Will Apple Forego Intel?—Why AMD’s New RYZEN Chips Look Smart for Future Macs

Intel may have just lost the performance crown for microprocessors for PCs. Against a backdrop of positivity for AMD these days, the new AMD RYZEN 7 1800X just set a new world record score for Cinebench, a respected CPU performance benchmark.

Yet, the story isn’t really about sheer performance but that AMD’s new chip line delivers stunning performance per watt compared to Intel’s i7. And that’s where this gets interesting for Apple. You see, for more than a half a decade now Apple’s design philosophy for devices has shifted to being more about economy of energy consumption over maximum performance.

This is where there seems to be better alignment. AMD’s new chip is extremely Apple-esque.

The Apple-Esqueness of RYZEN 7

The new RYZEN 7 chip lineup includes three new chips: the 1800X, 1700X, and 1700. They roughly compete with Intel’s i7 line including the i7-6900K, i7-6800K, and i7-7700K, respectively. While all three deliver similar performance, according to AMD, they do so at much smaller wattages.

Key Takeaway

Apple’s designs are all about thinness, lightness and long battery life and thus they prefer microprocessor selections based on energy requirements rather than shear performance. But AMD’s new RYZEN 7 chips excel in exactly this area, outclassing Intel’s i7’s in “power per watt” and beating their pants in price too. This could be a game-changer.

The 1800X and 1700X both have TDP’s (thermal design points) of 95W (watts) compared to 140W for their i7 competition. That’s more than a 30% savings in power draw. But the big kicker is the cost at the high end. The RYZEN 7 1800X is just $499 per chip compared to $1,089 for Intel. While the mid-range and lower end (1700) models save less money the lower range unit, in particular, delivers twice the cores (8), twice the threads (16), and is also 30% less in energy consumption.

01 – AMD RYZEN 7 CPUs perform equal or better than Intel’s finest, says company but deliver that performance in far smaller wattages. On average they draw 30% less energy making them ideal for Apple’s minimal TDP hardware designs.

These are big advantages even if independent third-party tests show the performance is slightly less than what AMD is touting. What matters these days for Apple is designing around minimal TDPs.

Preserving the “Conserving Energy” Apple Ethos

A Forbes article about the new Macbook Pro noted that Apple is designing for the needs of conserving energy and less about performance. “Here’s how Apple deftly puts it in their ad copy,” writes Brooke Crothers, ” ‘Intel processors deliver pro-level processing performance while conserving energy.’ ”

But where is this “pro-level” performance? Apple’s new Macbook Pro really isn’t particularly faster than the model it replaced. As the Forbes article points out, Apple seriously traded down wattage in the latest update, going from a 28W 5th-gen “Broadwell” part to a 15W 6th-gen “Skylake” part in the entry model.

Some have suggested Apple would at some point use its own A-series (ARM-based) processors in future Macs, since they are the ultimate in performance per watt. But such a direction would have serious consequences for macOS and its developers, forcing them to make another microprocessor architecture change. If Apple’s power envelope constraints are truly that important, than why not consider AMD’s new RYZEN 7 chips?

02 – AMD’s new RYZEN promises a return to true competition in the CPU arena, says multiple leading analysts and experts. (image: AMD)

Take a look at today’s current iMac 5K model. It uses an Intel 14nm “Skylake” 4-core i7-6700K processor with a TDP of 91W. Based on the iMac’s actual frequency (Apple regularly dials them down) the TDP is possibly low 80’s W range. But AMD’s RYZEN 7 1700 is at 65W already and has 8 cores.

An Apple and AMD Get-Together?

For Apple to go with AMD after years of embracing Intel seems questionable. The prestige of “Intel-inside” and the benefits of working with the industry leader seem locked in. But on the flip-side Apple’s own PC rivals could gain notable advantages and ruin the Cupertino company’s ability to drop those famous marketing bombs about thinnest and lightest and battery life.

What would Apple do without those marketing bullet points?

The PC market is also rebounding and growing in areas that are typically Apple’s turf, like high-end personal computers and more expensive laptops. It should be said too that Apple chose AMD’s new Polaris graphics over Nvidia’s goods in the latest new Macbook Pro because it was simply a good fit for Apple’s thin design. And Canalys analyst Daniel Matte stated for Forbes that “Apple’s desires probably informed AMD’s [Polaris] roadmap.”

Apple has been about thin design and tight TDPs for a long time now. Is it possible that when AMD decided to work from a clean state four years ago that they began the RYZEN line with the possibility of wooing Apple at some point in the future? Wouldn’t getting Apple be a huge win for them?

It certainly would. Whether Apple is tempted to explore a new dancing partner, however, is anyone’s best guess.

 

Razer Blade Stealth review: beautiful ultrabook gets cheaper, more powerful

The original Razer Blade Stealth made an impact as a 12.5-inch Windows laptop that seemed determined to match or beat Apple’s 12-inch MacBook at every turn — from specs to design to portability to price — and in my opinion it succeeded.

The recently-released refreshed version of the machine pushes the boundaries of the small form factor even further, and also manages to do so at a lower price point.

Starting at $1499.95, the new Stealth looks identical to the old one. Combining a sleek, super-sturdy black metal frame with individually lit RGB keys, it’s up to you if you want to keep things stealthy with plain white, green or any other colour keys, or you can go nuts with bright neons, rainbow waves or reactive animations as you type.

It’s a gimmick you usually only see on keyboards and laptops meant specifically for gaming, but it does wonders for productivity too (not to mention aesthetics). For example you can easily set the keys to change their lighting pattern so that every time you open Photoshop your favourite shortcut keys are colour-coded.

Once again keys are spaced nicely and are comfortable to type on, but only as far as you can expect on such a light and thin ultrabook. The stealth weighs in at 1.29kg and is a mere 13mm thick, and consequently key travel is shallow enough that long sessions of typing had me feeling some fatigue. The touchpad is a similar story, it feels great and works perfectly but bigger would be nicer. Thankfully the screen is multi-touch so even if you’re not packing a mouse you can get around OK.

Elsewhere you still have the two standard USB 3.0 ports plus a full sized HDMI, and a Thunderbolt 3 port for fast charging, DisplayPort or USB-C devices.

Inside, the machine follows the exact philosophy of its 2016 forbear but with a few slight upgrades in just the right places.

It still runs an Intel i7 processor, but this time it’s a 7th Gen Kaby Lake chip. It’s clocked slightly higher than last year’s CPU at 2.7Ghz (turbo to 3.5GHz). Subsequently it also packs integrated Intel graphics (like pretty much all ultrabooks), but it’s had a bit of a bump from the HD 520 to the HD 620. All models of the Stealth now come with a healthy 16GB of RAM, making even the entry level $1500 unit a force to be reckoned with.

In fact the only difference between the $1500, $1850 and $2100 versions of this machine is the amount of in-built storage you get (128GB, 256GB or 512GB respectively).

There is also an option to get the Stealth with a spectacular 4K screen, which achieves 100 per cent of Adobe RGB, in a 512GB model ($2400) or a 1TB model ($3000). But given the battery life on my QHD review unit struggles to make it to seven hours of continuous use, I’d only suggest you go 4K if you absolutely need the extra resolution or colour accuracy it brings, because it will drain your power.

So what does the machine’s extra grunt mean in real world terms? Well for starters the Kaby Lake makes this thing a multi-tasking beast, with the ability to handle a number of browser tabs that would have buckled last year’s model. All your standard productivity and entertainment tasks — like office software and streaming video — are buttery smooth.

Without a dedicated GPU, an ultrabook is probably not for you if you need to do graphics-intensive work or are looking for a portable gaming station, but within its category the Stealth does very well. If all you want to do is play a few rounds of Overwatch, and you’re happy to crank the settings down, there’s more than enough grunt here.

In other territories Razer offers a product known as the Core, which fits a standard desktop graphics card and can plug seamlessly into the stealth for serious graphics power when you’re at home. Unfortunately there’s still no word on when the Core might make it down under.

Overall, the reduction in price and increase in specs has pushed the Stealth to the head of the pack when it comes to small laptops, with the 256GB Stealth (at $1850) weighing up favourably with comparable Dell XPS 13 and MacBook models.

The cheapest XPS 13 model that comes with a 7th Gen i7 costs $2299, and it packs half the RAM of the Stealth (8GB) and no touchscreen. Meanwhile the $1999 MacBook, also with 8GB of RAM, comes with a much slower Core M3 mobile chipset. Even the 256GB 13-inch MacBook Pro packs an i5 chipset and 8GB of RAM, and costs $2699.

As with last time, the only real achilles heel of the Stealth is its battery life, which Razer has clearly sacrificed at the altar of more powerful internals. You’re looking at eight hours maximum which, to put it bluntly, is below average for this product category. You can kill it in two if you try.

The company has recently announced a huge battery pack that can charge your laptop and phone, which might boost your Stealth’s life to 15 hours, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a super-light laptop.

Being cheaper and more powerful than the competition, the beautiful Stealth represents a great value. But if getting a whole working day out of your lightweight travel computer without plugging in is important to you, this might be a stretch.

DeepMind’s Streams app is reportedly ‘saving NHS nurses two hours a day’

The data-processing deal has proved controversial with privacy advocates

Getty Images / Media for Medical / Contributor

DeepMind, Google’s London-based AI arm, has provedcontroversial with its data sharing deals with the NHS but the NHS Royal Free London hospital, which has been using the firm’s app to detect early signs of kidney failure, has come out in defence saying the technology is saving staff time.

In November 2016, a revised deal between the NHS and DeepMind was published that outlined how the artificial intelligence company would use patient data to deliver early warning signals as part of a five-year contract.

The system in use is called Streams and sees patient data being scanned by the app to predict when an acute kidney injury (AKI) is likely to occur. “Within a few weeks of being introduced, nurses who have been using Streams report it has been saving them up to two hours every day, which means they can spend more time face-to-face with patients,” the Royal Free said in a statement.

DeepMind hits back at criticism of its NHS data-sharing deal

DeepMind hits back at criticism of its NHS data-sharing deal

It is claimed that more than 26 doctors and nurses at the hospital are using the app and it is “alerting” them up to 11 times per day of patients at risk. In December, a second NHS hospital signed-up to work with DeepMind’s Streams app.

In one example highlighted by the Royal Free hospital a patient, Afia Ahmed, 38, from Hampstead, had a problem with her kidney function highlighted by the app and it is said the doctors were then able to medicate the condition before it developed any further.

NHS figures say acute kidney disease costs the NHS more than £1 billion per year. The Royal Free added that more clinicians will be using the technology in the coming months and alerts for sepsis and organ failure will also be introduced. The NHS is paying DeepMind for its technology, but has refused to say how much.

“On one day this week, the app alerted us to 11 patients, ranging from a young cancer patient to an elderly patient suffering life-threatening dehydration, who were at risk of developing AKI,” Sarah Stanley, a consultant nurse at the Royal Free said in a statement.

The contract deal between the Royal Free and the Google-firm wasinitially revealed by the New Scientist in April 2016 and saw heavy criticism over how much patient data was being shared.

SUBSCRIBE TO WIRED

In November, it was highlighted the DeepMind contract would see data from 1.6 million NHS patients shared each year and historical data from five years being passed to the Google-arm. Mustafa Suleyman, a DeepMind co-founder, told WIRED it was unfair to single his company out and the type of data-sharing it was doing was standard across other types of NHS contracts.

“They have listened reasonably to what objections have been made and they do try to address some of them, but entirely on [DeepMind’s] terms,” added Eerke Boiten, director of Centre for Cyber Security Research at the University of Kent told WIRED.

At the time the UK’s information commissioner, which is in charge of data protection regulations, confirmed an investigation into the data-sharing agreement was ongoing. Since then, the information commissioner has not announced any results of its findings.

Sharp vision: New glasses help the legally blind see

SAN FRANCISCO – Jeff Regan was born with underdeveloped optic nerves and had spent most of his life in a blur. Then four years ago, he donned an unwieldy headset made by a Toronto company called eSight.

Suddenly, Regan could read a newspaper while eating breakfast and make out the faces of his co-workers from across the room. He’s been able to attend plays and watch what’s happening on stage, without having to guess why people around him were laughing.

“These glasses have made my life so much better,” said Regan, 48, a Canadian engineer who lives in London, Ontario.

The headsets from eSight transmit images from a forward-facing camera to small internal screens — one for each eye — in a way that beams the video into the wearer’s peripheral vision. That turns out to be all that some people with limited vision, even legal blindness, need to see things they never could before. That’s because many visual impairments degrade central vision while leaving peripheral vision largely intact.

Although eSight’s glasses won’t help people with total blindness, they could still be a huge deal for the millions of peoples whose vision is so impaired that it can’t be corrected with ordinary lenses.

EYE TEST

But eSight still needs to clear a few minor hurdles.

Among them: proving the glasses are safe and effective for the legally blind. While eSight’s headsets don’t require the approval of health regulators — they fall into the same low-risk category as dental floss — there’s not yet firm evidence of their benefits. The company is funding clinical trials to provide that proof.

The headsets also carry an eye-popping price tag. The latest version of the glasses, released in mid-February, sells for about $10,000. While that’s $5,000 less than its predecessor, it’s still a lot for people who often have trouble getting high-paying jobs because they can’t see.

Insurers won’t cover the cost; they consider the glasses an “assistive” technology similar to hearing aids.

ESight CEO Brian Mech said the latest improvements might help insurers overcome their short-sighted view of his product. Mech argues that it would be more cost-effective for insurers to pay for the headsets, even in part, than to cover more expensive surgical procedures that may restore some sight to the visually impaired.

NEW GLASSES

The latest version of ESight’s technology, built with investments of $32 million over the past decade, is a gadget that vaguely resembles the visor worn by the blind “Star Trek” character Geordi La Forge , played by LeVar Burton.

The third-generation model lets wearers magnify the video feed up to 24 times, compared to just 14 times in earlier models. There’s a hand control for adjusting brightness and contrast. The new glasses also come with a more powerful high-definition camera.

ESight believes that about 200 million people worldwide with visual acuity of 20/70 to 20/1200 could be potential candidates for its glasses. That number includes people with a variety of disabling eye conditions such as macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, ocular albinism, Stargardt’s disease, or, like Regan, optic nerve hypoplasia.

So far, though, the company has sold only about 1,000 headsets, despite the testimonials of wearers who’ve become true believers.

Take, for instance, Yvonne Felix, an artist who now works as an advocate for eSight after seeing the previously indistinguishable faces of her husband and two sons for the first time via its glasses. Others, ranging from kids to senior citizens, have worn the gadgets to golf, watch football or just perform daily tasks such as reading nutrition labels.

EYING THE COMPETITION

ESight isn’t the only company focused on helping the legally blind. Other companies working on high-tech glasses and related tools include Aira , Orcam , ThirdEye , NuEyes and Microsoft .

But most of them are doing something very different. While their approaches also involve cameras attached to glasses, they don’t magnify live video. Instead, they take still images, analyze them with image recognition software and then generate an automated voice that describes what the wearer is looking at — anything from a child to words written on a page.

Samuel Markowitz, a University of Toronto professor of ophthalmology, says that eSight’s glasses are the most versatile option for the legally blind currently available, as they can improve vision at near and far distances, plus everything in between.

Markowitz is one of the researchers from five universities and the Center for Retina and Macular Disease that recently completed a clinical trial of eSight’s second-generation glasses. Although the results won’t be released until later this year, Markowitz said the trials found little risk to the glasses. The biggest hazard, he said, is the possibility of tripping and falling while walking with the glasses covering the eyes.

The device “is meant to be used while in a stationary situation, either sitting or standing, for looking around at the environment,” Markowitz said.

ZTE unveils ‘Gigabit’ phone, partners with Intel for 5G IT baseband unit

ZTE has already made a slew of announcements at MWC, including its new ‘5uper Generation’ smartphone boasting download speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE unveiled its new Gigabit Phone at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Sunday, boasting download speeds of up to 1Gbps.

The ZTE Gigabit Phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform with an integrated Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, and utilises a combination of carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO antenna technology, and 256-QAM modulation to achieve LTE download speeds that ZTE said are up to 10 times faster than first-generation LTE devices.

The smartphone also uses ZTE’s independently developed Pre5G Giga+ MBB solution and smart devices, which ZTE said makes it three times as powerful at improving data processing capability over the current network.

ZTE touted the new device as improving users’ lifestyles by allowing for 360 degree panoramic virtual reality video, instant cloud storage, entertainment upgrades, and fast cache of ultra Hi-Fi music and movies, as well as instant APP, which the company said removes the need for download or installation of applications.

The new smartphone announcement comes after ZTE terminated its Kickstarter campaign for the Hawkeye phone — originally called Project CSX — which was expected to comprise of features crowdsourced from the community.

The Hawkeye phone promised a self-adhering case and eye-tracking technology to enable hands-free experiences. While ZTE previously said it has not ruled out the Hawkeye completely, the crowdfunding campaign ended after it raised only $36,245 of its $500,000 funding goal.

Also at MWC, ZTE announced the launch a 5G IT baseband unit (BBU), based on Intel architecture.

By utilising advanced software defined networking/network function virtualisation (SDN/NFV) technology, the modular IT BBU is compatible with 2G/3G/4G/Pre5G and supports cloud-radio access networks (C-RAN), distributed-RAN (D-RAN), and 5G central and distributed units (CU/DU), ZTE said.

“Intel technologies power the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices, so we are very pleased to be partners in the field of 5G and our deep cooperation will support our two companies’ long-term development,” said Jianguo Zhang, senior vice president of ZTE.

“As a leading communication equipment and solutions provider, 5G is part of ZTE’s core strategy and it is dedicated to the R&D of virtualisation technologies. The cooperation between ZTE and Intel will deliver a simpler, more flexible, and open network to telecom operators, and bring bigger value to users.”

Also at MWC, ZTE revealed plans to release a full range of 5G mmWave and Sub6GHz pre-commercial base stations, which the company said provides support for 3rd Generation Partnership Projects (3GPP), 5G new radio (NR), new air interfaces, and mainstream 5G frequency bands in the industry.

The data throughput on the 5G Sub6GHz base stations can reach 10 Gbps, ZTE said, with China Mobile successfully completing a demonstration of the pre-commercial base station.

ZTE said it also completed 5G single-point technology and prototype verification and has now entered the 5G solution verification and product R&D phase.

“ZTE will continue its innovation in the 5G field to meet the product and service needs of customers. ZTE will occupy a place in the world’s first 5G commercial market and lay a solid foundation for the future Internet of Things (IoT),” said Zhang.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and 3GPP updated their 5G characteristics and requirements standards at the weekend, with speeds, spectrum, and latency all due to be decided later this year.

Under the current International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) 2020 technical performance requirements, 5G networks must be capable of downlink peak data rates of 20Gbps; uplink peak data rates of 10Gbps; downlink user-experienced data rates of 100Mbps; uplink user-experienced data rates of 50Mbps; 4ms latency for enhanced mobile broadband; and 1ms latency for ultra-reliable low-latency communications devices.

5G networks must also enable mobility maximum speeds of between 0km/h and 10km/h for pedestrians, 10km/h to 20km/h for vehicles, and 120km/h to 500km/h for high-speed vehicles; a connection density of 1 million devices per square kilometre; downlink peak spectrum efficiency of 30 bits/Hz; uplink peak spectrum efficiency of 15 bits/Hz; and area traffic capacity of 10Mbps per square metre.

Other parameters being decided include energy efficiency, reliability, control plane latency, and mobility interruption time.

Was I wrong to think an Apple Watch might improve my life?

The Apple Watch is cool and customizable. Is it also a little smart for its own good? (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg) (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)

By John Kelly Columnist February 26 at 4:58 PM