Anandtech News

**FEED** · 02-05-20, 06:47 PM

As high refresh rates increasingly become a standard feature in monitors aimed at the gaming market, manufacturers have started to turn their eyes towards what's next in the ever-ongoing race to stay ahead of their competition. So, with 144Hz displays seemingly conqured, that attention has turned to ever higher refresh rates. Following this trend, MSI this week introduced its Optix MAG322CR LCD, one of the industry’s first displays with a 180 Hz maximum refresh rate.
The MSI Optix MAG322CR uses a slightly curved 31.5-inch 8-bit+FRC VA panel with a 1920x1080 resolution. All told, the monitor offers a maximum brightness of 300 nits, a 3000:1 contrast ratio, a 1 ms MPRT response time, and a maximum refresh rate of 180 with VESA Adaptive-Sync support. As well, the monitor is also AMD Freesync certified. Meanwhile MSI is using a wider-gamut backlighting system, so the monitor can display 96% of the DCI-P3 and 125% of the sRGB color gamuts.
The MAG322CR is also marked as ‘HDR Ready’; though with 300 nits peak brightness it doesn't even meet the VESA's lowest DisplayHDR tier. So it's hard to imagine the monitor delivering a quality HDR experience.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the Optix MAG322CR is equipped with one DisplayPort 1.2a, two HDMI 2.0b connectors, and a USB Type-C port (with DP Alt Mode support). Also, the monitor has a dual-port USB 2.0 hub, and an earphone out.

Being aimed at serious gamers who demand not only performance, but also style, the Optix MAG322CR comes equipped with Mystic Light addressable RGB LEDs on the back that support a variety of modes.

The MSI Optix MAG322CR Monitor
		Optix MAG322CR
Panel		31.5" VA 8-bit+FRC
Native Resolution		1920 × 1080 (16:9)
Refresh Rate		180 Hz OC
Dynamic Refresh Rate	Technology	VESA Adaptive-Sync (AMD Freesync Certified)
Range	?
Response Time		1 ms MPRT
Brightness		300 cd/m²
Contrast		3000:1
Color Gamut		96% DCI-P3 125% sRGB
Viewing Angles		178°/178° horizontal/vertical
Curvature		1500R
Inputs		1 × DisplayPort 1.2a 2 × HDMI 2.0b
USB Hub		2 × USB 2.0
Audio		earphone out
Stand	Height	130 mm
Tilt	+20° ~ -5°
Swivel	-
Power Consumption	Idle	?
Typical	?
Maximum	?
MSRP		?

MSI’s Optix MAG322CR is currently listed at the company’s website, so it is reasonable to expect it to hit the market shortly. Amazon.com currently lists the monitor as available for pre-order for $329.99, with the monitor slated to ship within one or two months.
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Source: MSI (via Hermitage Akihabara)

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**FEED** · 02-06-20, 09:07 AM

GIGABYTE is a relatively new player on the memory market, yet it clearly wants to participate in the premier league. As seen at CES, this week the company introduced its Designare 32 GB memory that claims to offer both high speed and low latency. The company positions its Designare memory for high-performance systems powered by Designare motherboards.
GIGABYTE’s dual-channel 64 GB Designare Memory kit was tested to operate in DDR4-3200 mode with CL16 18-18-38 latency at 1.35 V. The modules rated for Intel Core as well as AMD Ryzen-based PCs.

The manufacturer does not disclose which memory chips it uses.

The modules are a standard height and come with modest aluminum heat spreaders that do not affect compatibility with large cooling systems.

GIGABYTE’s Designare 64 GB kit consisting of two 32 GB modules is covered by a lifetime warranty, just like other high-end memory. Expect the kit to hit the market shortly - prices will vary from region to region and will depend on the market conditions.
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Source: GIGABYTE

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**FEED** · 02-06-20, 09:07 AM

Micron has announced their first LPDDR5 DRAM is in mass production and now shipping to customers. The new RAM is significantly faster and more power efficient than LPDDR4x. One of the first products to use the new LPDDR5 will be the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 10 smartphone.
Micron's LPDDR5 is available in 6GB, 8GB and 12GB packages, with speeds of 5.5Gbps and 6.4Gbps per pin. The faster speed grade is a 50% improvement over their fastest LPDDR4x products (4266Mbps per pin), and Micron also claims better than 20% reduction in power use compared to LPDDR4x. Micron will also soon be offering multi-chip packages pairing LPDDR5 with UFS-based flash storage; these products will be available sometime during the first half of the year.
The most visible applications for LPDDR5 will be this year's crop of flagship smartphones, but Micron is also targeting automotive and networking applications with the obligatory references to 5G and AI driving demand for faster memory.
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**FEED** · 02-06-20, 02:16 PM

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has unveiled the the company has finished the development of its next-generation heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) media for hard drives. The platters use all-new magnetic thin films with a very small crystal grain size in order to maximize their areal density, with the goal of eventually enabling 3.5-inch HDDs to be built with capacities of 70 TB to 80 TB.
SDK’s platters for HAMR HDDs are made of aluminum and feature thin film magnetic layer made of an Fe-Pt alloy. To improve the magnetic coercivity of the media by several times over existing platters, Showa Denko used a new structure of magnetic layers and implemented new ways of controlling the temperature of the media during production.
Driving these developments, it's critical to maximize the magnetic coercivity of next generation HDD platters because the crystal grains used to record data are getting extremely small. This has made them very easy to magnetize, but it has also reduced the strength of the individual magnetic signatures, which creates an unwanted magnetic inter-track interference (ITI) effect that makes it harder for HDD heads to read the data. Platters with high magnetic coercivity require energy assistance during writing and this is what energy assisted magnetic recording technologies (HAMR, MAMR, ePMR, etc.) are all about. Meanwhile, the platters must survive extreme temperatures they are subjected to during heat-assisted recording. According to Showa Denko, its new HAMR platters offer the industry’s highest read-write characteristics and durability.

Transmission Electron Microscopy Images of HAMR Media

Plain View Cross Section

SDK is not disclosing the recording density of its new platters nor are they making specific promises about when it intends to start mass production of next-generation disks. Meanwhile, the company notes that today’s leading-edge conventional magnetic recording (CMR) platters feature recording density of about 1.14 Tb/in²and it is widely believed that this is not going to grow significantly without using energy assisted recording methods. By contrast, Showa Denko believes, HAMR-based media will achieve areal density of 5-6 Tb/in² in the future, which will increase capacity of hard drives by several times, all the way to 70 TB – 80 TB per 3.5-inch drive without increasing the number of platters. For comparison's sake, today’s 16 TB CMR (PMR+TDMR) HDDs use nine disks, so increasing their density by ~5.2X would enable drives featuring capacities higher than 80 TB.
Showa Denko is the world’s largest independent maker of platters for hard drives, selling media to all of the HDD producers. That said, the large manufacturers — Seagate and Western Digital — also produce media themselves and tend to use their own leading-edge platters to cut costs and maximize product margins. So it will be interesting to see which of three remaining hard drive makers will be the first to use HAMR platters from Showa Denko.
Seagate will be the first company to adopt HAMR for commercial 20 TB drives in late 2020, but since Showa Denko now only plans to ‘make preparations for full-scale supply of the new HD media’, it is likely that the first HAMR drives will use Seagate’s own platters. Toshiba is expected to use Showa Denko’s 2 TB MAMR platters for its 18 TB HDDs that are projected to arrive later this year, but in the longer terms it will switch to HAMR (we have no idea when). By contrast, Western Digital uses its so-called energy-assisted PMR (ePMR) technology for its 18 TB and 20 TB HDDs due this year and will gradually move to MAMR and HAMR in the years to come.
Related Reading:

Source: Showa Denko

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**FEED** · 02-07-20, 09:10 AM

The recent renaissance of AMD as the performance choice in the high-end x86 market has been great for consumers by enabling a second offering at the top-end of the market. Where Intel offers 28 cores, AMD offers 24 and 32 core parts for the high-end desktop, and to rub salt into the wound, there is now a 64 core offering. This CPU isn’t cheap: the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X costs $3990 at retail, more than any other high-end desktop processor in history, but with it AMD aims to provide the best single socket consumer processor money can buy. We put it through its paces, and while it does obliterate the competition, there are a few issues with having this many cores in a single system.

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**FEED** · 02-07-20, 09:10 AM

Silicon Power has revealed a new series of consumer-oriented 3.5-inch external USB hard drives. The Stream S07 HDDs can be used with PCs, Smart TVs, and other devices.
The Silicon Power Stream S07 family consists of four models featuring 3 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB, and 8 TB capacity. All the drives come in a black plastic enclosure with a texture that resembles a stone. To make resemblance with a stone even more realistic, the chassis has an opening that looks like a crack. The opening is used for cooling and it also has a stylish integrated LED that is used as a transfer status indicator.

The manufacturer is not disclosing which hard drives are used for its Stream S07 DAS devices, though given the performance and power needs for the device, they certianly won't be high-end. If nothing else, since we are not dealing with high-capacity drives, this means they are based on CMR (conventional magnetic recording) technology and won't incur the greater complexities of using a shingled drive.

Silicon Power’s Stream 07 external hard drives will be available shortly. Prices will vary depending on the capacity.

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Source: ASUS (via PC Watch)

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**FEED** · 02-07-20, 03:36 PM

ZTE has announced the industry’s first handset powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 865 processor, which will be powering the majority of high-end Android smartphones this year. As expected, the Axon 10s Pro is a 5G phone with an advanced camera and a beefy configuration.
The ZTE Axon 10s Pro 5G looks just like its predecessor — the Axon 10 Pro 5G — and comes with the same large 6.47-inch AMOLED display featuring a 2340x1080 resolution, a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and curved edges. Speaking of similarities between ZTE’s flagship 2019 and 2020 smartphones, it should be noted that the key differences between them are the SoC, the memory and storage subsystems, as well as launch software; everything else is the same.

The Axon 10s Pro 5G smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 SoC (4x Arm Cortex-A77, 4x Arm Cortex-A55, Adreno 650 GPU, Hexagon 698 DSP/NPU) that is paired with 6 GB or 12 GB of LPDDR5 as well as 128 GB or 256 GB of UFS 3.0 NAND flash storage. And in a bid to to improve the performance of the already powerful system memory and storage subsystems, the handset also supports RAM-Booster and FS-Booster firmware/software capabilities.

The imaging capabilities of the ZTE Axon 10s Pro are the same as those of its predecessor, so the handset sports a triple-module rear camera system containing a 48 MP main module with OIS, an 8 MP telephoto camera, and an ultrawide 20 MP lens. In addition, the phone has a teardrop 20 MP selfie camera.

Other notable hardware features of the handset include 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, navigation, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, an under-display fingerprint reader, and a 4,000 mAh battery that can be charged using a wired or wireless charger supporting Quick Charge 4+. The smartphone does not have a 3.5-mm audio jack, but its speakers do support DTX: X Ultra technology.
On the software side of matters, ZTE’s Axon 10s Pro will come with Google’s Android 10 with the MiFavor 10 UI.

ZTE Axon 10s Pro 5G
		Axon 10s Pro 5G
SoC		Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 1x Cortex A77 @ 2.84GHz 512KB pL2 3x Cortex A77 @ 2.42GHz 3x 256KB pL2 4x Cortex A55 @ 1.80GHz 4x 128KB pL2 4MB sL3
GPU		Adreno 650 @ 587 MHz
DRAM		6 GB LPDDR5 12 GB LPDDR5
		128 GB or 256 GB UFS 2.0
Display		6.47" FullView IPS LCD 2340 x 1080 (19.5:9)
Size	Height	159.2 mm
Width	73.4 mm
Depth	7.9 mm
Weight		175 grams
Battery Capacity		4000 mAh (Typical) 18 W charging
Wireless Charging		Qi
Rear Cameras
Main	48 MP f/1.7 aperture w/OIS 1/2.0" 0.8µm
Telephoto	8 MP f/2.4 aperture 3x optical zoom
Wide	20 MP f/2.2 aperture w/OIS 125° super-wide angle
Front Camera		20 MP selfie camera f/2.0 aperture 1/2.8" 1.0μm
I/O		USB 2.0 Type-C Fingerprint reader
Wireless (local)		Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0
Cellular		GSM, CDMA, HSPA, 4G/LTE, 5G
Splash, Water, Dust Resistance		-
Dual-SIM		2x nano-SIM
Launch OS		Android 10 with MiFavor 10 UI
Launch Price		Starting at CNY 3,200

The ZTE Axon 10s Pro will be available in the near future at prices starting at CNY 3,200 in China (~460 USD). It unclear when the handset is set to hit other markets and how much it is set to cost.
Related Reading:

Sources: ZTE, GSMArena

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**FEED** · 02-07-20, 06:36 PM

Passively-cooled video cards are rather rare these days, as the bulk of the market has made peace with today's dual fan actively cooled cards. Luckily, there are a still a few companies releasing passive designs, such as Palit Microsystems, who has introduced its fanless GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX.
The Palit GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX (NE5165001BG1-1170H) uses a custom PCB and comes with a sizable passive cooling solution. The double-wide heatsink incorporates a pair of heatpipes, and is considerably taller than the card as well. All told, with the heatsink factored in, the card measures 178 mm long and is 138 mm high. And unsurprisingly, given the strict thermal limitations in play, Palit is playing things conservatively here, and the card runs at NVIDIA official GTX 1650 reference clockspeeds of 1485 MHz/1665 MHz (base/boost).
Typical for GTX 1650 cards, Palit is using 4 GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory here. The card has two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and one HDMI 2.0b port.

Officially, Palit rates the card for a TDP of 75W; and judging from what we've seen with other GTX 1650 cards, that's probably a bit conservative as well. Which is all the better for Palit, since it makes their job of passively cooling the video card all the easier. The other upside of being a sub-75W card is that an auxiliary PCIe power plug isn't required, so the card can be dropped into a system and immediately used with no further internal wiring.

Palit has not revealed an MSRP for the GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX. NVIDIA’s regular MSRP for the GTX 1650 ($149), though I wouldn't be too surprised to see Palit charge a premium for a unique, passively-cooled card.

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Source: Palit

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**FEED** · 02-10-20, 12:52 PM

Today Arm announces its newest addition to the Cortex-M series, the new Cortex M55. In addition to the new CPU microarchitecture which brings several new improvements, we also see the introduction of the new Ethos-U55 NPU IP that is meant to be integrated with the new M55 core. Arm’s new IP is meant to advance the machine learning and inferencing capabilities of billions of low-power embedded devices over the next several years, and expand its product portfolio for new use-cases.

We’ve seen Machine Learning become quite the buzzword over the past several years, but today the ecosystem has evolved to the point that it’s no longer just a brand-new novelty, but rather quickly becoming a useful feature to the point that it’s being increasingly deployed in various systems and use-cases in the industry. Arm sees the endpoint AI market particularly an area where we’ll be seeing explosive growth over the coming years, and this is the area that Arm wants to cover with the new IP releases.

The new Cortex-M55 is a new generation IP more closely related to the M33, but brings a few new architectural advances with it that promise some large performance and flexibility improvements when it comes to machine learning as well as vector instructions.
The Ethos-U55 is a dedicated “microNPU” dedicated inference accelerator that ties in with a Cortex-M class CPU and offers the performance and power efficiency of a dedicated NPU, or MAC-engine would usually bring to the table – all in within the similar small footprint of the M-class IPs.
Cortex-M55: First Helium and Custom Instruction capable CPU core

The new Cortex-M55 is important as it’s the first Arm CPU core that is announced with both Helium as well as Custom Instructions capabilities. Helium, whose technical name is actually MVE (for M-Profile Vector Extension), is the new vector extensions and dedicated vector execution units in the M-class processor line-up, making it the first CPU in this range that is capable of SIMD instructions. The addition gives the new core up to a 5x increase in DSP performance, and the optimised instructions for ML workloads in combination with MVE adds up to a 15x performance improvement compared to previous generation M-cores.
In terms of overall microarchitecture, it’s a successor to the M33 and combined µarch as well as frequency improvements will see scalar workloads increase performance by roughly 20%, depending on the vendor’s configuration. The core had been designed with a focus on bandwidth and enabling the new MVE and new ML workloads that require it, so improvements have been made to the memory subsystem, such as having 4x 32-bit interfaces to the TCM (Tightly Coupled Memory).
The Ethos-U55: Arm’s first microNPU

Arm was relatively late to the NPU scene as most vendors had employed their own first-party IP architectures in products, and most vendors today use such implementations. The embedded market however is a bit different and there’s a need for something that is a lot lower area and lower power than what you’re generally used to in “larger” implementation such as in mobile SoCs, which are covered by Arm’s Ethos-N NPU IP.
The new U55 is a small-scale NPU that scales from 32 to 256 MACs, and requires coupling with a Cortex-M class NPU. Arm didn’t go into major specifics of the microarchitecture, but it’s a very lean design that focuses on area and power efficiency, as well as having small memory footprints, including some features that we see in the N-series such as weight decompression. We’re saying the U55 needs to be coupled with an M-class CPU to serve as the controller, but actually this isn’t all too different to what the N-series does as that IP already includes an M-class CPU. When it comes to the architecture of the NPU, it’s said to be different and not related to its bigger brethren, and was designed specifically for low-power use-cases.
In terms of area size, the smallest 32 MAC implementation of the U55 is said to be around 2x the size of an M55. We don’t have absolute figures to present here, but we’re essentially talking about fractions of a mm².

The performance improvements in such systems that use the M55 and U55 represent very major step-function increases over past generation solutions. Figures that Arm provides include up to a 50x performance uplift in a comparison to a Cortex-M7 based system, all while improving energy efficiency by 25x.

As to where the new IPs will be employed, is a very wide variety of embedded systems. It’s important to understand here that the major volume of such systems will be actually subsystems of current existing chips. If we were to take mobile as an example, you’d see subsystems using the IP inside the fingerprint sensors of a phone, the always-listening audio chip for voice assistant features, or even uses inside the RF systems that would optimise workloads such as antenna tuning. There are hundreds of M-class processors in today’s mobile devices that would benefit from ML capabilities, most of them completely transparent to the user.
Arm has currently licensed the M55 and U55 to its lead partners, and will open up wider range licensing to other customers in the coming months. As usual with IP, you should expect products using the new designs in around 2 years – if vendors ever publicly confirm whether they use the designs in their products.
Related Reading:

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The ASUS X545FA Notebooks
		X545FA-BQ140T X545FA-BQ075T X545FA-BQ139T X545FA-BQ138T
Display		15.6-inch 1920×1080
CPU		Intel Core i3-10110U Intel Core i7-10510U
Graphics		Intel UHD Graphics
RAM		8 GB
SSD		512 GB PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD
Wi-Fi		Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)
Bluetooth		Bluetooth 5.0
USB		1 × USB 2.0 Type-A 2 × USB 3.0 Type-A
GbE		GbE
Card Reader		microSD
Other I/O		HDMI, microphone, stereo speakers, audio jack
Battery		6.7 ~ 6.8 hours
Dimensions		Width: 360.2 mm Depth: 234.8 mm Thickness: 23 mm
Weight		1.9 kilograms
Additional Information		Slate Gray or Transparent Silver body
Price		Fom ¥77,556 to ¥99,818 without tax From $705 to $908 without tax

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Anandtech: MSI Reveals Optix MAG322CR: A 31.5-Inch Curved Monitor with a 180 Hz Refre

Anandtech: GIGABYTE Launches Designare DDR4-3200 Memory, a 64 GB Kit

Anandtech: Micron Shipping LPDDR5 DRAM

Anandtech: The Road to 80 TB HDDs: Showa Denko Develops HAMR Platters for Hard Drives

Anandtech: The 64 Core Threadripper 3990X CPU Review: In The Midst Of Chaos, AMD Seek

Anandtech: Silicon Power Unveils Stream S07 External Hard Drives: Up to 8 TB

Anandtech: Intel’s Comet Lake Meets Optical Drive in ASUS X545FA Laptop

Anandtech: First with Snadragon 865: ZTE Unveils Axon 10s Pro w/ 5G, 6.47-Inch AMOLED

Anandtech: A Passively-Cooled GeForce GTX 1650: KalmX by Palit

Anandtech: Arm Announces Cortex-M55 Core And Ethos-U55 microNPU

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