Anandtech News

**FEED** · 03-07-14, 05:30 PM

Late last year Toshiba announced its intentions to acquire OCZ's assets for $35 million in cash. The offer came after OCZ filed for bankruptcy, following a year of corporate challenges not to mention the difficulties of being an independent SSD manufacturer in a crowded market. Toshiba faces challenges of its own, although not financial. Despite being a large player in the NAND industry, Toshiba hasn't been able to produce the sort of success rival Samsung has been able to in client or enterprise SSD markets. Unlike many acquisitions in the tech industry, the Toshiba/OCZ deal actually seems to make a lot of sense. OCZ needs NAND and cash, while Toshiba needs competitive SSDs in the market. I spoke with OCZ's CEO Ralph Schmitt on the phone earlier today to get a feel for how the two companies are going to work now that the acquisition is complete.
As with most acquisitions, the promise from the get-go is independence. In the case of Toshiba/OCZ, independence is obvious. OCZ exists as a subsidiary of Toshiba and will receive funding/support from the company, but will continue to operate its own product lines independently of Toshiba.
We will see technical collaboration between the two companies, but sales will be kept independent from one another. Toshiba is strong with PC and enterprise OEMs, while OCZ is stronger in the channel. For now, that's how the lines will be drawn. In many ways it's similar to the Micron/Crucial relationship, with Micron (the parent company) handling OEMs and Crucial being the consumer facing brand. What's different in this case is Toshiba will likely depend on OCZ's controller expertise quite a bit.
Toshiba appears to be viewing the acquisition as a marriage of strengths. Toshiba will leverage OCZ to develop SATA and PCIe based controllers, while OCZ has canceled its own plans for SAS drives and instead will lean on Toshiba's expertise there. We'll see division according to form factor as well. OCZ's expertise is in more traditional 2.5" form factors today, while Toshiba has been building M.2 drives for a little while now. We'll see that separation continue, at least until there's a larger shift towards client use of M.2 (at which point OCZ may start making drives in that form factor as well). The internal goal is for zero overlap of efforts between both companies. That doesn't mean that we won't see OCZ branded Toshiba drives or vice versa, just that we won't see OCZ and Toshiba controllers created that compete for the same markets.

Business appears more or less as usual at OCZ. None of my contacts over there (with the exception of the CEO) have changed over the past few years. The entire technical team remains intact, which is pretty surprising given the dire financial situation the company was in last year. I believe a lot of it has to do with belief in the new leadership. When Ralph showed up in late 2012, a lot of folks I expected to quickly leave the company stuck around because they believed in the change he was bringing. It appears to have panned out.
There's limited room for independent SSD manufacturers. Exposure to volatility in NAND pricing and availability is a huge problem. OCZ's days were limited as an independent provider, despite OCZ making it much further than anyone ever expected. Most of its competitors that came from similar roots exited the SSD business while OCZ was still doing well in the space. An acquisition (or outright exit) was inevitable, and Toshiba's move on the business appears to be a really good fit.
The lack of a TLC offering is a huge hole in OCZ's (and Toshiba's) roadmap. OCZ competes well at the high end of the SATA market, but it has no answer to Samsung's SSD 840 EVO or Crucial's M500. Toshiba hopes to fix that. By the middle of the year Toshiba will release its first TLC based SSD, leveraging an existing Toshiba controller design. OCZ will probably end up selling a branded version of this drive to help address some of the more cost sensitive segments of its existing markets.
Early next year OCZ hopes to leverage Toshiba's 3D NAND technology to hit more competitive price points with a controller of its own: Jetstream Express.
OCZ's Jetstream Express has been in development for the past year and a half. It's a native PCIe Gen 3 controller with support for SATA. Tapeout is scheduled for the second half of this year but all IP blocks within the design are presently being run on FPGAs to work through bugs and continue firmware development. Similar to what we've seen from other controller vendors, there's a big focus on error correction and developing flexible front end and NAND interface blocks with Jetstream Express. OCZ expects the first Jetstream Express drives to ship in Q1 of next year. The initial target will be client however we should see an enterprise version follow shortly thereafter. OCZ hopes to have the client Jetstream Express drive to show off at CES next year. The timing does leave OCZ out of the beginning of the next round of controller releases from rivals Samsung and SandForce.

I brought up the point of using 3rd party controllers. While there's still at least one project that leverages a 3rd party controller in the pipeline, the goal is to move exclusively to OCZ and Toshiba designed controllers going forward. The follow-on to the recently announced Z-Drive 4500 (Z-Drive 6000?) will use a 3rd party PCIe based controller, likely as a way to bridge the gap between existing SATA options and Jetstream Express next year.
On the NAND front OCZ is almost completely transitioned over to Toshiba at this point. I think it's a safe bet that we won't see any OCZ products shipping with 3rd party NAND going forward.
The NAND side of the story is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the acquisition. Similar to how we have to fight for access to internal data on architectures and design, 3rd party controller/drive makers are kept at arm's length from some of the details on the inner workings of the NAND they're buying. Now that OCZ is in house, it gets far better insight into the NAND it's integrating into drives which in turn feeds back into firmware and controller development/optimization.
When Ralph Schmitt arrived at OCZ about 1.5 years ago, one of his primary goals was to increase the company's credibility as a provider of reliable SSDs. Development and validation cycles increased, which impacted time to market but significantly improved return rates. I asked Ralph if Toshiba planned on further improving things now that OCZ is a member of a company that supplies to OEMs like Apple. Toshiba evaluated all of OCZ's manufacturing and design processes and concluded that they were generally pretty good. The biggest change on the quality front will be access to NAND. Almost all NAND providers save the best stuff for themselves, but with OCZ in-house it should get the same 1st class treatment from Toshiba.
The Toshiba acquisition appears to be a good next step in the maturation of OCZ as an SSD player. Samsung is still an incredibly fierce opponent, and one that has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down. To be honest, until the new OCZ is cost competitive with the 840 EVO I'm not sure things will change much from a marketshare perspective. What I am sure of is that the old OCZ had no chance to be competitive in this new mature SSD space with vertically integrated players. With Toshiba's support and access to its NAND, the new OCZ at least has a chance to bring its own flavor of competition to the table. As good as Samsung's SSDs have been lately, it's still incredibly important to have competition in this space.
Gallery: OCZ's CEO Outlines Post-Acquisition Plans for TLC and Native PCIe SSDs

More...

**FEED** · 03-07-14, 11:01 PM

In my Mac Pro review I lamented the state of 4K display support under OS X 10.9.0. In my conclusion I wrote: "4K display compatibility under OS X is still a bit like the wild west at this point". Compatibility was pretty much only guaranteed with the ASUS/Sharp 4K displays if you cared about having a refresh rate higher than 30Hz. Even if you had the right monitor, the only really usable resolution was 3840 x 2160 - which ends up making text and UI elements a bit too small for some users. Absent were the wonderful scaling resolutions that Apple introduced with its MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Well it looks like that won't be the case for long, last night I got reports (thanks Mike!) that the latest developer build of OS X 10.9.3 includes expanded support for 4K displays, 4K/60Hz support for rMBPs and scaled resolutions below 4K.
For starters, the list of compatible displays in 10.9.3 extends beyond the ASUS/Sharp models. The 32" and 24" Dell 4K panels are now supported, and I'm guessing the < $1K 28" 4K monitors should be supported as well. You could drive any of those panels prior to 10.9.3 but not at 60Hz.
The display preference pane now includes support for scaled resolutions just like on the rMBPs. The default in 10.9.3 is still the panel's native resolution, but you now have the option to choose 3200 x 1800, 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720. All of these options are treated the same way that the rMBP's scaled resolutions are handled. In the case of the 2560 x 1440 setting, your display is rendered at 5120 x 2880 with text/UI elements drawn at 4x the size (2x in each dimension) and images/video in supported applications drawn at 1x size (1:1 pixel mapping). Once the frame is built, it's scaled down to fit the panel's 3840 x 2160 resolution - giving you a fairly sharp image. I suspect Apple is using their own filtering algorithms here as well in order to ensure maximum quality for the downscaled image.
The beauty of Apple's scaled approach is you get totally usable text/UI elements while still getting all of the benefits of having tons of screen real estate for working on images or videos. The example below features a Safari window that's always expanded to fit all content on the screen as well as a 2560 x 1440 video running at actual size. In this particular example the display is running at the 3200 x 1800 scaled setting, but as you can see the 2560 x 1440 video barely takes up any of the display real estate because the off-screen desktop resolution is a whopping 6400 x 3600 and video elements are rendered 1:1:

You'll also notice that despite the ultra high off-screen resolution, all text/UI elements appear as if they were drawn on a 3200 x 1800 display. That's the 4x scaling at work.
It appears that the 720p and 1080p scaled settings both scale up to 2560 x 1440 before fitting to the panel's resolution. I suspect the more popular options will be the 2560 x 1440 or 3200 x 1800 scaled resolutions.
Gallery: Improving the State of 4K Display Support Under OS X

Prior to 10.9.3, you could force some lower-than-native resolutions on 4K panels but you'd get a lower res desktop upscaled to fit the panel, without any of the HiDPI benefits I just outlined.
There may be a performance impact to the scaled resolution settings (the 3200 x 1800 option actually draws your screen at 6400 x 3600), particularly if you're driving a 4K panel off of an rMBP but I suspect any of the beefier Mac Pro configurations should be fine. This is definitely something to look at once 10.9.3 goes final.
This is a huge step forward in improving the state of 4K under OS X. The 10.9.3 update is a smaller update than 10.9.2 (~200MB vs nearly 800MB), which took around two months from initial seeding to final release.

More...

**FEED** · 03-08-14, 09:00 AM

“Mobile Workstation” always triggers an ambivalent feeling in my brain. Workstation means performance and reliability, whereas a mobile part suggests compromise for the added benefit of portability. Both of these terms mean added cost, so when Dell starts to offer a new mobile workstation with 4th Generation i5/i7 CPUs and FirePro GPUs under the heading of ‘entry-level’ and a starting price of $1199, curiosity takes over.
This new M2800 is aimed at cost-sensitive customers who require workstation levels of certification with performance, particularly for mission-critical applications. The 15” M2800 is designed to bridge that gap between business-class laptops and regular mobile workstations with ISV certification and configurability. Dell will offer the M2800 with mobile Haswell Core i5 and Core i7 processors, AMD FirePro W4170M graphics with 2GB GDDR5, up to 1 TB of storage and up to 16GB of system memory. Screen resolutions will be available in HD and FHD, along with external multi-monitor support.

The specifications list unfortunately is a little vague. While we were able to determine that the FirePro W4170M has 6 CUs (384 SPs), there is no mention of VT-x or VT-d on the CPUs (or if they are Xeons) and no mention of SSD storage, whether it is SATA, PCIe or M.2. The display is listed as an Ultrasharp panel, and thus an IPS, but no mention of PremierColor which might be more suited on the CAD/imaging side. When the M2800 website becomes fully functional, this data should become available.
In the Dell press release, a lot of talk on CAD, digital content creation and editing software was mentioned, particularly regarding the ISV certification. Applications such as AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, Solidworks and PTC Creo fall under this bracket. Dell is also drawing attention to their Precision Performance Optimizer, which will adjust the system settings for the certified applications to maintain maximum performance.

The device has a number pad, a DVD drive, four USB ports, a VGA output, a HDMI output, a Kensington lock, gigabit Ethernet, an SD card reader and a fingerprint scanner. The base device will ship with a 1366 x 768 panel to hit that $1199 price point. Availability is expected in the spring.

Source: Dell
Gallery: Dell introduces the Precision M2800, Entry Level ISV-Certified Mobile Workstation

More...

**FEED** · 03-10-14, 07:01 AM

At both the Intel Haswell launch and the first shipping Haswell Xeon silicon, I lamented the lack of a Crystal Well Xeon part in the line-up. It would make sense that a large L4 cache on a CPU would be a prime target for workstation and server applications, as well as the gaming methodology used by Crystal Well in the Mac/Clevo laptops and Brix Pro system. Thus when searching for information on Xeon E3 SKUs today, my surprise came at the listing of Iris Pro 5200 enabled Xeon silicon.
Slipping somewhat under the radar, the Xeon E3-1284L v3 is a BGA only processor, featuring lower frequencies than any other Crystal Well SKU to date. The 47W quad-core part has a base clock of 1.8 GHz, hitting 3.2 GHz as the max turbo frequency. That is a big jump from base to turbo, so it would be interesting to see what the breakdown turbo frequencies are depending on per-core loading. As with the other similar SKUs, we have 32GB DDR3-1600 support, however ECC is supported and the memory bandwidth comparison on ark.intel.com would make this component aimed more for laptops and mobile devices rather than desktops. The integrated Iris Pro 5200 graphics have the highest base frequency of any Iris Pro part at 750 MHz, rising to 1.0 GHz at turbo which is incidentally the lowest turbo frequency of the Iris Pro 5200 range. vPro, VT-x, VT-d and TSX-NI are all enabled for this part as well.
Both CPU-World and ark.intel put the release of this part at Q1’14 (CPU-World states February 2014), however much like the initial Crystal Well parts, I would imagine we were 6 months out from seeing any products with the CPU coming to market. It could turn out that this SKU is just a specific customer’s request – it would seem a little odd just to have one processor of this nature in the Xeon line-up. But if your volume is sufficient, Intel might make it just for you.
Anand, Ganesh and I have each taken four separate looks at different Crystal Well hardware, including Intel’s Customer Reference Board, the iMac, a Clevo and the GIGABYTE Brix Pro.

More...

**FEED** · 03-10-14, 01:30 PM

So far there have been only a few ways to get hold of an Iris Pro 5200 enabled machine. The first CPUs with these processors were in laptops, until Apple put some in the 21.5” iMacs and GIGABYTE pushed for its BRIX Pro that achieved Steam Box status. Fast forward a few months from those announcements and now ZOTAC is getting in the mix by releasing a pair of ZBOX E-Series mini-PCs.

The two models will be the EI750 and EI730, differentiated by their processor. The EI750 comes with the i7-4770R, the top performing Iris Pro HD 5200 CPU, whereas the EI730 is with the i5-4570R, with lower clock speeds, no hyperthreading and a smaller L3 cache.
The ZBOX E-Series are essentially in direct competition with the BRIX Pro in this market, and ZOTAC's aim is to win on z-height. These machines in the images look longer in the x/y dimensions but shorter in the z-dimension, while still retaining VESA 75/100 mounting. Official dimensions put the system at 188x188x51 mm, which seems very small for a 65W CPU.

Both models come with two DDR3L SO-DIMM slots for up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 (1600 supported, I’ve asked if these units will allow overclocking or faster memory), space for a 2.5” SSD, dual DisplayPort and a DVI port, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, onboard Intel 7260 2T2R 802.11ac WiFi and four USB 3.0 ports. ZOTAC will also sell Plus models with 8 GB DDR3-1600 CAS 11 and a 1TB 5400 HDD included.

ZOTAC is aiming for a March launch, with the EI750 base model retailing at £520, or £650 for the Plus edition. The EI730 base has an MSRP of £430, and the Plus edition will be £560. US pricing should be coming to me soon.

ZOTAC ZBOX E-Series
	EI750	EI730
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770R	Intel Core i5-4570R
Cores	4C / 8T	4C / 4T
Base Frequency	3200	2700
Turbo Frequency	3900	3200
L3 Cache	6MB	4MB
IGP	Iris Pro 5200	Iris Pro 5200
DRAM	2 x SO-DIMM	2 x SO-DIMM
Display Outputs	2 x DP 1 x DVI-D	2 x DP 1 x DVI-D
SATA	1 x SATA 6 Gbps 1 x mSATA 6 Gbps	1 x SATA 6 Gbps 1 x mSATA 6 Gbps
Ethernet	2 x GbE	2 x GbE
WiFi	Intel 7260 802.11ac 2T2R	Intel 7260 802.11ac 2T2R
USB	4 x USB 3.0	4 x USB 3.0

Gallery: ZOTAC Goes For Iris Pro in Their New ZBOX E-Series Gaming Mini-PCs

More...

**FEED** · 03-10-14, 05:30 PM

Word comes this afternoon that NVIDIA has released another new set of WHQL drivers, this time version 335.23. 335.23 is another member of the R334 driver branch, so this is a straightforward update to the 334.89 WHQL drivers released last month that builds on those previously introduced performance and feature additions.
335.23 is another one of NVIDIA’s “game ready” driver releases that’s being pushed out ahead of a major game’s launch. This time it’s for Respawn’s Titanfall, which is due tomorrow.
335.23 also includes a GPU clock offset increase that should be of interest to GTX 750 series owners. As our regular readers may recall from our GTX 750 review, all of our GTX 750 cards have overclocked so well that they’ve hit NVIDIA’s clock offset limits, keeping us from overclocking any of these cards to their physical limits. With this larger offset GTX 750 series owners should be able to squeeze a bit more out of their cards, and is something we’ll be checking up on this week.
Meanwhile this driver release also contains new SLI profiles for Diablo 3, DOTA 2, NFS: Rivals, and Watch Dogs. 3D Vision profiles/ratings are also included for Titanfall, Thief, and Call of Duty: Ghosts.
As usual, you can grab the drivers for all current desktop and mobile NVIDIA GPUs over at NVIDIA’s driver download page.

More...

**FEED** · 03-10-14, 06:30 PM

A couple of weeks ago at MWC, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 801 which was positioned as a speed bump for the next wave of flagship smartphones. Qualcomm touted a 2.5GHz CPU frequency (up from 2.3GHz with Snapdragon 800), as well as increased GPU, ISP and memory interface speeds. Samsung announced immediate support for the new Snapdragon 801 with the Galaxy S 5, as did Sony with the Xperia Z2. Unfortunately this is where confusion set in. The Galaxy S 5 was advertised as a Snapdragon 801 with a 2.5GHz CPU clock, while the Xperia Z2 claimed the same Snapdragon 801 branding but with a 2.3GHz CPU clock - the same frequency as a Snapdragon 800. If it's not CPU frequency that separates a Snapdragon 800 from an 801, what does? The answer, as it turns out, is a little more complex. The table below should help explain it all:

Snapdragon 800/801 Breakdown
	SoC Version	Model	Max CPU Frequency	Max GPU Frequency	ISP	eMMC	DSDA	Memory IF
MSM8974VV	v2	S800	2.2GHz	450MHz	320MHz	4.5	N	800MHz
MSM8974AA	v2	S800	2.3GHz	450MHz	320MHz	4.5	N	800MHz
MSM8974AB	v2	S800	2.3GHz	550MHz	320MHz	4.5	N	933MHz
MSM8974AA	v3	S801	2.3GHz	450MHz	320MHz	5.0	Y	800MHz
MSM8974AB	v3	S801	2.3GHz	578MHz	465MHz	5.0	Y	933MHz
MSM8974AC	v3	S801	2.5GHz	578MHz	465MHz	5.0	Y	933MHz

The Snapdragon 800 brand applies to an internal Qualcomm model number of MSM8974. The MSM8974 has four Krait 400 CPU cores, an Adreno 330 GPU, dual-ISP, 64-bit wide memory interface and a 9x25 Cat 4 LTE modem. It turns out there are two different silicon revisions of this SoC: version 2 and 3. The Snapdragon 800 v2 silicon was made available in three different flavors: VV, AA and AB. The difference between all three MSM8974 v2 variants was CPU and GPU frequency. This isn't an unusual practice at all as there's bound to be a distribution of operating frequencies for any design. Better bins end up as higher clocked parts, while others get tested and pass at lower frequencies. OEMs can pay more for the faster bins if they want.
In the case of v2 silicon, you could end up with silicon that ran its CPU cores up to 2.2GHz or 2.3GHz. Only the AB variant saw its max GPU frequency climb to 550MHz. The rest of the specs remain identical between all v2 silicon. Note that I'm using the marketing frequencies here and not the actual frequencies. For whatever reason the OEMs choose to round up to the nearest 100MHz when quoting CPU speeds (2.2GHz is actually 2.15GHz, 2.3GHz is actually 2.26GHz and 2.5GHz is actually 2.45GHz). That's a battle for another day.
Over time it's possible to squeeze more out of a given process and that's exactly what Qualcomm did with MSM8974 v3. This newer silicon revision used improvements on the process side (28nm HPm+) to push frequencies even higher. The options are now 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz on the CPU side. Just like with v2, v3 silicon offers three different variants. Unlike the situation with v2, v3 sees increases in CPU, GPU and ISP operating frequencies depending on which bin an OEM orders. Note that the increases in ISP frequency are substantial. If my math is correct, the Snapdragon 801 should be able to push almost as many pixels through its ISP as the forthcoming 805.
The other major difference is that v3 silicon enables support for eMMC 5.0.
In short, there are two different versions of MSM8974 silicon. Version 3 adds eMMC 5.0 support and hardware dual-sim, dual-active (DS-DA). All variants of v3 silicon can carry the Snapdragon 801 branding, while all v2 variants are Snapdragon 800s.
Putting it in Perspective
What does all of this mean? Let's first talk about the non-frequency related benefits of MSM8974 v3. eMMC 5.0 adds some new features as well as increases the maximum interface speed from 200MB/s in eMMC 4.5 to 400MB/s. As high end smartphones and tablets start using faster internal storage, having eMMC 5.0 support will be necessary to enable faster transfer speeds. SanDisk's recently announced iNAND Extreme update promises 300MB/s sequential read performance for 32GB+ devices. On a smartphone equipped with USB 3 that means you could feasibly copy large movies or files off of your smartphone at up to 300MB/s. Without eMMC 5.0 support you'd be limited to somewhere south of 200MB/s.
DSDA support matters to specific regions, and for those areas the benefit is obvious.
Supporting faster LPDDR3 means more available memory bandwidth for all of the big consumers on the SoC. I'd expect improvements in high end 3D gaming performance, and potentially certain camera/imaging workloads. Remember that all parts of the SoC have to share that tiny interface to main memory, so more memory bandwidth definitely doesn't hurt.
On the frequency side, the gains are pretty easy to understand. The higher peak CPU speed will translate into faster web page and application loads. Higher GPU frequency will allow for smoother frame rates in 3D games, and the faster ISP frequency can enable quicker processing of camera sensor output. You can also look at the benefits of these things from the perspective of lowering power consumption. Tasks can now complete in less time, allowing these individual IP blocks to quickly move down to lower power states and increase battery life.

More...

**FEED** · 03-11-14, 12:30 AM

Liquid-cooling is nothing new in the world of computers; enthusiasts first started creating custom water cooling setups back in the 80486 era, and even prior to that some mainframes used liquid-cooling. Due to their cost and complexity however, such cooling solutions often do not appeal to a large portion of users. With the advent of of closed loop, ready-to-run liquid-cooling kits from Asetek and CoolIT a few years back, however, liquid-cooling is now significantly less costly and complex. Today, the cooling solutions of both these two OEMs are being marketed by several brands and are becoming increasingly popular among all classes of users. Today we have NZXT's Kraken G10 GPU cooler; read on to see how it performs relative to the stock air-cooling solutions.

More...

**FEED** · 03-11-14, 06:30 AM

While we do not have anyone on the floor of CeBIT this year, manufacturers are showcasing several new products worth mentioning between now and Computex in June. MSI has sent over their EU contingent with a few new interesting products worth a mention and came back to us with an image deck. First up is the next in the line of mini-ITX sized graphics cards: the R9 270X Gaming ITX:

As with the GTX ITX cards we have seen from ASUS and MSI, MSI has transplanted the idea into the AMD range on the latest R9 2xx series. The GPU will feature a 1000 MHz core frequency, with 1050 MHz boost, along with 6GB GDDR5 (!?). The card in the image that says 6144 MB, which feels incorrect – MSI has some high memory capacity cards (4GB GTX 630 for example) but 6GB does seem like overkill. The card will have DisplayPort, HDMI 1.4 and dual DVI-I ports. Length for these cards is limited to 17cm, compliant with mITX specifications.
Also on display are some images of upcoming Intel motherboards. These might be related to the release of the Haswell CPU refresh we reported on recently:

There is not much to see – these motherboards must be in the final design stages before mass production. There are clearly M.2 slots on all the motherboards, suggesting the move away from mSATA based connectivity. It is hard to say if these are powered by one PCIe lane or two. There are a few ASMedia controllers dotted around, which look to be additional USB 3.0 ports or hubs. I have asked MSI for higher definition images and will update if we get some!
Source: MSI
Gallery: CeBIT 2014: MSI Shows New Intel Motherboards, R9 270X Gaming ITX

More...

**FEED** · 03-11-14, 07:31 AM

A good number of companies play in the enterprise Wi-Fi market: Aruba Networks, Ubiquiti and Ruckus Wireless to name a few. Enterprise Wi-Fi looks at markets that have dense casual user access but high levels of management therein, such as hotels, dormitories, hospitals, waiting rooms, office spaces and retail areas. Last year Ganesh reported on Ubiquiti’s initial Enterprise Wi-Fi AP offering, and a year further down the line Xirrus got in contact regarding their 802.11ac AP line. Xirrus’ offering comes from the point of view of upgradeability – buy an 802.11ac access point at 802.11n prices, but further down the line pay for a software update to enable 802.11ac access. This method of delivering data would allow businesses to upgrade without the need to replace hardware as well as spread the cost of network upgrading.
The main product Xirrus got in contact with us about is the new XR-620 Access Point, designed to be the lowest-cost 2x2 802.11ac enterprise solution on the market. This system is based off a Qualcomm Atheros SoC, and due to the dual stream nature the device is capable of 867 Mbps per radio. This is compared to Xirrus’ 3x3 XR-630 that can manage 1.3 Gbps per radio. The AP will have dual radios for 2.4 GHz/5GHz or dual 5 GHz operation, and be suitable for up to 240 concurrent users with four integrated antennas. While there are two gigabit Ethernet points (802.3ad / link aggregation compatible), cloud based management comes part of the solution as well. The XR-600 series comes with intruder detection and prevention systems with zero touch provisioning.

Administrators controlling the AP will have access to Xirrus’ Application Control. This software uses Layer 7 deep packet inspection to prioritize access of certain applications over others, with 1200+ applications being monitored. While not explicitly mentioned, Xirrus does have dedicating meshing support on the 620.
Xirrus are bringing the XR-620 into the market at $675, with availability in March.
Source: Xirrus

More...