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Selasa, 07 Januari 2020

Inside Intel’s Ghost Canyon NUC, the incredibly small modular desktop PC - The Verge

Today, you can upgrade a desktop PC’s gaming performance just by plugging in a new graphics card. What if you could do the same exact thing with everything else in that computer — slotting in a cartridge with a new CPU, memory, storage, even a new motherboard and set of ports? What if that new “everything else in your computer” card meant you could build an upgradable desktop gaming PC far smaller than you’d ever built or bought before?

Last week, I visited Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California so I could stop imagining and check out the NUC 9 Extreme for myself.

The Intel NUC 9 Extreme, aka Ghost Canyon, is smack dab at the intersection of two ideas the chipmaker has been pursuing for years. Since 2012, the company’s been building barebones desktop computers called NUCs (short for “Next Unit of Computing”) that are typically so tiny, you could fit one anywhere. And in 2015, Intel started working on an idea called the Compute Card to easily upgrade the brains of a PC by swapping in a new CPU cartridge. But the Compute Card was a commercial failure, and the NUC was only ever as powerful as its onboard graphics could manage.

But in 2018, after Intel conducted a freak experiment that put AMD graphics inside an Intel processor, the company proved that a NUC could be powerful enough for gamers as well — and starting wondering what it’d be like to build a fully upgradable version that could fit powerful desktop graphics cards, too. And while Intel was at it, the company resurrected the idea of a modular “brain” for the rest of the computer as well.

The result is a desktop gaming PC that’s just 5 liters in volume — slightly smaller than a PlayStation 4 Pro, and taking up less than half the 12 liter volume of a Corsair One, one of our favorite pre-built compact gaming PC designs, and yet with enough space to fit a desktop-grade Nvidia RTX 2070 GPU. Besides, its “NUC Element” modular CPU cartridge could make it even easier to upgrade than computers with far more space to work inside.

It just takes two screws to open the lid, with its twin 80mm exhaust fans and spring-loaded copper connectors — there’s no fan cable to unplug — plus half a dozen cables to dislodge, including snaps for a pair of Wi-Fi antennas, the power cable, and cables for the front audio, USB ports, and full-size SD card reader. Then push a lever, and the computer’s entire brain lifts right out — a graphics card-shaped brain that houses practically every critical part of the system save the modified 500W FlexATX power supply.

Pop open the NUC Element module after two more screws, and you’ll find an L-shaped vapor chamber cooler for the 45W Core i5, i7, or i9-9980HK CPU (laptop grade, but one of the fastest Intel makes); an 80mm blower-style fan and heat sink to dissipate the heat; two standard DDR4 laptop memory module slots; and two slots for stick-shaped M.2 NVMe solid state drives — just load it up with whatever you like. Around back there’s an Intel Wi-Fi 6 module baked right in, plus a full array of ports including four USB 3.1 jacks, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet sockets, and an HDMI port. That’s a fairly comprehensive array of ports today, but it’s neat to think that the next time you upgrade the CPU cartridge, it’d come with the latest and greatest ports as well.

Right next to the CPU brain is a second PCIe x16 slot where your gaming graphics card goes, and you should know it won’t fit every card — you’ll be looking for a “mini” GPU like a GeForce RTX 2070 Mini that’s less than eight inches in length. And it’s a little cramped in such a tiny case, with the graphics card practically blocking the CPU fan’s intake, so I’m curious if a gaming system would be able to maintain full performance for hours on end. But I did see a butter-smooth 60+ frames per second in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at max settings on a 2560 x 1440 monitor with surprisingly little fan noise during an early test — pretty impressive for a PC barely wider than two graphics cards side by side.

The bigger question is whether you’ll actually be able to upgrade such a system for years to come. While practically every other part of the system is easily upgradable with off-the-shelf parts, the NUC Element modules themselves are proprietary and their CPUs are soldered down, meaning you’d need to rely on Intel to keep making them for the foreseeable future, and Intel isn’t promising to do that for sure. But the company says there are currently at least two years of upgrades on the road map and it’s hoping to see more — and perhaps more importantly, Intel has actual partners promising to take up the modular torch.

While Intel will be selling the NUC 9 Extreme this March as a barebones system (read: bring your own OS, memory, storage, and GPU) starting at around $1,050 with a Core i5 module, $1,250 for Core i7, or around $1,700 for the flagship Core i9, it won’t be the only company pushing the idea. Razer and Cooler Master have both confirmed they’ll be selling their own complete turnkey gaming rigs later this year based on the NUC Element module, but with standard SFX power supplies and room for larger graphics cards than Intel’s own box, as well as their very own distinct NUC Element enclosures. You’ll be able to buy Intel’s board separately and stick it into one.

Both Cooler Master and Razer are notable partners because they’re new to the desktop market; Intel’s move means a PC parts vendor can now sell entire computers.

Plus, Intel says other vendors are signing up to sell its own Ghost Canyon box as a complete system as well — and there’s even a second version of the NUC, dubbed Quartz Canyon, that’ll offer Intel Xeon processor modules to businesses that need them.

Intel NUC marketing manager Bruce Patterson freely admits that his team’s original modular Compute Card was a failure. “For most cases it required so much effort from the other partners to integrate it and make it work, it just wasn’t worth it for most of our partners,” he tells me at Intel HQ. And while he considers Intel’s NUC program a success with 20+ percent growth year over year, he says we’re talking about a few million devices sold over the lifetime of the NUC.

But already, it feels like there’s more momentum behind this new NUC than this team’s projects have ever had before, and it makes me wonder if CPU cartridges might actually take off this time around — if perhaps Intel has hit on a new standard that could change the way the industry builds powerful small form factor PCs from here on out.

Either way, it’s seriously impressive how much power Intel has crammed into a tiny upgradable box. I want one.

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2020-01-07 14:00:00Z
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Watch AMD's CES 2020 keynote in 10 minutes - Engadget

Concept cars and concept foldables betray a lack of confidence - The Verge

Today, CES officially opens. Yesterday was “Press Day” at CES, otherwise known as “Day Zero” (not to be confused with Zero Day hacks). So many companies announced so much stuff that it’s impossible to synthesize it all. I’ll link you out to a bunch of videos to watch and some of the larger pieces of news just to keep you caught up, but it’s too much for one newsletter. So later in the week expect me to hone in more on specific categories. In the meanwhile, if you want the firehose, we have a storystream of everything at CES 2020 right here.

Let’s talk about Day Zero for a moment, though, because as I scan over everything we saw today I am struck by how many of the splashiest announcements weren’t products, they were concepts — and I strongly suspect more are on the way today and through the week.

I think that reveals a few things about the state of the consumer electronics industry. Especially when you look at the specific kinds of concepts that are being shown off: foldable screens and cars.

You are reading Processor, a newsletter about computers by Dieter Bohn. Dieter writes about consumer tech, software, and the most important news of the day from The Verge. This newsletter delivers about four times a week, at least a couple of which include longer essays. You can subscribe to Processor and learn more about it here. Processor is also a YouTube series with the same goal: providing smart and surprising analysis with a bit of humor. Subscribe to all of The Verge’s great videos here!

By subscribing, you are agreeing to receive a daily newsletter from The Verge that highlights top stories of the day, as well as occasional messages from sponsors and / or partners of The Verge.

Concept foldables

We knew that we’d see a lot of folding screens this year at CES, but what we didn’t fully expect is just how few of them would come with proposed ship dates. Dell’s Concept Ori and Intel’s Horseshoe Bend concepts are just concepts, tech demos that prove that, yes, these companies are working on devices like this. But Intel wouldn’t let anybody fold its folding laptop, which seems problematic.

TCL also made a folding screen prototype, but as with the above it didn’t say that what it was showing was even representative of a future product. Lenovo, meanwhile, gets credit for actually attaching a price and a possible release window for its ThinkPad X1 Fold, but the hardware we saw this week was so little improved compared to an earlier look that it’s hard to give Lenovo a ton of credit.

So why all the concept foldables instead of real products? I can think of a bunch of reasons, but they all boil down to one thing: a lack of confidence.

I don’t mean that these companies are all a bunch of yellow-bellied chickens. It’s not as if sheer chutzpah would make any of these products viable for release. Plus, there’s a very high profile example of a company confidently pushing a folding device out the door, and we all know what happened with that first Galaxy Fold.

Caution is warranted, in other words. I think that these companies lack confidence that these screens will be durable enough and good enough to really sell to a lot of consumers. I’ve sat in many briefings about folding devices with product managers from big companies and invariably they’ll gaze wistfully into the distance and say that the thing we really need is bendable glass.

It’s happened often enough that I am beginning to suspect it’s not just idle wishing, but fond remembrances of how much better the device in the lab is than the device in my hand in the briefing room. Corning has been talking about it and even told Wired this past March that it would be a matter of a couple of years.

Set aside durability. I also think these companies can’t confidently predict whether or not consumers really want folding devices. And even if a company believed there was demand for folding screens, there’s no way any company can truly be confident that they know what kind of folding screen will ultimately be successful.

Folding devices are fun to play with because they introduce a new opportunity for device makers to play around with form factors. Should the screen be on the inside or outside, fold on the long side or the short side, be a phone that turns into a tablet, or a tablet that turns into a laptop or something else entirely?

The only good way to answer those questions is to get lots of different kinds of devices into the market and see what sells. But they’re still so expensive that the risk isn’t worth it, I suspect. Better to let somebody else take a flyer.

I also hope that these companies lack confidence in one more thing: the software. Nothing I have seen to date feels right on folding screens. Windows 10X may help, but we’ve not seen nearly enough to even speculate. Think about how many years it took Apple to get the iPad to a place where it didn’t feel like a big iPhone. With foldables, the rest of the industry has barely started trying to solve the much harder problem of folding screen interfaces.

If anybody tells you they know the right way to make a computer interface for a folding gadget, they’re lying.

And so: concepts. They’re a way to test the waters and hopefully impart a sense of vague innovation that might add some shine to the brand. Which brings me to the other category: concept cars.

Concept cars

For a minute yesterday it seemed like the biggest news to come out of Sony’s keynote would be a first look at the PlayStation 5...’s new logo. But a new car drove out on to the stage — an electric concept car called the Vision-S designed by Sony itself.

It was a surprise, to say the least. Who expected Sony, of all the companies you could name, to produce a car? Why did it get made? Sony’s answer was telling: “This prototype embodies our contribution to the future of mobility,” Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said.

If you watch a lot of tech keynotes, you get used to these sorts of generic, platitude-y visions of the future. Usually, though, it’s in the form of a soft-focus video running you through the day of some young business professional ten years in the future. That’s what LG did this year. Sony, though, it elucidated that vision by making a damn car.

At least Sony did some work making a real thing, though. It worked with partners to build some of the pieces you’d expect in a hyper-connected electric car:

In fact, the Vision-S features 33 different sensors inside and outside of the car, multiple widescreen displays, 360 audio, and always-on connectivity, with some pieces coming from industry players like BlackBerry and Bosch. It’s also powered by a “newly-designed EV platform” — which appears to have been engineered by automotive supplier Magna — that Sony says will be able to power other vehicle types, like SUVs.

But the truth is that Sony didn’t actually provide all that much detail and left everybody with way more questions than answers. Our transportation reporter Sean O’Kane is going to try to answer as many of those questions as possible, but the truth is that the answers might be simple.

It might just be a concept car that makes people sit up and pay attention to Sony’s brand instead of paying attention to Sony’s products — which at CES this year were not especially great.

CES is about spectacle, you see. And when it comes to spectacle, even Sony has to cede the crown to Mercedes-Benz. It unveiled an Avatar-themed concept car with scales. When you click through that link — and you absolutely must — you will find that every sentence is more bonkers than the one that precedes it.

Those scales are there to convey empathy to people outside the car. James Cameron came on stage. The wheels are designed to be gentle on forest floors and also let the car drive sideways. Drivers are meant to enter into a symbiotic relationship with the car just like the Na’vi. No, really:

To that end, Mercedes-Benz likens this — seriously — to how the Na’vi physically connect with their banshees in the 2009 movie Avatar. And once passengers start moving in the AVTR car, the sweeping display in front of them can light up with 3D graphics of Pandora, the fictional world from the 2009 film Avatar. After Cameron joined Källenius on stage, he agreed with the chairman’s claim. “We will merge,” Cameron said.

As wackadoo as the AVTR car is, it nevertheless shares the same purpose as the Sony Vision-S. It’s an attention getter and reader, it worked. But when a magician draws your attention in one direction, it usually means some sleight-of-hand is happening where you’re not looking.

As with foldables, I detect a distinct lack of confidence. Ironically, the thing these companies don’t have enough confidence in is the very thing these cars are supposed to represent: a vision of the future. It’s as though these companies don’t have the confidence to decide on what their next big technology bets should be, so they just present the idea that they’re going to enable all of them someday.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, to see some of the ideas in Sony and Mercedes-Benz’s cars turn into tangible technology products in the near future. I just don’t know which of them are more real than the others, which is root of my distrust of them.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a concept and a con.

Catch up on CES 2020 videos

Verge Deal of the day

$100 off the iPad Pro

Best Buy has knocked $100 off of select models of the latest iPad Pro. This deal is only available for My Best Buy members, but you can create an account for free. This is the 12-inch version of the iPad Pro, and the deal applies to the WiFi-only and WiFi and cellular-enabled configurations, and you can get a 64 GB or 256 GB model. In his review, The Verge’s Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel found the iPad Pro to be powerful, practical, and capable, but expensive. This discount should help with that last point.

PC and Laptop news

└ AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 4000 CPUs are here to take on Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake laptop chips

Keep an eye on the first laptop reviews with these chips. If AMD achieved what it claims here, we could have a good old fashioned processor fight again. It’s been awhile!

With the new Ryzen 4000 chips, AMD hopes to not only catch up but actually take the lead against Intel when it comes to performance and battery life.

└ AMD and Intel’s new chips go head-to-head inside Acer’s Swift 3

Heck, maybe that fight is already begun!

└ Lenovo’s new AMD Ryzen 4000-powered Yoga starts $360 cheaper than its Intel version

└ Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus has a giant E Ink screen on the lid

The only thing about that appeals to me is the idea that you could take notes on it with the stylus. But kudos to Lenovo for making a product it will actually ship instead of just another concept.

└ Asus’ ROG Zephyrus G14 has a hidden LED dot-matrix display on the lid

I like this idea better than the e-ink laptop. It’s less practical but really is the point of the back of your laptop screen practicality?

└ Lenovo’s Yoga 5G is the first ARM-powered Windows laptop with 5G

More TV News

└ TCL will enable variable refresh rates for some TVs later this year

On the spectrum of “TV Gimmicks that CES tries to make you care about,” where 0 is an absolute fail and 10 makes you want to upgrade within the next year or two, I submit the following ratings, in chronological order:

The first HD TV flat panels: 9
3D TVs: 2
Curved TVs: 1
4K TVs: 5 at launch, 7 two years later
HDR: 6 at launch, 7 two years later
8K: currently 4
Variable refresh rates: currently 6.5

I’m giving variable refresh rates on TVs a higher score than I expected to because some are going to be landing alongside next-gen consoles later this year, which could create (oh god I’m going to use this phrase) synergies.

Variable refresh rate gets a higher score than 8K because I suspect there’ll be more content for it than 8K. Plus, nailing refresh rates change the viewing experience in a way that’s hard to quantify but definitively improves the quality of the experience — which was exactly the story with HDR. Finally, I think that the industry has figured this tech out and so it will become common on lots of TVs in the coming years.

└ LG’s roll-up TV is shipping this year and could cost $60,000

└ Amazon’s Fire TV soundbars will get Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, and more later this year

More CES News

└ The sex toy banned from CES last year is unlike anything we’ve ever seen

Worth the click just for the Gif.

└ Ring adds privacy dashboard to app in response to security concerns

└ Bluetooth will support hearing aids, sharing, and a better audio codec

└ Samsung’s new Ballie robot is like a real-life mini BB-8

└ Samsung plans to launch its Galaxy Home Mini smart speaker early this year

So is the original, bigger one cancelled or what? Why won’t Samsung just fess up and say one way or the other.

└ The headless robot cat company has made a headless robot kitten

I unironically love this.

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2020-01-07 12:00:00Z
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Sony TV Lineup | Hands-On at CES 2020 - Digital Trends

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2020-01-07 11:00:03Z
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Samsung's Neon 'artificial humans' look like super-realistic video chatbots - CNBC

NEON artificial humans.

NEON

Samsung's STAR Labs research group announced a new "artificial human" called Neon early Tuesday morning at CES 2020.

Neon isn't a robot or a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa. Instead, it's a simulated human assistant that appears on a screen and learns about people to help it give seemingly intelligent and life-like responses -- think of it like an animated chatbot. Samsung claims the Neons will be able to provide a response to questions in milliseconds.

A spokesperson for STAR (Samsung Technology & Advanced Research) Labs told CNBC that the avatars will "help enhance interactions people have with certain jobs, such as friendly customer service; a worker that will be able to remember your name if you do yoga a certain amount of times during the week."

NEON artificial humans.

NEON

As the images show, Neons will be able to have different looks and attitudes.

"Over time, Neons will work as TV anchors, spokespeople or movie actors; or they can simply be companions and friends," the company said.

Neons will be available as services for companies and people to license or subscribe to, but Star Labs said it's not trying to replace humans, even if it seems like it. "We are not looking to replace human jobs, but rather enhance the customer service interactions, have customers feel as if they have a friend with Neons," a spokesperson told CNBC.

STAR's marketing rhetoric around the Neons is pretty extreme. The company says the Neons have their own emotions and memories, for instance, which would be an astounding and unprecedented feat of computer science. It's more likely that the creators can simply program them to simulate emotions and store data.

Without having seen one, it's unclear how "smart" Neons actually are, or how well they are able to understand people or empathize with a person in distress. Voice assistants Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are also capable of learning a human's unique voice and responding, but they often make many mistakes.

Other companies have tried to replace or complement human workers in similar ways. SoftBank Robotics launched its smart robot Pepper in 2015. It was available for in-home purchase as well as in banks, healthcare facilities and restaurants, and was capable of serving as a receptionist.

"We plan to make Neon available to business partners as well to consumers all around the world," the company said in a FAQ sheet. "It is too early for us to comment on the business model or pricing for Neon, but we plan to beta launch Neon in the real world with selected partners later this year."

Without further details, it's tempting to dismiss this as a stunt product that will never see the light of day outside CES. We'll see if Samsung proves us wrong and actually releases the thing later this year.

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2020-01-07 07:01:00Z
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Senin, 06 Januari 2020

Samsung Galaxy Chromebook hands-on: ultra premium and super red - The Verge

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2020-01-06 14:00:08Z
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HP’s new all-in-one PC wirelessly charges your phone and has an RTX 2080 inside - The Verge

The PC market is largely focused on laptops these days, so it’s unusual to see a powerful new all-in-one PC. HP is announcing exactly that at CES 2020 this week, with its new Envy 32 AiO. It ships with a 31.5-inch 4K display capable of HDR600 (600 nits) and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 (Max-Q) inside. It’s the first all-in-one PC to be certified as part of Nvidia’s RTX Studio program, meaning it can use the RTX cores in supported applications for accelerated ray tracing and AI workloads.

HP is also including 65W Intel 9th Gen Core i7 processors, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of SSD storage. HP claims the Envy 32 AiO has the “world’s widest” 4K display in an all-in-one, thanks to a 92.8 percent screen-to-body ratio and edge-to-edge glass. It’s also the “world’s first PC” with a HDR600 display, and it also has a 6000:1 contrast ratio.

Aside from the raw power, HP has also included some useful features if you’re an audio or wireless charging fan. In yet another “world’s first” claim, HP says the Envy 32 AiO is the “world’s loudest all-in-one,” thanks to built-in front-firing tweeters and a subwoofer tuned by Bang & Olufsen. You can even stream music to these PC speakers when the machine is powered off. HP has also turned the base of this all-in-one PC into a Qi wireless charging pad that also works when the PC is off.

HP’s Envy 32 AiO is available today starting at $1,599.99 from HP’s website.

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2020-01-06 10:02:00Z
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Selasa, 07 Januari 2020

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Concept foldables

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Catch up on CES 2020 videos

Verge Deal of the day

The big keynotes

Folding screens

Hands-on videos

PC and Laptop news

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Senin, 06 Januari 2020