The Dell XPS 15 9550 Review: Infinity Edge Lineup Expands
It was roughly a year ago that we had a chance to review
Dell’s XPS 13,
which was the first laptop from Dell to feature the Infinity Edge
display. In addition to making the laptop look as much like a bezel-less
display as possible, it also let Dell squeeze a 13-inch laptop into a
much smaller chassis. The XPS 13 is still, to this day, unparalleled in
the PC space in this context. So the obvious question at the time was
when or if Dell was going to do the same to the rest of the XPS lineup?
That question was answered in October 2015, when Dell launched the
updated XPS 15 with Skylake and Infinity Edge. Just like the XPS 13
before it, the laptop was bezel-less and the larger 15.6-inch model fits
into a laptop chassis that would normally house a 14-inch display.
Smaller, lighter, and with the same styling as the XPS 13, Dell has the
potential to set the bar higher in the larger laptop segment as well.
Read More ...
Samsung Begins to Ship 15.36 TB SSD for Enterprise Storage Systems
Samsung
on Thursday introduced its new lineup of high-capacity SSDs for
enterprises. The new Samsung PM1633a family of drives includes the
world’s first SSD that can store 15.36 TB of data and which leaves
behind even the leading-edge hard drives. The solid-state drive not only
offers the world’s highest-capacity, but also boasts with increased
reliability and high performance. The manufacturer is already shipping
the new SSDs to select customers.
The Samsung PM1633a
15.36 TB SSD can deliver up to 1200 MB/s sequential read performance and
features random read and write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 IOPS
respectively, according to the manufacturer. The 15.36 TB SSD supports 1
DWPD (drive writes per day) throughout the period of several years
(unfortunately, Samsung does not specify of how many), which indicates
very high endurance. The new solid-state storage solution features
SAS-12 Gb/s interface and is compatible with servers that support drives
in 2.5”/15 mm form-factor. Samsung does not reveal power consumption of
the PM1633a 15.36 TB SSD, but based on power requirements the SSD can
consume up to 13.7W.
| Samsung PM1633a SSD Specifications |
|
15.36 TB |
| Controller |
Samsung proprietary controller |
| NAND |
Samsung's 256 Gb 48-layer TLC NAND |
| DRAM Cache |
16 GB DDR3 SDRAM |
| Sequential Read |
1200 MB/s |
| Endurance |
1 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) |
| Interface and Form-Factor |
2.5"/15mm SAS-12 Gbps |
The PM1633a drives are based on Samsung’s new
proprietary controller that can concurrently access large amounts of
high-density NAND flash with the help of a special firmware. Thanks to
the new controller, the PM1633a SSDs are even faster than the
PM1633
drives unveiled last August (sequential read and write speeds of up to
1100MB/s and 1000MB/s, up to 160/18 thousand random read/write IOPS).
Typically, high-capacity SSDs do not offer truly high performance
because of peculiarities of their internal architecture, but Samsung has
managed to develop a controller that weds performance and capacity.
The
Samsung PM1633a SSDs utilize the company’s third-generation 256 Gb TLC
3D V-NAND memory chips. The 256 Gb dies are stacked in 16 layers and
form a single 512 GB package. Samsung uses 32 of such packages to build
its most spacious SSD, leaving around 1 TB of NAND for overprovisioning.
The giant drive also features 16 GB of DRAM cache to ensure smooth
performance. The Samsung PM1633a 15.36 TB will be the second product to
use the company's 48-layer TLC 3D V-NAND after the
Portable SSD T3. Eventually, Samsung will further expand usage of this flash memory.
The
advantages of 15.36 TB SSDs in the server space are hard to
overestimate. There are 2U servers that can fit in 48 SAS3/12G storage
devices (
1,
2).
Each of such machines can store 737.28 TB of data (if fully populated
with Samsung’s new PM1633a SSDs), whereas a 42U cabinet featuring 21 of
such servers will be able to store 15482 TB of data (15.4 PB). By
contrast, storage capacity of a standard 42U storage rack based on 360
3.5” 10TB HDDs is around 3600 TB.
Samsung did not reveal the price of its 15.36 TB SSD, but is probably in the range of several thousands of dollars.
Later this year Samsung plans to add drives with 7.68 TB, 3.84 TB, 1.92 TB, 960 GB and 480 GB into its PM1633a lineup.
Read More ...
Microsoft Reveals Additional Details About HoloLens and Begins to Take Pre-Orders
Microsoft
this week began to accept applications for pre-orders for its HoloLens
augmented reality device. Right now, the company offers HoloLens only to
software developers looking to build applications for this new
environment.Interested developers will have to pay $3000 per unit for
this development kit, which is a hefty sum. Moreover, additional
technical specifications of HoloLens revealed by Microsoft give us a bit
of insight into what is inside this augmented reality wearable.
The Microsoft HoloLens is custom-built wearable
personal computer
running Windows 10 operating system. The HoloLens is based on an
undisclosed 32-bit Intel processor and a custom-designed Microsoft
holographic processing unit (HPU) that processes data from multiple
sensors. In fact, the list of HoloLens’ sensors is very impressive: the
device features one 2 MP video camera, an inertial measurement unit
(which means, a set of accelerometers, gyroscopes and maybe even a
magnetometer), one depth camera, four environment understanding cameras,
four microphones, an ambient light sensor as well as mixed reality
capture IC. Since the mixed-reality headset does not use any markers or
extra cameras to track movement that are located outside of itself, a
sophisticated set of sensors inside it is absolutely required.The
HoloLens can track gaze, understand gestures and voice commands thanks
to its sensors and underlying software.
The
device is equipped with 2 GB of RAM (1GB for the processor and 1GB for
the HPU) as well as 64 GB of NAND flash storage. The HoloLens can
connect to the Internet or other devices using Wi-Fi 802.11ac and
Bluetooth 4.1 LE wireless technologies. In addition, the device is
equipped with a Micro-USB 2.0 port, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a surround
sound system. The HoloLens can operate for two or three hours on one
charge, which is not a lot, but its unlikely you would be wearing this
around for a work day. It can also charge while in use, tethering it
somewhat but allowing developers to test applications on it as they
work.
The
AR headset from Microsoft uses its advanced sensors to track the
position and orientation of the user's head relative to their
surroundings. The system attempts to predict position where the user's
head will be in at the exact moment and applies holograms accordingly.
Microsoft makes a number of recommendations to software makers how to
ensure that the hologram is added to the right place at the right time,
but the system constantly monitors not only data from sensors, but also
adjusts the length of the rendering pipeline.
The
HoloLens uses two see-through holographic lenses (each of which
consists of three layers — red, green and blue) with an optical
projection system to generate multi-dimensional full-color holograms.
Maximum resolution that the HoloLens can render is
1268x720 (per eye), which is why actual holograms have
a limited field of view.
The holographic content is put at two meters distance from the viewer
because Microsoft believes that this is optimal for eyes and will not
cause any strain. Since augmented reality is not about maximum
resolution, Microsoft puts a lot of focus on quality of each hologram
because it is crucial for its usability. According the company, the
lenses support holographic density of up to 2.5K radiants (the more
radiants and light points there are, the brighter and richer the
hologram). But while the quality is very important for AR, to ensure
smooth framerate (at least 60 fps) Microsoft suggests to lower
resolution of images to 634x360 in certain cases.
Because
Microsoft’s HoloLens is a fully-fledged wearable PC, it has its own
limitations. The CPU is certainly going to be low powered to allow it to
be used mounted on a wearable, possibly Quark or Atom, but Microsoft is
not disclosing this yet. Since storage of the wearable PC cannot be
upgraded, Microsoft caps maximum allocated size for one application to
900 MB. Finally, the software giant warns that because certain
applications may require too much processing power, the system-on-chip
of the HoloLens can overheat. To prevent that, HoloLens will shut down
the application if temperatures hit certain levels. Consequently, even
if a developer managed to create something that uses all the resources
of HoloLens, it is not guaranteed that their app will actually work in
all circumstances, at least with this developer kit.
So far, Microsoft has developed a
limited list of applications
for HoloLens to show off capabilities of the AR to developers. The list
of productivity apps includes Skype, HoloStudio and Actiongram, whereas
the list of entertainment programs includes HoloTour, RoboRaid, Young
Conker and Fragments. With only a limited number of programs that
support holographic experience, it makes sense that this is a developer
kit and not a public release.
Also,
the original demos of Hololens used what Microsoft called an "Air Tap"
to do selections. This was not that difficult to pick up on, but to make
this easier they will be offering a Bluetooth connected hand held
device to let you do the clicking with that, rather than having to do
the gesture. Since the Hololens supports Windows 10 and Bluetooth, there
is likely opportunity here for more peripherals to do other tasks as
well.
The Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition will
only be available to software developers in the United States and Canada
initially. The developers have to participate in the Windows Insider
program. To buy the HoloLens, programmers will have to share their ideas
regarding their applications with Microsoft. If the software giant
likes the idea, its author will get a chance to buy the AR device. The
software giant plans to ship the first batch of HoloLenses to chosen
developers on March 30, 2016. When additional devices are manufactured,
Microsoft will invite more applicants to purchase to the HoloLens.
Interested developers may apply for a Microsoft HoloLens device
here.
Sources:
Microsoft,
PC World.
Read More ...
The FSP Hydro G 750W Power Supply Review
Today
we are taking a look at the other premium PSU series from FSP, the
Hydro G family. Unlike the Aurum PT that we reviewed some time ago, the
Hydro G is 80Plus Gold certified, but the company still boasts high
performance figures and the PSU does have advanced features. We put the
750W version of the Hydro G to the test and rate its electrical, thermal
and acoustics performance, determine the quality and assess its value
for money.
Read More ...
ZOTAC Announces SONIX PCIe SSD Price & Availability
ZOTAC
has formally announced its PCIe SONIX SSD, which was first demonstrated
at CES earlier this year. Confirming the final specifications and
design, the company said that the new drive would be available in the
middle of this month at a price-point comparable to that of other
PCIe-based SSDs. The availability of the ZOTAC SONIX will mark the
arrival of a new breed of high-performance PCIe SSDs based on the Phison
PS5007-E7 controller.
The final version of the ZOTAC SONIX will be faster than the
preliminary version
of the SSD demonstrated at CES, with the shipping version rated for
sequential read performance of 2600 MB/s and sequential write
performance of up to 1300 MB/s. The initial flavor of the ZOTAC SONIX
SSD will offer 480 GB capacity, will be equipped with 512 MB of DDR3
DRAM cache and will come in half-length half-height PCI Express 3.0 x4
card form-factor. The drive will consume 5.57W when performing read
operations, 7.27W while writing and 0.5W in idle mode, according to the
supplier.
| ZOTAC SONIX PCIe SSD Specifications |
|
480 GB |
| Controller |
Phison PS5007-E7 |
| NAND |
Toshiba MLC |
| DRAM Cache |
512 MB DDR3 SDRAM |
| Sequential Read |
2600 MB/s |
| Sequential Write |
1300 MB/s |
| Active Power (Read/Write) |
5.57 W/7.27 W |
| Idle Power |
0.5 W |
| Encryption |
AES-256 |
| MTBF |
2,000,000 hours |
| Interface and Form-Factor |
PCIe 3.0 x4 HHHL card |
The ZOTAC SONIX SSD will be among the first solid-state drives to use Phison’s PS5007-E7 controller
demonstrated in mid-2015.
The chip fully supports NVMe 1.2 protocol, error correction with
120-bit/2KB BCH code, NVMe L1.2 power saving mode, end-to-end data path
protection, advanced global wear-leveling, an AES-256 engine and so on.
The PS5007-E7 has eight NAND flash transfer channels and can perform up
to 300K random read IOPS (input/output operations per second) as well as
200K random write IOPS. As we
reported back in January, the PS5007-E7 had been finalized and the final firmware was due in February.
As
expected, the ZOTAC SONIX drive will use Toshiba’s multi-level cell
(MLC) NAND flash memory and will be positioned as ZOTAC’s premium
offering. The product will hit the market in mid-March at the price of
$369.99, which is comparable to that of Kingston’s HyperX Predator M.2
480 GB SSD (
$364.99) as well as
Samsung’s 950 Pro M.2 512 GB SSD (
$327.99).
It
should be noted that Phison not only develops controllers, but sells
packages consisting of a controller, NAND flash memory, firmware and
even production services. The majority of Phison-based SSDs are made by a
contract manufacturer under supervision of the controller developer.
While the approach somewhat constraints innovation of SSD suppliers
because drives based on the same Phison controller offer similar
feature-set and performance, it also guarantees relatively high quality,
competitive pricing and broad availability.
If
ZOTAC starts to ship its SONIX PCIe SSD in mid-March, other partners of
Phison, including Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, Patriot, PNY and other
will likely follow shortly. As a result, the market should have a
significant number of PCIe 3.0 x4 and M.2 SSDs with up to 2600 MB/s
sequential read performance based on MLC NAND memory. Competition
between various suppliers will naturally affect prices of actual
products, which is good for the end-user. Keeping in mind that Samsung’s
950 Pro M.2 512 GB SSD already costs $328, it looks like prices of
high-end PCIe NVMe SSDs this year will get very competitive. Moreover,
when and if new SSDs based on
SandForce's SF3500 controller arrive, things will get even more intense.
Read More ...
Market Views: Hard Drive Shipments Drop by Nearly 17% in 2015
Today
we're launching a new feature on the AnandTech Pipeline: Quarterly HDD
shipments reports. Here we'll examine HDD sales and analyze what's
behind them. Since some numbers are estimates, we recommend you to check
our counting methodology in the end of the story before reading.
While
no one is writing off the PC market entirely, since it's heyday nearly a
decade ago the PC market has been in a slow decline for some time, and
that decline has yet to bottom out. Sales of personal computers declined
by roughly 25 – 30 million units year-over-year, hitting
an eight-year low in 2015
due to economic trends, weak international currencies, and competition
from tablets and smartphones in some markets. Shipments of PC components
naturally dropped alongside weak PC sales, but hard drive sales in
particular have made for an interesitng observation: for 2015, declines
of HDD sales greatly outpaced the regress of the PC market. Based on
estimates from Western Digital and Seagate (see counting methodology
below), the total available market of hard drives contracted by nearly
100 million units year-over-year in 2015.
Sales of HDDs Total 469 Million Units in 2015
The
three major producers of hard drives shipped a total of 468.9 million
hard drives in 2015, according to estimates from both Seagate and
Western Digital. This is down from 564.1 million units in 2014, or by
17%. By comparison, back in 2010 at the peak of HDD sales, the industry
sold 651 million HDDs.
Typically,
sales of HDDs are rather high in the fourth quarter. They may be
slightly higher or slightly lower than in Q3, which is seasonally strong
since PC makers are stockpiling components for the back-to-school and
holiday seasons. Shipments of hard drives in Q4 2015 totaled 115.1
million units, which was well below shipments of HDDs in any fourth
quarter of any year of this decade. In fact, even in Q4 2008, when the
global economic crisis struck, the industry shipped about 124 million
hard drives. Moreover, HDD TAM in Q4 2015 dropped below the levels in Q4
2011, when a devastating flood in Thailand damaged production
facilities of hard drive makers.
Western
Digital sold 49.688 million of HDDs in Q4 2015 (a drop of 18.6%
year-over-year) and said that shipments of hard drives for gaming PCs as
well as for enterprise were weaker than expected. Western Digital
expects
total available market of HDDs to drop to 100 million units in the
first quarter of 2016, which would be the lowest HDD TAM in a decade. In
a bid to remain competitive and profitable in new market realities,
Western Digital plans to optimize and streamline its roadmap and
eliminate at least six programs to reduce costs. In addition, the
company intends to close-down its head wafer manufacturing facility in
Otawara, Japan. After the fab is shut down, Western Digital will have
just two head wafer facilities.
“We anticipate weak
demand in the March quarter, resulting in a hard drive TAM of
approximately 100 million units,” said Stephen Milligan, chief executive
officer of Western Digital, in a conference call with investors and
financial analysts. “We are reducing our cost base through a series of
planned actions, including the elimination of redundancy in functions,
products, and facilities. […] We are streamlining our product roadmap by
focusing our efforts to eliminate redundancy and optimize the products
we offer, resulting in the elimination of a minimum of six programs.”
On an annual basis, Western Digital sold 204.46 million HDDs in 2015, a decline of 18% compared to 2014.
Seagate
shipped 45.9 million of hard drives in Q4 2015, which was 20% below
shipments in the fourth quarter of prior year primarily due to slow
demand for PCs. Back in January the company
said
that it expected HDD market to stay weak, which is why it would perform
a reorganization, optimize its internal and external supply chains,
accelerate its roadmap, raise prices in certain markets and even
cut-down its manufacturing capacity in a bid to stay financially healthy
in the coming months.
“Taking into account
macroeconomic factors, we believe overall storage market demand will be
seasonally down in the March quarter which has ranged between 5% and 10%
over the last five years,” said Steven Luczo, chief executive officer
of Seagate, in a conference call with investors and financial analysts.
“We anticipate our non-GAAP gross margins will be sequentially flat in
the March quarter and ongoing activities that will improve our
profitability, including raising prices in certain markets, aggressive
product transitions and internal and external supply chain optimization
such as reducing manufacturing capacity.”
Seagate shipped 188.5 million hard drives in 2015, down 15.9% from 224 million units in 2014.
By
contrast, HDD shipments of Toshiba slightly increased in the fourth
quarter compared to the Q3 2015, if the estimates are correct. When
compared to the same period last year, sales of Toshiba’s hard drives
declined by around 15%. The company shipped about 76 million HDDs in
2015, a decline of approximately 16% from around 91 million a year
before.
Capacity Shipped Hit Record as Average HDD Capacity Is Increasing
But
while unit sales of hard drives are declining, demand for HDD storage
has not. Both Seagate and Western Digital set records in terms of
capacity shipments both in Q4 2015 and in for the whole year. Total
capacity of Seagate’s HDDs shipped in 2013 was around 194.2 EB
(Exabyte), but total capacity of hard drives the company sold in 2015
was 222.1 EB. Western Digital shipped 250.1 EB of HDD storage last year,
up from 202 EB in 2013.
The
reason why total capacity shipments are setting records amid declines
of unit shipments is simple: the average capacities of hard drives have
been almost skyrocketing in the recent quarters. Average HDD capacity
was around 1 TB in Q3 2014, but it jump by 31% (Seagate) or even 38%
(Western Digital) to roughly 1.3 – 1.4 TB per drive in Q4 2015.
Average HDD Costs Around $60
Yet
despite the significant shifts in both units shipped and capacity
shipped, HDD average selling prices have hardly changed. The ASP of one
HDD is around $60 for both Seagate and Western Digital. HDDs have been
on this level for quite some time now.
Historically,
Seagate’s ASPs were higher compared to ASPs of its arch-rival because
the company sold more enterprise-class HDDs. After the flooding in
Thailand in 2011 and Western Digital’s acquisition of Hitachi GST in
2012, its ASPs improved significantly. Perhaps, after the two HDD makers
adjust their manufacturing capacities in the coming months and
reconsider their prices, their ASPs will improve.
Western Digital Retains Leadership Position
Western
Digital controlled about 43% of the HDD market in Q4 2015, based on our
estimates. Seagate came second with nearly 40% market share, and
finally Toshiba was the distant third with roughly 17%.
Keeping
in mind global economic trends, competition from SSDs, and many other
factors, it is unlikely that there will be significant changes in the
HDD market in the upcoming quarters. In a bid to win market share,
manufacturers of hard drives would have to sacrifice already thin
margins, something they are unlikely to do. Therefore, the ranking of
HDD makers has all chances to remain the same in the coming quarters.
Shipments of Client HDDs Decline
Given the fact that sales of PCs
dropped to 71.9 million units,
or by around 10.6% year-over-year, in the fourth quarter of 2015, it is
not surprising that shipments of client HDDs by the two leading
manufacturers declined to approximately 53 million in the same period,
or by 26.5%. Even though we should not forget about consumer hard drives
by Toshiba, it is essentially a given that SSDs are gaining in
popularity in notebooks and high-end gaming systems at the expense of
HDDs. According to TrendForce, as much as
25% of laptops used SSDs in Q4 2015.
Looking
at client notebook (2.5") HDD sales, we have a somewhat fuzzy picture.
Seagate includes shipments hard disk drives it ships for game consoles
into its 2.5” client HDD category, whereas Western Digital includes its
drives for consoles into its consumer electronics category. Nonetheless,
it is evident from the numbers that Western Digital generally sells
more 2.5” hard drives than its rival does. In Q4 2015 Western Digital
sold 15.3 million 2.5” HDDs (a 28% drop from the same period a year
before), whereas Seagate supplied about 13.6 million 2.5” drives to its
customers (a 31% decline from the same quarter in 2014).
While
historically Seagate outsold Western Digital on the desktop HDD market,
in Q4 2015 the latter managed to become the world’s largest supplier of
3.5” hard drives with 12.458 million desktop HDDs shipped (versus
Seagate’s 11.7 million). Only time will tell whether it will stay on top
for long, but considering weak demand for PCs as well as measures to
maintain profitability, it remains to be seen whether Seagate, Toshiba
and Western Digital will fiercely compete for desktop market share at
all.
Seagate claims that its retail, gaming and client
offerings are continuing to move to higher capacity points thanks to the
company’s latest platters. Perhaps, instead of dropping prices on
mainstream capacities, Seagate will attempt to either make higher-end
HDDs more attractive, or introduce unique products, such as the recently
launched
2 TB 2.5”/7mm SMR HDD for mobile PCs.
Looking
at the data, it seems that shipments of 3.5” HDDs have hit the bottom
and will hardly drop significantly further going forward. However,
taking global economic situation into account, making predictions is
barely a good business these days.
Apart from weak
sales of PCs and growing adoption of SSDs, there are other reasons why
the market of HDDs is shrinking. Desktops may not be the most popular
type of computers, but small form-factor systems and all-in-one (AIO)
PCs are gaining traction. As a result, instead of purchasing several
moderate-capacity HDDs, consumers are buying one large-capacity hard
drive for storage purposes. Moreover, since SFF and AIO PCs are not
upgradeable, this further reduces addressable market for internal HDDs.
Sales of External HDDs and NAS Remain Strong
Since
the vast majority of notebooks, AIO PCs and SFF systems cannot house
more than one hard drive, external storage is getting more popular. Both
Seagate and Western Digital sell external HDDs and NAS devices under
their own brands as well as under G-Technology and LaCie trademarks.
Sales
of external HDDs and NAS from Seagate and Western Digital decreased in
2015 (just like shipments of other hard drives), but at a much slower
pace than shipments of internal HDDs.
Western Digital
has historically outsold its arch-rival with its My Cloud and My
Passport products, but in the recent quarters Seagate began to catch up.
In Q4 2015, the two competitors shipped similar amounts of branded
storage devices — 6.443 million (Western Digital) and 6.3 million
(Seagate) units.
The
Q4 2015 was a mixed bag for these two companies. While both managed to
increase shipments of their branded hard drives sequentially, sales of
Seagate's products increased by 5% year-over-year, whereas sales of
Western Digital's external storage systems declined by 12% compared to
the same quarter a year before.
Consumer Electronics Remains a Sizeable Market for HDDs
Nowadays
the vast majority of consumer electronics (CE) applications use NAND
flash memory. There are no ultra-mobile (players, tablets, etc.) devices
with rotating media inside, whereas devices like smart TVs tend to
utilize NAND memory as well. Applications like set-top-boxes, DVRs,
surveillance systems and other may not be significant consumers of HDDs,
but their sales are still important overall. Moreover, thanks to
success of Sony’s PlayStation 4, Western Digital sells loads of drives
for consumer electronics (CE).
In
Q3 2015, sales of Western Digital’s CE HDDs set a record as the company
shipped millions of HGST Travelstar hard drives for the PS4. In the
fourth quarter sales of Western Digital’s CE drives dropped to 8.46
million, a 9% drop year-over-year. Seagate includes sales of its drives
for consoles into its client HDD shipments, so, it is impossible to
directly compare CE HDD businesses of the two hard drives makers.
Seagate
recently said that shipments of its HDDs for surveillance applications
were growing rapidly and there was strong demand for HDDs specifically
designed for these workloads. Hard drives for surveillance and video
streaming systems should offer low price per gigabyte, support for ATA
streaming technology and improved reliability. Thanks to its latest
platters with high areal density, Seagate can address this market with
unique offerings. Western Digital also addresses these markets with its
Purple HDDs, which use its advanced platters as well.
Sales of Enterprise HDDs Remain High
Enterprise-class
hard drives are arguably the most lucrative part of HDD makers’
business. Such drives are naturally not shipped in huge quantities, but
they are sold with a huge premium because they are based on
specially-designed platforms. High-performance HDDs for mission-critical
applications can feature 10000 RPM spindle speeds and the faster SAS
interface. Despite their moderate capacities, such hard drives retail
for $700+ and are still used by many datacenters even with the rise of
SSDs. Moreover, both Seagate and Western Digital now offer helium-filled
HDDs for those, who need maximum capacity per rack and are willing to
pay extra for that.
Seagate
has been the leader of the enterprise HDD market in terms of unit sales
for a long time and nothing changed last year. The company sold 33.2
million enterprise-class hard drives in calendar 2015, up 200 thousand
from the previous year. The reason why the company failed to
significantly increase unit sales of its server HDDs was slower demand
for its 4 TB and 6 TB nearline HDDs in the second half of 2015. Even
with this, the average capacity of its enterprise drives increased to
2.2 TB in Q4 2015, or by 15% year-over-year, the company said recently.
Enterprise total capacity shipped was up 21% sequentially in the fourth
quarter, according to Seagate, which indicates that the product mix
improved in Q4 after the manufacturer introduced its family of 8 TB
PMR-based HDDs in September. Right now Seagate is shipping such hard
drives in high volume.
Although HGST’s product
portfolio has included high-capacity 8 TB helium-filled HDDs for well
over a year, the vast majority of the company’s clients are still
evaluating its helium drives, which is why Western Digital did not
capitalize on its leading capacities from the unit sales point-of-view.
The company sold 28.911 million server-grade hard drives in calendar
2015, down from 30 million in 2014 and 30.6 million in 2013.
In
Q4 2015, sales of Western Digital’s enterprise HDDs dropped to 7.008
million units, or by 12.5% compared to the same period a year before.
Nonetheless, the growing number of datacenters are deploying its
helium-filled 8 TB and 10 TB drives these days, so, the company remains
optimistic about its future in the enterprise. HGST sold 1.5 million
helium-filled HDDs last quarter, up from a million a quarter before.
Moreover, despite of unit sales drop, Western Digital saw 32%
year-over-year growth in enterprise capacity shipments in Q4 2015.
Final Words
The
market of personal computers is transforming and so is the data storage
market. As more client PCs adopt SSDs, fewer internal consumer-class
HDDs will be sold. That said, even with these declines the overall
market for hard drives is not going anywhere.
Looking
at broader market trends, as Ultrabooks and other thin form-factor
notebooks gain in popularity, unit sales of 2.5” HDDs will inevitably
suffer. Nonetheless, analysts from TrendForce expect 66% of laptops to
use hard drives this year, hence, TAM of 2.5” HDDs will still exceed 100
million units in 2016, especially thanks to the latest game consoles
from Microsoft and Sony. What remains to be seen is how HDD makers
optimize their mobile lineups to improve profitability (by cutting-down
costs) while making their products attractive from capacity, performance
and price standpoints. Solid-state hybrid drives have not become
popular or widespread so far. Similarly, the recently introduced
SMR-based 2.5”/7 mm HDD with 2 TB capacity looks more like an experiment
than a product Seagate pins a lot of hopes on. So, it should be
interesting to see what Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital plan to do
in order to sustain relevancy of 2.5” HDDs for mainstream PCs in the
coming years.
Shipments of 3.5” HDDs for client
computers have also been decreasing for a while, but last year the
industry still sold well over 100 million of such hard drives. The
form-factor has a lot of advantages: it is inexpensive, it can offer
high capacity points and it is compatible with 100% of desktop
motherboards that are available today. Nonetheless, since unit sales of
3.5” HDDs are declining, expect manufacturers to shrink the number of
their offerings going forward. Last year Western Digital already folded
its WD Green drives into its WD Blue family. In the future, makers of
HDDs may get rid of mid-tier affordable 7200 RPM HDD families and focus
on cheap 5400 RPM drives and high-performance 7200 RPM drives in a bid
to optimize their costs.
Meanwhile both Seagate and
Western Digital claim that while the HDD TAM is declining because of
shrinking sales of consumer drives, shipments of enterprise-grade HDDs
are growing. However, if we take a closer look at the numbers posted by
these two companies in 2012 – 2015, we will notice that Seagate sold
between 31.6 and 33.2 million server HDDs per year, whereas shipments of
enterprise hard drives from Western Digital fluctuated around 30
million units per annum during the period.
Since
average capacities of server-grade HDDs are rapidly increasing, it is
likely that many enterprises are adopting new 3.5” hard drives, whereas
sales of mission-critical 2.5”/3.5” models are either stagnating or even
declining as SSDs take their place in the datacenter. Keeping in mind
that it is easier to swap HDDs than to expand the datacenter itself in
order to increase storage capacity, it is logical to assume that unit
sales of server-grade hard drives will remain at the current level, or
will even grow slowly. The bigger question is whether shipments of such
HDDs will actually start to grow rapidly to compensate for diminishing
sales of consumer drives. This did not happen in the recent years and it
is unclear whether this will happen in 2016.
Methodology and Important Notices
There
are three major manufacturers of hard drives today: Seagate, Toshiba
and Western Digital. Other suppliers are reselling hard drives made by
these three companies.
Seagate and Western Digital
reveal their HDD unit shipments as well as TAM (total available market)
estimates every fiscal quarter. While such numbers are considered
preliminary, they are usually rather accurate and re-affirmed by
third-party analysts. Our TAM is the midpoint between Seagate’s and
Western Digital’s TAM estimates. If only one hard drive maker reveals
its TAM, we consider the number from only one vendor.
Meanwhile
Toshiba does not officially disclose its HDD shipments. We subtract
quarterly shipments of Seagate and Western Digital from our TAM estimate
to get the number of drives sold by Toshiba. The approach is is the
reason why we do not report historical shipments of Toshiba prior to Q3
2012. Based on estimates of hard drive makers and industry observers,
Toshiba cannot produce more than 22 – 23 million of HDDs per quarter.
Seagate’s
and Western Digital’s fiscal quarters end on the last business day of
the last week of a calendar quarter (e.g., the Friday next to December
31). While fiscal quarters of HDD makers may not correspond exactly to
calendar quarters, they are very close. Fiscal years of Seagate and
Western Digital do not correspond to calendar years as they begin in
July.
Historical TAM data comes from financial reports of Seagate and Western Digital.
Note 1:
Seagate completed acquisition of Samsung’s HDD business in December,
2011. The company started to include sales of Samsung-branded HDDs in
its quarterly shipments in Q1 2012 (Q3 FY2012).
Note 2:
Western Digital closed acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage
Technologies in March, 2012. Western Digital began to include HGST
shipments in its financial reports in Q2 2012 (Q4 FY2012).
Note 3:
Toshiba acquired some of Western Digital’s 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing
equipment and intellectual property in May, 2012. It was expected that
the manufacturing transfer could be complete within 6 to 12 months.
Western Digital made HDDs for Toshiba on a contract basis until late Q4
2012. Due to the contract manufacturing agreement between Western
Digital and Toshiba in 2012, there may be some inaccuracies in the
historical data in that period (i.e., since the drives were made by
Western Digital and then sold to Toshiba, they are attributed to the
former, not the latter).
Note 4: Seagate defines
client HDDs as 2.5” and 3.5” hard drives for desktops, notebooks and
hybrid PCs as well as game consoles. Seagate considers HDDs for external
storage and network-attached storage (NAS) as “branded” drives. Hard
disks for DVRs and surveillance systems belong to Seagate’s family of
HDDs for consumer electronics. Enterprise lineup includes 2.5” and 3.5”
drives for mission critical (SAS, SCSI, Fibre Channel), enterprise
storage, nearline and other datacenter applications.
Note 5: Western Digital attributes
desktop and mobile 2.5” and 3.5” hard drives to client HDDs. External
hard drives and NAS are referred to as “branded products”. Western
Digital’s consumer electronics HDDs are used in DVRs, game consoles,
video streaming applications and security video recording systems.
Read More ...
BaseMark Announces The Power Assessment Tool (PAT)
Basemark
has traditionally been a software company. We've seen and used a lot of
their benchmarking test suites including Basemark OS and Basemark X.
Seeking to expand its portfolio by not only providing software
benchmarks to quantify performance of devices, Basemark looks to provide
hardware to enable users to measure power-consumption and
power-efficiency of devices. Here is where the
PAT (Power Assessment Tool)
comes in. The PAT is a tool that doesn't require
destructive dismantlement of a device to be able to measure its power
consumption. This is an area where I'm particularly familiar with as
over the last year and more have been instrumenting a lot of smartphones
via external power supplies and measurement equipment by physically
opening them and replacing the lithium power cells.
Basemark
relies on the fact that when smartphones are fully charged, they
usually enter a power bypass-mode where the internal battery cell is no
longer used, and power is
instead drawn directly
from the connected charger. To do this the PAT is connected to a
conventional charger input. Currently this is a microUSB port but
Basemark tells me future revisions might consider going USB C. The
output is a USB-A port and thus one can connect any kind of receiving
device, be it USB C, microUSB or Lightning port.
On
the software-side the PAT comes with an interface and analysis software
that is able to connect to the hardware and show in real-time the power
consumption of the device.
It's
still a bit early to talk about the capabilities of the beta software
but Basemark shows promise and once all features are implemented the PAT
should represent great value in terms of analysis for both
professionals and enthusiastic hobbyists.
The charger
input power measurement methodology does come with limitations. For
example power consumption exceeding charger power will lead to
the device PMIC to compensate by drawing power from the battery - power
which then can no longer be tracked. Another problematic scenario is
when devices implement charge current limits when the screen is on.
While in practice they would be able to charge at rates of up to 12W,
they limit themselves to ~5W when the device is used. This limit
sometimes falls below the peak power consumption of devices and thus can
result in a misleading measurement data.
While the PAT is officially advertised and validated for power measurement over
a device's USB port, an interesting use-case that I couldn't help
myself testing is trying to use it to directly power and measure the
device's battery power input. With some cable splicing and modifications
to be able to just use the + and GND pins of the USB connectors and
connect them to the device's battery input I was able to avoid any of
the limitations and draw-backs of measuring power via the device's input
power.
Basemark
publishes that the power range on the input and output ports ranges
from 4.10V (3.9V output) to 5.25V at up to 1.8A. I'm not sure if these
are technical limits or simply the currently validated ranges that
Basemark has tested the hardware on as I had no issues connecting
fast-chargers with supply voltages of up to 9V. The internal ADC is
16-bit in resolution and able to measure voltage with accuracy of ÷
140 µV and currents at up to ÷ 1 mA accuracy for the
least-significant-bit (LSB). Currently the data sample-rate is
configurable down to 1ms resolution but Basemark tells me that the
internal ADC is capable of up to ~100kS/s and maybe taken advantage of
in future firmware updates.
Overall the PAT is an
interesting and useful little tool. Basemark prices the first generation
at 995€ without VAT for corporate costumers with limited availability
starting in April. At a rather steep starting price, the PAT will need
to distinguish itself via its software and analysis capabilities. I'll
be reviewing the PAT more in-depth in the coming months as Basemark
continues to refine the software suite, so keep an eye out for more
in-depth testing!
Read More ...
VESA Releases DisplayPort 1.4 Standard: DisplayPort Adds Compression & HDR
One
of the more interesting aspects of the DisplayPort standards is how the
VESA has the separate but strongly intertwined DisplayPort and Embedded
DisplayPort standards. As a result of the standard development process,
we see a bit of ping-ponging between the two standards on features. New
features get adopted by one sub-standard or the other first, and then
after a bit of time show up in the next iteration of the other standard.
What would become DisplayPort Adaptive Sync, for example, first started
out in Embedded DisplayPort, while the newest bandwidth mode, HBR3,
started out on DisplayPort.
After an update for the Embedded DisplayPort standard last year with
eDP 1.4a,
being announced this week is the next iteration of the DisplayPort
standard, bringing it to 1.4. And like the examples above, this is
another case where some features are making their way back from eDP to
the mainline DP standard, while at the same time new features are coming
to the DisplayPort family for the first time. To that end, DP 1.4 is a
mix of both old and new, and while also serving as interesting case in
highlighting how the two DisplayPort standards differ and why this is
necessary.
First off then, despite the updated version
number and unlike previous DisplayPort “point updates,” the latest
update does not change the physical layer for DisplayPort. HBR3,
introduced with
DisplayPort 1.3, remains the newest and fastest bandwidth standard for DisplayPort.
Instead
what has changed for DisplayPort 1.4 is the DisplayPort feature set,
and in a major way. Surprisingly absent in DisplayPort 1.3 was support
for the VESA’s
Display Stream Compression
standard, which uses lossy (“visually lossless”) encoding to cut down
on bandwidth needs, allowing for display setups with fewer lanes or at
higher resolutions – such as 8K uncompressed – that can’t be carried
within the bandwidth limitations of DisplayPort. Rather the first VESA
standard to include DSC was last year’s Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a, and
now a year later, DisplayPort is finally adding DSC support with the 1.4
standard.
As
we’ve since found out, there are a couple of good reasons for why we
haven’t seen DSC in the mainline DisplayPort standard until now, and
with 1.4 the VESA has finally addressed those issues to allow DSC to be
included in the standard. Of particular interest here is support for
Forward Error Correction (FEC), which the VESA considers necessary for
DSC on external monitors.
From a signal integrity
standpoint, as displays are the highest bandwidth external interface on a
typical PC, we’ve known that the VESA has been pushing the envelope on
external signaling for quite some time now. This is part of the reason
vendors are coalescing around USB Type-C, as it’s easier for vendors to
all back a single well-developed solution. In the case of HBR3, this
means pushing 32.4Gbps over a 4 lane connection, which is easy in a
short run inside a laptop measured in centimeters, but it is a greater
challenge with DisplayPort cables extending up to 2 meters. Practically
speaking, while a solid DP1.3/HBR3 setup shouldn’t see any errors to
begin with, the real world error rate – though quite low – is still
higher than would be ideal.
For uncompressed images
this isn’t an issue; any corruption is limited to a handful of pixels
and quickly corrected in the next refresh. However once DSC is brought
into the fold, any errors become a much larger problem. An error in a
compressed data chunk will cause decoding to fail or make the decoded
result very wrong over a large number of pixels, making the error far
more noticeable. Consequently DSC requires a high level of reliability,
which eDP with its short runs could provide, while DP’s longer runs
could not.
The end result is that the combination of DP 1.4 and the recently released DSC 1.2 specification include
Forward Error Correction
for DSC. Although Forward Error Correction increases bandwidth
requirements slightly, the additional, redundant data it carries allows
for errors to be corrected, making DSC suitably reliable over
DisplayPort connections. This is the key change to DSC and DisplayPort
that finally allows DSC to be deployed to external monitors.
Meanwhile
at DP 1.4 is also the first DisplayPort standard to incorporate DSC
1.2, it also becomes the first standard to gain DSC 1.2’s other
benefits. Along with the aforementioned error resiliency, DSC 1.2
introduces some new functionality specifically for HDR displays. The
compression standard now supports 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 color spaces and has
added 14-bit and 16-bit per channel color support to the existing
8/10/12-bpc supported bit depths. In this case the VESA has their eye on
HDR with displays over 4K, as while DP 1.3/1.4 offers enough bandwidth
for HDR at 4K, this is where it tops out.
| Display Bandwidth Requirements (RGB/4:4:4 Chroma) |
| Resolution |
Minimum DisplayPort Version |
| 1920x1080@60Hz, 8bpc SDR |
1.1 |
| 3840x2160@60Hz, 8bpc SDR |
1.2 |
| 3840x2160@60Hz, 10bpc HDR |
1.3 |
| 5120x2880@60Hz, 8bpc SDR |
1.3 |
| 5120x2880@60Hz, 10bpc HDR |
1.4 w/DSC |
| 7680x4320@60Hz, 8bpc SDR |
1.4 w/DSC |
| 7680x4320@60Hz, 10bpc HDR |
1.4 w/DSC |
While on the subject of HDR, DP 1.4 also includes
some HDR functionality of its own. The other major addition for the 1.4
standard is support for HDR static metadata, specifically the CTA 861.3
standard already used in other products and standards such as HDMI 2.0a.
While the full details of what it takes to implement HDR are beyond the
scope of this article, HDR
static metadata is specifically
focused on recorded media, such as Ultra HD Blu-Ray, which use static
metadata to pass along the necessary HDR information to displays. This
also improves DP/HDMI interoperability, as it allows DP-to-HDMI adapters
to pass along that metadata.
The last new feature
being introduced with DP 1.4 is updating the audio formats supported by
the DisplayPort standard. As with the video portion of the standard,
this is focused on functionality since the physical layer (and available
bandwidth) haven’t changed. The VESA specifically notes that this
latest update adds support for items such as 32 audio channel
configurations, and while they don’t say its name, this sounds like the
underpinnings for supporting decoded Dolby Atmos audio.
Wrapping
things up, like previous DisplayPort specification announcements, we’re
expecting some significant lag time between today’s announcement of the
DisplayPort 1.4 standard and when this functionality shows up in
shipping products, as manufacturers still need to develop controllers
implementing the standard. As it stands we still haven’t seen any
DisplayPort 1.3 equipment hit the market yet (this despite being
introduced in 2014), so it’s likely that DisplayPort 1.4 is some time
off. Meanwhile as DSC is always a hot topic in our comment section, so
far we haven’t heard anything about plans for monitors to actually
implement it. Most likely we won’t see anything until monitors with
resolutions over 5K hit the market, as the primary focus of DSC for
external monitors is for ultra-high resolution monitors coupled with
HDR. It's here where the uncompressed bandwidth requirements become well
in excess of what DisplayPort could provide.
Read More ...
NVIDIA Releases 362.00 WHQL Game Ready Driver
Right
on cue NVIDIA has delivered another game ready driver for a collection
of newly released titles. Bringing, alongside the typical performance
and stability reasons, additional graphical improvements to the games in
question.
NVIDIA’s 362.00 WHQL driver release
continues through the 361 driver branch. Furthermore, there are no new
issue fixes reported by NVIDIA this time around.
This
driver provides game ready support for the recently released Farcry
Primal, including performance optimizations and an SLI profile. Game
ready support is also provided for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition,
bringing to the original Gears of War improved graphics, 60FPS, and
support for resolutions up to and including 4k, alongside the inclusion
of NVIDIA’s own HBAO+.
Dying Light and the recent Dying
Light: The Following have received NVIDIA GameWorks Percentage Closer
Soft Shadows (referred to as PCSS). This newly released technique works
to further improve the believability of in game shadows by softening
shadows more as the move further from the shadow caster.
Anyone interested can download the updated drivers through GeForce Experience or on the
NVIDIA driver download page.
Read More ...
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