CES 2008 Photo Report

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 06:00 PM EDT

OCZ has been very busy this past year diversifying the company’s product offerings. For those that are unaware, OCZ Technology Group now owns PC Power & Cooling and Hypersonic. As such, the company was showcasing products from all of their divisions.

OCZ / HYPERSONIC / PC POWER & COOLING

Like Corsair, OCZ also announced the availability of 32GB flash drives and was showing off a wide array of memory products, including a 2.5” solid state hard drive. The model we say was an IDE variant, but a faster SATAII model was also planned. The PC Power & Cooling group showed off a number of new power supplies, including an 860 watt Turbo-Cool model with adjustable power rails and a 1KW model that features support for NVIDIA’s ESA. The ESA module is visible in the third picture down on the left.

The Hypersonic team was proud to show off a number of high-end gaming rigs and notebooks. The Hypersonic Aero notebook was particularly prominent because OCZ was proud of its price / performance proposition.

OCZ also showed off the latest iteration of their Neural Impulse Actuator technology. The Neural Impulse Actuator is a type of input device that senses alpha and beta brain waves in addition to fine muscle movements in the face. The software to configure the device is pictured above and has evolved considerably in the last year. It’s not quite ready for prime time, but OCZ expects the NIA to be available sometime soon for somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.

SAMSUNG

Samsung had multiple displays throughout the Consumer Electronics Show, but it was upstairs in an off the beaten path showroom that some of the most exciting and forward-looking products were showcased, at least from a computer geek's perspective.

As for the PC specific products on display, Samsung had a couple of HD DVD drives in addition to a brand new 22X DVD-Burner, a drive which the company claims is the fastest DVD-Burner available. Samsung also had some GDDR5 memory samples on display along with accompanying documentation that explained the progression of the company’s graphics memory and the advances introduced with each iteration. A number of solid state drives and flash memory related technologies were on display too.

What some of you may not know is that Samsung is the second largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, behind only Intel. To show their manufacturing prowess, Samsung also showcased some dice and wafers produced using next-generation 30nm technology. On display were a 64Gb NAND flash memory chip produced at 30nm and a 30um this wafer that was thin enough to be somewhat flexible. Very cool stuff indeed.

Tags: CES, Report, photo, port, hot, RT

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com