Antec Reveals the Signature S10 Premium Tower Case
Measuring 60 cm tall and 59 cm deep (23.7" × 23.2"), the Signature S10 is one of the largest tower cases in existence. It also weights about 18 kg, making it a very heavy case that is certainly not designed for frequent movement. Still, the proportions of a case alone are not stimulating and not what is unique about this particular release. What is perhaps the most important point of the Signature S10 is that it features Antec's patented three chamber design internal architecture.
Exactly as the name suggests, the three chamber design architecture splits the interior of the Signature S10 into three compartments. The entire front of the case is reserved for hard disk drives, the bottom compartment is shared between the PSU and five 2.5" device trays, and the primary compartment is reserved for the main system alone. Note that, despite its size, the Signature S10 does not have any 5.25" drive bays, so the idea of an optical drive is truly dead for this case. However, there is a slot for a short 5.25" device (fan controller, card reader, etc.). The chassis is most likely made out of SECC steel and the buyer is given the choice between aluminum and smoked tempered glass doors for the side panels. If Antec's press release is accurate and we are talking about real glass, not Plexiglass, that would be a sight to behold.
As the Signature S10 is intended to be Antec's engineering pinnacle, the stock cooling of the case is intense. The very architecture of the case is supposed to aid thermal performance, forcing top-down airflow. There are seven stock fans, one 120 mm and six 140 mm, preinstalled into the Signature S10, the models and specifications of which are unknown at this point of time. To limit the insertion of dust, Antec installed micromesh air filters to each individual chamber.
Obviously, Antec is trying to combine the very elegant appearance of the Signature series with outstanding thermal performance and expandability options, pitching the case as a good match for advanced gaming systems and workstations. Meanwhile it seems as Antec put every bit of their technology on the Signature S10, and the retail price reflects that, as the MSRP is just shy of $500. Consequently the potential market of the Signature S10 is going to be very small (if not very elite) limited to the most hardcore of enthusiasts who are willing to pay a very hefty price in order to combine elegant aesthetics and quality with thermal performance.
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AMD Picks Up Jim Anderson from Intel To Lead Computing and Graphics Business Group
After having conducted an external search, AMD has announced that they have tapped Jim Anderson to take over the group, bringing him over from Intel. Jim had in turn been with Intel for the last 7 months as the GM of the company’s Axxia communication processor business, after Intel acquired the business and Jim from LSI last year. Going farther back, before his tenure at LSI, Jim was employed at Intel as a microprocessor architect and later involved in Intel’s microprocessor strategic planning, giving him a bona fide background in the business he’s now being tapped to lead.
In their press release of the hiring, along with lauding Jim’s technical credentials, AMD has also been making it clear that they are bringing Jim on-board in order to help turn around the state of AMD’s Computing and Graphics business and improve its profitability. As the GM is responsible not only for technical matters but business and sales matters as well, AMD has been in need of someone capable of expertly handling all three aspects of the business, to which AMD believes that Jim’s “proven ability to transform businesses to drive profitable growth” makes him a good fit for the job.
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Intel to Acquire FPGA-Specialist Altera for $16.7 Billion
In the FPGA space Altera is one of the two major competitors, and alongside rival Xilinx the two companies comprise the bulk of the market. Prior to this sale Altera already had a close relationship with Intel, with Altera using Intel’s 14nm process for their latest generation of Stratix FPGAs.
As one of only a few external companies known to be using Intel’s 14nm process, Altera’s FPGA’s have been a natural complement to Intel’s ASIC business. On a business side there’s minimal overlap, but more importantly on the technical side FPGAs are good candidates for early production on a lower-yielding node. Since FPGAs are just large arrays of programmable logic and RAM, they can easily compensate for defects, allowing for a greater number of chips to be shipped for revenue early-on than a more complex ASIC.
Given Intel and Altera’s already close working relationship, today’s deal was not unexpected. Purchasing Altera allows Intel to bring their FPGA production entirely in-house, not just producing FPGAs but better aligning them to Intel’s development plans as part of their integrated device manufacturing model. However more significantly, this gives Intel access to top-tier FPGA technology, which they can use to augment other products.
Intel is already talking about the possibilities they see for Altera’s FPGA technology in the IoT and datacenter markets, but also the company has confirmed that they will be integrating FPGA technology into some of their future Xeon products, to allow customers to essentially build-out semi-custom processors via the FPGA component. Intel already does on-package FPGAs for certain customers, so this would represent the logical extension of that process by bringing the FPGA fully on-die.
For Intel this also represents a chance to further branch out in the markets they cover. The PC and server market has continued to treat the company well, even as PC sales have slowed, but having so far struggled to capture a major piece of the mobile space from ARM and its partners, Intel has been looking at other avenues of growth. In this case FPGAs represent a high-margin business on their own, one that’s increasing in revenue as ASIC development costs continue to rise, and a good match for Intel given their traditional manufacturing advantage.
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The Kaveri Refresh 'Godavari' Review: Testing AMD's A10-7870K
Astute readers will recognize that we recently posted two reviews covering more of the stack of AMD processors with the codename 'Kaveri' which covered the A6-7400K, A8-7650K and the A10-7700K in our recent coverage. Today we review the newest element that sits on top of all others, the A10-7870K Kaveri Refresh APU.
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Corsair unleashes the Bulldog DIY 4K Gaming PC
With a company as active as Corsair is, their latest move was no surprise to us. Corsair combined their knowledge of chassis design and thermal performance, used their industry contacts and brought about the creation of the Bulldog, a DIY 4K Gaming PC designed to fit into living rooms.
The Bulldog is the combination of a desktop PC case styled to appear as a gaming console with a 600W SFX power supply, a liquid cooler for the CPU and an ITX motherboard. Corsair's aim was to reduce a very high performance gaming PC to fit within the dimensions of a gaming console. In order to do that, they managed to fit dual liquid cooling systems (one for the CPU and, optionally, one for the GPU) and a high output SFX PSU into the desktop chassis. In terms of size, the Bulldog is relatively small but not too small, as it had to be tall enough for a high-end graphics card to fit.
The base configuration of the Bulldog includes the case, the ITX motherboard, the H5SF CPU liquid cooler and the 600W SFX power supply. It starts with a MSRP of $399, which seems a little steep at first but it is not really overpriced considering the specs of the motherboard. We are not aware of very specific details regarding the motherboard that is installed in the Bulldog, but it will support DDR4 RAM, USB 3.1, 7.1 audio, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi. (It's worth noting that at this point, the only mini-ITX motherboard that can support DDR4 is the ASRock X99E-ITX, but in the pictures provided by Corsair the board used seems to be a DDR3 based ASUS. It doesn't take much to pinpoint that the Bulldog is mostly likely aimed for a future DDR4 capable platform, or currently just for the ASRock motherboard if Corsair wishes to pursue the DDR4 route exclusively.) Corsair has also collaborated with NVIDIA and MSI to create drop-in ready liquid cooled variations of the Geforce GTX Titan X, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and GTX 970. Combinations of the Corsair H55 liquid AIO cooler and the HG10 graphics card cooling bracket may also be used.
Corsair's timing with that release seems perfect, as the first few graphics cards that can borderline handle 4K gaming are just hitting the market. A few months ago and 4K gaming without at least two high-end GPUs installed was impossible. However, you cannot install two graphic cards in a system with an ITX motherboard, which made the creation of very small 4K gaming PCs very difficult. Aesthetically, we feel that many will question the overly aggressive appearance of the Bulldog for a machine that is meant to be into living rooms. It definitely stands out a lot and that is not what people with modernized/minimalistic interior designs want. However, if Corsair's endeavor proves to be successful, it would be rather easy for them to base other designs on this, offering new products to cover a variety of tastes.
Alongside with the Bulldog, Corsair is also releasing the Lapdog, a gaming control center for use in the living room. Long story short, the Lapdog is a wired keyboard/mouse dock designed to sit on someone's lap. Aside from the presence of a USB hub and the memory foam cushion for user comfort, we do not have many details about the Lapdog at this point of time. Corsair will be offering it as a standalone station for $89 or with a keyboard for $199. The included keyboard obviously is the Corsair Gaming K65 RGB but we are unaware regarding the Lapdog's compatibility with other keyboards.
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Microsoft Announces That Windows 10 Will Launch On July 29
According to the blog post, Microsoft will be simultaniously launching Windows 10 around the globe to some 1.5 billion Windows users that currently reside in over 190 different countries, making it the widest Windows has ever been released at once. Windows 10 is Microsoft's chance to win back users who didn't embrace the changes made in Windows 8, and they have a lot riding on its success. Offering it as a free upgrade to existing Windows users will certainly help in gaining adoption.
Even with the free nature of the upgrade, the promise of a July release date for such a monumental update is quite a bold move on Microsoft's part. The less than optimal state of the current Windows 10 testing builds means that Microsoft has a great deal of work ahead of them as they squash bugs and improve the stability of Windows 10 in the two months between now and release. As a user who is keen on upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I really hope they succeed.
Finally, Microsoft has revealed a few more details about how Windows 10 distribution will work. Starting today, users can "reserve" Windows 10 on Windows 7/8.1 machines. Reserving Windows will in turn flag a machine for pre-loading, with Microsoft distributing most of Windows 10 ahead of time as to get it in to customers' hands more quickly to better balance the expected load on their server backend. According to Microsoft's FAQ, reserving/pre-loading Windows 10 only downloads it, and users will still manually confirm the installation, or for that matter users can cancel the reservation entirely. Pre-loading has not started yet, and while Microsoft doesn't say when it will start, I expect it won't be until very near July 29th.
| Windows 10 Upgrade Paths | ||||
| Win10 | Win7 | Win8.1 | ||
| Windows 10 Home | Windows 7 Starter | Windows 8.1 (Core) | ||
| Windows 7 Home Basic | Windows 8.1 (Country-Specific) | |||
| Windows 7 Home Premium | Windows 8.1 w/Bing | |||
| Windows 10 Pro | Windows 7 Professional | Windows 8.1 Pro | ||
| Windows 7 Ultimate | Windows 8.1 Pro for Students | |||
| Windows 10 Mobile | N/A | Windows Phone 8.1 | ||
Along with detailing the reservation process, Microsoft has also confirmed the upgrade paths for various versions of Windows. As expected, all Pro/Ultimate versions of Windows 7 and 8.1 will get upgraded to Windows 10 Pro, while all other versions of desktop/tablet Windows will get upgraded to Windows 10 Home. And of course, Windows Phone 8.1 devices will upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.
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MediaTek announces Helio P10 Mainstream SoC
The P10 is the direct successor to last year's MT6752, which saw some quite widespread in adoption by Chinese vendors such as Meizu (M1 note), Gionee (Elife S7) or JiaYu (S3) and others. The P10 improves on its predecessor, the the MT6752, by taking a lot of improvements which were introduced with the X10 and X20.
On the processor side, the CPU configuration remains a dual-cluster with four A53 cores per cluster. The MT6752 clocked both clusters at the same clock, running from 1.7 up to 2.0GHz as its maximum frequency depending on the chip bin. The P10 keeps this 2.0GHz maximum clock for its performance cluster, but has a slower cluster at lower speeds which we weren't yet able to confirm with MediaTek.
| MediaTek 2015 Main Lineup | ||||
| SoC | MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797) |
MediaTek Helio X10 (MT6795) |
MediaTek Helio P10 (MT6755) |
MediaTek MT6752 |
| CPU | 4x Cortex A53 @1.4GHz 4x Cortex A53 @2.0GHz 2x Cortex A72 @2.3-2.5GHz |
4x Cortex A53 @2.2GHz 4x Cortex A53 @2.2GHz |
4x Cortex A53 @lesser freq 4x Cortex A53 @2.0GHz |
4x Cortex A53 @1.7-2.0GHz 4x Cortex A53 @1.7-2.0GHz |
| Memory Controller |
2x 32-bit @ 933MHz LPDDR3 14.9GB/s b/w |
2x 32-bit @ 933MHz LPDDR3 14.9GB/s b/w |
2x 32-bit @ 800+MHz LPDDR3 12.8+GB/s b/w (To be confirmed) |
1x 32-bit @ 800MHz LPDDR3 6.4GB/s b/w |
| GPU | Mali T8??MP4 @700MHz |
PowerVR G6200 @700MHz |
Mali T860MP2 @700MHz |
Mali T760MP2 @728MHz |
| Encode/ Decode |
2160p30 10-bit H.264/HEVC/VP9 decode 2160p30 HEVC w/HDR encode |
2160p30 10-bit H.264/HEVC/VP9 decode 2160p30 HEVC encode |
1080p30 H.264 & HEVC decode 1080p30 H.264 encode |
1080p30 H.264 & HEVC decode 1080p30 H.264 encode |
| Camera/ISP | Dual ISP 32MP @ 24fps |
21MP single or 16MP + 8MP dual |
21MP single or 16MP + 8MP dual |
16MP |
| Integrated Modem |
LTE Cat. 6 300Mbps DL 50Mbps UL 2x20MHz C.A. (DL) |
LTE Cat. 4 150Mbps DL 50Mbps UL |
LTE Cat. 6 300Mbps DL 50Mbps UL 2x20MHz C.A. (DL) |
LTE Cat. 4 150Mbps DL 50Mbps UL |
Memory bandwidth was supposedly also increased, and I suspect, but again in need of confirmation, that we're talking about finally switching over to a dual-channel memory controller, as the MT6752 was still sporting a single 32bit controller. The P10 is aimed at 1080p devices so it looks that MediaTek is keeping the graphics performances conservative and power efficient.
MediaTek also upgrades the GPU from a Mali T760 to a T860, but keeps the shader core count steady at 2. We again see some interesting power claims concerning the T8XX series as MediaTek claims the new GPU uses only 70% of the power of the previous T760 iteration while improving performance by 20%, but we might be not talking solely architectural improvements as the P10 comes on a brand-new silicon manufacturing node.
The P10 is the first SoC to be announced on TSMC's 28HPC+ process. TSMC published the 28HPC process last autumn as a successor to 28HPM - with the advantages of a slight die shrink and improved power characteristics. 28HPC+ is yet another iteration that was publicly talked about last April, and promises a 15% gain in performance or a quite large 30 to 50% reduction in leakage at the same speed when compared to 28HPC.
We'll continue to see the 28nm process to live on for a long time in the mid-range and cost-sensitive segments as it marks the sweet-spot in the transistors/$ scaling, and 28HPC(+) is one of the first enablers of this life-time extension.
The Helio P10 also takes over the modem sub-system that we've seen announced in the X20 - with LTE rel.11 Category 6 capability and 2x20MHz carrier aggregation on the download stream. This also includes crucial CDMA2000 support that MediaTek needs to be able to penetrate the North American and other limited markets.
The mainstream lineup is the Taiwanese company's bread & butter and is the source of where MediaTek has seen most of its notorious successes. The P10, being part of this segment, will very likely see similar widespread adoption in low-cost devices as the Chinese smartphone boom continues to grow.
The Helio P10 is supposed to be sampling in early Q3 2015 and with phone mass-production happening towards the end of the year in the fourth quarter.
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ARM Announcements: New IoT Subsystem for TSMC 55ULP and ARM Cordio Radio IP
ARM's goal here is to provide a solution to its customers. ARM's business model revolves around licencing either their instruction set or the blueprints for partners to design their own SoCs. However, if we considered a saturated top tier market for processor IP, the way to grow with mid and low range partners is to provide more complete solutions. This is ARM's goal here with the IoT Subsystem, especially when IoT and 'billions of units' are spoken often in the same sentence more often. ARM also likes to note that by investing in a more complete subsystem, developers can reduce elements of risk with SoC design.
Because companies like ARM are more often the start point when it comes to developing devices around the internet of things, it can be difficult for them to drive the end products. Personally, I feel that while IoT is spoken about often at events, we don't always see the end product in ours hands in the volumes that are quoted. Part of that is the ecosystem, which needs to evolve. Offering more complete start points is one element of that process.
With reference to ARM Cordio, this is a new IP portfolio from ARM as a direct result of acquiring two companies - Wicentric and Sunrise Micro Devices, as formally announced a couple of weeks ago. This includes Bluetooth smart software solutions for low power wireless products as well as radio IP including pre-qualified, self-contained radio block with related firmware. The Cordio IP with TSMC 55ULP is rated to get over 2x more life over 1.2 volt and up when Lithium batteries are used. Dr Dipesh Patel, the VP of Technical Operations at ARM, showed off a radio beacon device built on the basis of Cordio at ARM's press event today.
Source: ARM
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Microsoft: New Windows 10 Licenses Will Start at $119 for Home, $199 for Pro
Desktop builders -- a small, but affluent crowd -- appear to be getting no pricing break; still OEM licenses likely will cost less
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PATRIOT Act Partially Expires After 10+ Hour Sen. Paul Filibuster; So, What's Next?
Section 215 in its current form expired, but the debate now shifts to the USA FREEDOM Act, which would partially restore it
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Microsoft: Windows 10 Will Land on July 29 for PCs, Tablets
Xbox One and smartphone versions will land later this year
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