A week after Western Digital confirmed that it had begun sampling of its 64 TB SSDs for datacenters, the company has teased its next-generation product, a 128 TB solid-state drive at FMS 2024.

For now, all we know about Western Digital’s 128 TB SSD is that it uses the company’s BiCS8 QLC NAND memory and is designed primarily for ‘fast AI data lakes and capacity-intensive performance applications,’ as Western Digital does not seem to be disclosing too much information about its upcoming product. The sample on the show floor indicates the usage of a U.2/U.3 form-factor suitable for GPU servers.

BiCS8 NAND has 218 layers and uses a hybrid bonding scheme that is being tagged as CMOS directly bonded to Array (CBA). It must be noted that this technique is an evolutionary successor to Micron’s CMOS-under-Array (CuA) and SK hynix’s Periphery-under-Cell (4D PUC) technologies. BiCS8 NAND can interface to the controller at rates of up to 3600 MT/s, making it suitable for Gen 4+ drives.

The technology demonstration on the show floor had the drive’s firmware optimized for AI checkpointing – a workload that involves sequential writes, but also requires the drive to support a minimum QoS for simultaneous read operations.

Western Digital is not the only company to talk about high-performance 128 TB SSDs. Samsung recently said that it has technology to build 120 TB-class drives, and Solidigm was also demonstrating a proof-of-concept 122 TB QLC SSD at FMS 2024. AI workloads have triggered an insatiable need for dense and power-efficient storage in the data center. This has served as an impetus for enterprise SSD vendors to continue pushing the envelop on the per-drive capacity front.

When it comes to music streaming services, Spotify is definitely one of the best. Home to a bountiful library of songs, albums, and playlists, both the mobile and desktop versions of the Spotify app give you plenty of ways to organize and enjoy your tracks. One such tool is the Spotify queue, which allows you to add songs to a next-up list (when one track finishes, the next track in your queue begins) for simplified listening. In fact, sometimes it’s a little too easy to add songs to the Spotify queue.

After a while, this list can become inundated with tracks you’ve never even listened to. Fortunately, it’s just as simple to clear your Spotify queue. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll teach you how to do so for mobile, desktop, and browser versions of the Spotify app.

What is the Spotify queue?

The Spotify queue is a helpful feature that allows you to instantly add songs to a rotation (or playlist) of tracks. When one song finishes, another will begin. You’ll also be able to scroll through your Spotify queue to see what tunes you’ve been listening to of late.

Do keep in mind that you’ll need to be a paying Spotify subscriber to have access to the queue feature with the Spotify mobile app. This goes for both iOS and Android device owners.

Oddly, this same rule does not apply to the desktop version of the Spotify app. Free ad-supported Spotify listeners can use and customize the Spotify queue without having to upgrade to a Spotify Premium account.

How to clear the Spotify queue (for iOS and Android devices)

You took one long look at your long-standing queue of Spotify tracks you haven’t listened to, and decided you’re never going to listen to all those Hannah Montana tracks. Here’s how to send all digital traces of the Disney-penned pop star into obscurity, as well as any other songs you don’t want to look at anymore.

Oh, and as we mentioned, the mobile Spotify queue feature is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers.

Step 1: Open the Spotify app and start playing a song (any song).

Step 2: Select the Now Playing bar at the bottom of the screen.

Step 3: Select the Queue icon on the bottom-right.

Step 4: Select Clear Queue on the right-hand side. That’s all there is to it! All of the songs that were in your queue should now be gone.

How to clear the Spotify queue (for desktop and web browsers)

Vanquishing tracks from the desktop and browser versions of Spotify is nice and easy. And unlike the iOS and Android versions of the app, the queue feature can be used by non-paying Spotify listeners.

Step 1: Open Spotify and start playing a song.

Step 2: Click the queue button, located at the bottom-right of the screen (the icon kind of looks like a hamburger, with a bun over top of two horizontal lines).

Step 3: When the next screen opens, select Clear Queue to remove all tracks from the queue. You can also remove individual tracks by right-clicking the song, then selecting Remove from queue.

Can I share my Spotify queue?

Though you’ll be able to share the individual tracks that are logged in your Spotify queue, there’s no magic “share the entire list” button. Fortunately, Spotify is well known for its social listening features, and one of these is called Collaborative Playlist. This allows both Spotify Free and Spotify Premium accounts to add, delete, and reorder tracks.

You can also create or join a Spotify Jam session. This is similar to a Collaborative Playlist, but is designed for everyone to be listening at the same time.

How much does a Spotify Premium subscription cost?

At this time, an individual Spotify Premium subscription is $12 per month. Spotify Duo (two Spotify accounts) costs $17 per month and Spotify Family (up to six accounts) costs $20 per month. Heading back to school? The Spotify Student plan is only $6 per month and even includes access to Hulu.

]]> https://rewardvoyager.org/how-to-clear-your-spotify-queue/feed/ 0 https://rewardvoyager.org/amd-launches-new-ryzen-radeon-gaming-bundle-warhammer-40000-space-marine-2-and-unknown-9-awakening/ https://rewardvoyager.org/amd-launches-new-ryzen-radeon-gaming-bundle-warhammer-40000-space-marine-2-and-unknown-9-awakening/#respond Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:29:58 +0000 https://rewardvoyager.org/?p=72417

AMD has made itself quite a reputation with its bundling campaigns over the years, and every new season we can be sure that the company will be giving away free games with the purchase of its hardware. This summer will certainly not be exception as AMD will be bundling Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Unknown 9: Awakening titles with its Ryzen 7000 CPUs and Radeon RX 7000 video cards.

The latest bundle offer essentially covers all of AMD’s existing mid-range and high-end consumer desktop products, sans the to-be-launched Ryzen 9000 series. That includes not only AMD’s desktop parts, such as the Ryzen 9 7800X3D, but also virtually their entire stack of Radeon RX 7000 video cards, right on down to the 7600 XT.

AMD’s laptop hardware is also covered as well, which is a much rarer occurence. Mid-range and high-end Ryzen 7000 mobile parts are part of the game bundle, including the 7940HS and even the 7435HS. However the refreshed version of these parts, sold under the Ryzen 8000 Mobile line, are not. Meanwhile systems with a Radeon RX 7700S or 7600S mobile GPU are included as well.

This deal is available only through participating retailers (in case of the U.S. and Canada these are Amazon and Newegg). The promotion is also applicable to select laptops containing these components. 

AMD’s Summer 2024 Ryzen & Radeon Game Bundle
(Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 & Unknown 9: Awakening)

 
CPU
GPU

Desktop
Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Ryzen 9 7950X
Ryzen 9 7900X3D
Ryzen 9 7900X
Ryzen 9 7900*
Ryzen 7 7800X3D*
Ryzen 7 7700X*
Ryzen 7 7700*
Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Radeon RX 7900 XT
Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Radeon RX 7800 XT*
Radeon RX 7700 XT*
Radeon RX 7600 XT*

Laptop
Ryzen 9 7940HS
Ryzen 7 7840HS
Ryzen 7 7735HS
Ryzen 7 7435HS
Radeon RX 7700S
Radeon RX 7600S

*This product does not qualify for the promotion in Japan

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 carries an MSRP of $60, whereas the Unknown 9: Awakening is set at $50, so this offer provides an estimated value of $110. The deal is particularly appealing to gamers and those interested in action titles. Meanwhile, fans of such games probably already have AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and Radeon RX 7000-series products, so while the deal will be appealing to some users, it may not be appealing for gamers looking to upgrade to AMD’s latest Zen 5-powered CPUs.

The campaign starts on August 6, 2024, at 9:00 AM ET and ends on October 5, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET, or when all Coupon Codes are claimed, whichever happens first. Coupon Codes must be redeemed by November 2, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET. 

Corsair, a prominent figure in PC components, has announced a strategic shift in its approach to power supply unit (PSU) certifications. The company is dropping the widely recognized 80 PLUS certification in favor of the newer but more comprehensive Cybenetics certification.

According to the press release, the primary reason for Corsair’s move to Cybenetics certifications lies in the program’s dual focus on both energy efficiency and noise levels. While the 80 PLUS certification has been a standard in the industry for decades, it exclusively measures energy conversion efficiency at four load levels (10%, 20%, 50%, 100%). Despite its long-standing presence, the 80 PLUS program has not seen significant updates in over 15 years, which limits its ability to provide a holistic view of PSU performance.

On the other hand, Cybenetics offers a more nuanced approach. It evaluates PSUs across multiple load levels and includes noise level assessments. This dual certification system rates efficiency on a familiar scale (Bronze to Titanium, plus a higher certification called Diamond) and noise levels from Standard (noisy) to A++ (virtually silent). By incorporating noise measurements, Cybenetics provides a more comprehensive overview of PSU performance, addressing an important aspect often overlooked by other certification programs. Cybenetics also enforces Power Factor, 5VSB efficiency, and Vampire Power thresholds, all important to the overall efficiency of a PSU.

Even though they’re dropping 80 PLUS in favor of Cybernetics, Corsair is being highly diplomatic with their press release. They even suggest that the reader should not disregard either in favor of the other.

Our opinion is a bit harsher: the simplicity of the 80 PLUS certification program has led to two major flaws. First, manufacturers have primarily focused on maximizing efficiency at three specific load points, neglecting overall performance. Second, the majority of PSUs have clustered around the 80 PLUS Gold and Platinum certifications, with very few achieving the stringent Titanium level. This results in hundreds of PSUs with significantly different technical capabilities sharing the same certification badge, creating a misleading uniformity that fails to reflect true performance disparities.

Furthermore, almost every PSU platform that has been released over the past 15 years would achieve 80Plus Gold status or greater, with very few products falling down to the 80Plus Bronze certification and almost zero meeting the 80Plus White and 80Plus Silver requirements, making the three lowermost certifications practically defunct. Cybenetics dual certification certainly does not solve every issue and cannot fully assess everything there is to assess about a PSU, but it certainly makes much more information available to the user and allows users to at least factor in acoustics performance when purchasing a product.

The issue that seems to remain is that, due to the slackest requirements, manufacturers were almost always certifying their units with an input voltage of 115 VAC, resulting in myriads of units carrying a certification badge that would fail the same 80Plus certification requirements with an input voltage of 230 VAC. Unfortunately, this is also true for the Cybenetics standard, as the badges do not inform the user about the input voltage that the certification was attained with. However, as the Cybenetics standard revolves around average efficiency and not efficiency at specific load points, the majority of the PSUs should meet both efficiency thresholds and not the other way around.

Certification processes can be costly for manufacturers. By opting for the Cybenetics program, Corsair possibly aims to get the most value from its certification investments. Cybenetics offers more detailed and up-to-date testing methodologies, ensuring that the data provided is more reflective of real-world usage scenarios. In any case, Corsair’s shift to Cybenetics certification marks a significant development in the evaluation of PSUs and has the potential to create waves in the market.

Ultimately, this move has the potential disrupt the status quo. With Corsair’s sheer size and influence in the larger power supply market, this could very well prompt other manufacturers to follow suit, and possibly even reshape consumer expectations and benchmarks for PSU quality.

Silicon Motion has been teasing their SM2508 client SSD controller for more than a year now at various trade shows. The controller is finally set for mass production, just in time as the mainstream segment of the Gen 5 SSD market is poised to take off. Silicon Motion expects SSDs based on the SM2508 to be available for purchase by the end of the year.

At FMS 2024, the company was reusing the same information cards seen at Computex in June. The specifications of the SM2508 from our Computex coverage are reproduced here.

Silicon Motion NVMe Client SSD Controller Comparison

 
SM2508
SM2264
SM2268XT2
SM2269XT

Market Segment
High-End
Mainstream

Manufacturing Process
6nm
12nm
12nm
12nm

CPU Cores
4x Cortex R8
4x Cortex R8
2x Cortex R8
2x Cortex R8

Error Correction
4K+ LDPC
4K LDPC
4K+ LDPC
4K LDPC

DRAM
DDR4, LPDDR4X
DDR4, LPDDR4X
No
No

Host Interface
PCIe 5.0 x4
PCIe 4.0 x4
PCIe 4.0 x4
PCIe 4.0 x4

NVMe Version
NVMe 2.0
NVMe 1.4
NVMe 2.0
NVMe 1.4

NAND Channels, Interface Speed
8 ch,
3600 MT/s
8 ch,
1600 MT/s
4 ch,
3600 MT/s
4 ch,
1600 MT/s

Sequential Read
14.5 GB/s
7.5 GB/s
7.4 GB/s
5.1 GB/s

Sequential Write
14 GB/s
7 GB/s
6.7 GB/s
4.8 GB/s

4KB Random Read IOPS
2500k
1300k
1200k
900k

4KB Random Write IOPS
2500k
1200k
1200k
900k

Current Gen 5 SSDs in the consumer client market are currently all based on Phison’s E26 controller. The appearance of newer platform solutions for SSD vendors is bound to be good from both an end-user pricing and adoption perspective.

Silicon Motion’s SM2320 native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 controller for USB flash drives and portable SSDs has enjoyed great market success with a large number of design wins over the last few years. Silicon Motion proudly displayed a selection of products based on the SM2320 on the show floor at FMS 2024.

The SM2320 went into mass production in Q3 2021. Since then, the NAND flash market has seen considerable change. QLC is becoming more and more reliable and common, leading to the launch of high-capacity cost-effective 4 TB and 8 TB SSDs. Newer NAND generations with flash operating at higher speeds have also made an appearance.

The SM2320, fabricated in TSMC’s 28nm node, supported four channels of NAND flash running at up to 800 MT/s. The new SM2322 uses the same process node and retains support for the same number of flash channels and chip enables (8 CEs per channel). However, the NAND can now operate at up to 1200 MT/s.

The SM2322 also improves the QLC support, thanks to the implementation of a better ECC scheme. While the SM2320 opted for a 2KB LDPC implementation, the SM2322 goes in for a 4KB LDPC solution. The use of a larger region enables extension of the NAND’s useful life.

The SM2322 and SM2320 packages are similar in size, and Silicon Motion expects PSSD designs using the SM2320 to adopt the SM2322 with different NAND (higher capacity / speeds) using the same enclosure. Products based on the SM2322 are expected to appear in the market before the end of the year.