By Laura Kobylecky

At this 2021 online edition of CES, AMD won an Award and the CEO gave a keynote speech. It’s a big year for the company.

AMD’s “Ryzen 5000 Series desktop processors” won one of this year’s CES “Best of Innovation” Awards. The Innovation Awards are part of an annual competition “honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products.” The processor is “built on cutting edge ‘Zen 3’ technology, providing unmatched compute power and exceptional performance-per-watt thanks to its ground-breaking 7nm architecture,” according to their CES Innovation Award Profile.

2020 was perhaps one of the most productive years for AMD
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Dr. Lisa Su, President and Chief Executive Officer of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), showed up to give the keynote speech. She spoke about how technology has been changed by the pandemic, as well as AMD’s newest projects and some of their collaborations with other companies.

Dr. Lisa Su’s presentation started with the standard “Dramatic Tech Video” of a diverse group of people using AMD technology for work and play.

Zoom users are approaching three and a half trillion minutes of meetings per year
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Her intro touches base with the current state of the world. She says that “2020 was perhaps one of our most productive years.” The increased dependence on technology in a socially-distant world accelerated “the pace of our digital transformation.” We have “transitioned to the new normal.”

One example she presents is the rise in video collaboration. She explains that “Zoom users are approaching three and a half trillion minutes of meetings per year. Cisco Webex meeting participants recently hit 600 million per month and Microsoft Teams is now supporting 115 million daily users.” This is only one example of many, but it showcases how “the pandemic has elevated technology to become an essential part of how we live, work, play and communicate.”

Naturally, this transformation has placed “significantly higher demands on our digital infrastructure.” She explains that “at the center of all this technology is high-performance computing”

Microsoft and Gaming

She brings up a live video of Panos Panay, chief product officer of Microsoft. She mentions that they have been collaborating over Microsoft Teams and so he seems very familiar to her, despite having not met in “real life” during this time. Panay talks about how he has been “learning to work differently” in a world where a meeting might include the sound of his dogs “barking in the background.”

He believes that “PC is becoming more essential.” It has expanded beyond “a productivity tool” into something that is used “to connect with other humans and people in general.” He aspires to “help tech disappear into the background,” as they move forward and “continue to push the boundaries.”

Cisco Webex meeting participants recently hit 600 million per month and Microsoft Teams is now supporting 115 million daily users
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The increased dependence on technology in a socially-distant world accelerated the pace of digital transformation as we have transitioned to the new normal
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They also discuss Microsoft’s gaming partnership with AMD. Panay states that “AMD’s momentum right now is incredible” and he describes their partnership as “two teams coming together.” AMD has created “high-performace CPUS and GPUs for the x box series x and series S.”

Another AMD innovation that will be helpful to gaming is the “AMD ryzen 5000 series mobile processors powered by our new zen 3 core.” AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 “increases our lead in overall performance and energy efficiency and also delivers the best single threaded performance,” according to Su. This should lead to more powerful laptop gaming or any other creative uses.

AMD expects “more than 150 ultrathin gaming and professional notebooks powered by Ryzen 5000 series to launch this year.” The first are anticipated to go on sale in February. As a result, AMD will have “ultrathin notebooks all the way up to super computers” with extremely high levels of performance.

Lucasfilm and AMD

The next guest to appear on a video screen is Francois Chardavoine, VP of Technology at Lucasfilm. Su explains that that Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Lucasfilm and AMD have worked together “for more than a decade” and that they were “an early adopter of AMD EPYC ThreadRipper.”

Chardavoine says that, recently, demand has been on the rise for video entertainment so “content creation is through the roof.” They have “built an entirely new studio from scratch in Sydney, Australia.” One very important part of the facility is “the render farm.” The render farm is where they have the computing “firepower that creates all of the images that you see on screen.”

The pandemic has elevated technology to become an essential part of how we live, work, play and communicate
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Software is being designed to take full advantage of processing “firepower in a way that software never has before
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The Sydney, facility will be exclusively AMD. Chardavoine explains that they chose AMD because “we just need as much firepower as possible” and “the amount of threads and cores that you have available is unprecedented and this really helps us deliver the content that we have.” He explains that current software is being designed to take full advantage of that “firepower” “in a way that software never has before.” The artists can make changes and see immediate results leading to a more “intuitive sense of what they are working on.

Overall, there’s a lot happening for this company. People are increasingly dependent on their home computer setup and that benefits companies like this. Their Innovation Award and partnerships may be good signs for their immediate future. It seems like they have an interesting year coming up and it should be exciting to see how that works out for them and what they bring to the table next year.

Tech Trends’ Digital Consultancy services offer support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

Laura Kobylecky is a contributing writer to Tech Trends. She is particularly interested in new and emerging technology and culture. Connect with her on LinkedIn 

The post AMD Keynote at #CES2021 appeared first on Tech Trends.

The term “Flagship Killer” takes on new meaning with the Honor 10 + GPU Turbo.

After using the brand new Honor 10 for a couple of months I can say with total confidence it really is a “Flagship Killer”. Producing phones that exceed expectations and challenge the stupidly high prices of new class-leading handsets from Apple and Samsung has raised Huawei, the parent company of Honor to be the second largest global smartphone maker. With Samsung still in top spot but Apple languishing in third. Most impressively Huawei has achieved this without access to the huge US market where the government and regulators have restricted their access due to security concerns. Being a Chinese company and China phobia in the US as it is, Huawei has suffered in North America but still excelled globally.

After using the brand new Honor 10 for a couple of months I can say with total confidence it really is a “Flagship Killer”
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“We believe the recipe of success is simple – give consumers a really good product! That’s what we work hard for every day at Honor,” said George Zhao, President of Honor. “But we don’t just stop at making a good product. We want to co-create a new lifestyle with young people worldwide. We listen to them, we bounce ideas around with them, and we cheer for them. They are our inspiration, and the reason we created the Honor 10, with its AI photography features and exquisite design.”

The mid-priced but high spec market has grown recently, driven by competitors including OnePlus, Huawei & Honor delivering handsets that demonstrate just how overpriced the flagship phones from Apple and Samsung are. I would also suggest that a lack of innovation at the top of the market has devalued their flagships somewhat. People are right to expect serious advances and groundbreaking new features if they are are shelling out around a grand for a phone. Samsung and more specifically Apple designed and built this market in top-end phones to work this way and only have themselves to blame when they can’t keep up with the demands of their customers.

#Honor are targetting the budget flagship space with the #Honor10 and just like the OnePlus 6 you get top tier components in an attractive yet affordable package
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Anyhoo, on to the £399.99 Honor 10. The way android is designed to mould itself to your usage means that the first few days of using a new phone are crucial while you set it up how you want it to work and Android learns how you use your phone and how to give you the best experience and battery life. This bedding-in process means you will experience pretty terrible battery life and a hot handset for the first 4-5 days and that judging the device in any way is foolish until about a week has passed and everything has settled down. By day 7 of my test I think I got the phone I was expecting. It was super fast and a pleasure to use. By week 8 I now know that you will never need to spend more than £500 to get an incredible smartphone that 99.9% of users will love.

By day 7 of my test and after tweaking it to my taste I think I got the phone I was expecting. The #Honor10 was super fast and a pleasure to use
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I was also fortunate as Honor Global wanted to ensure I got the latest Android 8.1 and EMUI 8.1 updates, including GPU Turbo, for this review so I’m testing the Honor 10 at its absolute best. The screen is 5.84” with an aspect of 19:9. It’s FHD+ 2280x1080px (432ppi) and for me proves that great screens don’t need to be 4K. FHD saves a chunk of battery over 4K and the visible difference is almost beyond human perception. On this screen the colours are bold, whites are bright and contrast is crisp, no complaints at all.

The screen is 5.84” with an aspect of 19:9. It’s FHD+ 2280x1080px (432ppi) and for me proves that great screens don’t need to be 4K
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The Honor 10 is loaded with the same flagship processor found in the top end Huawei P20 Pro, the Kirin 970 CPU. This octa-core processor (4×2.36GHz + 4×1.8GHz) is really powerful and makes the Honor 10 blazingly fast in daily use. 4GB of RAM is not a lot but the Honor 10 runs very fast and smooth no matter what you are doing. Interestingly the screen features a notch and the fact I don’t hate it still surprises me. To be fair it is hidden in a lot of my apps as the background remains black unless the app’s header colour is replicated to fill the notch sides and this seems to be limited to only a few apps but if you want to hide it permanently just pop into the settings and bingos, job done.

Honor is pushing the concept of “Beauty in AI” and this phone features advanced AI 2.0 technology, applied chiefly to the smartphone’s camera. The dual 24Mp + 16Mp rear facing AI Camera has an F1.8 wide aperture to improve low light photos and uses its AI to analyse and tweak your photographs. Offering Real-time Scene Recognition of 500+ Scenarios in 22 Categories, smart portrait and event gallery categorisation, dynamic bokeh and multi-subject framing. The AI camera produces pleasing results quickly, analysing, categorising the subject of your photo and treating it to your taste through Scene-specific Parameter Applications. The Dynamic Bokeh effect is all the rage right now and as you can see below can make a small panty dog look very pretty indeed!

The #Honor10 Dynamic Bokeh effect is all the rage right now and as you can see making a small dog look very pretty indeed!
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The #Honor10 camera interface is quick and intuitive with plenty of fun options in AI mode and a powerful regular camera for capturing less filtery images
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And I’m sure social media will be flooded with artistically blurry selfie photos from the Honor 10’s front-facing 8MP, F/1.9 unit which also offers four 3D Studio Lighting Portrait options, for professional like headshots. You can opt out of AI mode easily which boosts the resolution of the rear camera to the full 24Mp and gives really very good results. The camera interface is quick and intuitive with plenty of fun options in AI mode and a powerful regular camera for capturing less filtery images. UHD 4k Video quality is likewise excellent and since the GPU Turbo update can take super slow-mo HD footage at 480fps a feature very similar to the latest Samsung Galaxy S9+.

Confident in the new camera’s abilities Honor and Central St Martins recently celebrated the ground-breaking new AI & Photographic capabilities of the Honor 10 with the talented up and coming young designers graduating this year.

@Honorglobal wanted to ensure I got the latest Android 8.1 and EMUI 8.1 updates for this review so I am testing #Honor10 at its absolute best
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Using the impressive new 24 Megapixel camera they celebrated how mobile technology will increasingly be integrated into education and design in the future, whether it be graphic communication, product, architecture, fashion or jewellery, exploring the future of aesthetics and how mobile technology will play a critical role in that development.

The #Honor10 handset itself is beautiful with a very cool layered, refractive glass back that shines and changes colours as it moves
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The 3400mAh battery will give you a full day, which is average but totally usable and not a negative in the current marketplace. It also features fast charging which will give you a 50% battery boost in only 25mins. I have tested this and it worked well. After a 9am start, I often get to bed in the early hours of the morning with only 5% left (without recharges) but that is still better than a lot of phones, Hem Hem, Apple! The handset itself is beautiful and the CMF or “ Aurora Glass” design is a 3D glass back with a very pleasing nano-scale optical coating composed of 15 bright glimmering layers that shine and shift colours as it moves. Another nice note is that a basic clear case is included in the box! Plus the handset came with a preinstalled screen protector, so no frustration and bubbles adding one yourself.

EMUI 8.1 on the #Honor10 is fast, slick and fun to use and importantly the AI camera is very good
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128GB of internal storage makes up for the lack of a Micro SD card slot and the only niggle I have with this device is the crap Ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, awkwardly located at the bottom front of the screen. I regularly use Google Pay + NFC so need to have the device properly secured and unlocking it with this sensor is a pain in the butt. Both Huawei and Honor phones use a much cheaper fingerprint sensor which works much quicker and being located on the back of the handset meaning no finger contortion to access it. However, this is a minor drawback to an excellent smartphone.

UPDATE: Honor has just released an EMUI update (.146 C432) to address the slow fingerprint reader and indeed it does seem to be a bit quicker now! 

The only niggle I have with this device is the crap Ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, awkwardly located at the bottom front of the screen
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Launched in London within a week of each other the Honor 10 is competing against the new OnePlus 6. Following the release of the OnePlus it has suffered from several serious software issues which have had to be patched and then repatched. The OnePlus 6 boasts a slightly bigger screen and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner but only has a 16Mp camera and the OxygenOS seems to have issues causing excessive battery drain and other bugs such as dropped calls seem to be common.

GPU Turbo

The Honor 10, on the other hand, has been rock solid for me with the recent GPU Turbo update making things feel even tighter and more fluid in use. Honor claims this update could boost your gaming performance by up to 60% but maybe because this phone is already an excellent and quick device I tested only about a 10% bump in speed and frame rates. After running multiple GPU tests I could only see a small increase in performance on the Honor 10 but have no doubt that older or lower spec devices will see more of a benefit with GPU Turbo. However, there is no doubt that this update made the handset feel smoother in use and generally quicker, no complaints about that!

I also noticed that AR & VR was super smooth and really impressive on the Honor 10. With this update, it definitely has the grunt to manage the GPU heavy processing these new technologies demand and despite being only FHD the screen is detailed with great contrast. Only a 4K screen would do any better when 1.5 Inches from your eyes in a VR headset and frankly I have never tested a 4K screen on a smartphone that could keep up with any decent VR experience, too many pixels to push so an FHD screen definitely delivers a more pleasing and less juddery experience even if it is a little bit more pixelated than 4K.

When compared to the Samsung Galaxy S9+ in my recent review this mid-priced Honor handset blew the £869 S9+ out of the water in UI speed and fluid user experience and matched it for battery life. What more do I need to say? The Honor 10 is the definition of a bargain and is now available for £399.99 for purchase in select markets including UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, with other markets follow.

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post Product Review: Honor 10 + GPU Turbo appeared first on Tech Trends.

Like Deckard in Blade Runner; I am in love with a machine and I just don’t care!

It was love at first sight when I unpacked the top spec Dell Precision 7720 last week. Cupid’s bow twanged and his poison arrow thudded deep into the meat of my heart, I was a gonna. She was over £7k of laptop and I was a drooling geek, palms sweaty at the prospect of an Intel Xeon E3-1535M v6 server processor, Nvidia Quadro P5000 and a Samsung SM961 M.2 SSD. My shaking hands slowly peeled off her cardboard clothes, plugged her straight into the mains and turned myself on 😉 So how was it? Well, it was sweet while it lasted but she soon left me and drove away with the same cheeky UPS driver!

It was love at first sight when I unpacked the top spec Dell Precision 7720 last week. Cupid’s bow twanged and his poison arrow thudded deep into the meat of my heart, I was a gonna
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Check out the Specs below:

• Windows 10 Professional (x64)
• 17.3″ UHD IPS Narrow Border (3840×2160) Wide View with Web Camera and Mic
• Intel Xeon E3-1545M v5 (Quad Core Xeon 2.90GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo, 8MB 45W, w/Iris Pro Graphics P580)
• 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Class 40 MPWS
• 64GB, 4x16GB, 2400MHz DDR4 Non-ECC SDRAM
• NVIDIA Quadro P5000 w/16GB GDDR5 + Onboard Intel(R) HD Graphics P630
• Palm Rest with touch fingerprint reader, smart card and NFC
• 6 Cell (91 Whr) Long Life Cycle Lithium Ion Polymer Battery

It is large and heavy but still, much more portable and versatile than a PC tower while every bit as powerful
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Obviously, any laptop packing this kind of heat is going to be rather big and not a ‘pop in your bag and take to a meeting’ kind of computer:

Height: (front) 1.12″ (28.5mm) Height: (rear) 1.36″ (34.49mm) | 2. Width: 16.42″ (417.04mm) | 3. Depth: 11.08″ (281.44mm) Weight: (starts at) 7.55lbs (3.42kg) You can see that it is large and heavy but still, much more portable and versatile than a PC tower while every bit as powerful. Should you take it out and about though, the soft-touch, tough-looking carbon fibre shell is very sturdy and as Dell claims,

The brilliantly designed chassis is subjected to and passes MIL-STD 810G testing, ensuring durability and reliability for wherever your job takes you.

Anyone spending this much on a Laptop will be using some serious software for the kind of creative jobs that make the UltraSharp UHD (3840×2160) screen on my test unit an essential option, but for when 4K is not enough there is an HDMI 1.4 out and mini DisplayPort 1.4 out that supports third-party screens of up to 8K!

Anyone spending this much on a Laptop will be using some serious software for the kind of creative jobs that make the Ultra Sharp UHD (3840x2160) screen on my test unit an essential option
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The keyboard is really quite nice to use, with a pleasingly soft key feel and minimal travel, but I don’t think it will see much action as this is not a machine for writing. Disappointingly the touchpad is a miserable flash back to the 90’s and is basically useless, truly awful! However this would only be a real issue if users planned to move the 7720 around like a notebook on a daily basis, but it’s just not that kind of machine. Creative power users working on video, graphics or VR dev jobs will most probably plug in a mouse or pen and tablet for controlled cursor control and happily bypass the build-in touchpad altogether.

As you would expect on a gargantuan beast like the 7720 connectivity is excellent. Four USB 3.0 A ports with PowerShare technology for charging peripherals, one super fast Thunderbolt 3 port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket. 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth 4.2 will get you further connected and a side-mounted SD/SDHC/SDXC UHS-II port will gobble up all your digital media. The 7720 also sports dual, integrated, noise-cancelling, digital array microphones, and stereo speakers powered by Waves MaxxAudio Pro plus has a good old headphone jack to boot!

Four USB 3.0 A ports with PowerShare technology, one super fast Thunderbolt 3 port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket, plus an SDXC UHS-II port, 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 will get you connected
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As usual, there are a few bundled pieces of software, some useless like Candy Crush Soda Saga (why?!) but the Dell Optimizer 4.0 app might actually be one of the rare useful ones.

The Dell Precision Optimizer 4.0 takes the guesswork out of customizing settings and automatically adjusts them. It automatically tunes your workstation to run the most popular Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications at the fastest speeds possible for the fastest results. Featuring enterprise smart alerts for processor, storage, memory, and graphics utilization all in an elegant, new UI.

Seven hours, real-world battery life is a very useful feature and the 7720 lasted longer than any other workstation-level laptop I have used
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When not on mains power the 6 Cell (91 Whr) Long Life Cycle Lithium Ion Polymer Battery kept me going for a solid seven hours of video editing and a little light rendering. This is a very useful feature and the 7720 lasted longer than any other workstation level laptop I have used. I would normally expect no more than four hours of serious use on battery power, but I’d recommend staying glued to the mains for any serious rendering as the 7720 is a real monster and gets pretty hot under load. As workstation classification demands cooling is taken seriously and Dell have done a good job, the fans are not too loud and are quite effective at cooling it down during render-heavy tasks.

Dell’s patented 5th generation dual cooling fans provide a brilliant approach to thermal cooling, taking performance and comfort to levels never before seen on a task-intensive laptop. No matter how high-powered your project, your processing and graphical applications will work within turbo frequencies and your system will stay cool.

Security is another plus point for the 7720 and it comes as standard with a smart card reader with TMP encryption but an optional fingerprint reader and NFC sensor offer more options for keeping international spooks out of your machine. I didn’t test the fingerprint reader on my sample but it looks the business and is placed nicely, out of the way in the right corner.

Security is another plus point for the 7720 and it comes as standard with a smart card reader with TMP encryption but an optional fingerprint reader and NFC sensor offer more options for keeping international spooks out
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VR is our specialist area here at Tech Trends so I was very happy to see the 7720 claims to be VR-ready. That is quite a claim so I plugged in Dell’s own excellent Windows Mixed Reality Visor Headset, hooked up the accompanying Bluetooth handsets and gave it a spin. I was very impressed and after Windows updated a few of its MR components I was straight into the Cliff House, teleporting around, using apps and having fun. There was no lag or judder and the hand controls were super fast. Yes, I was using the top spec version of the 7720 and am sure that less well-speced versions might not be as slick with VR so users would need to make sure they choose the appropriate VR-capable options for maximum graphics and processor power.

I was very impressed and after Windows updated a few of its MR components I was straight into VR, standing in the Cliff House, teleporting around, using apps and having fun
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Get the best of work and play. Dell’s first VR-ready mobile workstation is optimized for gaming and content creation in addition to all your mainstream professional ISV applications. It’s so powerful it can handle complex VR work flows—so you can game or create in immersive virtual reality.

The Nvidia Quadro P5000 is an awesome GPU built on NVIDIA Pascal GPU technology and with 2560 CUDA Cores and 16 GB GDDR5 memory, it does an incredible job with VR and pretty much any resource-heavy, VR, 3D graphics or 4K video editing jobs you throw at it. It gave a smooth and faultless user experience and lent its considerable muscle to CUDA compatible applications.

The Nvidia Quadro P5000 is an awesome GPU with 2560 CUDA Cores and 16 GB GDDR5 memory. It does an incredible job with VR, giving a smooth and faultless experience and lent its considerable muscle to CUDA compatible applications
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Now we come to the negative, as yes, there was one thing that caused me serious annoyance with the 7720. It was slow. What!! I hear you scream, how can a machine with specs like these be slow? Well, I wondered this too, and can only place the blame on the slow speed, low cost, Samsung M.2 SSD and its drivers. Windows 10 was just sluggish, opening browsers, folders and utilities took two to three seconds and I felt like I was wading through treacle.

Try as I could, I couldn’t find newer M.2 drivers online to test my theory so I can’t really be sure what the problem was and the bundled Dell Precision Optimizer 4.0 was no help. This issue didn’t totally undermine the power and usability of the 7720 and didn’t affect VR at all but irritated me to the point of screaming at it while I waited for new windows to open and Win10 to do basic tasks. I am sure a service call to Dell and some fiddling around with drivers would fix this but for £7k+ I expected lightning speed out of the box and I didn’t get it. I am sure this is just a glitch so can’t hold it against the 7720 which overall is an incredible workstation and well worth the price tag for creative professionals working in cutting-edge Graphics, Video or VR.

RRP: £7263 on Dell UK

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post Product Review: Dell Precision 7720 Mobile Workstation appeared first on Tech Trends.