Topps Blog

Friday, 27 August 2021

ET Weekend Deals: Razer Blade 15 Core i7 and Nvidia RTX 2070 Super Gaming Laptop for $1,699, $100 Off Apple MacBook Air M1 Chip

Gaming is at an all time high in terms of popularity right now. Today, as part of the Intel Gamer Days event, you can save hundreds on select gaming devices including a Razer Blade 15 laptop that’s on sale with a $900 discount and it comes with two game download codes bundled with it including Crysis Remastered Trilogy.

Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10850H 15.6-Inch 300Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD ($1,699.99)

Razer’s Blade 15 is a gaming laptop that has a relatively compact build that measures just 0.81-inches thin. For such a small system this system packs strong processing hardware including an Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics processor. This hardware is able to run games at 1080p resolutions well, and the 1080p monitor built in the laptop supports a fast 300Hz refresh rate to give you an even better gaming experience. Currently, you can get one of these systems from Amazon marked down from $2,599.99 to just $1,699.99. For this price you also get two games bundled with the system including Humankind and the Crysis Remastered Trilogy.

Apple MacBook Air M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD ($899.00)

Apple’s latest MacBook Air comes equipped with Apple’s new M1 SoC, which contains an 8-core processor that’s reportedly 3.5 times faster than the hardware inside of the preceding model. Apple said the system can also last for up to 18 hours on a single charge, giving you all the power you need to work from sunrise to sunset. Now for a limited time you can get one of these systems from Amazon marked down from $999.00 to just $899.00.

Dell S3222DGM 31.5-inch 2K Curved Gaming Monitor ($389.99)

With Dell’s S222DGM gaming monitor you get a lot of performance for your buck. The monitor has a curved VA panel that supports a resolution of 2,560×1,440 with a blazing fast refresh rate of 165Hz. It’s also 99 percent sRGB compliant, which gives you highly accurate color production on screen. Best of all, this monitor is on sale with a phenomenal discount that drops the price from $549.99 to just $389.99 from Dell.

Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR Media Player ($37.41)

Roku’s Streaming Stick+ media player features 4K and HDR video support and competes directly with Amazon’s Fire TV 4K. It’s able to stream content from numerous sources including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Sling TV. Right now you can get it from Amazon marked down from $49.99 to $37.41.

Featured Deals:

Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10850H 15.6-Inch 300Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for $1,699.99 from Amazon (List price $2,599.99)
Apple MacBook Air M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $899.99 from Amazon (List price $999.00)
Dell S3222DGM 31.5-inch 2K Curved Gaming Monitor for $389.99 from Dell (List price $549.99)
Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR Media Player for $37.41 from Amazon (List price $49.99)
Dell XPS 8940 Intel Core i7-11700 Gaming Desktop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD + 1TB HDD for $1,299.99 from Dell (List price $1,799.99)
Dell S2721HGF 27-Inch 1080p 144Hz VA Curved Gaming Monitor for $264.99 from Dell (List price $369.99)
Roborock S6 Robot Vacuum and Mop for $399.99 from Amazon (List price $649.99)
Netgear Nighthawk R6700 802.11ac AC1750 Smart WiFi Router for $76.49 from Amazon (List price $99.99)
Dell Vostro 15 7500 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 1080p Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256B NVMe SSD for $959.00 from Dell (List price $1,927.15)
iRobot Roomba i7+ 7550 Robot Vacuum for $649.00 from Amazon (List price $799.99)
Dell Vostro 5890 Intel Core i7-10700 Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD for $679.00 from Dell (List price $1,241.43)
Dell XPS 13 9300 Intel Core i7-1165G7 13.3-Inch 1080p Touchscreen Laptop w/ Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16GB LPDDR4x RAM and 1TB M.2 SSD for $985.59 from Dell with promo code SAVE12 (List price $1,549.99)
Amazon Eero 6 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6 Router System for $195.00 from Amazon (List price $279.00)
Dell XPS 13 9300 Intel Core i7-1165G7 13.3-Inch 1080p Touchscreen Laptop w/ Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16GB LPDDR4x RAM and 1TB M.2 SSD for $985.59 from Dell with promo code SAVE12 (List price $1,549.99)
Seagate Expansion 6TB External HDD for $124.86 from Amazon (List price $159.99)
Dell Vostro 13 5301 Intel Core i5-1135G7 13.3-inch 108p Laptop w/ Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB NVMe SSD for $649.00 from Dell (List price $1,355.72)
iRobot Roomba 694 WiFi Robot Vacuum for $229.99 from Amazon (List price $274.00)
Roku Express 4K+ HD/4K/HDR Streaming Media Player for $29.00 from Amazon (List Price $39.99)
Dell Vostro 7510 Intel Core i5-11400H 15.6-Inch 1080p Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD for $1,028.99 from Dell (List price $1,827.14)
WD My Book 4TB External HDD for $78.76 from Amazon (List price $179.99)

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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Apple Promises Tiny App Store Changes to Drop Class Action Case

Apple pioneered the modern mobile application model, and it’s been reluctant to make changes that don’t directly boost its bottom line. This has led to a spate of litigation with developers, most of which is still winding its way through the courts. While the Epic case is still ongoing, Apple has worked out a settlement on a class action filed by developers, pledging to make some changes to the App Store model. They are very minor changes, though, which serves as a reminder of how little power developers have in the relationship.

The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed in 219 by two developers who accused Apple of abusing its monopoly over iOS software. Rather than take the case before a judge while also fighting Epic on another front, Apple and the plaintiffs have reached a proposed settlement, which the court can choose to accept or reject.

According to the filing, Apple has pledged to set up a fund that will make payments to small and medium developers. The total payout will be $100 million, and roughly 67,000 devs will be eligible. Payments could go as high as $30,000 for devs that made over $1 million in calendar years 2015 through 2021. Almost all members of the class would get between $250 and $2,000, though.

More interestingly, Apple promises it will amend its rules to clarify that developers can offer subscriptions outside the App Store. There have been several instances where Apple suspended or rejected an app based on the developer pushing subscriptions outside of the App Store, which circumvents Apple’s 30 percent cut. This was never technically against the rules, but Apple will now codify this right in its developer agreement. Apple also says it will ensure that its App Store search will rely on objective signals like downloads, star ratings, text relevance, and user behavior. However, it won’t have to change anything about search for the next three years.

At the end of the day, these are pretty minor changes. The Coalition for App Fairness, a group backed by Epic, Basecamp, and others, calls the settlement a sham. “This offer does nothing to address the structural, foundational problems facing all developers, large and small, undermining innovation and competition in the app ecosystem,” the group said in a statement. Regardless of whether this move earns Apple some goodwill, legislators are increasingly looking at laws to rein in Apple that could force it to allow third-party app stores. Apple wants to avoid that at all costs.

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This Mbeat Hi-Fi Turntable with Dual Speakers is On Sale for $300

Vinyl records have a certain richness of sound and experience to them that CDs and digital recording simply don’t. For those who care about the quality of the music they listen to, having a quality record player that can handle your vinyl collections gently which playing them with great sound quality is of the highest priority. While many prefer to use out of date and older styles of record players, the technology to play vinyl records has thankfully developed over time, so as not to be left behind by newer technologies. And it’s easy to bring these newer devices into your home.

Right now, you can get the mbeat MB-PT-28 Bluetooth Hi-Fi Turntable with Speakers for the reduced price of $299.99, a great discount of 11 percent off the full ordinary purchase price of $339, allowing you to bring into your home the rich sound of vinyl music and records for a lower than usual price.

The mbeat turntable has all the features that make it a sophisticated and versatile vinyl player. With a solid metal platter that sits over a sub-platter system, it’s designed to dampen unwanted resonance and noise. It also features an adjustable counterweight, anti-skating, and moving magnet cartridge, allowing for a purer sound experience. Spin 33/45 records and even stream on your smart devices via Bluetooth connectivity. You can also connect the mbeat turntable to your sound system with the system’s built-in pre-amplifiers, or simply use the powerful included speakers. Even play and record vinyl directly to your PC to digitize your collection for portability.

The mbeat MB-PT-28 Bluetooth Hi-Fi Turntable with Speakers is on sale for $299.99, meaning you can play your favorite records in higher quality with a whole range of other features more easily, with more enjoyment. Additionally, when you spend $50 or more in the store today, we’ll drop a $10 credit into your account (in about 14 days, as long as any returns you make don’t dip your total below $50).

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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IBM’s New System Z CPU Offers 40 Percent More Performance per Socket, Integrated AI

IBM shared new details on its upcoming Telum CPU at Hot Chips, and the new microarchitecture looks to be a significant advance over the older z15. This will be IBM’s first 7nm CPU built using Samsung’s EUV and a huge step forward for Samsung as far as demonstrating its EUV chops.

IBM’s Telum is a mainframe CPU, which means it operates in a very different compute environment than an x86 chip. Both a mainframe and a server are an integrated platform with a large pool of nearby DRAM, various forms of attached storage, and a large number of CPU cores, but mainframes are architected for very different purposes than your typical x86 server.

Mainframes are designed to maximize system throughput and reliability to a degree that x86 servers don’t match. Where a traditional x86 system has moved as much processing away from accelerators and into the CPU or GPU as possible, mainframes make extensive use of offload hardware in order to keep the CPU available. Mainframes emphasize throughput, redundancy, and security with features that allow for hot-swapping processors or other components in ways x86 systems don’t support. Performance and feature comparisons between mainframes and servers can favor either the mainframe or the x86 system depending on what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

Generally speaking, mainframes are deployed in environments where throughput and reliability demands are high, component failure is unacceptable, and it’s better to pay for equipment that can withstand a CPU or RAM DIMM failure without crashing than to have to take the system offline for any length of time. Mainframes also maintain CPU responsiveness at very high levels of load. They take less of a latency penalty than x86 cores and they juggle I/O workloads more adroitly.

The IBM Telum is laid out differently than a typical x86 CPU because it has a somewhat different role within the system and because mainframes allocate resources very differently than a typical server.

The Telum is built on 7nm technology and is 530 sq. mm. A chip like AMD’s Zen 2 Epyc with eight chiplets and an I/O die is roughly 592 sq. mm for the chiplets and 407 mm sq. for the I/O die. Since Epyc is a disaggregated chip and System Z uses off-die controllers to handle certain task, even comparing die size is a bit tricky. Each Telum contains eight CPU cores with SMT2 enabled, for a total of 16 threads per chip. A four-socket drawer contains eight chips in dual chip modules (64 cores total), with a 2GB virtual cache, and four drawers can be connected for a total of 32 chips (256 cores / 512 threads).

Telum is a significant departure from IBM’s previous z-15 architecture. The z-15 used a large off-die cache and a separate System Control chip with just 12 cores per socket. Not only does Telum increase that to 16 cores, but it also integrates new functionality on-die compared with previous z-machines.

Each Telum core has its own L1 and a 32MB L2. Because L2 cache data attached to one CPU core can be evicted to the L2 cache of a different core, the entire cache can also function as a 256MB “virtual” L3 for each Telum chip. Similarly, the L2 cache of a four-socket drawer can be addressed as a 2GB virtual L4 cache between all of the chips in the drawer. The L2 cache uses a 320GB/s bi-directional ring bus with an average latency of just 12ns. IBM claims that the Telum will run above 5GHz, which is no small achievement for a chip this complex.

One new feature on Telum — which also serves to illustrate the different approach IBM takes to chip design as opposed to Intel — is a new AI acceleration engine. The new engine contains 128 processing tiles designed for 8-way FP16 operations and 32 tiles for 8-way FP32 / FP16 calculations, connected via a 600GB/s bus. If Intel or AMD ever built an AI acceleration unit, we would most likely see that functionality added per core. Intel’s AVX-512 instruction set is intended to increase AI calculation performance, for example, and it’s built into each x86 CPU core. If the microarchitecture offers 1×512-bit register per CPU core and you’ve got 12 cores, you’ve got 12 registers. If you have 24 cores, you have 24 registers.

IBM’s AI unit, in contrast, is equally addressable from any CPU core. Instead, the AI unit serves multiple CPU cores at once, without data ever leaving the chip it’s being processed on. While this would also be true for AVX-512 instructions running on an Intel or future AMD CPU, many AI workloads are run on GPUs today. Data, therefore, flows off the CPU by necessity, and mainframes are designed to be secure at every level in a way that consumer and server hardware isn’t. Keeping the data on-die is a valuable asset in this space. IBM is particularly playing up this capability as a value-add for customers who want to run background AI tasks without compromising CPU availability or responsiveness.

There are articles that run in both directions on whether x86 servers can replace IBM mainframes or vice versa, and both claim that each solution can run laps around the other. While this may be true, it doesn’t seem to be the best way to frame the comparison. Mainframes and typical enterprise x86 systems are sold for different purposes. They run different operating systems, and after decades of differentiation, they focus on delivering top performance in specific metrics. If you don’t need the ability to hot-swap a CPU and RAM or 99.999999 percent uptime, mainframes may not be an appropriate solution. If you do need those things, a mainframe may be the smartest choice.

It’s always interesting to see what IBM is working on, even if it doesn’t directly affect the x86 market much. If nothing else, IBM’s z-system represents a road not taken in consumer computing history, and a type of CPU that has remained relevant in an x86-dominated world by being very good at what it does. Telum supposedly delivers a 40 percent increase in per-socket performance, which likely reflects the shift from 14nm to 7nm as well as the improved system architecture.

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Western Digital Pledges Transparency, Will Replace QLC SN550 for Unhappy Buyers

Earlier this week, news broke that Western Digital was shipping WD Blue SN550 drives with QLC NAND instead of the TLC NAND the drives had launched with. This had a significant negative impact on the drive’s performance when the SLC cache was exhausted.

Currently, a number of companies are known to be engaging in this type of behavior, though not all of them have switched from TLC to QLD NAND. Adata, Crucial, WD, and Samsung have all recently made significant drive changes without notifying customers. ExtremeTech and other tech websites have challenged companies to cease this behavior, and Western Digital has taken some significant action to redress the situation.

A Western Digital spokesperson who contacted ExtremeTech on Thursday told us the following:

[I]n June 2021, we replaced the NAND in the WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD and updated the firmware. At the time, we updated the product data sheet. For greater transparency going forward, if we make a change to an existing internal SSD, we commit to introducing a new model number whenever any related published specifications are impacted. We value our customers and are committed to providing the best possible solutions for their data storage needs.

When we inquired if the company would offer redress to customers who had purchased the WD Blue SN550 but had not received the performance they paid for, the spokesperson told us:

For any WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD with the new configuration that is under warranty but does not meet performance requirements, customers can reach out to our Customer Service team for assistance with replacement.

The SN550 comes with a five-year warranty, so this should literally cover any drive.

While we would like to see the currently ambiguous SN550 solution split into two separate SKUs, this change in position offers customers who might not have gotten the drive they paid for a way to solve the problem.

The current SN550 maintains its original performance while the SLC cache is full — it only drops if the cache empties. Whether that’s a problem is up to the end-user. The original version of the drive performed more consistently and is significantly faster, but if you’ve already put the drive into service, it may be a significant headache to remove it.

Our guidance on whether you should seek a replacement is this: QLC NAND is intended for relatively light workloads where reads are more important than writes. If you bought one of these drives as cool storage for photos or video and you don’t normally perform 150GB+ file copies, it should be fine. If you bought it for light workloads, it should be fine. If you’ve been perfectly happy with your SN550 to date, you don’t see your needs changing, and swapping it out for RMA would be a headache, you may not need to worry about it.

If you bought an SN550 that didn’t meet your performance expectations, we suggest contacting WD. Please let us know how it goes. Thank you to Expreview for surfacing this story. We’ll be keeping an eye on this, but we’re glad to see WD moving to promptly address the issue.

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Samsung Is the Latest SSD Manufacturer Caught Cheating Its Customers

In the past 11 days, both Crucial and Western Digital have been caught swapping the TLC NAND used for certain products with inferior QLC NAND without updating product SKUs or informing reviewers that this change was happening. Shipping one product to reviewers and a different product to consumers is unacceptable and we recently recommended that readers buy SSDs from Samsung or Intel in lieu of WD or Crucial.

As of today, we have to take Samsung off that list. One difference in this situation is that Samsung isn’t swapping TLC for QLC — it’s swapping the drive controller + TLC for a different, inferior drive controller. The net effect is still a steep performance decline in certain tests. We’ve asked Intel to specifically confirm it does not engage in this kind of consumer-hostile behavior and will report back if it does.

The other beats of this story are familiar. Computerbase.de reports on a YouTube Channel, 潮玩客, which compared two different versions of the Samsung 970 Plus. Both drives are labeled with the same sticker declaring them to be a 970EVO Plus, but the part numbers are different. One drive is labeled the MZVLB1T0HBLR (older, good) and one is the MZVL21T0HBLU (newer, inferior).

Right-click and open in a new window for a full-size image. (Photo: 潮玩客)

Peel the sticker back, and the chips underneath are rather different. The Phoenix drive (top) is older than the Elpis drive on the bottom. Computerbase claims a production date of April 2021 for the Phoenix, but if the 2110 and 2123 codes are production dates, this would seem to indicate March and June. It’s possible that Samsung uses specific numerical codes for each month. Either way, the Phoenix drive is older and faster and the Elpis drive is newer and slower.

Right-click and open in a new window for a full-size image. (Photo: 潮玩客)

And — just as we’ve seen from Crucial and Western Digital — performance in some benchmarks after the swap is just fine, while other benchmarks crater. Here’s what write performance looks like when measured over the entirety of both drives:

Right-click and open in a new window for a full-size image. (Photo: 潮玩客)

The original 970 Plus starts with solid performance and holds it for the entire 200GB test. The right-hand SSD is even faster than the OG 970 Plus until we hit the 120GB mark, at which point performance drops to 50 percent of what it was. Real-world file copies also bear this out, with one drive holding 1.58GB/s and one at 830MB/s. TLC hasn’t been swapped for QLC, but the 50 percent performance hit in some tests is as bad as what we see when it has been.

The only thing worse than discovering a vendor is cheating people is discovering that lots of vendors have apparently decided to cheat people. I don’t know what kind of substances got passed around the last time NAND manufacturers threw themselves a summit, but next time there needs to be more ethics and less marijuana. Or maybe there needs to be more ethics and marijuana, but less toluene. I’m open to suggestions, really.

Shamsung

Let me tackle some of the usual excuses out of the gate.

“It’s fine because 800GB/s is still really fast.”

“It’s fine because people don’t copy more than 120GB of data at a time.”

“It’s fine because it’s still TLC NAND, not QLC NAND.”

“It’s fine because everyone else is doing it.”

No, it isn’t.

I’ve already written one article this week with the title “Why Lying About Storage Products is Bad.” The events of the last week beggar belief. Did some silicon Voldemort reactivate a long-dormant “Screw your customers!” sigil in the sky? Are you being collectively blackmailed? Is the Illuminati involved?

When NAND first hit the consumer market, there were a lot of concerns around longevity and product quality. While there were exceptions, the majority of consumer SSDs from major companies over the last decade have been solid drives. Issues with drive manufacturers bait-and-switching customers like we’ve seen this week have occurred, but they’ve typically been limited to a single company at once. Samsung has been a major player in the NAND market from the start and has enjoyed a good reputation with the general community.

The pandemic is no excuse for this. The pandemic didn’t force Samsung to write “970 EVO Plus” on both products. These products are not equivalent. They are not fungible to anyone who wants to copy more than 120GB of data.

A 120GB cache may seem like it’s enough for most cases, but it’s not a real cache — it’s repurposed/empty TLC (or QLC) NAND that’s being treated as an SLC write buffer. The less free space on your drive, the less cache you have. The drive can’t provide you with 120GB of SLC without roughly 360GB of empty TLC (or 480GB of QLC) and how much cache it can provide you at any given moment will depend on how much you’ve recently written to the drive, how recently it performed garbage collection/TRIM, and how much free space you have. That 125GB SLC cache is at its largest and fastest when the drive is new and mostly empty. As the drive fills and approaches 2/3 capacity, the total amount of cache and overall drive performance will both begin to drop.

One more time, for the companies at the back of the room who may or may not be eating paste: When you ship one product to reviewers and another to customers, you damage trust between the review community and yourselves, between websites and their readership, and between readers and yourselves. You encourage people to assume the worst about your willingness to put profit ahead of the customer experience. You erode the willingness of the community to take your performance promises on faith.

Do you want the launch of future Samsung products to be met with jeers of “Yeah, but how will it perform a year from now?”

Do you think it’s good for Samsung’s brand loyalty if users are forced to play detective in order to make certain they aren’t buying the inferior version of your product that you refuse to identify as such?

The product is not the problem. The lying by omission, lost performance, and dishonorable behavior are the problem.

We’ll update this story with whatever Intel has to say and we’ve already reached out to a number of manufacturers to inquire as to whether they are engaging in this practice.

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Astronomers Still Can’t Explain Fast Radio Bursts

Few astronomical phenomena have been as vexing in recent years as fast radio bursts. These momentary flashes release as much energy in a millisecond as the sun does in three days, and the mechanism behind them is still a mystery. Astronomers have learned a lot about FRBs, but one of the leading explanations has failed a critical test. It’s not quite back to the drawing board, but the remaining possibilities don’t entirely fit the data either.

As with most things in the universe, FRBs existed before humans and will probably continue happening long after we are gone. However, we only noticed them in 2012 when researchers reviewed radio telescope data from 2006. Since then, dozens of FRB sources have been spotted. Their extremely short duration and unpredictability made it difficult to come to any conclusions, but the more recent discovery of repeating FRBs was a watershed moment. Using one of these repeating sources, researchers from the University of Amsterdam and ASTRON in the Netherlands tested the leading FRB explanation.

With repeating bursts, like FRB 20180916B that was the focus of the new Dutch study, it’s possible to gather much more data on each event. FRB 20180916B flashes once every 16.35 Earth days, so the team felt it would be a perfect test for the leading binary-wind model. According to the hypothesis, FRBs are the result of interactions between two orbiting objects like a neutron star and a black hole.

The LOFAR Telescope was key to testing the binary-wind model.

Unfortunately, the data from FRB 20180916B doesn’t support the binary system hypothesis. If the 16-day periodicity of this signal was the result of orbiting partners, the longer red wavelengths should be diminished or even blocked completely. That would leave only short blue-shifted wavelengths. However, the researchers found no such correlation. On some days, the signal was red-shifted, and on others, it was more toward the blue end of the spectrum.

There has also been a lot of interest in magnetars as a potential source of FRBs. These neutron stars encased in powerful magnetic fields appear to be associated with at least some FRBs, but this isn’t an entirely satisfactory explanation either. These objects have wobbling rotations that could produce repeating effects like an FRB, but none of them wobble slowly enough to match known repeating signals. Even if the binary-wind model doesn’t pan out, we know so much more than we did just a few years ago. It feels like we’re zeroing in on the mechanism, whatever it turns out to be.

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