Xiaomi has officially started to sell its Google Android TV 6.0-based set-top-boxes in the U.S. The Xiaomi Mi Box STB boasts with a rather powerful SoC, an HDMI 2.0a (4K, 60 fps, HDR) video output, a Bluetooth remote with voice search feature as well as a $69 price tag. The combination of modern, capable hardware and a relatively affordable price will improve chances of Xiaomi’s STB to become popular among those who use Google's Android TV platform.

The Xiaomi Mi is powered by Amlogic’s S905X-H SoC (four ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz, five ARM Mali-450MP clusters) and is equipped with 2 GB of DDR3 memory, 8 GB of NAND flash, a wireless module supporting Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0, a USB port as well as an HDMI 2.0a output with HDCP 2.2 and CEC. Xiaomi bundles a Bluetooth remote with a mic and voice search feature with its STB for extra convenience. In addition, the company sells its Mi Game Controller for those, who would like to play Android games on TV.

Since the STB runs Android TV 6.0, it supports various popular streaming services (including those from Google, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, VUDU and so on) and TV channels via apps (such as CNN, Disney and ESPN) out-of-the-box. Furthermore the box is also capable of acting as a Google Cast receiver, which allows it to work with applications that support casting but not stand-alone Android TV. This is especially notable since Google also announced their similarly priced Chomrcast Ultra this week, whose primary feature is 4K support as well. This gives the Mi Box a leg up on paper, since it should be able to do most of what the Chromecast can do while adding its Android TV capabilities on top of that.

The hardware and software of Xiaomi’s Mi Box supports the latest codecs and standards, including VP9 Profile 2, H.265, and  HDR10 (but not Dolby Vision). So owners of appropriate subscriptions and TVs can access more or less every audio/video format under the sun, including 4Kp60 video with HDR metadata or 1080p60 video with DTS 2.0 or Dolby Digital Plus audio (the STB also has an S/PDIF optical out and a 3.5-mm out for audio).

At present, there are not a lot of 4Kp60-capable Android TV media players. In fact, until now only NVIDIA’s SHIELD Android TV console supported 4K at 60 fps along with HDR, so the launch of the Xiaomi Mi Box gives owners of UHDTVs a second Android TV option. The Mi Box is nowhere near as powerful for non-video tasks, but at $69, it's considerably more affordable than the $199 console from NVIDIA.

The Xiaomi Mi Box is available right now from Mi.com and will also be sold by Walmart in the coming days or weeks.

Sources: Xiaomi, CNX Software.

Gallery: Xiaomi Mi Box Now Available in U.S.: Android TV 6.0 with 4Kp60 Output for $69

Plextor has introduced its new family of entry-level SSDs, which could become the most affordable drives in the company’s lineup in the coming months. The S2C SSDs use TLC NAND flash memory made by SK Hynix using 16 nm process technology as well as a controller from Silicon Motion.

Plextor has its own history with TLC NAND-based as well as SMI-powered SSDs and the S2C family is the first time, when the manufacturer combined the inexpensive memory and an affordable controller. The company originally planned to release its first SSD featuring TLC memory in mid-2015 and even demonstrated a drive featuring Marvell's 88SS1074 controller as well as Toshiba’s TLC NAND at CES 2015. After months of evaluating the configuration, Plextor decided to proceed with Toshiba’s MLC memory and Silicon Motion’s SM2246EN controller for its M6V SSD. In April 2016, the company finally released the M7V, its first drive based on TLC NAND memory produced by Toshiba using its 15 nm process technology. The Plextor S2C is the second TLC-based SSD by the company, which targets the low-end of the market.

The S2C features Silicon Motion’s SM2258 controller (which has four NAND flash channels and supports LDPC ECC technology) as well as SK Hynix’s TLC NAND made using planar 16 nm process tech, a combination found in Intel’s 540s SSDs. SMI’s SM2258 controller is a relatively new IC, which is why some SSD makers plan to use it for 3D NAND-based drives (e.g., ADATA’s SU800) because of compatibility with the memory as well as presumable low cost. Being cautious and due to slow ramp of SK Hynix’s 3D NAND, Plextor decided to use the SM2258 controller with planar TLC NAND from the South Korean company.

Plextor’s S2C drives come in 2.5”/7mm form-factor with SATA interface and are available in 128 GB (PX-128S2C), 256 GB (PX-256S2C) and 512 GB (PX-512S2C) configurations. Plextor is specing the highest-capacity S2C at up to 520 MB/s for sequential reads and up to 480 MB/s for sequential writes, but more affordable models sport slightly lower write speeds. As for random performance, we are dealing with drives capable of 98,000/78,000K read/write IOPS. Unlike many low-cost SSDs today, the S2C features DRAM cache to guarantee decent performance of write operations. In addition, Plextor promises that its S2C drives will sustain their performance over prolonged periods.

The Plextor S2C will be joining in a pretty crowded party ot entry-level SSDs. The drives will naturally compete against Plextor’s own M6V, M7V and M6S Plus. In addition, they will have to rival Intel’s 540s drives, which are not only very affordable, but also come with a five-year warranty (Plextor only offers a three-year warranty with its S2C).

Plextor has not announced MSRPs for its S2C drives and right now the products are absent from large U.S.-based retailers. Given performance numbers declared by the manufacturer, the S2C should be cheaper than the other entry-level drives sold under this brand.

ASUS has introduced a number of new products this summer, but never released their official recommended prices and availability timeframes for the US market. In the recent weeks, the company quietly began to sell some of the new products and this week ASUS published actual configurations, MSRPs and ETAs for its Zenbook 3, ZenFone 3, ZenWatch 3 and ZenPad 3S 10 devices.

ZenFone 3

ASUS formally introduced its ZenFone 3 family of smartphones at the company’s annual press conference ahead of Computex in late May. The new ZenFones are the first handsets from ASUS based on ARM processors and also the first phones from the company to use Super AMOLED display panels (high-end models only). The initial ZenFone 3 lineup included three models (Laser and Deluxe), but eventually ASUS expanded it with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821-based ZenFone 3 Deluxe 5.7” Special Edition as well as the value ZenFone 3 Laser.

Three ZenFone 3 models are already available in the U.S. for $199 (ZF3 Laser ZC551KL), $399 (ZF3 Deluxe 5.5” ZS550KL) and $499 (ZF Deluxe 5.7” ZA570KL), whereas the ZF3 Deluxe 5.7” Special Edition is set to be available in late October exclusively from the ASUS Store for $799. In the meantime, the destiny of the media-consumption focused ZenFone 3 Ultra (ZU680KL) in the U.S. is unknown. The device is available in some countries (e.g., the Philippines), but not in Europe or North America.

It is noteworthy that at present ASUS only offers silver versions of its ZenFone 3 smartphones. It looks like the rest colors will hit the market at a later date.

Zenbook 3

The Zenbook 3 from ASUS seemed like a worthy competitor for Apple’s MacBook back in June thanks to its Core i5 and Core i7 SoCs as well as low weight of 910g. Since the announcement at Computex, ASUS has upgraded the notebooks with Intel’s Kaby Lake processors, making the systems slightly faster and more responsive. At present, ASUS sells two Zenbook 3 models in the US: the premium Core i7-7500U-based UX390UA-XH74-BL equipped with 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB NVMe SSD and a fingerprint reader for $1599 as well as the mainstream Core i5-7200U-powered UX390UA-DH51-GR with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SATA SSD for $1099.

The top-of-the-range model with 1 TB SSD and rose gold finish for $1999 is yet to come. We mentioned earlier this year that the price difference of $500 between the Core i7-based ZB3 models is a significant jump for 500 GB of additional PCIe SSD capacity. 

ZenPad 3S 10

It is rather hard to make a breakthrough affordable tablet these days, but the new ASUS ZenPad 3S 10 looks rather impressive. For $299, the slate offers a retina-class 9.7” display with 2048×1536 resolution, a six-core MediaTek MT8176 SoC (two Cortex A72, four Cortex-A53 cores, PowerVR GX6250 graphics, etc.), 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, up to 64 GB of storage, 802.11ac WiFi and a fingerprint reader. 

The ASUS Z500M tablet looks like a rival for Apple’s iPad Air 2, which price starts at $399. The Wi-Fi-only ZenPad 3S 10 slate will be available in early November, but there has been no mention if ASUS intends to release a version with 4G/LTE.

ZenWatch 3

The ASUS ZenWatch 3 (WI503Q) got a lot of attention earlier this year because this is the first smartwatch from the company featuring a round display and because it is one of the first devices to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC (APQ8009w). Just like in other countries, the ZenWatch 3 will be available in the U.S. in November for $229.

What remains to be seen is whether the manufacturer plans to start selling all three versions of the device at the same time (in silver, gunmetal and rose gold finish), or intends to roll them out one after another like it does with the ZenFone 3.

The iPhone 6 was a runaway success by any measure. The A8 SoC may have been built on a temperamental  20SoC process – something that dogged all other phone vendors – but for Apple it didn’t matter. The iPhone 6 was the first iPhone generation with a phablet variant. By all metrics it was a resounding success as it capitalized on this pent-up demand for larger iPhones.

The iPhone 6s continued this success, and in a year of disappointing launches due to the weak showing of the widely used Snapdragon 808 and 810, the 6s and 6s Plus looked particularly good as the competition really couldn’t measure up. Now there were a lot of Android devices that performed better than the iPhone 6s/6s Plus in some particular area – a better camera or longer battery life, for example – but taken as a whole the iPhones 6s were just clearly superior devices. If nothing else, they hit that particular balance between features and performance that a lot of users were looking for.

Meanwhile, the addition of 3D Touch was the sort of refinement to the user experience that still remains exclusive to the iPhone. Other OEMs have implemented some form of force sensing, but the implementation is not really executed in a way to improve user experience in a noticeable way. Adoption remained weak as well, with no real widespread support in the ecosystem for such features.

That said, the iPhone doesn't exist in a vacuum on its own. Even in just the high-end market segment Apple limits themselves to, they have a loyal opposition, and that opposition is of course Samsung. Looking at the state of affairs there, relative to the iPhone 6s the Galaxy S6 had a better camera for still images, but it was obvious that it couldn’t freeze motion as well. The phone itself was fairly thick as well due to the need to accommodate a much larger battery. Despite the larger battery, battery life on LTE just wasn’t where it needed to be. The Galaxy Note5 was in many ways a similar story, which isn't too surprising as the Note has moved closer and closer to being a phablet-version of the Galaxy S.

But, as the story goes, Apple's competition has improved and advanced. The Galaxy S6 gave way to the even better Galaxy S7, HTC finally found their groove with the HTC 10, and OnePlus's 3 is their best showing yet. The competition is getting better, and with the iPhone 7, Apple can no longer rely on weak competition or pent-up demand for some major feature. The iPhone 7 must stand by its merits against this increasingly stiff competition.

To see how it manages, read on for the full review.

Back at CES, we saw what looked like a first budget-style entry into the 10GBase-T networking arena for low-cost, high-speed RJ-45 networking that would be backwards compatible with most of an enthusiasts home network infrastructure. At the time I was told it would be $300, but I misread the brochure and thought it said ten 10G ports. When I realized it said two ports 10GBase-T with another 8x1G ports, it still looked pretty interesting to say the least. ASUS is now formally announcing the launch of the hardware, called the XG-U2008, for $250 available at Newegg today.

At CES we saw a brushed aluminium switch, with the aim focused more on the premium and prosumer market. The styling of the switch on release essentially matches the one we saw at the show. There isn’t much in the way to say about the switch – it is unmanaged, offers two 10GBase-T ports and eight 1G ports, with the latter also supporting 100 Mbps standards. The total switch fabric affords a rated 56 Gbps bandwidth as well as up to 16 KB jumbo frames and a 2Mb memory buffer. The external adapter is rated at 18W, and it measures 1.06-inch high.

Putting this into perspective, we recently did a quick news post rounding up all the motherboards with 10GBase-T preinstalled and noted that the additional cost of the switch and the motherboard puts the cost per port for 10GBase-T around $100-$150. Aside from the $200 extra per motherboard for one or two ports, an 8-port switch comes in at around $700 (or a 16-port for $1400). Compared to the larger and more expensive switches, this switch only has two 10G ports, meaning that the only options for connectivity will be between a 10G NAS and a bigger 10G switch, or a 10G PC and a 10G NAS - ASUS marks down that for a PC-based LAN, a couple of servers could be on the 10G ports instead.

Options for low-cost 10GBase-T switches mean that it’s a minimum $700 for a few ports, which for most users is not particularly low cost. Bringing at least two ports in a 10G switch for $250 brings the cost of ownership right down and more palatable, although only having two ports has some limitations. The fact that it's available straight away from Newegg for anyone (in the US) is a plus.

Source: ASUS Edge Up, ASUS Product Page, Newegg

Microsoft has begun to sell HP’s Elite x3 smartphone at its Windows Store. The handset is one of the most powerful Windows 10 Mobile-based devices and the one of a few initially aimed at the business professionals on a company contract. The fact that Microsoft has started to sell the HP Elite x3 indicates that the smartphone is now available to general consumers as well.

Microsoft sells unlocked HP’s Elite x3 at it MSRP of $799, which is much higher than the price of typical Windows smartphones. The handset comes with its Continuum desk dock that features an Ethernet adapter, as well as DisplayPort USB connectors, and can work with desktop displays as well as keyboards. Meanwhile, neither Microsoft nor HP currently offer the Elite x3 Lap Dock device, which can transform the Elite x3 smartphone into a laptop.

The HP Elite x3 smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 SoC and is currently the only Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile-based smartphone to use the chip. The device is equipped a 5.96” AMOLED display and comes with 64 MB of eMMC 5.1 NAND flash storage, 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM as well as all the necessary connectivity features, including 4G/LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a USB Type-C connector. Developed specifically for enterprise and business users, who value security, the HP Elite x3 is FIPS 140-2 certified and features Secure Boot (with iris and fingerprint scanners), full disk encryption with a 256-bit key, fTPM 2.0, and so on. The smartphone from HP also takes advantage of Microsoft’s Continuum technology, which allows you to run your phone as a desktop PC.

At present, the HP Elite x3 has no rivals in the price range because it is the only Windows 10 smartphone that sells for $799. In the Continuum space, the HP Elite x3 competes against Acer's Liquid Jade Primo as well as Microsoft’s own Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, which are available for $449, $399 and $499 respectively.

For most PC enthusiasts, if you ask them to name a cylindrical machine, the Mac Pro comes immediately to mind. Not to tread too heavily on Apple’s toes on what would now be a 2-3-year-old product, Samsung is entering the market with a more consumer focused ‘ArtPC Pulse Premium Desktop’ in a cylindrical aluminium chassis. The PC is self-contained with an Intel 6^th generation Core i5 or Core i7, and an AMD Radeon RX based graphics card. On the top is a harmon/kardon 360-degree omni-directional audio speaker.

Preorders for both the Skylake-based Core i5 and Skylake-based Core i7 start from $1200 and $1600 from Amazon respectively. The exact CPU models have not been listed by either Samsung or Amazon as of yet, however it states the Core i5 is at 2.7 GHz, which is akin to the i5-6400 at 65W TDP or i5-6600T at 35W – the latter seeming more appropriate. For the Core i7, it is listed as 3.4 GHz, which would put it as the i7-6700, at 65W.

Here’s the breakdown of the two systems, with the more expensive MSI Vortex G65 that has a full i7-6700K and dual GPUs:

We don’t have pictures of the internals, but one would assume that both systems would offer dual channel memory and Samsung NVMe drives, however it is unclear if these are user upgradable. The Core i5 is listed as having 8GB of DDR4 (probably DDR4-2133) and a 256GB NVMe SSD, whereas the Core i7 is listed as having 16GB of DDR4 and a 256GB NVMe SSD with another 1TB SATA HDD. It doesn’t state that the 1TB is mechanical, or a 2.5-inch drive, so until we can see the insides it is hard to tell. It is stated that the 1TB is a ‘module’ and users can add their own ‘modules’, but no further information is given. Both systems come with an AMD Radeon RX 460 graphics card, which we would assume would be the MXM version similarly used in notebooks, but in this case with 2GB of GPU memory.

Clearly visible are four USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port (unsure on the speed), a HDMI output, an Ethernet port, an SD card reader and a single headphone jack. For this price it seems a little strange not to see any front facing Thunderbolt 3 ports here, and given that there are harmon/karmon speakers fitted, and something more in the audio ports might be worthwhile. It would be interesting to get a breakdown and see which audio codec they’ve fitted for the headphone audio port, as well as the Ethernet port controller. A note about the speakers - the Amazon listing for these machines indicates that 3xAA batteries are required, which might mean for the speaker itself as a separate entity, or these machines might come with a remote control.

The design is fairly minimal in design and measures 5.51 x 5.51 x 12.18 inches (13.9 x 13.9 x 30.9 cm) and uses the single central fan concept we’ve seen on a few other devices like the Mac Pro, the MSI Vortex and the GIGABYTE UHD Brix.

The Samsung ArtPC is available for preorder today at $1200 and $1600 from Amazon, to be delivered on the 28^th of October in the US.

Source: Liliputing, MS Power User

Update 10/12: Seemingly set to put an end to this saga, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Samsung has informed South Korean regulators that it intends to permanently cease production of the phone. Given the issues Samsung has experienced, it goes without saying that this is not surprising, and this will mean that the Note7 will not get a third shot in the market.

Samsung made it official today that it is suspending all sales and exchanges of its beleaguered Galaxy Note7 smartphone, and it is also asking all partners to do the same.

After reports of several phones catching on fire after it initially went on sale, Samsung initiated a global recall while it investigated the source of the problem, which traced the issue to defective batteries from a specific supplier (Samsung sources batteries from more than one supplier). With the problem seemingly solved, Samsung initiated an exchange program where customers could trade in their defective Note7s for new, supposedly safe, ones or a new Galaxy S7 or S7 edge instead.

Unfortunately, it did not take long for fresh reports of battery fires to surface. Several of the replacement Note7s have caught fire too, including one that forced a Southwest Airlines flight in Louisville, Kentucky to be evacuated on October 5th. Another replacement Note7 caught fire in a Farmington, Minnesota girl’s hand on October 7th.

Here's Samsung's official statement:

We are working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to investigate the recently reported cases involving the Galaxy Note7. Because consumers’ safety remains our top priority, Samsung will ask all carrier and retail partners globally to stop sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note7 while the investigation is taking place.

 

We remain committed to working diligently with the CPSC, carriers and our retail partners to take all necessary steps to resolve the situation. Consumers with an original Galaxy Note7 or replacement Galaxy Note7 should power down and take advantage of the remedies available, including a refund at their place of purchase. For more information, consumers should visit samsung.com/us/note7recall or contact 1-844-365-6197.

These new incidents suggest that the Note7’s issue is not limited to a single battery supplier like Samsung first thought. The Note7 is clearly a safety risk at this point, and we recommend that anyone that currently owns a Note7 heed Samsung’s advice and immediately power down the device and store it in a fire-safe location until it can be returned or exchanged.

After completing the acquisition of SanDisk, Western Digital is entering the consumer SSD market under its own brand with new SSDs derived from existing SanDisk product lines. As with their hard drives, the Blue SSD is a mainstream mid-range product, in this case using the SanDisk X400's combination of SanDisk 15nm TLC and Marvell's 88SS1074 controller.

Today we'll be taking a look at the 1TB drive, how it compares to its sibling, the X400, and whether it can find its place in the highly competitive mainstream SSD market.

Five months ago, Western Digital completed its acquisition of SSD and NAND flash manufacturer SanDisk, adding consumer SSDs and more enterprise SSDs to their existing portfolio of hard drives and HGST enterprise SSDs. WD is now introducing two families of WD-branded consumer SSDs, each derived from existing SanDisk product lines.

The WD Blue SSD is based on the SanDisk X400 SATA SSD with minimal hardware changes but has modified firmware and different usable capacities. Like the X400, the WD Blue is available as either a 2.5" or M.2 drive and uses SanDisk 15nm TLC NAND with the Marvell 88SS1074 controller. Our review of the 1TB WD Blue SSD shows that it improves on some of the X400's weaknesses but sacrifices some performance on many tests, producing a drive that is not quite as fast overall. The MSRP for the WD Blue is about the same as current actual retail prices for the SanDisk X400, which position it as a mid-range SATA SSD and puts it up against formidable competition from the new wave of drives using the more affordable 3D TLC NAND from Micron.

The WD Green SSD is an entry-level product line with limited capacity options. Based on the SanDisk SSD Plus, it uses a Silicon Motion controller in a DRAM-less configuration with SanDisk 15nm TLC NAND. The WD Green has a similar purpose to drives like the Samsung 750 EVO and the recently-announced OCZ TL100: to offer the lowest possible price while still providing acceptable reliability and a noticeable performance jump over hard drives. Higher capacities are omitted from the product line because the total price would be too high for the most cost-sensitive consumers even if the price per GB is marginally lower than a more mainstream budget drive.

While the Green label has connotations of better than average power efficiency when applied to WD's hard drives, the low performance of DRAM-less SSDs usually leads to poor energy efficiency during active use and the idle power savings tend to be minimal.

The WD Green will be available later this quarter, and pricing has not been announced.

Today HP announced an update to their product lineup, and one of the one announcement that caught my eye immediately was the new ENVY 27 display. HP has packed a lot of features into a great looking display, but best of all it’s going to be available for $499.

The 27-inch display is an IPS panel, and although HP doesn’t list the refresh rate, it is likely going to be 60 Hz. It also supports FreeSync, meaning it should help with image tearing when gaming at 4K, where the high resolution really taxes even the strongest cards. The benefits won’t be as pronounced as some higher refresh rate gaming displays, but regardless it is better to have this than not.

HP is also promoting that the “sRGB color accuracy exceeds 99 percent” which sounds like they don’t mean what they are saying. Accuracy is generally measured in Delta E, where lower is better, and gamut coverage is measured in percentage. With full sRGB gamut coverage, hopefully they have spent a bit of effort on panel calibration, and if so they will have a pretty nice display for the money.

It also features DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB-C for connectivity, and the latter can also charge your laptop or phone with up to 60 Watts of power. That means this can be a single cable connection to drive the display and power the laptop, which is exactly what USB-C is designed to achieve, and it’s great to see more products supporting this. For a desktop, it is less important, but if you want to dock your laptop, a single cable will give you display, and power.

The design is a thin bezel, with a chrome finished support mounting the display to the base. There is no mention of height adjustment, and the images are unclear.

As already mentioned, this 27-inch 4K IPS FreeSync display will be price at just $499, with availability starting December 4^th.

Source: HP via Windows Blog

Today we are having our first encounter with one of the oldest PC case designers, In Win. The company supplied us with the 303, one of their most anticipated unique designs that features an entirely metallic body and a tempered glass side panel, suitable for systems up to ATX in size.

Anyone tasked with handling the way data is moved around a processor deserves praise. It takes time, dedication and skill to design something that not only works appropriately and for all edge cases, but also can run at speed and seamlessly for software. The topic of interconnects has featured regularly over recent years, with cache coherent networks and unique custom designs entering both hardware released to the public as well as behind-the-scenes designs. This week sees the launch of the Gen-Z Consortium, featuring names such as ARM, Huawei, IBM, Mellanox, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Xilinx, with the purpose of designing a new memory semantic fabric that focuses on the utilization of ‘on-package and storage class memory’ (HMC, phase-change, 3D XPoint etc) at the hardware level.

The purpose of the Consortium is the development of the interconnect, with a focus on being an open and non-proprietary standard that scales from node to rack, and free from royalties (it’s a non-profit). The interconnect will be a memory semantic fabric, handling memory operations and communications such as load/store, put/get and atomics that are typically managed by the processor and software. The issue arrives when memory is in storage class devices which are block based rather than cache line based, and thus there is an aim for a high bandwidth (>100GB/s) with low latency (sub-100ns) for load-to-use functionality.

The interconnect is also aimed at offering real-time analytics, working between CPU cores, SoCs, FPGAs, GPUs, pooled memory and networked storage. There is also aims for security, as well as support via unmodified operating systems (which indicates that the new interconnect is a pure hardware design) and support within tiered memory hierarchy. Another goal is low-cost implementation, which will require working close with semiconductor manufacturers.

The Consortium consists of a number of key players designing SoCs and large scale systems:

Among the IP vendors (ARM, IBM) are fabless semiconductor companies (Broadcom, Xilinx) and big enterprise players (Dell EMC, HPE, Cray for supercomputers). Any which way you cut it, it represents a lot of the industry, except one major player at least – Intel. Despite Micron in there with 3D XPoint, Intel’s own designed interconnects are under lock-and-key with patents and proprietary technology, and given how the enterprise market is moving more into accelerators and/or non-x86 architectures with a myriad of microarchitectural designs, solution providers have more options to choose from. That being said, with the goal of Gen-Z to be open and free, that doesn’t stop anyone else from actually using it and it would be argued that the ultimate goal is to promote adoption.

Despite this week being the formal announcement of the Gen-Z Consortium, it would seem that something has been brewing for a while given that the press release today has stated that the core specification covering the architecture and protocol will be finalized in late 2016. I suspect we might hear something at SuperComputing 2016 in mid-November.

Source: Gen-Z

Gallery: Gen-Z Slide Deck

With the recent launch of AMD’s Radeon 400 series parts and consequent focus on hardware, it’s been some time now since we’ve heard from AMD about their Gaming Evolved application. As it turns out, there’s a reason for this. Thanks to some digging by the crew over at WCCFtech, it turns out that AMD discontinued the application last month and will no longer be distributing or supporting it.

The Gaming Evolved App was back in 2013 as part of the Radeon 200 series launch. The utility launched as a settings optimization service, which in a departure from other efforts, relied on crowdsourced data to generate settings recommendations rather than AMD running centralized testing. Though never explicitly called so by AMD, the client was clearly their answer to NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience, offering an AMD take on settings optimizations, video recording, and the like. Though branded as an AMD application, the utility was in practice a second-party initiative of sorts, and at its core it was a customized version of the Raptr’s eponymous gaming utility. The most recent major update to the Gaming Evolved App was in March of this year, when AMD & Raptr added additional video recording and editing functionality.

But after 3 years, it would seem that AMD has decided to discontinue the client for reasons unknown. After noticing that the client was no longer being bundled with the latest drivers, WCCFtech reached out to AMD, who provided the following statement.

Starting September 12th 2016, AMD is no longer bundling the “AMD Gaming Evolved App” by Raptr with builds of Radeon Software. The application will still work. AMD will cease to undertake any compatibility testing, install support or general technical support for this application, nor will it be available through Radeon Software or its installer. Previous builds of Radeon Software that include the “AMD Gaming Evolved App” dated before September 12th 2016 will remain intact and will not be affected.

At this point AMD is not bundling a similar application with their drivers, nor do their drivers contain equivalent settings/recording functionality. So at least for the time being it’s fair to say that AMD no longer has a counterpart to GeForce Experience. That said, the Gaming Evolved App wasn’t a 1^st party effort and its continued existence was never assured, but it is admittedly rare to see a software feature/package dropped in this manner.

GIGABYTE has updated its BRIX family of small form-factor PCs with Intel’s latest Core processors featuring the optimized Kaby Lake microarchitecture. The new systems are promoted to offer better performance than their predecessors, but are otherwise identical to BRIX PC powered by Intel’s Skylake processors: they support DDR4-2133 memory, M.2-2280 NVMe SSDs, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, USB Type-C connectors and use Intel NICs. Apart from performance, the notable improvement the new BRIX systems have are HDMI 2.0 outputs which we suspect to be via provided via an onboard LSPCON.

As Intel’s 7^th generation Kaby Lake-U CPUs are drop-in compatible with motherboards supporting the Skylake-U chips, GIGABYTE uses exactly the same chassis for the new BRIX PCs featuring previous-gen processors: one is 0.46 L in volume and another is a bit larger at 0.6 L. Meanwhile, the new PCs also have better CPU and GPU performance due to higher frequency and improved architecture. Besides, the latest BRIX PCs come with HDMI 2.0 outputs, thus supporting 4K (4096×2160 pixels at 60 Hz) resolution (the HDCP 2.2 tech compulsory for certain content is supported). By contrast, the predecessors of the new BRIX systems only had HDMI 1.4b connectors (they still had mDP 1.2 ports with 4Kp60 support).

The audio codec is perhaps a downside, with a laptop-class ALC255 in use, however we see an Intel NIC on board which is typically a requirement for embedded management systems. I would suspect that GIGABYTE will offer these units with vPro enabled hardware/software to specific business customers if needed.

Since GIGABYTE BRIX SFF systems are barebones, end-users or systems integrators will have to equip them with their own DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM memory, an M.2 SSD and/or a 2.5” hard drive (0.6 L BRIX PCs only). Since the computers are based on Intel’s Core i-series mobile processors in BGA packaging, they cannot be upgraded with better CPUs and GPUs. As there's no Thunderbolt 3, there's no provision for external GPUs with Kaby Lake at this time.

GIGABYTE did not announce recommended prices or release dates of the new BRIX systems, but MSRPs should be similar compared to existing SFF PCs based on Intel’s Skylake processors. As for availability, typically we see devices like this on sale in 2-4 weeks after the manufacturer lists them on their website.

Gallery: Gigabyte Upgrades BRIX SFF PCs with Intel’s Kaby Lake CPUs

Huawei’s first foray into the US smartphone market was with the Honor 5X, a lower-cost device with a well-balanced design. Encouraged by its initial reception, Huawei is back with a new device for the US—the Honor 8. While the Honor 5X hits a lower $199 price point, the Honor 8 costs twice as much but significantly improves performance and features. In many ways, it’s a restyled, less-expensive version of Huawei’s P9.

HP has introduced its new ENVY 13 premium laptops based on Intel’s Core i-series Kaby Lake processors. The notebooks resemble their predecessors featuring Skylake CPUs, but naturally offer all the advantages that Intel’s latest chips have, including higher performance and better energy efficiency. Other notable enhancements over the predecessors are a new battery and a USB Type-C port. In addition, HP reduced the starting price of the ENVY 13 to $849, down from $899 in case of the previous-gen model.

The HP ENVY 13 2016 uses exactly the same chassis as its predecessor released a few years ago. The PCs feature lifted hinge design to enable more comfortable typing (says HP, others may disagree) and are made of machined aluminum and magnesium. As for weight and dimensions, they are up to 12.95 mm thick and they weigh up to 1.49 kilograms (3.3 lb) depending on the actual configuration. Display panels of the ENVY also remained the same: HP offers a choice between a QHD+ (3200×1800) IPS panel (with or without touch support) and an FHD (1920×1080) IPS panel.

Internally, the HP ENVY 13 also resembles its ancestor with 8 GB of DRAM (optionally upgradeable to 16 GB), 128 GB SATA AHCI or 256 GB/512 GB/1 TB PCIe NVMe SSDs. The new HP ENVY 13 is also equipped with a 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi + BT 4.1 controller, a backlit keyboard, a webcam and so on. Among external ports, the ENVY 13 offers one USB 3.0 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A, an HDMI output, a TRRS connector as well as a microSD card reader.

The key improvement of HP’s ENVY 13 over previous-gen model is its processor: the manufacturer offers to install either the Intel Core i7-7500U or the Intel Core i5-7200U with Intel’s HD Graphics 620. The new CPUs feature higher frequencies, considerably improved video encoding/decoding engine, refined graphics as well as Speed Shift v2 technology, which should make the new ENVY 13 snappier and more responsive in general. It is also noteworthy that HP uses hyperbaric chamber cooling for its premium notebooks (ENVY 13, Spectre, etc.), so, everything should run more or less cool and quiet.

Yet another improvement of this year’s ENVY 13 is the new 57.8 Wh battery, up from 45 Wh on the previous-gen models. The higher battery capacity along with improved energy efficiency of Intel’s new CPUs will naturally prolong battery life of the new ENVY 13 laptops: HP claims about up to 14 hours, but everything depends on actual configuration and usage model (a notebook with a QHD+ display will not last that long).

Finally, HP decided to lower the price of the entry level ENVY 13 (Core i5-7200U, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD, an FHD panel, etc.) to $849, down from $899. The machines with higher performance and better displays will naturally retail at higher price points, when they hit the market in the coming weeks.

Source: HP via Lilliputing.

Some of you may remember AMD announcing the "Torrenza" technology 10 years ago. The idea was to offer a fast and coherent interface between the CPU and various types of "accelerators" (via Hyper Transport). It was one of the first initiatives to enable "heterogeneous computing".

We now have technology that could be labeled "heterogeneous computing", the most popular form being GPU computing. There have been also encryption, compression and network accelerators, but the advantages of those accelerators were never really clear, as shifting data back and forth to the CPU was in many cases less efficient than letting the CPU process it with optimized instructions. Heterogeneous computing was in the professional world mostly limited to HPC; in the consumer world a "nice to have".

But times are changing. The sensors of the Internet of Things, the semantic web and the good old www are creating a massive and exponentially growing flood of data that can not be stored and analyzed by traditional means. Machine learning offers a way of classifying all that data and finding patterns "automatically". As a result, we witnessed a "machine learning renaissance", with quite a few breakthroughs. Google had to deal with this years ago before most other companies, and released some of those AI breakthroughs of the Google Brain Team in the Open Source world, one example being "TensorFlow". And when Google releases important technology into the Open Source world, we know we got to pay attention. When Google released the Google File System and Big Table back in 2004 for example, a little bit later the big data revolution with Hadoop, HDFS and NoSQL databases erupted.

Big Data thus needs big brains: we need more processing power than ever. As Moore's law is dead (the end of CMOS scaling), we can not expect much from process technology advancements. The processing power has to come from ASICs (see Google's TPU), FPGAs (see Microsoft's project Catapult) and GPUs.

Those accelerators need a new "Torrenza technology", a fast, coherent interconnect to the CPU. NVIDIA was first with NVLink, but an open standard would be even better. IBM on the other hand was willing to share the CAPI interface.

To that end, Google, AMD, Xilinx, Micron and Mellanox have joined forces with IBM to create a "coherent high performance bus interface" based on a new bus standard called "Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface" (OpenCAPI). Capable of a 25Gbits per second per lane data rate, OpenCAPI outperforms the current PCIe specification, which offers a maximum data transfer rate of 16Gbits per second for a PCIe 3.0 lane. We assume that the total bandwidth will be a lot higher for quite a few OpenCAPI devices, as OpenCAPI lanes will be bundled together.

It is a win, win for everybody besides Intel. It is clear now that IBM's OpenPOWER initiative is gaining a lot of traction and that IBM is deadly serious about offering an alternative to the Intel dominated datacenter. IBM will implement the OpenCAPI interface in the POWER9 servers in 2017. Those POWER9s will not only have a very fast interface to NVIDIA GPUs (via NVLink), but also to Google's ASICs and Xilinx FPGAs accelerators.

Meanwhile this benefits AMD as they get access to an NVLink alternative to link up the Radeon GPU power to the upcoming Zen based server processors. Micron can link faster (and more profitable than DRAM) memory to the CPU. Mellanox can do the same for networking. OpenCAPI is even more important for the Xilinx FPGAs as a coherent interface can make FPGAs attractive for a much wider range of applications than today.

And guess what, Dell/EMC has joined this new alliance just a few days ago. Intel has to come up with an answer...

Update: courtesy of commenter Yojimbo: "NVIDIA is a member of the OpenCAPI consortium, at the "contributor level", which is the same level Xilinx has. The same is true for HPE (HP Enterprise)".

This is even bigger than we thought. Probably the biggest announcement in the server market this year.

Gallery: OpenCAPI Announcement

EIZO has introduced two new 27” displays designed for professionals and prosumers. The ColorEdge CG2730 and the ColorEdge CS2730 monitors share a lot of technologies and have a lot of similarities, but a number of distinctions allow EIZO to position and price them completely differently.

The EIZO CG2730 and the EIZO CS2730 displays are based on 27” 10-bit 2560×1440 IPS panels with a 60 Hz refresh rate. Based on the specifications, the monitors sport a 350 nits typical brightness, 1500:1 or 1000:1 static contrast, 13 or 10 ms ms response time, and 178° viewing angles. As for I/O capabilities, both devices are equipped with a triple-port USB 3.0 hub as well as DVI-D, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 inputs. In addition, both monitors come bundled with the company’s proprietary ColorNavigator 6 software, which can set the right brightness, gamma and other settings for photography, printing and web design with the help of calibration devices.

Apart from differences in static contrast and response time, the new monitors from EIZO have a number of other important differences. In particular, the higher-end professional EIZO Color Edge CG2730 can cover 99% of the Adobe RGB and 98% of the DCI-P3 color spaces. DCI-P3 is generally important for video editors and animation designers, who do post-production work, because the standard is used for digital movie projection in the U.S. and is expected to be adopted by television and home cinema industries in the future. In addition, the CG2730 is covered with a special retardation film, which ensures depth of dark tones when viewed from an angle. Moreover, to simplify calibration without using any third-party calibration devices, the monitor features a special sensor. Finally, the professional-grade display comes bundled with a shading hood that prevents glare.

By contrast, the EIZO ColorEdge CS2730 is aimed at entertainment enthusiasts and prosumers. It only covers 99% of Adobe RGB color space and does not support the aforementioned pro-level features of the CG2730 (yet, it has better response time and that is important for gamers). Realistically speaking, the difference between two displays should not be too dramatic for a non-professional eye in typical applications because both are based on 10-bit IPS panels with 16-bit look-up-table and have similar brightness. Meanwhile, when it comes to contrast and the quality of dark colors, the CG2730 is expected to be significantly better than its consumer-oriented brother.

EIZO did not announce MSRPs for its new displays, but said they would be available in November. Just like other ColorEdge monitors the new CG2730 and CS2730 come with a five-year warranty, which is longer than warranties offered by some other display manufacturers.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update came out at the beginning of August, with plenty of new user-facing features. There were also plenty of changes under the hood as well, including a change in policy regarding how Windows 10 handles device drivers.

When the 64-bit versions of Windows launched over a decade ago, as a security measure Microsoft decided to require that all kernel mode drivers must be signed to be loaded. Under the aptly named cross-signing requirement, hardware vendors would need to get a certificate from one of the major certificate authorities, and use that to sign their drivers. The idea being that by enforcing signing restrictions, it would be much harder for malware to masquerade as legitimate drivers.

This however didn't go quite as well as planned. In particular, malware authors begun stealing driver signing certificates from hardware vendors, allowing them to distribute malware that was for all practical purposes authentic as far as the operating system was concerned. As a result, when Windows 10 initially launched, Microsoft decided to take things one step further and require that not only would kernel mode drivers need to be signed, but that they would need to be WHQL signed by Microsoft.

With that said however, Microsoft's plans hit a snag. There were technical complications to this decision, as well as a problem with the ecosystem being ready for this change. So for Windows 10, WHQL signing was a policy statement and not something that was enforced.

Now with the rollout of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) this policy is no longer just policy, but an enforced requirement: in a fully secure x64 system, all kernel mode drivers must be signed by Microsoft. But, as with all rules, there are exceptions. The new requirement does not affect anyone who has upgraded from a previous build of Windows 10, and therefore it only affects new clean installs of Windows 10 1607. Furthermore the policy is only enforced if Secure Boot is enabled, so for those that require the ability to run traditionally (non-Microsoft) signed kernel mode drivers, one possible work around is to disable Secure Boot. As a backwards compatibility measure, Microsoft is also allowing the installation of drivers signed with end-entity certificates issued before July 29, 2015 which are signed by a supported CA. Finally, to prevent boot issues, boot drivers will not be blocked at this time, but the will be blocked in future versions of Windows.

An example of a warning notice for a driver now blocked under Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Getting to heart of matters then, the additional signing requirements for Windows 10 piqued our curiosity on driver compatibility, and as a result we've gone and taken a quick look at how this change impacts the average user. In practice, it shouldn’t impact very many people at all, as many hardware vendors only ship WHQL (Microsoft signed) drivers to begin with. But there is one particular segment of hardware manufacturers that still semi-regularly release non-WHQL drivers, and that's the GPU vendors. Both AMD and to a lesser extent NVIDIA periodically release beta, hotfix, and other types of drivers that aren't WHQL signed. The obvious question then is raised: will users still be able to run these non-WHQL driver releases under Windows 10 Anniversary Update?

To answer that question, we reached out to both companies for comment, and while only NVIDIA got back to us, they are not too concerned:

"All of our Game-Ready driver releases are fully WHQL certified, so this shouldn’t significantly impact GeForce users at all." - NVIDIA Spokesperson

As NVIDIA only releases the occasional non-WHQL hotfix driver, they are less likely to be impacted to begin with. And indeed, they haven't had a hotfix release since before the release of Windows 10 Anniversary Update. AMD on the other hand has had a couple such releases, so we decided to simply see what would happen if you installed a non-WHQL driver release on a Secure Boot enabled system.

As it turns out, even AMD driver releases marked as non-WHQL are still sent to Microsoft for signing. And as a result they install on Windows 10 Anniversary Update just fine. Now to be technically accurate, AMD could always ship an unsigned driver if they deem it necessary. But as we can see, some thought has been put into this, and the company isn't releasing any drivers that won't install under Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Nor, do I expect that NVIDIA would ship unsigned hotfix drivers either.

The net impact to the average user then is essentially zero. Having drivers that are signed by Microsoft but not fully WHQL does blur the line between what is and isn't really WHQL. But because all drivers are being signed regardless of WHQL status, it means that non-WHQL drivers are just as usable under Windows 10 Anniversary Update as they were before with the original release of Windows 10. This, ultimately, was the conclusion we expected to find. But it's nice to be able to confirm what we've already suspected.