Thread: Anandtech News

TP-Link recently introduced a couple of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) routers based on Broadcom's platform. At CES 2019, the company announced multiple new Wi-Fi 6 products to provide wallet-friendly entry points to the new technology. However, the key introduction in our opinion is the Deco X10 - the latest update to their Deco lineup of mesh networking / whole-home Wi-Fi products. The Deco lineup has traditionally used Qualcomm's platforms. For the Deco X10 with 802.11ax support, TP-Link has decided to adopt a Broadcom platform.

The list of 802.11ax products announced by TP-Link at CES include:

• Deco X10 2-pack (Q3 2019 / $350)
• Archer AX1800 Router (Q3 2019 / $130)
• Archer AX1500 Router (TBD)
• RE705X AX1800 Wi-Fi Range Extender (Q3 2019 / $100)

Since these are essentially early product announcements, we do not have concrete technical details yet. Most vendors are focusing on the high-end market with their Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) product portfolio. TP-Link's decision to bring 802.11ax products across a wider price range will enable faster market adoption for the new technology.
Gallery: TP-Link at CES 2019: Wallet-Friendly 802.11ax Products Announced





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We're here at Samsung CES 2019 press conference in Las Vegas.

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We're here at Intel, ready for their keynote presentation. Gregory Bryant and Nevin Shenoy are presenting. Starts at 4pm local time.

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At Intel’s keynote presentation today, the company announced that it would be expanding its current line of 9^th Generation desktop processors, to include new models from Core i3 up to Core i9. Almost immediately, we were given the details, and here they are.

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We’ve been on Intel's case for years to tell us when its 10nm parts are coming to the mass market. Technically Intel already shipped its first 10nm processor, Cannon Lake, but this was low volume and limited to specific geographic markets. This time Intel is promising that its first volume consumer processor on 10nm will be Ice Lake.
It should be noted that Intel hasn’t put a date on Ice Lake launching, but has promised 10nm on shelves by the end of 2019. It has several products that could qualify for that, but Ice Lake is the likely suspect.
Ice Lake-U

At Intel’s Architecture Day in December, we saw chips designated as ‘Ice Lake-U’, built for 15W TDPs with four cores using the new Sunny Cove microarchitecture and Gen11 graphics. Intel went into some details about this part, which we can share with you today.

The 15W processor is a quad core part supporting two threads per core, and will have 64 EUs of Gen11 graphics. 64 EUs will be the standard ‘GT2’ mainstream configuration for this generation, up from 24 EUs today. In order to drive that many execution units, Intel stated that they need 50-60 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which will come from LPDDR4X memory. In order for those numbers to line up, they will need LPDDR4X-3200 at a minimum, which gives 51.2 GB/s.
These processors will end up in the same kinds of designs that we see with quad-core 15W Whiskey Lake-U parts today, typically as part of product refreshes. But we could also see some new user experiences based on the chip given its increased performance.

Intel also focused on two other areas with this new chip in its announcement: connectivity and battery life.
For connectivity, the chips will support Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) if the laptop manufacturer uses the correct interface module, but the support for Wi-Fi 6 is in the chip. The processor also supports native Thunderbolt 3 over USB Type-C, marking the first Intel chip with native TB3 support.
On battery life, Intel discussed how they had been working to optimize every area of a reference design to help OEMs get better longevity. This includes the special 1W display technology we saw back at Computex, but also separate items such as better optimized power modes. Some interfaces were changed too, to make the motherboard smaller, so that a larger battery could fit in. With an optimized design, Intel says that 25 hours of battery should be possible with Ice Lake-U. There is also extra improvements in the Image Processing Unit for performance and power.

Security is important, and we expect this chip to match the in-hardware fixes for Spectre v2 and Meltdown (v3a) that the enterprise chips do.
We expect to see systems with Ice Lake-U being announced, hopefully, by the end of 2019.
Quick Bytes are shortened news pieces about topics mentioned at large press events. Because sometimes smaller announcements get buried at a keynote presentation because a dozen key points are mentioned in one article, and our Quick Bytes series separates out a few topics for targeted discussion. You can read the full article here.



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In addition to the consumer product announcements, Netgear is also releasing a number of new products targeting commercial deployments. The company has been heavily pushing cloud-managed devices in this market segment - providing VARs and IT administrators with an easy way to deploy, monitor, and maintain the network at small and medium businesses (SMBs) using their Insight service. Keeping this in mind, all the new products (except for the S350 series switches) are Insight-compatible. The company is also adding new features to their cloud management platform.
Netgear is launching five new switches in the Smart Managed Pro S350 series with 8 / 24 / 48 ports (and 2 / 4 SFP ports for uplinks). The 8 and 24-port models have Poe+ variants. A summary of the features of the five models is provided below.

Netgear is launching a new Orbi Pro Mesh Wi-Fi Ceiling Satellite. It can connect to an existing Orbi Pro router or satellite and comes with a 4x4 MU-MIMO radio for a dedicated wireless backhaul. This satellite finally brings PoE support to the Orbi Pro family (a shortcoming that we had pointed out in our launch coverage).

The Insight-Managed Smart Cloud Tri-band 4x4 Wireless Access Point (WAC540) is being introduced to target dense high-traffic deployments. As its name indicates, it comes with 3 separate radios (1x 2.4 GHz, 2x 5 GHz), and can support hundreds of Wi-Fi clients. The WAC124 AC2000 Wi-Fi router is being launched as a cost-effective business 4x4 802.11ac Wave 2 router for simple installations.

All of the above three devices can be managed with the Insight platform. New core features include instant Wi-Fi setup, RADIUS authentication on Insight Switches (with Premium subscription), and the ability to easily backup and restore device configurations. The Insight Pro features target VARs and integrators who can add their own management fees for recurring revenue.

The Pro features include custom reports for multiple installation sites (including troubleshooting, network health reports, and change logs), ability to rapidly deploy network configurations across multiple sites, along with the backup and restore functionality. Cloud management can be done using any web browser. Mobile applications are also available.



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When a PC technology company plays in a competitive market, where margins are tight, there are kudos all around when a product becomes overly successful and gets all the users or PC builders interested. Lian Li has had success recently with the LANCOOL ONE, a seemingly minimal sleek chassis design buoyed by its front symmetry, see-through panel, and customizability. After announcing that it would be making a limited run of five models called the ‘Champagne Edition’, demand was so high that they're going to make a few more for retail.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a nice looking case. Lian Li describes the design as ‘timeless, elegant’, which are usually words you hear during a commercial about a super expensive watch. That being said, there are more cases with RGB than watches with RGB.
The front panel has a brushed metal finish with a symmetric design, with RGB lighting in the middle where users can see into the case. The airflow vents for the case are on the side as part of the front structure, while there are exhaust vents on the top. Also on the top is the front panel IO, which includes a Type-C port, two Type-A ports, two 3.5mm jacks, a power button, and a button to cycle through the LEDs.

Aside from the color combination of the chassis and the front panel, which works well as a design ID, the key part of the chassis is the side panel. Using tempered glass, similar to many contemporary chassis, the white internal power coating combined with the slight tint in the window really makes the yellow gold of the Lian Li logo for the PSU shroud stand out.
The chassis can take up to regular sized ATX motherboards, with space for seven PCIe slots, along with support for one two-slot GPU in a vertical orientation if a PCIe ribbon is used.. On the top of the shroud are two detachable segments to put SSDs or additional fans, and two drives can be supported at the front of the chassis by the front fans. The front contains one 120mm fan, but can support a 360mm radiator, and the top vent will also support a 360mm radiator, but not at the same time (otherwise go for two 120mm fans or 240mm liquid cooling). The rear has a single non-RGB fan, and if a user wants to go all out with just fans, the chassis will support nine 120mm fans.

Lian Li is only making 1000 of these, all of which will be individually numbered, but will be sold worldwide. Given the low number of units, the company isn't listing the retailers that will be selling them; instead they're directing buyers to their social media page for more details.
Is it just me, but that color isn’t Champagne? Perhaps Champagne Edition is meant to be something related to status? We know Lian Li hasn’t had the best success with naming products recently, such as the Strimer (pronounced STREAMER).
Gallery: CES 2019: Lian Li’s Limited Edition LANCOOL ONE, Champagne Edition

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The consumer market is not used to the idea of redundant power supplies. For the enterprise market, redundant PSUs give peace of mind by eliminating a single point of potential failure. It can also protect the components should one power supply have a mishap, as the other supply can take over. The power supplies can be hot plugged as well, keeping the system alive in case one power supply needs to be replaced. For desktop/workstation users who want this level of security, there have not been many options to choose from except to purchase from the enterprise market. Last year, FSP introduced its 'Twin' range of redundant power supplies for consumers.

Over 2018, the company introduced two units, a 700W and a 500W model. The hardware fits into a standard ATX power supply bay, and the only difference in setups will be that two power cords are needed. The pickup of these units in certain markets has been so good, the company is working on a 900W model to address the higher-end of the target market. We were told that work on this unit is ongoing, and likely to be shown at the end of the year. FSP makes its own power supplies as an ODM, so they want to also hit the efficiency points as well. I was told that I'll likely see it either at Computex later this year or next year at CES.

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Having a small gaming machine is the goal of a number of users - I personally tend to oscillate between something massive and something small, but either way, I want it powerful. Here at CES, Zotac had its new MEK Mini on display and the design ID of it looks really impressive, along with good specifications inside.

The MEK Mini was previewed back at Computex, but is set to hit the market at the end of Q1. Inside it will have a custom motherboard, an Intel 8th Generation processor, Zotac's GTX 2070 mini graphics card, and the system will be equipped with Wi-Fi and dual network ports (Intel and Killer). The units on display were near-final production parts, and the company is working on which color combinations work best. There was an NVIDIA green, a white, a mirror finish, and a dark red. Personally, I liked the green and the mirror finish. All it needs now is a handle!

Pricing is not finalized, and will depend on processor choice and memory. The MEK Mini sits as the smallest member of the MEK family, alongside the MEK Ultra Gaming PC and MEK1.

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Toshiba has announced the fourth iteration of their OEM client NVMe SSD that is delivered as a single BGA chip package containing both the SSD controller and the NAND flash memory. The Toshiba BG4 is a significant upgrade over the BG3: Toshiba's new 96-layer 3D TLC replaces their 64-layer NAND, allowing for higher capacities and lower power consumption. The PCIe 3 x2 controller used in the BG2 and BG3 is replaced by a new controller supporting PCIe 3 x4, opening the door to much higher sequential I/O performance.
The BG4 is still a DRAMless SSD that relies on the NVMe Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature to mitigate the performance penalties that a DRAMless drive otherwise suffers from. Toshiba has enhanced their use of HMB with the addition of parity checking for data the SSD stores in host DRAM, providing an extra layer of data protection even when the host system does not use ECC memory. The BG4's firmware has also been tweaked to expand the range of user data mapping information that can be cached in the host memory buffer, improving performance for use cases like copying large files. These changes mean that the BG4 will ask to use a larger chunk of host memory to accelerate its operation, but the requested HMB size is still less than 100MB. Other firmware changes have focused on improving random I/O performance and reducing the impact of background flash management on interactive performance. Preliminary performance numbers from Toshiba indicate that random write performance has almost doubled, and random read performance is well over twice as fast as the BG3.

Toshiba BG4 Specifications
Capacities	128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, 1TB
Form Factor	M.2 16x20mm BGA or M.2 2230 single sided, M key
Interface	NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4
DRAM	None (HMB supported)
NAND	Toshiba 96L BiCS4 3D TLC
Sequential Read	2250 MB/s
Sequential Write	1700 MB/s
4KB Random Read	380k IOPS
4KB Random Write	190k IOPS

The change to a wider PCIe x4 host interface does not require the BG4 to adopt a larger BGA package size than its predecessors, but the version that is mounted on a removable M.2 2230 card now uses type-M keying instead of the B+M keying typically used for M.2 SATA and PCIe x2 SSDs. The switch to 96L 3D TLC with a higher per-die capacity has allowed some drive capacities to be thinner (1.3mm vs 1.5mm for the 512GB model), and has allowed a 1TB model to be introduced to the BG series for the first time. Toshiba was the first to ship SSDs with 96L NAND with last year's XG6 high-end NVMe SSD, and it looks like the BG4 will be the second 96L SSD to start shipping.
Toshiba's BG series has always been an entry-level NVMe SSD product for the OEM market, so it has largely escaped attention from consumers. Even the BG3's retail derivative Toshiba RC100 failed to have much impact due to a combination of higher than SATA prices, limited availability, and strong competition from the cheapest high-end NVMe SSDs that have overshadowed all attempts to establish a low-end NVMe market segment. However, the BG series has been growing in popularity with OEMs as an attractive alternative to small and slow eMMC for ultra-mobile devices. More recently, the BG3 has even been used in desktop systems as one of the cheapest ways for OEMs to be able to advertise NVMe storage. The BG4 is likely to see even broader adoption thanks to the higher performance, wider capacity range, and pricing that Toshiba says will be directly competing against SATA SSDs.
The Toshiba BG4 is currently sampling to select OEMs for qualification. Toshiba expects to provide review samples around the end of Q1, along with broader availability in Q2. A retail version has not been announced, but the BG4 seems positioned to fare better in the retail market than the BG3-based RC100, so we would not be surprised to see an RC200 by the end of the year.



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