Where do you think Malaysia is?
If you do not care about patents, it is obvious that you do not care about technology.
Samsung leads in wearable patents, South Korean researcher says
In a
report citing data from Thomson Reuters' Patent Search Service and World
Intellectual Property Service (WIPS), Samsung filed for the most amount
of patents for wearables between 2003 and 2014, with Philips second,
and Panasonic third.
Samsung Electronics has the most patents in wearable devices globally, a South Korean research institute has said.
Korea
Electronics Technology Institute (KETI), a government-backed researcher
of electronics components, in a report citing data from Thomson
Reuters' Patent Search Service and World Intellectual Property Service
(WIPS), said there were a total of 64,502 patents filed between 2003 and
2014.
The top 30 patent-holders accounted for 13.2 percent of the findings, with 8,539 patents.
Samsung filed for over 600 patents in the time period to become the
largest holder, while the Netherlands' Philips was the second-largest,
and Japan's Panasonic the third with over 400.
LG Electronics came fourth and Japan's Canon fifth, also with over 400 patents filed, KETI said.
Japan's Sony was eighth, while Microsoft and Qualcomm were 19th and 20th largest holders, respectively.
South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), also a state-funded researcher, was 21st.
By
country, Japan was the largest holder of wearable patents with a total
of 17,813, accounting for 27.6 percent of all patents filed in the time
period. The US was second largest with 14,519 (22.5 percent),
followed by China with 14,423 (22.4 percent), and South Korea's 5,036
(9.4 percent).
Europe filed 4,117, accounting for 6.4 percent.
"Patent
filings in wearable devices [are showing an] increase starting in the
year 2012. Though Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and ETRI are
leading in patent filings in the top-tier, Japan has multiple companies
forming a strong group and US conglomerates are starting to file more,
making the future of wearable[s] a battlefield between US, Japan and
South Korea," KETI said in the report.
KETI was unavailable for comment. Source: ZDNet.co.kr
I admit that his comments are good and sincere but a few things need to be put into perspective.
"Malaysian university research needs a paradigm change. Instead of
following national agendas instituted by bureaucrats, bottom up thinking
needs to be appreciated and accepted. Most technologies already exist,
and don’t need to be re-invented. What is needed is applying these
technologies to community and industrial problems that exist outside
local universities."
Malaysian researchers are aware of this but implimented poorly. The reasons can be attributed to my comments later.
"Citations to research need reward rather than the production of raw
papers. A realization is needed that patenting concepts and products
that have no commercial value is a futile pursuit, although it fulfills a
university KPI."
Not actually true but more emphasis on Indexed journals that will somehow generate quality citations.
Not necessarilty true but many other nations also suffer the same situations. This is a global academic problem.
"Grant panels need to practice meritocracy, and grant funds to the most innovative rather than the conservative."
This is called the safe approach. The panels are pressured to provide value for money for the research fund.
Innovative research is just to risky and worse, not needed by Malaysia.
"Although overall research output is increasing from universities
within Malaysia, emphasis must now be put on producing quality research
if Malaysia is not to continually fall behind its other ASEAN neighbors."
I have not got the figures on rankings in ASEAN. It could be due to other reasons such as cost of living.
The cost of living in Malaysia is higher than in Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. Malaysia needs to spend more to achieve similar results.
We are doing well compared to Indonesia, e.g. Compared to the size of Indonesia, Malaysia is therefore much much better.
This Murray Hunter is very good in his analysis of Malaysian situations. He supports his arguments with facts but may not interpret them for us, letting us judge for ourselves.Patent appliations versus approval facts need to be scrutinised because it may take at least 3 years for patents to get approval. If challenged, it will take even longer.My expereince with patent examiners from Japan and UK show that they are mostly not skilled in analysing new discoveries or concepts, with most of them getting it wrong. Even the simplest concepts they can miss whereas the obvious mistakes in other well established companies like Ferrari are ignored completely.Facts like differences between soft skin versus hard skin, are deemed as similar, which is absurd.I even had a patent examiner saying that my invention is impossible and yet commented that it is actually prior art. How can they be impossilbe when it is prior art? Mind boggling and yet they are still stubborn with their views. This is despite obvious differences in the claims, despite many similarities. Very very obvious similarities from established companies are ignored completely, and even impractical ideas are also accepted as patents. So patent approval is just a matter how much money we are willing to spend to defend our patents. Malaysia has not done that yet because they do not have much confiedence in their own inventions.
Image via Shutterstock. ‘Checkbook academia’ culture is placing the emphasis on quantity, not quality
MALAYSIA is spending about 5.9 percent of GDP on education and 1.13 percent of GDP on research and development. However as at 2014, no Malaysian universities have made the top 100 of the THES global or Asian university rankings, or QS World University Rankings.
This is in great contrast to universities with a similar start-up time
frame in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, and even Saudi Arabia,
making the top 100 in the Asian rankings over the last few years.
Although Malaysia’s ranking is high (33rd place) in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) world innovation index in 2014, the level of resident patent applications and grants is still relatively low, being ranked 44th. Patent applications
have grown from 218 applications in 1999, to 1,199 in 2013, with only
39 granted in 1999, growing to 288 patent grants in 2013. When
considering that 10 percent of these applications have been made by only 10 companies in Malaysia, there is still a long way to go for Malaysian university research to have the impact that some feel within Malaysian Government circles is due.
Malaysian university researchers, according to a Malaysian Government bibliometric study in 2012,
recorded an output of 29,815 papers, although these figures may have
gone up since then. This placed Malaysia in 45th position in the world,
but only 50th based on citations, which is a good guide to the
usefulness of knowledge presented. In terms of the research impact
measured by citations per paper, Malaysia only ranked 136. This is in
contrast to Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan, which were ranked 46, 75,
and 84th respectively. Even papers produced in Indonesia, Vietnam, the
Philippines, and Saudi Arabia had greater citation rates per paper than
Malaysia.
There are a number of probable reasons contributing to this poor performance.
The first reason stems from the organizational structure of the
Malaysian research community itself. Research has been organized into
clusters with top down priorities formulated by ‘unknown sources’ within
particular ministries. These priorities are not always in line with
market or community needs. Most often, like the biotechnology plan, the
lead time to create commercial and bankable projects is too long. A
Government corporation like the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation,
controlled by bureaucrats, is put in charge, where market needs often
don’t make sense to the administrators. Projects are often kept in the
hands of these corporations rather than commercialized, just to show the
bureaucrats are doing their jobs. (READ MORE: The growing gender imbalance in higher ed: Where have all the boys gone?)
Malaysian research is hindered by a lot of unnecessary costs, and bureaucracy. Although agencies like the corridor authorities
were set up with the view to decentralizing research and development,
most initiatives are still top down and controlled by bureaucracy. These
authorities are notorious in not talking to local community groups and
develop strategies like paddy estates
that local communities cannot accept, thus becoming ‘white elephants’.
In more sinister terms, many of these research and development projects
turn over community assets to government linked companies (GLCs), with
little or any community benefit.
The second major problem is the nature of Malaysian academia itself.
Research is a prerequisite to promotion within the Malaysian University
system. This requires academics producing papers to apply for senior
faculty positions. In some of the newer Malaysian universities, entering
prototypes and products into technology and invention exhibitions is a
way around producing papers. Consequently a large proportion of research
funds go into making up promotion materials, travel, and accommodation,
rather than actual research. Having a research grant is seen by many
researchers as a means to travel, be it to an exhibition or conference
in some exotic part of the world.
As a consequence, much university research output has little
community or market relevance. The paper or prototype was produced to
achieve a publishing KPI, or gain a medal at any of the international
exhibitions around the world. Paradoxically, Malaysian researchers are
travelling the world, but actually producing little if any output of any
commercial nature, even with the awards they are winning.
Many researchers with the above objectives in mind tend to work in
isolation from industry and the community. Unlike Thailand, universities
in Malaysia don’t have the same need to outreach to the community, so
there are very few research projects undertaken within local
communities. There is also very little collaboration with industry. This
is probably not the complete fault of the researchers as industry in
Malaysia tends to be still unsophisticated when it comes to university
collaboration.
As a consequence very few production prototypes ever get scaled up to
commercial production. Even if there are willing parties, university
bureaucracies often stall efforts to commercialize research with high
financial demands, and lack of time due to other responsibilities like
teaching by the researchers.
Many complex areas of research today, say in biotechnology, require
teams of specialists to make specific disciplinary contributions.
Although in Malaysia we see many papers with multiple authors, most of
them are passengers. Deans, Vice Chancellors, or senior members of
faculty are often put into paper authorships to curry favor for
promotional purposes.
Malaysian universities have tended to put emphasis on producing large
quantities of papers, rather than quality. Many academics are
practicing ‘checkbook academia’ by paying to place articles in
journals that can publish them within a month or so from submission. The
quantity of paper output rather than academic weight is the prime KPI
of Malaysian universities today. (READ MORE: Why business schools in Southeast Asia are ‘second class’)
In addition, many of the papers produced originate from the work of
students, who may or may not have their name on the paper as co-author.
The author has witnessed the ludicrous situation where many a Malaysian
academic delivers a paper at a conference, but is unable to answer
questions from the floor during question time. Some Malaysian academics
are producing over 30 papers per year from this method.
Malaysian academics are very hesitant to take up alternative methods
of research, such as ethnography and narrative in the social sciences.
This is a symptom of a general lack of innovation in the area of
research. The preferred route is a safe one where other research tends
to be duplicated within a Malaysian context. So in an engineering
conference or invention expo, one will tend to see lots of solar panel
concepts that have been revamped into new contexts, as an attempt to be
novel.
Malaysian academics tend to follow local leads. If for example,
Balanced Scorecard is popular at a particular university, then one will
see a number of faculty members doing their PhD thesis on Balanced
Scorecard.
Innovation is desperately needed in Malaysian university research,
but the panels who vet research grants tend to be bitterly conservative
and penalize any academic who tries to be innovative.
Malaysia needs to look at what China is doing with university
research. It is quickly becoming a powerhouse, looking at contemporary
problems and issues with strong research teams. The language barrier is
being broken with good editors employed to work up papers to
international standard.
Malaysian university research needs a paradigm change. Instead of
following national agendas instituted by bureaucrats, bottom up thinking
needs to be appreciated and accepted. Most technologies already exist,
and don’t need to be re-invented. What is needed is applying these
technologies to community and industrial problems that exist outside
local universities.
Citations to research need reward rather than the production of raw
papers. A realization is needed that patenting concepts and products
that have no commercial value is a futile pursuit, although it fulfills a
university KPI.
Grant panels need to practice meritocracy, and grant funds to the most innovative rather than the conservative.
Although overall research output is increasing from universities
within Malaysia, emphasis must now be put on producing quality research
if Malaysia is not to continually fall behind its other ASEAN neighbors. Image via Shutterstock.com
It is impossible to hide any wrong doing. It is proven by this article. The only way to solve this problem is to convince students and society that cheating does not pay. We can try to stop it by checking thoroughly all forms of academic misconduct. The second and most important is to continually try to convince students that misconduct does not pay. It destroys students. It is not the CGPA that counts, rather their ability to do or express things. No matter how great your paper qualifications, in real life, you will not go far if you do not have basic skills. It is the knowledge gained that matters that most. If we just copy blindly, we will not gain any knowlege at all. It is just a waste of time attending classes.
ONE of the more destructive traits of
Malaysia society today is academic dishonesty. It runs throughout many
facets of society. Academic dishonesty is not just an education issue,
it’s also prevalent within the civil service, business, and even
political walks of life.
A few high profile cases of academic dishonesty have arisen over the last few years. Two Federal deputy Ministers, Richard Riot (Human Resources) and Dr Ewon Ebin
(Science) were found to have fake degrees a couple of years ago. An
executive director of a private college of higher education affiliated
with a UK university, and pop star Fazley Yaakob was found to hold two fake degrees, and two public company directors were also found to have fake degrees. Many prominent figures in Malaysian society have bought ‘bogus degrees’ from unaccredited universities to enhance their qualifications and CVs. There are also cases of Malaysians trying to use fake degrees
to get work overseas in countries like New Zealand. However, this lack
of academic integrity is not limited to acquiring fake degrees.
A prominent academic has developed a collection of awards that could be considered dubious. Awards such as the Socrates Award in Education, Best Manager Award, and ‘The Name in Science’, awarded by “a designer award mill” called the Europe Business Assembly (EBA), purportedly located in Oxford, UK, appear to grant awards on application and payment,
rather than being scrutinized by any international panel. Other such
dubious awards include the “Merit of Commandeur” conferred by an
organization called the Belgian Chamber of Inventors (BCI), of which any
trace cannot be found through internet searches. This is not the first
time such awards have been controversial in Malaysia and the region.
There have been numerous issues in regards to plagiarism. Back in
2013, an Utusan Malaysia writer Ridhuan Tee was accused of plagiarism by
a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia lecturer Dr Aril Yasreen Mohd. Yassin.
Although the matter was never resolved, Ridhuan Tee was appointed an associate professor at Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (National Defence University).
Plagiarism in the copying of internet, book, and article material for
publications is widespread within Malaysia, although very few reports
ever rise to the public domain.
Adeline Lee Zhia Ern, a Malaysian writer, was caught plagiarizing Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul IV in her first book Lethal Lesson and Other Stories, and her book was withdrawn from the market and destroyed. An editor working for the New Straits Times, Brendan Pereira, was dismissed for plagiarizing the work of U.S. journalist Mitch Albom. Last year, the Malaysian national news agency Bernama suspended a journalist for plagiarizing an article from the Jakarta Post.
Plagiarism is not just confined to books. Australian Masterchef finalist Alvin Quah was accused of plagiarism by Rasa Malaysia’s Bee Yin Low from the Asian food blog Rasa Malaysia.
With the level of academic dishonesty in general society,
it’s not surprising that there is a lack of academic integrity within
Malaysian institutions of higher education.
With the level of academic dishonesty in general society, it’s not
surprising that there is a lack of academic integrity within Malaysian
institutions of higher education. However, what is surprising is the
extent of it, particularly among students, according to a recent survey.
These practices are not just restricted to students. A startling but not well publicized piece of research on student academic dishonesty
in Malaysia showed academic dishonesty was rampant. It was revealed
that students understand the university policies are towards plagiarism
and cheating, yet due to peer pressure and the feeling of security in
the collective culture, large percentages of students partake in
cheating in one form or another.
The study went on to state that 95.7% of students had partaken in some form of plagiarism.
Pic: AP.
The study went on to state that 95.7% of students had partaken in
some form of plagiarism, 96% had shared an assignment with other
students, 93% had cheated during tests, 92% had falsified data, 86% had
cheated in exams, and 90% had copied a friends assignment.
Due to the sheer number of students at Malaysian universities today,
it is almost impossible to use tools like ‘turnitin’ to check all
students’ work for plagiarism.
In addition, universities are worried about their reputations if pass
rates are poor, and often put extreme pressure on lecturers to pass
students. Failing a student in some faculties within a Malaysian
university would just lead to a long series of meetings and extra work
to reassess and pass them, many lecturers have told the writer.
Unfortunately, some staff at Malaysian universities are not good role
models to students. In of the few cases that came to public attention
two Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) lecturers who were caught
plagiarizing materials from the internet to produce an effective writing
handbook. The action taken against the authors was only a reprimand. A similar case involving a deputy vice chancellor of another university was ‘pushed under the rug’. However the IEEE banned any papers from the academic in any of their journals for 10 years.
Some lecturers use undergraduate student assignments as the basis of
papers they publish in academic journals. This accounts for the large
number of papers some lecturers are able to produce each year. Student
names are rarely added as authors to the lecturer’s submissions to
journals.
A number of deans and high office bearers within Malaysian
universities specifically hire staff from countries like Bangladesh to ghost write
for them. These staff members have no other duties other than to
produce papers and even books for their employers. This is in addition
to lecturers also putting their superiors name on their papers to carry
favour. Some staff members have also been known to employ a ghost writer to research and write their PhD thesis.
Plagiarism is extremely high among lecturers and professors within Malaysian universities, and only occasionally will any academic come out and publically talk about what is going on.
With the push over the last few years for Malaysian universities to rise in the world rankings,
publishing has become a very important issue for academics.
Universities have put a lot of funds into improving their volume of
articles published in academic journals.
Many methods are being used to get articles published and gain
citations for their work. Many Malaysian academics are using the
‘checkbook’ to just pay for publication. A number of academic journals
are now springing up using a ‘pay to publish’ approach, rather than the
‘double blind referee’ approach traditional to academic publishing in
the past. Lecturers also give papers at conferences where proceedings
are published in journals after the conference.
If one goes to Google Scholar and checks the publication citations of some of the new universities,
it will become very evident that many academics are gaining large
numbers of citations for their work within very short periods of time.
This has been particularly the case over the last three to four years.
High numbers of citations are being generated through the sheer volume
of papers where lecturers cite their own work, and make agreements with
other lecturers to cross-cite each other’s work.
Many other dishonest activities going on within Malaysian universities include;
The falsifying of student appraisal surveys to eliminate criticism of teaching,
The ‘cut and paste’ of curriculum from other universities when developing new courses,
Some foreign students who fail just to purchase a locally produced fake degree before returning home. Some even go to the convocation and take photos with their friends on graduation day,
There are still faculty members with dubious degrees and qualifications
within Malaysian universities today. As of today, there are still no
laws against this practice, and unfortunately some international
universities are cashing in on the Malaysian Ministry of Education’s
quest to improve qualifications among public university lecturers. Many
Malaysian lecturers are sent to overseas universities which guarantee a pass to gain their PhD.
Fraudulent academic practices and dishonesty is almost an
acceptable behaviour in Malaysia today, as the national and
institutional leaders have done very little to highlight the seriousness
of these offences.
There is currently a very low state of academic integrity within
Malaysian universities. However universities are only a microcosm of the
general society around them. Fraudulent academic practices and
dishonesty is almost an acceptable behaviour in Malaysia today, as the
national and institutional leaders have done very little to highlight
the seriousness of these offences.
Academically dishonest people are leniently dealt with in Malaysia,
which has given today’s younger generation ‘skewed ideas’ about morality
and ethics and so academic dishonesty has become a destructive modus operandi.
The prevalence of academic dishonesty shows that moral and ethical
standards are slipping in Malaysia and a whole new generation is being
told that it’s OK to steal the creative work and ideas of others. There
is a very high tolerance in Malaysian society for fraud, cheating and
mediocrity.
Malaysia is now a country where some ministers don’t know their own
portfolios, students don’t know their career disciplines, and university
professors who just don’t know their fields. This is costing Malaysian
society greatly. Mediocrity rather than meritocracy is favoured which
will affect Malaysia’s human capital competitiveness in the coming
years. This is a problem that is coming from the top of Malaysia’s
institutions, where reform is desperately needed.
Theoretical vs. Actual Bandwidth: PCI Express and Thunderbolt
By Nathan Edwards
Everything you need to know about modern
PCI Express and Thunderbolt's bandwidth potential and limits when
building your next PC.
We are in the future! It is time to continue
our scintillating look at interfaces, and the bandwidth limitations
thereof. This week, we cast our gazes on PCI Express and Thunderbolt.
First, PCI Express: what exactly does it mean when you have a PCIe 2.0
x8 connection? And does it make a difference whether your connection is
x8 or x16?
Photo credit: Flickr user abysal via Creative Commons
PCI Express
PCI Express
is a little confusing. A PCIe connection consists of one or more
data-transmission lanes, connected serially. Each lane consists of two
pairs of wires, one for receiving and one for transmitting. You can have
one, four, eight, or sixteen lanes in a single consumer PCIe
slot--denoted as x1, x4, x8, or x16. Each lane is an independent
connection between the PCI controller and the expansion card, and
bandwidth scales linearly, so an eight-lane connection will have twice
the bandwidth of a four-lane connection. This helps avoid bottlenecks
between, say, the CPU and the graphics card. If you need more bandwidth,
just use more lanes.
There are several different physical
connections, each of which can function electrically as a slot with a
lower number of lanes and can accommodate a physically smaller card as
well. A physical PCIe x16 slot can accommodate a x1, x4, x8, or x16
card, and can run a x16 card at x16, x8, x4, or x1. A PCIe x4 slot can
accommodate a x1 or x4 card but cannot fit a x16 card. And finally,
there are several different versions of the PCIe interface, each with
different bandwidth limitations, and many modern motherboards have PCIe
slots of different physical sizes and also different PCIe generations. Confused yet?
This
Asus Z87-Pro board has two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (in the green boxes),
four PCIe 2.0 x1 slots (the short gold-colored ones in the short orange
boxes) and one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot that can operate in either x1 or x4
mode (the long orange box).
Let's start with maximum theoretical bandwidth. A single PCIe 1.0 (or 1.1) lane can carry up to 2.5 Gigatransfers per second (GT/s) in each direction simultaneously. For PCIe 2.0, that increases to 5GT/s, and a single PCIe 3.0 lane can carry 8GT/s.
What's with this gigatransfers nonsense? Gigatransfers per second are the same thing (in this case) as gigabits per second, but they include the bits that are lost as a result of interface overhead.
All PCI Express versions lose some of their theoretical maximum
throughput to the physical overhead associated with electronic
transmissions. PCIe 1.* and 2.0 use 8b/10b encoding (like SATA does), the upshot of which is that each 8 bits of data cost 10 bits to transmit, so they lose 20 percent of their theoretical bandwidth to overhead. It's just the cost of doing business.
After
overhead, the maximum per-lane data rate of PCIe 1.0 is eighty percent
of 2.5GT/s. That gives us two gigabits per second, or 250MB/s (remember,
eight bits to a byte). The PCIe interface is bidirectional, so that's
250MB/s in each direction, per lane. PCIe 2.0 doubles the per-lane
throughput to 5GT/s, which gives us 500MB/s of actual data transfer per
lane.
PCIe 3.0 achieves
twice the speed of PCI 2.0, despite having a per-lane throughput that's
only 60 percent more than a PCIe connection.
You've
probably heard that PCIe 3.0 is twice the speed of PCI 2.0, but as we've
seen above, its per-lane theoretical throughput is 8GT/s, which is only
60 percent more than PCIe 2.0's 5GT/s. That's because PCIe 3.0 and
above use a more efficient encoding scheme called 128b/130b
(PDF link), so the overhead is much less--only 1.54 percent. That means
that a single PCIe 3.0 lane, at 8GT/s, can send 985MB/s. That's not quite twice 500MB/s, but it's close enough for marketing purposes.
What
that means is that a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection (3.94GB/s) should have
nearly the same bandwidth as PCIe 1.1 x16, or PCIe 2.0 x8 (both 4GB/s).
Modern
GPUs use a x16 PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 interface. That doesn't mean they always
run at x16 speed, though. Many motherboards have multiple physical x16
slots, but a smaller number of actual of PCIe lanes available. On a Z87 (Haswell) or Z77 (Ivy Bridge) desktop, the CPU has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes.
Intel chipsets have an additional eight PCIe 2.0 lanes, but those are
typically used for sound cards, RAID cards, and so forth. (AMD's 990FX
chipset includes 32 PCIe 2.0 lanes, plus four on the northbridge.) In
the Asus board shown above, for example, the PCIe 3.0 slots are CPU
lanes, while all the rest have to share the eight chipset PCIe 2.0
lanes. Using the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot in x4 mode disables three of the PCIe
2.0 x1 slots.
Image courtesy Intel
So a single x16 graphics card will use all 16 CPU PCIe lanes, but adding a GPU to the second x16 lane will drop both graphics cards' connections down to eight lanes each. Adding a third GPU will drop the first card's connection to x8, and the second and third cards' connections down to x4 each. This
is why many people who run multi-GPU setups prefer Intel's enthusiast
architectures, like Sandy Bridge-E and the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E. Ivy Bridge-E CPUs will have forty PCIe 3.0 lanes. That's enough to run two cards at x16 and one at x8, one card at x16 and three cards at x8, or one at x16, two at x8, and two more at x4. That's just ridiculous. Does it matter for performance?
Two
PCIe 3.0 GPUs running at x8 each on a PCIe 3.0 motherboard should have
nearly the same bandwidth as two PCIe 2.0 GPUs running at x16--the first
set runs at 7.88GB/s each, while the second two run at 8GB/s. If either
your motherboard or graphics card is limited to a PCIe 2.0 connection,
you'll be stuck using the slower interface.
TechPowerUp did an
enormous roundup of PCIe performance last May. They tested the two most
powerful single-GPU cards at the time--AMD's Radeon HD 7970 and Nvidia's
GeForce GTX 680--at x4, x8, and x16 using PCIe 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0, all
on the same motherboard. This is by far the best apples-to-apples test
I've ever seen on PCIe bandwidth scaling. The entire article is worth a
read, but the performance summary page collects the relative results at a glance.
Last year's most powerful graphics cards perform just fine at PCIe 2.0 x8 or even PCIe 3.0 x4.
As you'd expect, equivalent bandwidth configurations perform around the same. Most importantly, to quote the TechPowerUp authors,
"Our testing confirms that modern graphics cards work just fine at
slower bus speed, yet performance degrades the slower the bus speed is. Everything
down to x16 1.1 and its equivalents (x8 2.0, x4 3.0) provides
sufficient gaming performance even with the latest graphics hardware,
losing only 5% average in worst-case. [emphasis added] Only at even lower speeds we see drastic framerate losses, which would warrant action."
The
most interesting part in these results is the finding that last year's
most powerful graphics cards perform just fine at PCIe 2.0 x8 or even
PCIe 3.0 x4. That means that three-way SLI or CrossFireX should be viable, even in x8/x4/x4, on Ivy Bridge or Haswell desktops. But even if you don't have PCIe 3.0, you're not missing out on much performance running at x8 on a PCIe 2.0 connection.
The
doubled bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16, compared to PCIe 2.0, doesn't seem
to make much of a difference yet. AnandTech's Ryan Smith tested two
Nvidia GeForce GTX Titans, the current fastest single-GPU cards, in SLI
on both PCIe 3.0 and 2.0, and found, at best, a seven percent performance improvement at 5760 x 1200.
So
that's good news for people with older motherboards or graphics cards.
Provided you have at least PCI Express 2.0 x8, you're hardly leaving any
performance on the table, even on the fastest cards.
Thunderbolt
Thunderbolt
is a data transfer interface that can pass through both PCI Express and
DisplayPort signals, depending on what it is plugged into. A
Thunderbolt controller consists of two bidirectional data channels, with
each channel containing an input and an output lane. The Thunderbolt
chips on each end of the cable take in both DisplayPort 1.1a and a
four-lane PCIe 2.0 bus. Each channel is independent, and can either
carry DisplayPort or PCIe, but not both. Each direction in each
channel has a theoretical maximum throughput of 10Gbps--the same as two
PCIe 2.0 lanes. As discussed above, due to 8b/10b encoding, 20 percent
of the theoretical limit of PCI Express 2.0 is devoted to signal
overhead, so the maximum theoretical throughput of a single Thunderbolt channel is 1GB/s in each direction.
In first-gen Thunderbolt, that's as fast as you're going to get, since
each device can only access one of the two channels, and you can't
combine them. It's still pretty damn fast, since you can send high-def
video to a DisplayPort monitor at 10Gbps down one channel while reading
1GB/s from an SSD RAID with the other, at the same time.
Image courtesy Intel
So how much performance can you actually wring out of a Thunderbolt connection?
Gordon Ung at Maximum PC saw peak read transfer speeds of 931MB/s when reading from a RAID 0 of four 240GB SandForce SF-2281 SSDs in a Pegasus R4 chassis.
AnandTech actually got an SSD RAID in a Pegasus chassis right up to 1002MB/s
at its very peak, which seems to be right up at the practical limit of a
single Thunderbolt channel, but that was using a RAID 0 of four 128GB
6Gbps SATA SSDs, running sustained 2MB reads at a queue depth of 10. A four-way RAID 0 of SSDs is going to be too fast for a first-gen Thunderbolt connection. A two-drive RAID 0 can approach twice the speed of its individual drives. As we discussed in Part One,
a good 6Gbps SATA SSD can hit 515MB/s. A RAID 0 of two 6Gbps SSDs can
easily saturate the 10Gbps connection available in first-gen
Thunderbolt. A four-way RAID 0 can go far faster, but not while attached
via Thunderbolt. A very brief note on PCIe SSD performance (compared to Thunderbolt)
Despite the limitations of first-gen Thunderbolt, it's still a far better external storage interface than USB 3.0.
The OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2, a PCIe-attached SSD, can hit 1.5GB/s peak
in some sequential read tests on a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection. That drive
uses a SAS-to-PCIe controller, rather than a SATA controller to a RAID
card to a PCIe connection, but surely that can't explain the entire
speed difference. After all, Thunderbolt is a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection
too, right? Sort of. Each Thunderbolt storage drive is limited to one
channel with a maximum bandwidth of 1GB/s. The RevoDrive 3 x2 can use
the entire PCIe x4 connection, with its peak (post-overhead) bandwidth
of nearly 2GB/s. The Next Thunderbolt
The next
version of Thunderbolt, cleverly named Thunderbolt 2, will let you
combine both channels into one, with a theoretical maximum of 20Gbps
(2GB/s, post-encoding), allowing devices to take advantage all four PCIe
2.0 lanes in the Thunderbolt connection. It also brings increased
bandwidth to the display side of things; you'll be able to stream 4K
video to that fancy 4K monitor you've got lying around. So far
Thunderbolt 2 is only available on a couple of motherboards from Asus but it'll ship on the new Mac Pro as well, if and when that beautiful, weird-ass cylinder ever emerges from One Infinite Loop.
Despite the limitations of first-gen Thunderbolt, it's still a far better external storage interface than USB 3.0, which at best is only half the speed of a first-gen Thunderbolt connection (5Gbps maximum) and in real life, as we saw last time, doesn't hit anywhere close to its maximum theoretical throughput.
Back in February both James and I attended a press event
in London held by Kingston. This event was held to announce that
Kingston and HyperX were no longer focusing on the same market and that
HyperX would be solely aimed at Gamers (about time too 😉 ). It also gave us our first look at the awesome HyperX Cloud Headset
and a replacement for the highly successful HyperX Blu range, the brand
new HyperX Fury. The range is available in single or dual channel
kits, available in 4GB, 8GB or 16GB; 1333MHz, 1600MHz or 1866MHz and in
blue, black, white and red. So quite an impressive line-up. HyperX
have sent us a HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz (HX318C10FRK2/8) to try out. Rather nicely the entire range has a black PCB and our ssample is red to match our Test Rig. So fingers crossed they perform as good as they look.
Get in the game with HyperX® FURY!
‘Even newbies get up to speed fast, since FURY automatically recognises
its host platform and automatically overclocks to the highest frequency
published – up to 1866MHz – providing plenty of power for your next
deathmatch. FURY’s asymmetric heat spreader design lets you stand out
from the “square” crowd. It’s available in black, blue, red and– for
the first time in the HyperX line –white, with a black PCB. So your rig
can reflect your style and you can show it off with pride – without
spending a lot, since FURY is affordably priced. It’s 100 per cent
tested and LAN-ready, plus it’s backed by a lifetime
warranty and free technical support.’
The HyperX Fury kit arrived in a typical clear plastic wallet, sealed
with a Kingston branded sticker (Despite now being HyperX). Usually
the part number (for this kit HX318C10FRK2/8) would tell you the
specifications (check out this link), but if going by this code the memory MHz would be 3100? Or perhaps HyperX are doing things a little differently…
The packaging is held together by the same specifications sticker, so
to get to the Fury inside a delicate operation is required (a little
brute force and some tearing, it’s a very sticky sticker!).
Once out of the wallet and no longer obscured by the labelling, we can easily see how good the HyperX Fury looks.
Also included inside the plastic wallet is a warranty &
installation guide. This small leaflet outlines the Kingston Lifetime
Warranty and shows a simple guide of how to install memory.
At the time of writing the HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz Memory kit is retailing for approximately £60.29 on Amazon or Overclockers UK for £64.99 and comes with a Lifetime Warranty.
Undeniably the metallic red HyperX Fury, with its black PCB look good
from any angle, in fact I’d even go as far to say perhaps the best
looking ram sticks I’ve come across (of course once installed, you’ll
only see the edge!).
The HyperX Fury features a newly designed heat-spreader, which unlike
most isn’t symmetrical. The front of the heat-spreader has the new
model name printed in white on the left, whilst on the right the HyperX
brand logo is moulded on with a textured finish.
The back of the Fury is more or less the same, except instead of the
model and branding, there’s a warranty and model details sticker.
From the top (the bit you’ll see when installed), we get to see the
asymmetrical heat-spreader with the HyperX brand name to the far right.
Looking at the connection side of the Fury allows us to see the all black PCB and the textured detailing of the HyperX logo.
Something else that is clearly noticeable is the height of the
heat-spreader. Whilst not classed as low-profile RAM, the HyperX Fury
heat-spreader is not much higher than the PCB itself, this should mean
that regardless of your CPU cooler, it should fit easily without any
compatibility issues.
Hardware Installation
Installation of the HyperX Fury 1866MHz 8Gb DDR3 Kit into our Test Rig was simple enough. The RAM sticks aren’t tall enough to cause any compatibility issues with our test cooler the Raijintek Themis, which should mean no issues with other coolers either.
The Test Rig booted first time and with the MSI Z87 G45
motherboard left on Auto settings the HyperX Fury DDR3 automatically
set its frequency to 1866MHz, with timings of 10-10-10-28 at 1.5 volts.
Impressive as there’s no eXtreme Memory Profile (XMP) setting for the
Fury, it just works!
However with a little playing around with the timings using Intel XTU,
the HyperX Fury can easily be overclocked from 1866MHz to not only
2133MHz, but 2400MHz as well! Which for a set of sticks rated at
1866MHz and with an SRRP of £60 is pretty stunning. See AIDA64
Benchmark Results below for full details of timings etc.
Testing Methodology/Setup
The HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz RAM Kit was tested as part of our normal Test Rig, using Windows 7 64Bit (Service Pack 1) with all relevant Drivers installed. Prime95 (Blend) was used to test stability, whilst Intel XTU for overclocking and the following benchmarks were also used.
Avexir Blitz 1.1 Original 8GB 2400MHz @ 10-12-12-31
34247
35303
31127
46.7 ns
HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz @ 10-10-10-28
26870
27494
24500
55.8 ns
Avexir Core 8GB 1600MHz @ 9-9-9-24
23134
23751
21781
58.9 ns
The image above from AIDA64 shows that the throughput and the latency
of the HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz memory is more or less in the correct
range for its price range, which is good. The real magic in the Fury
modules is when you overclock them.
AIDA64 Benchmark Results (Overclocking Results)
Memory
Read
Write
Copy
Latency
HyperX Fury 8GB 2400MHz @ 13-15-13-39
33282
34812
29518
53.4 ns
HyperX Fury 8GB 2133MHz @ 12-13-12-35
30325
31169
27566
55.1 ns
HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz @ 10-10-10-28
26870
27494
24500
55.8 ns
After adjusting the HyperX Fury timings (as seen above), you can get a
huge performance gain. Admittedly the timings are a lot looser than
I’d have liked, but the figures speak for themselves.
Gaming Related Benchmarks
To give us some idea of the effect the increase in memory speed has
on Gaming, the benchmarks below have been run at 1866MHz, 2133MHz and
2400MHz using the HyperX Fury modules. We actually changed the
benchmarks a little in an attempt to look a little deeper into the topic
of whether an increase in Memory speed does truly affect FPS to any
real degree. Let’s see shall we…
As you can see faster memory does make a small difference within the
FireStrike test, but for all else it’s not far off the same. The reason
for this? Perhaps the timings are too slack on the overclocks to give
any real benefit or perhaps the advantage of high speed memory (in terms
of Gaming performance) is somewhat pointless! 😉
Final Thoughts
The HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz
RAM kit is a great start for the HyperX range. They arrived solidly
packed in a clear plastic wallet. Look good in the wallet, but in hand
feel well made and look even better.
With a wide choice of colours available (red, blue, black or white),
means they will suit any rig out there, whilst the low height of the
heat-spreader means you’ll be unlikely to have any compatibility issues
with even the biggest CPU cooler!
The HyperX Fury 8GB 1866MHz perform well at their native speed, but
slacken those timings and the RAM happily runs at 2400MHz (with a little
help from Intel XTU)
without even having to change the voltag! Of course even at this speed
it doesn’t perform quite as well as dedicated 2400MHz rated RAM
modules, but the fact it comes close is amazing!
I’ll admit I like the HyperX Fury, they look good, offer good
performance and at approximately £60 are priced well, but what really
gets me excited about them isn’t even the product itself! It’s the
promise of the now flying solo HyperX brand giving us an even better
product in the guise of a new Genesis or Predator range!
(HX318C10FRK2/8) to try out. Rather nicely the entire range has a black PCB and our ssample is red to match our 
