NVIDIA's SHIELD Tablet arrived earlier this year and it was one of the first devices to use NVIDIA's Tegra K1 platform with 4 Cortex A15 cores and a single SMX GPU based on NVIDIA's Kepler architecture. It was a major departure from NVIDIA's previous mobile GPU designs, and it came with a level of GPU performance that was unheard of in an ARM tablet. For the whole story you can take a look at the SHIELD Tablet review. What you may notice on the first page is the listing of a version with LTE support and 32GB of storage. At launch, the SHIELD Tablet was only available in its 16GB WiFi configuration. Today NVIDIA is opening pre-orders for the that model with 32GB of storage and LTE.

At $399, the SHIELD Tablet with LTE and 32GB of storage is $100 more expensive than the base model. This pricing is roughly in line with the cost of upgrades to other popular Android tablets like the Nexus 7, and much less expensive than upgrading an iPad to a 32GB model with LTE. The increased amount of storage and the addition of LTE are packaged together with NVIDIA's pricing; you can't just get one upgrade or the other.

In addition to the new model of the SHIELD Tablet, NVIDIA is announcing three new games optimized for Tegra K1 that are coming soon. The first is Beach Buggy Racing which is a kart racing game that is a sequel to Beach Buggy Blitz. The second is BombSquad which features various mini-games like capture the flag and hockey, with the addition of explosive weapons to blow up the other players. The last new title is Broadsword: Age of Chivalry which is a turn-based strategy game where the player assumes the role of the French or the British and builds their empire.

Customers in the United States on AT&T can also receive a special offer when buying the SHIELD Tablet with LTE. When activating it on a qualifying AT&T plan with a 2 year agreement, users will receive a $100 bill credit which effectively covers the cost of upgrading from the WiFi only model.

The SHIELD tablet with LTE and 32GB of storage can be pre-ordered now and it will ship on September 30th in the United States and Europe. Pre-orders can be made at Nvidia's official SHIELD website as well as retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, GameStop, Micro Center, Newegg, and Tiger Direct. Information about where to buy in a specific region can be found in the "Where to Buy" section on NVIDIA's website.

EchoSign is a system for managing electronic signatures on agreements, contracts, and other documents that can be transmitted electronically. The product was acquired by Adobe in 2011 to supplement their existing document services. The service allows consumers and businesses to obtain legally binding e-signatures in situations where distance or timing makes signing an agreement on an actual piece of paper impractical. With the rise of mobile devices in the workplace, including tablets, it would make sense for Adobe to offer an EchoSign app for mobile operating systems in addition to their web interface. Until now, Adobe has only offered an iOS application for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Today Adobe announced the launch of their EchoSign application for Android.

The layout of the app is essentially the same as its iOS counterpart, but with a design that goes along with Android design conventions rather than iOS ones. You can see above how documents can be sent to be signed by a single person or multiple users. The signing can be done right on a device's touchscreen.

The application also integrates with Google Drive, Box, Sharepoint, Saleforce, Evernote, and of course, Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. This covers most of the cloud storage services for documents in use today, although it's notable that Dropbox is missing from the list. While this app isn't going to do much for ordinary consumers, for small businesses and large corporations alike it may make the lives of Android users in the corporate world easier. If you are someone who has to use EchoSign for your job or your business, you can download the Android version from Google Play here.

Today we're looking at the two latest mechanical keyboards from Rosewill, the Apollo RK-9100 and the ten-keyless RGB80. Each targets a different group of users, but both have been designed with value in mind. Can they hold their own against the relentless competition? We'll find out in this review.

Although DisplayPort-equipped 4K monitors are still relatively new, the DisplayPort 1.2 standard underlying those devices is anything but. The long lead time between standards and products means that just as 4K monitors turn a year old, the DisplayPort 1.2 standard driving them will turn 5 years old later this year. This gap means that the VESA working group responsible for DisplayPort needs to aim well ahead of the curve, and all the while DisplayPort 1.2 adoption was ramping up, the VESA was already working on the next iteration of DisplayPort. Now after about 2 years of development the VESA has finalized their next standard, and this week they are releasing the DisplayPort 1.3 standard to their members for inclusion in their next-generation products.

Like DisplayPort 1.2 before it, DisplayPort 1.3 is a combination signaling and feature update intended to support new products and ultimately enable DisplayPort to push more pixels. The single biggest aspect of this is the introduction of High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3) mode, which increases the per-lane bandwidth rate from 5.4Gbps to 8.1Gbps, allowing for a 50% increase in bandwidth over DisplayPort 1.2’s HBR2. For a full 4 lane DP connection, this means the total connection bandwidth has been increased from 21.4Gbps to 32.4 Gbps, for a final data rate of 25.9Gbps after taking encoding overhead into account.

DisplayPort Supported Resolutions Standard Max Resolution
(RGB, 60Hz) Max Resolution
(4:2:0, 60Hz) DisplayPort 1.1 (HBR1) 2560x1600 N/A DisplayPort 1.2 (HBR2) 3840x2160 N/A DisplayPort 1.3 (HBR3) 5120x2880 7680x4320

At a hardware level the introduction of HBR3 is being made entirely at the controller level, with new controllers utilizing HBR3 signaling over existing hardware. The DisplayPort/mDP connector itself and the physical cabling remains unchanged, meaning HBR3 is fully backwards compatible with existing cabling and should work on any DP 1.1a/1.2 cable that’s built to spec. Built to spec being a key phrase in this case, as in practice HBR3’s higher clock rate will likely expose inferior cables, similar to what happened with the HBR2 earlier this decade.

By incrementally improving DisplayPort’s available bandwidth in this manner the VESA is looking to bring about support for the generation of monitors beyond today’s 4K monitors that DP 1.2 was designed for. This includes both 5K displays – such as the recently announced Dell 5K UltraSharp – and even farther in the future 8K displays.

For 5K displays DisplayPort’s 32.4Gbps provides enough bandwidth to cover a single 5K@60Hz monitor with traditional 24bit uncompressed color. In that case the physical interface can support either SST or MST operation – DisplayPort is merely a data transport layer – however we may still see MST operation used by 5K monitors due to the fact that 5K would require a pixel clock in excess of 1GHz, which will take time for GPUs and display controllers to catch up with.

Meanwhile the 50% increase in bandwidth also offers just enough of an improvement that DisplayPort 1.3 can even drive a pair of uncompressed 4K@60Hz monitors over a single connection, so long as VESA reduced blanking timings are used to minimize the signaling overhead. In that case you can technically even get a 4K@60Hz monitor over a 2 lane connection if desired, which would be useful for any situations where DisplayPort lanes are being taken for other uses (e.g. DockPort). Alternatively the additional bandwidth can be used to drive a single 4K@60Hz monitor at higher bit depths, such as 30bit and 36bit color.

However for 8K displays, while DisplayPort 1.3 is designed to support them the available bandwidth falls well short of the 45Gbps+ an 8K@60Hz 24bit uncompressed display would require. As such the VESA will be doing the next best thing and supporting Y'CbCr 4:2:0 subsampling, which reduces the bandwidth requirements by only transmitting ¼ of the color (chroma) data.

We’ve already seen 4:2:0 put to use in HDMI, allowing first-generation 4K TVs to support 4K@60Hz over HDMI 1.4 data rates by reducing the color data rate to the same 4:2:0 rate that most media is distributed in, and the idea would be the same for DisplayPort 1.3 and 8K displays. 4:2:0 support in this case is a consumer electronics focused feature and is meant to drive high resolution displays handling video and other content mastered at 4:2:0, whereas lower resolution uncompressed modes would still be preferred for workstations and general computer displays.

Wikipedia: diagram on chroma subsampling

4:2:0 support is also necessary for better HDMI interoperability, which is the other major aspect to DisplayPort 1.3. 1.3 will introduce the features necessary to allow DP-to-HDMI 2.0 conversion, and among HDMI-centric additions will be support for HDCP 2.2, which is the minimum version of HDCP required for DRM’d 4K media. Also being added for HDMI interoperability is Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) functionality, which allows HDMI devices to issue commands to other HDMI devices. This will allow DisplayPort to participate in that ecosystem, particularly having DisplayPort devices issue commands to other HDMI devices.

Finally there are a couple of features in development at the VESA that are notably absent in some form or another. Support for Display Stream Compression (DSC) apparently did not make the cut, as it is not in the 1.3 specification. DSC is the VESA and MIPI’s visually lossless (i.e. limited lossy) compression format designed to reduce bandwidth requirements, and based on the VESA’s work we expect it’s still under development and would be surprised if we didn’t see it later on. Meanwhile to no surprise (but always good for clarification), DisplayPort Active-Sync remains an optional part of the specification, so Adaptive-Sync availability will continue to be on a monitor-by-monitor basis as a premium feature.

Not In DP 1.3: Display Stream Compression

Wrapping things up, like most VESA standards announcements today’s announcement is more of a beginning than an end for the process. Now that DisplayPort 1.3 is standardized manufacturers can begin developing controllers (and GPUs) around it, which traditionally takes several months. This would put the release of the first DP 1.3 devices in 2015, which we would expect to be further aligned to the product refresh cycles for the necessary GPUs and monitors.

GIGABYTE's BRIX Pro (using an Intel Iris Pro part) has made a big splash in the market, particularly as a Steam machine. Enthused by its success, GIGABYTE has introduced the BRIX Gaming lineup. The lineup consists of mini-PCs in a form factor similar to the BRIX Pro (which itself had the footprint of an Intel NUC kit). The current flagship in the BRIX Gaming line is the BXi5G-760, a machine featuring a Core i5-4200H Haswell CPU and a NVIDIA GTX 760 discrete GPU. Given the paper specifications of the GTX 760, the machine promises to be a gaming powerhouse in its size class. Does it live up to its potential? Read on to find out.

Android is the world's most popular mobile operating system, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of July. But according to Google that's only the beginning. Android One is Google's initiative to target the other 5 billion people on the planet; people who may live in areas where purchasing the latest $700 flagship device simply isn't an option. In some of the countries Google is targeting, the average monthly income may be as little as the equivalent of $250. This is an enormous barrier for smartphone adoption. At Google I/O the stated goal of Android One was to bring a high quality smartphone experience to the masses in a $100 package. Today the first step is being made, with the launch of three new smartphones in India from manufacturers Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice.

Starting at 6399 Rs (~$105) the devices are slightly higher than Google's initial price projection but still within a price range that should be affordable by many people in countries like India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. They feature SoCs from Mediatek, and include features like dual SIM cards and FM radio support which are more popular in those countries than in others like the United States for example.

To avoid the issues that have traditionally plagued performance and software on low-end devices, Google has been working with various hardware suppliers and manufacturers to create a reference platform for Android One devices. This specification consists of a 4.5" 854x480 IPS display, a 1.3GHz quad core CPU from MediaTek, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of NAND, MicroSD support, a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, and a 1700mAh battery. At $105 that's a very good value proposition.

Google will also be supplying all software support which means that updates will come directly from Google and Android L support is a guarantee. Google has partnered with Indian cell carrier Airtel to allow users to download 200MB per month from Google Play without counting against the user's data allowance. For the first 6 months, software updates will also be free to download over the air using cellular data.

The Karbonn Sparkle V, Micromax Canvas A1, and the Spice Dream Uno can be seen at their respective manufacturer's websites. The devices are currently for sale at major Indian retailers including Flipkart, Amazon India, and Snapdeal.

It went relatively under the radar during the past two weeks of intensive launches, but AMD is launching a new campaign specifically for system builders dubbed the AMD Power Pack.

Normally system builders (including both the mass production sellers and boutique builders) have the option of buying a Product-In-Box (PIB) retail APU with a CPU cooler, bundled codes and all the manuals, or the tray processor which comes just as the processor. The AMD Power Pack meets the PIB and Tray parts half way, offering in one package a set of six processors with bundled codes and CPU coolers, but no manuals and in a single box arrangement. This helps to save on the packaging and offer a price point between the PIB and Tray cost.

We caught up with Adam Kozak, Product Marketing Manager from AMD, for some inside information.

Can you give us a little bit of the history of the AMD Power Pack?

We previously had a Power Pack scheme back in the days of Athlon, which had success. At the request of system builders around the world, we have reintroduced the scheme with some of our most popular AMD APUs. We ran a successful test back in February and March of this year, and now we are pushing ahead with offering the Power Packs initially to EMEA and North America with other regions to follow.

What is the current AMD Power Pack all about?

We want to offer system builders some savings and encourage them to design systems around AMD products that might offer some better value than before. Secondary to this, noting how much waste goes on with PIB type bulk purchases, it offers a chance to cut down on waste and recycling as well. It offers that combination of PIB and Tray at a lower cost than PIB alone but with all the bundled extras, especially if we are running a promotion at the time.

What sort of buyers are you expecting for the Power Pack?

At this point in time we are selling to system builders through our distribution channels. This includes those who build hundreds of systems a week down to the boutique builders who specialize in custom designs and configurations. Both of these types of system builders are prevalent through EMEA and NA. We currently do not have plans to these direct to end-users, however system builders might sell spare processors as OEM parts.

Which APUs will be available in the Power Pack?

At this point in time we have two options: a bundle of six A8-6600K APUs or a bundle of six Athlon X4 760K CPUs. This are both Richland parts, and we are looking into expanding the selection based on regional requirements and demand.

What is the expected discount to be over buying them separately?

Currently the difference between PIB and Tray is 5-10% depending on the APU, so the Power Packs will be somewhere in the middle of that, to both offset the semi-bulk purchasing with coolers and without a large chunk of the packaging that might come with a PIB version. Exact discounts will vary between regions.

Will there be different power packs for different regions, e.g. AM1 Kabini Power Packs for those target markets?

As time goes on, we are evaluating each region on what product segments are selling well and what our customers demand. AM1 is doing well in the regions where it is focused for – South America, Latin America, Africa and South Asia. We look at our quarter-on-quarter sales against demand, as well as talking to customers, to find where the Power Pack is best suited. Also, if we see an opportunity before we examine sales figures, we might make a strategic move and offer a particular Power Pack in that region.

How will it be sold?

System builders will have to inquire direct with their local distributor.

What will the warranty situation be for these parts?

An end-user will not notice if they buy a system with a Power Pack part – it is up to the system builder and the distributor to determine which segments of the warranty are held, depending on the region. Typically the system builder will honor the warranty you purchase with the system.

Will there be GPU versions of the Power Pack? If not, is this an opportunity missed?

GPUs are a little different to our processor line, purely because we sell the chips to our GPU partners who then make the cards. We have discussed in the past organizing bundles with our GPU/Motherboard partners combined with our APUs from the distribution level, however that tends to be highly region specific.

What plans does AMD have for the Power Pack in the future? How long will the promotion go on / will it emulate Never Settle and continually get updated with newer APUs?

At this point in time we are hoping to push forward into more regions as our research shows is the best way to go. As I mentioned, sales figures are usually organized into quarters so that is how we will make sense of the obvious markets to push into, however if there is a strategic opportunity with the Power Pack then we can push ahead before sales numbers come through.

Our initial phase-in back in Q1 2014 was very well received, so we hope to continue in the same fashion. If we see demand for our flagship processors such as the A10 series on our coolers, then it makes sense to follow that route. At this point in time our FX line is more oriented towards the boutique builders who tend to use their own cooling systems, so it makes more sense for them to buy our Tray units rather than us to offer a Power Pack.

Closing Thoughts

The Power Pack is essentially an extra SKU for system builders between buying a batch of tray processors (100 or 1000) against a bulk order of product-in-box units. By adding in the coolers and promotion cards while reducing the amount of waste and the price vs. six individual PIB units, I can see a Power Pack being preferential against PIB as long as the system builder plans to use the stock cooler.

The only issue AMD has is with choosing which APUs to use. I would have assumed Kaveri (A6-7400K, X4-840) would be the first choice over Richland, but it would seem there is still demand for Richland in the pipeline. There is the potential for a lower end-user system cost. Depending on the unit, we might be talking only $1 or $2 savings per system based on the Richland APUs.

If AMD sold Power Packs for all APUs, the end user might end up with a larger discount (for example, $3-$7 for FX-9590 + AIOs) if the system builder passes it on, but that might end up detrimental to AMD and cut into margins or cause over-demand increasing the difficulty to react dynamically. It is a balancing act between trying to encourage system builders to use APUs while still turning some profit per unit, but I do hope AMD keep up the sentiment and apply the same philosophy with the latest architectures.

The normal route for workstation level motherboards is from the server business unit of a motherboard manufacturer, which then works its way into full systems rather than being sold separately. The other, less used alternative is for the mainstream end-user motherboard business units to develop their own and sell directly to end-users building their own workstation. While some of the motherboard manufacturers are slowly jumping on this bandwagon, ASUS has been at it for a number of generations now, with enough success to continue into their new Haswell-E designs which have just been announced.

ASUS X99-E WS

The X99-E WS follows on from the X79-E WS and the X58-E WS, and the most obvious thing to notice is the seven full-length PCIe slots. ASUS’ workstation line of motherboards, as I was told during my time at their HQ, is focused at maintaining compatibility and function with as many different types of PCIe devices possible. This includes RAID cards, PCIe storage, video capture cards, PCIe co-processors, FPGAs, normal GPUs and any other form of throughput accelerant. In order to assist with bandwidth, it would seem that this motherboard uses a PLX chip to give a full PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 for four-way or x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 when all the slots are populated.

The system includes exclusive Beat Thermal Chokes (v2), 12K capacitors and enhanced power connectors. For onboard storage, M.2 x4 is supported along with dual SATA Express and ASUS’ PIKE II (Proprietary I/O Kit Expansion). Thunderbolt support is also provided via the onboard header. Networking comes via a dual Intel solution (I210-AT and I218-LM) with audio from a Realtek ALC1150. ASUS’ WS line of motherboards includes maintenance tools such as the Q-Code Logger and Dr. Power, the latter being for power supply monitoring.

Gallery: ASUS Announces Haswell-E Workstation Motherboards: X99-E WS (1P) and Z10PE-D8 WS (2P)

While pricing and release date has not been released yet, we expect the X99-E WS to be in the $520 price bracket and should be available in North America in the next few weeks.  Note that this motherboard acts more like an end-user product, and thus comes without AST2300/IPMI monitoring tools. This would lower the price, however the upshot is an enhanced BIOS/software package more akin to a consumer level product than a server one.

ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS

The dual processor line of motherboards is typically the mainstay for system builders alone, but over the years various manufacturers have floated the concept of an end-user model. This is shown by our recent increase 2P motherboard reviews. The main barrier here is that to take advantage of a 2P system, Xeons get promoted to the main cost. For home-users, that cost is largely prohibitive however for the prosumer or small-business IT specialist, it becomes part of the business cost instead. With Ivy Bridge-E, the Z9PE-D8 WS seemed to be well received, and thus the Z10PE-D8 WS launch seems a logical choice.

Using the SSI EEB form factor, this motherboard supports one DIMM per channel but has the full array of PCIe 3.0 x16 slots similar to the X99-E WS. It would seem that UDIMMs are not supported here, although the specification list does mention up to 512GB RDIMM/LRDIMM/NVDIMM support. The motherboard is based on the C612 chipset, which is the primary chipset for most workstation 2P motherboards. Storage comes via 12 SATA ports with two SATA Express and M.2 x4 support as well. Similar to the X99-E WS, Beat Thermal Chokes and 12K capacitors are being used here as well. This time the WS motherboard does have management via an AST2400.

One of the more interesting features from ASUS’ PE line of WS motherboards has always been the ability to overclock using the BCLK, to which extent ASUS is promoting a potential 10% improvement in performance using their OC Tuner and Xeon Turbo Charger platform.  We’ve tried testing some Xeons in house in a 1P environment and only achieved 4-7%, so it would be interesting to see this in action and observe what else is adjusted.

The Z10PE-D8 WS will be priced at $599 and will be available soon.

 

Coverage of Thunderbolt devices has been expanded on our site over the last few months. At IDF, we took the opportunity to chat with Intel about where Thunderbolt was headed.

The current market perception is one of Thunderbolt being relevant only to Mac users. But, a look at the products that Intel showcases, indicate that there are plenty of PC components (motherboards as well as workstations) that come with the technology integrated. Thunderbolt users on Windows have traditionally found that the technology doesn't live up to its advertised potential. Common complaints include

• Purchased peripherals don't carry certification on Windows
• Hot plugging peripherals doesn't work reliably
• Performance in terms of both bandwidth and latency end up being better on Mac compared to Windows for the same workloads

These issues have turned out to be a vicious circle - Mac users end up getting targeted with more Thunderbolt peripherals (for example, storage manufacturers pre-format their devices in HFS+ format), and this, in turn, lowers the appeal of these devices to Windows users. Irrespective of one's personal preference, it is an undeniable fact that Windows still rules the desktop and notebook market by a big margin. Without extensive adoption on the PC side, there is no doubt that Thunderbolt would go the way of FireWire, a technology that slowly faded into oblivion because Apple was the only vendor who invested in promoting it.

Expanding Thunderbolt's Reach with PCIe Expansion Cards

In the process of migrating from the Z77 / Z87 to the Z97 chipset, Intel tried to drive up Thunderbolt adoption by allowing motherboard makers to provide support via an add-in card. This kept the price of the motherboard low by avoiding the cost of integrating and verifying the Thunderbolt ASIC. The board layout only had to support a Thunderbolt header. The routing of the Display Port was also done externally.

Only interested consumers needed to pay the premium for the interface. In their motherboard segmentation plans for Thunderbolt, Intel intended these Add-In Cards (AICs) only for the X79 and H87 / H97 / Q87 chipsets. Z87 and Z97 motherboards were supposed to have Thunderbolt silicon on board. Unfortunately for Intel, many motherboard makers (including Asus) decided that the add-on card would be the best way to go forward, and didn't release any Z97 boards with integrated Thunderbolt support. This meant that the DIY market, for the most part, completely ignored Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt on PCs: A Crippled Experience

The reason for the far from optimal experience with Thunderbolt on PCs boils down to two different aspects, the hardware and the software. In terms of hardware, Intel has never allowed motherboard vendors to hang the Thunderbolt silicon / add-in card off the CPU's PCIe lanes. These have to hang off the platform controller hub (PCH). On the other hand, Apple was allowed to hook up the Thunderbolt silicon directly to the CPU. The reason behind this leads us to the software side of things.

Apple has full control over the operating system. Hanging Thunderbolt peripherals directly off the CPU's PCIe lanes requires extensive support from the operating system, particularly when it comes to hot plugging devices and/or waking up peripherals from sleep mode. Over the PCIe lanes off the PCH, Intel has more control via its chipset drivers. Ultimately, it looks like Microsoft dropped the ball and Intel decided to come up with a certification solution by only allowing Thunderbolt silicon to talk to the PCH for all PC boards.

While Microsoft continues to twiddle its thumbs, Intel has decided to come up with less restrictive hardware suggestions to bridge the Thunderbolt experience gap between Macs and PCs.

Thunderbolt's Future - X99 Brings Promise, Driver Features Add Utility

The X99 platform's Thunderbolt capabilities were barely touched upon in the initial Haswell-E reviews. Part of the problem was that none of the motherboards from major vendors had support with on-board silicon. However, it is actually a very important chipset launch for the Thunderbolt on PCs ecosystem because Intel has finally allowed the AICs to hang off the CPU's PCIe lanes. A restriction is that the AIC must have support for a switch to disable the sleep mode for all the Thunderbolt devices in the chain, though this could conceivably go away if Microsoft fixes Windows for this issue.

In terms of updates to Thunderbolt itself, we are yet to see a move to PCIe 3.0. However, the drivers have been updated to enable 'Thunderbolt Networking'. This involves linking multiple PCs / Macs with Thunderbolt cables. A 10 Gbps network is automatically created (in the form of a 'dummy' network adapter). Macs and PCs can talk with each other to share printers and folders. For small workgroups, this could be an effective way to achieve 10 Gbps networking without the costly and noisy switches.

In conclusion, Thunderbolt is making great progress and PC users can expect things to get better in the future. In addition to Apple, lots of other vendors are also throwing in support for Thunderbolt in their workstations and notebooks. It would have been great to have a new version of Thunderbolt with PCIe 3.0 along with the X99 launch. But, we already know it is not going to be the case till Skylake launches. That said, it will be a priority for Intel and Microsoft to get the performance and experience right with current silicon for now.

While Huawei's flagship banner was traditionally carried by its Ascend P-series, the P7 didn't ship with a high end SoC that was able to compete with other devices in the same category. With the Honor 6, Huawei takes a departure from its usual lineup and introduces their first big.LITTLE and high-performance SoC, the HiSilicon Kirin 920, which will be a key area of examination.

The Honor 6 sports the same 5" form factor as its cousin the Ascend P7, but with different build materials and design. We take a in-depth look into how this new player competes in terms of performance and power consumption. Read on to see where its surprise strengths and faults lie.

Typically multi-bay external storage devices tend to utilize 3.5" drives due to the lower cost and higher capacities. The downside, however, is that 3.5" drives are physically larger and heavier, which makes a multi-bay enclosure rather difficult to move around on a regular basis. To fix this, Promise is offering a 4-bay 2.5" RAID solution called the M4. Read on for our full review of this compact DAS.

While we don't usually cover SD cards, SanDisk's announcement of 512GB Extreme PRO SD card caught my eye today. There are currently only a couple of 256GB SD cards available and most OEMs have not been able to go above 128GB, so the Extreme PRO is the highest capacity SD card in the world, which really speaks for SanDisk's NAND and packaging expertise. 

SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card Specifications Capacities 128GB, 256GB & 512GB Read Speed Up to 95MB/s Write Speed Up to 90MB/s Warranty Lifetime Limited

The Extreme PRO comes in SDXC format and utilizes UHS-I interface, which is good for up to 104MB/s. As you can see in the table above, the Extreme PRO comes very close to saturating the interface and it carries UHS Speed Class 3 rating, meaning that it is suitable for capturing 4K video. The largest market for the new Extreme PRO SD cards is obviously video professionals because as we transition to 4K video, the need for storage increases substantially, which in turn opens market for larger SD cards.

While SanDisk didn't release any details of the internals, it's pretty safe to assume that the 512GB Extreme PRO consists of 32 x 128Gbit (16GB) dies. The photo above is from SanDisk's 2014 Investor Day presentation where the company claimed that it has the technology for a 32-die SDXC card and with the Extreme PRO the technology has made it into the retail. Since SanDisk/Toshiba doesn't have a 256Gbit NAND die (nobody has one in mass production yet), the only way to achieve 512GB is through a 32-die stack. SanDisk hasn't specified whether the NAND is MLC or TLC, but given that it is a high-end product I'm guessing it is MLC based. 

EDIT: As some of you mentioned in the comments, it seems to be two 16-die stacks instead of a single 32-die stack. SD cards definitely have the room for two die stacks and the photo also shows two 16-die stacks instead of a single 32-die stack. Either way it is impressive since nothing else comes close to the capacity SanDisk offers.

All capacities are available now and the MSRP for the 512GB model is $800, which is certainly high since 512GB SSDs retail for close to $200. However, the Extreme PRO is the only SD card that is available in such a high capacity, so I would say the premium is justified. Stacking more dies on top of each other will always have a negative impact on yield as the wires have to be longer and there are more wires to connect, so the room for errors increases and thus the manufacturing cost goes up as well. 

At Computex earlier this year, Intel had talked about 4K panels becoming more affordable (monitors around $400). The 4K All-in-Ones using those panels were on display at IDF. We grabbed a few photographs and they are linked in the gallery below.

Gallery: IDF 2014: 4K AIOs

The PLS panels have great viewing angles. Importantly, they also support full 60 Hz refresh rates even at the maximum resolution (UHD). Consumers worried about the usage of TN panels and lower refresh rates to hit the advertised price point have nothing to fear. Since Intel is pushing this effort, it makes sense that they first concentrate on the All-in-One (AIO) market which helps them sell their CPUs. The AIO models should go on sale soon, and Intel expects that Samsung will push these 23.6" panels into monitors very soon. The AIO models that were on display were high-end configurations with i7 processors and expected to come in around $1000, but cheaper models with less powerful CPUs are also on the way. [ Update: The systems on display are highly customizable Thin Mini-ITX-based AIOs. The 4K AIOs are anticipated to begin at prices of $999, but the systems on display (as configured with a 4th Gen Intel Core i7-4770S and Intel SSDs) were closer to the $1500 mark. In particular, the system in the gallery above is a Mitac M980, which will be available as a whitebox system to distributors and other OEMs]

Today, the USB-IF brought me in to see the long-awaited USB Type C cables. We've written about this before, but for those that aren't familiar with this new USB spec, the USB Type C cable and USB 3.1 spec are designed with the future in mind. As a result, there are a lot of new features to talk about. We'll start with the USB 3.1 spec before we get into the Type C connector.

With USB 3.1, we see a few key improvements. Peak throughput goes to 10 Gbps from 5 Gbps, which translates to a peak of 1.25 GB/sec. In a demo of an early controller with two SSDs attached to the system I saw peak throughput of 833 MB/sec. As a side note, I also saw a demo of wireless USB connectivity from smartphone to laptop and laptop to smartphone, which was definitely pretty cool. Getting back to the USB 3.1 spec, USB Power Delivery 2.0 (PD) makes it possible for USB to supply up to 100 watts, and coexists with the BC 1.2 spec that is used in USB power adapters to charge phones so a single port would be able to provide power for both systems. In addition, USB PD 2.0 allows for power to go both ways without changing the direction of the cable, so a laptop would be able to send and receive power from the same port. Finally, USB Type-C extensions mean that it's possible to do all kinds of interesting applications over USB ports, such as sending audio and video data. It's even possible for a USB Type C port to send PCI-E data through the connection for use cases such as a two in one convertible tablet.

This opens up the possibility for a dock scenario where a single cable to the monitor can charge a laptop and also mirror the laptop's display onto the external monitor, and the external monitor would also be able to serve as a USB hub for a keyboard, mouse, headsets, flash drives, and other USB peripherals. While the laptop charging aspect and integrated USB hub in display wasn't demonstrated in the prototype I saw, everything else was fully working as shown in the photo above.

I was also able to get some photos of the cable and receptacle. Unfortunately it took flash to really show the detail in the connector but it definitely will be a great standard for all kinds of applications. While I'm sure that there will be differences in the final product, the reversible plug works just like expected and could be quickly inserted from behind the back. The USB-IF believes that this standard will show up in products shipping in 2015. It does seem that the connector is a bit less compact than microUSB, but the benefits outweigh this increase in size.

For those that do will not settle for anything less than the best, Corsair has their gigantic AX1500i power supply. This is their new 1500W flagship behemoth, and it's also one of the first 80 Plus Titanium certified units worldwide. It has a massive list of features, including Corsair Link compatibility. However, could it possibly be worth the absurd $449.99 retail price? Read on to find out.

At WWDC this year, Apple announced iCloud Drive to compete with the cloud storage offerings of other companies. Previous to this, iCloud did not offer the file and folder sync capabilities of other cloud storage competitors, and Apple is hoping iCloud Drive will be the answer. It is a very competitive market right now though, with some pretty major price cuts by the major players this year including Dropbox, Microsoft, and Google.

Apple has now announced the full pricing structure for iCloud Drive which is more competitive than before. Just a few months ago, Apple only offered up to 50 GB in iCloud, and charged $100 USD per year for it. Google Drive at the time offered 100 GB for only $24 USD per year, so clearly some price adjustments needed to be done.

Apple iCloud Comparison   iCloud iCloud Drive Free Storage 5 GB 5 GB Lowest Tier (USD/year) 10 GB / $20 20 GB / $12 Second Tier (USD/year) 20 GB / $40 200 GB / $48 Third Tier (USD/year) 50 GB / $100 500 GB / $120 Fourth Tier (USD/year) N/A 1 TB / $240 Lowest Cost/GB $2 / GB $0.24 / GB

With the new prices, Apple is offering quite a bit of choice as far as storage tiers, and with a 20 GB option for only $0.99 per month, and Apple now offers tiers up to 1 TB which is in line with many competitors. Unfortunately they have not touched the free tier, which stays at 5 GB.

These new prices are much better per gigabyte than previously offered, with the 200 GB tier exactly the same price per gigabyte as both OneDrive and Google Drive, however none of the other tiers really come close. For $0.99/month, you can get 20 GB on iCloud Drive, but for only $2/month you can get 100 GB on both OneDrive and Google Drive. The higher tiers get even more out of sync, with Apple asking $240 for 1 TB of storage, but Microsoft offers 1 TB of storage and a full version of Office for $70 per year, or 5 x 1 TB and 5 installs of Office for $100 per year. Google comes in at 1 TB for $120 per year, and DropBox just lowered their pricing with 1 TB per year for $100.

It would seem Apple is hoping that users of its products will be willing to pay more for iCloud Drive to keep the experience all within the Apple ecosystem, and it might not be the wrong move. They have shown in the past that their customers are willing to spend more for the Apple products than competitors can accomplish, and Apple has traditionally not competed much on price so this may work out well for them, but it must be said, all of the consumer cloud offerings do support the Mac already, and several are available and popular on iOS as well, so it may be difficult to come to the game this late with a higher price than the competition.

rtThe competition in the cloud storage space has never been so intense. It is also a vast landscape of different features, free storage sizing, paid storage tiers, and API support. Today Microsoft has addressed some of the criticisms against OneDrive with an increased file size limit, faster syncing, Windows shell integration, and tweaks to the web interface to make the cloud storage easier to use, and more flexible.

One of the limitations of OneDrive has been the maximum file size of 2 GB. That is being bumped up today to 10 GB per file. That will certainly help with most files bumping into the limit, but is certainly not class leading. Dropbox also has a 10 GB upload limit, but that is only on the web interface, with files uploaded via the desktop application or mobile apps have no file size limit. Google Drive has a 5 TB limit on an individual file. It is good to see OneDrive increase this limit, but it seems shortsighted to set it so low especially when they have upgraded all Office 365 plans (personal and business) to 1 TB of storage per user. This feature is available today for OneDrive, and will be coming soon for OneDrive for Business.

Consumer Cloud Offerings   OneDrive Google Drive iCloud DropBox Box Amazon Cloud Drive Free Storage 15 GB 15 GB 5 GB 2 GB 10 GB 5 GB Paid Storage (USD/year) 100 GB - $24
200 GB - $48
1 TB (Office 365 Personal) - $70
5 x 1 TB (Office 365 Home) - $100 100 GB - $24
1 TB - $120
10 TB - $1200
20 TB - $2400
30 TB - $3600 20 GB - $12
200 GB - $48
500 GB - $120
1 TB - $240 1 TB - $100 100 GB - $120 20 GB - $10
50 GB - $25
100 GB - $50
200 GB - $100
500 GB - $250
1 TB - $500 Versioning Office files (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon No (Personal Tier) No File Restore Yes (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon Yes (30 days) Yes Operating System Support Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone Windows
OS X
Chrome OS
Android
iOS Windows
OS X
iOS Windows
OS X
Linux
Android
iOS
BlackBerry
Kindle Fire Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone
BlackBerry Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Kindle Fire

Another improvement to the service is to increase the number of files that can be uploaded or downloaded at any one time. If you are syncing a directory, this should dramatically increase the sync speed with Microsoft’s internal testing giving approximately a 300% increase in speed.  Assuming you have enough bandwidth from your ISP, this could be a very welcome change. The parallel syncing feature will be rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks.

A missing feature that I have personally bumped into many times is the inability to share OneDrive files from within Windows Explorer. This is also changing beginning with Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients. Right clicking in the shell will now offer the ability to share a link, or give more options if you would rather share by account name. This feature is a part of the Modern version of OneDrive, so it is good to see it coming to the desktop as well, and continues the trend of de-emphasizing the Start Screen experience. Windows 7 and 8 clients have begun rollout of this new feature, and Windows 8.1 and Mac should be available soon.

The final change to OneDrive affects only the web interface. As of today, folder uploads are now supported over the web, which is a feature that was previously only available in the client applications. Folders can be uploaded by using the Upload button and choosing a folder, or folder drag and drop is also supported in the web interface for browsers that support that feature. Currently, only Google Chrome supports this feature, but other browsers will be able to if the browser adds support.

OneDrive faces stiff competition in the cloud storage market, and these features are a welcome addition. The 10 GB file size is clearly a big improvement over the previous 2 GB limit, but when you offer 1 TB of space, 10 GB files may not be the largest a client wants to upload, so hopefully this will be increased again in the near future, if even for just the OneDrive client applications. Improved sync speed is of course always welcome. The folder uploads is also a nice bonus, but being able to share OneDrive files and folders by using Windows Explorer is the most welcome addition to how I use the service.

While it was alluded to in the iPhone 6 announcement, today T-Mobile is announcing WiFi Unleashed, which enables WiFi calling and texting for all Simple Choice customers and seamless hand-off of calls to cellular. In addition, T-Mobile is also partnering with GoGo to provide free text messaging and visual voicemail in flights that use GoGo to provide WiFi.

On the Personal CellSpot side, T-Mobile will give a free Asus 802.11ac WiFi router with 25 USD refundable deposit to Simple Choice customers starting on September 17th, which also acts as a femtocell and will provide signal to improve capacity and coverage of the network.

Overall, this seems to only extend the lead that T-Mobile already has with their extensive focus upon disrupting how mobile network operators do business in the US, and it'll be interesting to see what's in the Personal CellSpot.

Today, Intel showed off a reference design codenamed Llama Mountain, which is an incredibly thin tablet running Intel's Core M 5Y70. While we've covered Core M previously it's worth going over again for those unfamiliar with this chip. For reference, it's the first shipping implementation of Broadwell and designed to target a 4.5W TDP. This means that it's fully possible to integrate a full Windows PC into a thin, fanless formfactor. We've already seen the announcement of the ThinkPad Helix 2 with Core M, so it's clear that this new chip can support such formfactors.

One of the biggest surprises for me was how much smaller the PCB was in Llama Mountain. For reference, the photo above is from our Surface Pro teardown. The PCB takes up almost the entirety of the tablet, and there's a great deal of extra thickness from the fans in the device. I managed to get a photo of the entire Llama Mountain board below. The second green PCB contains the storage (a SanDisk iSSD solution) and a WiFi chip (Intel 7260AC).

The resulting tablet is incredibly light at 684 grams. For reference, the iPad Air is 469 grams. Of course, the real question is whether the extra ~200 grams is worth it. To get an idea of whether or not it is, Intel showed the performance of Llama Mountain in Sunspider 1.0.2 and 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited. I've put the results into the graphs below.

Needless to say, the Core M 5Y70 is the fastest tablet that we have test results for. The Surface Pro line has 15W TDP parts, while Core M operates in a 4.5W TDP. However, for this reference design Intel is leveraging the large amount of surface area to drive a 6W TDP. Despite this, it seems that it manages to equal or better the Surface Pro line in performance. Intel also emphasized that only an aluminum back cover would be needed to dissipate the heat to keep costs down. In fact, there were versions of Llama Mountain with copper and gold-plated back covers, but had no noticeable effect in performance. I'm definitely looking forward to future tablets and 2-in-1 devices launching with this chip, as this could enable laptop levels of performance in a tablet formfactor without the compromise we see now.

While it was pretty well-known that SwiftKey was coming to iOS 8, it wasn't really clear when this would happen. However, we now know that SwiftKey will be available at the launch of iOS 8, which is definitely great news. For those that are unfamiliar with SwiftKey, this is a custom keyboard that is rather well-known for its word prediction algorithms which adapt to the user over time. In addition to the standard prediction insertion upon tapping the spacebar, SwiftKey's latest version adds automatic space insertion in predictions depending upon context. In addition, if given appropriate permission SwiftKey can scan through social media, email, and text messages to build its prediction systems.

One of the major use cases for SwiftKey is its dual prediction capabilities, which makes it possible for the keyboard to infer what language you intend a word to be in, and change its predictions accordingly. This means you can switch between languages within a sentence without ever tapping a button to switch between languages. This is supported for English US/UK/AU/CA, Portugese BR/PT, French CA/FR, Italian, German, and Spanish ES/Latin America/US. In addition, for the iPod Touch and iPhone SwiftKey on iOS will support Flow, which is largely similar to Swype for those familiar with Nuance's Swype keyboard.