Computer Shopper 2019-11-01

ISSUE 381|COMPUTER SHOPPER|NOVEMBER 2019 15

AT FIRSTGLANCE,the Ice Lake line-up might
look atad underwhelming given how long it has
taken Intel to get the 10nm processors out of
the door.One might have expected higher clock
speeds and chips with more core counts.
But this is just the start forIntel’s 10nm
charge,and as it refines the process, better
chips can be expected.
There’s also agood deal of potential with
the Ice Lake CPUs. The fact that Intel is adding
what could end up being capable integrated
graphics acceleration in eight of its Ice Lake
CPUs is rather promising.
Both the U- and Y-series Ice Lake chips look
set to offer more graphical punch than even the
best eighth-gen U-series Core i7,which should
mean thin and light laptops that can run
modern games and handle some solid photoor
video editing without grinding to ahalt.
And that’s before taking intoconsideration
the IPC improvements and asuiteofcutting-
edge connectivity support Ice Lake will offer.
All we can do is speculateaswe’ve yet to
see Ice Lake processors in laptops yet, but we
expect to see them before the end of the year.

SOWHAT?

Bumbling Brits

Research by Crucial

shows that 73% of

British people have no

idea about PC innards

and simply make do

with slow performance,

even though asimple upgrade could

revive acrawling machine (see page 98)

Fear finding

Amazon’s Rekognition AI-powered facial

recognition tech can detect signs of fear

on aperson’s face,aswell as if they’re

sad, angry,disgusted, calm or confused

Human interest

Apple,Google and Facebook have

stopped using humans to review

recordings of user voice chats to assess

the performance of their AI systems,

but Microsoftistokeep using people to

appraise Cortana and Skype

Breaking Bluetooth

Researchers have found abug in

Bluetooth’s keyencryption protocol

that renders all devices using the

wireless connectivity protocol

vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks

Sugar-free

Google is to stop using sweet and

dessert-themed names forAndroid, with

the 10th version of the mobile operating

system simply being called ‘Android 10’

Smartphone streaming

In keeping-up-with-the-Joneses fashion,

Nvidia has revealed that it will bring its

GeForce Now game streaming service to

Android phones, much like Microsoft’s

xCloud and Google Stadia services

Leather laptops

To celebrateits 30th

anniversary,Asus has

released the ZenBook 13

Edition 30, which takes its

premium ultraportable and swaddles it

in aleather finish with laser-etched rose

gold accents and alogo that looks like a

Federation insignia fromStarTrek

Samsung showcase

At Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event,

the company showed off ahost of

devices, notably the Galaxy Note10,

Note10Plus and Galaxy TabS6tablet

THEPAST SLEWof Always Connected PCs
have been disappointing. While Microsoftand
Qualcomm deserve praise forgetting Windows
10 to run on chip architecture not suited forit
–Snapdragon chips use RISC instruction sets,
while Windows 10 has
traditionally run on x
instruction set architecture
that underpins Intel and
AMD CPUs –the reality of
this engineering feat has
been poor performance.
That was down to
Qualcomm starting out by
trying to rework chips that
could be found in flagship
phones to run aPC-grade
operating system. It made
some headwaywith the Snapdragon 850, which
was designed more forWindows 10 work.
With the Snapdragon 8cx, Qualcomm has a
chip fully designed to run Windows 10 and puts

in some reportedly impressive performance

against Core i5 U-series mobile processors.

Given the Snapdragon 8cx has the Adreno 680

GPU, which supports DirectX 12, the chipset

could even offer gaming performance that

beats Intel’s integrated

graphics accelerators.

As modern phones

have alot of gaming

power,the Snapdragon

8cx maywell deliver that

performance but in a

Windows 10 context,

which would also include

graphics-based rendering

taskssuchasvideoediting.

TheGalaxyBookSisn’t

likelytoblowultraportables

suchastheDellXPS15orRazerBladeStealth

outof thewaterinsheercomputingpower,but

itcouldbethefirstAlwaysConnectedPCthatis

worthpayingseriousattentionto.

SOWHAT?

While Ice Lake grabbed the headlines, Intel

also showed off its 10th-generation Comet Lake

processors, based on an enhanced 14nm

process. Comet Lake is more of adirect refresh

of the previous eighth-gen Core chips.

Core counts now run up to six, and top

speeds can hit 4.9GHz, which Intel said will

deliver ahike in performance over the last

generation, yet Comet Lake processors promise

better battery performance.The chips also look

to benefit from configurable TDPsinthe same

fashion as the Ice Lake CPUs.

Comet Lake eschews the Iris Plus graphics,

meaning Ice Lake will have its CPUs licked when

it comes to graphical grunt. Intel’s reasoning is

that Comet Lake processors are intended for

higher-performance laptops with dedicated

graphics options, while Ice Lake machines offer

less overall power but can go it alone.

We’re likely to get abetter impression of

what both families of mobile chips can do once

laptops start to arrive with them. And this

double CPU punch from Intel shows it still has

surprises up its sleeve,even if AMD has been

stealing the headlines of late.

• CPU: 64-bit octa-core Kryo 495


• Clock speed: 2.84GHz+1.8GHz


• Process node: 7-nanometre


• GPU: Adreno


• Connectivity:5G(with
  Snapdragon X55 modem), LTE,
  Wi-Fi 802.11ac,Bluetooth 5.

SNAPDRAGON8cxKEYSPECS

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