With the emphasis on smartphones and tablets at this year’s CES, it should come as no surprise that the various SoC IP developers are focusing their announcements around the show, and Imagination Technologies is among them. In 2011 Imagination announced their next generation of SoC PowerVR GPUs, the Series 6 family, based on the PowerVR Rogue architecture.  Now just under a year later Imagination has announced that they’ve officially released their first GPU designs to licensing for inclusion into SoCs.

Shedding more light on feature support for the first time, Imagination has announced that the baseline graphics feature set for Series 6 will include support for OpenGL ES “Halti”, the current working name for ES 3.0, itself derived from OpenGL 3.x. In terms of DirectX generations, this would make Series 6 a DirectX 10 part, analogous to the GeForce 8/9/200 series, the Radeon 2000-4000 series, and Intel’s HD2000/3000 iGPUs. Interestingly enough Imagination will also be offering designs that are DirectX 11.1/OpenGL 4.x compliant, which would bring them to parity with the very latest GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA.

Meanwhile on the compute side OpenCL will also be supported, and while Imagination doesn’t list the specific version we believe they will be conformant up to version 1.1. Microsoft’s DirectCompute is not specifically mentioned, however at a minimum the DX11.1 parts would need to support it.

Unfortunately at this time Imagination is still playing their cards close to their chest, so while we know what APIs Series 6 supports, we don’t know much about the configuration of the first two GPUs: G6200 and G6400. G6200 features two “compute clusters”, while G6400 features four of them, though beyond shader blocks we don’t know what a compute cluster entails.

PowerVR Series 5XT Architecture Diagram

Most likely Imagination is configuring their GPUs in a method similar to the SGX543 series, where a fixed frontend is coupled with a specific number of shader blocks and ROPs, along with several fixed function DSPs. The biggest question perhaps is whether Series 6’s geometry performance will once again be fixed; SGX543 only scaled the number of USSE2 pipelines, so while Imagination could grow the number of pixels they could deal with geometry performance was solely a function of a given GPU’s clockspeed.

Long term Imagination is planning to have designs that offer up to 1 TFLOP of shader performance, which would be nearly 10 times the theoretical shader performance of the SGX543MP16. The initial G6200 and G6400 will be much more conservative, though we don’t have specific performance estimates for them yet.

Finally, as Imagination is an IP vendor, there isn’t any kind of timeline on availability as this is up to their customers. The only SoC announced to use Series 6 so far is ST-Ericsson’s Nova A9600, which is not scheduled to arrive until sometime in 2013. Given the fabrication ramp-up schedule for most SoCs, any Series 6 equipped SoC is still a year out if not more; in the meantime there are still a number of ARM A15 + SGX543/544 scheduled for later this year. And for larger, more capable GPUs such as the SGX545 the release gap has been closer to 2 years, so DirectX 11.1 SoCs in particular are almost certainly 2014 products assuming Imagination gets a DX11.1 GPU design out this year.

We’ll have much more on Series 6 later this year as further designs are announced and Imagination publishes more details about the underpinnings of their PowerVR Rogue architecture, so stay tuned.

It wouldn't be far off the mark to call Google TV as one of the unmitigated disasters of 2010 - 2011. Through the failure of the Logitech Revue, it was responsible for Logitech's below-par performance last year, and also for the stepping down of its CEO. Anand covered Intel's winding down of the Digital Home Group and it could be said that Google TV / Intel's concept of Smart TV not taking off as expected was one of the reasons.

However, Google doesn't give up on its efforts without a fight. With access to the Android market and an upgrade to Honeycomb, Google TV received some life support last October. However, pricing and device power consumption were the two other prime factors which needed to get addressed. In order to take care of these factors, it was inevitable that Google and its partners would end up moving to an ARM based platform. Given that ARM has remained the architecture of choice for Android smartphones, this was also a move predicted by many.

We covered Marvell's foray into the DMA (Digital Media Adapter) market with their ARMADA 1000 platform. Today, Marvell is officially launching the next generation ARMADA 1500 (88DE3010) SoC. They also announced their team up with Google and indicated that all the Google TV boxes at the 2012 CES would be powered by Marvell silicon. Read on for our analysis.
 

Later today AMD will be releasing the first preview for their Catalyst 12.1 driver set. AMD has been going through preview/beta drivers at a rapid pace in the last couple of months – we’ve seen 3 different 11.11 preview drivers in as many weeks – and as 11.12 nears, AMD is preparing for what 2012 and the Catalyst 12.x series will bring. It may sound like hyperbole to say that 2012 will be the biggest year yet for AMD’s Catalyst driver team, but it’s the truth. Graphics Core Next will be the biggest GPU architecture change for the company since R600 (2900XT) nearly 5 years ago, bringing with it a great deal of backend driver work that needs to be done, while the frontend team has their own goals and aspirations.

At the same time it’s going to give AMD the chance to close the book on 2011. 2011 brought with it some great developments out of the Catalyst team such as significant performance boosts for both Cayman (6900 series) GPUs and CrossFire across the board, while other groups delivered on more consumer-facing features such as SteadyVideo to go along with the launch of the Llano APU.

But 2011 also brought with it some technical debt and some reputational debt, all of which needs to be paid in 2012. AMD outright blew the launch of Rage by posting a faulty driver, Battlefield 3 in CrossFire mode did not work out of the box (i.e. without microstutter) even with nearly a month-long public beta and AMD’s close relationship with DICE, and CrossFire support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim took the better part of a month to reach Radeon HD 5000 series owners. Not to kick the Catalyst team while they’re down, but for all that went well for them in 2011 they failed in other areas where they could least afford it. Thus 2012 becomes all the more important for AMD as they need to erase their debts from 2011.

Erasing those debts starts today for AMD, with the release of the Catalyst 12.1 preview driver. 12.1 won’t be the driver that buys AMD redemption – I think 11.11c is more important in that respect – but it is the driver that sets the pace for the year. And quite frankly it’s the driver that’s going to buy AMD a lot of goodwill, even if it only brings with it a few changes.

Custom Application Profiles As Implemented By NVIDIA

Of those few features I’m going to immediately dive in with what I think is the headline feature: custom application profiles. Ever since NVIDIA introduced custom application profiles so many years ago I have been a firm believer in their importance for GPU enthusiasts. While most games have been good about implementing anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering controls, that’s about as much progress as they’ve made. With the introduction of driver enhancements like Adaptive/Transparancy anti-aliasing, coverage sample/EQ anti-aliasing, tessellation clamping, and the widespread use of multi-GPU, the idea that you can set & forget your drivers on a global level has become antiquated. These features deserve to be used, and custom application profiles are the most efficient way of using them.

For more than 4 years now I’ve asked AMD for this feature – in meetings and in articles – but it hasn’t been something where we’ve seen eye-to-eye. AMD made some progress in 2010 with the introduction of Catalyst Application Profiles (CAP) to distribute out of band profile updates, and while CAP was a big step forward for AMD, the C I was looking for was custom. Tools like Radeon Pro have filled the gap in the meantime, but it’s never the same thing as having such functionality built into the driver itself, especially when 3^rd party tools will never have the reach of 1^st party tools.

With Catalyst 12.1 AMD is finally taking application profiles to their logical extension by allowing for custom application profiles, and I couldn’t be happier. As is the case with NVIDIA, AMD is allowing users to create new application profiles and to modify the application profiles distributed through drivers and CAP updates. This not only includes settings traditionally available through the driver, but for the first time AMD is opening up CrossFire – you can now force various CrossFire modes by using a custom profile.

Breaking things down a bit, if you have used NVIDIA’s custom profiles in the past then you should find the functionality nearly the same. All of AMD’s control panel settings can be saved to a custom profile which will then be used alongside the game the profile is for. For example this allows for forcing MSAA in Starcraft II or clamping tessellation factors in HAWX 2 without the need to set (and then unset) these features at a global level. If you’re an image quality purist, and particularly if you’ve spent a significant amount of money on GPUs to achieve this, then the value of custom profiles cannot be understated.

As for multi-GPU users, they will be the other significant group to benefit from custom profiles. Previously if you wished to force CrossFire on an unsupported application you needed to rename the executable to match a game AMD had a profile for, and then hope that specific CF mode worked. With custom profiles AMD is enabling several different CF modes: default (which uses whatever CF profile AMD has defined for the game), AFR Friendly (forced AFR), Optimize 1x1, and Use AMD Pre-define Profile, which allows a custom profile to have a CF mode from another game mapped to it (similar to NVIDIA’s SLI compatibility bits). Even disabling CF on a per-profile basis is an option here, though we found that it suffers from the same quirk that NVIDIA’s implementation does: the second GPU is decoupled but CF isn’t actually disabled, so games that can detect CF (such as Crysis) will follow their AFR friendly render paths as they still see CF enabled.

At this point all of the necessary functionality is present and accounted for, and in our tests we’ve found it to work without any hitches. AMD is finally at parity with NVIDIA in providing this small but crucial feature.

With that said, while AMD has done a great job implementing the functionality of custom application profiles the interface could use some further work. The whole implementation still feels like it’s been shoehorned into AMD’s existing 3D Applications Setting panel; AMD doesn’t sufficiently separate the concept of global and custom profile settings, as you use the same control panel to make changes to both types of settings. It’s possible (and likely) that you’ll accidentally set your global settings at least once when trying to save a custom profile.

Furthermore whereas NVIDIA uses application detection to pre-populate a list of profiles, AMD has no such detection. In order to create a profile you need to first select your settings in the 3D Application Settings panel and then save those settings to a new profile, a process that involves hunting down the executable of the game. Of course NVIDIA’s detection system isn’t perfect and you’ll have to follow a similar process at times, but if you have a large Steam library you’ll appreciate not having to drill down through several directories to find the right executable for each game.

Once a custom profile has been set however, AMD actually has a second panel that lists all of the custom profiles and their settings, and allows you to delete them. Note that this is just a listing of custom profiles, so pre-defined profiles continue to remain hidden. Custom and pre-defined profiles play well together for the most part, although if you create a custom profile for a game that already has a pre-defined profile AMD will warn you that the custom profile will override the pre-defined profile.

Overall if you’re a previous NVIDIA user who has missed custom application profiles you should be quite content with AMD’s latest addition. Otherwise if you’ve never had the opportunity to use custom application profiles before then you’re in for a treat.

Rounding out the changes to the Catalyst Control Center, along with the addition of custom application profiles AMD has also made some minor tweaks to the Video Color and Video Quality control panels. There’s no new functionality to speak of, but they have been tweaked to simplify their use.

Finally, outside of the CCC AMD has also added a couple new features to their driver, along with some specific performance enhancements. 3D users will find that quad-buffer (gaming) 3D finally works in conjunction with CrossFire, while TV users will find that AMD now supports frame-packed 3D over HDMI at 1080p30, on top of their existing support for 1080p24 and 720p60. A quick check of the HDMI specification lists frame-packed 1080p30 as an optional (secondary) resolution, but it’s there for the TVs that support it. Meanwhile for performance AMD is still hard at work on Skyrim; 6900 series users can look forward to up to 10% better performance in Skyrim when using MSAA alongside CrossFire.
 

Update: Released. http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst121Previewdriver.aspx

In two deals announced late last week, Verizon Wireless has expanded its spectrum holdings through deals that will give it control over various frequencies, almost all in the AWS space. This in the same week that AT&T had the door nearly entirely shut on them in their efforts to merge with T-Mobile. Though AT&T touted its desire to increase competition, produce more jobs in the United States and provide more and better services for its customers, spectrum was the real target of this acquisition. Ever hungry mobile data customers are the drive for bandwidth, and falling short of meeting your customers needs can be costly to a provider (just ask AT&T). There are several techniques that can be deployed for encoding more bits into each wave, but ask a firefighter what he wants to help fight a fire. More hoses will be the answer everytime, and in wireless that means more spectrum.

Where We Are, Where We're Going

Remember this guy? When Brian spent some time clarifying the HSPA+ state of the HP Veer 4G, he discussed modulation schemes used in current mobile data networks. The most efficient scheme currently in use is 64QAM, which provides enough density to encode a 6 digit binary number into a single wave. The ability to discern similar points in a QAM constellation becomes harder as they become more dense, and with HSPA+ and LTE we are approaching the limits of how spectrally efficient we can be. Going back to our firefighter analogy, firehose comes in various diameters. The larger the diameter, the harder the hose is to control. Implementing 128QAM would add another bit to each Hz, but increase the burden on each radio to discern between increasingly dense points on the plot. 

What's next then? LTE-Advanced will fulfill the true potential promised by 4G mobile broadband networks, and will do so through a more crowded and complex arrangement than we have now. Right now, your phone is picking up signals from, most likely, more than one cell tower owned by or servicing your network provider. These towers serve many customers over a wide geographic area, and are referred to as macrocells. Your phone utilizes the tower that will provide it the fastest and most reliable connection, and this determination is made using several factors including interference from other nearby towers. If you are lucky, your phone will have (if supported) a MIMO connection with low SNR resulting in a high speed, low latency connection. 

In Qualcomm's LTE-Advanced scheme, users would be served by a heterogenous network of relay basestations and pico- and femtocells, all operating together to provide fast mobile data that can service ever more customers at once. Unlike the macrocells, these small cells are distributed in an ad hoc manner, being placed in hotspots or coverage gaps. We've seen some of this in the deployment of picocells within AT&T and Apple stores in congested areas. It isn't enough to deploy these cells, though; it also becomes necessary to coordinate their operation with the macrocells, and this is the next step. 

Verizon currently operates their network in a 22MHz chunk of the 700MHz spectrum, this is divvied up in a frequency duplexed scheme with 10MHz for downstream, 10MHz for upstream, and two 1MHz chunks at the sides. This all fits nicely with LTE's ability to use varying sized channels, in this case 10MHz serves upstream and downstream fine. Lower frequencies propagate through buildings better, so 700MHz is beneficial in urban areas where customers might not get any signal from higher frequency towers.

Now, add in some lower power small cells throughout the range of a single macrocell. Many of these smaller cells will be within buildings, or covering outdoor hotspots (think Times Square and Madison Square Garden). Those smaller cells don't necessarily need to worry about building penetration as they are either outdoors or already within the building they're trying to serve. As a result,  that 700MHz frequency becomes less important, though they may still operate on them. Now, add in some of the channels that Verizon is acquiring; particularly a 20MHz chunk of AWS in Minneapolis, MN. Imagine that the whole channel is added for downstream operation. You now have multiple cells, with several channels to choose from, all operating in one geographic area. And that's just for LTE, the PCS spectrum they acquired could be added to their 3G and telephony networks for enhanced voice service and fallback data. One more picture to look at. 

Those 20MHz chunks are where LTE really shines. By moving to 20MHz channels, current generation (Cat. 2) devices could more regularly hit their bandwidth limits of 50Mbps and next gen devices (Cat. 3/4) could jump to 100-150Mbps. 

The New Land Grab, Spectrum Acquisitions

Now let's breakdown the two deals Verizon's made, and hope will get approved. Cricket Wireless is a regional operator that provides cellular services on spectrum it owns or leases within a given market. This is similar to ClearWire, though Cricket provides telephony services along with data services. Cricket, like ClearWire, intends to move to LTE and wants some of that coveted 700MHz spectrum. It just so happens, Verizon has 12MHz it isn't using in Block A of the 700MHz spectrum covering the Chicago area. So, Cricket gets 12MHz of building penetrating frequencies in the 3rd largest metropolitan region in the US, and Verizon gets 23 PCS and 13 AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) licenses in markets spread across the US. Since each chunk is regional, this won't mean that Verizon will have dozens of 20MHz channels blanketing the whole country, but with this deal alone they will have many 20MHz channels over many markets.

And what's so good about AWS? Mainly, it's available. AWS exists in the microwave spectrum, with downstream bandwidth provided between 2110MHz and 2155MHz, and upstream bandwidth provided between 1710MHz and 1755MHz. It was first put up for auction in 2006, and was almost entirely scooped up by T-Mobile for its 3G network. 

The key to this deal is that Cricket isn't actually doing anything with these channels, nor is Verizon doing anything with their 12MHz. The FCC generally frowns on deals that will adversely affect customers of a service. So if Cricket were giving up their only operating frequency in Fresno, CA, there might be some push-back. As it is, the FCC shouldn't have anything to complain about. Indeed, by exchanging 700MHz spectrum they are basically creating an honest to goodness competitor in the Chicago area. And just to bear out how important these AWS acquistions are, Verizon is also throwing in $100 million to help build out Cricket's LTE network. 

Spectrum Co. is a joint venture between Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House, and was formed to manage a large portfolio of spectrum that could be used by the wired telcos to branch out into wireless services. The venture went nowhere, and it seems the trio is ready to cash out. So, for $3.6 billion Verizon will be purchasing 122 AWS licenses that undoubtedly cover some of the largest markets in the US. This won't be a straight sale, either. Verizon is essentially entering a partnership with Spectrum Co. that will enable them to directly sell Verizon services, or purchase them wholesale for use under their own branding. 

Since all 122 of these licenses were being unused, the FCC won't be concerned about a loss of service to customers. What might strike some alarms is the notion that the largest cable telcos are going to be locked into offering only one wireless provider's services. This is obviously a strategic win for Verizon, but might be looked down on by regulators. It will be curious to see whether this is the end of Verizon's buying spree, there's only so much spectrum out there. 

And AT&T? AT&T is awaiting approval from the FCC on their purchase of Qualcomm's MediaFLO 700 MHz spectrum. Qualcomm having bowed out of the mobile TV business is letting this slice of spectrum sit idle, so this deal should be approved any day now. The purchase of T-Mobile is a different story altogether. Though becoming the number one wireless provider in America has its appeal, the acquisition of spectrum is the driving force behind this deal. Combining AT&T's block of 700 MHz spectrum with T-Mobile's nationwide AWS spectrum would boost their LTE competitiveness. Mergers of this type receive thorough evaluation from technical, legal, consumer and anti-competitive perspectives. In their recent Staff Report, the FCC opined that while AT&T's competitiveness will improve, the merger will negatively affect the public and lead to higher prices. The release of this report succeeded AT&T and T-Mobile withdrawing their application with the FCC, after Chairman Genachowski requested that the merger be put through a hearing to determine approval. AT&T will continue their merger efforts with the Department of Justice, in the hopes that a positive result there could sway the FCC in a future submission. So overall, it looks a little grim at AT&T right now.

Wrap-up

LTE isn't going to get too much better at using the spectrum we feed it. To that end, if more and more customers are going to be demanding more and more mobile data, the only solution is to feed the beast. Verizon had a headstart with the first US LTE network, which celebrated its first birthday the other day. Now Verizon is taking the next step and, should the AT&T/T-Mobile merger fall through, may end up with a commanding lead in LTE spectrum. What remains to be seen is how this will play out for the consumer. If wireless providers follow the lead of their wired kin, we could end up with high prices to take advantage of this high performance. That sounds logical, until you see how poorly US broadband speeds scale with their price; $200 for 105 Mbps just isn't balanced against $42 for 1.5 Mbps.

We discussed the availability of AMD branded memory modules earlier this month, but today AMD is officially unveiling information on their memory platform. There are a few major questions many will have: why is AMD entering the memory market at all, and what do they hope to offer that we can’t already get from other vendors? Let’s take those in turns.

The reason for AMD’s entry into the memory market comes from two areas. First, AMD’s APUs are now shipping in large volumes and can definitely benefit from higher bandwidth memory modules. We’ve already shown the sort of performance scaling you can get from an A8-3850 with higher clocked DRAM, but many people buy A-series APUs as part of a prebuilt system, and right now lots of OEMs are still cutting corners on the RAM and using DDR3-1333. That’s the second aspect of the move: AMD wants to enable a [buzzword alert!] “holistic customer platform experience”, and they may be able to help drive down costs for AMD platforms. A final element AMD mentions is a desire to drive and enable future memory product developments.

The other item to discuss is what AMD offers that we may not already have. Here the distinction between AMD branded memory and other options isn’t quite so clear, but AMD will be doing testing and validation in their labs using AMD platforms. AMD also notes that they will not be using any ETT (Effectively TesTed) or gray market RAM. The latter is used as a term to collectively group hardware that may be less desirable; as an example, Intel unboxed CPUs are “gray market” because they are intended for OEM use but can still end up being sold at retail. Basically, gray market parts would cut out some of the supply channel (in the example just cited, gray box processors typically cut out AMD/Intel and only have a short warranty from the seller). ETT parts on the other hand are a way of cutting costs by skipping branding; the RAM is still tested and is supposed to be high quality, but without branding it’s one small way to reduce costs. Generally speaking, ETT memory is destined for value RAM modules, so basically AMD is saying is that their AMD RAM will start out a step above value RAM. AMD also states that they will take end-to-end ownership of the AMD Memory ecosystem, working with module manufacturers, memory partners, IC partners, distributors, and VARs (value added resellers).

With that out of the way, let’s discuss the specifics of what AMD Memory will be available and the target markets. Here’s a slide from AMD’s presentation summarizing things:

 As you would expect from any memory, the AMD RAM will work with both AMD and Intel platforms; the main difference between the tiers will be the speed and packaging. Entertainment Edition memory will target the mainstream/value segment, come in single 2GB and 4GB DIMM packages, and is rated for CL9 operation at DDR3-1333 and/or DDR3-1600; Entertainment Edition memory is already available, starting in October. The Performance Edition memory should start shipping this month, and it will come in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB capacities (these are presumably two-DIMM kits with 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB total capacities; Bulldozer could potentially use four-DIMM kits). The main difference with Performance Edition memory is that it is rated for CL8 operation at DDR3-1333/1600 speeds. Last is the Radeon Edition memory, which will come in 4GB and 8GB kits and offer DDR3-1866 and up to DDR3-2133 support with CL9 operation (and presumably CL7/8 operation at lower speeds). The Radeon Edition parts will also have support for overclocking via AMD OverDrive software; availability is expected in Jan/Feb 2012.

So what does all of this really mean? That’s the difficult part. If all AMD memory supported speeds of at least DDR3-1600, that would be a clear break from the current offerings, but the press release indicates that there will be both DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 parts. The upgrade to DDR3-1600 provides a significant performance increase; we linked our Llano A8-3850 article above showing some of our own results, but here are some charts of our testing along with AMD’s results:

AMD shows up to a 20% performance increase in their testing by upgrading from DDR3-1333 to DDR3-1600, while our own results show an average increase in performance of around 14% across seven tested games (with a range of improvement of around 8% to 41%). Should you choose to spring for faster DDR3-1866 memory (or just overclock some decent DDR3-1600 RAM), the average performance increase is around 20% and up to 40% in some cases (or as low as 8% in Civ5). This isn’t too surprising as the AMD Fusion GPUs are significantly faster than competing solutions and the combination of shared memory bandwidth with the rest of the platform along with generally slower memory speeds (compared to dedicated GPUs) is a double-whammy. So why would AMD continue to sell anything less than DDR3-1600? Your guess is as good as mine.

Several of us have chatted about the AMD Memory announcement, and really we’re not quite sure if this is necessary or useful. If it means systems with better quality and higher performance RAM at the same price, that would be a good thing, but the persistence of DDR3-1333 for desktop parts doesn’t jive with that goal. What’s more, RAM prices are already incredibly low, so AMD entering a commodity market doesn’t appear to be a good way to improve the bottom line.

AMD’s first partners for their branded memory initiative are Patriot Memory and VisionTek, with Patriot being a familiar name to memory shoppers and VisionTek known for their graphics products. There’s nothing inherently wrong with AMD branded memory, but unless the price is lower than existing options (e.g. AMD mentions bundles as something we’re likely to see), there’s also not much that it adds to the market. For now, we’ll stick with recommending you buy RAM that will supports at least DDR3-1600 speeds if you’re buying a Llano (or future APU) system; whether that memory is AMD branded or otherwise will likely be far less important than how much the memory costs for the desired level of performance.

Passively cooled high performance GPUs are quite popular with the HTPC community. NVIDIA GPUs are preferred by many HTPC users because of good software support (LAV CUVID, for example) and the ability to use custom renderers like madVR without losing out on hardware decode acceleration. I have already covered this in detail in a previous piece.

A look at the list of passively cooled GPUs on Newegg reveals that higher end NVIDIA GPUs are not represented well. In fact, we have a number of GT 430 and GT 520 passive models, but only one GT 440 model. On the other hand, AMD's GPUs seem to be quite popular in this space. We have a large number of 6450s. There are two models each of the 6570 and 6670. The 6750, 6770 and even the 6850 have one passively cooled model each.

Zotac is trying to level the playing field here with the introduction of a passively cooled GTS 450.

The GTS 450 Zone Edition comes with a GTS 450 GPU (192 shaders) underclocked to 600 MHz / 1200 MHz. The 128-bit 1 GB DDR3 memory runs at 1333 MHz. Unlike other GTS 450 units, this one will not require a PCI-E power connector. The GTS 450 Zone Edition will have a MSRP of 99 Euros in the EU (with the pricing in the NA market yet to be determined). The unit is currently shipping to retailers and is expected to be out on sale in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Given that even the NVIDIA GT 5xx models seem to be looking a bit dated right now, we asked Zotac as to why this cooling mechanism wasn't put on one of the more recent NVIDIA GPUs. It appears that the thermal limitations of passive cooling required underclocking which NVIDIA wouldn't allow on the 500 series.  We are sure this will turn out to be better than the GT 430 models we have been recommending for HTPC use so far (particularly if you want to use madVR with 1080i60 streams). Will the lower speed DDR3 memory and core clock speeds hurt it when compared to the passively cooled GT440 (for HTPC purposes) ? We will know as soon as the card hits the market.

We’re here on the USS Hornet attending NVIDIA’s GeForce LAN 6 event, where NVIDIA has just finished a kick-off keynote and product announcement between rounds of gaming. While NVIDIA has held LAN parties in the past, they don’t traditionally use them to announce new products. But the reality of the GPU product cycle is that with Kepler due in 2012 NVIDIA won’t be launching any major new consumer GPUs this fall, so instead the fall is being dedicated to their ecosystem products and GeForce LAN 6 is being used as the launch event for those products. So while today’s announcement isn’t a new GPU, it is still quite relevant to gaming.

This evening at GeForce LAN 6 NVIDIA has announced a pair of technologies: 3D Vision 2 glasses, and 3D LightBoost. The 3D Vision 2 glasses are the long awaited replacement for NVIDIA’s earlier 3D Vision wireless glasses, and feature a new fit and larger lenses. Meanwhile 3D LightBoost is an interesting monitor adaptation that increases the amount of light that get through NVIDIA's 3D Vision glasses by turning a monitor's backlight off and on to allow the glasses to stay open longer. The two are being introduced tonight as complementary technologies.

A while after the iPhone 4S announcement, I posted a piece on the iPhone 4S' cellular architecture and talked about the new inclusion of HSPA+ alongside CDMA2000 1x/EVDO and some specifications. Since then, there's been some ongoing confusion about whether the device supports HSPA+, whether it's "4G," and just what all that really means. 

It's funny because this issue came up with the HP Veer 4G on AT&T a while back, and with that particular device I did a similar explanatory article in the context of a This Just In post. I wager the somewhat limited cross shopping (and commercial success of the Veer) resulted in many iOS users missing that discussion, and it's cropping up again for the iPhone 4S. The confusion is really twofold. First is a misunderstanding about 3GPP releases and what features are optional or mandatory. Second is a misunderstanding about HSDPA, HSUPA, and modulation coding schemes. Let's break it down. 

UMTS standards are defined by an organization known as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which is a body comprised of partners like telecommunications companies, wireless carriers, and cellular hardware manufacturers. Standards are important, and their formation requires collaboration and discussion. Major revisions are finalized, synchronized, and become "releases." For example the first releases define GSM, release 99 defines UMTS, release 5 defines HSDPA, 6 defines HSUPA, 7 - HSPA+, 8 - LTE, and 10 - LTE Advanced.

This is a huge oversimplification, but you can see how major milestones are bundled up and become releases, and thus when baseband manufacturers like Infineon, Qualcomm, or ST-E release hardware, they're said to be compliant with a given release, and inherit the big features from releases before it. 

Where confusion arises is that you don't need to include every feature from some release to say that your hardware is compatible with a given release, and really only features from release 99 are mandatory if you're out to make some UMTS hardware. So when a baseband is "HSPA+" (which really is a colloquial name for the improvements to HSPA made in 3GPP release 7), it doesn't need to include every last feature. Features included in release 7 include things like reduced signaling, faster call setup, continuous packet connectivity, reworked RCC states (idle, DCH, FACH, e.t.c), MIMO, and higher order modulation support. On the downlink, 64QAM or MIMO gets added, and on the uplink, 16QAM gets added. 

The confusion in the case of many HSDPA 14.4 (Category 10) devices seems to center on whether it is or isn't HSPA+ if it doesn't include 64QAM support on the downlink (which starts in category 13). This is one of those few times that looking at the Wikipedia table for HSDPA UE categories can be misleading. UE categories with 64QAM are introduced in 3GPP release 7, however it's up to manufacturers to include or not include that feature when actually making hardware. It's interesting to me that all of this misinformation comes up over HSDPA UE category, and somehow HSUPA UE category never gets brought up - I haven't seen anyone claiming that some baseband isn't HSPA+ because it excludes 16QAM on the uplink, yet the overwhelming majority of devices are just using QPSK. 

Apple hasn't stated what baseband is in the iPhone 4S (and I guess we won't know absolutely for certain until it gets opened up), but it is almost without doubt MDM6600 just like the Verizon iPhone 4. The specs all line up, and while that part doesn't include 64QAM on the downlink, it does include a number of the other HSPA+ features I've mentioned, and is thus 3GPP Rel.7 and therefore "HSPA+." 

Actually using these higher orders of modulation requires favorable radio conditions, of course, and the result is that 64QAM on the downlink or 16QAM on the uplink only gets used in very well tuned systems or cell center. There have been some drive tests done which have shown that 64QAM only really gets used 10% of the time on average. In the iPhone 4S' case here in the USA, it's silly to argue about whether or not the phone can decode 64QAM if AT&T doesn't even use it. A few Samsung devices so far have been based on ST-E's Thor 5730 HSDPA 21.1/Category 14 baseband, and include an engineering menu which shows the percentage of frames encoded using QPSK, 16QAM, or 64QAM. 

Note that 64Q is 0. I have run many other tests where 16Q is 100.

I've shown a few other interested people how to see this menu on the Samsung Infuse 4G on AT&T, and thus far none of them has seen any 64QAM frames show up. I've never seen 64QAM pop up either, even with line of sight to the tower in the middle of the night. Those markets include my own in Tucson, AZ, and New York City, which are both AT&T "4G" markets (connoting HSPA+ with improved backhaul) on the coverage viewer. Two data points isn't enough to say conclusively that AT&T isn't using 64QAM, but I haven't seen it yet. You can also see this on video from an Infuse in NYC. Not all AT&T WCDMA "3G" markets are HSPA+, but if you're in a market that AT&T has marked with dark blue (and calls "4G") you can be pretty much assured it's HSPA+.

So the next question is when HSPA+ is and isn't real 4G, and obviously the bar right now is LTE. We've gone over all the real ITU decisions and such in our LTE piece, (whose definition does include DC-HSPA+ and LTE instead of previously just LTE Advanced) but what matters is actual throughput. There's credibility to HSPA+ being comparable to LTE speed as soon as DC-HSPA comes around which aggregates together two 5 MHz WCDMA channels. With all the same features (MIMO, 64QAM, and wider channel bandwidth), DC-HSPA+ gets you approximately to the level of theoretical maximum throughput you can get on LTE. It's easy to see how things are arguably fairly comparable when you consider Verizon uses 10 MHz FDD, and DC-HSPA+ aggregates together two 5 MHz WCDMA channels. Throw in MIMO in addition to just dual-carrier, and maximum theoretical throughput lines up pretty closely as shown in this table by Qualcomm:

That's saying nothing about network latency, however, where LTE will continue to outshine HSPA+. In that case, it does arguably make sense to associate DC-HSPA+ with real LTE and call it real 4G, but until DC-HSPA+ or at least HSPA+ with MIMO it is almost without doubt still 3G. Obviously USA carriers' attempts to pass off HSPA+ 14.4 or even 21.1 as "4G" is immediately laughable marketing, but DC-HSPA+ is arguably real 4G.

Lastly, rumor has it that AT&T and Apple are "working together" to change the 3G status indicator to "4G" for AT&T in the US, a move that would mark the first carrier intrusion into the otherwise completely carrier-untouched iOS. I don't have issue with the status indicators showing H or H+ (for HSPA and HSPA+ when appropriate), but misleading indicators do nobody justice and just serve to reinforce these kinds of misconceptions. 

Western Digital jumped on to the local media streaming bandwagon quite early in the game. With better codec compatibility and a more stable platform compared to other vendors, the WDTV lineup caught the imagination of the consumers. Over the last few years (coinciding with the rise of Netflix), US consumers have tended to prefer over the top streaming solutions. Recognizing this trend, Western Digital has been strengthening their media streamers portfolio with the appropriate features.

Today, Western Digital is introducing the latest addition to their WDTV lineup, the new WD TV Live Streaming Media Player. Its roots (in terms of both hardware and firmware) seem to lie in the WDTV Live Hub which received praise from us last year. The industrial design has been updated, and the main hardware addition seems to be the integrated wireless network capability. The internal hard drive has been removed. Local media streaming compatibility seems to be retained.

Like the Roku 2 XS, the new WD TV Live has support for single band (2.4 GHz) 802.11n wireless only. However, the network port is Gigabit. Also, Western Digital PR claims that the new WD TV Live (as well as the WDTV Live Hub) supports 1080p video along with Dolby Digital Plus audio for selected Netflix titles. This is something we hope to evaluate and report back soon.

The new premium service making an appearance in the WD TV Live (as well as the Hub) is Spotify. As the PR reproduced below shows, the unit offers the full Spotify experience including account management and the social features (such as sending songs to your friend's inbox). In addition to YouTube, the new media player (as well as the WDTV Live Hub) gains access to DailyMotion, a service quite popular in Europe. The last few firmware releases for the WDTV Live Hub have also brought some simple games like Sudoku and Texas Hold'Em.

Priced at $99.99, this unit seems to cover all the media streaming aspects missed by the Roku 2 XS. It probably doesn't have the fan following of the Roku or the developer support that Roku provides. We also don't have much hope of it solving the DTS-HD MA bitstreaming issue. However, for the general consumer, Western Digital seems to have lined up a winner at a sweet price point (they could have chosen a better name, considering that the WD TV Live was the name given to the second generation player in the WDTV family). Stay tuned for our review of the new WD TV Live Streaming Media Player.

We have covered the powerline networking battle between HomePlug and HomeGrid in a lot of earlier pieces. With demonstration of working silicon at CES 2011, G.hn finally emerged from vaporware territory. Today, Marvell is announcing their first G.hn transceiver chipset, the 88LX3142. Read on for our analysis.

Last week NVIDIA provided an update on its Tegra SoC roadmap. Kal-El, its third generation SoC (likely to launch as Tegra 3) has been delayed by a couple of months. NVIDIA originally expected the first Kal-El tablets would arrive in August, but now it's looking like sometime in Q4. Kal-El's successor, Wayne, has also been pushed back until late 2012/early 2013. In between these two SoCs is a new part dubbed Kal-El+. It's unclear if Kal-El+ will be a process shrink or just higher clocks/larger die on 40nm.

In the smartphone spirit, NVIDIA is letting small tidbits of information out about Kal-El as it gets closer to launch. In February we learned Kal-El would be NVIDIA's first quad-core SoC design, featuring four ARM Cortex A9s (with MPE) behind a 1MB shared L2 cache. Kal-El's GPU would also see a boost to 12 "cores" (up from 8 in Tegra 2), but through architectural improvements would deliver up to 3x the GPU performance of T2. Unfortunately the increase in GPU size and CPU core count doesn't come with a wider memory bus. Kal-El is still stuck with a single 32-bit LPDDR2 memory interface, although max supported data rate increases to 800MHz.

We also learned that NVIDIA was targeting somewhere around an 80mm^2 die, more than 60% bigger than Tegra 2 but over 30% smaller than the A5 in Apple's iPad 2. NVIDIA told us that although the iPad 2 made it easier for it to sell a big SoC to OEMs, it's still not all that easy to convince manufacturers to spend more on a big SoC.

Clock speeds are up in the air but NVIDIA is expecting Kal-El to run faster than Tegra 2. Based on competing A9 designs, I'd expect Kal-El to launch somewhere around 1.3 - 1.4GHz.

Now for the new information. Power consumption was a major concern with the move to Kal-El but NVIDIA addressed that by allowing each A9 in the SoC to be power gated when idle. When a core is power gated it is effectively off, burning no dynamic power and leaking very little. Tegra 2 by comparison couldn't power gate individual cores, only the entire CPU island itself.

In lightly threaded situations where you aren't using all of Kal-El's cores, the idle ones should simply shut off (if NVIDIA has done its power management properly of course). Kal-El is built on the same 40nm process as Tegra 2, so when doing the same amount of work the quad-core chip shouldn't consume any more power.

Power gating idle cores allows Kal-El to increase frequency to remaining active cores resulting in turbo boost-like operation (e.g. 4-cores active at 1.2GHz or 2-cores at 1.5GHz, these are hypothetical numbers of course). Again, NVIDIA isn't talking about final clocks for Kal-El or dynamic frequency ranges.

Five Cores, Not Four

Courtesy NVIDIA

Finally we get to the big news. There are actually five ARM Cortex A9s with MPE on a single Kal-El die: four built using TSMC's 40nm general purpose (G) process and one on 40nm low power (LP). If you remember back to our Tegra 2 review you'll know that T2 was built using a similar combination of transistors; G for the CPU cores and LP for the GPU and everything else. LP transistors have very low leakage but can't run at super high frequencies, G transistors on the other hand are leaky but can switch very fast. Update: To clarify, TSMC offers a 40nm LPG process that allows for an island of G transistors in a sea of LP transistors. This is what NVIDIA appears to be using in Kal-El, and what NV used in Tegra 2 prior.

The five A9s can't all be active at once, you either get 1 - 4 of the GP cores or the lone LP core. The GP cores and the LP core are on separate power planes.

NVIDIA tells us that the sole point of the LP Cortex A9 is to provide lower power operation when your device is in active standby (e.g. screen is off but the device is actively downloading new emails, tweets, FB updates, etc... as they come in). The LP core runs at a lower voltage than the GP cores and can only clock at up to 500MHz. As long as the performance state requested by the OS/apps isn't higher than a predetermined threshold, the LP core will service those needs. Even with your display on it's possible for the LP core to be active, so long as the performance state requested by the OS/apps isn't too high.

Courtesy NVIDIA

Once it crosses that threshold however, the LP core is power gated and state is moved over to the array of GP cores. As I mentioned earlier, both CPU islands can't be active at the same time - you only get one or the other. All five cores share the same 1MB L2 cache so memory coherency shouldn't be difficult to work out.

Android isn't aware of the fifth core, it only sees up to 4 at any given time. NVIDIA accomplishes this by hotplugging the cores into the scheduler. The core OS doesn't have to be modified or aware of NVIDIA's 4+1 arrangement (which it calls vSMP). NVIDIA's CPU governor code defines the specific conditions that trigger activating cores. For example, under a certain level of CPU demand the scheduler will be told there's only a single core available (the companion core). As the workload increases, the governor will sleep the companion core and enable the first GP core. If the workload continues to increase, subsequent cores will be made available to the scheduler. Similarly if the workload decreases, the cores will be removed from the scheduling pool one by one.

Courtesy NVIDIA

NVIDIA can switch between the companion and main cores in under 2ms. There's also logic to prevent wasting time flip flopping between the LP and GP cores for workloads that reside on the trigger threshold.

NVIDIA expects pretty much all active work to be done on the quad-core GP array, it's really only when your phone is idle and dealing with background tasks that the LP core will be in use. As a result of this process dichotomy NVIDIA is claiming significant power improvements over Tegra 2, despite an increase in transistor count:

Courtesy NVIDIA

NVIDIA isn't talking about GPU performance today but it did reveal a few numbers in a new white paper:

Courtesy NVIDIA

We don't have access to the benchmarks here but everything was run on Android 3.2 at 1366 x 768 with identical game settings. The performance gains are what NVIDIA has been promising, in the 2 - 3x range. Obviously we didn't run any of these tests ourselves so approach with caution.

Final Words

What sold NVIDIA's Tegra 2 wasn't necessarily its architecture, but timing and the fact that it was Google's launch platform for Honeycomb. If the rumors are correct, NVIDIA isn't the launch partner for Ice Cream Sandwich, which means Kal-El has to stand on its own as a convincing platform.

Courtesy NVIDIA

The vSMP/companion core architecture is a unique solution to the problem of increasing SoC performance while improving battery life. This is a step towards heterogenous multiprocessing, despite the homogenous implementation in Kal-El. It remains to be seen how tangible is the companion core's impact on real world battery life.

In a private media event this week Corsair unveiled its latest contribution to the PC industry: gaming keyboards, mice and headsets. All of these new peripherals fall under the Vengeance brand. The motivation behind this move is simple: starting with memory and eventually expanding into power supplies, SSDs and cases, Corsair wants to be your one-stop shop for nearly everything you need for your PC. The CPU, motherboard and video card markets are either impossible to get into or undesirable for a manufacturer that doesn't already play in those spaces, leaving peripherals as one of the only options for expansion.

Traditionally companies avoided getting into the peripheral space because you have to compete with very wealthy and experienced competitors: Logitech and Microsoft. With Logitech trying to expand into other areas beyond peripherals it appears that Corsair is hoping that its competitor will lose a bit of its focus. Whether or not this works out for Corsair remains to be seen, but let's look at the products.

Vengeance Headsets

Corsair has dabbled in headsets already but with the Vengeance brand it expands the line considerably. Starting this October the company will offer three different Vengeance headsets priced from $39 up to $99.

The Vengeance 1500 is the top end SKU with two 50mm drivers, simulated 7.1 surround sound and USB support (integrated audio codec). The 1300 is the same as the 1500 but substitutes in a 1/8" stereo plug instead of USB.

The 1100 is a lighter design that uses 40mm drivers but with USB support.

Vengeance Keyboards & Mice

The entire Vengeance peripheral lineup is targeted at gamers. Start focused and expand beyond there seems to be the strategy. Corsair's initial keyboard & mice offerings are targeted at two genres of games: MMO/RTS and FPS. All of the Vengeance keyboards & mice feature an aluminum construction.

The MMO/RTS targeted products are called the Vengeance K90 and M90. The K-series are for keyboards while the M-series refer to mice. The K90 is backlit with over 90 individual LEDs (almost one behind every key). It uses Cherry MX mechanical red switches for each key which have a 2mm actuation travel (4mm total travel). There's no accompanying click sound with these keys, they have a nice linear but springy travel to them. The Cherry MX red switches apparently require the least amount of force to actuate out of their entire lineup of switches. Corsair claims the keyboard will recognize up to 20 simultaneous keystrokes.

The MMO/RTS focus comes in with the K90's 18 customizable macro keys. You can switch between three different sets of macros, for a total of 54 total macros. The macros are defined using Corsair's Vengeance gaming software.

The corresponding mouse is the M90:

The M90 uses an Avago ADNS-9500 5700 DPI laser sensor. The mouse has 9 customizable side buttons.

On the FPS side there are the K60 and M60. Let's start with the K60:

The aluminum chassis and Cherry MX red mechanical switches are both present, but the individual key lights are gone as are the macro keys. The K60 instead ships with a removable wrist wrest (which is actually quite comfortable) and easily removable, textured WASD and 1-6 number keys. When not in use, the textured keys can be stored in the wrist wrest. The feel of each keypress remains the same as the K90, but the macro keys are gone and the styling of the K60 is a bit different.

The M60 mouse includes a sniper button that allows you to quickly switch between high and low DPI modes (customizable in software).

Final Words

I had some brief hands on time with all of the newly announced Vengeance peripherals, they all felt good but it'll take much longer than a short play session to really evaluate these things. I'm mostly curious to see how well these things do in the hands of hardcore gamers. Does Corsair have what it takes to pull customers away from the likes of Logitech, Microsoft and Razer?

Corsair's new Vengeance lineup will be available starting next month.

This afternoon (and yesterday) we had a chance to meet with a number of SoC vendors who have partnered with Microsoft for Windows 8. Each of them has their own individual reference tablet running Windows 8, and today we had a chance to survey the landscape and get photos of all the tablets. We started with ARM, then looked at x86 based tablets. Of course, the real goal with Windows 8 is to abstract as much of the difference between these two platforms away. 

Unfortunately, all of the ARM vendors were required to keep their tablets under glass and out of the way of physical contact per Microsoft instruction. Microsoft isn't ready to show off the ARM version of Windows 8 for a variety of reasons at this point (at least without a Microsoft rep. present), but we still got a chance to at least take a look at what there is now. Microsoft is encouraging tablet makers to target either a 10.1" or 11.6" form factor with 1366x768 resolution (ed: Metro will require 1024x768 as a minimum, so 1280x720 displays don't meet Microsoft's requirements).

Texas Instruments

First up is TI, whose development platform was demoed playing back the 1080p30 H.264 baseline video shown in the keynote fluidly in windows media player with a split-screen view. One tablet displayed the start menu, another displayed two split screen games. TI's development platform as shown right now is running on OMAP 4430, which again consists of two ARM Cortex A9s at 1.0 GHz and PowerVR SGX 540 graphics. Windows 8 won't launch on OMAP 4430, however, instead it'll launch on the more powerful OMAP 4470 platform with PowerVR SGX544 graphics and a 2D display compositor. The reason is partly due to SGX544 having full Direct3D 9.3 compliance, partly because it's an all around faster platform. I'm told that right now there's some Direct3D emulation going on as well for all the SoCs that don't support Direct3D 9.3. 

I also recorded a short video showing the TI Windows 8 tablet in action.

Qualcomm

My next stop was Qualcomm, whose current development tablet runs on an MSM8660 SoC, which consists of two scorpion cores and Adreno 220 graphics. Qualcomm took the tablet out of the glass box for us and showed a quick demonstration of the start menu scrolling back and forth, and the IE10 mobile view working and scrolling around. 

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to shoot video of the tablet while that demo was running, but we did grab some photos of the tablet without the glass box. Performance on the start menu looked to be above 30fps the whole time but not buttery smooth like the x86 tablets we've seen so far.

Just like TI, Qualcomm won't go to market with the SoC they're demonstrating Windows 8 working on today, instead they'll use the more powerful dual core Krait MSM8960 at first and quad core Krait APQ8064 later on. Dual core krait SoCs (eg 8960, 8270, 8260A) come with Adreno 225, quad core krait (APQ8064 and others) come with Adreno 320, both of which are Direct3D 9.3. 

NVIDIA

We've seen NVIDIA's Kal-El quad-core A9 based tablet a few times now, and found it out on the floor, also behind glass. Unlike the other vendors, NVIDIA hasn't said anything about going to market for Windows 8 with anything but Kal-El, and I don't see any reason why they should either.

The Kal-El development tablet was seated in a nice looking dock with what looks like one USB 3.0 port and a full size HDMI port.

AMD

Switching over to the x86 camp, we have AMD, who showed us two tablets running on Brazos - the Acer Iconia Tab W500 and MSI WindPad 110W, which use a C-50 and Z-01 APU, respectively. Displays on these are 1280x800 and support capacitive touch just like you'd expect for Windows 8.

Both the MSI WindPad and Iconia Tab felt snappy and responsive running the same Windows 8 Developer Preview build that we've used on the Samsung developer hardware. Subjectively, the WindPad's capacitive panel was more responsive and less prone to errant touch recognition than the Iconia, though both were more than useable with Windows 8. 

Intel

Last but not least is Intel's own development tablet, which is running an unnamed 32nm SoC. Intel was suspiciously silent about which particular SoC was inside this device, and you'll notice that it too is locked down in a plastic box, lumping it squarely in the next-gen SoC category for Microsoft.

It's possible this is Medfield, it's also possible this is some 2nd gen 32nm Atom SoC. Hopefully we'll find out more as Windows 8 starts getting closer to launch. 

At the start of 2011 Lucid announced their Virtu software to go with Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs. With Virtu users would be able to use a discrete GPU and Sandy Bridge’s integrated GPU simultaneously in order to use the features of both GPUs. This normally meant either using a dGPU as the primary GPU while still being able to access Sandy Bridge’s QuickSync (D-mode), or using the iGPU as the primary GPU while having the dGPU power up and render frames to the iGPU when the dGPU’s capabilities were needed (I-Mode).

More recently in June at Computex they announced Virtu Universal. Virtual Universal added support for using Virtu with AMD’s integrated GPUs, and introduced the company’s Virtual Vsync technology for preventing screen tearing without using vsync.

Lucid has continued to work on Virtu since then, and finally at today’s IDF they’re announcing their latest rendition of Virtu: Virtu Universal MVP. Virtu Universal MVP adds Lucid’s latest technology, which the company is calling HyperFormance technology. Lucid is claiming that with HyperFormance they will be able to significantly improve I-mode rendering performance by “removing redundant rendering tasks”, or in essence they will be improving performance by rendering less.

So what exactly is HyperFormance? That’s a great question, and we don’t have a great answer. Lucid has decided to keep the mechanisms of HyperFormance under wraps for patent purposes, so what we have to work with amounts to a very high level overview. In this overview Lucid has made it clear here that the principle feature of HyperFormance is that it’s reducing the rendering workload on the dGPU by intercepting and removing some rendering tasks within a frame. This in turn would reduce input lag by either allowing a GPU to render a frame faster and move on to the next frame, or just hold off entirely until it's closer to a refresh cycle so that the rendered frame is not as old.

The long and short of it is that Lucid seems to have integrated the basis of Hydra – their largely ignored multi-GPU rendering technology – into Virtu, and are using Hydra’s ability to split up drawing commands to remove drawing commands heading to the GPU entirely. The unknown part of the equation is how Lucid is deciding what to remove. Based on what we’ve seen of Hydra it seems unlikely that this is a hidden surface removal technology, in which case it’s more likely that it’s an attempt to calculate and only render parts of an image that have changed from a previous frame – a GPU form of delta/inter-frame compression.

What’s also clear is that HyperFormance goes hand-in-hand with Lucid’s Virtual Vsync technology, which appears to do something like that (as with HyperFormance, they aren’t saying how Virtual Vsync works either). The significance here is that while HyperFormance would be looking at a frame based on draw commands, Virtual Vsync works off of a finished frame. So HyperFormance is getting some kind of feedback for future frames based on Virtual Vsync’s analysis of the completed frames.

Beyond this we know very little about the technology, or more importantly what the pitfalls may be. The immediate concern is that not rendering something could very result in the final composited image being wrong in some manner, or that doing all of this analysis may increase input lag more than a faster framerate decreases it. More interestingly though, because they need to analyze both draw commands and the rendered frame, HyperFormance only works in setups with multiple GPUs (i.e. iGPU + dGPU), as Lucid needs to be able to completely control the input and the output of the dGPU. So I-mode could potentially have less input lag than using just a discrete GPU with V-sync, and Lucid is promising just that. It certainly seems farfetched, but not impossible with the little information we have to work with.

In any case as Lucid has just announced Virtu Universal MVP, HyperFormance is not yet available for testing. Once Lucid makes it available for review it’s definitely something that bears following up on, so stay tuned.

Update: We had a chance to talk to Lucid about HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync in more detail, and have updated our article accordingly. One thing Lucid has made very clear is that while HyperFormance technically improves framerates, this is not the intention of the technology. Indeed it's largely a side effect of the fact that with HyperFormance the GPU is rendering some (or none) of a frame while still reporting to the CPU that the frame has been rendered and the buffers flipped.

The principle purpose of HyperFormance is to reduce input lag, and this is a logical extension of Virtual Vsync - if something is not going to be displayed (e.g. it will be an out of date frame by the time the next buffer flip comes around), why render it? Ultimately what Lucid is doing here is a creative workaround on updating the display without always waiting up to 16ms for a new refresh cycle with v-sync, and an even more creative workaround for the fact that modern GPUs typically have up to several frames in their rendering pipeline. The end goal is to display as new a frame as possible, as waiting for refreshes and having multiple frames in the rendering pipeline both contribute to input lag.

Of course it goes without saying that there are good reasons that modern GPUs have a frame pipeline, and this is primarily to smooth out the framerate so that it doesn't constantly fluctuate (creating a microstutter-like effect) and so that the CPU doesn't end up waiting on the GPU. Lucid contends that their solution can handle these issues without buffering additional frames - and thereby without increasing input lag - and it will be interesting to put this to the test once Virtu Universal MVP finally ships.

Not content with one big press event this week, Samsung is breaking some new and curious ground at their IFA keynote. Along with the LTE variants of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy S II, they are adding some new phones and a tablet, or is it a phone, a tablet-phone and a tablet. Either way, each one features a Super AMOLED display and unique features that will certainly set them apart. Read on to find out more. 

Sony has finally made it official, they are entering the tablet business. This move has been anticipated for a while now so this may not be a big surprise. At first, Sony will release two tablets: Sony Tablet S and Sony Tablet P. Both will be running Google's Android "Honeycomb" operating system. Tablet S will be available for pre-order starting today and shipments should start late next month. The availability of Tablet P is still open but Sony is stating later this year. 

Tablet S - courtesy of Engadget

Tablet P - courtesy of Ubergizmo

Tablet S is pretty much a standard tablet and it doesn't look too different from the other Android tablets. However, Tablet P is something totally new. It consists of two 5.5" LCDs which can be folded. This is a bit similar to Nintendo 3DS. We have seen all kinds of different designs by now, such as ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and PadPhone, but Sony takes yet another new approach. The design allows one display to be used for example email and the other as a virtual keyboard. They can also operate as one big display. 

Tablet S is relying solely on WiFi. For some, this might be a bummer considering that most of the other tablets have at least an option for 3G. Maybe Sony is relying on WiFi hotspots or tethering. As for the Tablet P, it supports 4G and will be limited to AT&T. 

To make Tablet S a bit more than just one more Android tablet, Sony has added some exclusive content. Sony offers a service called Video and Music Unlimited. The former is a video store, pretty much like iTunes. Music Unlimited is a little more intriguing, it offers you a library of over 10 million songs which you can sync to your Sony Tablet (some other Android devices are also compatible). The service is subcription based so it appears that you can sync as many songs as you like without paying extra (similar to Spotify but hopefully with broader music coverage). Video Unlimited, on the other hand, charges for each movie. Every Sony Tablet comes with a six month trial of Music Unlimited and one free download from Video Unlimited. 

As Sony has always cared about gamers too, there will be some exclusive titles. For example Crash Bandicoot will be pre-installed on Tablet S. Sony claims that their tablets are the first Playstation Certified tablets so these titles may not be limited to just Sony's tablets (although it looks like they will be at first). 

As a whole, Sony's tablet announcement is positive. Sony has at least tried to be creative and come up with something new instead of just joining the already huge number of Android OEMs. Whether consumers will buy Sony's approach or not, remains to be seen. 

Samsung has released four new laptops today. They are branded as Series 7 and will be available in October. These are also the first laptops with SSD caching. 

Read on for the full specs and our analysis!

Samsung has already sold 5 million of them in 85 days in Korea and Europe, but until now the Galaxy S II has been just a dream in a US phone buyers eye. All that was rectified tonight when Samsung announced three Galaxy S II variants that will be entering the US market on Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. Brian already ran through the specifications but we thought we'd provide some hands-on impressions from our time with them and a little overview. TouchWiz 4.0 was also showed off, and the skin is comprehensive enough that we'll devote some time in the future to flesh it out. First, a gallery from the event. Apologies for some of the shots, but lining up the best shot in this evironment is impossible.

Sprint Epic 4G Touch

Sprint will be first out of the gates with the Epic 4G Touch, launching on September 16th for $199 on contract. The device is one of two 4.5" slates whose WVGA (800x480) Super AMOLED Plus display is bright and vivid, and surprisingly crisp given the relatively low resolution. There's no denying that pixel density enthusiasts would have been thrilled at 720p or even qHD, but in the hand the only real effect was to make the icons comically large. Horizontal size not withstanding these devices are light and thin, though Sprint's variant is not the thinnest clocking in nearly a millimeter thicker than AT&T's at 9.65 mm. On first grab the lightness gave the impression I was holding a mock-up and not the real thing, but this WiMAX equipped featherweight was smooth and fast in navigating the device's UI. Nenamark was loaded on the device so we ran it through its paces and though the benchmark is not one we regularly feature the device smoothly ran it at 46+FPS. For those thinking of joining The Now Network, this phone will be hard to pass up.

AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II

Ma Bell has foregone alternate naming for their variant, and as the pictures bear out, this is also the closest to the international version that has made the rounds through out Asia and Europe. The 4.3" device lends itself better to the WVGA resolution, and feels noticeably smaller in the hand. Absent in all of these devices is the physical home button so prominent in the international version, but each feels solid in the hand despite a glossy plastic exterior that doesn't feel as premium as the soft touch or metal frames found on recent HTC phones. AT&T's SGSII shares the Exynos SoC and Mali GPU of the Epic 4G Touch and international version so while it is smaller it is no less fast. An NFC radio is on hand, though it was not mentioned at the event it's confirmed by FCC documentation. Release and pricing have not been announced, but we imagine they won't stray far from Sprint's date and pricing. Though it wasn't listed in the specifications released tonight, the phone is rated for HSPA+ at 21.1 Mbps, matching the international version and most likely indicating that both are using the same X-Gold 626 baseband. So, with AT&T's model so closely aping the already shipping internation version, why not be the first out the door? Not sure, but we hope it means it's not long coming. 

T-Mobile

T-Mobile is joining Sprint in the 4.5" form factor, though the demo models they had on hand presented rounder corners than Sprint's variant. And that's pretty much all we can say. Samsung and T-Mobile representatives committed to a dual-core processor but would go no further with launch date, pricing or specifications. Indeed, the demo models were kept under glass and not even the representatives were allowed to handle them, except to turn them on periodically so we could appreciate the display. As Brian pointed out in the earlier piece, this could end up being Qualcomm powered, in particular given that a dual core Snapdragon paired with Qualcomm's MDM8220 could make this T-Mo's first DC-HSPA+ 42 Mbps device. 

Overview

Since its announcement back at Mobile World Congress in February, the Samsung Galaxy S II has generated a lot of excitement and that excitement has lead to impressive sales figures. This, of course, follows in the success of their first generation Galaxy S devices. But what is it about these phone's that is lighting the world on fire? In a big way, this has to do with Exynos, Samsung's succesor to Hummingbird. The two components of Exynos are a dual-core Cortex A9 clocked at 1.2 GHz and the Mali-400 GPU, both ARM designs. ARM states that clock-for-clock a single-core Cortex-A9 should outperform a Cortex-A8 by about 20%. Give that same A9 a 20% clock bump, and a 40% performance improvement is possible before the second core even comes into the picture. But that only tells us why the Galaxy S II is such a huge improvement over, say, the Nexus S.

What makes the Galaxy S II seem to drastically outpace newer devices like the Droid 3, whose 1 GHz OMAP 4 SoC also features an A9 processor? The special sauce, as Brian will delve into further in his upcoming review of the international Galaxy S II, is Samsung's ability to leverage the Mali-400 to accelerate UI elements and even elements of the browsing experience, as well. 

September 16th is fast approaching, so we'll know soon just how well the US variants will perform relative to their international siblings. In the meanwhile, stay tuned for our review and some more Samsung news at the IFA Unpacked event on Thursday. 

HP just announced its plans to discontinue operations on webOS devices, specifically the recently announced TouchPad and webOS phones. The future of webOS is uncertain as HP simply added that it would "continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward". This likely means that HP is looking to either license out the software or dump it in an outright sale. 

At this point I don't know that HP needs to be at the helm of the webOS project. Licensing it out could generate short term revenue from companies looking to hedge their bets against Google/Motorola, but unless HP takes on a development partner I don't know that there's much of a future for webOS under HP's command. 

That leaves an outright sale. It's clear that HP wants to focus its business on the high margin enterprise space where success is a bit more guaranteed and away from the ultra competitive, regularly shifting consumer and ultra mobile markets. I firmly believe HP could have made Palm/webOS successful, but it would have to be commited to the platform for the long haul (read: 5+ years).

Who could do better with webOS? ASUS, HTC, Intel and Samsung all come to mind. The three Android partners could be interested in giving the vertically integrated route a try. As I mentioned in my review, had the TouchPad been free of bugs and performance issues it would be the best tablet on the market. Any of the three Android partners could continue to fund webOS development and leverage their hardware expertise. Unfortunately neither ASUS, HTC nor Samsung has a particularly great history of software development so any of them would be a risk.

Intel is the wild card here. After Nokia's recent unveiling of its first MeeGo phone it became very clear just how much potential the OS had. With Nokia's departure from the MeeGo partnership that leaves Intel without a hardware partner and not a tremendous need for new software. That being said, Intel has clearly expressed interest in supporting an alternative mobile OS that's truly open. An Intel purchase of webOS would at least put the project in the hands of a company that has real vision and the ability to execute it. 

I feel for the folks who did the impossible at Palm and created webOS in the first place. As a company Palm just needed resources to finish its task. HP looked like the home that could provide just that but in the end it ended up being another unfortunate roadblock for what was one of the most promising OSes in the mobile space.

Unless the perfect acquisitor steps forward, I'm afraid webOS may end up being the latest casualty of consolidation in the smartphone/tablet space.

If you've been on the Internet for very long today, you've probably already heard about this: Google intends to purchase Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion, or about $40 a share. The deal, Google's biggest acquisition ever, has been approved by the boards of both companies.

There are potentially far-reaching implications to this deal in both the long and short term: more immediately, Google will gain access to Motorola's massive portfolio of 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications (for reference, the Nortel bid that Google lost to Microsoft and Apple earlier this month ago was for just 6,000 patents). This will help Google face the wave of litigation that nearly every company in the smartphone market is currently trying to ride. In the long run, as the companies become more integrated, we could see Motorola phones that exhibit an Apple-like synergy between hardware and software. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

What does it mean for Android?

In a blog post announcing the deal, Google CEO Larry Page was careful to note both that the "acquisition will not change [Google's] commitment to run Android as an open platform" and that "[Google] will run Motorola as a separate business," meaning that other manufacturers will be given the same access to Android that they currently enjoy and that Motorola, for the moment, would continue to run as a separate entity and would not receive preferential treatment as an Android licensee.

For the moment, this is likely to be true. Google won't want to deal with an exodus of hardware manufacturers from Android to competing platforms, and even if the stated goal was a tight integration between Motorola hardware and Google software, this would take time to achieve.

Surely, as time goes on, Google will begin to give some form of preferential treatment to Motorola and its handsets, whether in the form of early access to software updates (as we've already seen with the Xoom and Honeycomb) or in features developed specifically for Motorola phones. Even so, Google will likely work to give third parties the same sort of access they have today, since the company's success has come from getting Android on as many devices as possible rather than at trying to beat Apple at its own game.

What of Microsoft?

As mentioned above, Microsoft could potentially see increased interest in Windows Phone 7 from handset makers worried about subpar treatment from Google, but Windows Phone 7 has had such a hard time gaining traction in the market that this seems unlikely.

What is more likely is that Microsoft will try to follow suit and buy up its own smartphone company - some have suggested that Nokia, a company with whom Microsoft already has a cozy relationship, could be a potential acquisition target, and Nokia's stock is currently up about 10% on this speculation. 

Rumors of a Microsoft-Nokia acquisition were swirling earlier this summer, but Nokia called them "totally baseless" at the time, and there are no indications that things are any different now. Still, especially as the patent wars heat up, expect to see more acquisitions as companies try to beef up their portfolios and shore up their businesses.

Clearing The Regulators

The last thing to consider is whether the deal will actually go through at all: both companies approve, but the deal still has to clear the hurdle of the Federal Trade Commission, the US agency responsible for antitrust regulation.

The FTC already has its eye on Google: primarily, the FTC wants to make sure that Google isn't using its dominant position in the search market to promote its other products as it continues to diversify its business. Also of concern to the agency is whether Google discourages its hardware partners from using non-Android operating systems on their handsets. This investigation is still in its early stages, having only started in June, but the scale and scope of the Motorola purchase will be sure to raise some eyebrows.

Despite this, I would say that the likelihood of FTC interference in the Google-Motorola deal is pretty low, since it's not a stretch to say that there's still a lot of very healthy competition in the smartphone market - Android has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, but Apple and the iPhone are both still very healthy, and Microsoft is taking aggressive steps to increase the presence of Windows Phone 7 in the market. Regulators would be smart to scrutinize the deal, but they probably won't stop it.