Thread: Anandtech News

As part of SiFive’s announcements today, along with enabling SiFive IP on Intel’s Foundry Service offerings, Intel will be creating its own RISC-V development platform using its 7nm process technology. This platform, called Horse Creek, will feature several of SiFive’s new Performance P550 cores also being announced today, and will be paired with Intel’s DDR and PCIe IP technology.

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Today’s announcement from SiFive comes in two parts; this part is significant as it recognizes that Intel will be enabling SiFive’s IP portfolio on its 7nm manufacturing process for upcoming foundry customers. We are expecting Intel to offer a wide variety of its own IP, such as some of the x86 cores, memory controllers, PCIe controllers, and accelerators, however the depth of its third party IP support has not been fully established at this point. SiFive’s IP is the first (we believe) official confirmation of specific IP that will be supported.



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In light of the rate of innovation, chip design teams have spent tens of thousands of hours honing their skills over the decades. But getting the best human-designed processor in this fashion can take six months or more, because the number of arrangements possible is equivalent to the number of atoms in the known universe… multiplied by the number of atoms in the known universe. With numbers so large, using computers to brute force the best configuration is impossible. At least, it was thought to be.
Synopsys’ CEO Aart de Geus is set to take the keynote presentations at two upcoming technical semiconductor industry events this year and as part of these talks, Aart will discuss what was considered impossible only a few years ago – the path to finding a better and automated way into chip design through the use of machine learning solutions. Within the context of EDA tools, as Google has demonstrated recently, engineers can be assisted in building better processors using machine learning algorithms.

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The gaming segment continues to experience rapid growth in the PC market, and we have seen PC component vendors come up with launch events specifically targeting gamers. Seagate's inaugural Virtual Gaming Event (SG21) is the latest in this list, and the company is announcing its latest flagship SSD - the FireCuda 530 at this event. With its PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, there is a significant jump in sequential access speeds (reads up to 7300 MBps). This has has an ideal target market in the gaming segment, with the fast load times making a visible difference in the user experience.
The drives in Seagate's FireCuda SSD series have typically been based on Phison controllers using custom firmware (with the company's preferred term being 'Seagate-validated'), and the FireCuda 530 is no different. It is based on Phison's PS5018-E18 using the latest 3D TLC NAND (Micron's B47R 176L). A number of E18-based SSDs have hit the market over the 6 months, and we also reviewed the Inland Performance Plus a few weeks back. It was held back a bit by the use of 96L 3D TLC - an aspect that should be addressed by the latest 176-layer NAND.

Similar to other flagship M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs, the FireCuda 530 also comes with a heatsink option. Unlike the ridged designs common for this application, Seagate has gone in for a minimalist option designed by EKWB - a finely-textured aluminum block weighing more than the usual finned heatsinks, while still retaining a slim profile for wide compatibility.

Seagate FireCuda 530 SSD Specifications
Capacity	500 GB	1 TB	2 TB	4 TB
Controller	Phison PS5018-E18 (PCIe 4.0 x4)
NAND Flash	176L 3D TLC NAND (Micron B47R)
Form-Factor, Interface	Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4		Double-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4
Sequential Read	7000 MB/s	7300 MB/s
Sequential Write	3000 MB/s	6000 MB/s	6900 MB/s
Random Read IOPS	400K	800K	1M
Random Write IOPS	700K	1M
Pseudo-SLC Caching	Supported
TCG Opal Encryption	No
Warranty	5 years (with 3 year DRS)
Write Endurance	640 TB 0.7 DWPD	1275 TB 0.7 DWPD	2550 TB 0.7 DWPD	5100 TB 0.7 DWPD
MSRP (non-heatsink)	$140 (25¢/GB)	$240 (25¢/GB)	$490 (21¢/GB)	$950 (21¢/GB)

While the FireCuda 520 came with 1 DWPD ratings, Seagate has returned to conservative roots with the consumer-standard 0.7 DWPD for the write endurance of the FireCuda 530 SSDs. The heatsink is optional, since most new motherboards are providing their own M.2 cooling solution. It does add a $50 premium to the barebones version. In addition to the 5-year warranty, Seagate also includes a 3-year Rescue Data Recovery Service plan with the SSD.
Pricing is par for the course with other E18 SSDs, and the added DRS tends to pull up the value for money aspect in the high-end space. Seagate also appears to be one of the very few vendors with a 512GB option in this performance class (E18-based SSDs). This is understandable, as the amount of parallelism available in 512GB-class drives is not high enough to sustain the link bandwidth for sequential writes (The 512GB SKU tops out at 3GBps, while the 2TB and 4TB ones reach up to 6.9GBps). On the power consumption front, the average active power ranges from 5.8W for the 500GB SKU to 8.4W for the 4TB one.
Overall, the product appears to check all the right boxes for gamers and content creators looking to purchase a new PCIe 4.0 SSD this summer.

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It’s been a few months since AMD first announced their new third generation EPYC Milan server CPU line-up. We had initially reviewed the first SKUS back in March, covering the core density optimised 64-core EPYC 7763, EPYC 7713 and the core-performance optimised 32-core EPYC 75F3. Since then, we’ve ben able to get our hands on several new mid and lower end SKUs in the form of the new 24-core EPYC 7443, the 16-core 7343, as well as the very curious 8-core EPYC 72F3 which we’ll be reviewing today.

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As part of today’s burst of ISC 2021 trade show announcements, NVIDIA this morning is announcing that they’re bringing the 80GB version of their A100 accelerator to the PCIe form factor. First announced in NVIDIA’s custom SXM form factor last fall, the 80GB version of the A100 was introduced to not only expand the total memory capacity of an A100 accelerator – doubling it from 40GB to 80GB – but it also offered a rare mid-generation spec bump as well, cranking up the memory clockspeeds by a further 33%. Now, after a bit over 6 months, NVIDIA is releasing a PCIe version of the accelerator for customers who need discrete add-in cards.
The new 80GB version of the PCIe A100 joins the existing 40GB version, and NVIDIA will continue selling both versions of the card. On the whole, this is a pretty straightforward transfer of the 80GB A100 over to PCIe, with NVIDIA dialing down the TDP of the card and the number of exposed NVLinks to match the capabilities of the form factor. The release of the 80GB PCIe card is designed to give NVIDIA’s traditional PCIe form factor customers a second, higher-performing accelerator option, particularly for those users who need more than 40GB of GPU memory.

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It’s been a little over a year since we covered Marvell’s OCTEON TX2 infrastructure processors, and since then, the ecosystem has been evolving in an extremely fast manner – both within Marvell and outside. Today, we’re covering the new generation OCTEON 10 family of DPUs, a whole new family of SoCs, built upon TSMC’s 5nm process node and also for the featuring for the first time Arm’s new Neoverse N2 processors.



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As part of today’s International Supercomputing 2021 (ISC) announcements, Intel is showcasing that it will be launching a version of its upcoming Sapphire Rapids (SPR) Xeon Scalable processor with high-bandwidth memory (HBM). This version of SPR-HBM will come later in 2022, after the main launch of Sapphire Rapids, and Intel has stated that it will be part of its general availability offering to all, rather than a vendor-specific implementation.

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In the news cycle today, Intel is announcing an update to its planned deployment of its next generation Xeon Scalable platform known as Sapphire Rapids. Sapphire Rapids is the main platform behind the upcoming Aurora supercomputer, and set to feature support for leading edge technologies such as DDR5, PCIe 5.0, CXL, and Advanced Matrix Extensions. The announcement today is Intel reaffirming its commitment to bringing Sapphire Rapids to market for wide availability in the first half of 2022, meanwhile early customers are currently operating with early silicon for testing and optimization.

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Netgear has been slowly building up its Wi-Fi 6 business portfolio over the last couple of years. Today, the company is launching its flagship SMB access point in its Insight-managed series - the WAX630. The consumer Wi-Fi market segment has received extra focus over the last year or so with the onset of the pandemic-induced work-from-home (WFH) trend. As businesses move towards reopening in many parts of the world, there is bound to be an investment in upgrading the networking infrastructure of many SMB / microbusinesses to gear up for the increased workloads. Netgear is hoping to ride this upgrade wave to increase the market share of its Insight-based networking equipment in the SMB market.
In 2020, Netgear released the Orbi SXK80 and the WAX610 AP to introduce Wi-Fi 6 into their SMB portfolio. The company has been far more busy this year, with the launch of the WAX214 AX1800 and WAX218 AX3600 APs under the Essentials brand, the Orbi SXK30 AX1800 mini and the WAX620 AX3600 Insight-managed AP back in March. Today's WAX630 launch rounds off its launches for the first half of 2021.

The WAX630 is the new flagship, and builds upon the 802.3at as well as 2.5GBASE-T support of the WAX610 and WAX620. A second wired LAN port (GbE) is included. It supports up to 600 active clients with 100 concurrent devices. The coverage area is also more, coming it at 3500 sq. ft. compared to 2500 for the WAX610 and 3000 for the WAX620. This tri-band solution (2x 5GHz + 1x 2.4 GHz 4x4) comes under the AX6000 class (1200 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band and 2 x 2400 Mbps in the 5GHz one), pointing to the use of a Qualcomm chipset. The lack of full 160 MHz support is not a big deal in this market segment, at least not until Wi-Fi 6E becomes more widespread.
Almost all SMB and enterprise Wi-Fi solutions are enabled with cloud-management. This greatly simplifies management on-the-go by IT administrators. However, this carries a premium for the additional firmware features and cloud servers maintenance from the vendor's perspective. Netgear's business lineup also includes an 'Essentials' product line that does away with the app and cloud-based management for a lower price point.

On the Orbi Pro front, one of the challenges for market acceptance has been the pricing due to its multi-device nature. The SXK80 was introduced last year at $770 for a router and a satellite. Last month, the SXK30 Orbi Pro Wi-Fi 6 Mini was introduced at $300 for a pair. To meet this price point, the SXK30 does away with the second 5GHz band and the 2.5GBASE-T port. The coverage area and capacity metrics are also a notch lower than the SXK80.

In SMB Wi-Fi, the focus is not on peak throughput - rather, security and reliability are primary concerns. Scalability and ease of management come in a close second. With their current portfolio of products and suggested pricing structure, Netgear is carving a niche for itself in this market segment. While not going head-to-head against the Cisco Merakis and Arubas, it does need to compete against other vendors such as Ubiquiti Networks, Linksys Business, EnGenius, and the like. However, none of these vendors seem to have a product in the market currently to go head-to-head against the WAX630's specifications. It will be interesting to track how the market evolves over the coming months. The WAX630 is priced at $330 and available for purchase today.
Gallery: Netgear Launches WAX630 AX6000 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point for SMBs





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