[SNEAK/PEAK] AMD RYZEN Processor Sneak Peak

AMD has given a sneak peak of its latest Zen architecture aka Ryzen core processors. The live stream was done on AMDs website. Here some specs and performance of early Ryzen chips were shown. These were in straight comaparasion with Intel's 6900k Broadwell-E processor which packs the same configuration as the chip shown. 

The first Ryzen-based chip will be the Summit Ridge family of high-end desktop chips. These will feature an 8-core 16-thread CPU i.e. is a true 8-core chip using simultaneous multithreading with a base clock of 3.4GHz. This chip also outperforms Broadwell-E processors not only in speed but also IPC and TDP. The IPC is 40 percent less and the TDP also has a huge margin of 45W as Ryzen has a TDP of 95W while Broadwell-E has a TDP of 140W. 

AMD's new chipset AMD AM4 Platform was released that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2, NVMe, SATA Express and Unlimited Upgrade and Expansion as said by AMD. 

These processors have AMD's new SenceMI technology where MI stands for Machine Intelligence. It packs Five technologies which are Pure Power, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, Neural Net Prediction and Smart Prefetch. 

Pure Power:-

It monitors temperatures, speed and voltage of the chip and optimizes the silicon chip behavior to deliver lower power usage by using adaptive control for real time management. 

Precision Boost:-

It works with Pure Power control loop and utilizes it's information  to optimize clock speeds without halts. It has a high precision tuning with 25MHz increments.

Extended Frequency Range:-

It provides higher clock frequencies as per the users cooling criteria.Those running big air coolers, liquid coolers will apparently see a big improvement compared to a stock cooler. The process is entirely automated, so even those without any overclocking skills can gain a performance boost.  

Neural Net Prediction:-

As claimed by AMD it uses true artificial network that are able to predict future decisions, pre-load instructions, and learn application data access patterns in order to improve performance.

Smart Prefetch:-

it works with Neural Net Prediction and learning algorithms designed to learn application access patterns to prefetch vital data into local cache for fast and improves usage and speeds.

At the end there was also a speak of EA's Star Wars Battlefront DLC The Rouge One which was played on Ryzen and AMDs next gen graphic architecture VEGA and performed quite well. 

"Now the stage is set for the massive showdown between processor giants Intel and AMD"  

Author: Saatvik Awasthi 

[NEWS] Bluetooth 5.0 is finally here !

Bluetooth 5's faster, longer-ranged wireless is here

Bluetooth 5 was unveiled on June 16th of this year, and today has officially come to market as a technology ready for implementation.

The biggest additions to the standard are increased range, speed, message capacity, and interoperability. The goal for this version of the wireless connection standard is aimed at Internet of Things technologies, which require strong connections that can relay information instantly across large homes. The company says it can deliver four times the range, two times the speed, and eight times the broadcast message capacity. This isn’t just a 4.3 standard upgrade, it’s 5.0 for a reason.

Bluetooth 5.0 was also made to reduce interference with similar wireless technologies which should vastly improve connectivity. Even with all of these updates, the new standard should still remain extremely low power just like it’s predecessors. This should ensure that consumers can have a streamlined experience without having to worry about battery usage. With four times the range like the company is touting, consumers should be able to walk around their house with a headset without having to worry about having their phone on them at all times.

The company says consumers can expect Bluetooth 5-enabled products to launch within two to six months, meaning we are sure to see a variety of new products sporting the technology at CES 2017. With one of the biggest focus points being IoT this year, the technology should be quite popular at the show.

The biggest thing for me would be wireless headphones, allowing users to have a large distance delta between them and their phone or computer before the connection breaks.

For more information on Bluetooth 5: www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth5

[LAUNCH] Samsung's new 960 series NVMe SSDs Hit In OCT16

Samsung's spacious new 960 Pro and 960 Evo hit the market. Both come in the relatively newfangled gumstick sized M.2 form factor supporting the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) specification for fast speeds, high bandwidth, and low latency storage access. Where they differ is in the type of memory each one employs.

It uses stacked 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory and a four lane PCIe 3.0 interface, uses 48-layer V-NAND, allowing for significantly more storage than last year's 950 Pro. According to Samsung, all three capacities 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB can deliver up to 3,500MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 2,100MB/s of sequential writes.

The 512GB also features 512MB of DRAM cache and is rated to deliver up to 330,000 IOPS of 4K random read and write performance. DRAM cache is doubled to 1GB for the 1TB model, which bumps up 4K random read and write performance to 440,000 IOPS and 360,000 IOPS, respectively, while the 2TB model boasts 2GB of DRAM cache with the same read and write IOPS as the 1TB model.

As for the 960 Evo, it also boasts a four lane PCIe 3.0 interface, but uses slower triple-level cell (TLC) memory chips and comes in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. However, don't ready slower to mean slow, because the 960 Evo line is anything but. All three capacities are rated to deliver up to 3,200MB/s of sequential write performance, also besting the previous generation 950 Pro.
Samsung says the new drives will be available in October.
The prices are as follows:

    960 Pro 2TB: $1,299
    960 Pro 1TB: $629
    960 Pro 512GB: $329
    960 Evo 1TB: 479
    960 Evo 500GB: $249
    960 Evo 250GB: $129

[RECALL] Samsung Note 7 Explodes!!!

Samsung has issued a global recall for all 2.5 million of the phones it has shipped so far. Some of the phones shipped with faulty batteries that could catch on fire. Samsung has announced an unprecedented recall of the Galaxy Note 7 just weeks after launching the well-received smartphone. Sales have been halted globally, and over the coming weeks Samsung will issue replacements to anyone affected. The issue is related to the phone's battery, with some scattered reports that the cell can explode while charging.

The percentage of affected phones is small estimated at 24 out of every 1,000,000 phones but Samsung only has one battery supplier in each of the countries in which the phone has shipped. All units could potentially be affected, though the models sold in China apparently include batteries that are unaffected by the flaw.

Official Statement by Samsung:

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue. To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7. For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks."

Author : Saatvik Awasthi

[NEWS] PCI Express 4.0 PCI Express 4.0 Brings 16 GT/s Bandwidth Speed

The next iteration of PCI Express will double the bandwidth per lane, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. During Intel Developers Forum,we found the hidden gem in the next specification; it provides at least a 4x increase in power delivery at the slot, which might eliminate the need for auxiliary power cables with some GPUs.

Speeds and Feeds

The next iteration of the PCI Express standard will officially pass the 1-gigabyte bandwidth mark and knock on the door of 2 gigabytes per second, per lane, per direction. The performance shifts from 3.0 to 4.0 while x16 devices like video cards get a massive headroom increase that will aid in providing the bandwidth needed for next generation virtual and augmented reality. PCI Express is a full-duplex protocol that can send and transfer data at the same time. The speeds listed above are for single direction performance. PCIe 4.0 uses the same encoding scheme as PCIe 3.0.

PCI Express 4.0 Performance Usage

There are many usage cases for the New/Upcoming PCI Express 4.0. The faster 16 GT/s data Bandwidth rate and high power efficiency would be useful for the connection of the M.2, U.2 and PCIe expansion cards that would be able to take advantage of higher Bandwidth, providing higher speed and would also in turn draw less power.

PCI Express has moved well beyond video cards. Currently, nearly every IO device routes through PCIe to send signals back to the CPU.

NVMe SSDs using PCIe 3.0 x4 recently reached the usable limit of the interface, such as the Samsung SM961 that reads data at 3,100 MB/s. Enterprise NVMe SSDs using the add-in card form factor and bifurcation will ship later this year with PCIe 3.0 x16. The increase in throughput will allow manufacturers to reduce costs by delivering the same performance with half the number of PCIe lanes. Analyst firm Forward Insights predicts enterprise PCIe storage devices will surpass the number of SATA products shipped between 2017 and 2018.

Mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and other battery-operated devices will benefit from low-power states and a new focus on burst performance. PCIe 4.0 adapts new L1 sub-states with half and quarter-swing bursts, which use just 400 and 200-millivolt steps.

During the last year, we've seen a number of companies build external graphics housings that route back to a small form factor PC via external cabling. The big fear is that a product from Company A will not work with a product from Company B. The PCI-SIG looks to end interoperability issues with the OCuLink standard.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi
Source : TomsHardware

[LEAK] AMD Zen Architecture Sample Processor Benchmarks Leak !

After a much hyped wait for AMD Zen Architecture processor family, the first verified benchmarks of one of the sku's just leaked out via Ashes of Singularity benchmarks database. This leak displays the first real world performance of the new Architecture. However, the benchmarks leaked out are of the Engineering Sample of AMD Zen and may not represent  the performance of the finished product in any way. 

Benchmarks show some real improvements over AMD's FX-8350

A few days ago, the OPN (Order Part Number) of AMD’s Zen Engineering Sample leaked out. This was 1D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N. The first part of the number indicates the unique identifier of the Zen ES CPU while the second part (32/28) reveals the base clock as well as the turbo clock. This means we are looking at a base clock of 2.8 Ghz and a turbo of 3.2 Ghz. It goes without saying that the frequencies of the engineering sample are probably not final and could get an uplift by the time the product actually hits the shelf.

With this context, we continue on to the main spectacle of today. The exact flavor is the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark. We can quickly confirm that the benchmarks are indeed of a Zen processor because:

• It lists the OPN Zen has previously been identified with (1D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N), 
• It lists another OPN that we have yet to identify Zen with but appears to be a different revision of the same (2D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N) 
• So in short, we have at least two variants of Zen being tested here. I’ll refer to them as 1D and 2D. 
• We can see that the profile has previously tested Carrizo engineering samples of AMD – so this isn’t a newly minted spoofer profile. 

Here are the Benchmarks:

We can see that the Zen 1D ES sample is performing rather well. Across all 4 settings, the CPU is able to earn a consistent CPU frame-rate of 58-60 frames per second. The benchmark was conducted with the AMD Radeon RX 480, so we cannot make direct comparisons from just this benchmark alone. We can however, compare this setup to similar setups where only the CPU has been replaced.

There doesn’t seem to be any difference at first sight between the 1D and 2D variants. They are both clocked at the same rates and the only difference that we can see is the fact that the 2D variant fares much worse in terms of performance. There could be multiple reasons for why this is the case. It is possible that this particular variant is actually a cut down core and the benchmark is reading it incorrectly or even that its simply another revision being tested that did not like the AotS benchmark. In any case, because of these reasons, I decided to focus on the 1D variant for our comparison.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Source: Click here

[Transaction] LeEco Buying Vizio for $2 Billion

Chinese electronics firm LeEco is buying American TV manufacturer Vizio for $2 billion. The acquisition was announced during a press event this morning in Los Angeles, giving LeEco an instant foothold in the US television market. Under the deal, Vizio will be operated as an independent subsidiary, with the company's current executive team staying in place and working out of its offices in Southern California sans Vizio founder and CEO William Wang, who is leaving the company. No replacement has been named, but Wang will be taking the reins as chairman and CEO of Inscape, Vizio's data business, which is being spun out into a privately held company. LeEco will own 49 percent of Inscape, with Wang owning the remaining 51 percent. The LeEco deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

In what seemed to be more of a eulogy than a press conference, Wang described the company's humble beginnings, and how it had fought through early challenges, parts shortages, and the global financial crisis as it slowly slugged its way to success. "We had to fight through competition from all over the world," he said, before lauding most of Vizio's senior leadership team one by one.

"I have mixed feelings," he admitted about the deal. "As the owner and father of Vizio, I am very reluctant to let it go. But as the CEO and owner of the company, I know this is the right decision to make for our hard-working employees and loyal shareholders."

 Author : Saatvik Awasthi

[REVELED] Samsung 4TB SSD 850 EVO

The 850 EVO, first introduced in 2014, popped up for sale last week in a 4TB configuration at some online retailers with no official announcement from Samsung.  A 4TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD can now be yours: for a cool $1,500. The other versions are 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB. There are few consumers for whom the drive's capacity and speed will offset its astronomical price, but if you are one of them, you can pre-order yours now and expect it to ship on July 31. Just make sure you're home for the delivery guy; Amazon understandably requires a signature. 

There are larger SSDs, of course. Samsung claims that a 16TB model it began shipping in March is actually the world's highest-capacity SSD, though that one uses a 12Gb/s SAS interface designed for use in enterprise storage systems, not consumer desktops or portables.

Author : Saatvik Awasthi

Nokia C1 : The Company's First Android

As Nokia will return to the market in 2016 we have been seeing a lot of upcoming Nokia smartphones around. This time we want to show you the live images of Nokia C1, an Nokia Android smartphone that is inspired from an already released Nokia tablet. This Nokia C1, according to the news, will likely be Nokia’s new smartphone for 2016. And what makes it very appealing is that, the Nokia C1 will have a mid-range price tag.

Nokia is still having their secret well kept about the official Nokia C1 specs. However, from the leaks, we now know that the Nokia C1 display will sport a 5.5″ FHD Screen. As a mid-ranger, Nokia C1 will feature 4GB RAM  and 16GB internal storage. The Nokia C1 camera is said to be an 20MP Pureview combined with a 8 MP selfie shooter, which reminds us of Nokia E1. Also, a 64-BIT Mediatek CPU is expected to keep the price low and the performance high.

[LAUNCH] Samsung Unveils UFS Cards! Bye Bye Micro SD

A new wave of removable storage is coming: Samsung today unveiled the industry's first Universal Flash Storage (UFS) cards. UFS promises read speeds up to five times faster up to 530 megabytes per second and write speeds twice as swift. 

Available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB storage capacities, Samsung's UFS cards are aimed at high-resolution mobile shooting devices, like DSLRs, 3D virtual reality cameras, action cams, and drones. Samsung said its UFS cards can read a 5GB, full-HD movie in about 10 seconds, compared to 50 seconds on a typical UHS-1 microSD card with 95MB/s of sequential reading speed.

Author : Saatvik Awasthi

Source : Click Here

[RUMOR] Leaked Mi 5 successor Mi 5s

Contrary to earlier reports, a new leak suggests that Mi 5's successor, dubbed Mi 5s, will sport a full-HD 5.5-inch display instead of a 5.15-inch display like its predecessor.

Last month, leaks regarding the mobile phone suggested that it is scheduled to arrive in second half of the year and will pack 6GB of RAM.

All the other features that were leaked last month are in line with the new leaks. The smartphone is rumoured to be equipped with Force Touch screen, expected to work on similar lines with Apple's 3D touch. Some of the other rumoured features on the Xiaomi Mi 5s include Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, and a dual rear camera setup.

Along with Xiaomi Mi 5s, the company is rumoured to be working on next-generation Mi Note smartphone which is expected to come in three models - standard, high, and top-end. According to the leaked details, the alleged "standard" variant will feature single rear camera setup, Hi-Fi chip, and will also support quick charging. The high variant of Mi Note 2 is rumoured to pack a dual camera setup at the back in addition to the standard version.

[NEWS] Samsung Mass Producing Industry’s First 512-Gigabyte NVMe SSD in a Single BGA Package

Samsung Electronics announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first NVMe* PCIe solid state drive (SSD) in a single ball grid array (BGA) package, for use in next-generation PCs and ultra-slim notebook PCs. The new BGA NVMe SSD, named PM971-NVMe, features an extremely compact package that contains all essential SSD components including NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller while delivering outstanding performance.

“Samsung’s new BGA NVMe SSD triples the performance of a typical SATA SSD, in the smallest form factor available, with storage capacity reaching up to 512GB,” said Jung-bae Lee, senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering Team, Samsung Electronics. “The introduction of this small-scale SSD will help global PC companies to make timely launches of slimmer, more stylish computing devices, while offering consumers a more satisfactory computing environment.”

Configuring the PM971-NVMe SSD in a single BGA package was enabled by combining 16 of Samsung’s 48-layer 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash chips, one 20-nanometer 4Gb LPDDR4 mobile DRAM chip and a high-performance Samsung controller. The new SSD is 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighs only about one gram (an American dime by comparison weighs 2.3 grams). The single-package SSD’s volume is approximately a hundredth of a 2.5” SSD or HDD, and its surface area is about a fifth of an M.2 SSD, allowing much more design flexibility for computing device manufacturers.

In addition, the PM971-NVMe SSD delivers a level of performance that easily surpasses the speed limit of a SATA 6Gb/s interface. It enables sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,500MB/s (megabytes per second) and 900MB/s respectively, when TurboWrite technology is used. The performance figures can be directly compared to transferring a 5GB-equivalent, Full-HD movie in about 3 seconds or downloading it in about 6 seconds. It also boasts random read and write IOPS (input output operations per second) of up to 190K and 150K respectively, to easily handle high-speed operations. A hard drive, by contrast, will only process up to 120 IOPS in random reads, making the new Samsung SSD more than 1500 times faster than an HDD in this regard.

The PM971-NVMe SSD line-up will be available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB storage options. Samsung will start providing the new SSDs to its customers this month worldwide.

As a leading SSD provider, Samsung has a history of introducing advanced SSDs ahead of the industry. In June 2013, Samsung introduced XP941 SSD in M.2 (mini PCI-Express 2.0) form factor (80mm x 22mm), which was also the industry’s first PCIe SSD for PCs. Now, Samsung plans to rapidly expand its market base in the next-generation premium notebook PC sector with the new high-performance, BGA package, NVMe SSD. Later this year, Samsung plans to introduce more high-capacity and ultra-fast NVMe SSDs to meet increasing customer needs for improved performance and greater density. 

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Source : Samsung Newsroom

[REVEALED] AMD announces $200 Polaris RX 480 card!

A few hours ago AMD shook up the PC community when it announced the RX 480, which will be a -get this-,  $200 dollar graphics card that will rub shoulders with the much loved R9 390 and the GTX 980, and at a much lower price point., 



The card will apparently run on a 256-bit bus, which as we posted according the rumours earlier will be the same as the GTX 1060. The power consumption is stated as 150 W which, though lower than the previous generation cards this matches in graphics power, is comparable to the GTX 1070 and it's expected that the 1060 should definitely be lower than this. 



From the chart above, you can see that the card will come in 4 and 8GB variants. perfect for tackling VR requirements or gaming at 4k. The Radeon RX 480 will also expand the total overall market for virtual reality—a key new battleground for computing. AMD’s been beating the drum loudly with its LiquidVR development kit initiative and the Radeon Pro Duo, a dual-GPU beast of a graphics card devoted to VR game development.

As far as the form factor and aesthetics are concerned, the RX seems to be continuing the legacy of the Nano and the Fury X, slick, black and minimal. 



With the release of the 480, AMD has officially just steamrolled all over the mid-range graphics cards market. There's absolutely no reason to buy a 950, 960 or even a 970 now, and the same applies to the 370, 380 and their predecessors. The hype for the Vega family cards has also significantly increased.

Your move, Nvidia.

Author: Ishaan
Source: AMD livestream

[LEAK] AMD's mid range Polaris card beats GTX 980 and nears GTX 1080 in CrossFire!

AMD fans must be salivating right now because this is some amazing news. Well, not officially. Leaked benchmarks show the AMD card which will probably be called the R9 480 beating GTX 980 in 3Dmark and falling short of the HBM powered R9 Fury. 

However, some truly amazing results can be seen when the cards are CrossFired, with results approaching the newly announced Pascal card GTX 1080! The implications of this are huge, because industry experts were expecting about the same levels of performance from Polaris as we saw from Pascal.

The GTX 1060, as we posted earlier, seems to be boasting performance comparable to the GTX 970, so its rival AMD card beating the 980 is a huge advantage for AMD. 

Earlier we posted about the expected announcement date and event for this card along with the next gen AMD APUs. This leak has upped the ante even further, as hype for the AMD Polaris cards increases day by day.

Author- Ishaan

Source

[RUMOUR] GTX 1060 to offer VR level power with 4-8GB VRAM and a 256-bit bus

The very highly awaited GTX 1060 has been spotted on shipping manifests. Even though Nvidia hasn't officially confirmed any rumours about the card, the industry has been on fire with rumours and speculations. 

A very interesting piece of information that the manifest entry reveals is that the card is shipping with a 256 bit bus, which is double its predecessors. The bus on the GTX 960 acted as a bottleneck and this improvement will definitely boost performance, just like in the 1070 and 1080.



This card is also expected to cross the VR-threshold, resulting in further ease of VR adaptation. The cheaper getting across the VR threshold seems to be getting, the more salty the prices of the VR headsets themselves start to seem. It's expected to go for around $250-$300. 

The card is expected to pack in 1280 CUDA cores, down from 1920 on the GTX 1070. That points to the card giving out around 60% the performance of a GTX 1070. This would make it comparable to the GTX 970 as of now. Another exciting factor is the power consumption. Seeing the trend as we have in the Pascal cards, more graphics power for less power consumption, the 960 might have a TDP comparable to the 950 or maybe even the 750ti, although this is speculation. That 256 bus is bound to drive the consumption up a bit and it will be interesting to see how it all finally adds up.

Author: Ishaan
Source