Thread: Anandtech News

While we typically don't comment on rumors we don't know to be true at AnandTech, we often get requests to help set rational expectations ahead of major iDevice launches. The shroud of secrecy around major Apple launches can pave the way for both sensible and unrealistic conclusions.
Given the growth of Apple's iPhone/iPad devices, it has become increasingly difficult for suppliers in the chain to remain mum about any changes. Similar to how we often get early access to CPUs, motherboards and other components out of Taiwan, it has become increasingly commonplace to see leaks of iDevice components out of the big ODMs in China.
Apple is largely expected to launch its sixth iPhone next month. The historical cadence of design, SoC, and cellular changes are in the table below:

Apple iPhone - Historical Trends
 	Release Year	Industrial Design	CPU Architecture	GPU Architecture	Cellular Architecture
iPhone	2007	1st gen	ARM11	MBX-lite	Infineon S-Gold 2
iPhone 3G	2008	2nd gen	ARM11	MBX-lite	Infineon X-Gold 608
iPhone 3GS	2009	2nd gen	Cortex A8	SGX-535	Infineon X-Gold 608
iPhone 4	2010	3rd gen	Cortex A8	SGX-535	Infineon X-Gold 618 in 4 GSM / Qualcomm MDM6600 in 4 CDMA
iPhone 4S	2011	3rd gen	2 x Cortex A9	SGX-543MP2	Qualcomm MDM6610 (MDM6600 w/ ext. trans)
iPhone Next	2012	?	?	?	?

Trends are pretty easy to spot in the table. With the exception of the first iPhone, the industrial design appears to be on a 2-year cadence. The CPU and GPU architectures are also on the same 2-year cadence. From a silicon standpoint even the cellular architecture is trending towards the same 2-year cadence, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. GSM/CDMA iPhone 4 divide).
Based on historical trends alone it's pretty easy to conclude that we'll see a 4th generation chassis, a pair of ARM Cortex A9s and a PowerVR SGX 543MP2 under the hood. Add the assumption of LTE (a reasonable one to make) and you have a pretty believable story. It turns out the currently available evidence helps corroborate this, but let's dig through what's out there to see how this all fits.

More...

We're back! After a false start last week, we have our second podcast. This week Brian Klug, Ryan Smith and myself discussed Thunderbolt, Quick Sync in OS X, Windows 8/RT, the current state of the mobile SoC landscape and finally we put Ryan's talents to good use and went over his picks for the best graphics cards on the market today. We went to a slightly longer format for this episode and ended up clocking in at 1 hour and 31 minutes.
Our goal is to make this a weekly affair, with Monday as the targeted publication date for the podcasts. The podcast is now available via iTunes as well as RSS feeds for both the MP3 and M4A versions. Links to everything are below.
The AnandTech Podcast - Episode 2
featuring Anand Shimpi, Brian Klug & Ryan Smith
iTunes
RSS - mp3, m4a
Direct Links - mp3, m4a
Total Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
As always, comments are welcome and appreciated. Let us know what you liked, hated and want to hear more of.

More...

 
Synology's 2-bay NAS units have consistently performed well in our tests. Today, the latest additions to the 2-bay lineup have been launched in the form of the DS213 and DS213+. The DS213+ also marks the reappearance of Freescale's PowerPC based NAS processors in the Synology 2-bay units.
Gallery: Synology DS213 2-bay NAS Unit


Gallery: Synology DS213+ 2-bay NAS Unit


Synology used to differentiate the regular (DS211 / DS212) and performance models (DS211+ / DS212+) by using 512 MB of DRAM in the latter (compared to the 256 MB in the regular models). In the 2013 models, however, both units have 512 MB of DRAM. Physically, both models have a USB 2.0 and a SD card slot in front, and 2 USB 3.0 ports in the rear. The DS213+ model has an eSATA port in order to enable attachment of additional storage devices.
The DS213+ is based on the Freescale P1022, which runs at 1.067 GHz. In addition to having two e500 cores (each of which is a dual dispatch superscalar processor with out of order issue and execution), we also have double precision vector floating point units which should greatly help accelerate any DLNA apps running in the system.

Freescale P1022

Rounding up the SoC side of things are the two SATA ports, two GbE ports (of which only is used in the DS213+) and some PCI-E ports (connected to USB 3.0 and eSATA bridges in the DS213+).
The DS213 is based on the tried and tested Marvell Kirkwood mv6282 SoC. Both SoCs have hardware encryption support and a dedicated hardware XOR engine for accelerating RAID operations.
Despite being targeted towards home users and prosumers, the Diskstation Manager OS also has plenty of small business features including ACL support for granular, file-level control, ADS support up to 100,000 users and groups and an antivirus package.
The DS213 and DS213+ both come with a single 92mm fan, and the noise level at full speed is rated to be 19.9 dB(A). The DS213's power consumption is rated at 8.3W when the disks are idle and at 18.5W when the disks are being accessed. For the DS213+, these numbers shoot up to 10.1W and 22.2W. Under RAID-1, the DS213 is rated for 108.23 MBps reads and 65.41 MBps writes while the DS213+ is rated for 110.36 MBps reads and 84.31 MBps writes. Synology indicated that the reported numbers were obtained using two Seagate Barracuda LP ST31000520AS 1TB 5900 RPM drives.
Both models are available for ordering in the North American market starting today, with the DS213 at $299 and DS213+ at $369.

More...

Diamond MM is in the process of launching multimedia products in rapid succession. Last week, we had the launch of the Android Media Player AMP1000, and this time around, we have the GC1000 (Game Capture 1000) for capturing and editing game play sessions from popular consoles. The GC1000 acts as a High Definition Personal Video Recorder (HD-PVR) which captures video output from game consoles (or any other sourcE), compresses it using H.264 and streams it out over USB. The original video has a zero-delay passthrough.
HD-PVRs: A Brief History
Video capture cards have been quite popular for some time, but users have definitely felt the need to move away from PCI-E capture cards. Products such as AverMedia's Game Broadcaster HD and the Hauppauge Colossus were introduced recently. We even reviewed the Hauppauge Colossus from a HTPC perspective here. The pioneer in the high definition personal video recorder (HD-PVR) market was the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It initially gained market acceptance as a PVR for set top box outputs (in a HTPC setting). However, consumers soon found that it was very effective at recording game console outputs also. This led Hauppauge to market the same hardware with some additional cables as the HD-PVR gaming edition.
Seeing the success of the Hauppauge HD-PVR gaming edition, other vendors jumped into the fray with similar products. There are a number of alternatives for SD (standard definition) capture, but we are dealing with units capable of HD video recording here. The AverMedia Game Capture HD could capture HD video to internal storage, enabling PC-free recording, while the AverTV USB HD DVR was more similar to the Hauppauge HD-PVR in terms of functionality. Elgato has a dimunitive offering in the form of the Game Capture HD. After almost four years of not having any major updates for their HD-PVR, Hauppauge also introduced the HD-PVR 2 Gaming Edition with zero-delay HDMI passthrough. Today, Diamond Multimedia is throwing their hat in the ring with the GC1000.
Gallery: Diamond Multimedia GC1000 HD Game Capture Card


GC1000 Specifications
The GC1000 functionality is similar to the Hauppauge HD-PVR 2. Video input for recording may come from game consoles, DVD or VHS players, camcorders or STBs as long as they are through S-Video, component video or HDMI without HDCP. There is a zero delay passthrough to the corresponding output port, and the recorded video is streamed out through the USB 2.0 port to a PC.
Recording of video upto 1080p30 is supported. The included Diamond Video Capture (DVC) enables recording as well as upload to YouTube functionality. The internals of the GC1000 include the ADV7611 HDMI receiver and the ADV7181C HD analog video decoder from Analog Devices and the Fujitsu MB86H58 H.264 video compression chip [PDF specifications].
The GC1000 retails for $139.99 and offers a lite version, the GC500, for $69.99. At this price, it definitely comes in cheaper than the Hauppauge HD-PVR 2 Gaming Edition. It remains to be seen as to whether the lower price comes with any quality / miscellaneous software functionality tradeoffs. The unit will be sold at major retailers such as Microcenter and Fry's, as well as e-tailers including Amazon, Newegg and Tigerdirect.

More...

When Intel first came up with their Ultrabook initiative last year—and yes, it was basically just a rechristening of ultraportables with the thin factor of a MacBook Air—they also made some bold claims. One of the biggest was that they felt upwards of 40% of laptops sold in the coming year would be Ultrabooks. At this point, it’s safe to say that didn’t happen, despite some serious marketing muscle—heck, almost the entire Intel booth at CES 2012 was devoted to Ultrabook products! So what was missing from the first round of Ultrabooks that made them less popular than Intel had hoped? ASUS might just have the answer, and that answer is in their updated UX21A, UX31, and UX32VD.

One look at the spec sheet for the UX31A tells you almost everything you need to know. Naturally, it’s very thin and light, but we can say that of just about every Ultrabook. What sets the UX31A apart from the competition is their build quality for one, but the single biggest factor that no one else is currently matching is their use of a 1080p IPS display—a matte, high contrast panel even. There’s plenty more to say about the UX31A, and we’ll have our usual gamut of benchmarks and testing results, but if you’ve been looking for the best Ultrabook for general use you can probably stop right now and just start shopping. For those that like to know everything about a product before taking the plunge, including the strengths and weaknesses, read on.

More...

Today LG has announced the Optimus G (LG-F180), the company's first smartphone to use Qualcomm's APQ8064, otherwise known as the Snapdragon S4 Pro. Under the hood there are four Krait cores humming along at 1.5 GHz, the Adreno 320 GPU, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. There's also 4G LTE support, a 13 megapixel rear facing camera, a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, and a 4.7 inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels. That translates to 317.6 pixels per inch.
The screen, which LG refers to as the "G2 Touch Hybrid Display", is said to deliver 470 nits of brightness and be 30% thinner than LG's previous screens. This is achieved by eliminating "the gap between the glass and the LCD panel". Translation: The glass and the touch sensor are now integrated (on-cell rather than in-cell). The battery, rated at 2100 mAh, is said to have a lifespan of 800 charge cycles, though that'll obviously need to be tested.
Speaking about testing, we benchmarked an APQ8064 reference platform last month.
When will this device hit the market? According to LG it'll land in South Korea next month. Japanese operator NTT DOCOMO says it will offer their customers the Optimus G in October or November. No word as to the rest of the world. There's no pricing information either.
Other things to note: Android 4.0 is onboard, not Android 4.1, and no date has been given regarding upgrades. The Optimus G also weighs 145 grams and measures 131.9 mm x 68.9 mm x 8.45 mm. That compares favorably to the HTC One X, which also has a 4.7 inch display, yet comes in at 134.36 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm and weighs 130 grams.
Update: Technically the Xiamoi Mi-Two was the first smartphone powered by a Qualcomm APQ8064 to be announced, but it's not going to come out until October. That and chances are it's not going to be available outside of China.

More...

Today at the annual Hot Chips conference, AMD’s new CTO Mark Papermaster unveiled the first details about the Steamroller x86 CPU core.
Steamroller is the third instantiation of AMD’s Bulldozer architecture, first conceived in the mid-2000s and finally brought to market in late 2011. Committed to this architecture for at least one more design after Steamroller, AMD has settled on roughly yearly updates to the architecture. For 2012 we have the introduction of Piledriver, the optimized Bulldozer derivative that formed the CPU foundation for AMD’s Trinity APU. By the end of the year we’ll also see a high-end desktop CPU without processor graphics based on Piledriver.
 
Piledriver saw a switch to hard edge flip flops, which allowed for a considerable decrease in power consumption at the expense of careful design and validation work. Performance didn’t change, but AMD saw a 10% - 20% reduction in active power. Piledriver also brought some scheduling efficiency improvements, but no Prefetching and branch prediction were the two other major design improvements in Piledriver.

Steamroller is designed to keep the ball rolling. It takes borrows fundamentals from the Bulldozer/Piledriver architectures and offers a healthy set of evolutionary improvements. In Intel speak Steamroller wouldn’t be a tick as it isn’t accompanied by a significant process change (28nm bulk is pretty close to 32nm SOI), but it’s not a tock as the architecture is mostly enhanced but largely unchanged. Steamroller fits somewhere in between those two extremes when it comes to changes. 
 
Read on for our analysis of AMD's latest CPU architecture.

More...

After a bunch of high profile departures earlier this year, AMD has been trying to turn the tides as of late with high profile hires. Kicking it off was the return of K8 chief architect Jim Keller - AMD hired him away from Apple. Keller will assume the role of AMD's new chief architect of CPU cores. 
Today AMD is announcing that it has made a similarly key hire: John Gustafson. Gustafson joins AMD as its new Chief Graphics Product Architect, and he comes from a very good background. 
Prior to joining AMD, John spent almost four years at Intel. The last seven months he has spent as a senior architect at Intel Labs, working on some forward looking computer usage models. The AMD press release summarizes Gustafson's experience in a typically flattering way:
 
Gustafson is a 35-year veteran of the computing industry. He joins AMD from Intel, where he headed the company’s eXtreme Technologies Lab, conducting cutting-edge research on energy-efficient computing and memory, as well as optical, energy and storage technologies. Prior to that, he served as CEO at Massively Parallel Technologies and CTO at ClearSpeed Technology, a high-performance computing company. Gustafson has also held key management and research positions at numerous companies including Sun Microsystems, Ames and Sandia laboratories.
AMD is also particularly proud of its new hire as he comes with his own law:
 
In 1988, Gustafson wrote Reevaluating Amdahl's Law to address limitations of Amdahl’s Law, which models the maximum potential performance improvement from parallel processing. Gustafson proved that processors working in parallel can solve larger problems, marking a change in how the industry viewed parallel processing. Today, Gustafson’s Law is widely accepted among academia as the standard for parallel processing education. 
Gustafson's background in parallel computing fits very well with his new role with graphics products. AMD is careful to point out that John's work would apply to both Radeon and FirePro lineups, the latter which has become a renewed focus for AMD.
AMD's press release also has a pretty powerful quote from the new hire, sounding downright passionate about GPUs and what they mean to the future of computing:
 
“I look forward to working with my teams to expand the AMD graphics technology roadmap,” said Gustafson. “The next decade will serve as a watershed era for GPUs in graphics rendering power and compute capabilities, creating the opportunity for multi-tera FLOPS APUs. In terms of raw performance, the evolution of discrete graphics has far exceeded that of the central processing unit (CPU), and the programmable characteristics of today’s GPUs have thrown open a door that could very well see it rival the CPU as the most critical element of computer performance in the near future.”
Folks move between silicon companies all of the time, but I'm ok with the idea of these moves being more high profile than they have been in the past. It never hurts to know who is building the things we're reviewing.
 

More...

First, a recap. Clover Trail is the dual-core 32nm Atom platform that will power the first generation of value x86 Windows 8 tablets (and go up against ARM based Windows RT designs). Clover Trail will be in ASUS' Tablet 810 as well as Acer's W510. The two 32nm CPU cores are based on the Saltwell design, which happens to be the same CPU core used in Intel's Medfield platform for smartphones. The GPU core is expected to be the PowerVR SGX 544MP2, and clocked high enough to be competitive with the 543MP4 in Apple's A5X SoC.
Cedar Trail is the 32nm netbook/nettop platform. It uses 1 - 2 Saltwell derived Atom CPU cores and a PowerVR SGX 545 GPU from Imagination. 
Now onto what's new.
An unintentional leak a few months ago brought the codename Valleyview to light. Take up to four 22nm next-generation Atom cores and pair them with Intel's own Gen7 graphics (currently used in Ivy Bridge) and you've got Valleyview. Bay Trail is the platform name.
Today EXPreview posted a bunch of slides offering additional insight into Valleyview. Valleyview will replace Cedar Trail's SoC, although you can expect that a Clover Trail/Medfield replacement will come down the road. The SoC will feature between 1 and 4 22nm Silvermont cores (Out-of-Order Atom, new architecture) running at anywhere from 1.2GHz to 2.4GHz. Each core gets a hefty 512KB L2 cache, for a total of 2MB in a quad-core configuration.
The combination of new architecture, more cores and higher max clock speeds should yield much better performance than Cedar Trail. Whenever this does go into a Windows 8 tablet, the performance should be quite good.
The big news are the four integrated Gen7 graphics engines, which I can only assume refer to Intel's EUs (Intel's HD 2500 has 6 EUs, while HD 4000 has 16 EUs). We've expected Intel to move away from licensing Imagination's GPUs for quite a while now, and it seems like Valleyview might be the first attempt at doing just that. By the time Intel gets to 14nm, I wouldn't be too surprised if it starts playing around with gen-graphics in a smartphone.
That being said, Imagination isn't totally out of Valleyview. In a bizarre move, a VXD392 decode block is still included from Img - despite Intel's own decoder being present in the design. There's a lot of guessing we can do as to why, including having a discussion around power efficiency of decode engines, but otherwise it's unclear why Intel opted to implement both decoders. There's support for hardware accelerated 1080p60 video decode (or 2 x 1080p30 streams). The usual codecs are listed (VC1, H.264, MPEG1/2/4) as well as some additions due to the VXD392 block (WebM, JPEG).
 

The timing on Valleyview and the Bay Trail platform appears to be late 2013 and into 2014. This seems a bit late, but the netbook/nettop platform isn't really begging for a faster refresh. What really matters is how quickly Intel will bring Valleyview to Windows 8 tablets and a similar setup to Intel's smartphone SoCs. Intel's current roadmaps tell us that we'll see Silvermont based smartphone SoCs in 2013, likely in the latter part of the year. I am hoping for sooner than Q4 2013 if Intel wants to be taken seriously in the smartphone space however. As of now it's efforts have been good, but distinctly not Intel-like.

More...

After a string of disappointing devices that have been poorly received by the market, the current release cycle is very important for LG to re-establish itself as a maker of high-end and high quality Android phones, competing on the razor-edge of marketshare and mindshare with the HTCs and Samsungs of the world. Thus arrives the Optimus 4X HD, the flagship of LG’s new lineup, a device goinghead to head with the international versions of the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III.  It comes with high expectations and a spec list to match - 1.5GHz Tegra 3 quad-core with GeForce ULP graphics, 4.7” 720p display with an IPS LCD panel, and 1GB of LPDDR2 RAM.

Considering that this is a cell phone, that's pretty impressive, but it's not alone in boasting a formidable specsheet. The Optimus 4X HD, One X, and Galaxy S III all have quad-core A9 SoCs, large 720p displays, and sit at the very top of each manufacturer's respective Android 4.0 lineup. Interested in seeing how LG's latest stacks up against the mighty One X and Galaxy S3? Read on to find out. 

More...