Review: Sony HDR-PJ320E Handycam Camcorder and Projector: nice features, shame about the image quality

March 31, 2013 Tim Anderson 1 Comment

The Sony PJ320E is an HD camcorder with a neat trick: it is also a projector, making it a true all-in-one device. Shoot your video, dim the lights, sit back and watch your creation on the nearest wall. You can also use it as a projector for any device with HDMI output, which includes most new laptops and some tablets.

The perfect camcorder then? I wish it were; but unfortunately its core feature, making videos, is disappointing considering the price, plus there are a few other limitations to be aware of.

What you get is the camcorder, mains adapter, a micro to standard HDMI cable, and a USB extender cable. The reason for the extender cable is that the camcorder has a very short (4cm or so) USB cable built-in, which tucks into the handle when not in use. Handy, and will work OK with a laptop, but if you have a desktop PC you will probably want to use the extender cable.

What you don’t get with this particular model is any storage. There is none built-in, and no SD card is supplied. So you have to supply your own SD card. It supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, and Sony’s own Memory Stick media, up to 64GB. For the SD cards, class 4 or faster is specified. I used a 32GB class 10 SDHC card.

Operation

Like most camcorders, this one has a grip handle and flip-out screen. You can twist the flip-out screen around so it faces forward, handy for the self-timer. Menus are chosen by touch control on the screen, and while this works it is a rather small screen and fiddly to operate.

There are also some physical buttons: zoom lever, photo button, and start/stop for video recording. On the inside panel are buttons for projector mode, play and power, and along the top a focus slider for projecting. The camcorder can be mounted on a tripod.

There are two shooting modes, video and photo. In some video modes you can still take photos with the photo button, but not vice versa.

Connection options are generous. There is a flap on the side covering power in and multi video out (for TVs that lack an HDMI input), though the multi video connector is an optional extra. On the inner panel you get HDMI in and out (the in being for projecting), and microphone in with plug-in power.

The device is light and compact and basic operation is easy. The main snag is the slightly awkward menu system.

Specifications

On paper this is a decent camcorder. Here are a few key specifications:

30x optical zoom extended to 55x for video recording.
Still photos up to 8.0 mega pixels, 16:9 format
1080 HD video recording, 16:9 format
Focal distance 1.9-57mm
Frame rate 50i or 50p
Projector resolution 640 x 360
Projector brightness 13 lumens
Battery life: typical 75 minutes recording, 240 minutes playback

Image quality

My biggest concern with this device is that I could not achieve excellent results. Don’t even think of using this for still photos; they are poor quality despite their high pixel count.

Here is a shot of some daffodils:

I took a similar shot on my excellent Canon S100 camera:

The difference is more apparent when you zoom in. Sony first, Canon next:

How about videos? Here the Sony comes out better, as you would expect. The Canon S100 can also take videos, but while the image quality was still better on the Canon, it was more jerky when panning; the Sony is much better at steadying the image, for handheld videos. Credit to Sony for that.

Here is a quick video of the flowers using default automatic settings. Note: to get the best quality set it to play in 1080p:

This struck me as over-exposed, and I tried again using manual exposure:

I got the best results using the highest available quality (no surprise).

The video quality is not that bad, but less good than the resolution would lead you to expect.

Note that the lens is a Sony G lens, not a Carl Zeiss as used on some Sony models.

Sound quality

The audio side is pretty good. Built-in stereo mic on the front, option for external mic with plug-in power support, Dolby Digital recording.

Projecting

Of course the Sony is also a projector, which is a lot of fun. The projector is the DLP type which is ideal for portability. The downside is that it is low resolution and the lamp is not very powerful, but that is expected. It certainly beats having to peer at the tiny screen to watch a video, though if you have a TV handy you will probably be better off connecting to that with HDMI rather than projecting.

The HDMI input means you can connect other devices. I tried this with a Sony Xperia phone which supports MHL, meaning that the USB port can be used for HDMI output with a suitable adaptor. This worked well, and I could project a video from the phone through the Sony camcorder.

Will you use this much though? What about purchasing a separate pocket projector and a conventional camcorder instead – you will probably get better quality for both, and spend no more money.

Features

There are a range of options in the menus though documentation for these is not great. Features include Spot focus, which focuses automatically on a subject you touch, and Smile shutter, which automatically takes a picture when it detects a smile! I tested this and it actually worked, good fun.

There is a useful feature called My Button. Four buttons on the left of the touch screen are user-assignable, so you can quickly access a feature without having to scroll through the menus.

Other features include white balance adjustment, self-timer, manual focus, low light optimization, wind noise reduction for the mic, and of course image size and quality.

Software

Sony supplies free software for PC and PlayStation 3, called PlayMemories. You can import images and video from the camcorder, upload to a cloud service for sharing, and burn DVD or Blu-ray discs. Mac users miss out on this, but can still easily import from the camcorder.

Conclusion

I like the features of this camcorder and if the image quality were better I would love it. As it is, I feel it is a nice device let down by poor optics. It is light and convenient though, with some fun features. Recommended if the combination of camcorder and projector in one unit is particularly useful, but for pure video quality you could do better.

cloud computing, microsoft, mobile

Microsoft’s growth areas: Azure, Server with Hyper-V, Office 365, Windows Phone

March 27, 2013 onlyconnect 1 Comment

Microsoft has left slip a few figures in posts from PR VP Frank Shaw and platform evangelist Steve Guggenheimer.

Observers have tended to focus on Windows “Blue” and what is happening with Microsoft’s core client operating system, but what caught my eye was a few figures on progress in other areas.

Windows Azure compute usage doubled in six months
Windows Azure revenue growing 3X
Office 365 paid seats tripled year on year last quarter
Server 2012 Datacenter edition licenses grown 80%

A notable feature of these figures is that they are relative, not absolute. Office 365 is a relatively new product, and Windows Azure (from what I can tell, since Microsoft did not release numbers) performed rather badly until its renaissance in early 2011 under Satya Nadella, Scott Guthrie and others – see here for more about this). It is easy to post big multiples if you are starting from a small base.

This is real progress though and my guess is that growth will continue to be strong. I base this not on Microsoft’s PR statements, but on my opinion of Office 365 and Windows Azure, both of which make a lot of sense for Microsoft-platforms organisations migrating to the cloud.

Why the growth in Server 2012 Datacenter? This one is easy. Datacenter comes with unlimited licenses for Windows Server running in Hyper-V virtual machines on that server, so it is the best value if you want to the freedom to run a lot of VMs, especially if some of those VMs are lightly used and you can afford to overcommit the processors (you need a new license for every two physical processors you install).

Here’s another figure that Shaw puts out:

Windows Phone has reached 10 percent market share in a number of countries, and according to IDC’s latest report, has shipped more than Blackberry in 26 markets and more than iPhone in seven.

Spin, of course. This February report from IDC gives Windows Phone just a 2.6% market share in the 4th quarter of 2012. Still, it did grow by 150% year on year, thanks no doubt to Nokia’s entry into the market.

My personal view is that Windows Phone will also continue to grow. I base this on several things:

I see more Windows Phones on the high street and in people’s hands, than was the case a year ago.
Windows Phone 8 is decent and the user interface is more logical and coherent than Android, which mitigates a lack of apps.
Nokia is bringing down the price for Windows Phone devices so they compare well with Android in the mid-market below Apple and the premium Android devices.
There is some momentum in Windows Phone apps, more so than for Windows 8. Guggenheimer notes that downloads from the Phone Store now exceed 1 billion.

The context of the above is not so good for Microsoft. It is coming from behind in both cloud and mobile and the interesting question would what kind of market share it is likely to have in a few years time: bigger than today, perhaps, but still small relative to Amazon in cloud and Apple and Android in mobile.

There is also the Windows 8 problem. Many prefer Windows 7, and those who use Windows 8, use it like Windows 7, mostly ignoring the tablet features and new Windows Runtime personality.

How will Microsoft fix that? Along with leaked builds of Windows Blue, Microsoft has announced the next Build conference, which will be in San Francisco June 26-28, 2013 (I am glad this will not be on the Microsoft campus again, since this venue has not worked well). There is a lot to do.

internet, mobile

What is mobile security? And do we need it?

March 21, 2013 onlyconnect

I attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where (among many other things) numerous security vendors were presenting their latest mobile products. I took the opportunity to quiz them. Why do smartphone users need to worry about security software, which many users were glad to leave behind with their PC? I observed that whereas I have often heard of friends or contacts suffering from PC malware, I have yet to hear anyone complain about a virus on their mobile or tablet.

I got diverse answers. NQ Mobile, for example, told me that while mobile malware is relatively uncommon in the USA and Europe, it is different in China where the company has a strong base. In China and some other territories, there are many Android-based mobiles for which the main source of apps is not the official Google Play store, but downloads from elsewhere, and malware is common.

Do you have an Android phone? Have you checked that option to “allow installation of non-Market apps”? One mobile gaming controller I received for review recently came with a free game. Guess what – to install the game you have to check that option, as noted in the documentation.

When you allow non-Market apps, you are disabling a key Android security feature, that apps can only be installed from the official store which, you hope, has some level of quality checking from Google, and the likelihood that malware that does slip through will be quickly removed. But what will users do, install the game, or refuse to disable the feature? I am reminded of those installation manuals for PC devices which include instructions to ignore the warnings about unsigned drivers. Most of us shrug and go ahead.

Nevertheless, for those of us not in China mobile malware is either uncommon, or so stealthy that few of us notice it (an alarming thought). Most of the responses I received from the security vendors were more along the lines that PC-style malware is only one of many mobile security concerns. Privacy is another one high on the list. When you install an app, you see a list of the permissions it is demanding, and sometimes the extent of them is puzzling. How do we know whether an app is grabbing more data than it should, for unknown purposes (but probably to do with ad targeting)?

Some of the mobile security products attempt to address this problem. Bitdefender Mobile Security includes an application audit which keeps track of what apps are doing. Norton Mobile Security scans for apps with “unusual permissions”.

Web site checking is another common feature. Software will attempt to detect phishing sites or those compromised with malware.

Perhaps the biggest issue though is what happens to your lost or stolen device. Most of the mobile security products include device tracking, remote lock and remote wipe (of course, some smartphones come with some of this built-in, like iOS and Find My iPhone).

If you do lose your phone, an immediate worry is the security of the data on it, or even worse, on an SD card that can be removed and inspected. Your contacts? Compromising photos? Company data? Remote wipe is a great feature, but could a smart thief disable it before you are able to use it?

Some products offer additional protection. NQ mobile offers a Mobile Vault for data security. It has a nice feature: it takes a photo of anyone who enters a wrong passcode. Again though, note that some smartphones have device encryption built-in, and it is just a matter of enabling it.

Windows Phone 8 is an interesting case. It includes strong Bitlocker encryption, but end users cannot easily enable it. It is enabled via Exchange ActiveSync policies, set through the Exchange Management Console or via PowerShell:

Why not let users set encryption themselves, if required, as you can on some Android phones? On Apple iOS, data encryption is automatic and can be further protected by a passcode, with an option to wipe all data after 10 failed attempts.

Encryption will not save you of course if a rogue app is accessing your data and sending it off somewhere.

Mobile security can feels like a phoney war (ha!). We know the risks are real, that smartphones are just small computers and equally vulnerable to malware as large ones, and that their portability makes them more likely to go astray, but most of us do not experience malware and mainly worry about loss or theft.

Businesses are the opposite and may care more about protecting data than about losing a device, hence the popularity of mobile device management solutions. The fact is though: some of that data is on the device and being taken everywhere, and it is hard to eliminate the risk.

Is mobile security a real problem? I hardly need to say this: yes, it is huge. Do you need anti-virus software on your phone? That is harder to answer, but unless you are particularly experimental with the apps you install, I am not yet convinced.

The frustrating part is that modern smartphones come with integrated security features many of which are ignored by most users, who find even a simple passcode lock too inconvenient to bother with (or perhaps nobody told them how to set it). It is hard to understand why more smartphones and tablets are not secure by default, at least for the easy things like passcodes and encryption.

App and privacy issues are harder to address, though maintaining properly curated app stores and only installing apps from there or from other trusted sources is a good start.

gpu computing, hardware, software

NVIDIA’s Visual Computing Appliance: high-end virtual graphics power on tap

March 20, 2013 onlyconnect

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has announced the Grid Visual Computing Appliance (VCA). Install one of these, and users anywhere on the network can run graphically-demanding applications on their Mac, PC or tablet. The Grid VCA is based on remote graphics technology announced at last year’s GPU Technology Conference. This year’s event is currently under way in San Jose.

The Grid VCA is a 4U rack-mounted server.

Inside are up to 2 Xeon CPUs each supporting 16 threads, and up to 8 Grid GPU boards each containing 2 Kepler GPUs each with 4GB GPU memory. There is up to 384GB of system RAM.

There is a built-in hypervisor (I am not sure which hypervisor NVIDIA is using) which supports 16 virtual machines and therefore up to 16 concurrent users.

NVIDIA supplies a Grid client for Mac, Windows or Android (no mention of Apple iOS).

During the announcement, NVIDIA demonstrated a Mac running several simultaneous Grid sessions. The virtual machines were running Windows with applications including Autodesk 3D Studio Max and Adobe Premier. This looks like a great way to run Windows on a Mac.

The Grid VCA is currently in beta, and when available will cost from $24,900 plus $2,400/yr software licenses. It looks as if the software licenses are priced at $300 per concurrent user, since the price doubles to $4,800/Yr for the box which supports 16 concurrent users.

Businesses will need to do the arithmetic and see if this makes sense for them. Conceptually it strikes me as excellent, enabling one centralised GPU server to provide high-end graphics to anyone on the network, subject to the concurrent user limitation. It also enables graphically demanding Windows-only applications to run well on Macs.

The Grid VCA is part of the NVIDIA GRID Enterprise Ecosystem, which the company says is supported by partners including Citrix, Dell, Cisco, Microsoft, VMWare, IBM and HP.

gpu computing, professional, software development

Big GPU news at NVIDIA tech conference including first Tegra with CUDA

March 20, 2013 onlyconnect

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made a number of announcements at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) keynote yesterday, including an updated roadmap for both desktop and mobile GPUs.

Although the focus of the GTC is on high-performance computing using Tesla GPU accelerator boards, Huang’s announcements were not limited to that area but also covered the company’s progress on mobile and on the desktop. Huang opened by mentioning the recently released GeForce Titan graphics processor which has 2,600 CUDA cores, and which starts from under £700 so is within reach of serious gamers as well as developers who can make use of it for general-purpose computing. CUDA enables use of the GPU for massively parallel general-purpose computing. NVIDIA is having problems keeping up with demand, said Huang.

There are now 430 million CUDA capable GPUs out there, said Huang, including 50 supercomputers, and coverage in 640 university courses.

He also mentioned last week’s announcement of the Swiss Piz Daint supercomputer which will include Tesla K20X GPU accelerators and will be operational in early 2014.

But what is coming next? Here is the latest GPU roadmap:

Kepler is the current GPU architecture, which introduced dynamic parallelism, the ability for the GPU to generate work without transitioning back to the CPU.

Coming next is Maxwell, which has unified virtual memory. The GPU can see the CPU memory, and the CPU can see the GPU memory, making programming easier. I am not sure how this impacts performance, but note that it is unified virtual memory, so the task of copying data between host and device still exists under the covers.

After Maxwell comes Volta, which focuses on increasing memory bandwidth and reducing latency. Volta includes a stack of DRAM on the same silicon substrate as the GPU, which Huang said enables 1TB per second of memory bandwidth.

What about mobile? NVIDIA is aware of the growth in devices of all kinds. 2.5bn high definition displays are sold each year, said Huang, and this will double again by 2015. These displays are mostly not for PCs, but on smartphones or embedded devices.

Here is the roadmap for Tegra, NVIDIA’s system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Tegra 4, which I saw in preview at last month’s mobile world congress in Barcelona, includes a software-defined modem and computational camera, able to tracks moving objects while keeping them in focus.

Next is Tegra Logan. This is the first Tegra to include CUDA cores so you can use it for general-purpose computing. It is based on the Kepler GPU and supports full CUDA 5 computing as well as Open GL 4.3. Logan with be previewed this year and in production early 2014.

After Logan comes Parker. This will be based on the Maxwell GPU (see above) and NVIDIA’s own Denver (ARM-based) CPU. It will include FinFET multigate transistors.

According to Huang, Tegra performance will includes by 100 times over 5 years. Today’s Surface RT (which runs Tegra 3) may be sluggish, but Windows RT will run fine on these future SoCs. Of course Intel is not standing still either.

Finally, Huang announced the Grid Visual Computing Appliance, which I will be covering shortly in another post.

development, microsoft, software development, visual studio, windows

Microsoft’s Windows 8 app problem will not be solved by incentivising junk

March 20, 2013 onlyconnect 3 Comments

Microsoft has launched a “Keep the cash” offer to developers. Publish up to 20 apps, 10 for Windows Phone and 10 for Windows 8, and get $100 for each of them.

The offer is little use for most of the world. The terms state that “Offer good only to legal residents of the 50 United States & D.C. aged 18 or older”.

It is little use for Microsoft either. How much development time does $100 buy? Still, there is a way to make sense of it for hobbyists or developers with some spare time. What you do is to create one of those apps that does very little but is specific to something like a particular sports team or pop star, and maybe searches the web for news about them. Then you replicate it 10 times over for 10 different teams or celebrities. Then you adapt it for both phone and Windows 8 store. That’s 20 apps, $2000.

In other words, the only thing this will achieve is to increase the amount of dross in these two stores. Microsoft is pumping the numbers, so that there is an appearance of success on the most naive analysis, counting the apps.

Incidentally, this is something that Windows Store VP Antoine LeBlond assured me Microsoft would not do, at the launch of Surface RT in New York last year.

Does Microsoft have an app problem? Yes, particularly on Windows 8. Windows Phone 8 is less of a problem; Microsoft’s phone is actually building some momentum from what I can tell and app availability is not too bad, despite some gaps such as Instagram and BBC iPlayer.

The app problem is nothing to do with quantity though. 10 good apps for the Windows Store is worth more to the platform than 10,000 poor ones. In fact, filling the store with junk is a negative that will cement the perception that there is little there that is worthwhile.

Rather, the app problem is the consequence of several factors:

1. The development platform is not good enough. Most things can be done, but not easily, and the default look and feel results in blocky apps that tend to scale badly on big screens. The built-in controls are too primitive. The user interface is insufficiently intuitive and users struggle to discover the menus and features hidden in the Charms bar.

2. Microsoft has so far failed to establish Windows 8 as a tablet platform. The reasons are complex and to do with the Windows heritage, the way OEM and retail partners treat Windows, and the fact that there are other tablet platforms (iOS and Android) out there which meet the need for many people.

3. Windows 8 is out there in reasonable numbers, but most users spend most of there time in the desktop, making the Windows Store app platform less successful than the quantity deployed would suggest.

4. Businesses are mainly standardising on Windows 7, not Windows 8, to the detriment of the new app platform.

In this context, the best thing that could happen for Windows 8 is the appearance of new compelling apps that will drive users to the underused tablet personality. Microsoft could and should do some of those (there are a few efforts, like Fresh Paint).

Those apps, though, will not be developed for $100. They will be developed either by enthusiasts who love the platform (which will not happen until the platform is improved), or by businesses who invest real money and effort in building them.

As it is, this misguided initiative does little other than to draw attention to the problems Microsoft has with its new Windows.

mobile, reviews, tablets

Review: Seagate Wireless Plus combines hard drive and wi-fi for storage on the go

March 19, 2013 Tim Anderson 1 Comment

Need more storage for your tablet or smartphone? If so, the Seagate Wireless Plus could be just the thing. In a nutshell, this is a 1TB USB 3.0 external drive with battery power and a wi-fi access point built in. Attach it to your PC or Mac and fill it with stuff: a zillion MP3s, or a pile of videos, or pictures, or boring business presentations, or whatever you need. On the road, you power up the drive, connect your mobile device to the built-in wi-fi, and play what you want – though note there are a few complications, of which more below.

In the box you get the drive, a USB mains adaptor, a USB port that attaches to the drive, a USB 3.0 cable, and a brief getting started manual.

To be clear, there is a protective cover on the end of the drive which pops off to reveal what looks like Seagate’s GoFlex port. Another piece plugs into this, converting it to a USB port. Slightly awkward, because you may well lose the protective cover and end up having the USB adaptor permanently attached.

Setup is a matter of charging the battery and then connecting your mobile device to the drive’s integrated wi-fi access point. By default this is an unencrypted open connection, and if you intend to travel with the unit I recommend setting a password, which converts it into a secure encrypted connection.

Next, you download the free Seagate media app for iOS or Android, at which point you can view the contents and playback media such as music and video. What if you have a mobile device other than iOS or Android? Hang on, all is not lost.

The inherent problem here is that connecting storage to a mobile device is not as simple as on a computer, where it just appears as another drive, especially on Apple’s iOS which does not directly expose a file system to the user. This is the reason for the Seagate Media app.

Second, the obvious problem with connecting to a dedicated wi-fi access point on the Seagate drive is that you will no longer be connected to any other wi-fi network and therefore may be disconnected from the internet, or forced to use your data connection.

Fortunately Seagate has a solution, called “concurrent mode”. You use Seagate’s app to connect your drive to a second wi-fi network, such as your home wi-fi, and then your internet connectivity is restored.

While this mostly works, it is an inconvenience, since if you are out and about you will need to do this for any new wi-fi connection point you want to use. Further, as soon as you turn the drive off (or the battery runs out) you will have to connect your mobile device separately. If you then later want to reconnect to the Seagate, you have to change the wi-fi settings on the mobile again, so it is a little bit of hassle.

I used the drive on both an iPad and an Android phone, and found the setup fairly straightforward, though the Android mysteriously needed restarting before it worked properly. Playing media from the drive via the app works fine for video, images and music.

If you have a device that is neither Apple nor Android, you can still use it by connecting the wifi on the device to the Seagate, and then browsing to a mini web server on the drive. The question is: where to point the browser? Help was not helpful on this point, suggesting a wirelessplus URL that did not work at all for me, but I noticed that the network was in the 172.25.0 range, took a stab at 172.25.0.1 and found that it worked. Using a Nokia Windows Phone, for which there is no Seagate app, I could connect to the device, stay on the internet, and still easily play the media. Here is the browser view on Windows Phone:

You can also access settings from the browser and check status:

That said, as I connected various devices to the Seagate I found its behaviour increasingly unpredictable. On the iPad I got a mysterious message saying I was connecting through another device and should connect directly, even when I was connected directly as far as I could tell. Sometimes you lose internet connectivity and the second network connection needed to be kicked back into life through settings. You are meant to be able to have up to eight devices connected, with up to three streaming media simultaneously, but maybe this is optimistic.

The wi-fi complications are not Seagate’s fault, but inherent to providing additional storage for mobile devices, though I wonder if the firmware could be improved a bit.
Connecting the drive to a computer over USB disables the network connectivity but is otherwise straightforward. The drive is formatted with the Windows NTFS format, and a read-write NTFS driver is supplied for Mac users. Apparently you can also convert the drive to Mac HFS+ format though I did not try it. It uses a fast USB 3.0 connection when available, which is a big plus since it is much faster than USB 2.0.

There is some sync software for Windows supplied but I do not really see the point of it; personally I prefer simply to copy stuff across as needed.

According to the manual, the drive takes 3 hours to charge fully, and then has about 10 hours battery life streaming, or 25 hours standby, which is enough for most journeys. If you fancy using this on a flight, note that some airlines may not allow wi-fi to be enabled which would prevent use of the drive, other than via a laptop and USB.

Despite the fact that it is not hassle-free, I rate this drive highly based on its generous 1TB capacity and the fact that it also works fine as a standard USB 3.0 external drive, making all the mobile and battery-powered capability a nice bonus. If you need serious extra local storage for a tablet or smartphone, I cannot think of any better option.

That is the question though: do you need extra local storage for a mobile device? Internet-based storage like Dropbox, Skydrive or Google Music is more convenient, provided of course that you can connect. Most mobile devices come with built-in storage that is enough for a few videos or a fair amount of MP3 music.

There are certain scenarios where Wireless Plus will be useful, but I am not sure how common they are for most people.

Update: The Wireless Plus can also be used as a DLNA server and I have successfully used this feature both on the iPad (you can download a DNLA client from the app store; I used 8player Lite) and on Windows:

Can you use this then as a standalone music server? Yes, though it is a shame there is no option to join the Wireless Plus to your existing network directly. I am guessing there is a way of hacking this though, if you can figure it out. It is not too bad, since once it is connected to your network using concurrent mode, other devices on your network can see it.

You can also play media from the Wireless Plus to Airplay devices such as Apple TV.

hardware, software, software development

Intel Xeon Phi shines vs NVidia GPU accelerators in Ohio State University tests

March 18, 2013 onlyconnect 1 Comment

Which is better for massively parallel computing, a GPU accelerator board from NVidia, or Intel’s new Xeon Phi? On the eve of NVidia’s GPU Technology Conference comes a paper which Intel will enjoy. Erik Sauley, Kamer Kayay, and Umit V. C atalyurek from the Ohio State University have issued a paper with performance comparisons between Xeon Phi, NVIDIA Tesla C2050 and NVIDIA Tesla K20. The K20 has 2,496 CUDA cores, versus a mere 61 processor cores on the Xeon Phi, yet on the particular calculations under test the researchers got generally better performance from Xeon Phi.

In the case of sparse-matrix vector multiplication (SpMV):

For GPU architectures, the K20 card is typically faster than the C2050 card. It performs better for 18 of the 22 instances. It obtains between 4.9 and 13.2GFlop/s and the highest performance on 9 of the instances. Xeon Phi reaches the highest performance on 12 of the instances and it is the only architecture which can obtain more than 15GFlop/s.

and in the case of sparse-matrix matrix multiplication (SpMM):

The K20 GPU is often more than twice faster than C2050, which is much better compared with their relative performances in SpMV. The Xeon Phi coprocessor gets
the best performance in 14 instances where this number is 5 and 3 for the CPU and GPU configurations, respectively. Intel Xeon Phi is the only architecture which achieves more than 100GFlop/s.

Note that this is a limited test, and that the authors note that SpMV computation is known to be a difficult case for GPU computing:

the irregularity and sparsity of SpMV-like kernels create several problems for these architectures.

They also note that memory latency is the biggest factor slowing performance:

At last, for most instances, the SpMV kernel appears to be memory latency bound rather than memory bandwidth bound

It is difficult to compare like with like. The Xeon Phi implementation uses OpenMP, whereas the GPU implementation uses CuSparse. I would also be interested to know whether as much effort was made to optimise for the GPU as for the Xeon Phi.

Still, this is a real-world test that, if nothing else, demonstrates that in the right circumstances the smaller number of cores in a Xeon Phi do not prevent it comparing favourably against a GPU accelerator:

When compared with cutting-edge processors and accelerators, its SpMV, and especially SpMM, performance are superior thanks to its wide registers
and vectorization capabilities. We believe that Xeon Phi will gain more interest in HPC community in the near future.

development, mobile, professional, software development, web authoring

Native apps vs HTML 5: no consensus over how to choose

March 18, 2013 onlyconnect 2 Comments

Wondering whether to invest in native apps or HTML5 web apps (maybe wrapped as native) for your next mobile development project? Welcome to plenty of confusion about which is the best path to take. Here are a few pieces of evidence from this month:

A Compuware survey of 3,500 consumers showed a preference for mobile apps over mobile websites:

When consumers were asked about the benefits of using a mobile app versus a mobile website (a website that is specifically designed to be viewed on a mobile device), the majority (85 percent) said they preferred mobile apps primarily because apps are more convenient, faster and easier to browse.

Just 1% expressed a preference for mobile websites over apps. Note that consumers cannot be expected to know whether or not a native app is actually written in HTML5 or not; but here is an intriguing report from Xero, which makes accounting software:

Very early on we chose to build Xero Touch using HTML5 technologies. That choice showed that we care about the future of the open web and its continued success as an application delivery platform and we firmly believe that HTML5 is the future of development across any and all platforms. We do not regret this choice – but we’ve found that building a complicated mobile application in HTML5 has been hard. Even with frameworks as amazing as Sencha Touch, we’ve found the ability to iterate as fast as we would like has become harder as our application has become more complex.

… the lesson we’ve learnt over the last 12 months has been that the cost in time, effort and testing to bring an HTML5 application to a native level of performance seems to be far greater than if the application was built with native technologies from the get-go … Maintaining and iterating a web app was becoming a big impediment – so the next release of Xero Touch will be built with native technologies and we’ve already made a lot of progress. It does feel better.

If a company is so unhappy with its development platform that it is willing to endure the pain and expense of switching, that is evidence of deep dissatisfaction.

On the other hand, here is the UK’s Government Digital Service:

Our position is that native apps are rarely justified. Since November 2012, central government departments and agencies have to get approval from Cabinet Office before starting work on apps. For government services, we believe the benefits of developing and maintaining apps will very rarely justify their costs, especially if the underlying service design is sub-optimal. Departments should focus on improving the quality of the core web service.

Is this because the Government Digital Service is spending public money and therefore apps are an unnecessary luxury? That is arguable, though it has not stopped the BBC (also publicly funded) from delivering a ton of apps, to predictable complaints from owners of less favoured platforms like Windows Phone.

This one will run and run. HTML5 will get better, but so also will native platforms, so I doubt this difficult choice will get easier any time soon.

It may be a matter of whether your particular app is a good fit for HTML5 or not. However, I am not aware of any consensus over what characteristics make an app a good or bad fit for an HTML5 solution, except that for broad reach HTML5 cannot be beaten, and for full access to device and OS features there is no substitute for native.

audio, gadgets, reviews

Review: Bayan Audio StreamPort Universal Bluetooth streamer

March 17, 2013 Tim Anderson

Problem: you want to play audio from your mobile device on powered speakers or through your home hi-fi. Usual solution: connect a cable from the earphone socket on your device to the powered speakers or to an input on your hi-fi. That is a little fiddly and untidy, so how about a wireless solution instead?

This is where Bayan Audio’s StreamPort Universal comes in. This little USB-powered box in effect enables any audio system for Bluetooth. Simply connect the output from the StreamPort to your hi-fi or powered speakers, using either a 3.5mm jack socket or right and left phono sockets, and then pair it with your mobile device. Audio output is then redirected to the StreamPort and you can enjoy the music at full quality.

In my tests the StreamPort worked exactly as advertised – well, nearly. You put the StreamPort into pairing mode by holding down power for 8 seconds. A Sony Experia T Android phone connected easily, I fired up Google Music, and was able to play one of thousands of tracks at what sounds to me very decent quality.

Next I tried an Apple iPad 2. Again, it paired first time. I started BBC iPlayer and was able to watch a recent broadcast with excellent sound over hi-fi speakers. A Windows 8 tablet also worked well.

You can pair up to four devices, but only one at a time will be active. If the “wrong” device grabs the connection, turn Bluetooth off on that device. If you pair a fifth device, it will simply forget one of the other pairings.

So what didn’t work? Well, the StreamPort supports NFC Secure Simple Pairing, which means you can connect a device simply by tapping it. I tried with the NFC-enabled Xperia T and got the amusingly polite message, “Unfortunately content sharing has stopped.” I am not sure whether this should have worked, but I put the failure down to this being a relatively new protocol; perhaps it would work with the newer Xperia Z. Note that Apple devices do not currently support NFC at all.

I also experienced very occasional audible stuttering, which is unfortunate, though most of the time everything was fine. Still, this could be annoying. I heard it on music on the iPad and on the Windows tablet, but BBC iPlayer was fine. I guess it may depend on the underlying bitrate and how much data is being transferred. I am reluctant to pin the blame on the StreamPort; rather, it is a common problem with Bluetooth audio, it may or may not be something you experience, and shows that the implementation of the standard (or the drivers) on devices has a little way to go before it is rock-solid everywhere.

Is the quality as good as it is through a cable? Generally not, though how noticeable the loss of quality is in the realm of “it depends”. It is a digital connection, so in some circumstances (if the analogue output is poor) it could be better.

Bear in mind that if you are using a mobile device as the source, you are probably not looking for the best possible sound quality; but you will probably be pleasantly surprised by how good it can sound.

The actual quality will depend first, on the quality of the source, and second, on what audio protocol the source negotiates with the StreamPort. Bayan states that best quality will be from Bluetooth devices that support aptX compressed audio. The protocol used is generally invisible to the user, so all you will notice is how good it sounds. Generally a more recent device will sound better. At a minimum, your Bluetooth source has to support version 2.1 and the A2DP profile, otherwise it will not work at all.

In the box is the StreamPort, two audio connection cables, a USB cable for power, a USB mains adaptor, and a brief manual.

Two final thoughts. One is that Apple has its own AirPlay system for wireless audio; but thanks to the rise of Android we are seeing more Bluetooth audio devices coming on the market. Since Apple devices work with Bluetooth audio, but Android and other devices do not work with AirPlay, this is an obvious response to demand.

Second, it is reasonable to expect Bluetooth audio to be built into an increasing proportion of new playback equipment. Of course, in this case you will not need the StreamPort. It is not that common yet though, which makes the StreamPort a handy accessory. Recommended.

Tim Anderson's IT Writing

Monthly Archives: March 2013