Thread: Anandtech News

This week NVIDIA announced their earnings for the first quarter of their 2020 fiscal year, and although the crash in crypto-currency has been a boom for gamers wanting to buy GPUs, it has not been as welcome to the company’s Form 10-Q. Revenue for Q1 2020 fell 31% to $2.22 billion, with gross margin falling 6.1% from 64.5% to 58.4%. Operating expenses at the company were up 21% despite the downturn in revenue, with NVIDIA spending $132 million more this quarter on R&D than the same period a year ago. Operating income was down 72% to $358 million, although thanks to $44 million in interest income and $5 million in income tax benefit, net income came in at $394 million. Even though net was higher than operating, net was still down 68% compared to Q1 2019. This resulted in earnings-per-share of $0.64, down 68% from the $1.98 a year ago.

NVIDIA Q1 2020 Financial Results (GAAP)
	Q1'2020	Q4'2019	Q1'2019	Q/Q	Y/Y
Revenue	$2220M	$2205M	$3207M	+1%	-31%
Gross Margin	58.4%	54.7%	64.5%	+3.7%	-6.1%
Operating Income	$358M	$294M	$1295M	+22%	-72%
Net Income	$394M	$567M	$1244M	-31%	-68%
EPS	$0.64	$0.92	$1.98	-30%	-68%

Although seeing such a drop is never good, some perspective is required. NVIDIA’s 2019 fiscal year was a standout. Revenue in Q1 2019 was $3.2 billion, with a net income of $1.2 billion. But if you go back to Q1 2018, revenue was $1.9 billion, and net income was $507 million, which is much closer to Q1 2020. Comparing Q1 2018 to Q1 2020 has 2020 up 14.6% on revenue, and net income down 28.6%. Clearly the inflated results thanks to a perfect storm for NVIDIA’s 2019 financials has ended though, and the company has been thrust back to reality. Luckily reality for the company is that a Q1 of $2.2 billion makes it easily their second best Q1 ever, so I think they’ll be OK.
Jumping into individual segments within the company, there are basically two products NVIDIA sells: GPU and Tegra. NVIDIA further breaks these down into subcategories, but NVIDIA at its heart is still a GPU company and its results prove that out. GPU revenue accounted for 91% of the company’s revenue, at $2.022 billion USD, and this segment had an operating income of $669 million. A year ago when crypto was king, GPU was $2.765 billion in revenue with an operating income of $1.394 billion. Revenue for GPU was down due to drops in gaming and data center revenue, as well as not having $289 million in revenue for cryptocurrency mining processors (CMP).
Tegra on the other hand was only $198 million in revenue for Q1 2020, with an operating loss of $44 million. A year ago, Tegra was $442 million in revenue and the segment was in the black, with an operating income of $97 million. The big drop for Tegra is a decline in SoC modules for gaming, which you can read as Nintendo Switch sales for the most part.
NVIDIA then shuffles all of these results into several other categories. Gaming is their largest, and Gaming had revenue of $1.05 billion, which is down 39% from a year ago. NVIDIA attributes this drop due to a decline in GPU shipments as well as a decline in SoC modules for gaming consoles.
Professional Visualization, which features the Quadro brand, had revenue of $266 million, up 6% from a year ago. NVIDIA has seen growth in both desktop and laptop workstation products compared to 2019.
Data Center had revenue for Q1 of $634 million, which is down 10% from a year ago. NVIDIA has seen some slowdown in the hyperscale and enterprise purchases of GPUs, but some growth in inference which has offset the drop somewhat.
Automotive had revenue of $166 million, up 14% from a year ago, attributed to growth in AI cockpit modules.
Finally, OEM and Other revenue was $99 million, down 74% from a year ago, which is not surprising since this is where NVIDIA stuck it’s CMP sales, meaning this entire drop can be attributed directly to cryptocurrency.

NVIDIA Quarterly Revenue Comparison (GAAP) ($ in millions)
In millions	Q1'2020	Q4'2019	Q1'2019	Q/Q	Y/Y
Gaming	$1055	$954	$1723	+11%	-39%
Professional Visualization	$266	$293	$251	-9%	+6%
Datacenter	$634	$679	$701	-7%	+10%
Automotive	$166	$163	$145	+2%	+14%
OEM & IP	$99	$116	$387	-15%	-74%

After a stellar FY 2019, the company has had to hit reset a bit. Q1 is well down compared to 2019, but luckily for the company, not so far off the year previous. Looking ahead to Q2 2020, NVIDIA is expecting revenue of $2.55 billion, plus or minus 2%, and gross margins 59.2% plus or minus 0.5%.
Source: NVIDIA Investor Relations

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According to a recent report by Reuters, sources claim that Google is to suspend some business operations with Huawei due to the U.S. Commerce Department’s blacklisting of the company earlier in the week on Thursday.
Huawei is said to lose access to non-open source software and services provided by Google, which in layman terms means essentially all Google services besides baseline Android. Losing access to the Play Store would be a major blow to Huawei’s mobile operations besides the Chinese market where Google doesn’t operate any services.

Huawei will continue to have access to the version of the Android operating system available through the open source license that is freely open to anyone who wishes to use it.
But Google will stop providing any technical support and collaboration for Android and Google services to Huawei going forward, the source said.

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Last week Motorola announces a new addition to its product line-up: The One Vision. The “One” series is a higher mid-tier value series by the company targeting a better value proposition for users. The new One Vision updates the internals compared to last year’s one, and adds new interesting features such as a new 48MP camera sensor and a new Exynos SoC by Samsung.

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Kingston's latest flagship client/consumer SSD is launching today: the KC2000, which is set to replace the two year old KC1000. The KC2000 was previewed early this year at CES, but pricing and release dates were not announced at the time. Technologically, the new KC2000 is a huge improvement over its predecessor in its choice of both controller and NAND, and as a result it puts Kingston on the leading edge.



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ASRock has released two new ATX motherboards to complete its Z390 product range, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and the Z390 Phantom Gaming X. Both the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming X come with a new refreshed design which features plenty of integrated RGB LEDs, a 2.5 GbE Realtek NIC, and triple M.2 slots. The Z390 Phantom Gaming X also includes support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) for maximum Wi-Fi performance and connectivity.

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Having launched their Corsair One small form-factor PCs, as well as Bulldog PCs for the living room, Corsair is now entering the market of mainstream gaming machines with its Vengeance series of computers. The new systems are Micro-ATX PCs designed for gamers looking for performance and style, but not necessarily looking to build a machine themselves.



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Marvell on Monday announced that it had entered into agreement to buy Avera Semiconductor from GlobalFoundries. The acquisition will bring additional chip design capabilities to Marvell and will enable it to develop a wider range of products. In particular, the company says that that the takeover will help it to strengthen its position as a leading supplier of infrastructure semiconductor solutions. Meanwhile the deal also sees Marvell signing a wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries.
GlobalFoundries spun off its ASIC Solutions division (which it got from IBM) into Avera Semiconductor in November 2018. The business unit helps chip designers to develop semi-custom of full-custom chips. Avera employs about 800 engineers and has a comprehensive portfolio of silicon-proven IP, including Arm cores, performance and density-optimized SRAMs, embedded TCAMs, high-speed SerDes, interfaces, and other useful IP. In particular, Avera has design experience in fields such as analog and mixed-signal and SoCs for switches, routers, and other devices. Right now, Avera is developing several projects for next-gen datacenters.
Marvell will pay GlobalFoundries $650 million in cash at closing (by the end of Marvell’s fiscal year 2020) plus an additional $90 million in cash if certain business conditions are satisfied within the next 15 months. The contracts involve handing over Avera's revenue base, strategic design wins with infrastructure OEMs, and a long-term wafer supply agreement between GlobalFoundries and Marvell.
Since Avera used to work exclusively with customers of GlobalFoundries, the vast majority of its IP blocks were designed for GlobalFoundries’ process technologies. So Marvell signing a long-term supply agreement with GlobalFoundries makes sense for both companies, as Marvell is going to be using GlobalFoundries capacity anyhow.
With addition of Avera engineers and IP, Marvell hopes to address (among other markets) custom ASICs aimed at base stations, which will have positive effects on its revenue and profitability.
Overall, selling off its Avera business is part of a greater reshaping of GlobalFoundries. As the company has ceased development of cutting-edge process nodes (7nm+) and shifted to specialty process technologies, its client base and business needs are shifting as well.
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• GlobalFoundries to Sell 300mm New York Fab to ON Semiconductor
• GlobalFoundries to Sell 200-mm Fab 3E to Vanguard, Exits MEMS Business
• GlobalFoundries Establishes Avera Semiconductor: a Custom Chip Company
• GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes

Source: Marvell

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ASUS has introduced its new high-end smartphone, the ZenFone 6. The new handset is based on Qualcomm’s top-of-the-range Snapdragon 855 SoC, and perhaps most interesting of all, a motorized 180° flip-up camera module.
Featuring a huge NanoEdge 6.4-inch display with a 92% screen-to-body ratio, the ASUS ZenFone 6 looks like one large screen as it does not feature any notches or water drops. The LCD can cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, supports HDR10, a maximum brightness of 600 nits.
The key feature of the phone is its motorized 180° flip-up camera module, which incorporates a 48 MP Sony IMX586 RGB sensor as well as a 13 MP 125° ultrawide sensor. The camera can be used not only for regular photos, but flipped-up for high-quality selfies. In addition to a rather unique form-factor, the camera supports new HDR+ Enhanced, Super Night and Auto Panorama modes.
The ZenFone 6 is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 SoC (Adreno 640 graphics, quad-channel LPDDR4X, X24 LTE modem, etc.) that is paired with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of UFS 2.1 NAND flash storage (expandable with microSD), and a 5000 mAh battery. To ensure snappy operations, ASUS has also incorporated its OptiFlex technology, which the company says accelerates app launches and reloads by keeping them in RAM, while also promising to save power in idle mode.

When it comes to connectivity, the ZenFone 6 supports 4G/LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, Wi-Fi Direct, USB Type-C, GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. Meanwhile, the smartphone has a fingerprint reader on the rear (that promises to unlock the phone in 0.3 seconds).
The ASUS ZenFone 6 (ZS630KL) with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of NAND will be available later this year for $560 in the US and €499 in Europe. Other configurations will also be available, but their prices will be announced at launch.

The ASUS ZenFone 6 Smartphone
		Preliminary Specifications
Display		LCD 6.4" 2340x1080 100% DCI-P3 96% NTSC 600 nits brightness HDR10 Corning Gorilla Glass 6
SoC		Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Adreno 640 @ ?MHz
RAM		8 GB LPDDR4X
Storage		256 GB of UFS 2.1 NAND flash + microSD card slot
Local Connectivity	Wi-Fi	802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5.0
Data/Charging	USB Type-C
Audio	Dual stereo speakers with dual NXP TFA9874 smart amplifiers Hi-Res audio 192kHz/24-bit standard that is 4 times better than CD quality DTS (Digital Theater System) Headphone: X 7.1 virtual surround sound for headphone support AudioWizard with listening profile ASUS ZenEar Pro tuned by 1MORE Dual internal microphones with ASUS Noise Reduction Technology 3.5-mm jack
NFC	Yes
LTE		X24 Modem
Navigation		GPS (Dual bands, L1+L5),, GLONASS, BDSS, GALILEO (Dual bands, E1+E5a), QZSS (Dual bands, L1+L5)
Main Camera		48 MP, f/1.8, 1/2-inch 0.8µm pixels, Laser/PDAF Sony IMX586	13MP, 125° ultrawide camera
Front Camera		none
Battery	Capacity	5000 mAh
Expected Life	"Two days"
SIM Size		Nano SIM + Nano SIM
Sensors		accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
Biometric Security	Fingerprint	Rear sensor
Facial Recognition	-
Dimensions	Height	?
Width	?
Thickness	?
Weight		190 grams
Colors		Midnight Black, Twilight Silver
Protection	Drop	?
OS		Google Android 9.0 with ASUS ZenUI 6
Launch Countries		?
Price		$560/€499

UPDATE: The ASUS ZenFone 6 does have a 3.5-mm audio jack.
Related Reading:

• ASUS Launches the ZenFone 5: Now With Added Notch
• ASUS Announces ZenFone AR and ZenFone 3 Zoom
• ASUS Chief Exec Jerry Shen Steps Down

Source ASUS Press Release

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The Honor 20 Pro continues to use the 48MP sensor we first saw in the View20 and adds a 3x optical zoom module, a new wide angle camera module, and curiously enough a new dedicated macro camera module. We’ve had the phone for a few days and were able to do some camera testing as well test essentials such as the battery life of the phone.


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