Motherboard makes cause confusion around Skylake memory

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Skylake is the first CPU generation to support DDR4, which I have ... out the IMC and since it's a part of the processor, that will kill the whole processor.

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OnePlus X Reportedly Coming Next Month with Snapdragon 801 CPU and $250 Price Tag

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... 5-inch screen of an unknown resolution and will be powered by a Snapdragon 801 processor which was fairly popular among early 2014 flagships.

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AMD announces PRO A-Series APUs targeted at business notebooks and PCs

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The AMD PRO A-series mobile processors are based on the company's ... from AMD with a 3.4GHz max frequency and 12 compute cores (4 CPU + 8 GPU).It is also the only AMD PRO mobile processor to come with Radeon R7 ...

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AMD Moves on the Enterprise

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... blend solutions across high-end graphics and the CPU in either the desktop ... All this processor does is focus on security, and it provides a level of ...

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ST Licenses Latest ARM Core for Automotive Smart Driving Applications

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Chipmaker STMicroelectronics (ST) has licensed ARM's new 32-bit ARMv8-R processor technology for deployment in its 32-bit microprocessors for ...

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Verykool's Jet $140 Smartphone Debuts in U.S.

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The Jet SL5009 budget smartphone features a 5-inch screen, a 1GHz quad-core CPU, Android 5.1 Lollipop and an 8-megapixel main camera.

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Next Gen AMD Stoney And Bristol Ridge APUs Spotted In BIOS Update

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All AMD desktop processors, CPUs and APUs, will share a single platform starting with the previously mentioned AM4 socket. Differentiation in ...

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Intel Will Finally Increase the Number of Physical Core Counts on The Cannonlake

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Squishing four physical cores from the well known Core i7 and i5 CPU ... from four to eight in the future Cannonlake processors has finally arrived.

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AMD PRO A-Series Processors Announced for Mobile and PC

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Their fastest, AMD PRO A12 processor comes with 3.4GHz CPU, 12 compute cores, and runs at 800MHz being based on Radeon R7. Some of the ...

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CPU Virtualization In The Cloud: Getting Your Slice, And More

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In the first part in this series, we talked about the nature of processor ... We start this second part of the CPU virtualization on the cloud series by ...

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Intex Aqua Ace with 3GB RAM, Quad-Core CPU Launched at Rs 12999

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It is clocked at 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6735 64-bit processor with Mali-T720 GPU besides 3GB DDR3 RAM. Moreover, it comes with 16GB of ...

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Panache Air PC goes on sale in Kenya in October

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The world's smallest and lightest pocket computer, the Air PC by Panache, is due to ... It is powered by Windows 10 and an Intel Quadcore Processor.

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AMD launches PRO A-Series chips for notebooks and desktops

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One of the most intriguing new chips is the AMD PRO A12, which is the company's first notebook processor with 12 compute cores (4 CPU and 8 GPU ...

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AMD unveils desktop and mobile processors

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These have the firm's fastest mobile processor – version A12 running at up to 3.4GHz. There are 12 cores (4 CPU + 8 GPU). Graphics are Radeon R7, ...

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Boxx's itty-bitty Apexx 1 workstation packs a liquid-cooled, 18-core Xeon CPU

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... the Apexx 1, a PC that's less than 5-inches wide and 8.5-inches tall yet still packs up to an 18-core Xeon processor and professional-grade graphics.

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AMD Introduces Its Fastest PRO A-Series APUs Yet – Coming To Business Laptops And Desktops

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“The innovative architecture of new AMD PRO processors delivers compelling ... Carrizo also features significant CPU and graphics performance ...

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AMD launches its most powerful line of enterprise mobile processors

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The Pro A12 processor is the fastest of the bunch, and is said to be the "fastest notebook processor" with 3.4GHz CPU max frequency. It's also the only ...

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AMD unveils new processors targeting Windows 10 market

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It's new AMD PRO A12 processor is the fastest AMD PRO to date with 3.4GHz CPU max frequency. The A12 integrates 12 compute cores (4 CPU ...

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Microsoft Surface Pro 4: Leaks, specs, pricing and release date

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The new processors in question could either be Intel's Core M 'Broadwell' CPU or Intel Skylake processors to be available in Core i3, Core i5, and ...

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AMD releases Pro APU

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The A12 integrates 12 compute cores (4 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores), based ... AMD PRO A-Series mobile processors (formerly codenamed "Carrizo ...

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AMD launches PRO A-Series processors for businesses

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To crown the new mobile range AMD has introduced the AMD PRO A12 processor with a max CPU frequency of 3.4GHz. It is also the first mobile ...

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iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Update: Devices Features A9 Chipset, Enhances Speed to 50 Percent Than ...

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Tech Times recently reported that the custom A9 processor is about 50 percent faster than the A8 chipset. It carries a dual-core 1.8GHz CPU, making it ...

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The First Pentium Skylakes CPUs Enter Retail Stores

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The new low-cost, eco-friendly Intel Pentium G4500T is a dual-core processor that comes without Hyper-Threading technology and runs at 3.00GHz ...

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Analisys Of iPhone 6s Benchmarks Shows Apple A9 Processor Does More With Less

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Apple's 64-bit A9 Processor – The efficient power plant under the hood of the ... Regardless, what Apple has been able to do with their core processor ... with the A9′s dual core CPU are impressive and it's obviously significantly ...

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AMD PRO A-series processors now shipping

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It's new AMD PRO A12 processor is the fastest AMD PRO to date with 3.4GHz CPU max frequency. It has 12 compute cores (4 CPU + 8 GPU) and ...

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System Builder Marathon Q3 2015: Value Comparison

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Sticking with an Intel CPU while dumping most of his money into graphics left .... Shifting our attention to processors of similar IPC, my true quad-core ...

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Teclast X98 Air III Tablet With 9.7-Inch Retina Screen, Intel CPU, 8000 mAh Battery Costs $138 On ...

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The tablet is powered by Intel Z3735F chipset that features a quad-core processor clocking at 1.83 GHz. The SoC is coupled with 2 GB of RAM.

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AMD shows thin and light business notebooks can still be powerful

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AMD unveiled its first enterprise-centric mobile processor in Mexico City, Mexico alongside HP's launch of the HP EliteBook 705 G3, the first commercial notebook to debut with AMD silicon.

The most significant thing about the EliteBook 705 G3 is its slim design. HP claims that the notebook is the world's slimmest and lightest commercial Ultrabook, edging out the even more premium priced HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1, a notebook that ships with Intel's first generation Core M processor. Unlike the Core M, the AMD A12 Pro on the highest configuration of the EliteBook 705 G3 still uses a fan, and you still see air vents on the plastic undercarriage of the notebook.

The 25W processor is more powerful than Intel's 15W architecture on Core M, and it delivers more performance at a more affordable price. The AMD A12 GPU is a quad-core CPU with 8 integrated graphic cores, making it a 12-core design.

AMD A12 Pro architecture

The AMD A12 Pro APU has the fastest clock speed of any notebook processor, coming in at 3.4GHz. AMD claims that performance benchmarks reveal that the APU outclasses existing Core i5 mobile processors from Intel, so it should readily beat the more power conservative Intel Core M CPU. We'll have to wait to benchmark the A12 Pro against Intel's Skylake-based second generation Core M.

With eight GPU cores, AMD claims that the graphic performance is equivalent to or above a 2000 series FirePro graphics. This means that you're getting discrete-class graphics in an integrated design, according to Vladimir Rozanovich, Corporate Vice President of AMD.

Despite packing in so much power, the A12 Pro still delivers all-day battery life, which means over eight hours on a single charge, said Rozanovich. AMD claims that early testing of the A12 Pro on the EliteBook 705 G3 reveals that the processor can deliver over nine hours of battery life.

In terms of raw performance benchmarks, the A12 Pro delivers 31% faster graphics, 19% greater CPU performance and 18% greater multi-threaded performance. Additionally, there is also an AMD Secure Processor, which is based on ARM TrustZone, for hardware-based root of trust applications.

An HP exclusive

Despite announcing Lenovo as a launch partner for the A12 Pro, AMD says that its latest processor will be an HP exclusive.

The exclusive period isn't stipulated in a contract, Rozanovich revealed, but we can expect to see HP as the only A12 Pro vendor for at least six months, given HP's robust portfolio. AMD reveals that HP's historic commitment to AMD, its large mobile portfolio and a dedication to the commercial space makes it a natural partner.

For enterprise users, AMD guarantees a 24-month longevity period for its Pro-class processors as well as 18-month longevity.

From integrated graphics to workstation

When I asked AMD about positioning the A12 Pro as a mobile workstation product given its powerful Radeon R7 graphics, Rozanovich said that this would be the natural progression, and that HP could certainly re-purpose existing products and re-classify them as mobile workstations.

Simply put, it seems like a matter of branding, and if HP chooses to go that route, AMD would get its processors ISV certified. ISV certification would enable IT administrators to confidently choose a product knowing that it has been rigorously tested to deliver consistent performance with popular titles, like Adobe Creative Suite.

Rozanovich revealed that the company isn't afraid that more powerful A-series chips, like the A12 Pro, would cannibalize the discrete FirePro business at AMD. It would only add to the interest for discrete graphics, he said.

One application that could drive corporate users to graphics is virtual reality. Virtual reality glasses like Oculus or HoloLens could drive the need for even more powerful graphics.

• Read more about Intel Skylake

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AMD's Pro APUs for business launch quietly with just one major customer, HP

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The A12 integrates 12 compute cores (4 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores), ... from the more conventional models are what AMD calls the AMD Secure Processor, ... easily program the CPU, as well as an integrated HEVC video decoder.

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Google's Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P Bring High-Performance CPUs, Fingerprint Sensors

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The Nexus 6P brings a 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor, a 5.7" 1440p AMOLED display, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage (with 64 GB and 128 GB ...

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AMD shows thin and light business notebooks can still be powerful

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AMD unveiled its first enterprise-centric mobile processor in Mexico City, ... The AMD A12 GPU is a quad-core CPU with 8 integrated graphic cores, ...

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Analysis Of iPhone 6s Benchmarks Shows Apple A9 Processor Does More With Less

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Apple's 64-bit A9 Processor – The efficient power plant under the hood of the new ... Regardless, what Apple has been able to do with their core processor ... As Forbes contributor and industry analyst, Pat Moorhead had noted, CPU ...

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Google's Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P Bring High-Performance CPUs, Fingerprint Sensors

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Google introduced two new Nexus smartphones, the Huawei-made Nexus 6P and the LG-made Nexus 5X. The devices start at $499 and $379 respectively, and come with high-performance processors, cameras and fingerprint readers.

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Alienware X51 R3: Gaming Desktop in Console's Clothing

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Powered by an Intel Skylake processor and an Nvidia Maxwell GPU, this ... custom profiles that modify power consumption and CPU performance.

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AMD Introduces PRO A-Series Processors Enabling Enhanced Performance, Reliability and...

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AMD is also introducing a new AMD PRO A12 processor, the fastest AMD PRO notebook processor with 3.4GHz CPU max frequency. It's the first AMD ...

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How to Configure Your Laptop: Specs That Matter

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Most mainstream laptops use Intel's Core Series processors — Core i3, i5 or ... Moving from a slower Core i5 CPU to a slightly faster one probably isn't ...

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Teardown reveals Samsung, TSMC both fab Apple's A9 processor

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Teardown reveals Samsung, TSMC both fab Apple's A9 processor ... SoCs contain many different types of logic, from memory caches to CPU cores.

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1 More Potential Improvement That Intel Can Bring to Kaby Lake

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Intel did it with the GPU, why not the CPU core as well? ... to use in its 10-nanometer Cannonlake processor, but ported to Intel's less advanced ... Although I believe that a CPU core like Skylake/Cannonlake is more difficult to port ...

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ST takes licence for ARM's 32bit v8-R processor, targets auto applications

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James McNiven, general manager of ARM's CPU group, said: “ST has extensive automotive experience and deep customer relationships. Its transition ...

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Intel Corporation Will Finally Be Upping Its Core Counts With Cannonlake

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Typically, the low-power CPUs aimed at Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 convertibles have two CPU cores while the processors aimed at higher-performance ...

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'World's Smallest' Pocket Computer Arrives in Kenya

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Here is so far the "world's smallest and lightest" pocket computer. ... Powered by Windows 10 and Intel Quadcore Processor, the CPU comes with a ...

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Apple's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus Are Fast, New A9 Processor Impressive

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Apple's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus Are Fast, New A9 Processor Impressive - The ... The CPU, or central processing unit, on the A9 is still two cores.

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Rugged Touchscreen Display is designed for ground vehicles.

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Configurations with internal embedded Intel® CPU options provide Ethernet, ... equipment connected to the displays or by the embedded processor.

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STMicroelectronics Adopts ARM's Latest Processor Technology for Automotive Applications

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First implementations of the ARMv8-R processor will be used in advanced ... processors for safety-related automotive devices targeting PowerTrain, Safety ... requirements," said James McNiven, general manager, CPU group, ARM.

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Dell XPS 15 with 4K nearly bezel-free display and Skylake CPU on the way

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First up, it'll be powered by an Intel Skylake processor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics. Ther are options for 1920 x 1080 pixel and 3840 x ...

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Andes Technology President Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin Will Present an Ultra Low Power IoT SoC ...

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"The rapidly developing Internet-of-Things market is redefining the computing requirements of today's embedded processor cores. Instead of CPU ...

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Andes Technology President Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin Will Present an Ultra Low Power IoT SoC ...

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"We are pleased to be presenting at the 2015 Linley Processor Conference, which is the premier forum for describing ... Instead of CPU architectures that only produce more and more MIPS, IoT applications demand embedded cores ...

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Self-Driving Cars Rev CPUs

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Their arrival will help double by 2025 the size of today's $10 billion automotive semiconductor market, fueling new segments like vision processors.

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September 29, 2015 | iPhone 6s following 3 days: Processor rate, show, 4K feature, and Live Photo

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Also, the exchange between the CPU and GPU in the iPhone 6s makes some staggering design execution. “The A9's PowerVR GPU is really beating ...

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MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK review

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For the gaming community two processors are the most important; the Core i7 6700K has four CPU cores with Hyper-Threading, 4.0GHz frequency, ...

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New Intel i5-6600k cpu processor i5 6600k z170

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I have a brand new in box Intel i5 6600k cpu for sale. still sealed not opened Asking 220 firm. Not lowering. Really good deal if getting into z170.

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Water Cooling 101: What to do and what to avoid

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Water cooling systems -- whether they are a custom loop or an AIO -- all follow the same basic principles. You have the reservoir, the pump, the radiator, the fans, some tubing, a block (for either the CPU, GPU, or both), and the water itself. After years of working with...





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Apple’s A9 SoC Is Dual Sourced From Samsung & TSMC

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Picking up from our conversation this morning on Apple’s A9 SoC, the crew over at Chipworks has been working hard over the weekend to decap A9 and their first results are in. As it turns out, Chipworks has found chips fabbed by both TSMC and Samsung, which means that A9 is in fact a dual sourced part.

In taking apart iPhones and decapping SoCs, Chipworks has turned up two SoCs. The first, APL0898, is a 96mm2 A9 that’s fabbed by Samsung. The second SoC, APL1022, is a 104.5mm2 SoC fabbed by TSMC. And while Chipworks isn’t naming the specific manufacturing processes used, based on Apple’s comments on a “new transistor architecture,” we’re certainly looking at a form of FinFET. In which case the two chips are made on versions of Samsung’s 14nm FinFET and TSMC’s 16nm FinFET processes respectively.

This development is interesting for a few different reasons. From a fabrication standpoint, Samsung and TSMC have been brawling at multiple levels (technical and legal) to be the first to get a next-generation FinFET process out the door, with Samsung ultimately winning that battle when they shipped the 14nm Exynos 7420 for the Galaxy S6 family. For TSMC on the other hand this is as far as we know the first consumer product released with a 16nm TSMC fabbed part, indicating that TSMC is finally able to ship such parts in a reasonable volume.

More importantly, this is a huge move for Apple, and one we admittedly don’t have all of the facts about at this time. Dual sourcing parts is by no means a new concept – IBM requiring a second source of x86 chips is how AMD got started in the x86 industry, after all – but in more modern times dual sourcing of high performance parts is very rare due to how difficult and expensive it is. With dual sourcing essentially requiring the chip to be taped out twice – once for each fab – it requires significant financial and engineering resources, a cost that not very many companies besides Apple can take on without significant risk.

Apple A9 SoC Versions
	APL0898	APL1022
Manufacturing Process	Samsung 14nm FinFET	TSMC 16nm FinFET
Die Size	96mm2	104.5mm2

The big hurdle with dual sourcing a part such as a cutting-edge SoC like A9 is that unless the source fabs have designed their processes to be near identical – to form a common foundry specification – then different fabs will have different processes with different characteristics. This in turn is determined by the technical decisions a fab made in research and development, and the specific issues the fab ran into when bringing up the new process. The end result being that while two fabs can turn out chips based around the same design, those chips will not be identical. It’s this kind of inconsistency that chip customers like Apple have to tackle head-on if they want to go with dual sourcing.

Even at a physical level we can see this inconsistency right away in terms of die sizes. Despite the TSMC and Samsung processes being quite similar, the Samsung A9 is the smaller of the two by 8%, which as Chipworks notes is indicative of better density on Samsung’s 14nm node. What we don’t see, and the issue Apple really has to control for, is power consumption. Right now it’s a safe assumption that both chips can reach Apple’s required clockspeeds, so in order for Apple to utilize both in the iPhone 6s they need to make sure both perform as identically as possible, especially when it comes to idle power leakage and power consumption at different clockspeeds. The billion dollar question right now is whether either of the A9s is consistently better than the other one, and in which case by how much. For Apple it’s best that these chips are identical as possible – and they can make design choices when tapping out the chip for each fab to help ensure this – but at the end of the day even Apple has to bow down to the laws of physics.

But the biggest unknown right now is why Apple would do this given the difficulties involved; to develop two A9s at twice the price. We can certainly speculate on reasons they would do this – yield issues at a fab, a desire to avoid putting all of their eggs in one basket and giving one fab too much power, or even just wanting to ramp up A9 production quickly by doubling the number of fabs working on it. But at the end of the day I don’t expect that’s a secret that will be known beyond the halls of One Infinite Loop, so speculation is all we have to work with for now.

In any case, if Apple has done their homework then dual sourcing A9s shouldn’t have an impact on average consumers, beyond perhaps ensuring that Apple has a sufficient supply to meet demand (ed: Apple sold 13mil iPhones in their opening weekend). Otherwise for techies, things are both more interesting and frustrating; just dual sourcing A9 makes an interesting product since this is something we almost never see done these days. As for the billion dollar question of which A9 is better, that will be a tossup. With enough time, effort, and a very large number of iPhones, it should be possible to coarsely determine if the A9s significantly differ in battery life, and thereby power consumption. However given the difficulties in taking an iPhone apart to access the A9, one would really need a software identification method to really make use of this information.

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Apple's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus Are Speedy: New A9 Processor Posts Big Gains

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Apple's A9 processor makes some big gains in performance over its ... The CPU, or central processing unit, on the A9 is still two cores — albeit faster ...

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Dino PC Primal GS2 review

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Inside is a rather middling dual-core 3.2GHz Intel Pentium G3258 processor. ... Not surprising for a CPU with two cores, the PC suffered most in the ...

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The hard drive is becoming obsolete

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At the Global SSD Summit, Samsung is pushing solid state drives as not just the technology of the future, but the technology that users need today to keep up with the speeds available wired and wireless technologies. With new protocols, such as USB 3.1, Thunderbolt 3, Wi-Fi 802.11ac and 5G mobile broadband, hard disk drives pose as the bottleneck to the computing experience.

Traditional hard disk drives rely on the SATA III protocol, which is capped at 6Gbps. Up until 2015, this speed was more than sufficient. Hard drives based on the SATA II and SATA III protocol could keep pace with existing wired and wireless standards, like USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n.

However, as PCs begin supporting newer, faster standards, for the first time in computing history, the venerable hard disk drive isn't able to keep up.

Faster technology

New computers today are beginning to support faster technology, such as USB 3.0 and USB 3.1, Thunderbolt 3 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. These technologies bring faster data transfer speeds than SATA III's 6Gbps cap.

For example, USB 3.1 can transfer data up to 10GBps, and Thunderbolt 3 can reach speeds up to 20Gbps, speeds in excess of SATA III's 6Gbps. In the future, 5G mobile broadband, the technology that will replace 4G LTE, allows data transfers up to 1Tbps.

With these faster speeds, SATA III and the hard drive that relies on this data connection protocol will become obsolete, said Ryan Smith, Senior Product Manager of SSD Marketing at Samsung Semiconductor.

SSDs and NVMe

New Samsung solid state drives rely on the non-volatile memory express, or NVMe, protocol, which delivers faster CPU to data storage performance and reduced latency. Smith says that this is the technology of the future, as SSDs that use NVMe can keep up with the wired and wireless technologies available today.

The benefit to an NVMe-based drive is that these SSDs are able to process multiple queues of data, and as such are suitable for workstations and servers. This allows servers to process simultaneous I/O requests.

Samsung highlighted live broadcast video as one example where SSDs are more suitable than hard drives.

Simultaneous data requests

In a presentation, Peter Morrone, Senior Vice President of Product Engineering for Chyron, described the process for which graphics are overlaid on top of live video feeds. One example of Chyron's technology is live animations and graphics on sports broadcasting.

"We've used a variety of different storage media," Morrone said, "But SSDs have made such a significant impact on our business: time to market, time to manufacture and provide a better user experience"

In the past, graphic overlays were done in post-production, meaning they weren't available for live broadcasts. However, because NVMe allows Chyron partners to process multiple queues of data simultaneously, a video feed can be downloaded, edited and uploaded while another clip uploaded. This reduces downtime and allows for live broadcast with real-time graphic overlays.

SSDs allow sports broadcasters to fulfill their goals, Morrone said. Broadcasters are able to deliver a better user experience by telling better stories with better visuals.

Global SSD demand

Samsung estimates that the global demand for NAND memory this year alone is 84 billion GB, and that this number will more than double by 2019 to 209 billion GB of data. Smartphones are the primary drivers for memory consumption today, but SSD growth will outpace smartphone memory consumption moving forward.

Consumers are paying more attention to SSDs for its increase in reliability, capacity and performance, according to Samsung's research. 38% of consumers shopping for a notebook know what an SSD is, and one in three laptops today ship with an SSD, which is made possible due to the declining cost of storage.

For example, the average cost per GB for SSD storage is about $0.38 in July 2015. Samsung intends on shipping 13 million of its own branded V-NAND SSD this year for the after-market segment. V-NAND is Samsung's new branding for 3D-NAND.

• Read about how 10TB SSDs are a possibility with this new technology

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Vibox Exile review

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The window gives you a glimpse of the Raijintek Themis CPU cooler. This is a ... power comes from a quad-core 3.5GHz Intel Core i5-4690 processor.

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Apple iPhone 6S A9 Processor Delivers Knockout Punch In Benchmark Throwdown

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For compute chores, Apple says the A9 chip improves overall CPU performance by up to 70 percent. These performance promises come without ...

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Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 Review - A Gaming mini-PC Done Right

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Zotac has been creating mini-PCs with a gaming focus by tying a mobile NVIDIA GPU with a Core U-series Intel CPU for a couple of generations now.

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Getting The Most Out Of A Low-End Laptop

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This is not to say that the CPU, RAM, storage, and other aspects of the system ... will see a larger performance increase from upgrading the processor.

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Exclusive iPhone 6s Benchmarks Show Unparalleled Performance From A Dual-Core CPU

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Despite featuring a dual-core processor, Apple's iPhone 6s is still a beast when it comes to performance and our exclusive benchmarking results have ...

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Yoyotech Warbird RS10

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The newly released Intel Core i5-6600K processor, based on the ... It's cooled by a SilentiumPC Spartan Pro CPU cooler, which runs quietly.

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Chillblast Fusion Gladiator review

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The processor has an unlocked multiplier, and Chillblast has overclocked it from its typical 3.5GHz speed to 4.4GHz, with an Akasa Nero 3 CPU cooler ...

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Wired2Fire Diablo Evolution

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Its Intel Core i5-4690K processor is based on the Haswell architecture, which ... Wired2Fire has overclocked the unlocked CPU from 3.5GHz to a huge ...

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CCL Nebula 200i review

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The processor struggled most with the multitasking benchmark, which ... CPU is a better bet if you need high performance in such intensive tasks.

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Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 Review - A Gaming mini-PC Done Right

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In the course of our coverage of mini-PCs, we have seen offerings from vendors such as ASRock, GIGABYTE and Zotac targeting the gaming market. Usually, 'mini' doesn't fit the requirements of consumers in this space, but the appearance of power-efficient high performance GPUs have made the offerings in the gaming mini-PC space quite interesting. Zotac has been creating mini-PCs with a gaming focus by combining a mobile NVIDIA GPU with a Core U-series Intel CPU for a couple of generations now. Today, we have results from our evaluation of their Broadwell plus Maxwell combination, the Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970.

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iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results

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At this point the iPhone release cycle is pretty well understood. One year, Apple releases the design refresh that changes the external design significantly while generally focusing on evolving the internal components. The year after, the S variant is released with the same design as the previous year, but with sweeping changes to the internals. This cycle of upgrades allows Apple to focus on updating one half of the iPhone at a time while essentially giving their teams a more comfortable two years to develop their next generation technologies.

The iPhone 6s fits into this model quite well, with the introduction of new features like 3D Touch and a 12MP camera that supports 4K video recording. However, it’s often difficult to understand exactly how much has changed with an S model as Apple tends to focus on high level features, this despite the fact that so many of the changes in an S model are at a low level. While I haven’t had a lot of time with the iPhone 6s yet, I wanted to share some of the first results that I’ve acquired over the course of testing the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus in the past few days.

The first, and probably biggest change that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere else yet is the storage solution of the iPhone 6s. Previous writers on the site have often spoken of Apple’s custom NAND controllers for storage in the iPhone, but I didn’t really understand what this really meant. In the case of the iPhone 6s, it seems that this means Apple has effectively taken their Macbook SSD controller and adapted it for use in a smartphone. Doing some digging through system files reveals that the storage solution identifies itself as APPLE SSD AP0128K, while the Macbook we reviewed had an SSD that identified itself as AP0256H.

While the name alone isn’t all that interesting, what is interesting is how this SSD enumerated. One notable difference is that this storage solution uses PCI-E rather than SDIO, so it’s unlikely that this is eMMC. Given the power requirements, it’s likely that this isn’t the same PCI-E as what you’d see in a laptop or desktop, but PCI-E over a MIPI M-PHY physical layer. By comparison, UFS's physical layer is MIPI M-PHY as well, while the protocol is SCSI.

The iPhone 6s in turn appears to use NVMe, which rules out both UFS and traditional eMMC. To my knowledge, there’s no publicly available mobile storage solution that uses PCI-E and NVMe, so this controller seems to have more in common with the Macbook SSD controller than anything in the mobile space. It doesn’t seem this is an uncommon idea though, as SanDisk detailed the potential advantages of PCIE and NVMe in mobile storage at the Flash Memory Summit a month ago.

	NVMe	eMMC
Latency	2.8 µs	N/A
Maximum Queue Depth	Up to 64K queues with 64K commands each	Up to 1 queue with 32 commands each
Duplex (Typical)	Full	Half

The controller is a critical part of any storage component, but without any NAND to control it’s a bit pointless. Fortunately, the NAND used appears to be exposed in the OS as it’s referred to as 1Y128G-TLC-2P. Breaking this down, the 1Y means that we’re looking at 1Ynm NAND process with TLC. The TLC portion might concern some, but as we’ll soon see it turns out that we’re looking at a hybrid SLC/TLC NAND solution similar to SanDisk’s iNAND 7232 eMMC and desktop SSDs like Samsung’s 850 EVO which is better suited to the bursty workloads seen in mobile and PC segments. Between the 128GB and 64GB units we currently have, the 64GB unit uses Hynix NAND, but it remains to be seen who is supplying the NAND for the 128GB variants and what other suppliers exist for the 64GB SKUs.

An example of how an SLC/TLC NAND storage device looks in mobile devices

For those that are unfamiliar how these hybrid SLC/TLC NAND solutions work, in essence the SLC cache is made sufficiently large to avoid showing the reduced performance of TLC NAND. Any time you’re writing to the storage, the writes go to the SLC cache first before being committed to TLC NAND. As long as the overall average bandwidth demand doesn’t exceed the speed of the TLC, short-run bandwidth is solely limited by the speed of the SLC cache, which turns out to be the case for almost every normal use case.

In order to see how all of this translates into performance, we once again use StorageBench, which is an app that allows us to do 256K sequential and 4K random storage performance testing developed by Eric Patno and is comparable to AndroBench 3.6.

In practice, it seems random IO performance is relatively low, but it’s likely that we’re looking at a bottleneck of the testing methodology as the queue depth of the test is 1 and given PCB size limitations it isn’t reasonable to have as many NAND die working in parallel as we would see in something like a laptop. However, when we look at sequential speeds we can really start to see the strengths of the new storage controller and SLC/TLC. In the interest of seeing the limits of this SLC cache I decided to try running this test over a 5GB span.

The graph is a bit difficult to interpret, but in effect we’re looking at the time it takes to write 256KB at a time until we get to 5GB. There are two notable spikes roughly around 2GB, but it appears to be small and likely to be some kind of garbage collection or some background work. At 3GB or so the latency increases which suggests that the SLC cache is overrun and write bandwidth is limited by TLC NAND performance.

Overall, NAND performance is impressive, especially in sequential cases. Apple has integrated a mobile storage solution that I haven’t seen in any other device yet, and the results suggest that they’re ahead of just about every other OEM in the industry here by a significant amount.

Storage aside, the SoC itself sees major changes this year. Apple has moved to a FinFET process from either TSMC or Samsung for the A9 SoC. However, it still isn’t clear whether the A9 is single source from one foundry or if A9 is being dual-sourced. Chipworks has reason to believe their iPhone 6s' A9 is fabricated on Samsung's 14nm process, though it hasn't been confirmed yet. Dual-sourcing is well within Apple's capabilities, however TSMC's 16nm and Samsung's 14nm process are not identical - naming aside, different processes developed by different fabs will have different characteristics - so dual-sourcing requires a lot more work to get consistent chips out of both sources. For what it's worth A8 was initially rumored to be dual-sourced as well, but decapping by Chipworks only ever turned up Samsung chips.

Moving on, let's talk about initial performance and battery life measurements, which look promising. Of course, it’s worth noting that the web browser benchmarks we currently have are often optimization targets for OEMs, so web browser benchmarks seen here aren’t necessarily evidence that the browser experience will be performant and smooth across all scenarios.

Regardless of whether an OEM is optimizing specifically for these benchmarks, it’s hard to ignore just how well Apple has optimized Safari and the dual core Twister CPUs as they’ve effectively set new records for these benchmarks in mobile. Of course, to try and really figure out the relative performance between CPU architectures when ignoring differences in operating system and developer convention we’ll have to turn to some of our native benchmarks such as SPEC CPU2000, but this will have to wait for the full review. What we can look at are some of our standard benchmarks that test graphics and game-related performance.

In 3DMark, we see the continuation of a long-running trend in the physics test in which the primary determinant of performance is clock speed and memory performance as data dependencies mean that much of the CPU’s out of order execution assets go unused. However, in graphics we see an enormous improvement, to the extent that the A9’s PowerVR GPU is actually beating the iPad Air’s GXA6850 GPU by a significant margin.

In GFXBench, we see a similar trend which is incredible to think about. Apple has managed to fit a GPU into the iPhone 6s that is more powerful than what was in the iPad Air 2 for OpenGL ES, which is really only possible because of the new process technology that enables much lower power consumption and higher performance.

While I don’t normally call attention to most of the GFXBench subtests, in this case I think the driver overhead is worthy of special attention as it highlights one of the real-world benefits that improved CPU performance has. While we often think of CPU and GPU performance as orthogonal, the GPU is fundamentally tied to CPU performance to a certain extent as traditional APIs like OpenGL ES can have significant CPU overhead, especially as GPU performance has grown far faster than CPU performance. For APIs like OpenGL ES, to set up a frame it’s necessary for the CPU to check that the API call is valid, then do any necessary GPU shader or state compilation and begin running code on the GPU at draw time, which incurs increasing overhead as scenes become more complex. Through a combination of efficient drivers and enormous CPU performance, the dual core Twister CPU manages to set a new record for OpenGL ES driver overhead.

The final piece of data I've been able to collect over the course of the past few days is basic WiFi battery life. For those that are unfamiliar with the changes from the iPhone 6 line to iPhone 6s, the iPhone 6s now has a 1715 mAh (6.517 WHr) battery, and the iPhone 6s Plus has a 2750 mAh (10.45 WHr) battery. Both have a battery about 5.5-6% smaller than the previous generation.

Interestingly, the iPhone 6s Plus appears to actually have accordingly less battery life at 12.9 hours, or right around 6% less than the iPhone 6 Plus. This could be evidence that there haven't been any efficiency improvements to the iPhone 6s line, but given that our testing shows Apple is already at the point where our web browsing test is effectively a pure display rundown it's likely we're looking at the worst-case difference. This warrants additional investigation, but it's possible that a more balanced workload will even out the difference in battery life and maybe even tilt the scales back towards the iPhone 6s depending upon how much load is placed on the SoC.

Overall, while there’s still a great deal of work left to do to exhaustively evaluate the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the initial results are quite positive. I haven’t finished a detailed investigation into the architecture of Twister, but I suspect we’re looking at some pretty significant changes compared to Typhoon, which would be unlike the smaller move from Cyclone to Typhoon. The GPU improvements are enormous, and while we don’t have enough data to determine whether the iPhone 6s retains the same sustained GPU performance that we saw in the iPhone 6, the peak performance figures are impressive to say the least. The SSD-like storage solution is also a major surprise, and likely to be overlooked as its effects are often hard to distinguish without direct comparison. Battery life does regress in a single test, but I suspect in real-world situations with less of a focus on the display battery life will either be equal or favor the iPhone 6s, so it will be interesting to see if Apple's battery life estimates remain as accurate as they traditionally have been. We’ve definitely discovered much more about the iPhone 6s than what we’re able to cover in this initial article, so stay tuned for the full review.

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