text:
A Busy Day for Android - Nexus S and Gingerbread (2.3) Officially Announcedby Brian Klug on 12/6/2010 9:35 PM EST
- Posted in
- Nexus S
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
45 Comments
Back to Article
Bhairava - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkOh come on Google!!! No microsd slot? Really no microsd slot??
Really??? Is that true??
Oh come on, i cant believe that. Reply
Jedi2155 - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkNothing special here for me other than Gingerbread and NFC. I prefer my Epic 4G although I'm saddened that they only provided Bluetooth 2.1+EDR on the Epic versus 3.0 on the rest of the galaxy phones. Its pretty insane on how different every carriers version of the Galaxy phone is. Reply
Bhairava - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkReally no microsd slot?!? Really??
Go to hell Google!! Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkNo one's forcing you to buy it, so what's the problem? Reply
TareX - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkI was saving $600 for this phone. I can't believe I'm passing on the new Nexus... (aka, a Samsung Galaxy S with a flash, without a microSD slot) Reply
Gamingphreek - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkFor goodness sake, pay attention and read the article before reacting.
It says no SD Card was INCLUDED. It doesn't say that there is no SD Card *slot*. All they are doing is bringing in support for devices that do not, in fact, have an SD Card slot.
A little reading comprehension goes a long way... Reply
mesiah - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkActually, not to sound like an ass or anything, but a little research would show you that there is indeed no SD card slot on the nexus s. Brian may have been a little unclear, but he did say "Gingerbread brings official platform support for devices that lack external storage, instead allowing for internal NAND to be partitioned to emulate a virtual SD card. That appears to be what is done on the Nexus S - there's no microSD card" So your reading comprehension comment was a little unwarranted.
That being said, it is disheartening to see android devices move in this direction. an SD slot was always one of the selling points for an android device over an iphone. Although most people aren't going to use 16gb, people that have a large music library or store movies on their SD card are going to shy away from this phone. Reply
Bhairava - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkI agree, i have a 32gb sd on my galaxy 'couse i like to carry my music with me, and this lack on the Nexus S is a big big disappointment. Reply
Bhairava - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkNo you need to read better, and to let some smugness drop. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkIf you're going to blow $600 on a phone, then why not spend another $100 to buy a dedicated wireless portable storage device? Reply
Trefugl - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkIf you're going to blow $600 on a phone, then why should you need carry around two devices?
I would expect my relatively expensive devices to meet my (reasonable) storage requirements either natively or via expansion. I'm not ticked that it's not an option here, but it does affect my decision and I'm leaning elsewhere a little more now. Reply
Bhairava - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkOf course no one is forcing me, dude....but the lack of microsd slot still sucks. Android terminal are better beacouse you can do whatever you want (change battery, expanding storage etc), opposite to the iPhone crap that allows you nothing.
Now this is the first step into the wrong Apple-like direction. Reply
Cbac - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkAm I missing something? It sounds like the Nexus S doesn't have a microSD card but is there a reason to think that future native 2.3 phones won't have them either? My impression was that the Nexus One wasn't really all that good of a phone vs. manufacturer/carrier specific models but was appreciated in that you got updates much quicker. Why are people talking about a lack of an SD card on this google phone like it's setting the stage for all the others? I mean don't we know that it's already lacking vs. others in that it's not one of the dual core chips we were expecting? Why should it be any different in respect to the lack of an SD slot? Reply
Zoomer - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - linkNot sure what you are talking about since the Nexus One is a very good device when it came out. Obviously it doesn't beat devices that just came out, but what can?
I believe it holds its own even amongst newer devices.
Disclaimer: HTC Desire owner
Why is there a larger form factor, but with the same screen res, less expansion capabilities? The concave thing seems like a gimmicky waste of space.
And I can't believe it doesn't support GSM video calling. Reply
Jodiuh - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkI'm looking @ a Fascinate right now and it's most certainly not 4" tall. Reply
Brian Klug - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkSamsung lists the following dimensions for the Fascinate: 4.18" x 2.5" x 0.39" here: (add http) samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SCH-I500RKAVZW
I'll have to double check the unit I still have in a second, but I believe the Fasciante is indeed just over 4" tall. ;)
-Brian Reply
craig0ry - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkI'm curious as to why you think they released this specific hardware configuration, as opposed to waiting for dual-core right around the corner, not to mention the Bluetooth 2.1+EDR... This being the "developer" phone for the Android platform, I'm a little confused as to why they would release this seemingly incremental update versus what waiting for what is sure to be a major revolution for the platform...
Any idea what the plan is here with this specific kit? Reply
TareX - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkExactly. Let's not fool ourselves: This is a Samsung Galaxy S, with a flash, and a new chip with 0 significant uses.... minus the microSD expansion. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkDon't forget the curved screen :-P Reply
strikeback03 - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkListening to their interviews, it sounds like they use these reference devices in designing the OS. So Google has probably had these around for months, and probably didn't want to wait to have next-gen SoCs before they could make serious progress on the OS. Which could also help explain why they showed off a tablet running Honeycomb at the same time they announced Gingerbread, we might see that even more quickly than the usual gap between version releases for Android. Reply
TareX - Monday, December 06, 2010 - linkWhere do I start.... the plastic case with the ugly bump at the back? The SINGLE CORE A8 PROCESSOR, in 2011? No microDS expansion? No LED notifications?
GB also disappointed, massively: No multimedia app, no Gmail video chat, no UI GPU acceleration, no tabbed browsing as rumored...etc
The only impressive thing is the curved Super AMOLED with insane contrasts. That's it.
Let's hope the Olympus has a comparable screen. Reply
bplewis24 - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkYou say no UI GPU acceleration, but Brian states the following:
"Gingerbread's UI brings GPU accelerated animations onboard and will likely provide some speedup to the interface."
Is that different from what you were referring to?
Brandon Reply
thernus - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkGPU accelerated UI was one of the features i really wanted with 2.3 (hell i wanted it with 2.1 on my nexus one.
this article is the only one i have seen talking about it.
Brian can you please clarify this? watching the video clips they talk about the garbage collection for apps and the GPU stuff games im really hoping there is a noticable speed increase
its really stupid in this day and age that android doesnt have it. Apple has is winmo7 has it, palm finally might get it after more than a year of promising (I had a pre and it was way to small and laggy i actually gave it away!)
if android doesnt get it soon im jumping back to a iphone or going over to a winmo7 phone when i look to get another phone in 6months time the jittery lag on the N1 kills the experience to much. Reply
Brian Klug - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkAt this point, it's a bit unclear. There's definitely GPU acceleration for most animations now, and the UI in general is supposed to be much smoother. I'm not clear yet on whether all of the UI is 100% GPU accelerated, for that I'm waiting to get a device in-hand.
I'm just uncertain how much of this menu smoothness is attributable to the Dalvik VM doing much faster/opportune garbage collection (which Google is claiming was responsible for a lot of that trademark Android stuttering when just scrolling through menus or webpages), and how much of that will be sped up purely from having a leaner UI with more GPU accelerated animations.
Stay tuned, I'm going to try and find out.
-Brian Reply
tipoo - Saturday, December 11, 2010 - link"The SINGLE CORE A8 PROCESSOR, in 2011? "
Wut? Are there any smartphones using a dual core processor right now? Yeah, dual core A9's are right around the corner, but phones are in development for months before release. Reply
bplewis24 - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - link"long-press to select accented characters (which sounds almost identical to iOS's implementation)"
Android has had that since at least 2.1, if not sooner.
Brandon Reply
MacTheSpoon - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkThat's weird. Samsung's numbers are off. Verizon lists the specs as 4.92" (H) x 2.53" (W) x 0.39" (D). I pulled out my ruler and Verizon is right; the Fascinate is actually nearly 5" tall. Verizon also gives the weight as 4.16 oz., or 118 grams, which is a good ten grams less than Samsung's number. I'm guessing Verizon is right about the weight as well, because my Fascinate has to be more than 10 grams lighter than the iPhone 4s I've used. Reply
Brian Klug - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkIndeed, I think you're right in that regard. I just measured this Fascinate and it appears to be at least 4.875" tall. I'll update the article+dimensions. Awesome catch!
-Brian Reply
rigamortis - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkI bought the nexus one when it first came out , i was so excited. Then i slowly started to realize that T-mobile kills the phone. The single worst carrier on the planet. I could go on for days on this since my wife and their parents have the family plan. I went back to sprint. Love the phone, hate T-mobile and ATT.
eVo 4G owner Reply
MacTheSpoon - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkThanks for being responsive to reader feedback, Brian! You rock. Reply
thernus - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkthanks for the response, I would love to know. Reply
sonci - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkSmb tell me please I can put 2.3 on my Galaxy S,
because that would be the end of the lagging,
If the hardware is the same we can put Nexus software instead waiting for Samsung to update.. Reply
evilspoons - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkWelllp, I'm still waiting for 2.2 on my Galaxy S Captivate so 2.3 will be at an unofficial level...
Maybe they're going to surprise everyone with a Galaxy S and just skip 2.2 and go straight to 2.3? Hahaha. Reply
blueF - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkPretty sure someone on XDA released 2.2 for non rooted captivates. I also think it was baked by samsung, just not officially released yet. Reply
bjacobson - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkGreat preview of Gingerbread.
NFC is for an alternative payment method (to mastercard/visa/etc) from what I understand. Reply
ss4rob - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkYou mention the Nexus S is just like a Galaxy S phone except it adds LED flash, a gyroscope and a front facing camera. I believe my Epic 4G has all of those things except obviously NFC.
Can you clarify? Reply
blueF - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkI think that the epic is the only galaxy S phone with a front camera out of 10 or 11 galaxy s variants. Most of the galaxy phones are the same thing with a different case, but the epic (with its 4g, physical keyboard, and front camera) should really be in a class of its own. Reply
jdworth - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkThe new Android keyboard might be an improvement, but don't really want to give up Swype which I have on my Vibrant. Reply
blueF - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkFrom my experience with the new android keyboard (hacked onto my N1) it is superior to Swype and HTC IME in landscape mode, but in portrait mode swype still rocks. Wonder if I can use tasker to switch keyboards depending on the phone orientation. Reply
wintermute000 - Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - linkHave you tried SlideIT?
I went from swype to SlideIT after one of the beta updates broke on my N1. Never looked back. You know how sometimes swype lags? SlideIT never lags and aside from that its pretty much the same, except you don't 'double twirl' to do double letters (it auto detects it) and the auto-fill is much less intrusive (I prefer it).
any soft keyboard for me has gotta have a 'swype-like' functionality I'm so used to it now lol Reply
ekerazha - Thursday, December 09, 2010 - linkWhy don't you say that Android (stock) still doesn't support proxy configuration for Wi-Fi connections? It's still impossible to use the Wi-Fi network at university etc. Every other mobile OS (my 10-year-old Nokia included) do have proxy support. Reply
Jkm3141 - Thursday, December 09, 2010 - linkThe one I cant understand is still no CDMA option? REALLY? Googles home market is the US, WHY would you limit yourself to T-Mobile. If its really a phone to end all phones, throw in CDMA/GSM and make it a world phone, simple as that. Reply
titexinex - Saturday, December 11, 2010 - linki love this mobile and its features and looks also ! i think this has all needs than others.
http://burnxtreme.org/ Reply
_Aurel_ - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - linkI swear, one of the biggest 'noob' mistakes that reviewers pull is leaving Flash 'On' instead of 'On-Demand' in the browser settings and then complaining that it chugs. Let me ask you something... WHY ON EARTH IS IT EVER A GOOD IDEA TO LEAVE FLASH ON. SO YOU CAN WATCH ADVERTISEMENTS. NO YOU LEAVE IT OFF AND IF YOU WANT TO WATCH FLASH-CONTENT YOU TOUCH THE AREA THAT ITS IN. I loaded up your webpage Brain with Flash as 'On-Demand' and it actually panned and scroll just fine without much noticeable lag. Reply
CreateAccount - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - linkthey're not good at every review, news are slow, everyday there's no new post or news.
yet they call themselves your source for hardware analysis and news. They just DON'T do review thoroughly.
Someone pay them to review for all of their article. There must be some script ready or guideline for what they can say. So much hard this days just to find a reviewer which stick soulfully,loyally to their own opinion. If you are so scare of those manufacturer never send product for you to review, F*K them! Use your ads income to buy product to test and also ask from your friend that own computer retailer shop or any of your readers that are in this business to lend u a product for review purpose.
Just How Hard Could It Be ??????????????????
darn.. where is the battery life review?
oh, I'm here for the comment only. The comments are far more sincere and interesting. I still like the old anandtech thou.
time shift, people change... bye bye anandtech.. Reply


text:
Your browser is not currently set to accept cookies. Please update your preferences or check to make sure you don't have another program set to block cookies.
There are items in your cart not related to this team store. You can check out with the existing items in your cart or empty your cart to continue shopping this page.
Straight out of the pound,
ready to hound.
Lounging around after your latest victory calls for sweet kicks that suit the top dog. Since that's you, grab Warrior's versatile new lifestyle shoe, the oh-so-comfortable Hound Dog.
Shipping Rates
-UPS does not deliver on weekends or holidays
-In-stock orders are not guaranteed to ship the same day they are received. All orders received for in-stock items will be shipped within 1 business day.
-Warrior reserves the right to hold any order for suspected fraud.
Free for all orders over $99 with promo code. Normally $7.99 for orders under $99
-2-5 business days once shipped
-48 contiguous United States
Custom order items delivery vary based on product. Shipping lead times will be communicated in order confirmation e-mail.
-*Rates are based on "ship to" address zip code and calculated during the checkout process.
-Priority: 2 business days once shipped
-Express:1 business day once shipped
-Only available for in-stock items. Items that are not eligible for Express Shipping will be noted in the shopping cart.
This site is for orders shipping to addresses within the United States (and territories). We are unable to accept international orders at this time.
Warrior is happy to ship purchases to APO/FPO addresses. All packages sent to these locations will ship via the US Postal Service.
Overall Product Rating
86% of reviewers recommend this product
1 of 7
12/26/12 by Lilshredmas
Yes, I recommend this product.
"Super sick design and looks. Awesome fabric. Love the fake carbon fiber look on some of the models."
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes 0
No 0
Quality: 5 / 5
Value: 5 / 5
2 of 7
10/3/12 by Conor
"I was skeptical purchasing a shoe from warrior, because I had warrior cleats for about a day that were absolutely miserable. Not even remotely the same experience with the warrior hound dog. I've had them for well over a year now and they are still completely in tact, they feel like new. Other than some dirt, they look like new too. No seams coming apart, no loose strings, they are great. They are super comfortable and look great. You get compliments from the ladies regularly :)
Like I said, they are still in excellent shape but I'm buying a second and third pair because they came out with a ton of new colors (only 2 at the time Ibought the last ones)
I would highly reccomend these shoes for not only casual wear, but mine also feel great for bmx riding, dirtbike riding, and driving."
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes 4
No 2
3 of 7
3/16/12 by jimmy
"Totally radical i love puppy ears supper comfy dude i like pie and cake for jimmy time"
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes 11
No 15
Value: 4 / 5
4 of 7
12/7/11 by Brian
"Extremely comfortable and a design like no other. Perfect shoes to just wear around everyday."
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes 20
No 2
5 of 7
12/7/11 by Augustus | Boston, MA, USA
"Of all the shoes i have worn the hound dogs are definitely the most popular. Everyone that sees these super fly shoes wants to know how they can get their hands on them. The color combinations are insane, there are so many possibilities, there's a hound dog for everyone! Not only are they aesthetically pleasing but are also extremely comfortable, its like walking in a bag filled with puppy ears. Once you go Warrior you'll never go back. Feed your inner dog and get a pair today!"
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes 23
No 4
Use Promo Code "SHIPSFREE" to claim free ground shipping on those orders over $100
We pride ourselves on providing unmatched customer service. Just give us a call and we will be happy to help. Because getting your gear shouldn't cost you.
We make sure you are covered against defects for 30 days. One of the best warranties in the business.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
- HOMEWelcome
- THE HOTELAll about us
- BARCELONAKnow the city
- RESERVATIONBook now!
- CONTACTFor our pleasure
- BLOGMore information
The best way to discover our charming city: Barcelona!
Your Gateway to Barcelona
Hotel Curious, your Hotel in Barcelona city center.
A modern and comfortable hotel in the center of Barcelona where you can live an experience both outside and inside the hotel. You will see that the walls of the rooms are decorated with large pictures of places and monuments of Barcelona. Its design is inspired by the four elements: Water, Earth, Fire and Air. An economical, unique and familiar hotel at once.
Our rooms are fully equipped: WI-FI, Air-conditioning, flat screen TV satellite, hair dryer, radio...
Reached on foot from downtown Barcelona very near Las Ramblas, Plaza Catalunya, the Cathedral, the Gothic Quarter, the Port, the Mercat de la Boqueria and many other sights and tourist attractions, also thanks to the wide availability of public transport, with which you can move easily from the center of Barcelona to all parts of the city.
Hotel Curious will make you discover the most interesting and innovative sites of Barcelona.
We invite you to our hotel and enjoy an UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE with us.
Our customers say
Download Hotel Curious APP
Located right in the center of Barcelona's famous Ramblas and with the Liceu Theatre Metro Station at the door. All transportation at a few meters.
You will only find the best price on our website. 100% guaranteed.
Enjoy a free breakfast buffet with any booking made with this website.
Completely free, with a powerful optical fiber connection that is available throughout the hotel.


text:
Academy Awards Guide
Academy Awards Guide from Overstock.com. Our guides provide customers with information about the Academy Awards.
ITEM#: 12230526Anyone who's seen 1990's QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER knows Tom Selleck's talent for the Western genre. Equally at home riding a horse on the open trail as he was cruising the palm-lined streets of Hawaii in MAGNUM P.I., Selleck makes an unfaltering and likeable hero in this cowboy collection. What's more, authors Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, and Jack Shaefer provide the superb source material for these adventures in the American frontier: CROSSFIRE TRAIL, co-starring Virginia Madsen and Mark Harmon; LAST STAND AT SABER RIVER, co-starring Haley Joel Osment and David Carradine; and MONTE WALSH, co-starring Isabella Rossellini. Please see individual titles for complete synopsis information.
|Warner Brothers
|5.5" x 0.5" x 7.75" WxHxD
|0.34 lbs
|Virginia Madsen, Tom Selleck, Haley Joel Osment, David Carradine, Isabella Rossellini, Mark Harmon
|Country of Origin
|United States
Academy Awards Guide from Overstock.com. Our guides provide customers with information about the Academy Awards.
Looking for the perfect Valentine's Day movie to watch this year? We've picked the best of classic, manly, RomCom, devastatingly sad, and guilty pleasure Valentine's Day flicks.
Tribeca Film Festival Guide from Overstock.com. Our guides provide customers with information about the Tribeca Film Festival.
How to Review a Movie from Overstock.com. Movie reviews are a great way to determine the importance of a film, its impact on viewers, and whether or not it is worth a watch.
Top 5 Prestigious Film Festivals from Overstock.com. Read more about the film festivals behind some of your favorite movies.
How to Organize Your DVDs from Overstock.com. Our guides provide customers with information about how to organize your DVDs.
10 Fun Facts about Disney from Overstock.com. Disney has a long, exciting history, and here are some fun and lesser known facts.
Tips on Selecting the Perfect Entertainment Gift from Overstock.com. Our guides provide customers with tips on selecting the perfect entertainment gift.
This item will be delivered to you via USPS Trackable Media Mail or UPS Mail Innovations and will take from 2 days to 3 weeks from the time the item leaves our warehouse. *
This date is subject to change. In order to assure you receive Overstock.com's low price on this item, your credit card will be charged upon order placement. The item will ship immediately upon release.
Items must be returned in new or unused condition and contain all original materials included with the shipment. More Details
FINAL SALE EXCLUSION: Items marked as FINAL SALE are not returnable unless the problem you experience is the result of our error.
For your protection, all orders are screened for security purposes. If your order is selected for review, our Loss Prevention Team may contact you by phone or email. There may be a two business day delay to process your order.
** Most Oversize orders are delivered within 1-4 weeks. Some orders may take 6 weeks to be delivered.
The Tom Selleck Western Collection (DVD)
Today $16.28


text:
The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 10by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/21/2012 12:40 AM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Smartphones
- Cloud Computing
- Mobile
- GPUs
- SoC
- Podcast
31 Comments
Back to Article
dishayu - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkIt always seems like a long wait between podcasts to me. Definitely the high point of my day when it comes out though. Looks like a good one from the outline. Listening to it now. Reply
noblemo - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkEnjoyed listening to all the topics in this edition of the podcast. Sounds like thermal throttling on the Nexus 4 isn't a deal breaker, especially if you buy into the greater philosophy of the device.
Have a great holiday. Reply
LadyKate - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - linkLove my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home)
http://goo.gl/rSjbU Reply
IanCutress - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkSince this podcast was recorded, I essentially spent all weekend playing around with C++ AMP. It definitely gets around my 'Don't want to program on AMD cards' issue :) Currently trying to make a benchmark with it involving grid solvers, but it all seems too CPU limited. Switching to a better CPU speed makes more performance gain on AMP code than overclocking the GPU. Kind of odd :/
Ian Reply
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkIf I remember the MS presentations correctly, GPU entry and exit is rather expensive. If you try to maximize the amount of time you stay on the GPU, you might see better results. Reply
IanCutress - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkI rearranged my code to do just that. Maybe I'm just not spawning enough threads. Reply
maximumGPU - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkhave been testing AMP for a couple of months now, and i must say i prefer it to cuda. It definitely feels more C++ rather than C, and makes the conversion of existing C++ work easier. Not "slap code to phi and be done" easy, but i feel it's a step up from cuda.
From a few benchmarks i ran, it's a tad slower (could be application dependent), but i'd happily trade that for the nicer language.
Would be nice to hear your thoughts about it. Reply
smike - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkHi, I love listening to your podcasts and learn a lot every time. Unfortunately, they're very long and I dont always have time to listen to the whole thing. I'd like to suggest that you add the ability to increase the playback rate of the audio for people like me.
For those of you who would like to do this yourselves, run the following in your javascript console on this page:
document.getElementsByTagName('audio')[0].playbackRate = 1.5; Reply
Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkOMG Anand, -100 geek points for you, now go sit in the corner and think about your newbness.
HOW can you not have heard of cCleaner, it's a geeks favorite application (Glary utilities is similar but in testing curently).
Please don't now hit me with a bunch of software you use all the time, my brain will explode :D Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkHa! In my defense, I tend to just build more systems instead of dealing with existing ones. It gives me an excuse to use new hardware in real world scenarios for extended testing, and often results in me finding issues I wouldn't have otherwise.
Take care,
Anand Reply
Visual - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - linkNow, I can not talk with certainty about this "cCleaner" in particular before I explore it a bit more (and I don't think I want to bother), but I've always regarded the class of programs of system or registry cleaners, optimizers and fixers as absolutely idiotic and pointless.
At best, they have a couple good tweaks, but I'd still prefer to apply those explicitly and after being well informed about how and why they work instead of just using a blackbox magical tool that does them in bulk for me.
More likely than not they also have a good number of "tweaks" that are somewhat contextual and probably not a universally good thing that everyone should apply without consideration of the specific of the system, its usage and such.
Then you also have a heap of similar programs that are a complete no-op, just counting on getting sales through scare tactics and user ignorance.
And finally there even are malicious programs that are advertised in the same category as this.
No way anyone with a clue about computers should ever need to install this crap. Much like we did ok for years without an antivirus program (though today's free options make that no longer a reasonable choice). Reply
Visual - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - linkOMG, I just had a read of its "features" page, and it is full of so much fail that it makes my head hurt. I retract my "can not talk with certainty" statement. Reply
Boogaloo - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link>using a blackbox magical tool
>programs that are a complete no-op
>full of so much fail
Just stop posting. Reply
IanCutress - Friday, November 23, 2012 - linkNormally you are right, these 'registry cleaners' are often nothing but a steaming pile of garbage. But CCleaner is the diamond in the rough, period. It's free, and there's no bugging to buy a paid version. Reply
Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkI recommend the above as well when looking at freeing space, great windows application for seeing what's taking up your space, a GUI version of linux's du. Reply
sideshow23bob - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkLooking forward to listening to this after work. Quickly becoming my favorite podcast. Thanks for recording in between the busyness that October's pre Xmas product release was. Reply
SpitUK - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkGreat as always guys :) Reply
vkn - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkThanks a lot for these podcasts. Very informative.
Also hoping you guys have some time to discuss the transceiver stuff which you have been hinting for some time next Reply
crypticsaga - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkThis is definitely my all time favorite podcast. Between the astute insights and the hilarious soapbox dialogue I always find myself anxiously awaiting the next episode.
Brian, for what its worth the attention to detail that you and the other editors demonstrate in your product reviews has made Anandtech my de facto tech news and review site. These days I find that I don't even bother with the reviews from other publications who seem to all echo the same bandwagon impressions. Even if you regularly have to be the one that makes the unpopular observation, some us truly appreciate the extra effort.
Kevin G - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkWhen was this recorded? Nothing about taking a razor to the Wii U's CPU? I have a feeling that this was recorded after that little 'incident'.
Two recent tidbits of news that were missing from this week's podcast. The first is that MIPS has been bought out. Really surprised that this didn't come up in the discussion of the TI OMAP. The other bit would have been the launch of the Itanium 9500. Outlook for this architecture is arguably darker than what is surrounding AMD at this point. Itanium's death won't have that great of an impact to Intel as a whole. These two items probably had time to sneak into this pod cast.
AMD's situation is as dire as you've indicated. It really boils down to how much their expense are in comparison to their revenue. Good to hear some discussion along the lines of 'if you were in charge of AMD, what would you do?' in the podcast. This type of analysis is what I've found lacking in previous episodes but glad to hear it, even if it was about doom and gloom.
Love the bit at the end with BRIAN SMASH. Will need video of him throwing a phone against a wall. Reply
hammer256 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkOk, this is definitely my favorate episode so far. Very nice segment on the HPC stuff. What's you guys' take on Nvidia's GK104/110 strategy, i.e., little die with limited compute capbility for general consumers and big die for professional/HPC space? Is this going to be a trend that will continue for the next generations, and will AMD also join in?
Also, I wonder how easy it really is for porting over OpenMP code to utilize Phi. A common issue with programming for PCI-E accelerator cards, be it Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, is the bottleneck of the PCI-E bus itself. Which means that the programmer has to be aware of the seperate memory space between the accelerator and the host, and to arrange memory transfers efficiently to avoid that bottleneck. I know in my simulation using CUDA, that is a very large part of the code. To me, that is definitely a barrier to entry if I was just used to program for the CPU. So I wonder how intel is going to deal with it, maybe with compiler directives just as with OpenMP to denote which memory blocks should reside on the GPU? But it seems that this problem alone is enough to make porting existing OpenMP code to efficiently utilize the Phi a less than a trival process.
Of course, this is just speculation, since I don't have a Phi to try OpenMP with. Maybe in super computers this is a non-issue, since the bandwidth bottleneck there is probably intenode communication. What are your thoughts? Reply
IanCutress - Friday, November 23, 2012 - linkA lot of my CUDA work didn't rely on PCIe speed at all. One copy of the memory buffer from host to device, then a few thousand to a billion loops each with a few billion threads spawned, then copy back. Total time transferring over the PCIe bus was sub 0.1% of a long simulation.
I could see where Host->Device->Host copy times could be problematic, but it is all algorithm dependent. If you want to do a Matrix convert once on a bit of data, then yes the transfer will be a limiting factor. I try and keep my PCIe transfers to a minimum with my matrix solvers - keep the data on the host and only probe the data you actually need. If it's a science based simulation, you don't need the results of every time step - take every 10th or 100th loop around.
If PCIe is the bottleneck, then perhaps CUDA/GPGPU isn't the best way to look at your code? Or buy a machine where you can bump up the PCIe bus a bit and still maintain data coherency (if you need ECC).
With Xeon Phi, I imagine it'll be an API call to probe the Xeon Phi devices present, then a separate pragma for calls to Xeon Phi devices. Hopefully (fingers crossed) that it will automatically split over multiple Phi cards present in the system and do the cross talking automatically. That won't be the best solution for all, but for my Brownian motion simulations will love it. I wonder if they will include SLI/XFire type bridges between cards to minimize the PCIe crosstalk.
Ian Reply
hammer256 - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - linkYeah it took me a lot of effort to minimize transfer over the pci-e bus, which I needed to happen at each time step for synchronization across my neural network simulation.
It's not a bottleneck anymore, but for a moment there I was wondering why I didn't move my last bit of host code to the GPU and not deal with pci-e transfer at all. But then I remembered that I was programming to handle multiple cards, and it was easier to keep that bit of code on the host and handle the synchronization from multiple GPUs to the host over pci-e.
With multiple cards it seems that full optimization requires treating the code as running on a multi-node system. Which is probably a non-issue for people in the super computer space since they have to deal with multiple nodes anyways. But for scientists who want to have a super computer in a desktop, to run OpenMP code with little modification, it will be a barrier if they want multiple cards. So like you said, hopefully Intel can have software and hardware solutions to make that easier to handle.
Should be exciting times. Reply
tipoo - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - linkIt's kind of funny how AMD and Nvidia switched boats there, the 500 series actually often has better compute performance than the 600, but the 600 is much more efficient for what most consumers will use it for, namely games. And AMD had a game oriented architecture with the 6000 series then added in all the compute stuff with the 7k, just as Nvidia relegated all that to the more professionally oriented cards.
Is it a good strategy? I guess so, smaller dies = lower cost and power consumption and most users won't miss all the compute stuff. But it may limit some next generation games which may lean on GPGPU calculations, who knows how that will pan out. But for current tech, I think it's a good tradeoff, just a bummer for enthusiasts and scientists who may have wanted to run GPGPU calculations on a card that doesn't cost thousands. Reply
IanCutress - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - linkThe only reasons the top cards cost thousands is because they use ECC, often better double precision rates, and support if things go wrong. You essentially pay more for the HW and an extra layer of testing before you get the card. If you don't need ECC as an enthusiast, then don't bother - but for commercial results, ECC tends to be the barrier between several years of work or several years on the streets.
The NVIDIA 600 series does have its place - ideal when spawning a lot more lightweight threads. But the AMD change was more to do with architecture - VLIW4/5 was good but only great in a few niche examples that took care of ILP. GCN is a more general way of tackling everything GPGPU related, hence why those VLIW4/5 codes do not work as well, but everything else tends to work better.
Ian Reply
hammer256 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkAn AnandTech podcast just won't be the same without the Brian Rant. Reply
maximumGPU - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - linkone of my favourite episodes too. Insight on the HPC market was super informative. Looking forward to you guys getting your hands on a phi!
The thoughts on what went wrong with AMD were very insightful too. . Never owned one of their products, but i know how bad for all of us a world without AMD would be. Reply
Dman23 - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - linkGood podcast! I really feel that these guys who are talking now their stuff!! Obviously, Anand wouldn't of hired them if they didn't have technical backgrounds in compute... just saying, they're smart. ;)
BTW, with speculation of AMD being bought out or sold off piece by piece, what about Apple buying them up?? I think they would be MUCH more likely to buy them up then Samsung since they are both American companies, have the headquarters right next to each-other in silicon valley (so the integration of both companies would be much easier), and obviously Apple has interest in acquiring semiconductor companies in order to leverage their own products for their businesses.
Ideally tho, I would rather have ARM be able to somehow buy them up and be able to integrate their energy efficient designs with some of AMD's high-powered GPU prowess. Not only that but it could create a company that has the scale and technical talent to match up with Intel. I don't see that happening tho because ARM doesn't have the pile of cash to probably pull that off, except with maybe an outside investor group providing the financial capital to pull something like that off. Reply
Pfffman - Friday, November 23, 2012 - linkGreat episode. Always interesting to hear more about different industries and how they interact with each other. Brian's rant is justified. Hopefully developers will fix it in future patches. My Padfone fortunately doesn't do that.
Will there be more coverage on Padfone 2? I was waiting to see Anandtech's take on the first one before I got it, then I just got impatient and got it.
Several podcasts ago I think Anand mentioned that he was getting a Thunderbolt to PCIe slot device from OWC and was going to test it out putting a GPU on it and seeing what would happen. Any updates from that?
I understand that it is already a lot of work to get the podcast together, however I think people would greatly appreciate a link dump of the topics/companies/articles/etc. of the topics you cover like Rooster Teeth does with theirs. Brian mentioned that a company would do screen calibrations for Google if they just approached them. I wanted to look at the company to know more about it and this happens on a regular basis of just people talking about tech.
Thanks again and keep them up :) Reply
kylewat - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI'm not sure that the value added is 'attention to detail', but rather in good enough. The added value of paying for a phone that surfs the internet, takes pictures, texts and makes calls, etc. is high. I don't have to lug around a laptop, phone, and camera anymore. If people wanted good cameras, they wouldn't have stopped carrying around the big one, or the camera manufacturers would make competitive phones.
That hasn't happened. The software companies are designing the phones. So inherently the attention to detail on cameras isn't there. It isn't a big factor in the purchasing decision, because even if there was a small subset of buyers who cared enough, they wouldn't be enough to move the needle to support an entire phone platform, or even phone.
There is good reason that software has been winning the battle for a long time because it has the unique ability of being able to attract the best minds, and for those that know this to be true, managing software projects is one of the hardest management skills one can find. Those that can do it, are handsomely rewarded and require very little to no capex.
Anyway, that is my thought for now. Reply
iAnders - Friday, December 28, 2012 - linkJust listened to episode 10, very high quality discussions. Loved the bleak situation for AMD insight. Just wanted to say thanks!
Anders Reply


text:
Gators set for physical battle against Minnesota
Published: Friday, March 22, 2013 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 23, 2013 at 1:05 a.m.
AUSTIN, Texas — Florida will get a physical test in its next NCAA Tournament matchup on Sunday.
Up Next
Who: Florida vs. Minnesota
What: NCAA Tournament, Round of 32
When: Sunday, TBD
TV/Radio: TBD/WRUF
Photo Galleries
The No. 3-seed Gators will face 11-seed Minnesota in the round of 32 on Sunday (6:10 p.m. TNT).
Minnesota advanced with an 83-63 win over UCLA on Friday night.
The game will set up a familiar coaching matchup, Florida's Billy Donovan vs. Minnesota's Tubby Smith. Donovan is 10-14 against Smith, but has won the last six meetings between them. Donovan and Smith haven't faced each other since Smith resigned from Kentucky in 2007.
Donovan and Smith worked together in the early 1990s on Kentucky's staff. Smith was an assistant coach and Donovan was a graduate assistant under Rick Pitino.
Florida will have its hands full inside with Minnesota 6-foot-8, 245-pound power forward Trevor Mbakwe, who finished with nine points and 12 rebounds against UCLA. Offensively, Minnesota is paced by Andre Hollins and Austin Hollins. The two guards combined for 44 of Minnesota's 83 points.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


text:
Samsung Chromebook (XE303) Review: Testing ARM's Cortex A15by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/31/2012 9:00 AM EST
149 Comments
Back to Article
zappb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linklooks awesome - between this and the Nexus 10 Reply
Flunk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI recommend the Nexus 10, better screen and OS. ChromeOS is a real turkey. Reply
quiksilvr - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkIt really boils down to what you need. If you can live without a keyboard, get the Nexus 10. If you are on a budget, get this. If you want a keyboard and are willing to shell extra dough, get the Nexus 10 and a bluetooth keyboard. Reply
B3an - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkHe wasn't talking about keyboards and form factors. Chrome OS is almost completely useless for anything more than browsing the net. It's about equivalent to a basic feature phone in capability. It's for such a small niche, about the only people i could see buying Chrome OS notebooks are extremely poor students, and even then it probably wont do everything they want. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAnother niche market is for people that do online investing and banking with significant assets. The added security of chrome OS is well worth having for $250 you won't find much cheaper insurance. Windows is just not safe for online financial transactions, which of course the poor student doesn't have to worry about. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkBy the way I find google docs to be pretty useful for productivity. I used to use open office and since I made the switch I haven't looked back. Netflix not being supported on the ARM version is kind of a bummer though. I think Google should make sure that Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon streaming all work as this definitely fits under the umbrella of cloud computing. Reply
damianrobertjones - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkWindows is safe... Don't run as full admin and maybe the user might have some common sense not to visit porn sites Reply
klmccaughey - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkNo, they can use a Chromebook to visit porn sites or any other activity (long list) that might get them on trouble in Windows.
I maintain the computers (just) in my house and home office, and for one user I really wish he had a Chromebook and not a Windows laptop - I keep having to restore it from image.
Oh and I use Windows 7 x64 as my main machine, with Ubuntu VM for development. Reply
Wolfpup - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkNothing wrong with porn sites...like any other business they're not especially wanting to screw over their customers. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkChromeOS is NOT more secure than Windows. You are putting too much stock in anti-Microsoft blather from Google. Might as well listen to Apple's opinion of Windows.
Does this SoC even have the hardware security features built into Intel and AMD x86 chips (AES, Intel Secure Key, OS Guard)? I don't think it does. ChromeOS might require different methods to crack, but it is not more secure, and the hardware of the Chromebook is less secure.
Besides, I'd imagine any successful investor is going to be using something a lot more satisfying than a tiny, cheap netbook variation with a so-so screen. Reply
jeffkro - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkYou do realize there is a higher end chromebook that runs on a ULV celeron cpu right. If you want better specs it is available. Reply
jeffkro - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkThe celeron runs windows pretty fast so you know its lighting fast for chrome OS. Reply
agnar150 - Saturday, November 03, 2012 - linkYou could not be more wrong. The OS structure is inherently more secure and it is very much more secure than Windows. Reply
Wolfpup - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkHow is Windows not safe? I've been using it how long now? Decades? And had exactly zero security intrusions. Being the market leader so you're a big target doesn't mean the platform is less safe-in fact Microsoft takes security a lot more seriously than most closed source software does.
As for this unit...it remains ridiculous. I bought a $200 Acer running real Windows 7 on AMD hardware, and it's obviously a bajillion times more functional. This thing runs one single program-Chrome, on low end hardware, doesn't properly support external displays or other devices, can't replace my real PC for...much of anything, and it actually costs as much or more than superior devices...just like the older Chromebooks did. Reply
epobirs - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkUtter nonsense. There are tons of options for locking down Windows the average consumer doesn't bother with but the information is widely available. Just a few changes makes it far harder for malware to get any value from the machine.
The difference is that you still have the full capabilities of Windows and its software library, along with a choice of browsers, including Google Chrome.
The people I know who do serious online financial work wouldn't blink at spending a lot more than $250 to pay someone like me to teach them to lock down their machine for work. Putting up with the limitations of Chrome OS and paying for the privilege would strike them as absurd. Reply
UltraTech79 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - link"People that do online investing and banking with significant assets" have better options than shitty chrome OS or standard windows. Ridiculous. Reply
ddriver - Wednesday, January 09, 2013 - linkHave you actually checked the chrome store? there are plenty of good applications, especially concerning productivity, surely, the overall number of apps is much lower than android, but considering most of those are useless, it is not that big of a deal. You can do plenty of stuff on the chromebook, and that that price point it is a very good bargain. Reply
Flunk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkNo, honestly it doesn't. If you need a keyboard you buy one of the ASUS Transformer pads. This is a very limited device that won't get you very far and really doesn't have a reason for existing. If this was just a laptop-like device running android I could see the utility but Chrome OS is basically just a kneecapped version of android. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkIts kneecapped for security, their is a reason for it. Reply
klmccaughey - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI would totally agree with this if there was an android with a keyboard and this hardware at this price point. The transformer is good, but it's far too expensive.
I got an Ipad 2 by accident, and between that and the laptop I don't think I need anything else. I hate Apple, which makes the whole experience confusing. Reply
garfnodie - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - linkLet's see, Chromebook for $249, or Transformer w/ keyboard for $600. I'm guessing if you'r a broke college student who needs something simple, the Chromebook is looking pretty good. Reply
Myrandex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkEh instead of the Nexus 10 + keyboard, Microsoft Surface all the way! Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkWhy? I want a good high-res screen on my device if I'm going to $400, which is $100 cheaper and has the same amount of free storage as Surface. Reply
qwerty321 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - linkNot for long. When PNaCl is stabilised, ChromeOS users will be able to install native software. Obviously not Windows API stuff, but then who in their right mind would use that garbage anyway? There's a few things in the Chrome store experimenting with NaCl (the early, non-portable version) now. Reply
Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI'm just a little shocked how how much the nexus 10 costs vs the chromebook. Clearly there is some price padding in the nexus 10 price. Reply
kllrnohj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkHow do you figure? The two share a similar SoC, and nothing else. In particular the Nexus 10 has that incredibly gorgeous 2560x1600 IPS display, whereas this Chromebook has a mediocre, off the shelf 1366x768 TN display. Given that there's only a $150 difference between the two, the screen alone easily accounts for most of that. Similarly, the N10 is a smaller device - cramming the same stuff into a smaller form factor is typically harder and more expensive. Reply
Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkThere aren't a lot of points of comparison with the Nexus 10 screen. Granted I'm sure the screen is more expensive, but similar size, similar SOC, same memory. Given the pricing trend with the nexus 7 and chromebook I expected a price around $50 less. Or at least to come with 32gb of memory for that price. I don't think $400 is a *bad* price, but it isn't as aggressive as I expected. I'm sure there will be a parts cost breakdown soon. Reply
Krysto - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkNexus 10 is a high-end tablet. Chromebook is a pretty low-end laptop, in all regards. Reply
sna19703 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkGet a Windows RT Tablet. Reply
kyuu - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkOnce they release one with a better SoC than Tegra 3 and a 1600x900 screen or better, sure. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkWhich is going to be another year, by which point Android tablets will be on to the next-gen hardware. Reply
name99 - Sunday, November 04, 2012 - linkYou have an odd definition of awesome.
"The display is functional but not very good. Build quality is decent but the new Chromebook is still a plastic notebook. Thankfully the keyboard and trackpad are both pretty decent."
Add in HDMI that doesn't work, a weird slot that isn't connected to anything, and the various other hassles described and I'm not sure exactly what the awesome here is. Reply
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkSeems a nice machine on paper, but I don't really know how much I would trust an "always online" Google machine with my data.
Seems too much of a trade off.
Cheers Reply
coder543 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkBecause I'm sure that your secrets are personally being observed by Google since they're just ever so valuable. That's the only reasonable line of reasoning.
They're just happy to make advertising revenue off of you, and since you'll likely use Google from whatever machine you have, it won't make much difference to not use this one. Also consider that if you were doing something highly sensitive, you could always walk over and turn on your computer, assuming you trust it, especially if you have Windows. I'd be less inclined to trust the good will of the parasites lurking around on there. Reply
coder543 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkturn on your regular* computer
/typo fixed Reply
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkActually I work with a lot of NDA stuff (translations mostly) so yes, I really have a lot of secret stuff on my computer. ;) And believe me when I say I don't use google for ANYTHING on my work related projects. :)
And the problem is not google per se, but having a machine that's not really usable if not online. I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?
This is not an objective opinion. It's rather my personal view of this kind of machines. I'd like a super lightweight portable laptop, but not one that's tied hands and feet to an online service.
Just MY two cents. :) Reply
jamyryals - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI'm pretty sure they support offline Google docs using a local disc cache. Still though, I'm pretty sure we are not the target for this platform. Reply
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkExactly what I was saying. For my kind of work it's not a viable solution. :) Reply
chrnochime - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkSo what do you use at work instead of Google then? Curious because AFAIK all other search engines do the same as Google... Reply
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkThat's the point. For really important NDA stuff we don't use search engines, AT ALL. :)
I can connect to a company server with extensive documentation to serch for specific infromation on the project I'm working on (usually given to us by the committent), but I cannot really access Google or Bing and search for things i need.
For lesser project we use a company issued google profile for searches but no online document manipolation is allowed, meaning no Google Docs, Office Online, Dropbox, iCloud or anything similar. We have company online storage and we use VPN connections with tokens to generate the cyphers needed to connect. I cannot even send work files via email even if our email server is phisically based in our campus. :)
They take security very seriously where I work. ;)
Cheers Reply
wumpus - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI would assume that the real issue is if you can wipe chromeOS and replace with the linux of your choice. By the security choices you list, I wouldn't be using any type of windows box. From the comments below, there doesn't appear to be a "plug a USB stick in and hit a button" linux disto yet. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkLook into ixquick if you are worried about search privacy. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link"I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?"
If you are really tied to MS office you can use MS's cloud based office suite. Reply
jjj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkNice perf numbers.On power consumption both the software and the hardware are a lot different form a phone so maybe it's not as bad as you think.
Now all we need is quad A15 :D (might be doable in tablets/notebooks with bigLITTLE or Nvidia's 4+1 even on 28nm) Reply
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkIt will be 4 A15 cores plus a low power companion core. Who knows when it will be actually in devices.
I have not heard any announcements for quad core A15 from other sources (such as Samsung) that said it is going to happen sometime even if it has not been announced. Reply
Jorange - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkExcellent I've been waiting for this review. Exynos 5250 does seem a power hungry chap, which kinda destroys my hopes for a quad-core 5450 / Mali T658 in the next Galaxy phone, unless Samsung move to a new node. There is mention of 28nm process on Samsung's foundry site, combined with Big.little maybe my dreams are alive.
Anand, any news when Samsung will adopt a new process node, and will it be 28nm or 22nm?
Work is already underway to port Ubuntu to it:)
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/ubuntu-12-04-up... Reply
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI share your excitement, I have SGS3 and I'm so looking forward to SGS4 and what it can bring to the table. Hopefully some sort of big.LITTLE design to lower the power draw, also there is a trend of bigger battery, hopefully the trend continues without much increasing in the physical size. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkWhy? Samsung will do it just like Nvidia with Tegra 4, and put 1 or 2 Cortex A7 chips next to the A15's, which will handle 80% of the tasks. Reply
Aenean144 - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI'm curious how big.LITTLE is going to work in practice. The auto switching between discrete graphics and integrated graphics on laptops may give us a clue on how well it works.
Hitting 9 W peak at 1.7 GHz? That's Haswell territory, and I'd surmise Haswell will crush any ARM, even the 64 bit ones in 2014, with a 10 W TDP envelope.
Secondarily, either Samsung is binning some low power parts for the Nexus 10 and prospective smartphones, or they have to downclock. The big question would be how much would they have to downclock.
On to the Nexus 10 analysis. Reply
Kevin G - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkVery respectable performance from the Cortex A15. It'll be interesting to see how it'll fair in a smart phone but the bar has been set. Reply
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkWay to use the crappiest pictures of the display you could wrestle up.
If the display is on par with other 768 TN panels used in laptops reviewed by AT, why did you use those washed out pictures of the display? I don't see the same lack of photography skills when reviewing other laptops with similar panels.
I guess since Google isn't stroking AT the same way Apple does, a fair review with fair pictures would be pointless.
Hacks! Reply
PsychoPif - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkWhy would you base your opinion on a picture when they provide numerics to back up the review?
Since I learned about Photoshop, I no longuer believe what I see on a picture anyway. Reply
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkEver hear the phrase "A picture says a thousand words"?
For the casual viewer, who may not delve into the display numbers, the pictures certainly do tell a story. It just depends on what story AT wants to tell. Reply
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkLook at the review of the Dell XPS 14Z. According to the numbers in this review, the panel in the Sammy CB is on par, if not better than the one used by Dell. Look at the pictures of the Dell display vs the CB display. Are they on par with one another?
You can certainly influence a consumers purchasing decision based on some sub-par photographs.
Well done AT. Reply
PeteH - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkDo you really think the people technologically sophisticated enough to be interested in an AnandTech review are the same people who would base their purchasing decision on one photograph of a display? Reply
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkDo you really think nobody will do a Google search for "Samsung Chromebook Review" and find AT's site on the list?
I guess Google is smart enough to know a persons IQ and direct them away from AT and its "sophisticated" readers.
Sheeesh, get over yourself. Reply
PeteH - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkSeriously? Just start reading the review, it is clearly not targeted at consumers. Heck, there's a photo of a circuit board on the first page! There's a tear down of the device (complete with photos) before the display is even discussed! Who is going to read this review other than people who care deeply about the technical aspects of the Chromebook?
But I'm starting to think you know that, and the real reason you're upset is because AnandTech pointed out that the Chromebook has a crappy display. Reply
SND_ - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkMost likely the Chromebook doesn't have a very good display AND the picture sucks.
I did notice that the display looks very poor in that image. I doubt it's that bad (two feet in front of you). . . typing "Chromebook" into Google will fetch you better pictures of suggesting a display of higher quality. Reply
LogOver - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI would like to see a comparison with the Celeron-based Chromebook Reply
krumme - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkCelleron is a different price segment.
The comparison was perfect and valid imho. Reply
MadMan007 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkIt is a valid comparison, however there is an unanswered question: What do I get for stepping up to the Celeron Chromebook? And that is a valid question, even though at that price point there are more options. Reply
Selden - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkBy stepping up to the Samsung 550, you get a larger and brighter (300 nits vs 200 nits) screen (but lower resolution, 1280x800), 4 GB of RAM, slightly better faster CPU performance, longer battery life (much bigger battery), and a card reader slot that doesn't let the card stick out (approx. 1 cm) from the case. For performance, the 4 GB of RAM is probably the most significant factor, as it lets you open many more tabs. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkYou also get the ability to play netflix content. Reply
LogOver - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkSome benchmarks shows 50-80% better performance for 1.3Ghz Celeron-based chromebook.
I would like to see confirmation from Anand. Also some GPU benchmarks (Celeron vs. Exynos) would be welcomed. Reply
krumme - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkAnd that just proves celeron is no competitor for A15 as the performance difference means nothing compared to the total cost differences for the intended segment.
An more interesting comparison would even be to the old AMD APU bobcat, in some low voltage variants.
But ofcourse its the new lowcost AMD/Intel variants that is going to be the main competitors. Reply
LogOver - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkSamsung asks ~$450 for Celeron Chromebook, but this doesn't mean that Celeron-based netbooks have to be expensive. You can buy Acer AO756 for just $265 from bestbuy (and it inclides$100 Win Home Premium and 320Gb HDD which chromebook lacks)
And if you wish, you can install Chrome OS on it by yourself. Reply
AgeOfPanic - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAnand, could you tell us how it compares to the Atom in day to day use? I currently own a Samsung Series 5 chromebook and I would like to know if it makes any sense to upgrade to this model. Seems I would have to take a hit in battery life, but I heard you can at least watch 720p Youtube videos on it. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkYou can watch 1080p videos on it if you want. It has a vastly better GPU. Maybe you can sell yours, and pay little to no difference to get this new one. The performance improvement overall should be noticeable. Reply
AgeOfPanic - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkAnand doesn't seem to be too convinced. Performance in normal browsing seems acceptable. Don't really understand, because Chrome on a tablet is plenty fast. Reply
krumme - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkIt looks like ARM 15 is making it very difficult for Intel and AMD for this low cost market. Especially with win8 machines comming.
I dont know how Intel can catch up to this competition with the new Atom. When 22nm Atom hits market, TSMC is printing dirt cheap A15 on 28nm for everyone and his brother; tablets, phones, notebooks. Heck even some server segments is going Arm. And the performance looks like its sufficient for grandma.
The new Atom and new bobcat better have some tangible performance benefits both on cpu and gpu side - they simply need to drive most if not all, pc games well on a notebook.
I am impressed by the performance of ARM here. Reply
extide - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkYeah, basically this next gen 22nm Atom core is going to be make it of break it for the Atom. I can see the Atom getting canned entirely if the 2nd gen core on 22nm sucks. Reply
andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkYeah, intel must be feeling crazy pressure. They are 6-12 months behind. Both Haswell and the new atom should be coming out now with windows 8. Reply
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI'm impressed by the ARM performance, besides the performance and battery life, there is also the cost to consider. As far as I know, ARM cpu cost much less than x86 cpu.
If I can get 50% of power for 25% of the price, that sounds like a good trade off in many scenarios. Reply
wsw1982 - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkThe samsung arm a15 is basically a 6+ w SOC... If you linear scale the medfield up 3 times, it means a three core atom, and three times the graphic power (does scale linearly), and i think the performance is comparable. The medfeld is arround 64 mm2, and the three core atom and graphic is, to my best guess, 100mm2, any one give me a estimation of the die size of the samsung a15? we can calculate the price :) Reply
krumme - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkThe intereting thing is the total cost for the OEM. The A15 implemented as here must be dirt cheap.
Intel have high fixed cost, but arm can spread the cost to phones whatever through both Samsung but primarily TSMC.
In the long run it will be difficult for Intel the have the same low cost.
Years back they could use old fab equipment for the Atom and in that way use production capacity that had been written off the the worst part. Today they they need the new process nodes to be competitive, and that will raise cost for the Atom. I think they are in a bad market here.
Competing with TSMC and Samung is another world from competing with AMD and GF.
They need their ultrabooks, but the market is to small for the future fab cost.
Now arm can share cost from phones to notebooks. That is massive cost advantage imho. Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkA chromebook is too niche a product to properly judge a SoC . Typically thermals are completely different.
Its fast, yes, but how will it do in a smartphone ? And chromeOS has too few apps and the chromebook has too less a res to actually judge the best SoC ..... Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkNot like the Atom one was using bigger resolution. And Exynos 5 Dual can support up to 2560x1600, as we've already seen with Nexus 10. Reply
MilwaukeeMike - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkMaybe I missed it, but does this have a built in webcam? Looks like it does from info on other sites, and I'd like to know how it performs for Skype purposes if anyone knows. Sounds like videos from youtube/facebook work ok as well, which would make this a great netbook style option. Reply
deneb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkFor that price, why wouldn't anyone get a used laptop instead? At least then they'll get the benefit of a proper OS of their choice (linux or Windows, i don't know if used apple lappies go that low).
Granted, it wouldn't be new, but at least it would be many times more functional - no? :) Reply
Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkBattery life. A old low end laptop is going to have terrible battery life. Reply
TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI think netbooks are the more obvious comparison. You can buy Intel/AMD powered netbooks running Windows/Linux for $200 and up. The "better" choice depends on just how basic your computing needs are and how much you can live with a cloud-based operating system. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkBrowsing on them will be much slower, especially on those single core ones that cost $200. I know because I've used one. Single core Atom browsing on a netbook is excruciatingly painful. Plus, I believe I saw in a Cnet review that this Chromebook has higher performance in browsing than IE9 with a Core 2 Quad. That's not a very fair comparison because it used IE9, but still. Reply
TrackSmart - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI wasn't advocating one or the other, just pointing out the obvious comparison is not between used laptops and chromebooks, but between chromebooks and other "netbook-like" laptops.
It's a tradeoff between running a lightweight, but very limited operating system (Chrome) or a heavier but full-featured and mature operating system (Windows or Linux). Performance versus greater availability of features and software.
I've also used single core atom netbooks and found them painfully slow. I haven't used the newer dual core Atom or dual core AMD-based netbooks that are more common these days. I'm guessing they are similarly painful, given that single-threaded performance is the major limitation for light workloads. Reply
Jumangi - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkChromebook...a "solutiion" still in search for a problem/market to serve. Reply
Peroxyde - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkCan you please clarify how the Chromebook perform the following tasks in offline mode?
1. Can I work and save documents when not connected to the Internet?
2. Is it possible to play music or video files stored on the SD Cards? What media formats are supported? (MP3, MP4, MKV?)
3. Can the Chromebook access media files over the LAN, via DLNA client or SAMBA shares?
Thanks in advance for any help. Reply
FormulaRedline - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI'm also interested in this. The review doesn't seem to go at all into the required internet connection and how this affects functionality. Unfortunately, we don't yet live in a world with free WiFi everywhere. Reply
Selden - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkOffline YES
A/V YES (but not all formats)
Samba NO Reply
ddy - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkI want to ask if there is smb, already using the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I have a performance issue on working with Google docs. As you asked about the documents, I wanted to be involved.
It is not that sensitive to respond, neither on-line nor offline. Does any of you have a similar problem??
Thanks in advance. Reply
StormyParis - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkNice review, thanks.
I'd have liked more info about offline use though. Even if I'm online most of the time, it's very important that i can also be productive, and entertained, while offline. Reply
prophet001 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkThe ultimate digital pick-pocket. Reply
rootheday - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linksure, the Atom N570 on 45nm is not so competitive on power and performance but I think it is misleading to compare A15 vs this rev of Atom because newer and better Intel processors are available....
I think more interesting comparison point for future competitors to A15 would be:
Acer Aspire One 756 - 11.6" notebook with Sandybridge Pentium or Celeron - I have seen it as low as $290 at Best Buy and Costco. Similar price point but way more performant.
Clovertrail based machines - reviewed on this site.. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6340/intel-details-a...
... while this is Win8 not ChromeOS, I would expect power and performance to be similar. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI bet those don''t look as good as the Chromebook either. You're paying for the whole package. Reply
Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI just wish the Surface had shipped with this SOC. Windows RT sounds more interesting than chrome, but it got saddled with a much older SOC in a product twice the cost. Reply
andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkme too. If surface had this SOC with a higher res screen, I'd buy one. Instead I'm waiting for a hardware refresh. Tegra3 and atom are too slow, i5 is too power hungry. Reply
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI agree, Tegra 3 and current Atom are too slow, but the upcoming Atom should be better. I'm considering buying that instead of windows RT as a media pc replacement.
I'm hearing a lot of miracast, has anyone coming out with the dongle yet? anything decent in the retail? Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkHaswell should make a pretty nice media PC. Its suppose to be really good with power consumption especially if you get into the ULV versions. If your media PC is plugged into the wall the difference between 10W or 20-30W isn't that big of a deal. I'm pretty big into HTPC and I'm probably going to swap out my llano system for haswell when the i3 or pentium versions are released. Reply
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkSorry, I probably mislead you.
What I'm looking for is surface type of tablet when I want to work on a tablet, and then I can dock it on my coffee table and use miracast as a wireless mirror display. That way, I can get rid of laptop, tablet and media pc and use 1 device only.
Currently I have an old core 2 duo laptop plug in 24/7 with a hdmi display and a wireless mouse as a media pc. The laptop is getting old and a replacement is needed soon. Reply
wsw1982 - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkthe samsung a15 is also 6+ w range soc according to the review Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkAnand has said Haswell will have higher TDP than IVB on the same level of performance. That 10W variant is just a significantly lower powered version. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAgreed, even WP8 got a better SoC than T3 (Krait). Odd choice. Snapdragon S4 Pro in the surface would have been nice. Reply
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkKrait, might loose out to this A15 in all out performance but it is pretty great for battery life especially on LTE phones. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkLTE has nothing to do with the chip. Those quad core S4 Pro's aren't even integrated with LTE yet. Latest LTE efficiency comes from the fact that it's made at 28nm, not at 45nm - the LTE chip itself that is. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkImpressive that the A15 beats Atom across the board, and draws significantly less power doing that. Complete leapfrog. Reply
eddman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkNot a valid comparison IMO when it comes to power consumption. That's an old 45nm Atom. Clover trail will do much better, thanks to the 32nm process and its new S0ix power states. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkFair enough, but the performance per clock won't go up significantly until Silvermont. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkStill, the current Atom and Brazos are only mild updates (if that). The E2-1800 in HP's dm1 gets 547 in Sunspider, so clock-for-clock, Brazos 2.0 is ahead on this single test. However, the power consumption must be signicantly more. Still, slightly different markets.
I would very much like to see the next Atom plus AMD's Jaguar; reduced power and better performance could make for a decent A15 competitor. Reply
lmcd - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkSupposedly these were the leaky chips, so we could have a similar story in Samsung's favor. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkBrazos has a much higher TDP though. Was it 10W for CPU and another 8 for the GPU? It's crazy. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkClover Trail is not a mobile chip. Only Medfield is, and they don't even have a dual core version yet. You will never see Clover Trail in smartphones (yet you will see Cortex A15), and the only reason you will see them in Windows 8 tablets is because Medfield would be too slow with Windows 8, and Clover Trail is more powerful, but also uses much more power, and they are willing to compromise on that, while lying through their teeth that it will get 8-9h of battery life. It will get nowhere close to that. Reply
wsw1982 - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkthe clover trail is about 3.5+ w tdp according to some review. the samsung a15 is a 6+w soc. what make you think a 3.5 w soc cannot go to mobile, but a 6+w soc can? Reply
eddman - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkWhat your comment has to do with what I wrote?! I never mentioned anything about smartphones.
I just pointed out that you cannot compare an old 45nm chip with a brand new 32nm one, consumption wise.
Then again, just because we haven't seen clover trail on smartphones, doesn't mean it consumes too much power. Reply
Hulk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkGood quality IPS screen on my next laptop or I stay with my Dell 640m forever.
Put a SSD in it recently and I'm totally fine with it. Reply
slackpenguin - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI keep reading these comments on reviews for this device like "wouldn't some other device be a better value for $250?"
How many of you actually go and buy $250 used clunker laptops and are overjoyed with the "value" you just picked up over a 2.5 lb, 0.8 inch, fanless laptop with a warranty?
I haven't seen $250 laptops that come with any "advantage" of a "proper OS". New $250 laptops almost always come with Windows 7 Starter. Used, almost always blank or Windows XP Home. They inevitably either weigh 6 lbs or run a dog slow Atom with 1GB RAM and a 4200 or 5400 rpm drive that is soundly beat by this new Exynos chip setup.
Granted, you can upgrade most any of these clumsy $250 devices talked about for another $40 as Microsoft is desperate for you to use tiles instead of a start menu.
It sounds like most of these comments are from people who would see value in the "Homer Car" over one of those Smart cars. There are plenty of devices out there for you people. This "value" comment is just getting annoyingly repetitive. Reply
eddman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkYou are right about the 250$ range, but with a little more you can get some good stuff.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+15.6%26%2334%3B... Reply
TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAnand,
Why not add a few words comparing this to a standard netbook? $250 sounds like a unique price class, until you hop on Newegg and see that netbooks can be had for similar prices. Here's an 11.6" model for $278 that runs an AMD C60 CPU, 4GB RAM, and 320GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Key questions worth addressing in the article:
1) Is the Chrome user-experience dramatically better than running Windows on a low-end processor? [Particularly the more efficient Windows 8 platform.]
2) Do the advantages of a lightweight operating system really outweigh the lack of versatility compared to a full-blown OS?
3) Many of us have purchased netbooks as replacements of our parents ancient laptops. Does this Chromebook do a better job than netbooks at meeting basic computing needs? Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkYes it is, and Windows 8 is not that much more efficient than Windows 7. Maybe 5% more efficient. Reply
TrackSmart - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkTo clarify, this isn't a "yes" or "no" question that I wanted an answer to. The "answer" depends on your computing needs and what you can afford.
I have my own general answers. For my purposes, the Chrome OS is too limited for what I want to do with a laptop-like device. The *concept* of a lightweight operating system that can run on low-end hardware is fantastic. However, the Chrome OS ecosystem is still lacking in features and software availability. Microsoft's RT operating system sounds like it is getting closer to this goal, at least if Anandtech's review is to be believed. We'll have to see if 3rd party software appears to round-out the ecosystem. And the price is still $600 if you want the keyboard cover, so out of this sub-$300 discussion.
On the other hand, a Windows-based netbook can run all of the software I need, but painfully slowly. It's the reason I don't own a netbook and chose to spend more than $300. But if $300 is all you have to spend, and you need something portable that runs all of your productivity software, an 11.6" netbook might be better for you than a Chromebook. Reply
karasaj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkDoes anybody notice that A15 pretty much beats the Z2760 from the Surface review hands down in every way?
If only Surface RT had that. But then again that might say just as much about IE versus chrome. Reply
alvinchim - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAnand: How fast does this boot up? Is it like a smartphone/tablet, instantaneous? Is it like an apple ssd/os, pretty quick? Or like a window 7 SSD watch the screens go by? Or like a windows xp/hd x 7 years old, you might as well sort the laundry, text your girlfriend, and brush your teeth boot? That's a big question, because this really is like a tablet with a keyboard and a bad screen. Reply
slackpenguin - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI keep seeing figures of 10 seconds cold boot, 2 seconds from sleep mode, and 3 seconds off. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkTablets and phones don't boot-up instantaneously. That's waking from idle mode that you're talking about, which basically just means turning on the screen. Reply
Krysto - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkWhen Cortex A7 arrives in big.Little I expect the idle times to drop dramatically in A15 set-ups, and I doubt Intel can keep up with that. Not to mention they still won't keep up in graphics department.
Anand, can you stop plugging Surface into Android and Chromebook reviews? Why would I want to hear how Surface might do in the future with this chip that Chromebook already has? Seriously. Reply
Exophase - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkAnand's Cortex-A15 diagram looks really weird vs an official one.. http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/10/20/arm_a15_pipeline_...
Three instructions are decoded and dispatched to 5 clusters of 8 execution queues (8 slots each) per cycle, then each cycle each execution queue can issue a cycle to its associated execution unit (note this diagram is using issue/dispatch opposite from how it's often used). There's no execution relationship like given in Anand's diagram, the clusters are: NEON (2x), load/store (2x), simple ALU (2x), multiply, and branch. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI based my diagram on a lot of the content in here:
Slide 20 introduces the independent issue queues, although subsequent slides make it all a bit more ambiguous (and more like the block diagram you included). I didn't include "issue" width for each of the arrows in my diagram to keep thing simple but I can see that it can definitely give the wrong impression.
Let me see about doing a better pass on the A15 once I'm back from my current trip.
Take care,
Anand Reply
madmilk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkMore proof that ARM ISA isn't magically more efficient than x86 in perf/watt.
My i7-3720QM Mac can complete Kraken in 2100ms, with a load power consumption of 30W and idle power of 12W (display on at mid-brightness, discrete GPU off). Ivy has very good power gating, so I'll just assume the CPU is consuming 20W. This results in 42 Joules to complete one run of Kraken. The A15 on the other hand, with a differential of 4 watts (again assuming perfect gating at idle) takes 38.8 Joules. In server usage, perf/watt is king. If the best ARM can deliver is 10% better perf/watt at the expense of 5x per-core performance, they're not going to make a dent against Xeon. I imagine V8 could be optimized more for ARM, but the gains there are not nearly as big as before.
Some other observations -
I ran 8 instances of Kraken at once to make use of all the cores and HT, while reducing the effect of perf/watt-killing Turbo Boost. Power consumption was about 65W total, or approximately 55W going into the CPU. Each Kraken finished in about 3700ms, so what we have is 55W*3.7s/8 = 25 joules per Kraken. Much better, but obviously an apples-to-oranges comparison against the A15 which should probably have two instances run on it for optimal efficiency.
Also, shame on Intel/Samsung/Google for the Chromebook 500. 12W idling for a netbook is just ridiculous.
I don't think we can pull the 32nm vs 22nm fab card here either, because Intel has always been ahead in this respect and the gap is widening. Reply
lemonadesoda - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkThe new chromebook is a near-winner! While it is targetting impulse purchase, low-budget buyers, and 2nd world economies, they should consider a 1st world premium buyer audience. If this had a better quality screen with "retina" pixel density, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I don't want to game... I want to read my PDFs without having to zoom to make the text legible... and with the SD card reader... it would be a perfect image display device for the SD cards once it comes out of the camera. 1366x768 is very 2009, not 2012. Reply
ol1bit - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkI don't understand why Chrome OS continues at all?
Just slapping JellyBean on this hardware would have much more functionality. Reply
andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkOnly google can answer this question....
Kinda like Firefox OS... or whatever they are calling it. Just not sure what the point is. Maybe they figured linux needs just a few more radically different distributions :-) Reply
ssddaydream - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - linkPlease, will somebody ban this clown?
ShaneMickey, that is... Reply
ssddaydream - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - link...there will be support that would allow AndroidOS, Linux, or Windows RT to be installed and properly functioning on this device. Reply
iwod - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkBoth Atom and Sandy /Ivy Bridge uses 4 thread compared to 2 threads the Cortex A15 uses. A better comparison would be a Quad Core A15. Which free the Core from doing other work in a Single Threaded Benchmarks and better illustrate mutithreaded performance.
The A50 will offer 20 - 30% performance increase compared to A15 at 32 bit and further improvement at 64bit mode. This, with higher frequency and Quad Core or Hex Core will surely bridge the gap between everyday Laptop and a Chromebook. Reply
Krysto - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkIt doesn't matter. HT is pretty gimmicky anyway. You can maybe 10% improvement in performance.
Don't forget A57 will not just have better IPC than A15, but will also go to higher clock speeds - up to 3 Ghz, actually. A quad core A57 chip at 3 Ghz will be more than enough performance for most people, while having very good battery life. Reply
nishantmohan - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - link"Plugging the Chromebook into a relatively modern (~2 year old) Samsung LED backlit LCD HTDV caused the Chromebook to reboot itself."
i dont know why but I burst into laughter when i saw this.... Reply
legoman666 - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkAny word on the ship date for the 3g version? I preordered one on Amazon on the 19th, no word on ship date and I can't find one mentioned anywhere. Reply
TrackSmart - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI opened this page and got taken here: http://testables.net/d/juicyru.com
I'm guessing this is not what you guys agreed to regarding what advertisements on your site can do. Here's the brilliant message you get:
You've been selected from the [MY STATE] region to take part in our annual visitor survey.
This will only take 30 seconds of your time and will enhance user experience. Upon completion you will have the opportunity to get a iPad or iPad Mini, a $1000 Best Buy Card , or a $1,000 Visa Gift Card. Reply
Mumrik - Friday, November 02, 2012 - link"PC notebooks that still struggled with the same virus/malware issues they'd been facing for years"
That comment had me confused. Is he talking about the crap companies put onto their non-business notebooks or did I miss some sort of virus/malware hell in 2010 that somehow later got solved? Reply
yannigr - Friday, November 02, 2012 - linkThis could be better, but it is ok
I have seen worst than this
What did you expect with so low price
This does not work but let's see something else that works
And here it is a USB 3.0 that works as a slow USB 2.0, and here it is a slot that it is not a slot but a hole
More or less this is what I was reading in this article. So you pay $249 and you buy a very light machine with overall poor quality and an OS that it is very limited in what you can do with it. And only 6 hour battery time?
Better buy a netbook, tablet or a second hand laptop for that price. Reply
koss - Friday, November 02, 2012 - link"Note that the previous Atom solution required two chips: the N570 and its NM10 Express PCH. The !!! -= N570 =- !!! had a 2.1W TDP and was used for all IO, while the N570 and its two Atom cores needed about 8.5W. "
I guess that is the NM10 actually? Otherwise it makes no sense, to me at least.
I keep reading and loved the expression that "ARM is the new AMD", perhaps we should call them "ARMeD", since they are in the same boat now. Reply
owned66 - Saturday, November 03, 2012 - linkput ubuntu on it = win Reply
runeks - Monday, November 05, 2012 - linkAnyone care to take a guess on how much this device would retail for if it included a battery with 50% or 100% more capacity? That would be a 45 or 60 Whr battery, respectively. I think it would fairly useful to be able to pull 9 hours from a single charge. Reply
actionjksn - Thursday, November 08, 2012 - linkHow would the performance on this compare to a similarly clocked Core 2 Duo? I'm talking about CPU tasks not graphics. Reply
TheJian - Monday, November 12, 2012 - linkYou're forgetting to mention your basing that on a 1.3Ghz cpu from a year ago instead of the 1.7ghz tegra3+ that they're currently putting out (htc one x+ etc). That's about another ~27% you're leaving off NV's table right anand?
So Intel's current tech is just about to catch NV's old tech with Tegra4 just around the block that will increase cpu (I don't expect much here, but they don't need much already quad and performs on par with what just came out to a large degree), and double gpu since going quad instead of dual, so at worst it will double if no chip improvement at all, and dual channel finally. Looks like they'll be behind again just after launch I guess? They'll have to do better than catching last years tech. And they didn't make it into xmas devices like Tegra. So again NV will get their tech out in time in Q1 for craploads of devices to be planned all year. I'm thinking it's best to be fastest in March/April if you want to be designed into Xmas devices.
Surface may have chosen the 1.3ghz but they should have ran a 1.7ghz Tegra3+. I guess it saved them $10/surface (less?). I'm sure customers would rather pay $5-10 for another 30% performance. They should at least offer the option. Oh well. I told my dad to buy a Nexus 10 for xmas anyway and I'll wait for a great 10in Tegra4 as if I'm going to game (dad isn't much) I want Tegra game optimizations and everything out now isn't quite as good as I'd like for Xbox360 portable replacement and double as a laptop i9300 replacement (it's 8yrs old...LOL). Nvidia seems to be the only one helping devs make some great stuff and gaining praise from the likes of Carmack and Epic's Unreal team.
Tegrazone.com has some great games in the pipe. I'm looking forward to Baldurs Gate enhanced on a 65in TV in the near future too...LOL. That game should run on anything out by everyone on the top end and give gamers a good 100+hrs of fun on the bigscreen without an xbox360/ps3. With my limited game time, it should hold me over until android gaming really takes off. There are 5 unreal 3 engine games in the pipe now, and lots of other good looking stuff at tegrazone says next xmas should be excellent. I'm sure Id's engine will get used by them in a few games also. Between these and my PC I should have no reason to even look at an xbox720/ps4. I'm guessing a lot will be in the same boat.
I may have to pony up for the cube u30gt jelly bean to get me to xmas which should produce a tegra4+. Then again going from 40nm to 20nm there may be no need. That's a HUGE decrease in chip size and samsung is better than TSMC at any process. The U30GT (and it's ilk) look pretty dang good for $200 tablet at 10in for something to use for training vids/books etc until next year. Reply
sathish2020 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link"With Apple pushing at the top and Google working the bottom" Nice one. Reply
deslock - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - linkThanks for the detailed (as usual) review. A question:
Since it idles at 6.33W and has a 30 Watt-hour battery, shouldn't it last less than 5 hours with the screen on? It lasted 6.07 hours in the browsing test. Reply
ramonchis - Thursday, January 10, 2013 - linkHi. I got one of these a couple of days ago. In the first day I broke the LCD by putting some weight on the laptop.
I went to the store (Best Buy) to check if they could repair it of exchange it, but they did not offer any solutions.
So.... I would like to change the screen myself, which I have done in the past with other laptops.
Did you get a chance to open the screen lid? Do you know the LCD model?
Thanks! Reply
calden - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - linkI have used the Chromebook Since the CR-48 then moved to the Acer and now this one. You will be surprised as to how useful the apps found in the Google store really are. I use Microsofts 365 and I am just as productive as if I was using the full program on a normal laptop. I recently found a new online service called Lime Documents, fantastic. The writing program is called Lime Writer and after using it I can honestly say I will never have any use for none web apps again. www.live-documents.com/live_writer.html The same goes for the Excel and Powerpoint clone, there awesome apps.
I love having the security the Chromebooks give me, I travel a lot and have either have had my laptop stolen or lost after a night of drinking. These give me the freedom of just shrugging my shoulders and saying oops instead of freaking out that someone now has photos of me and my dog with peanut butter. That was a joke of course it was the cat, at 250 dollars though these really are disposable computers.
My company recently bought over 300 Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. Our company is an all Unix environment with 90 percent of our data and internal apps being served from Oracle, in which all info is displayed with web apps. The few people who need Office or other software like the treasury department can display them using Citrix. A feature that was left out of the article, I for one use a CRM program called Goldmine. When I travel the 4G connection I have is more then fast enough to display this program and others. The Chromeboxes make a perfect dumb terminal, their also priced much better then the HP solution we were using. Google also doesn't mess about, we have many spares to switch out the defective ones if nessecsary. We then send them back to Google who just gives us new ones.
To tell you how useful a web program can be our software development team uses online development apps that were found in the Google store. They claim it's as good as if they were using Eclipse or Netbeans. I was actually amazed when they showed me. It's also a good employee incentive to give out a laptop to everyone even the secretaries. Yes they are just Chromebooks but our staff really seems to enjoy them as they can't muck'em up like they can with ordinary machines. We supply our people with Samsung 550's, the ARM version was deemed to slow but I took ome of the evaluation machines for my self as I like the size. I find it to be quick enough for my needs, I can stream 1080p movies from my Google Drive account without breaking a sweat so it's just fine for my needs. Reply
qwerty321 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - linkOne of the guys working at Linaro claims he has the USB 3.0 port pushing 70+ MB/s. I'm guessing an engineer knows better than a laypress hack. Reply
EvilTed - Saturday, September 07, 2013 - linkHe should enlighten everyone how?
I call BS on your enlightened engineers claims!
I'm fuming mad at Samsung for blatant false advertising.
I have tried ChromeOS as well as Ubuntu with Unity and XFCE and the average throughput over USB 3.0 is 16MB/s, which is slower than my 2011 Mackbook Pro over USB 2.0 :(
I actually bought my Chromebook for image transfer and storage from SD card to USB 3 drive.
The fact it cannot produce at all has left me with a $250 doorstop.
Class action suit anyone?
ET Reply