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MSI Adds Low-Profile AMD Radeon RX 460 Graphics Cards to Lineup
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MSI Adds Low-Profile AMD Radeon RX 460 Graphics Cards to Lineup

MSI has quietly added two low-profile AMD Radeon RX 460 graphics adapters to its product family. The add-in-boards (AIBs) are powered by AMD’s latest entry-level GPU, Polaris 11. As these are base RX 460 models. they do not require PCIe power and are compatible with a wide range of computers that have enough space for a dual-slot card. The new adapters will be among the most affordable discrete graphics options today and will be aimed at those upgrading entry-level systems as well as building SFF HTPCs.

The MSI Radeon RX 460 4GT LP and Radeon RX 460 2GT LP are based on AMD’s Baffin (Polaris 11) graphics chip (896 stream processors, 56 texture units, 16 raster operations pipelines, 128-bit memory bus) clocked at up to 1.2 GHz (base/boost) and carry 2 or 4 GB of GDDR5 memory at 7 Gbps. As for connectivity, the boards have one DL-DVI-D and one HDMI 2.0 output with HDCP 2.2 support (HDCP 2.2 is required for playback of protected UHD video). When it comes to cooling, the AIBs use dual-slot cooling systems with two fans, the same as the company installed on other low-profile graphics cards. As an added bonus, MSI states that it uses MIL-STD-810G certified components to ensure a long lifespan for its LP adapters.

Over the past couple of months, MSI and a number of other companies (GIGABYTE, GALAX) have introduced low-profile graphics adapters based on NVIDIA’s GPUs – MSI is one of the first with similar LP RX 460 cards and extending its range of contemporary LP AIBs to four models. The addition of two low-profile cards to the lineup may indicate that demand for such products is relatively significant and rather stable.

Both AMD Polaris 11 (Baffin) and NVIDIA GP107 GPUs outperform integrated graphics cores of mainstream desktop CPUs and also support modern functionality like DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs. Furthermore, the two graphics processors support hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding of HEVC (H.265) and VP9 video at 4Kp60 as well as HDR10. Finally, the GPUs consume up to 75 W of power and do not need any auxiliary PCIe power connectors, which makes them compatible with virtually all modern PCs with a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, including those from various large brands that sometimes do not have any spare connectors left.

MSI’s Radeon RX 460 Low Profile Graphics Cards
  RX 460 4GT LP RX 460 2GT LP
GPU AMD Polaris 11 (Baffin)
Stream Processors 896
Texture Units 56
ROPs 16
Core Clock (MHz) 1090
Boost Clock (MHz) 1200
Memory Capacity 4 GB 2 GB
Type GDDR5
Clock 7 Gbps
Bus Width 128 bit
Outputs DisplayPort 0
DVI 1 × DVI-D
HDMI 2.0b 1
TFLOPS (FP32) 1.95
TDP 75 W
Launch Date 2/2017 2/2017

MSI has not announced MSRPs forthe new cards, and since the AIBs were added to the company’s product family in the last week, they are no yet available at Amazon or Newegg. Given the positioning of the adapters, it is unlikely that their price will be substantially different from $109 (2 GB version) and $139 (4 GB version) recommended by AMD.

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Intel Announces Cyclone 10 FPGAs for IoT Devices
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Intel Announces Cyclone 10 FPGAs for IoT Devices

Intel this week has announced its new portfolio of FPGAs designed for small form-factor and/or low-power Internet-of-Things devices, specifically in the fields of automotive, industrial, audio/visual and vision applications. The Cyclone 10 GX and Cyclone 10 LP FPGAs formally belong to a single family of products, but both have different capabilities and were developed for different needs.

The Intel Cyclone 10 GX FPGAs are designed for applications that need relatively high performance (up to 134 GFLOPS, IEEE 754 single-precision) and advanced I/O capabilities. The new FPGAs contain up to 220,000 logic elements, up to 80,330 adaptive logic modules (ALMs) with 8-input look-up tables (LUT), support 10 G transceivers as well as a PCIe 2.0 x4 IP block to connect to CPUs and other devices. Among devices that will use the Cyclone 10 GX FPGAs Intel names industrial machine vision, smart city surveillance, video streaming, robotics, machine tools and other devices. The 10 GX family is made on TSMC’s 20nmSoC planar process, in line with what we perhaps expect as Intel is working through Altera roadmaps set before the acquisition.

By contrast, the Intel Cyclone 10 LP FPGAs are aimed at low-power/low-cost applications, such as sensor fusion, motor controls, interfacing, I/O expansion for CPUs and so on. For example, if an application needs to combine data from multiple sensors, the Cyclone 10 LP will do the job, but the actual processing will be performed by something more powerful. The FPGAs contain 6,000 – 120,000 logic elements, DSP blocks (up to 288 18×18 multipliers), integrated PLLs, 65 – 230 LVDS channels and so on.  

Both families of the Cyclone 10 FPGAs are compliant with the IEC 61508 machinery directive safety standard (in fact, Intel says that it is the first FPGA vendor to obtain the appropriate device and tool qualification), which in case of a chip probably indicates its reliability during continuous operation. 

Intel Cyclone 10 FPGAs
  Cyclone 10 GX Cyclone 10 LP
Logic elements (LEs) 85,000 – 220,000 6,000 – 120,000
Adaptive logic modules (ALMs) 31,000 – 80,330 –
ALM registers 124,000 – 321,320 –
Variable-precision DSP blocks 84 – 192 –
18 x 19 multipliers 168 – 384 –
18 x 18 multipliers – 15 – 288
Peak fixed-point peformance (GMACS) 151 – 346 –
Peak floating-point performance (GFLOPS) 59 – 134 –
Voltage Core voltage: 0.9 V
I/O Voltage: Various		 1.0 and 1.2 V
Process Technology 20 nm (TSMC CLN20SOC) unknown
I/O
Global clock networks 32 10 – 20
Maximum user I/O pins 192 – 284 176 – 525
Maximum LVDS pairs 1.4 Gbps (RX or TX) 72 – 118  
Maximum LVDS channels – 65 – 230
Maximum transceiver count (10.3 Gbps) 4 – 12 –
Maximum 3V I/O pins 48 –
PCIe 2.0 x4 hard IP blocks 1 –
Memory devices supported DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR3 –
Packaging
E144 pin – 22 x 22 mm, 0.5 mm pitch
M164 pin – 8 x 8 mm, 0.5 mm pitch
U256 pin – 14 x 14 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
U484 pin 19 x 19 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
F484 pin – 23 x 23 mm, 1.0 mm pitch
F672 pin 27 x 27 mm, 1.0 mm pitch
F780 pin 29 x 29 mm, 1.0 mm pitch

Intel’s Cyclone 10-series FPGAs, as well as evaluation kits and boards on their base, will be available in the second half of 2017. In addition to hardware, Intel also plans to release its Quartus programming software that supports the new FPGAs.

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Intel Announces Cyclone 10 FPGAs for IoT Devices
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Intel Announces Cyclone 10 FPGAs for IoT Devices

Intel this week has announced its new portfolio of FPGAs designed for small form-factor and/or low-power Internet-of-Things devices, specifically in the fields of automotive, industrial, audio/visual and vision applications. The Cyclone 10 GX and Cyclone 10 LP FPGAs formally belong to a single family of products, but both have different capabilities and were developed for different needs.

The Intel Cyclone 10 GX FPGAs are designed for applications that need relatively high performance (up to 134 GFLOPS, IEEE 754 single-precision) and advanced I/O capabilities. The new FPGAs contain up to 220,000 logic elements, up to 80,330 adaptive logic modules (ALMs) with 8-input look-up tables (LUT), support 10 G transceivers as well as a PCIe 2.0 x4 IP block to connect to CPUs and other devices. Among devices that will use the Cyclone 10 GX FPGAs Intel names industrial machine vision, smart city surveillance, video streaming, robotics, machine tools and other devices. The 10 GX family is made on TSMC’s 20nmSoC planar process, in line with what we perhaps expect as Intel is working through Altera roadmaps set before the acquisition.

By contrast, the Intel Cyclone 10 LP FPGAs are aimed at low-power/low-cost applications, such as sensor fusion, motor controls, interfacing, I/O expansion for CPUs and so on. For example, if an application needs to combine data from multiple sensors, the Cyclone 10 LP will do the job, but the actual processing will be performed by something more powerful. The FPGAs contain 6,000 – 120,000 logic elements, DSP blocks (up to 288 18×18 multipliers), integrated PLLs, 65 – 230 LVDS channels and so on.  

Both families of the Cyclone 10 FPGAs are compliant with the IEC 61508 machinery directive safety standard (in fact, Intel says that it is the first FPGA vendor to obtain the appropriate device and tool qualification), which in case of a chip probably indicates its reliability during continuous operation. 

Intel Cyclone 10 FPGAs
  Cyclone 10 GX Cyclone 10 LP
Logic elements (LEs) 85,000 – 220,000 6,000 – 120,000
Adaptive logic modules (ALMs) 31,000 – 80,330 –
ALM registers 124,000 – 321,320 –
Variable-precision DSP blocks 84 – 192 –
18 x 19 multipliers 168 – 384 –
18 x 18 multipliers – 15 – 288
Peak fixed-point peformance (GMACS) 151 – 346 –
Peak floating-point performance (GFLOPS) 59 – 134 –
Voltage Core voltage: 0.9 V
I/O Voltage: Various		 1.0 and 1.2 V
Process Technology 20 nm (TSMC CLN20SOC) unknown
I/O
Global clock networks 32 10 – 20
Maximum user I/O pins 192 – 284 176 – 525
Maximum LVDS pairs 1.4 Gbps (RX or TX) 72 – 118  
Maximum LVDS channels – 65 – 230
Maximum transceiver count (10.3 Gbps) 4 – 12 –
Maximum 3V I/O pins 48 –
PCIe 2.0 x4 hard IP blocks 1 –
Memory devices supported DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR3 –
Packaging
E144 pin – 22 x 22 mm, 0.5 mm pitch
M164 pin – 8 x 8 mm, 0.5 mm pitch
U256 pin – 14 x 14 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
U484 pin 19 x 19 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
F484 pin – 23 x 23 mm, 1.0 mm pitch
F672 pin 27 x 27 mm, 1.0 mm pitch
F780 pin 29 x 29 mm, 1.0 mm pitch

Intel’s Cyclone 10-series FPGAs, as well as evaluation kits and boards on their base, will be available in the second half of 2017. In addition to hardware, Intel also plans to release its Quartus programming software that supports the new FPGAs.

Related Reading:

HTC to Exit Entry-Level Phone Market Later This Year
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HTC to Exit Entry-Level Phone Market Later This Year

In the highly competitive smartphone industry it’s easy enough to make a name for yourself, but it’s a lot harder to make a profit while doing so. Apple and Samsung have long captured the lion’s share of the profits thanks to their f…

HTC to Exit Entry-Level Phone Market Later This Year
  • Comments are Closed

HTC to Exit Entry-Level Phone Market Later This Year

In the highly competitive smartphone industry it’s easy enough to make a name for yourself, but it’s a lot harder to make a profit while doing so. Apple and Samsung have long captured the lion’s share of the profits thanks to their f…