Thread: Anandtech News

I suppose it's fitting that I should be the one to write our PlayBook review. Before Android and the iPhone, there were two mobile platforms/devices that I was hugely fond of: the Palm V and my BlackBerry. In fact, it wasn't until the iPhone that I finally let go of my last BlackBerry - moving on from the email era into the smartphone age.

Today's BlackBerry is of course very different than the devices I used in college. And the PlayBook is unlike anything RIM has ever done.

I don't believe any tablet maker has perfected the formula just yet. I made that abundantly clear in our review of the iPad 2. While you can't argue that Apple is the forerunner in the smartphone based tablet space, over the long term I still believe this is anyone's game. Remember, the leaders in the early days of the PC industry weren't the ones who ultimately dominated the mature market.

What follows is our review of RIM's first attempt at building a tablet. The PlayBook is far from perfect, but there's a foundation here that can be built upon if RIM has a good roadmap and good execution. And if you're a BlackBerry user, there's a lot of synergy to exploit.

Let's get to it.



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We just started testing SSDs based on IMFT 25nm NAND Flash and look at what Intel/Micron just announced? The first 8GB MLC NAND device built on a 20nm process. This is obviously an announcement of pre-production silicon, it’ll take IMFT until the second half of this year (at least) to start shipping production quality 20nm NAND.

IMFT 20nm 8GB NAND, 118mm2

At 50nm IMFT NAND was good for 10,000 program/erase cycles (rated, not actual). The move to 34nm dropped that to 3000 - 5000 program erase cycles, a value that was maintained with the move to 25nm. I asked Micron how long NAND will last at 20nm and was told that p/e cycles are comparable to where 25nm was at a similar point in its development cycle. Micron expects quality to ramp over time and ultimately hit a similar point to existing 25nm NAND, which is good for controller manufacturers as it means any ECC/NAND redundancy efforts they have already implemented should support the new 20nm product.

An 8GB 2-bit-per-cell MLC NAND device built at 20nm has a die area of 118mm2, down from 167mm2 at 25nm. A single 8GB NAND device wasn’t built at 34nm.

IMFT is on a 15 - 18 month process cadence, meaning this transition was of course planned for in advance. The first 20nm NAND is being manufactured at the IMFT Fab in Lehi, Utah, which is currently producing 25nm NAND. Some equipment upgrades are necessary to support 20nm. IMFT will also transition its fabs in Manassas, VA and Singapore to 20nm at a later point.

For consumers there’s an obvious win. We need smaller transistor geometries to reduce the cost of NAND, which ultimately reduces the cost of SSDs. The days of 50% annual price reductions are over however, expect to see a conservative 20 - 30% drop in price for SSDs that use 20nm NAND over 25nm NAND.


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First I want to thank everyone who entered and MSI for suppling a GT680R Sandy Bridge notebook for the contest. And second, I'd like to congratulate AT reader gamefreakgcb - you're our grand prize winner!

MSI will be sending me 25 coupons for Mafia 2 which I'll distribute to the first 25 commenters who entered the contest.

And if you didn't win this time, don't worry - we've got another big contest coming up soon...



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When Hauppauge introduced the original HD PVR in 2008 its component plus TOSLINK (optical S/PDIF) capture of 5.1 Dolby Digital and up to 1080i analog video was a revolutionary, and long overdue, shift for the home theater PC (HTPC) based digital video recorder (DVR). Finally there was a viable option for recording DRM-free high definition (HD) content. The device was far from perfect however, suffering from stability (I RMA’d four personally); furthermore, as a large external USB device, it didn’t provide the most appealing form factor for many installations.

Today we’re looking at Hauppauge’s second iteration of the HD PVR concept, this time as a standard height PCIe x1 device dubbed Colossus. It offers all of the previous capture options while adding HDMI input to the feature list.



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Last October after months of waiting, Apple finally refreshed their MacBook Air lineup, which we reviewed shortly after launch. The update introduced a new 11.6” form factor along with a minor redesign, faster graphics, and bigger SSDs—all with cheaper prices as an added bonus. The new SSDs were fairly interesting, since Apple didn’t use normal 2.5” or 1.8” SSDs but instead introduced a whole new form factor with mSATA SSDs (also known as blade SSDs).

In iFixit’s teardown, it was confirmed that the MacBook Airs use Toshiba’s Blade X-gale SSDs. A bit over month ago, however, it was discovered that there appear to be two different revisions of SSDs circulating in MacBook Airs. The first one is obviously the Toshiba, but later user reports show that there is a second, totally different SSD. This SSD carries a model name of SM128C while the Toshiba is TS128C. The SM in the model name hints towards Samsung as the manufacturer, and Apple has used Samsung SSDs before.

MacBook Air SSD Comparison
AJA System Test: iSebas/DiskWhackTest Model Read MB/s Write MB/s TS128C 209.8 175.6 SM128C 261.1 209.6 The interesting aspect is that the SM128C models provide quite a nice performance bump in at least one performance metric. Benchmarks posted by users show that the SM128C manages up to 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds. In our tests (and corroborating what users have reported), the TS128C only offers speeds of up to 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write. The SM128C also supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) while the TS128C does not. The performance figures match the figures of Samsung 470 Series pretty well, which Samsung quotes as providing up to 250MB/s read and 220MB/s write. The Samsung 470 Series uses Samsung’s own controller with model number S3C29MAX01-Y340.

There is no absolute confirmation yet that Samsung manufactures the SM128C, but all indicators point that way. Regardless of manufacturer, the SM128C appears noticeably faster in sequential read/write performance. What we can’t confirm is how the two models differ in more intense testing, specifically with regards to random read/write performance, TRIM support, etc. Ultimately it may not matter, as users will get whatever Apple decides to put in their laptops.





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When we reviewed Motorola's Xoom, all that was available was the $799 3G version. Since then Motorola has released a more affordable $599 WiFi only edition with 32GB of NAND on board. Inside the Xoom, as you're all familiar with is NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC. Tegra 2 was Google's reference SoC for the Honeycomb release of Android, and thus it's been the heart and soul of all recently announced Honeycomb tablets.

NVIDIA, eager to parade its success with Tegra 2, shipped me a box containing four WiFi Motorola Xooms to give away to our most loyal readers. Here's a shot of the four:



Now the plan: we'll be giving one away every two days until we're out of WiFi Xooms. Sound good?

Read on for details on how to enter!



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Two weeks ago we saw the paper launch of the Radeon HD 6450, the low-end member of AMD’s Northern Islands family of GPUs. It was a solid product for HTPC use and a very notable improvement over the 5450 it replaced, but it was an uncharacteristically delayed launch for AMD. At the same time we noted that the Northern Islands family had one more GPU we had not seen: Turks.

As it turns out, Turks-based video cards will be launching alongside the 6450 today, delivering all of the remaining Northern Islands products in a single push. Turks will be powering the Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570, replacing the Redwood-based Radeon HD 5670 and Radeon HD 5570 respectively. Considering that we saw AMD deliver a solid upgrade for their low-end lineup with the 6450, will we see the same with Turks and the 6670/6570? Let’s find out.

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When we reviewed Motorola's Xoom, all that was available was the $799 3G version. Since then Motorola has released a more affordable $599 WiFi only edition with 32GB of NAND on board. Inside the Xoom, as you're all familiar with is NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC. Tegra 2 was Google's reference SoC for the Honeycomb release of Android, and thus it's been the heart and soul of all recently announced Honeycomb tablets.

NVIDIA, eager to parade its success with Tegra 2, shipped me a box containing four WiFi Motorola Xooms to give away to our most loyal readers. We're still trying to contact the winner of the first Xoom. Remember you have seven days to claim your prize otherwise you forefit it. Also remember that the contest is only available to legal residents of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico). Be sure to read the eligibility section to make sure you aren't disqualified if you win!

Here's a shot of the remaining three:

We'll be giving one away every two days until we're out of WiFi Xooms. Sound like a plan?

Read on for full contest entry details!



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One of our favorite mainstream notebooks last year was Dell’s XPS 15—provided you purchased the upgraded 1080p LCD. It managed to hit the market before talk of Sandy Bridge completely eclipsed the outgoing Arrandale offerings, and it provided a good blend of performance, battery life, build quality, and most important price. There are other laptops with good LCDs floating around, but try finding a high-quality 1080p LCD in a laptop for under $1000. That’s what the original L501x provided; now Dell has upgraded the design with Sandy Bridge processors.

Outwardly, very little has changed, so if you liked (or disliked) the original then you’ll probably feel the same with the L502x. However, the CPU change however brings quite a few other tweaks along for the ride. Previously, the XPS line had versions with dual-core Arrandale CPUs and an Optimus-enabled GPU, or you could upgrade to a quad-core Clarksfield processor and get a GPU upgrade as well, unfortunately losing out on Optimus in the process. Sandy Bridge CPUs come in both dual-core and quad-core varieties, and since all of them come with Intel’s latest IGP they all support Optimus. That’s the good news, but is there a downside? Read on for our full analysis.



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ASUS was at the forefront of the netbook revolution thanks to its close partnerships with Intel and Microsoft. ASUS has been all but absent from the smartphone and tablet revolution again, because of its two key partnerships: Intel and Microsoft. Both Intel and Microsoft lay dormant while the smartphone and tablet revolution pick up speed, granted this may all change around Windows 8, but for now it's the truth. If you're a partner of both Intel and Microsoft, you too lay dormant while competitors like Apple, Samsung, Motorola and LG take your cake. After more than enough thumb fiddling, it was ASUS' turn for a slice.

Read on for our full review of ASUS' first Honeycomb tablet: the Eee Pad Transformer.



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