AnandTech

AMD in $35 Billion All-Stock Acquisition of Xilinx

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 10:53:00 GMT

After a couple of weeks of rumor, as well as a couple of years of hearsay, AMD has gone feet first into a full acquisition of FPGA manufacturer Xilinx. The deal involves an all-stock transaction, leveraging AMD’s sizeable share price in order to enable an equivalent $143 per Xilinx share – current AMD stockholders will still own 74% of the combined company, while Xilinx stockholders will own 26%. The combined $135 billion entity will total 13000 engineers, and expand AMD’s total addressable market to $110 Billion. It is believed that the key reasons for the acquisition lie in Xilinx’s adaptive computing solutions for the data center market.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su

“Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry’s high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world. This is truly a compelling combination that will create significant value for all stakeholders, including AMD and Xilinx shareholders who will benefit from the future growth and upside potential of the combined company. The Xilinx team is one of the strongest in the industry and we are thrilled to welcome them to the AMD family. By combining our world-class engineering teams and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high performance computing.”

Xilinx CEO Victor Peng

“We are excited to join the AMD family. Our shared cultures of innovation, excellence and collaboration make this an ideal combination. Together, we will lead the new era of high performance and adaptive computing. Our leading FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs, accelerator and SmartNIC solutions enable innovation from the cloud, to the edge and end devices. We empower our customers to deploy differentiated platforms to market faster, and with optimal efficiency and performance. Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets.”

Details

As part of the acquisition, Victor Peng will join AMD as president responsible for the Xilinx business, and at least two Xilinx directors will join the AMD Board of Directors upon closing.

Part of the enablement of the acquisition is AMD leveraging its market capitalization of ~$100 billion, and a lot of the industry will draw parallels of Intel’s acquisition of FPGA-manufacturer Altera in December 2015 for $16.7 billion. The high-performance FPGA markets, as well as SmartNICs, adaptive SoCs, and other controllable logic, reside naturally in the data center markets more than most other markets. With AMD’s recent growth in the enterprise space with its Zen-based EPYC processor lines, a natural evolution one might conclude would be synergizing high-performance compute with adaptable logic under one roof, which is precisely the conclusion that Intel also came to several years ago. AMD reported last quarter that it had broken above the 10% market share in Enterprise with its EPYC product lines, and today’s earnings call is also expected to see growth. AMD is already reporting revenue up +56% year on year company-wide, with +116% in the Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom markets.

The press release states that AMD expects to save $300m in synergistic operational efficiencies within 18 months of closing, due to streamlining shared infrastructure. The deal has been unanimously approved by both sets of directors, and is subject to approval of both sets of shareholders. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Calendar Year 2021.

AMD shares are currently down 5% before the market opens. A conference call will be held at 8am ET to discuss AMD’s Third Quarter Financial results and acquisition plans.

Portfolio

AMD's key product lines includes its Zen based processor lines such as Ryzen and EPYC, its Graphics division for Radeon and Radeon Instinct, and its semi-custom and embedded division which has been developing the latest generation of console processors for both Sony and Microsoft.

Xilinx recently entered the market with its Versal Alveo Adaptive SoCs, built as combination programmable logic plus hardened compute logic and specialized co-processors and accelerators. Its FPGA families include Spartan, Zynq, Artix, Kintex, Virtex, and Virtex Ultrascale, used in a wide variety of commercial, embedded, and enterprise markets, including the hardware used to design processors of the future.

Source: Press Release

Akasa Turing Fanless Case Review: Unrivalled Noiseless NUC

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT

Silent computing systems are preferable for a multitude of use-cases ranging from industrial applications (where dust and fans make for a troublesome configuration) to noiseless HTPCs (particularly for audiophiles). Akasa has been providing thermal solutions in multiple computing verticals for more than 20 years, with a particular focus on passive cooling. They have been targeting NUCs since the launch of the Ivy Bridge version in early 2013. The NUC solution was completely re-imagined with the launch of the Turing fanless case for the Bean Canyon NUCs.

Best CPUs for Gaming: October 2020

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 14:30:00 GMT

Sometimes choosing a CPU is hard. So we've got you covered. In our CPU Guides, we give you our pick of some of the best processors available, supplying data from our reviews. Our Best CPUs for Gaming guide targets most of the common system-build price points that typically pair a beefy graphics card with a capable processor, with the best models being suitable for streaming and encoding on the fly.

Intel: DG1 GPU Now Shipping, Xe-HPG DG2 GPU In Labs

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 01:30:00 GMT

Alongside today’s profitable-but-uneasy earnings report from Intel, the company’s earnings presentation also offered a short update on the status of their discrete GPUs. As of today, Intel’s DG1 GPU is now shipping. Meanwhile the company announced their next GPU, appropriately named DG2, which is based on their upcoming Xe-HPG architecture. This GPU is now back from the fab and is in Intel’s lab, and is now far enough along to have been powered on.

First and foremost we have DG1, or as it’s better known by its commercial product name, Iris Xe Max. Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades, the company has since the beginning of this year been touting it as a companion to their Tiger Lake CPUs, pitching it as an upgraded graphics option for thin & light notebooks, and a successor of sorts to Intel’s GT3e and GT4e iGPU configurations from past generations. Until recently, we weren’t quite sure when it would show up in commercial products, but recent OEM notebook reveals along with Intel’s earnings announcement are now confirming that the GPU is shipping to OEMs. According to Intel, DG1-equipped notebooks are expected later in Q4. In the meantime, there are still scant few details on DG1 itself, such as expected performance and power consumption; so hopefully Intel will be getting ahead of its OEM partners on this one to set some expectations.

Meanwhile, today’s notes also announce for the very first time the next discrete GPU to come out of Intel, DG2. While obviously still some time off, Intel has completed tape-out and fabbing of the initial alpha silicon, with the company reporting that they’ve powered-on the GPU in their labs.

Somewhat surprisingly, CEO Bob Swan has also confirmed that this isn’t just a DG1 successor, but instead is a higher performing GPU based on the company’s forthcoming Xe-HPG(aming) architecture. First revealed this summer, Xe-HPG is Intel’s enthusiast/gamer-focused architecture, incorporating marquee features found in similar dGPUs like ray tracing. It’s also being manufactured completely external of Intel; while the company hasn’t said which fab and process node is being used, it’s none of Intel’s nodes. So this is the first major piece of external fabbed silicon that we know of to be up and running at Intel.

But like all teasers/financial disclosures, Intel isn’t saying too much more at this time. Nothing new was revealed about the Xe-HPG architecture, and Intel hasn’t clarified whether DG2 is a big, flagship-grade chip, or a more modest, high-volume part. For now, the company is simply saying that DG2 will “take our discrete graphics capability up the stack into the enthusiast segment.”

Intel Reports Q3 2020 Earnings: Still Very Profitable, But Challenging Times Ahead

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 01:00:00 GMT

Once again kicking off our earnings season coverage for the tech industry is Intel, who reported their Q3 2020 financial results this afternoon. The traditional leader of the pack in more than one way, Intel has been under more intense scrutiny as of late, particularly due to their previously disclosed delay in their 7nm manufacturing schedule. None the less, Intel has been posting record revenues and profits in recent quarters – even with a global pandemic going on – which has been keeping Intel in good shape. It’s only now, with Q3 behind them, that Intel is starting to feel the pinch of market shifts and technical debt – and even then the company is still well into the black.

For the third quarter of 2020, Intel reported $18.3B in revenue. A drop of $0.9B over the year-ago quarter. As previously mentioned, Intel has been setting a string of record revenues in previous quarters, but the boom is coming to an end as margins and revenues are slipping. Those declines are also having the expected knock-on effect to Intel’s profitability, with the company reporting $4.3B in net income, a 29% drop versus Q3’19.

Huawei Announces Mate 40 Series: Powered by 15.3bn Transistors 5nm Kirin 9000

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 16:00:00 GMT

Today Huawei took the stage to unveil the new Mate 40 series of devices. In the form of the Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro and the Mate 40 Pro+, the new phones represent the company’s leading edge in terms of technology, mostly enabled by the new Kirin 9000 chipset which is manufactured on a new 5nm manufacturing node, promising great leaps in performance and efficiency.

The new phones also feature an updated design with a different camera layout, differentiated display design and improved speakers and charging features.

The new Kirin 9000 is are the core of the discussion – and it’s also Huawei’s biggest problem as the new silicon is no longer under production since September due to US sanctions on the company, representing a much more substantial threat than the already existing limitations on the company’s products, such as not being able to ship with Google Mobile Services.

Acer’s New Swift 3X Notebook, with Intel Iris Xᵉ MAX Discrete Graphics, from $900

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 13:45:00 GMT

At Acer’s global press conference today, one of the hot ticket items was the announcement of an upcoming laptop featuring an Intel’s discrete graphics option. The new Intel X^e graphics architecture, which debuted in Intel 11^th Gen Tiger Lake notebook processors, is now set to see the launch of an additional higher power discrete graphics option and coming to notebooks first. One of those devices will be the Acer Swift 3^X, with both Tiger Lake and discrete X^e MAX inside.

Crucial Portable SSD X6 and X8 2TB Review: QLC for Storage On-the-Go

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT

Bus-powered portable flash-based storage solutions are one of the growing segments in the consumer-focused direct-attached storage market. The emergence of 3D NAND with TLC and QLC has brought down the cost of such drives. NAND manufacturers like Western Digital, Samsung, and Crucial/Micron who also market portable SSDs have an inherent advantage in terms of vertical integration. Last year, Crucial/Micron had announced its entry into the segment with the QLC-based Crucial Portable SSD X8. A few months back, Crucial updated the lineup with a 2TB model while adding a lower-performance X6 member to the portfolio. Read on for our review of how these two high-capacity models fare in our evaluation.

Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:15:00 GMT

Silicon Motion has announced the official launch of their first generation of PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controllers. These controllers have been on the roadmap for quite a while and have been previewed at trade shows, but the first models are now shipping. The high-end SM2264 and mainstream SM2267/SM2267XT controllers will enable consumer SSDs that move beyond the performance limits of the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface that has been the standard for almost all previous consumer NVMe SSDs.

The high-end SM2264 controller is the successor to Silicon Motion's SM2262(EN) controllers, and the SM2264 brings the most significant changes that add up to a doubling of performance. The SM2264 still uses 8 NAND channels, but now supporting double the speed: up to 1600MT/s. The controller includes four ARM Cortex R8 cores, compared to two cores on SMI's previous client/consumer NVMe controllers. As with most SSD controllers aiming for the high end PCIe 4.0 product segment, the SM2264 is fabbed on a smaller node: TSMC's 12nm FinFET process, which allows for substantially better power efficiency than the 28nm planar process used by the preceding generation of SSD controllers. The SM2264 also includes support for some enterprise-oriented features like SR-IOV virtualization, though we probably won't see that enabled on consumer SSD products. The SM2264 also includes the latest generation of Silicon Motion's NANDXtend ECC system, which switches from a 2kb to 4kB codeword size for the LDPC error correction.

The SM2264 controller will be competing with in-house controllers used by Samsung and Western Digital for their flagship consumer SSDs, and against the upcoming Phison E18 controller. Phison's E16 controller was the first consumer PCIe 4.0 controller to hit the market, but is now being outclassed by a second wave of PCIe 4.0 controllers that come much closer to using the full potential of a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. The SM2264 controller is currently sampling to drive vendors, but we don't have an estimate for when products will be hitting the shelves.

Silicon Motion Client/Consumer NVMe SSD Controllers
	SM2263(XT)	SM2267(XT)	SM2262EN	SM2264
Market Segment	Mainstream Consumer		High-End Consumer
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	12nm
Arm CPU Cores	2x Cortex	2x Cortex R5	2x Cortex	4x Cortex R8
Error Correction	2kB LDPC	2kB LDPC	2kB LDPC	4kB LDPC
DRAM Support	LPDDR3, DDR4 -XT: None	LPDDR4, DDR4 -XT: None	LPDDR3, DDR4	LPDDR4, DDR4
Host Interface	PCIe 3.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4	PCIe 3.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4
NAND Channels, Interface Speed	4ch 667 MT/s	4ch 1200MT/s	8ch 800MT/s	8ch 1600MT/s
CEs per Channel	4	8 -XT: 4	4	8
Sequential Read	2400 MB/s	3900 MB/s	3500 MB/s	7400 MB/s
Sequential Write	1700 MB/s	3500 MB/s	3000 MB/s	6800 MB/s
4KB Random Read IOPS	300k -XT: 280k	500k	420k	1000k
4KB Random Write IOPS	250k	500k	420k	1000k

For the more mainstream product segments, Silicon Motion's SM2267 and SM2267XT controllers are the replacements for the SM2263 and SM2263XT. These will help bring entry-level NVMe performance up to about the level that used to be standard for high-end PCIe 3.0 SSDs. The SM2267XT is the DRAMless variant of the SM2267 and also has half as many chip enables (CEs), which allow for a much smaller package size suitable for use on small form factors like M.2 2230. The SM2267(XT) controllers are still manufactured on the cheaper 28nm process. The SM2267 and SM2267XT controllers are in mass production and the first products using those parts have also entered the supply chain: we already have a sample of ADATA's Gammix S50 Lite with the SM2267 controller on our test bench.

The SM2267 will be competing against a mix of older 8-channel controllers like the Phison E12, and newer 4-channel solutions as seen in the SK hynix Gold P31. We expect this to be the most important consumer SSD product segment going into 2021 as these drives will not carry the steep price premium currently seen on high-end 8-channel PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and they'll still be plenty fast for almost all use cases. The DRAMless SM2267XT variant will be competing against controllers like the Phison E19T for entry-level NVMe SSDs that carry little or no price premium over SATA drives. These low-cost NVMe controllers are also increasingly popular for portable SSDs; the performance increases of the SM2267XT over the SM2263XT will not matter for drives using 20Gb/s USB to NVMe bridge chips, but will be helpful for Thunderbolt SSDs.

SK Hynix to Buy Intel’s NAND Memory Business For $9 Billion

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:30:00 GMT

In a joint press release issued early this morning, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK Hynix. The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at $9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling their overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to their Optane memory technology as they continue to develop and sell that technology.

New Cadence Transient EM Simulation Tools: 3D Clarity

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT

In the realm of processor and product design, having the right series of tools to actually build and simulate a product has been a key driver in minimizing time to market. Cadence is one of the more prolific companies in the electronic design automation (EDA) software space, with tools for designing integrated circuits, PCBs, packaging, SoCs, radio frequency, as well as respective verification tools. What landed in my inbox this morning was an announcement for a new tool in Cadence’s solver portfolio to enable better full-system EM simulation while also scaling across CPU and GPU as well as to other systems.

Cadence’s 3D Transient Solver uses a finite difference time domain model to essentially model an anechoic chamber over a wide frequency range for both electromagnetic interference but also electromagnetic compliance. This is what the EC/FCC certification enablement is all about in order to enable sales of a product in a region – the more accurate (and scalable) the EM simulation work is, the idea is that the results from any anechoic chamber testing will be more in line with the simulation, resulting in fewer prototype sampling in advance of the certification test.

The Transient Solver is designed to work in conjunction with Cadence’s other tools, such as FEM and MoM, for whole product simulation – due to capacity, it has often been the case that products would be simulated part-by-part, and then a full scale simulation result would be interpolated. Cadence points to its full product potential, as the software is designed to scale almost linearly across as many CPU cores as can be thrown at it (either in a single system or in a multi-system environment), as well as leveraging GPU acceleration (note, something I did in my PhD for FDTD but for chemical simulations). Cadence also points to its ability to keep the simulation memory footprint low, often a difficult task with these sorts of simulations (especially FDTD), such that systems no longer need terabytes of DRAM just to run. The software can also be run via cloud services and scaled as needed. Due to the scalability, it also allows for quicker deformation testing, to avoid such areas as the iPhone 4 issues.

Anechoic chambers are marvellous things – if you ever get a chance to go in one, I highly recommend it. If the 30% reduced cycle time that one of Cadence’s partners is quoting is anything to go by, then there might be some chambers empty for a bit – perfect to get your company to convince that an employee tour is needed.

Cadence’s Clarity 3D Transient Solver is due for release in Q1 2021.

Source: Cadence

Test Driving SPECviewperf 2020: A Look At The Latest In Workstation GPU Benchmarks

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 15:00:00 GMT

Over the years, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation's SPECviewperf benchmark has become the industry standard for workstation GPU benchmarking. Owing to the fact that, unlike video games, there's little concept of a "standard" workload for CAD, content creation, and visual data analysis tools, as well as the sheer complexity of these applications, there is an ongoing need for a standardized multi-application benchmark. This is both to offer a wider, holistic view of GPU performance under workstation applications, and even more fundamental than that, to provide a proper apples-to-apples testing environment.

With the previous release of SPECviewperf dating back to 2013, the benchmark has been due for a refresh – and that has finally arrived this week with the release of SPECviewperf 2020. An incremental update over SPECviewperf 13, the 2020 version makes some important changes including support for 4K resolutions, as well as updating the workload traces.

Meanwhile, with a few systems already setup for other needs, we decided to take a quick test drive of the new version of the SPECviewperf, giving us a better look at what's new along with an idea of where performance lies with the updated benchmark workloads.

AMD Zen 3: An AnandTech Interview with CTO Mark Papermaster

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:00:00 GMT

The announcement of the new Ryzen 5000 processors, built on AMD’s Zen 3 microarchitecture, has caused waves of excitement and questions as to the performance. The launch of the high-performance desktop processors on November 5^th will be an interesting day. In advance of those disclosures, we sat down with AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster to discuss AMD’s positioning, performance, and outlook.

The Corsair H150i Elite Capellix AIO Cooler Review: Go Big Or Go Home

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:30:00 GMT

Today we are taking a look at the largest member of Corsair's new Elite Capellix AIO cooler family, the H150i Elite Capellix. An upgrade for the renowned H150i Pro RGB, the H150i Elite Capellix features a 400 mm long radiator that holds three 120 mm fans, all the while incorporating improved iCUE integration and more powerful cooling fans.

Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SDXC UHS-I 128GB Memory Cards Capsule Review

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT

Samsung had last revamped their SDXC cards lineup back in 2014 to delineate them into the standard, PRO, and EVO categories. Since then, the company slowly phased out the full-sized cards from their lineup, and started to focus on microSDXC cards. This week, they are aiming to get back into the SDXC cards market for creators and professionals in the content capture market segment. Two new product families are being announced - the PRO Plus, and the EVO Plus. Both families are UHS-I cards, with the PRO Plus aimed at professionals, and the EVO Plus at creators. Samsung sampled the 128GB capacity cards in both families ahead of the retail launch. This review takes the cards out for a spin and attempts to analyze their value proposition.

Apple Announces iPhone 12 Series: mini, Regular, Pro & Pro Max, all with 5G

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 22:00:00 GMT

A little later in the year than usual, but today we finally saw the announcement of Apple’s newest line-up of iPhones. This time around we didn’t get two, or even three phones, but a total of four new devices ranging both in size as well as in pricing. The iPhone 12 series is a major leap for Apple as they represent the company’s first ever 5G devices, preparing the company for the next generation of cellular networks for the better part of this decade.

The iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max are both straightforward upgrades to the 11 Pro series, whilst the regular iPhone 12 represents the mainstream option as a successor to the iPhone 11. The new entry in the line-up is the iPhone 12 mini – an incredibly exciting device for people who are looking for a more diminutive form-factor device, being smaller and more light-weight than even the iPhone SE released earlier in the year.

Thanks to the new A14 SoC, we’re seeing upgraded performance across the board, as well as greatly improve image processing on the camera systems, with particularly the iPhone 12 Pro Max standing out in terms of its camera systems.

More On NVIDIA Quadro Brand Retirement: Embracing the Graphics and Compute Overlap

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 21:45:00 GMT

Now that NVIDIA’s second GTC event of the year has wrapped up, we’ve finally gotten a chance to follow up with NVIDIA on last week’s announcement of their RTX A6000 video card, and what that means for the Quadro brand. In short, NVIDIA has confirmed that the Quadro brand is going away for sure, and as we suspected, it’s largely due to the overlap between graphics and compute.

As a quick refresher, last week NVIDIA launched their new professional visualization-focused video card, the RTX A6000. Based on the new GA102 GPU, the card ticks all the boxes for a high-end, pro-grade video card; and under normal circumstances, it would be part of NVIDIA’s Quadro family of products. However the card was notably excluded from the Quadro family in something of a last-minute change. At the time it wasn’t clear just what this meant for the Quadro brand as a whole, but now that GTC has wrapped we’ve been given some better insights into what’s going on.

First and foremost, NVIDIA has confirmed that the Quadro brand is being retired, or “streamlined” as the company calls it. Similar to the Tesla brand a couple of years back, the brand is set to be slowly retired from the market, as new professional visualization cards are released without the Quadro branding. Going forward, all of these cards will be given brand-less names, such as the “NVIDIA RTX A6000” and “NVIDIA A40”.

The more interesting aspect to this change is why: why would NVIDIA retire one of its oldest video card brands after so long? After all, the market for pro cards isn’t going away, and it remains a tidy, profitable business for NVIDIA. At the time we suspected that this has to do with the increasing overlap in NVIDIA’s product lines between professional visualization cards and compute cards, and the company has since confirmed that our hunch was correct.

As NVIDIA has continued to expand into the compute market, their professional visualization (ProViz) and compute products have increasingly overlapped in terms of features and pricing. As NVIDIA already charges “full” price for both their compute and ProViz cards, there are little-if-any feature differences between the two: desktop ProViz cards have the same access to compute features as compute cards. And compute cards, though almost exclusively server-mounted, can be provisioned as a virtual ProViz card as well.

One of the consequences of which has been that NVIDIA’s own messaging on what cards can do what tasks has become unfocused, never mind potentially confusing customers. If you need an actively-cooled desktop card for running neural network prototyping, for example, what card do you buy? Previously it was the Quadro card, despite the fact that it was a ProViz part. Similarly, the ex-Tesla V100 makes a great part for provisioning a virtual Quadro instance, even though it’s not a Quadro part.

As a result, NVIDIA has opted to go the route of essentially merging their compute and ProViz hardware lineups in an effort to simplify their offerings. NVIDIA wants for there to be a single brand – NVIDIA – which covers both markets, reflecting the flexibility of their cards and (largely) eliminating questions over which cards can be used for graphics or compute. At the same time, this also allows NVIDIA to reduce the number of hardware SKUs offered, as they no longer need overlapping products at the fringes of these markets.

Ultimately, the market for ProViz and for computing has quickly become one in the same. Though the two differ in their specific needs, they still use the same NVIDIA hardware and pay the same NVIDIA “premium”. So both are set to become a single product line to cover the needs of all of NVIDIA’s professional and commercial customers, whatever their graphics and compute needs.

The Apple 2020 Fall iPhone Event Live Blog 10am PT (17:00 UTC)

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 16:15:00 GMT

Today Apple is holding its second fall 2020 launch event - only a few weeks after the traditional September launch which saw the unveiling of the a new Apple Watch, and a new line of iPads, including the new iPad Air which sports the new 5nm Apple A14 SoC. What was missing from the September event was any new announcements of new iPhones - which this year seem to have slightly slipped in terms of timing.

Today's event should cover the new iPhones, and if industry reports are accurate, we actually should be seeing quite a slew of new devices in the form of two "regular" iPhones and two Pro models, for a total of four devices. It should demark the first time in 3 years that Apple will be introducing a new iPhone design, and this generation should be the first one to support 5G connectivity.

As always, we'll be live-blogging the event and hold live commentary on Apple's newest revelations.

The event starts at 10am PDT (17:00 UTC).

Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 08:00:00 GMT

It’s almost been a year since Imagination had announced its brand-new A-series GPU IP, a release which at the time the company called its most important in 15 years. The new architecture indeed marked some significant updates to the company’s GPU IP, promising major uplifts in performance and promises of great competitiveness. Since then, other than a slew of internal scandals, we’ve heard very little from the company – until today’s announcement of the new next-generation of IP: the B-Series.

The new Imagination B-Series is an evolution of last year’s A-Series GPU IP release, further iterating through microarchitectural improvements, but most importantly, scaling the architecture up to higher performance levels through a brand-new multi-GPU system, as well as the introduction of a new functional safety class of IP in the form of the BXS series.

ASRock Industrial's NUC 1100 BOX Series Brings Tiger Lake to UCFF Systems

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 06:30:00 GMT

Intel's introduction of the Tiger Lake U-series processors with support for a range of TDPs up to 28W has resulted in vendors launching a number of interesting systems with a twist to the original NUC's 100mm x 100mm ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF). Notable among these have been the GIGABYTE's BRIX PRO (3.5" SBC form-factor), and ASRock Industrial's STX-1500 mini-STX board, with the latter adopting the embedded versions of the Tiger Lake-U processors. ASRock Industrial also happens to be one of the first to adopt the Tiger Lake-U series for traditional UCFF systems with the launch of their NUC 1100 BOX series.

Intel's Tiger Lake-based NUCs (Panther Canyon and Phantom Canyon) are an open secret in tech circles, but are yet to be officially announced. ASRock Industrial's Tiger Lake NUCs such as the NUC BOX-1165G7 have also been hinted at in Intel's marketplace - a retail follow-up to the embedded market-focused iBOX 1100 and NUC 1100 solutions. Today's announcement makes the Tiger Lake NUCs from ASRock Industrial official. The company is launching three models in this series - NUC BOX-1165G7, NUC BOX-1135G7, and NUC BOX-1115G4. The specifications are summarized in the table below.

ASRock Industrial NUC 1100 BOX (Tiger Lake-U) Lineup
Model		NUC BOX-1115G4	NUC BOX-1135G7	NUC BOX-1165G7
CPU		Intel Core i3-1115G4 2C/4T 1.7 - 4.1 GHz (3.0 GHz) 12 - 28 W (28W)	Intel Core i5-1135G7 4C/8T 0.9 - 4.2 GHz (2.4 GHz) 12 - 28 W (28W)	Intel Core i7-1165G7 4C/8T 1.2 - 4.7 GHz (2.8 GHz) 12 - 28 W (28W)
GPU		Intel® UHD Graphics for 11th Gen Intel® Processors (48EU) @ 1.25 GHz	Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (80EU) @ 1.3 GHz	Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (96EU) @ 1.3 GHz
DRAM		Two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots Up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 in dual-channel mode
Motherboard		4.02" x 4.09" UCFF
Storage	SSD	1x M.2-2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4 (CPU-direct) or SATA III)
	DFF	1 × SATA III Port (for 2.5" drive)
Wireless		Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2x2 802.11ax Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5.1 module
Ethernet		1 × GbE port (Intel I219-V) 1 × 2.5 GbE port (Intel I225-LM)
USB	Front	1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
	Rear	2 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
Display Outputs		1 × HDMI 2.0a 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 2 × DisplayPort 1.4 (using Front Panel Type-C ports)
Audio		1 × 3.5mm audio jack (Realtek ALC233)
PSU		External (90W)
Dimensions		Length: 117.5 mm Width: 110 mm Height: 47.85 mm
MSRP		?	?	?

The striking aspect of the NUC 1100 BOX-series chassis is the similarity to the 4X4 BOX-4000U series.

According to the products' datasheet, ASRock Industrial plans to get the two Type-C ports in the front panel certified for USB4. Since the certification plan is still pending, they are being advertised as USB 3.2 Gen 2 for now. They also believe that Thunderbolt 3 devices can be used in the front Type-C ports (since Intel claims four USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 ports on Tiger Lake) - that would be interesting to test out, given the logo on the chassis only indicates SuperSpeed 10Gbps with DP-Alt Mode support.

The key updates compared to the existing NUCs from various vendors (based on Comet Lake-U) are the support for four simultaneous 4Kp60 displays along with the 2.5 GbE wired LAN interface. The performance advantages provided by the 10nm Tiger Lake with its new microarchitecture may probably help the NUC BOX-1100 series get the edge over the 4X4 BOX-4000U series (based on the Renoir APUs) in single-threaded workloads. On the multi-threaded side and GPU-intensive workloads, it is shaping up to be an interesting tussle - one we hope to analyze in more detail in our hands-on review.

Since the unit targets the embedded market also, it has the usual bells and whistles including an integrated watchdog timer and an on-board TPM. Pricing is slated to be announced towards the end of October 2020.