Western Digital has rapidly risen to being a top-tier player in the market, and this is no more evident than with their newest high-end SSD, the WD Black SN850.

Just over a year ago, NVIDIA finally brought GeForce NOW, its PC game streaming service, out of beta. The commercial launch of the service saw the introduction of two tiers: a feature and time-limited free tier, and a paid Founders tier that offered a full set of features (including RTX) and priority access. Now as the company is in its second year of operating the commercial service, today NVIDIA is raising the price for GeForce NOW paid subscriptions, essentially doubling them to $10/month (or $100/year) for new members.Officially, what NVIDIA is doing today with its subscription plans is two-fold. First, the Founders plans, which were advertised as a limited-time offer from the very beginning, are finally being retired and will no longer be offered to new customers. In their place the company is launching a new set of “Priority” memberships, which are otherwise identical to the old Founders plans, offering the same features and priority access.The only meaningful change, other than the name on the plan, will be the price. Whereas the Founders plans were $5 a month or $25 for a six-month subscription, GeForce NOW Priority subscriptions will be sold on a monthly or yearly basis. Monthly plans are now $10 per month (or more specifically, $9.99), while yearly plans are $100 ($99.99).With that said, as a thank you to their Founders members – and no doubt mindful of the negative public reaction to price hikes – NVIDIA is also grandfathering in the old Founders rate for existing customers under what they are calling their “Founders for Life” benefit. This means that while new customers will have to pay the new, higher prices, existing customers will have their old prices locked in so long as they remain in what NVIDIA calls “good standing.” Which for all practical purposes works out to a 50% discount on the service for existing members.Past that, NVIDIA’s blog post announcing the price increase doesn’t go in to any detail on explaining the reason for the increase. But it’s not terribly surprising to see NVIDIA raising prices; even without the explicit limited-time nature of the founders packages, $5/month was probably not covering all of NVIDIA’s costs, especially as evidenced by the price of comparable high-end instances from the major cloud service providers. If nothing else, this is a sign that NVIDIA is finally looking to make a real profit from the service, rather than just trying to cover costs.Overall, NVIDIA seems rather bullish on the future of their unique cloud gaming service, even with the licensing-related teething issues over the past year and the hit to demand that will no doubt come from a price hike. According to the company they’re continuing to add capacity to the service, including spinning up a data center in Montreal later this year. Similarly, the company is continuing to expand its GeForce NOW Alliance partnerships for other countries, further increasing the number of countries that have local GeForce NOW servers.Finally, while today’s news is largely focused on the business-side of the service, NVIDIA does mention that an upcoming update to the service is going to address refresh rate synchronization. With the 2.0.28 update, the server-side refresh rate will be set to match the client-side refresh rate in order to account for the existence of both 60Hz displays and 59.94Hz displays. This small variance in refresh rates is not an issue with games locally, but similar to streaming video, it can be a problem with cloud gaming as a mis-match would lead to judder and the occasional dropped frame.

Intel today has announced that the company will be holding an event on March 23 to discuss the future of engineering at the company. Dubbed “Intel Unleashed: Engineering the Future”, the hour-long webcast will be hosted by recently hired CEO (and Intel returnee) Pat Gelsinger.

One of the most popular air cooling brands, Noctua, has announced the first CPU cooler in its highly anticipated Redux series, the NH-U12S Redux. The Redux series is designed to offer a streamlined and more affordable entry point to some of Noctua's most popular (and sometimes expensive) CPU coolers. Noctua also launches its NA-FK1 Redux second cooling fan kit as an optional extra.Focusing on the new NH-U12S Redux, Noctua has 'streamlined' its previous NH-U12S cooler by opting for a four heat pipe design instead of five on the previous version. Another difference is that Noctua has opted out of a soldered interface between the heat pipes and the cooling fins and supplies just one NF-P12 Redux 120 mm cooling fan to reduce overall costs.Noctua also has one of the simplest and most popular mounting kits in recent times, with its SecuFirm2 mounting system, with support for LGA11xx, LGA15xx, LGA20xx, as well as Intel's latest LGA1200 socket. The SecuFirm2 mounting kit also supports AMD's AM4 socket. The new Redux series has also stripped away some of the unnecessary fluff to allow a lower entry-point for users on a budget but still looking for similar quality and performance levels.In addition to the NH-U12S Redux, Noctua has made an optional 120 mm fan kit for systems that demand more cooling performance, the NA-FK1 Redux. The NA-FK1 kit includes one matching NF-P12 Redux 1700 rpm cooling fan, with four grey anti-vibration pads, a pair of fan mounting clips, a 4-pin PWM Y-cable, and two NA-RC14 low-noise adaptors. Where the original NH-U12S comes supplied with both cooling fans, the Redux series gives users the option to purchase this separately, which lowers the cooler's overall cost.To increase its products' longevity, Noctua includes its NH-U12S Redux in its future mounting upgrade scheme, which allows users to request a new mounting kit if a new socket is announced cooler can officially support. Noctua is a little vague in specifying if this service is free of charge and states that as long as it's technically possible for them to do so, it could make the NH-U12S Redux a good long-term investment for a current build and future upgrade paths.Amazon (US) LinkNoctua also includes a 6-year limited warranty with the NH-U12S Redux and has set an MSRP of $50 and €50, with stock available at its official Amazon store from today. The additional NA-FK1 Redux 120 mm fan kit is also available today and has an MSRP of $17/€17.Gallery: Noctua Announces First Cooler in Redux Series, NH-U12S ReduxSource: NoctuaRelated Reading

Last month, we reported that AMD had been made aware of many users experiencing intermittent connectivity issues with USB ports on its Ryzen 500-series motherboards. Requesting that users with any USB drop-out issues reach out directly to them, AMD has now released a statement confirming that it's planning to release a firmware update via a new AGESA update.A post on Reddit by the official AMD account, u/AMD, has revealed that AMD will distribute a new firmware update named AGESA 1.2.0.2 to its motherboard partners within a week. AGESA (AMD's Generic Encapsulated System Architecture) is AMD's primary base on which motherboard vendors build their firmware around. This means it's likely that an update alleviating users with problematic and intermittent USB issues isn't far away.AMD's official statement on its new updated AGESA reads as follows:

In a sudden but perhaps not too surprising announcement, Micron has stated that they are ceasing all R&D of 3D XPoint memory technology. Intel and Micron co-developed 3D XPoint memory, revealed in 2015 as a non-volatile memory technology with higher performance and endurance than NAND flash memory.Intel has been responsible for almost all of the commercial volume of 3D XPoint-based products, under their Optane brand for both NVMe SSDs and persistent memory modules in the DIMM form factor. Micron in 2016 announced their QuantX brand for 3D XPoint products, but never shipped anything under that brand. Their first and only real product based on 3D XPoint was the X100 high-end enterprise SSD which saw very limited release to close partners. Micron has now decided that further work to commercialize 3D XPoint memory isn't worth the investment.Micron currently owns the only fab equipped to mass-produce 3D XPoint memory: the Lehi, Utah fab that was formerly the home of the Intel-Micron flash and 3D XPoint joint venture IMFT. Intel and Micron began splitting up their partnership in 2018, first parting ways for 3D NAND flash memory development, followed by dissolving the 3D XPoint partnership after completing development on the second generation 3D XPoint. In 2019, Micron exercised their rights to buy out Intel's share of the IMFT fab, leaving Micron as the sole owner of the fab and Intel in the position of buying 3D XPoint wafers from Micron to use in Optane products. Intel's Optane products have not been enough to fully utilize the capacity of that fab, and Micron's non-GAAP operating profits have been taking a hit of over $400 million per year in underutilization charges.Micron is now putting that 3D XPoint fab up for sale, and is currently engaged in discussions with several potential buyers. Intel is the most obvious potential buyer, having recently begun the long process of selling their NAND flash and flash-based SSD business to SK hynix while keeping their Optane products. Intel has already moved their 3D XPoint R&D to Rio Rancho, NM but has not built up any 3D XPoint mass production capacity of their own; buying the Lehi, UT fab would save them the trouble of equipping eg. their NAND fab in Dalian, China to also manufacture 3D XPoint.However, Intel is not guaranteed to be the buyer of the Lehi, UT fab. They've doubtless had opportunities to do so before as Intel and Micron unwound their partnership. Micron states that the Lehi, UT fab could be used to produce analog or logic ICs, not just memory—and that converting it to large-scale manufacturing of DRAM or NAND flash memory would not be as appealing to Micron as simply expanding capacity at their other existing fabs. With widespread semiconductor shortages affecting almost all corners of the industry, this fab is likely to sell quickly even if the buyer needs to put substantial effort into retooling.Micron does not have a direct replacement lined up for 3D XPoint memory technology, but continues R&D into new memory and storage technologies. Micron's announcement is emphasizing a pivot toward developing memory products that will use the Compute Express Link (CXL) interface, which promises to be a vendor-neutral interface for DRAM and non-volatile memories such as 3D XPoint.Related Reading:

Today Qualcomm is announcing that the company has completed the acquisition of NUVIA, a start-up company consisting of industry veterans who were behind the creation of Apple’s high-performance CPU cores, and who were aiming to disrupt the server market with a new high-performance core called “Phoenix”.

In the myriad of news and early reviews, Intel is today officially launching its 11 Generation Core family of desktop processors, also known as Rocket Lake, built on Intel’s most advanced 14nm process node technology. This new product family will form the basis of Intel’s premium desktop portfolio for most of 2021, if not longer, and features processors with up to eight cores. Highlights include the new microarchitecture, Cypress Cove, and the Xe-LP graphics design, both of which are redesigns of Intel’s 10nm mobile products. These parts also include Intel’s first PCIe 4.0 offering on the desktop, new AVX-512 for desktop, better memory support, support for resizable BAR, new overclocking features, and enhanced multimedia acceleration.

In an effort to partially mitigate the market chaos that has come from the cryptocurrency mining boom over the last 6 months, last month NVIDIA very publicly introduced a mining throttling mechanism for its then-new GeForce RTX 3060 cards. By throttling the performance of Ethereum mining on these cards to half their native rate, it would ideally keep miners from immediately snapping up any (and every) RTX 3060 card in search for a profit, leaving more available for NVIDIA’s gaming customers. Essentially a software security/DRM system, the success of NVIDIA’s effort would hinge largely on ensuring the underlying throttling mechanism remain undefeated – an effort that has significantly fumbled after NVIDIA accidentally released a driver without the complete throttling code.As part of the development of their upcoming Release 470 driver branch, last week NVIDIA released driver 470.05 to developers and Windows Insiders. Among other things, this development driver enabled CUDA support on the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) for the first time. Unfortunately, this driver didn’t include the complete throttling code for Ethereum, and as a result it’s possible to use the driver to mine the cryptocoin on RTX 3060 cards at their full (native) rate.The news was initially broken by HardwareLuxx and ComputerBase, who had the driver and were able to confirm that they were no longer getting throttled with the new driver. NVIDIA in turn has since confirmed the matter as well, sending a statement out to various members of the press that “A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations. The driver has been removed.”Unfortunately, this is a prime, real-world example of how software security (and DRM-like systems) are only as strong as their weakest link – in this case NVIDIA’s driver team. NVIDIA security mechanisms rely on signature checks for the BIOS and drivers to prevent bypassing the throttling mechanism, but since this is a signed, legitimate NVIDIA driver to begin with, it is readily accepted by the card. And since the driver doesn’t have a timebomb on it, the genie is out of the bottle, as it were. Windows cryptominers should be able to use the driver with RTX 3060 cards indefinitely, and since the driver was widely released there’s no possibility to preventing its re-distribution.The silver(ish) lining to this otherwise bad news is that it could have been even worse for NVIDIA. This driver was for Windows and not for Linux, with the latter being the preferred platform for industrial miners. Furthermore there are apparently other mining-checks in the driver that do still work (e.g. checking the PCIe link width), so NVIDIA’s anti-Ethereum throttle for the RTX 3060 is not completely broken. It has, however, had a massive chunk taken out of it with this driver release.All of which means that the ongoing chip crunch has just become all that more severe for gamers and other video card buyers. With an unthrottled RTX 3060 able to pull in around $5/day in profit, the card risks being a reasonably attractive offering for miners looking to make a quick buck.

Alongside every launch of AMD’s consumer processors, the commercial offerings for business come along a few months after. Today we see the commercial launch of the Ryzen 5000 Mobile series, named Ryzen Pro 5000 Mobile. These are built on the same Cezanne processor design, but with the added sprinkling of Pro level features required by commercial customers for widescale deployment, security, and stability. Alongside the increased performance from the previous generation, these new parts include the security updates in Zen 3 such as Shadow Stacks, Pro-level features such as DASH, and guaranteed silicon and imaging support.

Back in December, we reported that Intel's Maple Ridge Thunderbolt 4 controller was shipping to customers. We can now report that ASUS has unveiled a Thunderbolt 4 expansion card, the ASUS ThunderboltEX 4. It includes support for 100 W quick charging, includes a 40 Gbps bi-directional switch, and can support up to 8K ultra HD resolutions.Since the launch of Intel's Z590 chipset on socket LGA1200, we've seen some of the more premium models featuring Intel's latest Maple Ridge Thunderbolt 4 controllers. This is primarily a feature we see on models looking to add functionality for content creators. Native Thunderbolt 4 is built into Intel Tiger Lake. Still, for motherboards without Thunderbolt capabilities, the ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 add-on card allows users to add Intel's latest Maple Ridge controller into existing systems.ASUS hasn't unveiled a full list of technical specifications at the time of writing. Still, we cross-referenced the specifications we do know with Intel's JHL8540 Maple Ridge TB4 controller, and they match. The accessories include everything needed to get the ThunderboltEX 4 operational, which means users will require a PCIe 3.0 x4 (or PCIe 4.0 x2) and USB 2.0 motherboard header available, as well as a 6-pin PCIe 12 V ATX power cable free from the power supply.Adding not just one port but a total of four, the ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 includes two Type-C and two mini-DisplayPort inputs, which allow for up to five devices to be daisy-chained. This includes up to three devices and two Thunderbolt monitors, or four devices and one monitor. The top Type-C port includes support for 100 Watt quick charging and can even power a compatible notebook, with the second Type-C port offering up to 27 Watts of quick charging capability. We should also note that the ThunderboltEX 4 can accommodate monitors with resolutions up to 8K due to conforming to DisplayPort 1.4.At the time of writing, ASUS hasn't specified when the ThunderboltEX 4 expansion card will be available, nor how much it will cost.Gallery: ASUS Reveals ThunderboltEX 4 Expansion Card, Dual Type-CSource: ASUSRelated Reading

As AMD initiates the official global launch of its 3 Generation EPYC enterprise processor family, codename Milan, we spend some time with AMD’s Forrest Norrod to discuss the new processors, how the pandemic has affected adoption, what new features have influenced AMD’s positioning of its new EPYC, and what future challenges are fast approaching the enterprise processors.

The coronavirus pandemic left no industry unscathed. But retail in particular bears many scars, and many permanent changes. But are things really as bad as we think?

The arrival of AMD’s 3 Generation EPYC processor family, using the new Zen 3 core, has been hotly anticipated. The promise of a new processor core microarchitecture, updates to the connectivity and new security options while still retaining platform compatibility are a good measure of an enterprise platform update, but the One True Metric is platform performance. Seeing Zen 3 score ultimate per-core performance leadership in the consumer market back in November rose expectations for a similar slam-dunk in the enterprise market, and today we get to see those results.

One of the leading questions as to our original Core i7-11700K review was the validity of those results given that, as usual with launches, motherboard vendors push BIOS updates as we move closer to the official launch. At the time, we were testing on Intel’s microcode 0x2C, the latest version available to the motherboard vendor. Intel has since released microcode 0x34, and we have retested our results on this new update.

The original Razer Blade tested the laptop waters for a company more known for gaming peripherals such as keyboards and mice, but the Blade lineup has transformed into a complete gaming laptop suite. Today we are taking a look at our first Razer Blade laptop in a couple of generations, and for 2021, Razer has refreshed with the latest NVIDIA Ampere-based laptop GPUs which should bring about a nice bump in performance at all resolutions.

Seagate recently published its long-term technology roadmap revealing plans to produce ~50 TB hard drives by 2026 and 120+ TB HDDs after 2030. In the coming years, Seagate is set to leverage usage of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), adopt bit patterned media (BPM) in the long term, and to expand usage of multi-actuator technology (MAT) for high-capacity drives. This is all within the 3.5-inch form factor.

Today’s were reviewing Xiaomi’s new Mi 11 – its baseline model of its 2021 flagship line-up. The phone distinguishes itself by offering a new 1440p 120Hz OLED, and being powered by the Snapdragon 888, in a thinner, more refined design, starting at only 749€.

We’re gearing up for a busy time when it comes to server announcements, with the recent news that AMD will be launching its next generation platform on March 15, but also we are expecting Intel to disclose its Ice Lake Xeon Scalable platform sometime soon as well. To that point, a discussion I had with Intel today, on-the-record, disclosed some interesting numbers about the state of Ice Lake Xeon Scalable deployment.

Samsung's new SSD 980, with no PRO, EVO or QVO suffix, is the company's first entry-level NVMe SSD. We've got two of the capacities in for review.

When considering data privacy and protections, there is no data more important than personal data, whether that’s medical, financial, or even social. The discussions around access to our data, or even our metadata, becomes about who knows what, and if my personal data is safe. Today’s announcement between Intel, Microsoft, and DARPA, is a program designed around keeping information safe and encrypted, but still using that data to build better models or provide better statistical analysis without disclosing the actual data. It’s called Fully Homomorphic Encryption, but it is so computationally intense that the concept is almost useless in practice. This program between the three companies is a driver to provide IP and silicon to accelerate the compute, enabling a more secure environment for collaborative data analysis.

We’ve known for a while that AMD was set to launch its next generation enterprise EPYC processor family, collectively known by its codename Milan, sometime in the first quarter of this year. Today AMD has put out a press release confirming the date and time of its online event – the launch of the new 7003 series processors will occur starting at 8am PT/11am ET on March 15, 2021.The launch event will feature presentations from CEO Dr. Lisa Su, CTO Mark Papermaster, GM Enterprise and Embedded Solutions (EESC) Forrest Norrod, and GM Server Business Unit Dan McNamara. Leading data center partners and customers will also make an appearance.To date we know that AMD’s Milan processor line will feature up to 64 Zen 3 cores, using a seemless transition from the Zen 2 EPYC Rome ecosystem with pin-compatible processors. Milan will also offer up to 128 PCIe lanes, eight channel memory, and dual socket configurations. If the desktop Zen 3-based processors are any measure, +19% IPC generational gains are expected with the new processor, despite main memory access likely remaining the same. We have questions on exact performance, frequencies and efficiency, but this launch date should showcase all the product specifications such that we will see where the solution sits compared to current market offerings.AMD has provided some previous benchmarking numbers – at CES the company showcased weather prediction simulation code, with two new 32-core Milan processors up against two of Intel’s popular 28-core Xeon Gold 6258R units. In that first party demo, a six hour simulation showed that Milan was 46% faster in dual socket compute. Later we were shown a single socket comparison, where the difference rose to 68%. These were first party tests without any comparison system details, however we expect more data on the March 15 launch.Questions will be asked about AMD’s ability to supply EPYC, given it currently has a squeeze on its supply chain for a number of products. We are aware that AMD has already been providing key customers with complete silicon, and also to add to this, Dr. Lisa Su has stated that one of AMD’s key targets for 2021 is going to be the enterprise market.We will be live blogging AMD’s launch – it can also be found online at the AMD events website.Related Reading

The march on performance with desktop platforms has unique challenges compared to other platforms. Peak single thread throughput is often considered the Holy Grail, with a fast follow up of good multi-core and all-core performance given the nature of how desktop platforms are used with background processes and multiple concurrent applications. In order to bring its best single core performance to the desktop market, Intel had to redesign its 10nm product on 14nm, which combines the high throughput of the design with the high frequency of 14nm. These redesigned Cypress Cove cores form the basis of Intel’s new 11 Gen Desktop Processor Family, Rocket Lake. Today we are reviewing the Core i7-11700K, an eight-core processor with hyperthreading able to boost up to 5.0 GHz.

Everyone wants to know what's in Intel's new Ice Lake Xeon server platform, right? Well the first promited board has been disclosed: Axiomtek (who?) has unveiled its latest motherboard compatible with Intel's Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors based on the LGA4189 socket. The Axiomtek IMB700 is an ATX-sized solution with six memory slots capable of supporting up to 384 GB in hex-channel, with two Gigabit Ethernet ports six SATA-600 storage slots.During the virtual Hot Chips 2020 industry event show, during our live blog of Intel's segment, Intel unveiled some details about its upcoming Ice Lake Xeon Scalable processors. Based on Intel's 10nm+ manufacturing process, we confirmed that Intel had started production on its Ice Lake-SP chips at the beginning of the year. With not much furor surrounding expected motherboard models at the moment, Axiomtek has unveiled its IMB700 with a single LGA4189 socket based on Intel's C621A chipset. Note that this is the same family of chipsets as current Skylake and Cascade Lake Xeons.The Axiomtek IMB700 features an ATX PCB with a very simplistic green PCB which is common on professional and industrial-grade motherboards. Some of its key features include a single LGA4189 transposed socket, with six memory slots that can accommodate both LRDIMM and RDIMM DDR4-3200 memory, with a total capacity of up to 384 GB. For storage, the IMB700 features a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 2280 slot and six SATA-600 ports, including support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.Located in the center of the board are three full-length PCIe slots, with the top two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16, with the other operating at either PCIe 3.0 x16 or x8. There's also three half-length PCIe 3.0 x8 slots, although one of the half-length slots shares bandwidth with the blue-colored full-length slot.On the rear panel is a basic array of input and outputs, including four USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports, one D-Sub video output, a PS/2 keyboard, and mouse combo port, as well as an RS-232/422/485 port, and dual Intel i210-AT Gigabit Ethernet. In regards to audio, Axiomtek offers its AX93242 HD audio converter board as an additional extra.At present, Axiomtek hasn't unveiled any pricing information, but the official product page does state the IMB700 is coming soon. We're waiting for Intel to fully disclose its Ice Lake Xeon platform.Source: AxiomtekRelated Reading

Today Qualcomm is announcing the new “Snapdragon Sound” branding initiative, essentially an umbrella term that covers the company’s various audio related hardware and software products, promising improved end-to-end interoperability for a better audio experience.

GlobalFoundries this week reiterated plans to invest $1.4 billion this year in expansion of its manufacturing capacities across the world. Around one third of the sum will be co-invested by GlobalFoundries' customers who want to ensure that they have capacity allocation for years to come. The world's fourth largest foundry is also mulling to bring forward its IPO to late 2021 ahead of its original 2022 date.In any typical year, GlobalFoundries spends about $700 million on expansion of its production capacities, however growing demand for chips has made clear the need for faster than normal groth - as a result the company is to invest $1.4 billion on expansion this year. The money will be divided equally between GlobalFoundries' sites in Dresden, Malta (New York) and Singapore, according to Reuters. Production capacity is expected to increase by 13% this year and by 20% next year as a result of the increased funding.Last year GlobalFoundries said that it planned to significantly increase capacity it its Fab 1 located near Dresden. The company's German facility produces chips using 22FDX, 28SLP, 40/45/55NV as well as BCDLite technologies that are particularly important for automotive, mobile, IoT, and industrial applications. Capacity of Fab 1 in 2021 is expected to be in the range between 400,000 and 500,000 wafer starts per year. Increasing that number means that GlobalFoundries will be able to better address high-growth applications.GlobalFoundries expects to raise around a third of $1.4 billion from its customers that will pre-pay to guarantee supply over the following years, the CEO of the company told Reuters. He did not name the clients.In addition to boosting its existing production facilities, GlobalFoundries is also looking forward building another fab adjacent to its Fab 8 located in Malta, New York. Funding of the new facility will largely depend on subsidies and incentives provided by the U.S. Government and the state of New York as parts of the CHIPS for America act introduced last year. It should also be noted that Fab 8 in Malta recently recieved ITAR certification for DoD production on its 45 nm process, expanding GlobalFoundries' value as a home-grown chip manufacturer to the US government.Back in 2020 GlobalFoundries earned approximately $5.7 billion in revenue, down from $6.176 billion in 2017. The company projects that in 2021 its revenue will grow by 9% to 10% year-over-year as a result of unprecedented demand.Since demand for chips is growing and governments have investments almost ready to go, it would seems to be a good time for GlobalFoundries' initial public offering. Previously GlobalFoundries planned to go public in late 2022 or early 2023, but the company appears to be thinking about bringing it forward into the late 2021 timeframe. Currently GlobalFoundries is wholly owned by Mubadala, an Emerati state-owned holding company.Related Reading

Today Xiaomi is updating one of its most popular and successful phone models with a slew of new Redmi Note 10 variants. Alongside the Note 10, Note 10S and the Note 10 5G, we’ve had the Redmi Note 10 Pro for a few days to get our first impressions of the low-cost device.

From a post by ASUS's Technical Product Marketing Manager (u/ASUSTechMKTJJ) on Reddit, ASUS looks to be readying up a new B550 motherboard based on its ProArt series. The ASUS ProArt series primarily aims to provide to creators, and its new ProArt B550-Creator is the first AMD AM4 motherboard to benefit from Intel's updated Thunderbolt 4 controller. Also included are an advertised 12+2 phase power delivery and dual 2.5 GbE networking.Similar to previous iterations of its ProArt motherboard, such as the ASUS ProArt Z490-Creator 10G, it follows a simplistic design with straight lines provided by a pair of rectangular M.2 and an L-shaped power delivery heatsink. Keeping in line with its basic theme, it omits any integrated RGB LED lighting. ASUS advertises the B550-Creator as including a 12+2 phase power delivery with teamed power stages, with an 8-pin and 4-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input pairing providing power to the processor.Currently, ASUS hasn't revealed detailed specifications, but we can see that the ProArt B550-Creator includes three full-length PCIe slots, with the top likely conforming to PCIe Gen4 with the bottom slot most probably driven by the B550 chipset. It includes two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, with four SATA ports for storage, with possibly two PCIe M.2 slots due to the location and length of the pair of M.2 heatsinks featured on the board. It includes four memory slots with up to 128 GB of capacity, but ASUS hasn't provided information on supported speeds.Much of the fanfare surrounding this announcement is the inclusion of Intel's latest Thunderbolt 4 controller, which looks to be the first time it has been implemented on an AM4 model. This is present on the rear panel of the ProArt B550-Creator with two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, a single DisplayPort input, four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. Also present on the rear panel is a pair of 2.5 GbE ports which ASUS hasn't specified which controller it's using, with a PS/2 combo port, one HDMI video output, and a small BIOS Flashback button. Finishing off the rear panel is five 3.5 mm audio jacks and single S/PDIF optical output, which is powered by a Realtek ALC1220A HD audio codec.The ASUS ProArt B550-Creator motherboard is expected to be released sometime in April with an expected MSRP of $299.Related Reading

As part of AMD’s latest Where Gaming Begins product presentation, the prolific processor designer announced the next member in its Radeon family of video cards, the Radeon RX 6700 XT. Following the tried and true scale-down release strategy that has come to define the GPU industry, the company is preparing its second RDNA2 GPU to further flesh out its lineup of video cards. Set to be released on March 18, the Radeon RX 6700 XT will be AMD’s anchor card for 1440p gaming, succeeding the last-generation RX 5700 XT and giving AMD’s product lineup a more wallet-friendly option than their 4K-focused 6800/6900 series cards. The launch for the latest Radeon card will be an all-out affair, with both reference and partner custom cards launching the same day, with prices starting at $479.

Today AMD is officially going to start offering its Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors at retail, effectively ending the exclusivity deal with Lenovo on the product line. To date, Lenovo is the only company to have offered Threadripper Pro in the Thinkstation P620 platform. In the past few months, beginning with the CES trade show, we have seen three motherboard manufacturers showcase models of compatible motherboards for the retail market, and today is supposed to be the day that systems with those motherboards can be purchased.At the launch of the Threadripper Pro platform, AMD advertised four different models from 12 cores up to 64 cores, built upon its Zen 2 architecture and mirroring the Threadripper 3000 family of hardware. The Pro element is an upgrade, giving the processor eight memory channels rather than four, support for 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, support for up to 2 TB of ECC memory per CPU, and Pro-level admin tools. In essence, sometimes it is easier to think of Threadripper Pro more as ‘Workstation EPYC’, as these new processors are aimed at the traditional workstation crowd.AMD Ryzen Threadripper ProAnandTechCoresBase

Some analysts consider Intel to be a processor company with manufacturing facilities – others consider it to be a manufacturing company that just happens to make processors. In the grand scheme of things, Intel is a hybrid of product, manufacturing, expertise, investment, and perhaps most importantly, research. Intel has a lot of research and development on its books, most of it aimed at current product cycles in the 12-36 month time span, but beyond that, as with most big engineering companies, there’s a team of people dedicated to finding the next big thing over 10-20+ years. This is usually called the Moonshot Division in most companies, but here we find it called Intel Labs, and leading this team of path-finding gurus is Dr. Richard Uhlig.

Crucial introduced the X6 Portable SSD last year as an entry-level alternative to their NVMe-based X8 Portable SSD. Launched in capacities of up to 2TB, the X6 adopted a 96L 3D TLC version of the BX500 SATA SSD along with an ASMedia ASM235CM SATA to USB 3.2 Gen 1 bridge chip. Today, the company is launching a unique high-performance product in the external SSD space within the same X6 family.Direct flash-to-USB controllers have traditionally been used only in thumb drives, where compactness is the primary feature. These controllers present a number of advantages including significant reduction in bill-of-materials (BOM) cost and overall device power consumption. However, such controllers have typically been restricted to speeds of around 400MBps. Taking advantage of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Gen 2x2 interfaces, Phison introduced a couple of high-speed flash controllers with a direct USB interface at CES 2021. The U17, sporting a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) upstream interface and a 2-channel 1200 MT/s downstream NAND interface, is the one on which Crucial's Portable SSD 4TB is based.Crucial claims speeds of up to 800MBps for both reads and writes. This is significantly higher than the 540 MBps numbers possible with the SATA-based external SSDs. Officially, the X6 drives have 'Micron 3D NAND' and there is no specification of the generation / layer count. However, Crucial indicated that the X6 4TB drives being shipped today come with 96L Micron 3D NAND (QLC). As is usual with Micron / Crucial, it is likely that the NAND generation may get updated in the future to allow Micron to offer even lower price points.The new 4TB X6 Portable SSD is priced at $490. At this price point, it compares quite favorably with the other QLC-based external SSDs such as the Sabrent XTRM-Q (though the latter comes with a Thunderbolt interface). The other 4TB external SSDs in the market are from Western Digital, with prices ranging from $680 to $750. Given their 3D TLC flash and the usage of a NVMe drive behind a bridge chip, they can offer much better performance, endurance, and additional flexibility (such as the ability to salvage the internal SSD in the case of a bridge chip failure) for professional use-cases. However, for the average consumer, the price per GB as well as price to performance ratio are both in Crucial's favor with the new X6 Portable SSD based on the Phison U17 controller.

After a 9-year run, Intel today has begun to wrap up its Performance Tuning Protection Plan service, the company’s optional extended warranty for CPU overclocking. As of today, Intel is no longer selling new PTP plans, and the program will be shifting to servicing existing warranties while those are still active. Intel’s warranty service was quite unique throughout the industry; given the potentially destructive nature of overclocking, it’s almost unheard of to be covered, even by optional warranties.Intel originally launched the Performance Tuning Protection Plan back in January of 2012, right in the middle of the heyday of Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPU overclocking (ed: has it really been that long?). At the time, for anywhere between $20 and $35, Intel would offer a one-time warranty that specifically covered damages incurred by overclocking – something that Intel’s standard warranty explicitly does not cover. Should a retail boxed processor fail due to overclocking, intel would replace a PPTP warrantied chip once and only once, free of charge.When Intel kicked off the program, it was initially started as a six-month trial, where saw enough success to become a long-term offering for Intel, covering all overclockable Intel consumer chips including their massive HEDT parts. Even though the program made it very affordable to overcook an Intel CPU for little more than the price of a pizza, the one-time replacement restriction seemingly did its job, as stories of people trying to abuse the program have been few and far between.None the less, the PTPP’s days have finally come to an end. In a message posted to the plan’s website, Intel announced that the program was being discontinued, citing that “As customers increasingly overclock with confidence, we are seeing lower demand for the Performance Tuning Protection Plans”.And while Intel doesn’t provide any specific numbers to back that up, broadly speaking it’s not at all surprising to hear that demand is down. Since the Sandy Bridge era overclocking has become a lot less fruitful; with Turbo Boost Max 3.0, Thermal Velocity Boost, and other turbo technologies, Intel has begun wringing out the bulk of clockspeed headroom from their CPUs right out of the box. At the same time peak clockspeeds have stalled at a bit over 5GHz, and the much larger core counts of today’s CPUs means that Intel differentiates its parts based on core count more than it does based on clockspeeds. So unlike the Sandy Bridge era, where you could easily expect to add another 1GHz (or more) to a $216 i5-2500K, a modern i5-10600K is lucky to achieve half of that thanks to already starting at a peak clockspeed of 4.8GHz. Ultimately, although CPU overclocking is far from dead, it’s no longer delivering big, easy performance boosts as it once did.At any rate, with the retirement of the PPTP, Intel is transitioning to servicing existing warranties. Intel chip owners who have already purchased a plan are still covered for the length of their warranty, which rides on top of Intel’s standard 3-year warranty. So Intel will still be replacing a handful of chips for a couple more years yet.

Intel's third generation QLC SSD delivers much-needed performance improvements due to its new 144-layer 3D QLC NAND and a new low-cost SSD controller from Silicon Motion.

Semiconductor foundry offerings are thriving due to unprecedented demand for semiconductors and processors in recent quarters. Analysts from TrendForce believe that in Q1 2021 foundries will increase their revenue by 20% year-over-year as their capacities are fully loaded. Since the demand for chips is projected to continue to exceed the constrained supply for several quarters, market observers predict that manufacturers will be busy for a long time, and beyond this, will take a long time to catch up. This is good news for foundry revenue, and may encourage others to widen their foundry offerings. Warnings however about fab equipment are coming into play - being fully loaded means equipment now wears out faster, which increases risks of disruptions should that equipment also be short on supply.

NVIDIA this morning is launching their previously announced GeForce RTX 3060. First unveiled back at CES 2021, the latest member of the GeForce RTX 30 series is continuing NVIDIA’s ongoing top-to-bottom launch of Ampere-based video cards, with today’s card in some respects being the most popular one. Aimed at the mainstream market, the RTX 3060 is designed to be a more balanced option for the larger market of gamers who probably aren’t trying to drive high-end 4K displays, but still want the latest graphical features on a 1080p or 1440p display. RTX 3060 cards will go on sale a bit later this morning – at 9am Pacific – with prices starting at $329.

NVIDIA this afternoon closed the book on another record fiscal year, announcing their FY 2021 and Q4 2021 earnings results for the company. For the last quarter of their fiscal year, NVIDIA booked just over $5B in revenue with a profit of $1457M, marking NVIDIA’s first five billion dollar quarter, and setting earning records across the board. Meanwhile for the full fiscal year, NVIDIA has recorded just under $16.7B in revenue, with a net income for the year of $4.3B.

It looks like AMD is getting ready to launch the next part in their RDNA2/RX 6000 family of video cards. This afternoon the company sent out a save the date invitation to the press and public, announcing that the company will be holding a Radeon-related announcement next Wednesday, March the 3. And with a picture of a previously unseen Radeon video card included with the announcement, AMD is leaving little ambiguity about their plans.The event, officially dubbed “Where Gaming Begins Episode 3”, will be another Radeon-focused event, where AMD will “introduce the newest addition to the Radeon RX family of high-performance graphic cards.” AMD’s previous two WGB events have been pre-recorded presentations, so we’re expecting the same here.The cornerstone of the announcement will be the introduction of a new Radeon video card. Essentially giving us half of the product announcement up-front, AMD has also posted a short, looping video of the card, highlighting the fairly sizable card and its open air cooler with dual axial fans. Given this, we’re almost certainly looking at what will be a Radeon RX 6700 card. AMD started the RDNA2 family with the top cards and GPU (Navi 21) first, so this is the next step in the expected filtering down of RDNA2 into cheaper video cards.

In some unexpected news today, HP and HyperX (formerly a division of Kingston) have jointly released a statement that HP is to acquire HyperX gaming peripherals portfolio, and the brand, for $425 million USD. Kingston retains the DRAM, Flash, and SSD products (those that are branded HyperX will probably be renamed). Perhaps it is indicative that Kingston wants to remain focused on the memory and storage markets, and divest away from a variable commodity market, while at the same time HP is looking to boost its presence in the space alongside its HP OMEN branding.Pending regulatory review, the deal is expected to go close in Q2 2021, with the acquisition accretive on a non-GAAP to HP in the first full year. The HyperX peripheral line-up, which includes gaming headsets, microphones, keyboards, mouse pads, mice, power supplies, console accessories and apparel, is expected to be used by HP’s broader gaming ecosystem to expand potential add-ons for its OMEN series gaming desktops and laptops, as well as build that ecosystem for hardware, software, and services.HyperX as a brand has always been a distinct element somewhat separate from Kingston – over the last few years, every trade show we’ve attended we have made separate meetings for each company, whereas a decade ago we would cover both in the same room. This disaggregation of the business has obviously allowed Kingston to package it up should it ever need to offload, as it has now done with HP. Kingston still retains the gaming focused RGB-laden DRAM and SSD businesses, although these are likely to be sold either under Kingston or a separate new brand that we will learn about in due course. It is unclear whether HyperX sponsorships of eSports teams is also part of the deal, if those will transfer to HP, or they will remain with Kingston.In the press release, HP quotes that the PC hardware industry is set to have a $70 billion addressable market by 2023, with the global peripherals market (gaming and non-gaming) to grow to $12.4 billion by 2024. HP states that gaming peripherals will be a disproportionally large element of that year-on-year growth, and that HyperX’s brand recognition will help HP ‘advance its leadership in personal systems by modernizing compute experiences and expanding into valuable adjacencies’. In non-corporate speak, that just means that HP sees collective value in enabling its own systems with top-brand accessories to improve the overall experience. For a price, naturally, although there will no doubt be some synergies as HP can mothball some of its own HP OMEN peripherals that may not have had large distribution.With the deal expected to close in Q2, it will be interesting to see if HP does any brand reorganization with HyperX, such as ‘HyperX by HP’, or leave it as it is. If we get more information we will add to this news post.

Today Lenovo is announcing a slew of updates across a large portion of their ThinkPad lineup, and updating their business-focused products for 2021. Some of the big changes for this year are impressive and welcome, with Lenovo committing to bringing feature-parity between their AMD and Intel offerings, as well as refreshing some of their laptops with 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, and continuing the trend of bringing back 16:10 aspect ratio displays for a better productivity experience.ThinkPad X13 and X13 YogaAlthough some of the ThinkPad X lineup got refreshed back at CES, Lenovo is continuing the 2021 updates today on the X13 and X13 Yoga products, and the changes make these already impressive devices even more so.On the processor side, Lenovo is offering either 11th Gen Intel Core – aka Tiger Lake – processors with vPro optional, as well as AMD Ryzen 5000 Pro options. Lenovo says they have heard the feedback from customers and are working hard to close the feature and option gap between the two platforms. For the most part, customers choosing AMD or Intel will have the same specifications and options available for the rest of the product, such as displays, memory, and so on, other than the platform specific features such as Intel supporting Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe 4.0.The X13 and X13 Yoga will also be getting Wi-Fi 6E meaning 6 GHz support, and for those that want connectivity when out and about, sub-6 5G is an option on the X13, or 4G is available on both models.Lenovo is also continuing to move to 16:10 displays, with the taller displays filling out more of the body and providing more vertical pixels for productivity. This is a great trend, and one that should not have taken this long to come back to, as of course the original widescreen ThinkPads were all 16:10 before the entire industry moved to 16:9. Lenovo is also proud to offer low-blue light hardware support on the displays, and unlike most low-blue light technologies which cause a red-shift on the display, the backlight physically produces less of the stressful blue lights, allowing the display to still keep the proper white balance.As this is a proper business machine, there is also addition security such as Match-On-Chip fingerprint readers built into the power button, and the Intel models will support Human Presence Detection which allows the machine to lock when you are away and unlock when you get back. This will be through the IR camera, and as far as the visual camera, Lenovo is including an option for both HD with IR, as well as FHD with IR, the latter being a nice addition thanks to the increase in video conferencing over the last year.The updated ThinkPad X13 will be available in May starting at $1139 USD, and the X13 Yoga will be available in April starting at $1379.ThinkPad T14, T14s, and T15ThinkPad T14When most people imagine ThinkPad, they likely think of the venerable T Series. Lenovo said they are working on feature parity between Intel and AMD, and one of the changes is not branding the products differently based on the CPU, but for the T series, it doesn’t look like they’ve quite gotten there yet. There will be ThinkPad T14 i, ThinkPad T14s i, and ThinkPad T15 powered by Intel, and for the 14-inch models, the ones branded without the i will be AMD Ryzen based.Although the T series is, at least for this gen, sticking with 16:9 aspect ratios, with several options for the 14-inch and 15-inch range including UHD displays with Dolby Vision. Lenovo is also offering its PrivacyGuard displays for extra security, and some low-power options depending on how you configure it.ThinkPad T14sAs far as performance, the laptop will offer up to Core i7 11th Gen with vPro options, or AMD Ryzen 5000 Pro. Memory will be up to 32 GB on the S model, and up to 48 GB on the non-S. Storage is up to 2 TB of PCIe storage, with the Intel platforms supporting PCIe 4.0 speeds. The non-S model T14 and the T15 also offers an optional NVIDIA GeForce MX450 with 2 GB of GDDR6, if extra graphics compute is needed over the Intel Iris Xe or AMD Vega 8 graphics.As with much of the ThinkPad lineup, Lenovo is offering Wi-Fi 6, 6E, and cellular capabilities with 4G and 5G options. As with the ThinkPad X13 range, Lenovo will also be offering FHD webcams with IR as optional upgrades.Although the T14s is smaller and lighter than the T14, it includes a larger battery at 57 Wh, compared to just 50 Wh in the larger model. The 15-inch T15 also has the 57 Wh battery.The ThinkPad T14s is one of my favorite laptops around, and it is always nice to see it get updated. The new models will be available starting in March and going through May depending on the model, with prices starting at $1149 for the ThinkPad T14 AMD model.ThinkPad P14s and P15sAlso getting an update is a couple of the mobile workstation models under the P-Series, and as with the other units there will be both 11th Gen Intel Core with vPro as well as AMD Ryzen 5000 Pro CPU offerings.The P14s and P15s will both offer 8 GB or 16 GB of soldered memory, as well as a SO-DIMM slot, which will allow for up to 48 GB maximum memory in these thinner and lighter versions of the P-series laptops. Lenovo is also offering the NVIDIA T500 which is the workstation class graphics based on the Turing MX450 and featuring 4 GB of VRAM.Both the P14s and P15s will offer FHD displays as standard, with a few options such as ePrivacy or Low-Power, and both will offer an optional UHD display with HDR 400 and Dolby Vision HDR. The UHD displays will come with X-Rite factor color calibration.For those that need a Linux version, Lenovo will be offering Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installs, as well as Red Had as factory options.Wireless will be Intel Wi-Fi 6E for 6 GHz support thanks to the Intel AX210 on the Tiger Lake models, and the AMD offerings will still support Wi-Fi 6, but without the 6 GHz support.Although some of the other ThinkPads are being offered with a FHD webcam, the P14s and P15s are not, at least for now. The newer webcam is physically larger, and would take a more comprehensive redesign of the chassis, but the HD webcam does offer IR if needed.The Intel powered P14s i, and the P15s will be available in March, starting at $1389 for either, with the AMD powered P14s coming in May, and starting at $1169.ThinkPad L14 and L15Rounding out the lineup is the least-expensive way to get into a ThinkPad, and that is the L Series. Also being offered in a L14/15 i Intel based, or L14/15 AMD based design, the least expensive offerings still offer some powerful options.With 11th gen Intel Core with vPro, and AMD Ryzen 5000, there will be two SODIMM slots, thanks to the thicker and heavier design, which means the least expensive models here can be outfitted with the most RAM, at up to 64 GB. There will be Intel Iris Xe, or AMD Vega graphics, and purchasers can opt for NVIDIA GeForce MX 450 as well.One of the sad realities of a budget device is the display, and the base model comes with a (Yuck) 1366x768 TN panel. Luckily Lenovo offers FHD IPS offerings on both.Storage is up to 1 TB PCIe SSD, or up to 2 TB spinning hard drive, but you do get Wi-Fi 6 across the range, and optional cellular options.The L series is really all about entry price, and the new L14 and L15 will be available in May starting at $689.Source: Lenovo

Alongside a raft of ThinkPad updates, Lenovo is also announcing a new monitor to pair nicely with those Thinkpads. The Lenovo ThinkVision P40w is a rather impressive looking product, offering a 39.7-inch 21:9 panel, featuring a 5120x2160 WUHD resolution. And that’s not all.The new P40w is also a dock for your laptop, thanks to the single-cable Thunderbolt 4 port which can charge the laptop at up to 100 Watts. It can provide up to 12 ports from the monitor, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and one USB Type-C. Not only that, but Lenovo includes an eKVM, which allows you to control two devices from this single monitor and dock combination. The extra Thunderbolt 4 port also would allow you to daisy-chain another 5K monitor.Lenovo ThinkVision P40wSpecificationDisplayDisplay Size39.7-inches

Today we’re reviewing the Galaxy S21 Ultra in both Exynos and Snapdragon SoC flavours, as well the baseline Galaxy S21 – contrasting two very different devices in Samsung’s new series, coming in at two very different price points.

Some AMD users have been posting on social media, including Reddit, about experiencing intermittent connectivity problems when using USB ports on their 500-series motherboards. In response, AMD has reached out through a Reddit post that it has been made aware of the connectivity issues, and is requesting more information from specific users with the issue to help them resolve it. Since this announcement, many users have been reaching out to AMD.AMD's X570 motherboards have been readily available since July 2019, and its B550 models have been available since June 2020 and have both become well established over the course of the last year and a half. The fact that users are now having USB issues begs the question whether the issues have been present all along but are now rising above the noise, or there is something related to the longevity of these systems.AMD 500 Series Motherboard and USB Connectivity Issues?The most common reproduction of this issue appears to be during the use of Virtual Reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with an intermittent connection issue being more prevalent to these users. As USB is the main method to power and communicate with VR headsets and peripherals, any dropout, even slightly to the high-powered VR applications, would instantly be highlighted. That isn't the only problem it can cause, as streaming devices and USB audio interfaces could also experience power dropouts, which could be quite noticeable, especially if doing a recording.While AMD hasn't pinpointed the exact cause of the issue yet, it asks its users to reach out to them over on Reddit by u/AMDOfficial, which is an official support channel for AMD. Extensively combing through user comments on Reddit, it doesn't seem to be solely related just to one section of hardware. Some of the issues that users report seem to stem from the release of PCIe 4.0 graphics cards on 500 series motherboards. Reddit user u/duddy32 also states that they have been having these issues with a B450 motherboard and a Ryzen 7 3700X processor, which precede the 500-series chipset.

The annual IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference covers a range of topics of interest to AnandTech. Every year the conference includes a session on non-volatile memories where most of the NAND flash memory manufacturers share technical details of their latest developments. At the conference we get more information than these companies are usually willing to share in press briefings, and the presentations are usually about technology that will be hitting the market during the coming year.At ISSCC 2021 this week, four of the six major 3D NAND flash memory manufacturers are presenting their newest 3D NAND technology. Samsung, SK hynix and Kioxia (+Western Digital) are sharing their latest 3D TLC NAND designs and Intel is presenting their 144-layer 3D QLC NAND. Not participating this year are Micron (who announced their 176L 3D NAND late last year) and Chinese newcomer YMTC.3D TLC (3-bit per cell) UpdatesSamsung, SK hynix, and Kioxia/WD presented information about their upcoming generations of 3D TLC. Not shown here is Micron's 176L TLC, because they haven't released most of this data for their latest generation of 3D NAND.3D TLC NAND Flash Memory

Toshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption.The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3 generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data. The HD disks are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a long-time partner of Toshiba. Each aluminum platter is about 0.635 mm thick, it features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch and can store up to 2 TB of data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model which presumably features a lower number of platters (based on the same performance rating).For modern enterprise and nearline 3.5-inch HDDs, Toshiba's MG09-series drives uses a motor with a 7200-RPM spindle speed. The HDDs are also equipped with a 512 MB buffer and are rated for a 281 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate. Unfortunately, Toshiba has not updated the random access performance of the new products, though it is likely that their per-TB IOPS performance is lower when compared to predecessors. The manufacturer will offer its new drives both with SATA 3.3 (6 Gbps) and SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps) interfaces as well as a selection of logical data block length.One of the noteworthy things about Toshiba's MG09-series FC-MAMR HDDs is their power consumption. In active idle mode, they typically consume 4.16/4.54 Watts (SATA/SAS models), which is considerably lower when compared with Seagate's Exos X18 as well as Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC550. As far as power consumption efficiency at idle (large hard drives could spend plenty of time idling) is concerned, the 18 TB MG09 is an undeniable champion consuming just 0.23 Watts per TB (in case of the SATA version). Meanwhile, the new drives are rated for 8.35/8.74 Watts (SATA/SAS SKUs) during read/write operations, which is higher when compared to the DC HC550 as well as predecessors from the MG07 and the MG08-series.Brief Specifications of Toshiba's MG09 HDDsCapacity18 TB16 TBPlatters98Heads1816Recording TechnologyFlux-control microwave-assisted

One of the critical points during this period of high demand for graphics cards is that a portion of them are being purchased by professional users looking to mine cryptocurrencies. The recent launch of new cards coupled with record highs in the cryptocurrency market has led to a rebirth of the mining community, who as of recently could earn ~$15 per RTX 3090 graphics card. These professional miners buy graphics card by the pallet load, sometimes bypassing retailers and going direct to distributors, as they can guarantee a complete shipment sale in one go. The knock on effect is fewer cards available for gamers looking to build new systems, leading to empty shelves and causing prices to spike for the handful of cards that ever make it to retailers.In order to at least offer a fig leaf to gamers, in the past certain graphics board partners started producing mining-only graphics cards. These had no graphical outputs, making them almost impossible for gaming use cases, but it filtered off some of the mining market into buying those rather than taking stock away from shelves for gamers. This was a poor band-aid, and now NVIDIA has gone one step further to separate mining from gaming.NVIDIA’s announcement today is two-fold: firstly addressing the upcoming launch of the RTX 3060 graphics on February 25, and secondly announcing a new range of dedicated mining hardware.

Samsung is one of the few brands still launching new high-end SATA SSDs in the consumer market. The new Samsung 870 EVO is a fine update to a very successful product line, but sticking with their long-time strategy of being the premium option doesn't make much sense when NVMe has taken over the high-end SSD market segment.

The workstation line of machines from Lenovo have been extremely successful for the company. While ThinkStation might not have as much brand identity as the more recognizable ThinkPad, for the markets that require them Lenovo’s ThinkStation range has been at the front of high-performance under-the-desk offerings since 2008. Lenovo has focused on everything from small form factor entry ThinkStation systems, all the way up to high-end dual socket P-series tower designs. The system we are reviewing today actually marks a major milestone for the ThinkStation business; the ThinkStation P620 is Lenovo’s first AMD workstation system, and it comes in to replace the whole range of Intel-based high-performance ThinkStations previously offered.

This week at ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference), Microsoft presented a talk titled ‘Xbox Series X SoC: A Next Generation Gaming Console’, with hardware engineer Paul Paternoster presenting. The 30 minute presentation covered a lot about Microsoft’s latest console processor, most of which was a repeat about what we saw at Hot Chips in August last year, however there was a new element in this presentation talking about how the console design team balanced acoustics, power, thermal performance, and processor yield, discussing where the hotspots in the design originate and where the performance/power targets of the final silicon were optimized.

NVIDIA this morning has sent over a quick note revealing the release date for their next GeForce desktop video card, the RTX 3060. The mainstream(ish) video card, previously revealed at CES 2021 with a late February release date, has now been locked in for a launch on February 25, with prices starting at $329.As a quick recap, the RTX 3060 is the next card down in NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture consumer video card stack. Using the new GA106 GPU – which is already shipping in RTX 3060 laptops – the RTX 3060 follows the traditional price/performance cadence for video card launches, with NVIDIA releasing a cheaper and lower performing video card for the mainstream-enthusiast video card market. NVIDIA’s 60-tier cards have long been the company’s workhorse parts for 1080p gaming – as well as some of their highest-volume parts in North America – and the RTX 3060 is expected to fill the same role within the Ampere/30-series family.NVIDIA GeForce Specification ComparisonRTX 3060RTX 3060 TiRTX 2060GTX 1060CUDA Cores3584486419201280ROPs64?804848Boost Clock1.78GHz1.665GHz1.68GHz1.709GHzMemory Clock14Gbps? GDDR614Gbps GDDR614Gbps GDDR68Gbps GDDR5Memory Bus Width192-bit256-bit192-bit192-bitVRAM12GB8GB6GB6GBSingle Precision Perf.12.8 TFLOPS16.2 TFLOPS6.5 TFLOPS4.4 TFLOPSTensor Perf. (FP16)51.2 TFLOPS64.8 TFLOPS51.6 TFLOPSN/ATensor Perf. (FP16-Sparse)102.4 TFLOPS129.6 TFLOPS51.6 TFLOPSN/ATDP170W200W160W120WGPUGA106GA104TU106GP106Transistor Count?B17.4B10.8B4.4BArchitectureAmpereAmpereTuringPascalManufacturing ProcessSamsung 8nm?Samsung 8nmTSMC 12nm "FFN"TSMC 16nmLaunch Date02/25/202112/02/202001/15/201907/19/2016Launch PriceMSRP: $329MSRP: $399MSRP: $349MSRP: $249