AMD Nods at Shorter Design Cycles, More Synthesized Designs

The presentations we've seen from AMD thus far today haven't been very specific in terms of numbers, but there's a lot of reading between the lines that we can do here. AMD already mentioned that it's no longer interested in pursuing bleeding edge process technologies, but its CTO expanded on that idea by mentioning that AMD will transition to shorter design cycles. We got a hint of this transition with the annual Brazos/Llano cadence, but now it's official AMD policy to have shorter design cycles. These shorter design cycles will leverage lower amounts of custom block design and lean more on easily synthesizable architectures. The tradeoff is obviously performance but you do get better time to market. As was the case with Brazos however, if you can bring the right combination of technologies to market at the right time, the tradeoff is worth it. 

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Toshiba Demos Excite 10.1” and Concept Tablet Designs

We reviewed Toshiba’s Tegra 2-based Thrive 10.1” late last year and from a design standpoint, we were pretty disappointed with it. While elements like the removable battery, full size ports, and rubberized back cover were well done, overall the Thrive just wasn't designed as well as the leading Android tablets. It hit a more value oriented price point than higher end products like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but even compared to more midrange tablets like the Asus Transformer, the Thrive just wasn't competitive. 

Toshiba learned a lot from their experience with the Thrive, and clearly desire to improve on their tablet designs in the future. To that end comes the new Excite 10”, a tablet that represents a dramatic step forward from the Thrive, significantly improved in almost every way. Gone are the curved edges, rubber backing, and chunky design. In its place, we find an extremely slick looking tablet that can easily compete with the cutting edge of that Android world. At 7.7mm thick, it's definitely one of the thinnest new tablets on the market. The back is flat and made of magnesium alloy, with a rounded rim around the edge of the device. Toshiba went with magnesium alloy instead of a cheaper aluminum extrude here because magnesium was lighter and more structurally rigid than a brushed aluminum casing would have been. 

Gallery: Toshiba Excite 10" - CES 2012

Spec-wise, the Excite has a 10.1" 1280x800 display with an IPS panel and Gorilla Glass covering the screen (fixing our only two complaints with the Thrive's otherwise excellent display panel). It's running TI's OMAP 4430 inside clocked at 1GHz. The higher clocked OMAP 4460 (1.5GHz) didn't fit in the thermal envelope Toshiba was shooting for with the Excite, there just wasn't enough heat being dissipated to handle the increased clock speeds. The Excite does lose the full-size ports of the Thrive, though that makes sense given that a standard size HDMI connecter is actually thicker on its own than the entire chassis of the Excite (!). The units we went hands on with had Ice Cream Sandwich installed on them, the final device may ship on either Honeycomb 3.2 or ICS depending on when the Excite hits retail as well as how long it takes Toshiba to finalize the ICS port for the Excite.

I must say, I'm absolutely in love with the industrial design of the Excite. It also feels great in hand, a completely opposite experience from the original Thrive. It's a very premium feeling device, and it has a surprisingly solid frame even with the utter lack of thickness. I'm really impressed to see how far Toshiba has come in terms of design and quality since the Thrive was shown off here last year. Toshiba envisions the Excite as a premium level product slotting above the Thrive, so the Thrive will still be sold alongside the Excite. MSRP is $529 for the 16GB and $599 for the 32GB, price points that I think are on the optimistic side given that a similarly premium design-oriented product launched recently with the Tegra 3 quad-core SoC for $499/599 for 16GB/32GB. Availability is expected close to the end of Q1, and we'll definitely have an evaluation unit to look at when it does hit market.

Gallery: Toshiba Demos Excite 10.1” and Concept Tablet Designs

Toshiba also showed off a few tablet design concepts, with 5.1", 7.7", and 13.3" form factors being shown off. The industrial design used across the entire lineup is more mainstream-oriented than the high-end Excite, though in this case that still means a relatively thin body, clean lines, and a textured plastic backing. Overall they feel pretty good, and are a significant step forward from the rather clunky Thrive design. The 7.7" model with an OLED screen especially was impressive in both in form factor as well as feel and industrial design. The 13.3" model was an interesting one in that we haven't seen a whole lot of larger tablet form factors at CES this year. I personally feel like it's something that really lends itself to being a Windows 8 tablet, but Toshiba officially says that they are still evaluating both hardware and software choices for all of the future tablet designs.

It's worth noting that all of the design concepts were running Android, and it's a distinct possibility that both Win8 and Android models will exist. Toshiba genuinely seems to be agnostic on a hardware platform level (as shown by their use of Tegra 2 in the Thrives and OMAP 4 in the Excite) so it's not difficult to believe that they don't have a silicon partner finalized yet for any of the concept tablets. These prototypes were hand built preproduction units, so build quality was obviously not something we could evaluate, but even so, I came out with high hopes for Toshiba's tablet future. Availability was expected to be Q3 onwards, with the 5.1" model with a 21:9 aspect ratio screen being made primarily for the Japanese market and probably not having high hopes for a US launch.

Gallery: Toshiba Concept Tablets - CES 2012

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Dune HD Pro : A Premium Entertainment System using the Sigma Designs SMP8910

Dune HD  is one of the most respected middleware developers in the media player scene. By exclusively restricting themselves to Sigma Designs, they have managed to produce an enviable lineup of media players coveted by many people. It was not much of a surprise, then, that their latest offering, the Dune HD Pro received a CES innovation award.

When it was announced in late fall last year, the unit was a silver colored monolithic design. In the space of a few months, it has undergone revisions to become more of a modular design.

The unit in the middle is the player housing the main SoC, the SMP8910. It also has all the DACs for full multichannel analog audio output. The module on top is the Blu-ray / HDD add-on, while the third module
is a NAS system with 4 bays and a touchscreen based control unit. Unfortunately, I couldn't play around with the system because the display was running a canned video, and the unit was just showcased without being powered on (at least in the time that I was at the booth).

The main unit comes in at $1900, and I was told by the Dune rep that the rest of the pricing wasn't fully decided yet. At around $2000, it is difficult to justify the purchase of a media player for a majority of the consumers out there. Hopefully, a lower cost version (with just the SoC, couple of USB ports, wired Ethernet, SPDIF optical out and HDMI 1.4a output) will come out soon.

Much has been said about the SMP8910 and its VXP video post processing. I won't go into the details in this piece, but suffice to say that a large number of users are waiting for the SoC to make an appearance in shipping products and believe that only the premium features offered by the SoC can save the local media streamer market from its current rut.

One of the biggest challenges to be faced by the Dune HD Pro (other than consumers accepting their pricing strategy), is the Cinavia DRM system. While I couldn't elicit any official response from the Dune
representatives, I understood that

Cinavia DRM was included in the latest SDK supplied by SigmaThe Cinavia behavior with that SDK wasn't the same as that of the PS3.

Since the SDK is quite immature, not much can be inferred from the current state. However, Cinavia is a threat that Dune is perfectly aware of. It will be quite interesting to see how it is handled.

At CES, Dune also showcased their IPTV platform (Dune HD TV-101/301) which looks very similar in form factor to the WDTV Live SMP and is targeted towards the same market. In the US, the WDTV Live SMP is well placed, and I believe the Dune HD TV series will find its feet in other markets.

Partnerships with THX and Vudu have also been made public. You can read all about that in the official press releases [1 ] and [2]. It is highly possible that one may be able to watch Vudu in HD on the  various Dune units (based on the SMP8642) already in the market.

Dune also confirmed that the current lineup (Smart series, HD Duo and HD Max) would remain in production and continue to use the SMP8642. There are no plans to shift to a SMP8646 model unless Sigma Designs decides to completely stop shipping the SMP8642 before the SMP8910 lineup takes off.

There is no firm shipping date set for the HDI Dune Pro, but a large number of media streaming enthusiasts (including me) are waiting in anticipation just to see how good the SMP8910 is!

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