AMD’s Roy Taylor teases R9 Fury X2 system for developers

VR and DirectX 12 ready PCs stacked on shelves

AMD’s Roy Taylor has been known to use its razor sharp marketing skills to tease the upcoming products and now he took to Twitter to show a shelf fully stacked with “console-sized” Falcon Northwest Tiki PCs with Radeon Technologies Group and AMD badge.

In a tweet that says: “Developers, we have something coming for you,” Roy Taylor, Corporate Vice President of Alliances at AMD, has showed a shelf full of what appears to be the same Falcon North West Tiki 4-inch gaming PCs which were showcased during the Virtual Reality Los Angeles (VRLA) 2016 Winter Expo, powered by AMD’s Radeon Fury X2 graphics card based on two 28nm Fiji GPUs.

It appears that these systems will be heading to developers focused on DirectX 12 and Virtual Reality as that is what the dual-GPU flagship card with 12 TFLOPs of single-precision compute performance is all about.

The Falcon Northwest Tiki gaming PC is a result of AMD’s promise to deliver the world’s most powerful small computer for developers.

In case you missed it earlier, AMD’s Radeon Fury X2 dual-GPU graphics card has been delayed earlier and it is currently scheduled to launch sometime in Q2 this year and be ready for Oculus VR and HTC’s Vive VR headsets.

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AMD doomed to hit new lows

It will just get worse

AMD is expected to lose more ground to Nvidia and have a terrible year – at least before Zen comes out.

According to Digitimes AMD is losing market share to Nvidia in the discrete GPU market while falling further behind Intel in the PC processor field. AMD is likely to suffer from a record low share of both markets in the first quarter of 2016.

It was always going to be a pants year for everyone. Demand for standalone graphics cards is sluggish and the market for standalone grahics cards continues to decline. But as the market shrinks it would appear that Nvidia is dining off AMD at the same time. AMD’s discrete GPU market share has also been hurt by falling shipments of its own PC processors.

What is a bigger worry is that the in the PC processor market, AMD’s gap behind Intel has widened to the point that it might have difficulty clawing anything back from Intel by the time Zen architecture can help the company make a comeback.

The Zen processor architecture will be introduced in high-end desktops like gaming PCs and servers, and the first Zen products are unlikely to arrive until the fourth quarter of 2016. Zen probably will not help AMD regain its PC share.

In GPUs AMD will have its work cut out to ensure that the launch of its Polaris architecture will be on schedule. Any delays of the launch or performance issues could interrupt its way to recovery. AMD expects shipments of Polaris architecture-based GPUs to begin in mid-2016. AMD reportedly will use the 14nm LPP process from Samsung/Globalfoundries for its upcoming Zen CPUs and Polaris GPUs.

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Lenovo Yoga bends to budget position

Starts at $500

The Lenovo Yoga is one of those devices that we want since we played with one on a press doo and notw it appears that Lenovo has given us a reason.

Lenovo’s Yoga 710 (in the 11-inch version) is being released at a nice starting price of $500. For those who came in late a Yoga gets it name from its 360-degree hinge. You can turn the Yoga 710 into a tent mode for movie-watching, or stand mode for showing a presentation.

While lower-priced laptops are heavier the Yoga 710 just 2.35 pounds. Of course it helps that the 1080p IPS display is just 11.6 inches diagonally, but still that is pretty good.

In the smaller form factor, lighter-use laptop, Lenovo features CPU choices up to an Intel 6th-gen (Skylake) Core M5 CPU wth integrated graphics. You can configure the RAM up to 8GB (LP-DDR3), and you can choose up to 256GB of SSD storage. The 40Wh battery is rated by Lenovo to last up to 8 hours.

The Yoga 710 series will be available in June. A 14-inch version will follow with a starting price of $799, with much higher-end options, including core i7 CPUs and Nvidia graphics.

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Zotac unveils new Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD

Based on Phison E7 controller and Toshiba MLC NAND

Zotac has unveiled its first NVMe PCIe-based SSD that will be based on Phison E7 controller with Toshiba MLC NAND, the Zotac Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD.

To be available only in 480GB capacity, the Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD is the first consumer-aimed NVMe 1.2 PCIe SSD from Zotac. Based on Phison E7 controller and Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND paired up with 512MB of DDR3 cache, the Zotac Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD will offer sequential read and write performance of up to 2,600MB/s and 1,300MB/s, respectively. The random 4K read and write performance is set at up to 350,000 and 250,000 IOPS, which is significantly higher than any SATA 6Gbps-based 2.5-inch SSD.

The Zotac Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD is based on a low-profile add-in card form-factor and includes a heatsink which should cool down the controller.

According to Zotac, the new Sonix PCIe 480GB SSD is aimed at wider array of applications including large databases, resource-heavy applications, multitasking, multimedia applications as well as gaming. It will come with End-to-end Data Path Protection and Dynamic Wear Leveling and have an MTBF of up to 2,000,000 hours or around 700TBW. It will be backed by a three-year warranty.

Unfortunately, Zotac did not announce any details regarding the availability date or the price and we can’t seem to find it listed anywhere.

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TP-LNK shows its new Talon

The world’s first multi-band 802.11ad router

TP-LINK, a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, today unveiled the Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router, the world’s first multi-band router based on 802.11ad.

Powered by the 802.11ad and 11ac MU-MIMO solutions from Qualcomm Atheros, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, the TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router can deliver ultra-fast speeds of up to 4.6Gbps on 60GHz bands.TP-LINK is pushing the router as part of its new connected home portfolio, with smart home devices, connectivity products, and accessories.

The idea is that with the number of smart devices in the home steadily rising, consumers need more bandwidth to ensure seamless connectivity.

The TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router uses a new frequency with untapped bandwidth and channels at 60GHz. It also utilizes existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, resulting in 7Gbps Wi-Fi speeds throughout the home and combines 802.11ad with 802.11ac MU-MIMO to provide a step up in capacity.

This is better than the standard dual-band structure. The router transmits locally stored media and content from the cloud drastically faster, ensuring that devices function at prime performance.

Using the TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router, consumers can download an entire feature-length 4K HD video in about four minutes or transfer a thousand photos to a storage device in approximately five seconds, without any concerns about network interference.

Rahul Patel, senior vice president and general manager, connectivity, Qualcomm said that Qualcomm was continually investing in new, innovative technologies to meet the increasing bandwidth demands resulting from overcrowded networks.

“We are leading the way with 802.11ac wave 2 with MU-MIMO to improve efficiency in the 2.4/5 GHz bands and now once again are bringing groundbreaking 802.11ad technology to commercial fruition. These technologies combined with the unique features of TP-LINK’s Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router are designed to improve wireless networking and user experience.”

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