served with delightful pica-pica food that were totally sumptuous, that I found myself askin for more from the waitress to the point of calling their attention even from afar.

It was an afternoon event so snacks were expected but I was surprised that they made it a pica-pica style of serving where servers carry around trays of pica-pica food that you can grab from them while you're seated.

I was not really hungry that time since I just had lunch earlier, but after tasting the food especially their Chicken Sate, all I could say was "Wow! I have to eat more of these!"

Later, a few minutes after the event ended, a good looking guy walked into the restaurant and proceeded directly to the counter area to talk with some of the crew. From there I realized he must be one of the owners for he looks too charming to be one of the crew.

My hunch was right, for he was celebrity Erwan Heussaff, most widely known as the brother of actress Solenn Heussaff.

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Seiko Epson Corporation recently announced it had acquired Somerset, Wisconsin-based K-Sun Corporation, a supplier of award-winning portable and desktop electronic label printers. The acquisition of K-Sun, with its more than three decades of experience in the industrial identifications solutions market, will provide Epson with broader access to labeling customers and influencers as well as expand the company's presence in the industrial labeling market.

After supplying K-Sun with label printers on an OEM basis for two decades, Epson believes that acquiring its partner will enable it to better serve industrial customers with the ever expanding line of Epson label printing solutions - from the desktop to the industrial press. Junichi Watanabe, director, and chief operating officer of Epson's Visual Products Operations Division, commented, "We are delighted to take our partnership with K-Sun to the next stage. The acquisition will not only give us access to K-Sun's expertise in industrial label printing, but will help boost the Epson brand and increase exposure of Epson's label printers in this important strategic market."

Michael Kasun, founder and president of K-Sun, said: "K-Sun has enjoyed a strategic partnership with Epson since 1994. Now as a member of Epson's prestigious group of companies, we are very excited for our future and the new products and supplies that we can offer our customers and the expanded opportunities for our employees."