Breakfast Bytes Blogs

This is my second post about this year's CES. The first was Consumer Electronics Show 2021: GM, Intel.

AMD

The second day of CES opened with Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, presenting. AMD announced new products, but as far as I can tell they are all built with the same 7nm as the product that they announced last year. But she did preview a processor that is not yet available (see below).

The top of the line of Ryzen HX processors are the 5900HX and 5980HX, which run in boost mode (that is to say, for short periods, not for sustained operation) at 4.6GHz and 4.8GHz respectively, both dissipating 45W. Since both chips have the same specs, apart from the clock speed, I assume this is a speed grade rather than different dies. They are targeted at gaming notebooks. There is a new GPU, too, RDNA2, to go with the processors.

Next, a preview of the upcoming processor code-named Milan. This is a third-generation EPYC targeted at the server market. She didn't say, but I'm guessing that the increased performance versus the previous generation comes because the processor is fabricated in 5nm (versus 7nm for the current generation). AMD claims that these are the world's highest performance x86 server processors, both per-core and throughput. But since Intel announced new processors the day before, who knows. I'm sure benchmarks will be available once the usual suspects get their hands on the chips.

If you want to see edited highlights, watch Endgadget's AMD’s CES 2021 keynote in 4 minutes. The reason that this is so short, is that the full keynote involved so much mutual-schmoozing where people from Microsoft, HP, and others, came on to say how great AMD was, and Lisa could say how great they were to work with. But this adds very little. AMD is also one of the sponsors of the Mercedes Formula-1 team and the seven-times winner of the driver's championship, Lewis Hamilton. So they spent some time talking to him about using computers in racing, and playing videogames growing up. I found it quite interesting, but most Americans are not very interested in Formula-1 so I suspect I was in the minority. The whole keynote was 50 minutes long, and once you cut all this touchy-feely stuff out then you get left with the four minutes of real meat.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA's presentation was all about "gamers and creators". It's obvious what "gamer" means, although the high-end of that market are professional gamers playing in e-sports competitions. In this context, "creator" means mostly people creating videos. Dealing with videos in 4K and 8K requires huge amounts of processing power. But it is not just editing videos, it is handling 3D models, and all the complexity that goes with texture, ray-tracing, and more. One of the most intensive tasks is rendering, creating frame after frame to produce the final video output. There was no mention of things like automotive, where NVIDIA is also a significant player. Instead, it took the "consumer" part of CES seriously and talked about the products that they have that are targeted at consumers.

Two years ago, NVIDIA introduced real-time ray tracing (during a game, not just during rendering video) and AI-based DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), which it called RTX. I know what ray-tracing is, but I'm not clear what DLSS is even after reading about it on the website. It uses "dedicated Tensor Core AI processors. DLSS taps into the power of a deep learning neural network to boost frame rates and generate beautiful, sharp images for your game".

I'm not a gamer so I tend not to be impressed with graphics of games since I don't know the standard for comparison. But the player numbers are always impressive: Call of Duty with 85M players.

NVIDIA reflex helps e-sports gamers get their best system latency. "The latency analyzer is to an e-sports gamer what a heart-rate monitor is to a runner". With hardware built into (some) displays, it measures full click-to-display latency.

The actual product being announced is called the RTX3060. Of course, NVIDIA doesn't make full computers, the technology is delivered in gaming laptops. Laptops like this are 30% faster than the Playstation 5 and other consoles. It delivers 90 frames per second (fps) on the latest games at 1080px. The flagship is the RTX3080 laptop, the world's fastest gaming laptop. It delivers 100fps at 1440px.

For e-sports, the refresh rates are even higher, up to 280fps.

There were lots of comments on YouTube below the video of this keynote about how NVIDIA was "advertising other people's products". Another person pointed out that you can't actually buy an NVIDIA product—they don't sell to the general public. Actually, Intel and AMD's presentations were the same, showing laptops that used their chips since they don't build actual computers themselves. But somehow that seemed less obvious. They did talk a fair bit about the chips. But NVIDIA only talked about games, and laptops optimized for gaming (and "creating" but that definitely came across as an afterthought).

To see lots of impressive graphics, watch NVIDIA’s CES 2021 keynote in 10 minutes:

Mercedes

The Mercedes keynote was a bit odd, since it was all about the display across the front of its latest vehicles. The automotive manufacturers are definitely trying to sell more value by adding functions that already exist on your smartphone. But it doesn't seem to be in their DNA. I once saw a joke image somewhere showing how a decade ago you wanted an in-car audio system with hundreds of buttons to control everything. But now you just want a single 2.5mm jack so you can hook up your smartphone...in fact, you probably don't even want that anymore, just a Bluetooth connection. I find myself thinking that way about these vehicles. I don't really care about music in the car, or even maps—it's all on my phone. Over the last few years, on the rare occasions when I've rented a car, the big challenge has always been to get my phone to link up with the rental car so I don't have to learn how to "drive" yet another user interface that is so non-intuitive that there are lots of videos on YouTube about how to get it to work. I realize that a rental car is a sort of a worst case compared to a car you use every day. I actually have a similar issue with "smart" TVs. The only button I use on the remote control for my TV is the on/off. I know it can play YouTube and other stuff directly, but I've never bothered to learn how — I just use my Apple TV box for everything except the very occasional over-the-air program that comes straight through my cable box.

Mercedes-Benz's new screen offers "amazing functionality: apps, vehicle functions, navigation, climate control, and entertainment. The list goes on. We call it 'zero layer principle'". I'm not sure I want to be looking at screens for "vehicle functions", and climate control has been a solved problem for me for over a decade. I set the temperature to 70°F when I buy the car and then never touch any of the buttons again. My phone already has navigation and entertainment that I know how to use, I'm not keen to learn a new system.

Wired is another skeptic:

Mercedes’ press briefing also showed off a UFO graphic that zooms around on the display to demonstrate the G-force the car is undergoing in real-time. Why they chose to measure G-force, I don't know. Automakers already struggle to keep the driver’s information feed easy to understand, and drivers don’t need to know G-forces. Hopefully it can be disabled.

The MBUX Hyperscreen was created entirely in-house by Mercedes-Benz, and requires eight CPU cores (processor unknown) and 24GB of RAM to power it. The tech will trickle to other Mercedes models after its debut on the EQS, assuming buyers really do want an all-touch interface.

I would have expected Mercedes to talk about where they are on ADAS, electric traction, and autonomy, more like General Motors did. But it was all about its electronic dashboard.

Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.