The Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles have been out for quite some time now, each with a new controller. Back in November, Apple confirmed it would be bringing support for these new gamepads to iOS, now six months later, that support has finally arrived.
As part of the iOS 14.5 update, Apple has also introduced support for additional game controllers on iOS, including the Xbox Series X/S controller and the PS5’s DualSense.
Apple began expanding gamepad support on iOS in recent years in preparation for its own gaming service – Apple Arcade. These controllers can also be used for cloud gaming services, which are finally starting to open up to iOS.
Currently, Microsoft is testing Xbox Cloud Gaming on iOS via browsers on the iPhone and iPad. GeForce Now is available on iOS with a similar web-based solution and soon, Amazon Luna and Google Stadia will be joining the ranks.
KitGuru Says: Do any of you use a controller with your phone for gaming, whether it be mobile games or console/PC titles streamed via the cloud?
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In late 2020, Square Enix finally brought Dragon Quest XI over to the Xbox platform and better yet, the game was also available on Game Pass. Now, it looks like Xbox will be getting more Dragon Quest games, including the excellent spin-off Dragon Quest Builders 2.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 originally released in mid 2019 for the Nintendo Switch and PS4. Later that same year, the game was also made available on Steam.
Now, Microsoft has announced that Dragon Quest Builders 2 will finally be coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles. Additionally, the game will launch on Game Pass for Console, PC and Cloud, marking the latest step in a long running Game Pass partnership with Square Enix.
The game officially arrives on the 4th of May, on that date, Game Pass subscribers will be able to install the game and start playing. Those who don’t have Game Pass will have to fork out £44.99.
KitGuru Says: I played quite a bit of this at release on Nintendo Switch. It’s a fun game and certainly worth an install if you have Game Pass. Will any of you be grabbing this one next month when it comes to Game Pass on PC and console?
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Yesterday marked the 36th anniversary of the first power-on of an Arm processor. Today, the company announced the deep-dive details of its Neoverse V1 and N2 platforms that will power the future of its data center processor designs and span up to a whopping 192 cores and 350W TDP.
Naturally, all of this becomes much more interesting given Nvidia’s pending $40 billion Arm acquisition, but the company didn’t share further details during our briefings. Instead, we were given a deep dive look at the technology roadmap that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says makes the company such an enticing target.
Arm claims its new, more focused Noverse platforms come with impressive performance and efficiency gains. The Neoverse V1 platform is the first Arm core to support Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE), bringing up to 50% more performance for HPC and ML workloads. Additionally, the company says that its Neoverse N2 platform, its first IP to support newly-announced Arm v9 extensions, like SVE2 and Memory Tagging, delivers up to 40% more performance in diverse workloads.
Additionally, the company shared further details about its Neoverse Coherent Mesh Network (CMN-700) that will tie together the latest V1 and N2 designs with intelligent high-bandwidth low-latency interfaces to other platform additives, such as DDR, HBM, and various accelerator technologies, using a combination of both industry-standard protocols, like CCIX and CXL, and Arm IP. This new mesh design serves as the backbone for the next generation of Arm processors based on both single-die and multi-chip designs.
If Arm’s performance projections pan out, the Neoverse V1 and N2 platforms could provide the company with a much faster rate of adoption in multiple applications spanning the data center to the edge, thus putting even more pressure on industry x86 stalwarts Intel and AMD. Especially considering the full-featured connectivity options available for both single- and multi-die designs. Let’s start with the Arm Neoverse roadmap and objectives, then dive into the details of the new chip IP.
Arm Neoverse Platform Roadmap
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Arm’s roadmap remains unchanged from the version it shared last year, but it does help map out the steady cadence of improvements we’ll see over the next few years.
Arm’s server ambitions took flight with the A-72 in 2015, which was equivalent to the performance and performance-per-watt of a traditional thread on a standard competing server architecture.
Arm says its current-gen Neoverse N1 cores, which powers AWS Graviton 2 chips and Ampere’s Altra, equals or exceeds a ‘traditional’ (read: x86) SMT thread. Additionally, Arm says that, given N1’s energy efficiency, one N1 core can replace three x86 threads but use the same amount of power, providing an overall 40% better price-vs-performance ratio. Arm chalks much of this design’s success up to the Coherent Mesh Network 600 (CMN-600) that enables linear performance scaling as core counts increase.
Arm has revised both its core architecture and the mesh for the new Neoverse V1 and N2 platforms that we’ll cover today. Now they support up to 192 cores and 350W TDPs. Arm says the N2 core will take the uncontested lead over an SMT thread on competing chips and offers superior performance-per-watt.
Additionally, the company says that the Neoverse V1 core will offer the same performance as competing cores, marking the first time the company has achieved parity with two threads running on an SMT-equipped core. Both chips utilize Arm’s new CMN-700 mesh that enables either single-die or multi-chip solutions, offering customers plenty of options, particularly when deployed with accelerators.
Ts one would expect, Arm’s Neoverse N2 and V1 target hyperscale and cloud, HPC, 5G, and the infrastructure edge markets. Customers include Tencent, oracle Cloud with Ampere, Alibaba, AWS with Graviton 2 (which is available in 70 out of 77 AWS regions). Arm also has two exascale-class supercomputer deployments planned with Neoverse V1 chips: SiPearl “Rhea” and the ETRI K-AB21.
Overall, ARM claims that its Neoverse N2 and V1 platforms will offer best-in-class compute, performance-per-watt, and scalability over competing x86 server designs.
Arm Neoverse V1 Platform ‘Zeus’
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Arm’s existing Neoverse N1 platform scales from the cloud to the edge, encompassing everything from high-end servers to power-constrained edge devices. The next-gen Neoverse N2 platform preserves that scalability across a spate of usages. In contrast, Arm designed the Neoverse V1 ‘Zeus’ platform specifically to introduce a new performance tier as it looks to more fully penetrate HPC and machine learning (ML) applications.
The V1 platform comes with a wider and deeper architecture that supports Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE), a type of SIMD instruction. The V1’s SVE implementation runs across two lanes with a 256b vector width (2x256b), and the chip also supports the bFloat16 data type to provide enhanced SIMD parallelism.
With the same (ISO) process, Arm claims up to 1.5x IPC increase over the previous-gen N1 and a 70% to 100% improvement to power efficiency (varies by workload). Given the same L1 and L2 cache sizes, the V1 core is 70% larger than the N1 core.
The larger core makes sense, as the V-series is optimized for maximum performance at the cost of both power and area, while the N2 platform steps in as the design that’s optimized for power-per-watt and performance-per-area.
Per-core performance is the primary objective for the V1, as it helps to minimize the performance penalties for GPUs and accelerators that often end up waiting on thread-bound workloads, not to mention to minimize software licensing costs.
Arm also tuned the design to provide exceptional memory bandwidth, which impacts performance scalability, and next-gen interfaces, like PCIe 5.0 and CXL, provide I/O flexibility (much more on that in the mesh section). The company also focused on performance efficiency (a balance of power and performance).
Finally, Arm lists technical sovereignty as a key focus point. This means that Arm customers can own their own supply chain and build their entire SoC in-country, which has become increasingly important for key applications (particularly defense) among heightened global trade tensions.
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The Neoverse V1 represents Arm’s highest-performance core yet, and much of that comes through a ‘wider’ design ethos. The front end has an 8-wide fetch, 5-8 wide decode/rename unit, and a 15-wide issue into the back end of the pipeline (the execution units).
As you can see on the right, the chip supports HBM, DDR5, and custom accelerators. It can also scale out to multi-die and multi-socket designs. The flexible I/O options include the PCIe 5 interface and CCIX and CXL interconnects. We’ll cover the Arm’s mesh interconnect design a bit later in the article.
Additionally, Arm claims that, relative to the N1 platform, SVE contributes to a 2x increase in floating point performance, 1.8x increase in vectorized workloads, and 4x improvement in machine learning.
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One of V1’s biggest changes comes as the option to use either the 7nm or 5nm process, while the prior-gen N1 platform was limited to 7nm only. Arm also made a host of microarchitecture improvements spanning the front end, core, and back end to provide big speedups relative to prior-gen Arm chips, added support for SVE, and made accommodations to promote enhanced scalability.
Here’s a bullet list of the biggest changes to the architecture. You can also find additional details in the slides above.
Front End:
Net of 90% reduction in branch mispredicts (for BTB misses) and a 50% reduction in front-end stalls
V1 branch predictor decoupled from instruction fetch, so the prefetcher can run ahead and prefetch instruction into the instruction cache
Widened branch prediction bandwidth to enable faster run-ahead to (2x32b per cycle)
Increased capacity of the Dual-level BTB (Branch Target Buffers) to capture more branches with larger instruction footprints and to lower the taken branch latency, improved branch accuracy to reduce mispredicts
Enhanced ability to redirect hard-to-predict branches earlier in the pipeline, at fetch time, for faster branch recovery, improving both performance and power
Mid-Core:
Net increase of 25% in integer performance
Micro-Op (MOP) Cache: L0 decoded instruction cache optimizes the performance of smaller kernels in the microarchitecture, 2x increase in fetch and dispatch bandwidth over N1, lower-latency decode pipeline by removing one stage
Added more instruction fusion capability, improves performance end power efficiency for most commonly-used instruction pairs
OoO (Out of Order) window increase by 2X to enhance parallelism. Also increased integer execution bandwidth with a second branch execution unit and a fourth ALU
SIMD and FP Units: Added a new SVE implementation — 2x256b operations per cycle. Doubled raw execute capability from 2x128b pipelines in N1 to 4x128b in V1. Slide 10 — 4x improvement in ML performance
Back End:
45% increase to streaming bandwidth by increasing load/store address bandwidth by 50%, adding a third load data address generation unit (AGU – 50% increase)
To improve SIMD and integer floating point execution, added a third load data pipeline and improved load bandwidth for integer and vector. Doubled store bandwidth and split scheduling into two pipes
Load/store buffer window sizes increased. MMU capacity, allow for a larger number of cache translations
Reduce latencies in L2 cache to improve single-threaded performance (slide 12)
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This diagram shows the overall pipeline depth (left to right) and bandwidth (top to bottom), highlighting the impressive parallelism of the design.
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Arm also instituted new power management and low-latency tools to extend beyond the typical capabilities of Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS). These include the Max Power Mitigation Mechanism (MPMM) that provides a tunable power management system that allows customers to run high core-count processors at the highest possible frequencies, and Dispatch Throttling (DT), which reduces power during certain workloads with high IPC, like vectorized work (much like we see with Intel reducing frequency during AVX workloads).
At the end of the day, it’s all about Power, Performance, and Area (PPA), and here Arm shared some projections. With the same (ISO) process, Arm claims up to 1.5x IPC increase over the previous-gen N1 and a 70% to 100% improvement to power efficiency (varies by workload). Given the same L1 and L2 cache sizes, the V1 core is 70% larger than the N1 core.
The Neoverse V1 supports Armv8.4, but the chip also borrows some features from future v8.5 and v8.6 revisions, as shown above.
Arm also added several features to manage system scalability, particularly as it pertains to partitioning shared resources and reducing contention, as you can see in the slides above.
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Arm’s Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) are a big draw of the new architecture. Firstly, Arm doubled compute bandwidth to 2x256b with SVE and provides backward support for Neon at 4x128b.
However, the key here is that SVE is vector length agnostic. Most vector ISAs have a fixed number of bits in the vector unit, but SVE lets the hardware set the vector length in bits. However, in software, the vectors have no length. This simplifies programming and enhances portability for binary code between architectures that support different bit widths — the instructions will automatically scale as necessary to fully utilize the available vector bandwidth (for instance, 128b or 256b).
Arm shared information on several fine-grained instructions for the SVE instructions, but much of those details are beyond the scope of this article. Arm also shared some simulated V1 and N2 benchmarks with SVE, but bear in mind that these are vendor-provided and merely simulations.
ARM Neoverse N2 Platform ‘Perseus’
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Here we can see the slide deck for the N2 Perseus platform, with the key goals being a focus on scale-out implementations. Hence, the company optimized the design for performance-per-power (watt) and performance-per-area, along with a healthier dose of cores and scalability. As with the previous-gen N1 platform, this design can scale from the cloud to the edge.
Neoverse N2 has a newer core than the V1 chips, but the company isn’t sharing many details yet. However, we do know that N2 is the first Arm platform to support Armv9 and SVE2, which is the second generation of the SVE instructions we covered above.
Arm claims a 40% increase in single-threaded performance over N1, but within the same power and area efficiency envelope. Most of the details about N2 mirror those we covered with V1 above, but we included the slides above for more details.
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Arm provided the above benchmarks, and as with all vendor-provided benchmarks, you should take them with a grain of salt. We have also included the test notes at the end of the album for further perusal of the test configurations.
Arm’s SPEC CPU 2017 single-core tests show a solid progression from N1 to N2, and then a higher jump in performance with the V1 platform. The company also provided a range of comparisons against the Intel Xeon 8268 and an unspecified 40-core Ice Lake Xeon system, and the EPYC Rome 7742 and EPYC Milan 7763.
Coherent Mesh Network (CMN-700)
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Arm allows its partners to adjust core counts, cache sizes, and use different types of memory, such as DDR5 and HBM and select various interfaces, like PCIe 5.0, CXL, and CCIX, requiring a very flexible underlying design methodology. Add in the fact that Neoverse can span from the cloud and edge to 5G, and the interconnect also has to be able to span a full spectrum of various power points and compute requirements. That’s where the Coherent Mesh Network 700 (CMN-700) steps in.
Arm focuses on security through compliance and standards, Arm open-source software, and ARM IP and architecture, all rolled under the SystemReady umbrella that serves as the underpinning of the Neoverse platform architecture.
Arm provides customers with reference designs based on its own internal work, with the designs pre-qualified in emulated benchmarks and workload analysis. Arm also provides a virtual model for software development too.
Customers can then take the reference design, choose between core types (like V-, N- or E-Series) and alter core counts, core frequency targets, cache hierarchy, memory (DDR5, HBM, Flash, Storage Class Memory, etc.), and I/O accommodations, among other factors. Customers also dial in parameters around the system-level cache that can be shared among accelerators.
There’s also support for multi-chip integration. This hangs off the coherent mesh network and provides plumbing for I/O connectivity options and multi-chip communication accommodations through interfaces like PCIe, CXL, CCIX, etc.
The V-Series CPUs address the growth of heterogeneous workloads by providing enough bandwidth for accelerators, support for disaggregated designs, and also multi-chip architectures that help defray the slowing Moore’s Law.
These types of designs help address the fact that the power budget per SoC (and thus thermals) is increasing, and also allow scaling beyond the reticle limits of a single SoC.
Additionally, I/O interfaces aren’t scaling well to smaller nodes, so many chipmakers (like AMD) are keeping PHYs on older nodes. That requires robust chip-to-chip connectivity options.
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Here we can see the gen-on-gen comparison with the current CMN-600 interface found on the N1 chips. The CMN-700 mesh interface supports four times more cores and system-level cache per die, 2.2x more nodes (cross points) per die, 2.5x memory device ports (like DRAM, HBM) per die, and 8x the number of CCIX device ports per die (up to 32), all of which supplies intense scalability.
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Arm improved cross-sectional bandwidth by 3X, which is important to provide enough bandwidth for scalability of core counts, scaling out with bandwidth-hungry GPUs, and faster memories, like DDR5 and HBM (the design accommodates 40 memory controllers for either/or DDR and HBM). Arm also has options for double mesh channels for increased bandwidth. Additionally, a hot spot reroute feature helps avoid areas of contention on the fabric.
The AMBA Coherent Hub Interface (CHI) serves as the high-performance interconnect for the SoC that connects processors and memory controllers. Arm improved the CHI design and added intelligent heuristics to detect and control congestion, combine operations to reduce transactions, and conduct data-less writes, all of which help reduce traffic on the mesh. These approaches also help with multi-chip scaling.
Memory partitioning and monitoring (MPAM) helps reduce the impact of noisy neighbors on system-level cache and isolates VMs to keep them from hogging system level cache (SLC). Arm also extends this software-controlled system to the memory controller as well. All this helps to manage shared resources and reduce contention. The CPU, accelerator, and PCIe interfaces all have to work together as well, so the design applies the same traffic management techniques between those units, too.
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The mesh supports multi-chip designs through CXL or CCIX interfaces, and here we see a few of the use cases. CCIX is typically used inside the box or between the chips, be that heterogenous packages, chiplets, or multi-socket. In contrast, CXL steps in for memory expansion or pools of memory shared by multiple hosts. It’s also used for coherent accelerators like GPUs, NPUs, and SmartNICs, etc.
Slide 14 shows an example of a current connection topology — PCIe connects to the DPU (Data Plane Unit – SmartNic), which then provides the interconnection to the compute accelerator node. This allows multiple worker nodes to connect to shared resources.
Slide 15 shows us the next logical expansion of this approach — adding disaggregated memory pools that are shared between worker nodes. Unfortunately, as shown in slide 16, this creates plenty of bottlenecks and introduces other issues, such as spanning the home nodes and system-level cache across multiple dies. Arm has an answer for that, though.
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Addressing those bottlenecks requires a re-thinking of the current approaches to sharing resources among worker nodes. Arm designed a multi-protocol gateway with a new AMBA CXS connection to reduce latency. This connection can transport CCIX 2.0 and CXL 2.0 protocols much faster than conventional interconnections. This system also provides the option of using a Flit data link layer that is optimized for the ultimate in low-latency connectivity.
This new design can be tailored for either socket-to-socket or multi-die compute SoCs. As you can see to the left on Slide 17, this multi-protocol gateway can be used either with or without a PCIe PHY. Removing the PCIe PHY creates an optimized die-to-die gateway for lower latency for critical die-to-die connections.
Arm has also devised a new Super Home Node concept to accommodate multi-chip designs. This implementation allows composing the system differently based on whether or not it is a homogenous design (direct connections between dies) or heterogeneous (compute and accelerator chiplets) connected to an I/O hub. The latter design is becoming more attractive because I/O doesn’t scale well to smaller nodes, so using older nodes can save quite a bit of investment and help reduce design complexity.
Thoughts
ARM’s plans for a 30%+ gen-on-gen IPC growth rate stretch into the next three iterations of its existing platforms (V1, N2, Poseidon) and will conceivably continue into the future. We haven’t seen gen-on-gen gains in that range from Intel in recent history, and while AMD notched large gains with the first two Zen iterations, as we’ve seen with the EPYC Milan chips, it might not be able to execute such large generational leaps in the future.
If ARM’s projections play out in the real world, that puts the company not only on an intercept course with x86 (it’s arguably already there in some aspects), but on a path to performance superiority.
Wrapping in the amazingly well-thought-out coherent mesh design makes these designs all the more formidable, especially in light of the ongoing shift to offloading key workloads to compute accelerators of various flavors. Additionally, bringing complex designs, like chiplet, multi-die, and hub and spoke designs all under one umbrella of pre-qualified reference designs could help spur a hastened migration to Arm architectures, at least for the cloud players. That attraction of licensable interconnections that democratize these complex interfaces is definitely yet another arrow in Arm’s quiver.
Perhaps one of the most surprising tidbits of info that Arm shared in its presentations was one of the smallest — a third-party firm has measured that more than half of AWS’s newly-deployed instances run on Graviton 2 processors. Additionally, Graviton 2-powered instances are now available in 70 out of the 77 AWS regions. It’s natural to assume that those instances will soon have a newer N2 or V1 architecture under the hood.
This type of uptake, and the economies of scale and other savings AWS enjoys from using its own processors, will force other cloud giants to adapt with their own designs in kind, perhaps touching off the type of battle for superiority that can change the entire shape of the data center for years to come. There simply isn’t another vendor more well-positioned to compete in a world where the hyperscalers and cloud giants battle it out with custom silicon than Arm.
The vocal: often the official moment that gets a gig under way, the determiner of the direction your eyebrows go when first listening to a new artist. The vocal has enabled ‘one-man bands’ to play to rooms of thousands of people with only a guitar in their hand or a piano at their fingertips. The vocal is what has given Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury and Aretha Franklin their status as some of the greatest musical communicators in history.
It’s probably the reason you realised, at an early age, you might not be that guy in a band, but more importantly it’s also why these tracks and artists feature below.
We’ve chosen 23 songs with exquisite vocals by exquisite vocalists (so no Beethoven here, I’m afraid), from Frank Sinatra to The Streets, Clannad to DAVE that are perfect to test your system – whether it’s for their brooding baritone or their dynamic pyrotechnics.
Listen to the What Hi-Fi? playlist 2021
Adrianne Lenker – zombie girl
Any solo work from Big Thief‘s Lenker, particularly those from her latest album songs, could make this list for her ravishingly evocative vocals. One of today’s most important and naturally gifted songwriters, reminiscent of Dylan, she carries a delicate yet resolute delivery that demands a system able to capture, and sweep you away with, every waver in it.
Like this? Try The Weather Station Atlantic
View Adrianne Lenker songs and instrumentals on Amazon
Dry the River – Weights & Measures
Thanks to the quivering falsetto of frontman Peter Liddle, we could have picked almost any number from the now-disbanded London folk-rock outfit Dry The River. The former choirboy reaches remarkably lofty heights, and here his signature undulating delivery moves from calculated tenderness to passionate outcries beteen his bandmates’ rip-roaring electrics. You should be able to hear his every tremor between your stereo speakers.
Like this? Try Antony and the Johnsons For Today I am a Boy
View Dry the River Shallow Bed on Amazon
PJ Harvey – On Battleship Hill
You could fit more than a handful of artists’ vocal ranges between PJ Harvey’s. At one end of her repertoire is the angsty alto growl that steers the organ on Down by the Water, and at the other the angelic high-pitched wailings here during On Battleship Hill where, while speaking of the casualites of war, she exercises her best impression of a soprano choirboy. The juxtaposition of the deep baritone running beneath it makes for a great A/B comparison, too.
Like this? Try Lucinda Williams Come On
View PJ Harvey Let England Shake on Amazon
Big Brother & The Holding Company – Summertime
With a raspy coarseness that’ll have you tenderly stroking your vocal chords and reaching for the nearest glass of water, plus a vibrato that could have you checking for wobble on a vinyl pressing, Janis Joplin’s frontwoman performance here steals the show even amongst the gilded psychedelic ‘60s-defining electric guitar jams – which really is saying something.
Like this? Try The Tallest Man On Earth The Dreamer
View Big Brother & The Holding Company Cheap Thrills on Amazon
Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance in New York is a go-to album in our test room for more reasons than one. Aside from showcasing the diverse range of Kurt Cobain’s vocal, and its unerring faithfulness live, the slow-burn build from muttered country drawl to anguished shriek is a great examination of the dynamic subtlety of your system.
Like this? Try Pearl Jam Black
View Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York on Amazon
DAVE – Streatham
One of the most salient voices on the British music scene, the South London rapper comments candidly and with brutal sincerity on the country’s societal issues, and his own personal, painful experiences within it, with a rawness and vulnerability to his delivery that’s utterly compelling. His reflection on Streatham, where he grew up,is representative of the way his clever wordplay naturally ebbs and flows with a tempo.
Like this? Try AJ Tracey Anxious
View DAVE Psychodrama on Amazon
Kate Bush – Top of the City
One of Kate’s best vocal performances at her 2014 Before the Dawn London shows is also, not that surprisingly, one of the most accomplished executions she’s ever committed to tape. Her other-wordly ability to near-whisper one line into the mic and belt down the next in true rock-queen guise is fully to the fore.
(Go for the original The Red Shoes album version rather than 2011’s Director’s Cut, as the latter features a tragically restrained vocal delivery in favour of more instrumental chutzpah.)
Like this? Try This Mortal Coil Song to the Siren
View Kate Bush The Red Shoes on Amazon
Nina Simone – Strange Fruit
While Simone’s dramatic cover of Abel Meeropol’s sobering protest poem (most famously performed by Billie Holiday) doesn’t perhaps show off her vocal dexterity as well as many of her numerous hits, it’s a triumph of low-level dynamic craft. The most insightful kit should reveal very few static moments in both her execution and the piano accompaniment.
Like this? Try Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace
View Nina Simone Pastel Blues on Amazon
Clannad – Caislean Óir
What better than a lush production of enchanting Irish-tongued balladry to test the sheer scale and openness of your system (and, perhaps even more so, your headphones)? The echoic, ethereal choir of Celtic band Clannad (from which spawned Enya) should fill your soundstage without dominating the daintier soprano that it frames.
Like this? Try Grouper Headache
View Clannad Macalla on Amazon
Frank Sinatra – It Was a Very Good Year
It just wouldn’t seem right for a celebratory list of vocalists to ignore Sinatra’s distinct baritone. Here in 1965 (before taking on the deeper, smokier quality that defined his later-years delivery) it’s light, free-flowing and pliable, often moving along with rubato, and demonstrating the dynamic gusto and rhythmic diction the crooner was well known for.
Like this? Try Tom Waits Martha
View Frank Sinatra September Of My Years on Amazon
Joni Mitchell – Carey
At the other end of the of the frequency scale is Joni Mitchell’s high-pitched, featherlight vocal, here depicting her anecdotal appreciation of a hippy cave-dwelling commune she once visited. A decent system will capture her vocal acrobatics across several octaves, her impeccable self-harmonising and the subtle timing discrepancies within the breezy, buoyant tempo. You’ll know how unerring your system is when it’s playing Joni Mitchell. You’ll just know.
Like this? Try Laura Nyro Beads of Sweat
View Joni Mitchell Blue on Amazon
The National – Demons
Thick, cavernous and resonant (albeit with the range of a teaspoon), Matt Berninger’s baritone has become one of the most recognisable in popular music – thanks in great part to its soothing depths and rare ability to be so mellifluous within melodies at the same time. Demons exposes one of his most sure-footed, more-monotonous-than-most delivery, which is sure to give your mid/bass driver or woofer a good run for its money.
Like this? Try Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds We No Who U R
View The National Trouble Will Find Me on Amazon
Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby
The possessor of another classic (albeit considerably less accomplished) low range, Lou Reed has a penchant for straight-laced, seemingly aloof storytelling. But where he’s often easy-going, his vocal can also morph into impassionated outbursts – and with Coney Island Baby there is, at times, dynamic attack sufficient to have you straightening in your chair. With a largely undemonstrative acoustic and drum mix faintly colouring the canvas around it, Reed’s vocal really (and rightfully) is centre stage.
Like this? Try Serge Gainsbourg La Saison des Pluies
View The National Trouble Will Find Me on Amazon
The Unthanks – Here’s the Tender Coming
As rooted to folk tradition as Morris dancers of old, the virtuosic vocals of these two Geordie sisters, with their matching dialect but disparate timbre, make their duetting parts some of the most interesting on the music scene. Clean, unspoiled and, for the most part, largely unaccompanied, they offer a thorough mid/upper midrange workout.
Like this? Try Fairport Convention Matty Groves
View The Unthanks Here’s the Tender Coming on Amazon
The Streets – Blinded by the Lights
The vocal equivalent of walking with your head down and hand in your pockets, Mike Skinner’s deadpan rambling raps are not only witty and slick here, their poetic step makes them solid a test of timing against the backdrop’s jagged beat.
Like this? Try Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Starting Over (ft Ben Bridwell)
View The Streets A Grand Don’t Come for Free on Amazon
Laura Marling – What He Wrote
One of the greatest singers of this generation, Laura Marling is (like Eva Cassidy or Norah Jones), a perfect soundtracker of a breezy summer’s day. Your system owes it to her (and you) to be transparent enough to lay her vulnerability bare, to pick out the subtle lifts and lilts of the silky, sun-bathed delivery that often curl into the softest of whispers.
Like this? Try Lorde Liability
View Laura Marling I Speak Because I Can on Amazon
Jack White – Hypocritical Kiss
It may be his virtuosic guitar-playing that Jack White is most notable for, but his nasally, overwrought-sounding vocal is just as distinctive – and here it’s as impressive for the elasticity of his upper midrange display as for the immediacy of it.
Like this? Try Aerosmith Crazy
View Jack White Blunderbuss on Amazon
Bon Iver – 715 – CR∑∑KS
Unless you have your system connected to your TV, there’s a very good chance you won’t have heard Darth Vader through it. If you’re now sitting there thinking what a pity that is, the next best thing is listening to this Bon Iver track. A radical departure from his trademark falsetto, Justin Vernon’s completely unaccompanied vocal seeps from a thick vocoder cloud, with all the digital depth of a modern-day electronic record that a mid/bass driver should lap up.
Like this? Try Squarepusher Plug Me In
View Bon Iver 22, A Million on Amazon
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bats in the Attic
A wonderfully direct midrange performance from Fife singer-songwriter Kenny Anderson, his jaded, rustic timbre is complemented by the sweet backing vocals of Lisa Elle. Hopkins, fresh from his collaborative Small Craft on a Milk Sea album with Leo Abrahams and Brian Eno, lays down a fluid piano accompaniment too. It’s all about space and textures within that midrange here.
Like this? Try Sufjan Stevens John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
View King Creosote & Jon Hopkins Diamond Mine on Amazon
Sam Cooke – A Change is Gonna Come
The King of Soul lays down a career-defining vocal illustrating his optimism for future African-American equality – his heartfelt crooning is awash with the energetic passion and mighty vibrato that defines the traditional bluesy vocal. Warmth and richness should cling to his booming presentation without neglecting his pained expression and effortless melisma.
Like this? Try Eric Bibb & Needed Time Where the Green Grass Grows
View Sam Cooke Ain’t That Good News on Amazon
Jefferson Airplane – We Can Be Together
You may have to endure (read ‘air-guitar along with’) almost a minute of Kaukonen’s jamming before any vocal kicks in, but it’s worth the wait when you’re eventually handed the pitch-perfect matrinomy of Kantner, Balin and Slick’s harmonies. Your system should easily discern the three vocal tiers, and provide space around Balin’s high tone and reach.
Like this? Try The White Stripes It’s True That We Love One Another
View Jefferson Airplane Volunteers on Amazon
Solange – Cranes in the Sky
Like her A-list sister (to whom we’ve given an honourary inclusion below), Solange has flexed her soprano style in pop music, here within a sweet, clear and polished production that lies at the foreground of a bare instrumental arrangement. If your system’s upper midrange is its highlight, this should be a great advert for it.
Like this? Try Beyoncé Sandcastles
View Solange A Seat at the Table on Amazon
Randy Newman – It’s a Jungle Out There
A wonderful songwriter, a wonderful singer – and a bona fide elder in America’s singer-songwriter/composer hall of fame. Randy Newman may not have much in the way of vocal range, but the musical inflections in his distinctive voice can guide melodies through jazzy terrains with seemingly effortless ease.
Like this? Try Lyle Lovett She’s No Lady (She’s My Wife)
View Monk: original television soundtrack on Amazon
MORE:
Our pick of the best songs to test your speakers and headphones
And 50 of the best hi-fi albums for audiophiles
Check out the Listen to the What Hi-Fi? playlist too!
Intel’s new CEO Pat Gelsinger helmed his first full earnings call for the company yesterday, echoing other industry leaders in saying that the ongoing industry-wide chip shortages could last several more years. Intel also reported that it set a quarterly record for the most notebook PC chips sold in its history, but also reported a sudden slump in data center sales that found revenue dropping 20%, a record for the segment, as the number of units shipped and average selling prices both declined dramatically. Intel also posted its lowest profitability for its server segment in recent history, which surely is exacerbated by AMD’s continuing share gains and Intel’s resultant price cuts.
Intel’s first-quarter 2021 results were strong overall; the company raked in $18.6B in revenue, beating its January guidance by $1.1B (and analyst estimates). However, the impressive quarterly revenue is tempered by the fact that gross margins dropped to 58.4%, a 6.1 ppt decline year-over-year (YoY).
Chips shortages are top of mind, and Gelsinger said he expects the industry-wide chip shortages to last for several more years. A shortage of substrate materials and chip packaging capacity has hamstrung the industry, and Gelsinger said that Intel is bringing some of its chip packaging back in-house to improve its substrate supply. That new capacity comes online in Q2 and will “increase the availability of millions of units in 2021.”
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Intel’s Client Computing Group (CCG), which produces both notebook and desktop PC chips, posted record notebook PC sales that were up 54% YoY. However, average selling prices (ASPs) dropped a surprising 20% YoY, which Intel chalked up to selling more lower-end devices, like low-end consumer and education (Chromebooks). Competitive pricing pressure from AMD’s Ryzen 5000 Mobile processors also surely comes into play here.
Meanwhile, desktop PC volumes dropped 4% YoY while average selling prices dropped 5%, a continuation of an ongoing trend that’s exacerbated by tough competition from AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors. All told, that led to CCG revenue being up 8% YoY. Intel’s consumer chips now account for 59% of its revenue.
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Intel’s Data Center Group (DCG) results were far less impressive. The unit’s $5.6B in revenue was down 20% YoY, and Intel also shipped 13% fewer units than last year. Intel chalks this up to cloud inventory digestion, meaning that companies that ordered large numbers of chips in the past are still deploying that inventory. This is the second quarter in a row Intel has cited this as a reason for lowered revenue.
Intel formally launched its Ice Lake Xeon processors earlier this month, and it isn’t unheard of for large customers to pause purchases in the months before large product launches that bring big performance and efficiency gains. A complex mix of other factors could also contribute, like cloud service providers moving to their own chip designs and possible continued market share gains by AMD. Still, Intel expects its server chips sales to rebound in the second half of the year. We’ll learn more when AMD releases its results, also with the market share reports that will arrive in a few weeks.
Intel’s average selling prices for its server chips also dropped 14%. Intel cites an increase in sales of lower-cost networking SoCs as a contributor, but the company has also cut pricing drastically to compete with AMD’s EPYC processors, which ultimately has an impact.
DCG operating margins weighed in at 23%, a record low for a segment that typically runs in the 40% range, with Intel citing the impact of its 10nm Xeon ramp as a contributor. It’s also noteworthy that 10nm is less profitable than Intel’s 14nm process, so moving from 14nm Cascade Lake to 10nm Ice Lake will further impact margins.
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Intel is moving forward with its plans to invest $20 billion this year as it expands its manufacturing capacity, with a good portion of that dedicated to its Intel Foundry Services (ISF) that will make chips for other companies, much like we see with other third-party foundries like TSMC. Gelsinger says Intel is engaging with 50+ potential customers already.
Gelsinger also noted that Intel has onboarded 2,000 new engineers this year and expects to bring on “several thousand” more later in the year. However, he didn’t provide a frame of reference as to how that compares to Intel’s normal hiring rate, which is an important distinction in an engineering-heavy company with over 110,000 employees.
Intel expects to ramp up its investments, and noted that it would reduce its stock buybacks as it plows more money into its investments. Intel guides for a 57% gross margin for the second quarter on $17.8B and a $1.05 EPS.
Sony will start rolling out support for 1080p streaming (aka Full HD) on PlayStation Now from this week, thus levelling up the streaming quality of its cloud gaming service’s current 720p cap.
The Japanese gaming giant shared the news in a tweet on its official PlayStation account, which reads: “The rollout will occur over the next several weeks across Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, where PlayStation Now is available”.
PlayStation Now will begin rolling out support for streaming 1080p capable games this week.The rollout will occur over the next several weeks across Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, where PlayStation Now is available. pic.twitter.com/OEHWHtMTw8April 22, 2021
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As first noted by The Verge, Sony has yet to share a list of games that can actually be streamed in the higher resolution, but says support will soon roll out for “1080p capable games”.
Granting some PlayStation Now games 1080p streaming will bring the cloud gaming service up on a par with several of Sony’s competitors. Amazon’s Luna currently maxes out at 1080p, although Google’s Stadia can hit up to a 4K resolution. Microsoft, meanwhile, is currently trialling 1080p support for xCloud, its Xbox cloud gaming offering launched in September last year.
MORE:
Still looking to buy a PS5? See PS5 stock and where to buy: latest PS5 restock details
Read our review of the Sony PlayStation Pulse 3D Wireless Headset
Microsoft is releasing a preview version of Office 2021 for Mac and Office LTSC this week. While Office LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) is designed for commercial customers, both versions are perpetual versions of Office that don’t rely on subscriptions or the cloud. Microsoft announced its plans for Office 2021 back in February, and a Windows version — which won’t be available in preview — will also be released later this year.
Office 2021 for Mac will support both Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs, and require at least 4GB of RAM and 10GB of storage space. It’s designed to be a static release of Office, but during the preview there will be monthly updates that could include new features. Once Office 2021 for Mac is final and released, no new features will be added. Current improvements include:
Line Focus, this feature removes distractions to let Word users move through a document line by line.
XLOOKUP, an Excel feature that lets you find things in a table or range by row.
Dynamic array support in Excel, which has new functions for dynamic arrays in spreadsheets.
Record a slide show with narration in PowerPoint.
Microsoft’s Office LTSC variant will also include things like dark mode support, accessibility improvements, and the same Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP features found in Excel 2021 for Mac. Office 2021 for Windows will include similar features.
If you’re interested in trying out Office 2021 for Mac, you’ll need to download the installer from Microsoft’s site and a special Volume License Serializer to activate the preview.
Sony will begin rolling out support for 1080p streaming with PlayStation Now beginning this week, upping the streaming quality from the cloud gaming service’s previous 720p cap.
“The rollout will occur over the next several weeks across Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, where PlayStation Now is available,” Sony said in a tweet.
PlayStation Now will begin rolling out support for streaming 1080p capable games this week.
The rollout will occur over the next several weeks across Europe, US, Canada, and Japan, where PlayStation Now is available. pic.twitter.com/OEHWHtMTw8
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) April 22, 2021
In its tweet, Sony says support will roll out for “1080p capable games,” but it hasn’t yet shared a list of games that can hit the higher resolution. We’ve asked the company if it can share more information.
Allowing some PlayStation Now games to stream at 1080p brings the service on par with some of Sony’s cloud gaming competitors. Amazon’s Luna currently tops out at 1080p, while Google’s Stadia can hit up to a 4K resolution. Microsoft is currently testing 1080p support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud).
I played the entirety of the PlayStation 3 version of The Last of Us on my PS4 last year with PlayStation Now streaming, and the service worked without a hitch. The 1080p resolution boost (for games that support it) should be a nice upgrade.
Amazon One is expanding to its biggest area yet: the company is now testing its palm-scanning payment technology in Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Amazon’s home city of Seattle.
The company has been using Amazon One payment technology in its Amazon-branded stores in the Seattle area (including Amazon Go and Amazon Books), but the Whole Foods rollout will make the most substantial expansion of the technology yet. The company says that thousands of customers have already signed up with Amazon One.
According to an Amazon FAQ, the palm-scanning technology analyzes “the minute characteristics of your palm — both surface-area details like lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” in order to identify a customer, allowing them to use the biometric scan as an alternative (and, theoretically, faster) method of checking out than fumbling around with a credit card or cash.
Customers will be able to register their palms at kiosks in the supported Whole Foods stores, allowing them to associate a physical credit card to that palm scan. (Amazon One users who have already registered may have to re-link their cards once to be able to use them at Whole Foods.) And of course, Amazon One users will be able to link their Prime accounts to their scans to get the subscription service’s discounts when shopping.
Amazon One will debut at the Madison Broadway Whole Foods in Seattle as an additional payment option for customers, with plans to expand it to seven other Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area over the next few months. Amazon hasn’t announced plans to further build out the palm-scanning payment system outside of the Seattle area.
All of this, of course, assumes that you’re OK with Amazon building an ever-larger database of biometric information linked to its customers, something that some experts have raised concerns about. That’s particularly true given that Amazon’s data — unlike other biometric security systems, like Apple’s Face ID — is stored in on the cloud, rather than secured locally on a specific device.
Microsoft has started inviting Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to test its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service on iPhones and iPads today. The service works through web browsers, allowing it to also run on PCs and Macs on Edge, Chrome, or Safari. We’ve managed to get an early look at this beta and see how Xbox Cloud Gaming works on an iPhone or iPad.
The web interface for xCloud (yes, we’re going to keep calling it xCloud) is very simple to use. It scales across devices like the iPhone, iPad, or even a large monitor attached to a PC to provide quick access to games. Microsoft has even included a search interface, which is something that’s strangely missing on rival service Google Stadia.
You don’t need to install any apps or extensions; it works natively in Chrome, Safari, or Edge. All you need is a compatible USB or Bluetooth controller. Some games even work with Xbox Touch Controls, so a controller isn’t required if you’re happy to tap on the screen and play. I managed to quickly start games using an Xbox Elite 2 controller paired to an iPhone 11 Pro.
Once you launch a game, you’ll have to wait a fair amount of time for it to actually load. Much like xCloud on Android, the backend servers for Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming are actually Xbox One S consoles. This older Xbox hardware isn’t powered by a modern CPU or SSD, so game loads are affected as a result. Microsoft is planning to upgrade xCloud servers to Xbox Series X hardware at some point this year, though.
Microsoft’s Xbox Game Streaming on an iPhone.
I’ve only been playing xCloud via the web for a few hours, so it’s difficult to judge the experience, but I’ve certainly run into a lot of connection issues both wireless and wired with my desktop PC. Microsoft says it’s working on a routing issue with this beta, but it’s worth pointing out this is a test service, and it’s only just launched, so hiccups like this are to be expected.
Once the connection settles down, it’s very similar to xCloud on Android. If you run this through a web browser on a PC or iPad, you’ll even get a 1080p stream. It feels like I’m playing on an Xbox in the cloud, and there’s a dashboard that lets me access friends, party chats, achievements, and invites to games. This is all powered by Xbox Game Pass, so there are more than 100 games available — and even some original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles that can be streamed.
You can search and easily launch Xbox games in a browser.
Xbox Touch Controls can be used for certain games.
Microsoft hasn’t said when the company plans to roll this out more broadly yet, but given the early connection issues, there’s clearly still some work to be done until the web version is available for everyone. Still, it’s impressive how well this scales across multiple devices and opens up the ability to stream Xbox games to virtually any device that has a Chromium or Safari browser.
I also tried this xCloud browser version on the new Edge app for Xbox consoles, but it’s not fully supported yet. Both the service and the browser are in early beta right now, so full support might come at a later date. Either way, I imagine that xCloud will arrive on Xbox consoles through the ability to quickly stream a game while you’re waiting for it to download in the background. That’s really where xCloud makes sense on a console that can already play Xbox games.
This browser-based version of xCloud does open up the service to many more possibilities, too. Xbox chief Phil Spencer has previously hinted at TV streaming sticks for xCloud, and Microsoft has already committed to bringing the service to Facebook Gaming at some point. It’s easy to imagine Xbox Game Streaming apps for smart TVs, coupled with the ability to access the service from web browsers to ensure almost any device can access an Xbox Game Pass subscription. That’s clearly Microsoft’s goal here, and this beta feels like just the beginning.
More bad news for the prospective PC builder comes out of Taiwanese research institute TrendForce, which is predicting a rise in DRAM prices of between 18 and 23% for the second quarter of 2021.
(Image credit: TrendForce)
While negotiations between OEMs and resellers are still ongoing, TrendForce is predicting a quarter-on-quarter price increase of 25% on 8GB DDR4 2666MHz modules, higher than expected. DRAM modules continue to be in short supply, partly due to the global chip shortage, and partly thanks to many people buying new machines to work from home during the pandemic. All kinds of RAM are affected, from mobile DRAM, GDDR modules for graphics cards, and server DRAM, which is closely related to home PC RAM and therefore more easily affected by price rises.
The second quarter of the financial year is often the peak season for laptop production, and TrendForce’s figures predict a 7.9% increase in the manufacture of laptops by major manufacturers this year, which will put more pressure on supplies of RAM and increase the price by 23 – 28% in 2Q21.
And the worst thing is it’s all likely to carry on this way for some time. Server RAM, under pressure thanks to a boom in cloud computing linked to the pandemic, will see another rise in demand, putting manufacturers in an advantageous position as they negotiate with the AIB makers. The price of server RAM could rise by 25% next quarter, TrendForce forecasts.
Microsoft is reportedly working on a big overhaul to its app store for Windows. Windows Central reports that the software maker plans to release an updated store later this year that will be far more open to all types of apps and games. This could pave the way for developers to be able to submit any Windows application to the store, including browsers like Chrome or Firefox, and even allow third-party commerce platforms in apps.
That’s a big shift for the app store on Windows if Microsoft delivers this rumored overhaul later this year. Currently, the Windows store (or Microsoft Store as Microsoft calls it) requires developers to package their win32 apps as an MSIX and use Microsoft’s own update mechanisms and commerce platforms. Microsoft will reportedly allow developers to submit standard EXE or MSI packages to the store, and updates can be managed through a developer’s own content delivery network (CDN).
Such a change would open the Windows store to many more apps, including popular ones like Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of productivity apps, and even rival browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft launched its own Windows Package Manager last year, and it quickly became a great option for the hundreds of apps that are missing from the store right now. Apps like Steam, WinRAR, and Zoom don’t exist on the Windows store right now, but they’re available through the Windows Package Manager.
The current Windows store lacks many popular apps.
It sounds like whatever overhaul Microsoft is working on here will likely incorporate the company’s work with the Windows Package Manager to verify apps and list them in the store. Microsoft currently uses a number of methods to validate app packages for its Windows Package Manager, including scanning with its SmartScreen technology, static analysis, and SHA256 hash validation.
Microsoft’s rumored consideration of allowing third-party commerce platforms would also mean the company wouldn’t take a cut from developers who use their own in-app purchase systems. That’s another big change that would be both a surprising and open change to current app stores.
The Windows store originally appeared in Windows 8 as part of Microsoft’s big push to get developers to create universal Windows apps that would span across phones, tablets, PCs, and even Xbox consoles. This fell apart with the end of Windows Phone, and Microsoft eventually allowed developers to bring full native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store nearly two years ago. Developers have been asking for these rumored Windows store changes for years to make it far easier to get apps into the store and maintain and update them.
Microsoft is said to be planning to bring many of its own apps to this new Windows app store, including Teams, Office, Edge, and Visual Studio. The new store is rumored to be part of Microsoft’s big “Sun Valley” overhaul to Windows later this year. Microsoft has previously described this as a “sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows,” which should see an overhaul for the Start menu, File Explorer, built-in apps, and much more.
Xbox Cloud Gaming will come to Windows 10 PCs and Apple iOS devices in a limited beta tomorrow, April 20, the company announced today. For now, the beta will be available to 22 countries, with more being added at a later date.
This beta will be exclusive to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, so if you’re not a member, you won’t be able to participate in the beta. Even then, only “select” subscribers are being invited.
The service will be available at www.xbox.com/play on iPhones, iPads and PCs, where those who have been invited can play more than 100 Game Pas tittlies through Safari, Edge or Google Chrome.
To play those games, you’ll need a compatible Bluetooth or USB-connected controller. Touch controls will also be available for 50 of the 100 games and will work similarly to how they do with Android devices.
Microsoft and Apple previously had public disagreements about Game Pass, where Apple wanted each game to be to be run through the App Store, and Microsoft ultimately had to take to web browsers as a workaround.
If you don’t already have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you can sign up for one month of gaming goodness for
just $1
. Otherwise, it is priced at $14.99 per month and provides access to over 100 games for Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Windows 10. Recently, Microsoft and Electronic Arts teamed up to add EA Play to Xbox Game Pass as well.
Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) is officially arriving on iOS and PC tomorrow. The service will arrive on devices via browsers, allowing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play Xbox games on iPhones, iPads, and PCs. Microsoft is keeping this beta rather limited though, and requiring players to be invited to participate in the testing phase.
The service will be accessible at www.xbox.com/play, where Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers that have been invited to the beta will be able to play Xbox games through Edge, Chrome, or Safari browsers. More than 100 games will be available, and testers will be able to use a compatible Bluetooth or USB-connected controller or simply use custom touch controls.
“The limited beta is our time to test and learn; we’ll send out more invites on a continuous basis to players in all 22 supported countries, evaluate feedback, continue to improve the experience, and add support for more devices,” says Catherine Gluckstein, Microsoft’s head of xCloud. “Our plan is to iterate quickly and open up to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members in the coming months so more people have the opportunity to play Xbox in all-new ways.”
It’s the first time Xbox Game Streaming has been available on iOS devices after the service launched exclusively on Android phones and tablets last year. Microsoft wasn’t able to offer xCloud on iPhones or iPads during the initial launch phase of the service back in September, due to Apple’s restrictions on cloud gaming apps.
Both Apple and Microsoft got into a public war of words over xCloud, and Apple initially insisted that Microsoft would have to submit individual games for review. Apple eventually offered a compromise to allow cloud gaming apps to run on iOS with individually reviewed games, but Microsoft branded it a “bad experience for consumers.”
AMD’s EPYC Milan processors launched last month with 120 new world records to their credit in various applications, like HPC, Cloud, and enterprise workloads. But variants of these chips will eventually come to the market as Threadripper models for high end desktop PCs, and AMD’s server records don’t tell us too much about what we could expect from the PC chips. However, the company recently broke the Cinebench world record with its Milan chips, giving us an idea of what to expect in rendering work. Just for fun, we also ran a few tests on Intel’s new flagship 40-core Ice Lake Xeon chips to see how they stack up against not only AMD’s new record it set with the server chips, but also a single AMD Threadripper processor.
During the latest episode of AMD’s The Bring Up YouTube video series, the company took two of its $7,980 EPYC Milan 7763 chips for a spin in Cinbench R23, a rendering application that AMD commonly uses for its desktop PC marketing (largely because it responds exceedingly well to AMD’s Zen architectures).
As a quick reminder, AMD’s flagship 7763 server chips come armed with the 64 Zen 3 cores and 128 threads apiece and have a 2.45 GHz base and 3.5 GHz boost frequency. All told, we’re looking at a Cinebench run with 128 cores and 256 threads, which you can see in the tweet below:
So sieht das aus, wenn sich 2x 64 Zen-3-Kerne durch den Cinebench R23 fressen. pic.twitter.com/o9jiZeKPlRApril 15, 2021
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The dual 7763’s scored 113,631 points, while the previous world record weighed in at 105,570 (as per HWBot rankings). AMD says it used a reference server design with conventional air cooling for the test run, so there were no special accommodations or overclocking. The system peaked at 85C and 403W during the test run. Here’s AMD’s official HWBot world record submission.
1K Unit Price / RCP
Cores / Threads
Base / Boost – All Core (GHz)
L3 Cache (MB)
TDP (W)
AMD EPYC Milan 7763
$7,890
64 / 128
2.45 / 3.5
256
280
Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
$8,099
40 / 80
2.3 / 3.2 – 3.0
60
270
That isn’t much info to work with, but it’s enough for us to set up our own test. We ran a few tests with a dual Xeon 8380 Ice Lake Xeon server we used for our recent review. Much like AMD’s test system, this is a standard development design with air cooling (more details in the review). The Xeon system houses two $8,099 10nm Ice Lake Xeons with 40 cores 80 threads apiece that operate at a 2.3 GHz base and 3.2 GHz boost frequency. Yes, AMD’s Milan outweighs the Xeon system, but the Ice Lake 8380 is Intel’s highest-end part, and both chips come with comparable pricing.
We’re looking at the EPCY Milan server with 128 cores and 256 threads against the Intel Ice Lake system with 80 cores and 160 threads. Our quick tests here are not 100% like-for-like so take these with a grain of salt, though we did our best to match AMD’s test conditions. Here are our test results, with a few extras from the HWBot benchmark database mixed in:
Cinebench Benchmarks
Score
Cooling
Chip Price
2x AMD EPYC Milan 7763
113,631
Air
$15,780
1x Threadripper 3990X (Splave)
105,170
Liquid Nitrogen (LN2)
$3,990
2x EPYC 7H12
92,357
Air
?
2x Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
74,630
Air
$17,000
1x Threadripper 3990X (stock)
64,354
All-In-One (AIO) Liquid Cooling
$3,990
As you can see, in Cinebench R23, the dual EPYC Milan 7763’s are 34% faster than the dual Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s. AMD lists a 403W peak power consumption during its tests, but we assume those measurements are for the processors only (and perhaps only a single processor). In contrast, our power measurement at the wall for the Xeon 8380 server weighed in at 1154W, but that includes a beastly 512GB of memory, other platform additives, and VRM losses, etc., meaning it’s just a rough idea of power consumption that isn’t comparable to the EPYC system.
Naturally, Cinebench R23 results have absolutely no bearing on the purchasing decision for a data center customer, but it is an interesting comparison. Notably, a single Threadripper 3990X, when pressed to its fullest with liquid nitrogen by our resident overclocking guru Splave, still beats the two Xeon Platinum 8380’s, though the 8380’s pull off the win against an air-cooled 3990X at stock settings (measured in our labs).
Finally, we decided to see how two Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s compare against a broader set of processors. Intel suffered quite a bit of embarrassment back at AMD’s launch of the 64-core Threadripper 3900X for high-end desktop PCs, as this $3,990 processor (yes, just one) beat two of Intel’s previous-gen 8280 Xeons in a range of threaded workloads. Intel’s Xeon’s weighed in at $20,000 total and represented the company’s fastest server processors. Ouch.
In fact, those benchmark results were so amazing that we included an entire page of testing in our Threadripper 3990X review comparing two of Intel’s fire-breathing behemoths to AMD’s single workstation chip, which you can see here. As a bit of a redux, we decided to revisit the standings with a quick run of Cinebench R20 with the new Intel 10nm Xeons. Notably, this test is with an older version of the benchmark than we used above, but that’s so we can match our historical data in the chart below:
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Unfortunately, we don’t have a dual-socket EPYC Milan 7763 system to add to our historical test results here, but we get a good enough sense of Ice Lake’s relative positioning with this chart. The two Intel Ice Lake 8380’s, which weigh in at $17,000, beat the single $3,990 Threadripper 3900X at stock settings. That’s at least better than the dual 8280’s that lost so convincingly in the past.
However, a quick toggle of the PBO switch, which is an automated overclocking feature from AMD that works with standard cooling solutions (no liquid nitrogen required), allows a single Threadripper 3990X to regain the lead over Intel’s newest 10nm flagships in this test. Intel’s latest chips also can’t beat AMD’s previous-gen EPYC Rome 7742’s, which are 64-core chips.
Of course, this single benchmark has almost no bearing on the enterprise market that the Ice Lake chips are destined for, and the latest Xeon’s do make solid steps forward in a broader range of tests that do matter, which you can see in our Ice Lake 8380 review.
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