IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 28/11/2013

Futuremark Begins Delisting "Cheating" Mobile Devices from 3DMark Database

Over the summer, following a tip from @AndreiF7, we documented an interesting behavior on the Exynos 5 Octa versions of Samsung's Galaxy S 4. Upon detecting certain benchmarks the device would plug in all cores and increase/remove thermal limits, the latter enabling it to reach higher GPU frequencies than would otherwise be available in normal games. In our investigation we pointed out that other devices appeared to be doing something similar on the CPU front, while avoiding increasing thermal limits. Since then we've been updating a table in our reviews that keeps track of device behavior in various benchmarks.
It turns out there's a core group of benchmarks that seems to always trigger this special performance mode. Among them are AnTuTu and, interestingly enough, Vellamo. Other tests like 3DMark or GFXBench appear to be optimized for, but on a far less frequent basis. As Brian discovered in his review of HTC's One max, the list of optimization/cheating targets seems to grow with subsequent software updates.
In response to OEMs effectively gaming benchmarks, we're finally seeing benchmark vendors take a public stand on all of this. Futuremark is the first to do something about it. Futuremark now flags and delists devices caught cheating from its online benchmark comparison tool. The only devices that are delisted at this point are the HTC One mini, HTC One (One max remains in the score list), Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (2014 Edition). In the case of the Samsung devices, both Exynos 5 Octa and Qualcomm based versions are delisted.
Obviously this does nothing to stop users from running the benchmark, but it does publicly reprimand those guilty of gaming 3DMark scores. Delisted devices are sent to the bottom of the 3DMark Device Channel and the Best Mobile Devices list. I'm personally very pleased to see Futuremark's decision on this and I hope other benchmark vendors follow suit. Honestly I think the best approach would be for the benchmark vendors to toss up a warning splash screen on devices that auto-detect the app and adjust behavior accordingly. That's going to be one of the best routes to end-user education of what's going on.
Ultimately, I'd love to see the device OEMs simply drop the silliness and treat benchmarks like any other application (alternatively, exposing a global toggle for their benchmark/performance mode would be an interesting compromise). We're continuing to put pressure on device makers, but the benchmark vendors doing the same will surely help.

Chipworks Confirms Xbox One SoC Has 14 CUs with 2 Disabled

In our mini-review of the Xbox One I speculated that the shipping version of Microsoft's console featured 14 AMD GCN CUs (Graphics Core Next Compute Units), with two disabled to improve yields. Microsoft publicly stated that Xbox One development kits featured 14 CUs and Sony similarly had 20 CUs with only 18 enabled with the PS4. With Xbox One hardware in the wild, Chipworks went to task delayering the SoC/APU and confirmed the speculation - the Xbox One does indeed feature 14 CUs (pictured above).
Microsoft claims it weighed the benefits of running 12 CUs (768 cores) at 853MHz vs. 14 CUs (896 cores) at 800MHz and decided on the former. Given that the Xbox One APU only features 16 ROPs and ROP performance scales with clock speed, Microsoft likely made the right decision. Thermal and yield limits likely kept Microsoft from doing both - enabling all CUs and running them at a higher frequency. Chances are that over time Microsoft will phase out the extra CUs, although it may take a while to get there. I'm not sure if we'll see either company move to 20nm, they may wait until 14/16nm in order to realize real area/cost savings which would mean at least another year of shipping 14/20 CU parts at 28nm.

Compared to the PS4's APU, we see a very similar layout. The on-die SRAM sits next to the GPU array, and far away from the CPU, which makes sense given that the latter isn't allowed direct access to the eSRAM. You can very clearly see the tradeoff Microsoft had to make in order to accommodate its eSRAM. The GPU area shrinks considerably.

11/26/2013 Daily Hardware Reviews
DailyTech's roundup of reviews from around the web for Tuesday

NYT: NSA May Have Spied on Google, Yahoo Data Centers Via Fiber-Optic Cables
The data running along these cables between data centers is not encrypted

Samsung Question's Apple's "Pinch to Zoom" Patent in U.S. Trial, Has Emergency Motion Denied
This patent is particularly important because it's the only one where Apple can collect money for lost revenue

Quick Note: Intel Wants to Sell OnCue Internet TV Service for $500M
Intel wants to close the deal by the end of the year

Xbox One Owners with Hardware Issues to Get Free Game Code
All game choices are download titles

Available Tags:Xbox , Hardware , Yahoo , Via , Samsung , Motion , Intel , TV ,

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 28/11/2013

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