Anandtech News

**FEED** · 07-07-20, 03:48 PM

Further expanding its ever-growing list of CPU coolers, Deepcool has announced its new Castle 280EX AIO CPU cooler, a closed loop liquid cooler with a 280 mm radiator. Slotting in between the pre-existing Castle 240EX and 360EX, the 280EX is designed to improve options for users looking for an RGB-infused cooler with a grey cylindrical CPU block.
The Deepcool Castle EX series is designed with a 3-phase motor intended to improve flow rate and overall cooling performance, but with less operating noise. The latest in the Castle EX range is the 280EX, which uses a 280 mm radiator that's paired with a black sprayed aluminium core, and comes supplied with a pair of 140 mm 400-1600 rpm cooling fans. The new cooler supports all the usual socket types, including Intel's LGA20XX, LGA 1200 and LGA 115x sockets, as well as AMD's TRX40/TR4 and AM4 sockets.

One of the Deepcool Castle 280EX's main design traits comes via the CPU block and pump, with a swappable logo plate which allows users to choose between Deepcool's Gamerstorm emblem or a ying-yang symbol. Integrated into the rather bulky looking pump and block is some addressable RGB LED lighting which can be customized through a 3-pin ARGB motherboard header, or with an included RGB controller in the accessories bundle.
The cooling plate is made from copper for effective heat dissipation, and Deepcool has opted for a larger design with 25% more skived fins, although Deepcool doesn't state which model it is using as a comparison. The larger plate allows better support for the sizable AMD TR4 socket, which has a much larger IHS than smaller processors such as the AMD's Ryzen 3000 series.
The Deepcool Castle 280EX has an MSRP of $150 and is currently available to buy at Amazon. For reference, the larger Castle 360EX is presently available for $158, while the smallest of the now completed trio, the 240EX with 240 mm radiator can be purchased for $130.
Related Reading

More...

**FEED** · 07-07-20, 09:44 PM

Synaptics this afternoon is announcing that the firm is acquiring Broadcom’s wireless IoT business unit. The deal will see Synaptics acquire “certain rights” to Broadcom’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS products for the IoT market, as well as in-development products and the business relationships themselves. The total bill for the transaction is set to be $250 million, which Synaptics will be paying entirely in cash.
One of the tech industry’s biggest controller suppliers, in the consumer space Broadcom is generally best known (or at least most visible) for its wireless products. The various iterations of the company have produced a number of controllers and chipsets for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other wireless technologies, which have shown up in everything from PCs and smartphones to game consoles and routers. Late last year the company was reportedly planning to sell off its wireless division wholesale, but in recent months has changed its mind and decided to keep the business after securing a major customer win. Instead, it would seem that the company has opted to slice off a smaller part of its wireless business unit, and in turn is selling that to Synaptics.
For its part, according to the company’s press release Synaptics is getting Broadcom’s “wireless IoT” business, which is distinct from their larger wireless unit. Along with current and future hardware for this market, Synaptics is also getting a 60 member engineering support team, as well as limited exclusivity for three years. All told, this is expected to significantly augment Synaptics’ product portfolio, as it will allow them to increase their vertical integration by developing an even larger portion of their IoT hardware and IP in-house.

Overall, buying out Broadcom’s wireless IoT unit is the latest in a series of acquisitions for Synaptics, who for the last few years has been in the process of diversifying its product portfolio. While the company is best known for its human interface technologies, such as trackpads and fingerprint readers, in recent years the company has been branching out into the IoT space in order to broaden and diversify their core businesses. This has included buying out Conexant Systems as well as Marvell’s multimedia unit in 2017, wand now Broadcom’s wireless IoT business is set to join them.

As things stand, the deal is set to close in the first quarter of 2021. Synaptics will be paying for the business unit entirely in cash, with the majority of that coming from the earlier sale of Synaptics’ Touch and Display Integration business.
Meanwhile, on an amusing note, this marks the second time that Broadcom has sold off its IoT business. The company previously sold off its then-wireless IoT business to Cypress Semiconductor in 2016, a deal that eventually closed for $550 million. So while Broadcom doesn’t seem to have much interest in keeping its IoT businesses, the company seems to have found a niche in growing them to sell off.

More...

**FEED** · 07-08-20, 08:34 AM

Wired connectivity is converging onto two standards: USB4 and Thunderbolt 4. Both of these are set to debut by the end of the year in Intel’s upcoming Tiger Lake platform, and to set the scene Intel is updating us on the scope of its Thunderbolt 4 efforts.

More...

**FEED** · 07-08-20, 09:21 AM

Today Qualcomm is announcing an update to its extremely successful Snapdragon 865 SoC: the new Snapdragon 865+. The Snapdragon 865 had already seen tremendous success with over 140 different design wins, powering some of the best Android smartphone devices this year. We’re past the hectic spring release cycle of devices, and much like last year with the S855+, for the summer and autumn release cycle, Qualcomm is providing vendors with the option for a higher-performance binned variant of the chip, the new S865+. As a bit of a arbitrary, but also important characteristic of the new chip is that this is the first ever mobile silicon to finally pass the 3GHz frequency mark.

More...

**FEED** · 07-09-20, 12:38 PM

Western Digital made a number of announcements yesterday related to their enterprise hard-disk drives (HDD) product lines. While there was nothing unexpected in terms of the products being announced, two aspects stood out - one was the retail availability of EAMR (energy-assisted magnetic recording) HDDs, and the other was additional information on the EAMR technology itself. In 2019, WD had announced the sampling of EAMR-based Ultrastar DC datacenter HDDs with 18TB and 20TB capacities. Yesterday's announcements build upon those products - the WD Gold-branded version of the Ultrastar DC CMR drives is now available for retail purchase, and the Ultrastar drives themselves have moved to general availability. The Ultrastar JBOD and storage server product lines have also been updated to utilize these new high-capacity drives.
Flash-based storage devices have taken over traditional consumer hard-drive application areas. However, increasing data storage requirements mean that HDDs still continue to be the most cost-effective solution for bulk storage. HDD vendors have been working on increasing hard drive capacities using multiple techniques. Around 10 years back, we had 2TB 3.5" HDDs with five PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) platters in an air-filled enclosure. These drives were CMR (conventional magnetic recording) drives. In the last decade, we have seen advancements in three different categories that have enabled a 10-fold increase in the capacity of HDDs while retaining the same physical footprint:
Increasing the number of platters / making the platters thinner has been made possible by using sealed helium-filled enclosures. The reduced turbulence enables platters to be stacked closer to each other. The first-generation helium HDDs had 7 platters, and this has now grown to 9 platters for the new high-capacity drives.
The size of the writing head and the flexibility with which it can be manipulated dictate the minimum width of the recording tracks on the platters. Western Digital is claiming that they are the first to use a triple-stage actuator (TSA) in shipping HDDs.

The Triple-Stage Actuator (Picture courtesy: Western Digital)

The enhanced precision with TSA allows the TPI factor to go up. Incidentally, Seagate also has a novel actuator scheme (dual actuator), though that is aimed at increasing the throughput / IOPS.
One of the key challenges faced in the quest to increase the areal density of platters is the ability of the writing head to reliably alter the magnetic state of the grains in the tracks. Both heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) are techniques that address this issue. In 2017, WD seemed set to go all-in on MAMR for their HDD product line, but three years down the road, we are looking at a variant that WD claims is a product of their HAMR and MAMR research - EAMR (energy-assisted magnetic recording).
While details were scant when EAMR was announced , WD is finally opening up on some of the technical aspects.

Energy-Assisted PMR (ePMR) (Pictre courtesy: Western Digital)

WD's first-generation EAMR technology (christened as ePMR) involves the application of electrical current to the writing head's main pole (this is in addition to the current sent through the voice coil) during write operations. The additional magnetic field created by this bias current ensures that the bits on the track alter their state in a more deterministic manner. In turn, this allows the bits to be packed closer together and increasing the areal density.
The above techniques can also be used with shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to boost areal density further. SMR has been around in both host-managed and drive-managed versions for a few years now. WD indicated in yesterday's announcement that qualification shipments of their 20TB Ultrastar DC host-managed SMR drive are in progress.

Western Digital's Gold Series - Enterprise-Class Hard Disk Drives Family Specifications

The WD Gold 18TB is available for purchase today and will set you back by $593. The 16TB version is priced at $528, but is currently out of stock. As is typical for enterprise drives, the two new models each have a MTBF of 2.5M hours, workload rating of 550TB/yr, and a 5 year warranty.

More...

**FEED** · 07-09-20, 01:41 PM

With AMD's B550 models now on the shelves, a lot of focus around its launch was based on pricing - or rather the lack of very low-cost entry-level models.
The motherboard manufacturer Colorful has today unveiled two new micro-ATX sized B550 motherboards: the CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14 and B550M Gaming Pro V14 models. Some of the primary features include a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec, two PCIe M.2 slots with one Gen4 and one Gen3 slot, as well as a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller.

The Colorful CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14 micro-ATX motherboard

The most striking of the new pair from Colorful is the CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14 model. It features a very aesthetically pleasing white and silver color scheme, with Naval inspired CVN aircraft carrier class branding and an actively cooled chipset heatsink with a red ring around the fan for contrast.
Although the Colorful CVN B550M Gaming Pro 14V follows a black and silver aesthetic, both models share the same feature set, with a full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, a full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and a small PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. For storage, both models include a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, and a secondary PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, with four SATA ports that includes support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Each model also includes four memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4000, with a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB. Colorful is also advertising a 10-phase power delivery on both boards but doesn't go into detail in regards to the componentry or design.

The Colorful CVN B550M Gaming Pro V14 micro-ATX motherboard

Neither model includes any USB 3.2 G2 connectivity, but there are three USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, one USB 3.2 G1 Type-C, and two USB 2.0 ports. Also present is a pair of video outputs including HDMI and DisplayPort, with six 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec. For networking is a single Ethernet port which is powered by a Realtek 8111H Gigabit controller, with a PS/2 combo port which finishes off the pairings rear panels.
The cool-looking Colorful CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14 has an MSRP of $126, while the black and grey B550M Gaming Pro V14 comes with a slightly cheaper MSRP of $121. Although Colorful hasn't divulged when or where these models will be available, they are likely to hit stockists of Colorful motherboards in the coming month.
Related Reading

More...

**FEED** · 07-10-20, 12:27 PM

There's no disputing that Intel had a quiet first half of the year, with not much cadence in its product releases, aside from Comet Lake and its associated Z490 motherboards. During the middle part second quarter, Intel finally unveiled its revamped 14 nm processors through its release of the 10th generation Comet Lake for desktop, and along with it a heap of new models ranging from Z490 to H460, and even the more workstation focused W480 models. Moving firmly into the third quarter of 2020, Intel now has a fully stacked lineup and we're unveiling our Best Intel Motherboards guide for July 2020.

More...

**FEED** · 07-13-20, 07:03 PM

Today Analog Devices has announced that it will be acquiring Maxim Integrated in a transaction estimated at $21bn. The combined company value is said to end up being valued at $68bn, creating a significant player in the analog IC market.
Analog Devices are best known for their signal processing discrete ICs, such as amplifiers, ADCs and DACs, although their product portfolio extends to a very wide range of other designs.
Meanwhile Maxim Integrated is mostly known by their power management ICs as well as sensors. For example, they have been the main battery power management IC (PMIC) provider for Samsung mobile devices for the better part of the last decade (And until recent years, a lot of other phone-centric PMICs as well).
Although the two companies have some overlapping product segments which likely will see consolidation, the overall two business seem like they will be complementary to each other as they both specialize in different areas. Analog Devices in particular says that the transaction is meant to boost its market share in the automotive and data centre markets thanks to Maxim’s application specific products, while continuing to offer Analog Devices own broader market products.
In a market where we see a ton of consolidation and many vendors opting to vertically integrate their solutions, it becomes important to have a broader product portfolio in order to maintain leadership positions. The new consolidated Analog Devices and Maxim Integrated entity will have the breadth to compete against big players such as Texas Instruments.

More...

**FEED** · 07-14-20, 07:40 AM

With AMD’s market share slowly increasing, it becomes very interesting to see where EPYC is being deployed. The latest announcement today comes from AMD and Google, with news that Google’s Compute Engine will start to offer new Confidential Virtual Machines (cVMs) built upon AMD’s Secure Encryption Virtualization (SEV) feature. These new cVMs are variants of Google’s N2D series offerings, and Google states that enabling SEV for full memory and virtualization encryption has a near zero performance penalty.
Secure Encryption Virtualization in AMD’s 2^nd Gen EPYC processors allows cloud providers to encrypt all the data and memory of a virtual machine at the per-VM level. These are generated on-the-fly in hardware, and are non-exportable, reducing the risk of side attacks by potentially aggressive neighbors. Previously this sort of computing model was only possible if a host assumed control of a whole server, which for most use cases isn’t practical.

With SEV2, technically AMD allows for up to 509 keys per system. Google will offer images for its cVMs with Ubuntu 18.04/20.04, COS v81, and RHEL 8.2; other operating system images will be available in due course.
These cVMs will be available in vCPU listings, confirming that simultaneous multi-threading is enabled on the hardware. Both Google and AMD declined to comment on the exact EPYC CPUs being used, only that they were part of the 2^nd Gen Rome family.
This is technically a beta launch, with Google being the first cloud provider to offer SEV-enabled VMs. Google is also promoting the use of its Asylo open-source framework for confidential computing, promising to make deployment easy at a high performance.

A number of 30 MB gifs were created by Google to showcase the new cVMs. Rather than share them with you in an outdated 1989 format, we converted them to video:
Users wanting access to the new VMs should go to the relevant Google page.

Related Reading

Gallery: Google’s new Confidential Virtual Machines on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC

More...

**FEED** · 07-14-20, 12:32 PM

Last year we spotted that AMD was in the market to hire a new lead product manager for a ‘workstation division’. This was a categorically different position to the lead PM for high-end desktop, and so we speculated what this actually means. Today, AMD is announcing its first set of workstation products, under the Ryzen Threadripper Pro branding. However, it should be noted that these processors will only be available as part of pre-built systems, and no corresponding consumer motherboards will be made available.

More...