IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 15/07/2014

Western Digital My Book Duo DAS Review
Earlier this week, we took a look at LaCie's high end 2-bay RAID DAS, the 2big Thunderbolt 2. It integrated both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 as connectivity options. At $800 for a 8 TB version, the pricing carries a premium for the Thunderbolt connectivity. USB 3.0 is, in a way, the poor man's Thunderbolt. With a focus on the average consumer, Western Digital launched the My Book Duo USB 3.0 DAS with hardware RAID capabilities a few weeks back. The 8 TB variant is priced at a more palatable $450. Read on to see how it performs in our evaluation.

Your Thoughts on the Wearables Market

For the past couple of years we've noticed a shift in focus of dominant players in the smartphone space. As the smartphone market moves from rapid expansion to a maturing phase, the companies on top don't want to be left behind in the same way the notebook PC vendors were at the start of the smartphone/tablet race.
At the same time, continued reduction in transistor feature sizes and power consumption have enabled a new class of low power SoC. ARM's product offerings in particular extend both up and down the power curve. There's Cortex M for ultra low power devices, often perfect for wearables, and then a range of Cortex A CPUs for higher end wearables all the way up to smartphones, tablets and eventually servers.
Initial successes in the wearables space were specialized pieces of hardware. For example, pedometers and health trackers like the Fitbits of the world. Most of these designs leverage Cortex M series CPU cores. More recently however we've seen a more serious push into the world of smart watches. Initial plays here were more disorganized in terms of hardware and OS selection, but we're beginning to see some consolidation on the heels of Google's Android Wear announcement.
At last month's Google IO we saw the first official Android Wear devices launch from LG and Samsung. Later this summer we'll also see the arrival of the Moto 360, an arguably much more appealing Android Wear device thanks to a greater focus on design. I've spent the past couple of weeks with LG's G Watch and am still toying with the best way to present my thoughts on the device. In short it seems like a great platform if you're a developer, but honestly lacks the battery life (I measured under 9 hours of actual use, display on but dimmed on a single charge) and feature set today to really convince me as a consumer.
Last month we soft launched our new Wearables content section at AnandTech, with ARM graciously agreeing to be a launch sponsor. ARM's support will allow us to likely do some wearable giveaways in the not too distant future too.
The path to wearable computing becoming something more substantial however demands a lot of things to change. If we're talking about watches we need better battery life, the functionality needs to improve as well (although I am impressed by some of what's already been introduced for Android Wear). I'm curious to get your thoughts on the wearable space. What would it take for you to add yet another computing platform to your life? Is anyone out there waiting for the perfect smart watch? I know I stopped wearing watches nearly a decade ago, and to go back I'll likely need quite a bit of convincing in terms of a great product.
If you've got thoughts on this space, we'd love to hear them as they'll help shape our coverage going forward. Leave your comments below.

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Devil’s Canyon Review: Intel Core i7-4790K and i5-4690K
In the latter part of the last decade, getting performance on the cheap meant buying a low end processor and learning how to overclock it. This is how I started in building computers, but a few generations ago Intel locked it all down except for a few high-end models in each generation. Since then, due to various changes in packaging, each of the last few generations has anecdotally felt to offer less overclocking headroom or fewer highly overclocking parts, much to the chagrin of enthusiasts. With Devil’s Canyon, Intel aimed to address some of these concerns.

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Synology DS414j: An Ideal Backup NAS
The consumer Network Attached Storage (NAS) market has seen tremendous growth over the past few years. As the amount of digital media generated by the average household increases, the standard 2-bay NAS is no longer sufficient. 4-bay solutions based on ARM platforms are the most attractive for home users, thanks to their low cost and power consumption profile. We have already evaluated solutions from Western Digital (WD EX4) and LenovoEMC (ix4-300d) in this space. Today, we are going to take a look at Synology's offering in this market segment, the DS414j.

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MSI’s ECO Range of Motherboards Announced

At Computex this year, the MSI booth featured a range of new motherboards branded ‘ECO’, with the emphasis on minimizing power output while still retaining a level of functionality. Today we received the official announcement for the range, which will initially encompass three models: the H97M ECO, the B85M ECO and the H81M ECO. Each of these models will be in the micro-ATX form factor, offering one PCIe 3.0 x16, two PCIe 2.0 x1 and one PCI slot. At this point in time all the PCBs are in black, rather than the white edition we saw at Computex which might come at a later date.

All three models use a simple power phase design without the need for a heatsink. As none of these chipsets support CPU overclocking, MSI only has to deal with TDP allowances. In our initial Computex coverage, reader TiGr1982 commented that these motherboards should throw up an image at boot if an S or T low power processor was not detected – it would be interesting to see if MSI would implement such a feature.

Each motherboard uses Intel NICs, USB 3.0 and six SATA 6 Gbps, except the H81 which uses two SATA 6 Gbps plus two more SATA 3 Gbps ports due to chipset limitations. The H81M ECO also uses only two DRAM slots, whereas the others have four. MSI is branding its ECO range as a 40% power saving, while retaining 100% performance and stability. The main feature to help this is their ECO Center Pro software, which allows users to switch off ports and slots not being used. For example, PCIe slots with no cards, or disabling USB ports/NICs/fan headers as required thus saving extra milliwatts.

MSI’s overclocking motherboards over recent generations have included an OC Genie button on board, and for the ECO range this turns into the ECO Button which helps reduce power usage. The button is also toggled in the BIOS, and MSI retains its Military Class rating for these new products.

The ultimate ECO board might be a severely stripped down mini-ITX motherboard with the bare essentials, with an integrated processor and DDR3L, however for custom build PCs there has to be that balance of configurability and power saving. MSI is focused on small business, data center and system integrators for its range.

I am currently awaiting release dates and pricing for these new models. Product pages are not available online yet, but I will update this post when I have links and information.
Addition:
Just got word of MSRPs for North America. The H97M ECO will be $90, and the B85M ECO will be $75. It looks like the H81M ECO will be for SIs only or for other markets.

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Watch our Hangout with ARM GPU Fellow Jem Davies

For those of you who weren't able to catch the live stream be sure to watch our interview with ARM Fellow and all around GPU expert Jem Davies. In our Hangout Jem talked about how he got involved with GPUs at ARM (spoiler alert: his boss told him to go out and buy a GPU company). He also shared his thoughts on Mali's unique architecture and how it may evolve over time. We discussed the future of mobile gaming, solving memory bandwidth challenges, and the potential for ARM scaling its GPU architectures from wearables all the way up to supercomputers.

I reference it a few times, but you should also check out Ryan Smith's deep dive into ARM's Midgard GPU Architecture. ARM is the second mobile-focused GPU vendor to allow us unfettered access to the details of their GPUs and we're very thankful for it.
I'd like to thank Jem once again for taking the time to chat with me, and if you haven't already seen them I'd suggest watching some of our other Hangouts with ARM:

HGST Expands Ultrastar C10K Family with 1.8 TB 12 Gbps SAS HDD

HGST (a Western Digital company) today launched the Ultrastar C10K1800, a 10000 RPM hard drive in the 2.5" form factor targeting enterprise / data center applications. Earlier versions of the Ultrastar C10K family topped out at 1.2 TB and came with a 6 Gbps SAS connector. The new member has a 1.8 TB capacity and comes with a cutting-edge 12 Gbps SAS connection. With this introduction, HGST is moving all capacities in the Ultrastar C10K family to 12 Gbps SAS.
Even though flash storage is grabbing all the headlines right now, there are many applications where the premium for IOPS doesn't need to be paid, and cost per GB wins out. It is this market segment that HGST hopes to target with the Ultrastar C10K1800.
In order to improve performance over previous generation Ultrastar C10K HDDs, HGST has put in a 'media cache' - a disk-based caching technology providing a large non-volatile area for data storage. HGST claims that there is a significant improvement in write performance even at high workloads (compared to NAND-based caches). Improvements are in the order of 2.5x for random writes and 23% for sequential accesses when compared to older Ultrastar C10K drives.

HGST's Disk-based Media Cache

The high level operation of the disk-based media cache is explained in the above picture. While HGST wasn't ready to comment on how much of the drive capacity was being used as a disk cache, they did mention that the cache has no effect on the capacity visible to users. This technology is also being rolled out across all Ultrastar C10K models.
The hard drive family comes with both 4K native / 512 emulation and a 512 native sectors version for legacy compatibility. HGST also claims improved power efficiency. The drives are already being qualified by OEMs and are available now. The FIPS-certified encryption-enabled drives will ship early next year.

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LaCie's 2big Thunderbolt 2 and Rugged Thunderbolt DAS Review
Consumers dealing with multimedia workflows need to transfer large amounts of data around. Be it collecting data in the field or editing media at a workstation, the necessity for fast and accessible direct attached storage (DAS) units can't be stressed enough. LaCie and G-Technology are two vendors targeting this space. Back in April, we had covered the launch of some solutions in this space. Today, we are reviewing one of LaCie's introductions, the 2big Thunderbolt 2. LaCie's Rugged Thunderbolt bus-powered DAS forms a complementary offering for in-field use. Both units offer Thunderbolt as well as USB 3.0 connectivity. Read on to see how they perform in our evaluation.

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SilverStone NightJar NJ520 Power Supply Review
Most PCs don't require a massive power supply capable of 750W or more sustained output, and even the 500-550W models can be overkill for many users. Today we'll be looking at he Silverstone Nightjar 520W power supply, a PSU with a moderate power output but a very distinct feature: it's completely fanless. Fanless PSUs aren't a new idea, but advances in technology have taken them from expensive and rather esoteric devices to modern designs that are more reasonable. The Silverstone Nightjar 520W retails for $139.99 including shipping (after rebate), a steep price for a 520W unit even if it is 80Plus Platinum certified, but that's due in large part to its fanless nature. Does it perform well enough to justify such a price? We'll find out in this review.

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Testing Samsung 850 Pro Endurance & Measuring V-NAND Die Size

Last week Samsung announced the 850 Pro, which is the first mainstream SSD to utilize 3D V-NAND. We already reviewed the drive and covered the fundamentals of V-NAND in detail but there is one thing I did not have the time to test: endurance.

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Join us for a Live Hangout with ARM Fellow Jem Davies and Chat about GPUs at 12PM ET Today

After answering your questions in our Ask the Experts post, ARM Fellow and GPU expert Jem Davies agreed to join a live video discussion with me. At 12:00PM ET today (50 minutes from now) we will be hosting a live Google Hangout with Jem Davies. I'll update this post with the stream just before we begin.
We will be accepting questions live if you are able to join the Hangout. As usual, we'll be posting the feed directly to our YouTube Channel once it's over.
Update - Stream below:

Monday, July 14, 2014

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 15/07/2014

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