IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 4/23/2012

HTC One X Cases: Taking Protection into HTC's Hands

With the One lineup (particuarly the One X and One S), HTC really ratched up its focus on design. The One X is easily one of the best looking Android smartphones on the market today. The problem is that the majority of consumers prefer to use cases on their phones, which ultimately hides a lot of the design work that HTC and other companies put into their devices. There's also the problem of determining what color to launch with a device. You can't have an infinite number of colors and the trend lately has been towards putting out fairly conservative colors. This further amplifies the customer use of cases, which once again hides a lot of the design work that HTC and others put into their devices.
Apple took matters into its own hands with the bumpers for the iPhone 4 - providing some protection while not obscuring too much of the design. Nokia is similarly well known for doing this with its phones for a while now. HTC is following suit and will be shipping its own minimalist cases for the One X.
These things don't offer any protection for the screen, but they snap on the back of the One X while still allowing some of the design to shine through. The cases will be available a variety of colors and designs, but we got some hands on time with an orange and blue case. No word on pricing or availability.

Gallery: HTC One X Cases: Taking Protection into HTC's Hands

FSP Aurum Xilenser AU-500FL 500W
FSP is one of the largest manufacturers for OEM power supplies and adapters. Now they're launching a new fanless series, the "Aurum Xilenser", for users that want absolute silence. We have the AU-500FL on our test bench today. Like the previous Aurum offerings, the new generation is 80 Plus Gold certified. As for the fanless part, you'll want to be careful if you try for a complete silent (i.e. fanless) PC—it's one thing to have a fanless PSU when there are case and CPU fans to compensate, but entirely fanless systems will need some big heatsinks and an open chassis if you want reasonable performance.

The casing for the AU-500FL has more ventilation holes than we're used to seeing, with arrow-shaped perforations on every available spot! Besides the bottom (where a large fan might normally sit) and the back (to exhaust heat from your system), FSP has holes on the front and sides of the casing. Even the top (not shown, and assuming a top-mounted PSU; otherwise this is the "bottom") has a few extra holes to help with cooling. With no fan, there's obviously a need to remove heat and the extra ventilation should help in that regard.

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AMD Q1’12 Earnings Report: $1.59B Revenue, $590M Net Loss

It’s the middle of April and that means it’s once again earnings season for the prior quarter.
Late yesterday AMD released their earnings report for Q1 2012, and it turned out to be a bit of a doozy. For the quarter AMD brought in $1.59 billion in revenue, with a net loss of $590 million. This is compared to $1.61B in revenue and a $510M net profit in Q1 of 2011, meaning AMD’s revenue is slightly down on a year-over-year basis, while their net income went well into the red.

AMD Q1 2012 Financial Results
	Q1'2012	Q4'2011	Q1'2011
Revenue	$1.59B	$1.69B	$1.61B
Net Income	-$590M	-$177M	$510M

Overall, while things have been going modestly well for AMD lately thanks to the strength of their product lineup, their stake in Global Foundries has continued to drag down the company’s profits. In Q4’11 AMD had to take $209M charge that drove them into the red then, and Q1’12 has not fared any better.
As you may recall, last month AMD fully divested themselves of Global Foundries, eliminating their 8.8% share of the company. This divestment was part of a larger revision of AMD’s wafer agreement with GloFo, which saw AMD giving up their share in the foundry as part of a larger payment to GloFo in order to get out of a previous exclusivity agreement with GloFo that had entitled them to production rights on some 28nm APUs. Altogether AMD has taken a $703M charge, composed of cash and and their GloFo stake, in order to get out of using GloFo's 28nm process; and that's every bit as bad as it sounds.
The good news of course is that AMD’s GloFo-related financial troubles are almost at and end now that they no longer hold a stake in GloFo, with the bad news being that there are still a few more payments to go until they’re fully freed. On top of the $703M charge for Q1, AMD owes a further $275M to GloFo over the next year, with AMD choosing to write all of this off in their $703M charge for Q1. However once they’re paid off next year, that’s it – AMD will have no further financial ties to GloFo, with the only remaining ties being the contract fab work GloFo does for AMD.
In any case, not counting their problems with GloFo, AMD’s non-GAAP net income for Q1’12 would have been $92M, which is a small but notable increase over their non-GAAP net income of $56M in Q1’11. Even though revenues were down, AMD’s operating income from both GPUs and CPUs is up versus 2011, reflecting the higher gross margin attached to AMD’s latest generation of products.

AMD Q1 2012 Computing Solutions Division Financial Results
	Q1'2012	Q4'2011	Q1'2011
Revenue	$1.203B	$1.309	$1.2B
Operating Income	$124M	$165M	$100M

In particular, on the CPU side of things the average sale price for AMD CPUs has held steady, but overall costs have come down slightly, making it a net win for AMD. CPU revenue for Q1’12 was $1.203B with an operating income of $124M, versus $1.2B and $100M for Q1’11. All things considered Bulldozer doesn’t seem to have lit a fire under AMD, and the lack of new APUs to replace Brazos isn’t helping, but at the very least AMD is holding their ground.

AMD Q1 2012 Graphics Division Financial Results
	Q1'2012	Q4'2011	Q1'2011
Revenue	$382M	$382M	$413M
Operating Income	$34M	$27M	$19M

Meanwhile on the GPU side of things this was the first quarter where AMD’s new Southern Islands GPUs were shipping, which is both good news and bad news for AMD. Traditionally quarters where major new GPU architectures are introduced see lower revenue as customers hold off on purchases, and with the launch of Southern Islands early in the year this was no exception. However new GPUs also launch at higher prices, which pushes margins up. The net result is that while revenue takes a step back profits increase, which is exactly what AMD needs at the moment.
Altogether AMD booked $382M of GPU revenue in Q1’12 with an operating income of $34M, versus 413M in revenue with an operating income of only $19M in Q1’11. The increase in operating income over Q1’11 is thanks in large part to AMD’s nearly quarter-long 28nm product lead, combined with AMD’s conservative pricing. Q2’12 should see revenue improvements as AMD will have been shipping desktop SI GPUs for the entire quarter along with introducing mobile SI GPUs, however as we saw earlier this week AMD’s conservative pricing has already eroded due to a need for price cuts, meaning that AMD’s margins will likely be going down.
Moving forward, Q2’12 is widely expected to see the launch of AMD’s Trinity APU, which should give their CPU business a shot in the arm. At the same time we’re expecting AMD to finally launch Southern Islands products for the mobile market, which will be important for AMD as their mobile GPUs are high volume products.

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NVIDIA Plots Mobile SoC GPU Performance, Surpassing Xbox 360 by 2014

Qualcomm was the first to tell us that it expects to offer console level GPU performance in the not too distant future, generally hinting that its Adreno 3xx GPUs would get us there. NVIDIA shared this slide (pictured above) with us today that gives its take on where PC, console and mobile GPU performance will land over the coming years. There's nothing too revolutionary here but it does provide an interesting visual for much of what the GPU vendors have been talking about for the past couple of years.
The solid lines are estimated performance, while the dotted lines are trends. According to NVIDIA, somewhere in the 2013 - 2014 timeframe is when we'll get Xbox 360-class GPU performance out of mobile SoCs. The console line only has two points (Xbox 1 and Xbox 360), while the mobile line starts with the original iPhone, moves up to Tegra 2 and then follows Tegra 3.

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Thecus and McAfee Partner for Antivirus Technology in Intel-based NAS Systems

Thecus announced a partnership with McAfee at CeBIT 2012 to bring antivirus technology to their lineup. On April 16th, Thecus announced that that Thecus NAS systems would start shipping with McAfee antivirus technology. We also covered the release of Thecus's TopTower lineup, where it was briefly mentioned that McAfee's anti-virus module would be part of the shipping firmware. Today, we have more details.
Antivirus Technology in NAS Systems - A Brief History
NAS vendors have realized that anti-virus technology is fast becoming one of the must-have features in their firmware and antivirus vendors have only been too eager to spread out their reach. Users of some of Netgear's ReadyNAS solutions have been able to run the open source ClamAV antivirus since 2008, but it has never been an official feature.
Symantec, one of the leading antivirus vendors, has restricted its offerings to enterprise NAS systems, leaving the fast-growing SMB and SOHO NAS markets free for other vendors to enter. Trend Micro was one of the first to have an antivirus solution for SMB NAS systems. Buffalo Technology adopted them for some of their NAS models. QNAP was next with the open source ClamAV solution becoming part of the TurboNAS v3.5 firmware. Last month, Synology delivered the first Antivirus Essential pack for users running firmware version DSM 4.0 or later. Antivirus Essential internally uses the ClamAV engine. Thecus is the latest to join the list of NAS vendors with an antivirus solution as part of their firmware.
Thecus and McAfee Join Hands
Thecus's partnership with McAfee brings a host of things to the table.

As per the press release, the following features are worth mentioning:

Comprehensive detection so threats are isolated before they can spread
Removal of viruses, worms, and other malicious code
Reliable and accurate detection, without a costly false-alarm problem
Effective scanning of compressed, archived, and packed files
Support for a wide range of platforms
Scan engine SDK for easy integration into third-party applications

Of course, AnandTech readers are interested in the aspects which are not mentioned in the official PR. We contacted Thecus for some clarifications, and got the following information:

Despite the fact that Thecus advertises all NAS systems shipping after April 16th as having the McAfee antivirus module, it is only Intel-based NAS systems with firmware version v2.02.x and above that will support it. In terms of bundling, only the N6/8/10 series will have it as part of the firmware. The McAfee module will become available for users of other supported NAS systems to download towards the end of this month.
Unlike Buffalo Technology's subscription based model for the Trend Micro engine and antivirus definitions, the McAfee antivirus is offered free of charge to Thecus's customers. However, virus definition updates are available only for 3 years per bundled system.
Thecus assures us that the McAfee module has very limited impact on NAS performance as specific folders can be targeted for scheduled scanning. It is not clear whether this means that real time protection is unavailable.
Compared to ClamAV v0.96, Thecus claims that the McAfee module on a similarly spec-ed NAS system is 12x more efficient in terms of time spent in scanning a given file. A higher virus recognition rate (99% to ClamAV's 68%) is also claimed. Thecus also indicated that the McAfee module could scan files of upto 8 GB in size, while ClamAV could scan files of upto 2 GB in size only (though I haven't been able to confirm independently whether ClamAV's StreamMaxLength parameter is restricted to 2 GB only).

On the whole, the tie-up between Thecus and McAfee is quite interesting. It remains to be seen whether McAfee would be interested in getting their engine ported over to other NAS platforms (ARM / PowerPC based) and vendors. The fact that McAfee is now part of Intel might play a role, but that also provides some scope for deeper integration with Intel's NAS platforms in the future.

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Driving Impressions: 2013 Acura ILX Base, Manual, and Hybrid
The ILX proves most fit as a hybrid, not as strong a challenger in non-hybrid form

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N.C. Facebook Data Center Officially Goes Online
According to Facebook, over 2,000 people and 1.2 million hours of work went into the social network's latest data center

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AMD's Brazos 2.0, Trinity Storm Onto the Market
Chips have been shipping to OEMs since last quarter

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New Device Sends Signals Directly from Brain to Muscles, Paralyzed Patients Could Benefit
The machine has already helped a monkey move its paralyzed hand

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USAF Wastes $1 Billion on Computer Technology
Military spending needs to get under control, especially with a shrinking budget

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4/20/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews
DailyTech's roundup of hardware reviews from around the web for Friday

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Microsoft Posts Bullish Earnings, Verizon Warming to Windows Phone
Windows 7 claims 40 percent desktop market share; Xbox 360 is top U.S. console for 15th month

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IBM Welcomes Two New Companies to Its 500-mile Range Lithium-Air Battery Project
The two newcomers are Asahi Kasei and Central Glass

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NASA Boasts "Greenest" Federal Building in the United States
Super green facility uses space tech

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New Bill Hopes to Put Black Boxes in All New Cars Starting in 2015
One provision in this bill would allow the IRS to take away the passports of US citizens

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Nokia Bleeds Even More Sales Than Expected, Sales VP is Booted
Opinion: Finnish phone giant must phase out Symbian or die

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Apple to U.S. Gov't on Collusion Allegations: Bring It On
Apple feels confident it will defeat U.S. prosecutors' claims it engaged in e-book price fixing

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N.C. Company Creates Plugless Charging System for EVs; Google, Duke Energy Take Notice
The $3,000 wireless EV charging pad is ready to be tested this spring

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Norwegian Terrorist Brags He Learned His Skills in COD:MW2 Video Game
Terrorist claims two more Christian ultraconservative cells are ready to strike in Norway

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Nikon Announces D3200 D-SLR Camera, Wireless WU-1a Adapter for Android Only
Nikon said a wireless mobile adapter for Apple's iOS will be out later in fall 2012

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Available Tags:HTC , AMD , NVIDIA , GPU , Xbox , McAfee , Facebook , Hardware , Windows Phone , Microsoft , Windows , IBM , NASA , Nokia , Apple , His , Nikon , Wireless , Android ,

Monday, April 23, 2012

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 4/23/2012

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