Month: April 2022

We are producing colossal amounts information every day due to a profusion of digital technologies and apps that use AI/ML and IoT. Moreover, all signs indicate that demand for digital storage will continue to grow at unprecedented levels for decades to come.

To provide greater storage efficiencies and value for customers managing data at scale, Samsung Electronics and Western Digital, two of the world’s largest storage providers, have recently partnered to help usher in the standardization of next-generation data placement, processing and fabrics storage technologies (D2PF), including Zoned Storage.

The two companies believe the adoption of next-generation storage standards is the most effective way to ensure that hardware and software can be effectively combined within the system stack to maximize performance and functionality while reducing costs. Samsung and Western Digital have partnered to bring this vision into reality. They are encouraging wide industry collaboration between storage stakeholder groups. Through collaboration, the companies can help assure customers that storage ecosystem vendors support the new technology standards and system architectures for efficiently handling today’s data workloads as well as tomorrow’s.

The Reality of Today’s Data Infrastructures

We are well into the zettabyte (ZB) era, a period characterized by quantities of data so vast that understanding it has become trickier than ever. The mind-numbing amounts of data being produced today emphasizes the urgency of rethinking how data centers and cloud infrastructures are designed and operated.

Against this background of hypergrowth, there is the possibility for fragmentation about standards and systems which could slow down the ecosystem’s attempts to keep up with growing storage needs.

“We have entered into a golden era for data consumption, analytics and storage. One of the surest ways to undo all that good would be if the industry were to implement conflicting systems and standards,” said Cheolmin Park, Vice President of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “From AC versus DC in the old electric wars to Betamax versus VHS, history teaches us that industries which lack clear standards and formats see periods of missed opportunities and wasteful spending. The adoption of effective standards will minimize complexity, drive out inefficiency and reduce the cost of products and services, which benefits vendors and end-users alike. If data storage is to meet the future needs of end-users, what the industry needs now is broad consensus on Zoned Storage. “

Focusing on the Future of Zoned Storage

As part of Samsung and Western Digital’s agreement, the companies are focusing their initial efforts on creating a healthy ecosystem and solid application support around Zoned Storage.

Currently, large-scale data infrastructure relies on tens of thousands of solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard-disk drives (HDDs). Because these large-scale systems are so complex and manage such a lot of data, any inconsistency in storage device or system architecture can lead to costly costs.

Zoned Storage, an open-source and standards-based project that allows data center storage infrastructures to scale effectively and efficiently, is Zoned Storage For hyperscale cloud and enterprise vendors, some of which possess ZB-scale storage needs, Zoned Storage will help to improve asset utilization, lower latency and reduce costs.

Zoned storage is made up of two technologies. These are Shingled Magnetic Recording in HDDs or Zoned Namespaces in SSDs. ZNS SSDs are the heart of Zoned Storage. These drives divide their address space into distinct zones, streamlining the drive architecture by equipping the host with the ability to place data in the appropriate zone.

Future-Forward Technology for a Data-First World

As an innovative storage solution, Zoned Storage has unconventional data-writing rules. Zones can be written sequentially starting from the beginning of a zone, and the data within a zone cannot be arbitrarily overwritten. Therefore, it is highly important that the industry aligns around the host software stack that enables storage systems to optimally leverage the power of Zoned Storage. This host-device model alignment is a crucial theme of the overall initiative. Samsung, Western Digital, and other ecosystem partners have committed to contributing software components to enable Zoned Storage’s success via the open-source community.

Implementing Zoned Storage on the host allows system software and hardware to work in unison with much greater efficiency. ZNS can reduce the amount of over-provisioning, and it eliminates problems related to QoS variability and write amplification. The solution increases capacity due to higher device density, and can provide long-term performance even when the device has reached its maximum capacity. Furthermore, ZNS boasts greater endurance than traditional storage methods as the data does not need to be constantly rewritten.

Whether a device is SAS-SATA (HDD or SSD) or NVMe(tm) SSD, Zoned Storage can be highly effective, and will enable more efficient system-wide performance management for everyone’s benefit.

“The implementation and continued development of Zoned Storage will empower the storage industry to strike a balance between cost, latency and performance through the use of intelligent architectures,” said Wim De Wispelaere, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Western Digital. “As an industry, we are at a point where we must align around the technologies and systems that will drive data storage in the near future and for decades to come — in the most intelligent and efficient way possible.”

For the Benefit of All

This collaboration between Samsung & Western Digital is a reflection of both companies’ conviction that new standards are necessary for storage to meet data demand.

The two companies have already launched an initiative involving Zoned Storage devices including ZNS SSDs. As part of an effort to enable open and scalable data center architectures, they founded the Zoned Storage Technical Work Group, which SNIA approved in December 2021, and are working with the Linux Foundation to set up a similar project workgroup. Samsung and Western Digital are working together to create high-level frameworks and models for innovative Zoned Storage technologies.

ZNS is the first of numerous D2PF collaborations designed to pave the way for innovative new data centers and cloud services. Samsung and Western Digital are committed to enabling a high degree of cooperation among key stakeholders in generating storage solutions that nicely suit a data-first world, along with everyone in it.

FromSoftware released a new patch for its wildly successful and difficult open-world RPG Elden Ring on Tuesday. You can view the long list of patch notes at Bandai Namco’s website, but the 1. 04 update features a few key changes: the overpowered bleed dogs are nerfed, and the illusory wall is gone.

Zullie the Witch tested the patch Tuesday and discovered that overpowered Rotten Stray dog breeds weren’t nearly as hard as the previous versions. Before the update, the bleed dogs had a glitch whereby the game could deal massive health damage to your character thanks to an error tied to their attack animation — an error making Rotten Stray dogs stronger than some bosses, even. Now, they’re fixed. We don’t necessarily mean that they are “fixed”, as in “taking them to a vet.” Zullie the Witch demonstrated the changes in this video.

Zullie reported another important change. The mysterious, illusory wall doesn’t disappear anymore. In March, players discovered a fake wall in Volcano Manor that dissolved when you hit it 50 times. At first, players weren’t sure if developers were using it to hide secrets, or if it was just a bug. The wall won’t collapse to reveal another room after the patch. It appears the destructible walls, although illusory and effective, were not meant to be a way to reveal more secrets, but a method to conceal an unwelcome room.

A worker has accused Nintendo and staffing agency Aston Carter of violating the National Labor Relations Act, according to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) docket published Monday. Axios first reported the complaint.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, workers are protected by law in their right to form a union and self-organize. The complaint, filed Monday in Washington, names both Nintendo and Aston Carter, a staffing agency Nintendo apparently uses to hire workers in contract positions. The unnamed worker alleges that Nintendo and Aston Carter engaged in “concerted activities,” like retaliation toward, firing, refusing to hire, or disciplining organizing workers; “coercive actions,” like surveillance of those workers; and “coercive statements,” such as threats or promises of benefits. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is meant to protect workers from unfair labor practices related to organization efforts.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday. Details included in these documents were not immediately available to the public — just the public docket. Nintendo has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

Nintendo of America, a Japanese subsidiary of Japanese Nintendo, is located in Redmond. Nintendo as a whole has 27 subsidiaries and more than 6,500 employees, according to a Corporate Responsibility report published in 2021. Nintendo, like other videogame companies, sometimes depends on contract labor to develop certain positions.

With this lawsuit, Nintendo of America is joining a growing list of video-game companies who have been accused of labor abuses. Currently, the NLRB is pursuing a labor dispute with Activision Blizzard’s leadership and its quality assurance (QA), workers at subsidiary Raven Software. Raven Software QA workers have announced that they will unionize. The employees are calling themselves Game Workers Alliance and are awaiting a procedural ruling from the NLRB before they can vote in a formal unionization.

Elsewhere at Activision Blizzard, hundreds of workers walked out of work in 2021 following a report from the Wall Street Journal that detailed the extent of Kotick’s knowledge of employee misconduct.

The latest NLRB lawsuit comes in a time when video game workers are pushing toward unionization. Last year, Beast Breaker developer Vodeo Games became the first certified gaming studio union in North America after management voluntarily recognized it. In 2020, contracted game writers for Voltage Entertainment went on strike, and won, after 21 days without official union recognition — a first for the video game industry. And in the board games industry, United Paizo Workers and Cards Against Humanity Workers United formed unions in 2021 and 2020, respectively.

If you have ever subscribed to Game Pass, or obsess over Xbox Achievements, then you are familiar with Chris Novak’s work.

The head of Xbox research and design is leaving the company after nearly 20 years. Novak, who has been leading the user experience research efforts and designing them for over five years now, previously served as Xbox design director. Across these roles, Novak was responsible for user experience in many of the company’s biggest projects, including Xbox Game Pass, along with cloud gaming and Xbox Live.

“Microsoft has been where I’ve gotten to learn in the crucible of gaming, from the world’s best across the industry,” Novak told Polygon. It’s been both its greatest and worst moments that I have seen it. That learning experience is what I treasure .”

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Photo: Chris Novak

Novak took over Microsoft’s Xbox research and design at a turning point for the company and its flagship console. When the Xbox One launched in 2013, Microsoft’s marketing strategy failed the console: The Xbox 360 had succeeded in capturing a major gaming audience, but Microsoft looked to the Xbox One to become a full-on entertainment system. The Xbox One reveal was a notorious disaster, focusing on everything but video games. Microsoft realized quickly that it needed to win gamers back, and has not abandoned the entertainment platform.

Novak came on as head of Xbox research and design right after Microsoft was pushing hard, publicly, on the idea of Xbox being focused primarily on video games. While consoles were still important, the more exciting idea for Xbox leadership was the freedom to play Xbox games on different devices, beginning with the launch of Xbox Play Anywhere, which let players access games on a Windows PC or a console.

Xbox leader Phil Spencer dialed into a singular idea: Gamers should be able to play games anywhere, using the Xbox ecosystem. Xbox’s leadership placed a strong emphasis on cloud streaming to bring Xbox to mobile devices. Novak pointed to Microsoft’s Touch Adaptation Kit for Xbox Cloud Gaming as a particularly proud moment in his career at the company.

Image: Bizarre Creations, Ltd./Microsoft Game Studios

“How big is that challenge when you’re trying to build experiences of entire games on a device that it was never designed for? Novak stated that this was Novak’s challenge. Novak said that the xCloud team spent a lot of time working with the engineers to track down the problem and ensure that the output could be rendered to all devices. […] That is one of my proudest moments.”

Another feature he looks back to fondly is Xbox’s photo modes and achievements; Xbox Live originally almost launched with a limit of just five achievements. Novak and his team realized with Project Gotham Racing 2 that achievements reinforced Microsoft’s philosophy that different styles of play were acceptable. In Project Gotham Racing 2, most people wanted to win races and go fast, but some players wanted to take photos of shopfronts and to explore environments; a wide variety of achievements reinforced the idea of playing your way, a mantra that stayed with Novak and the company for decades.

Novak said that the biggest challenge was to balance experimental changes and keeping it comfortable for players. “It’s very easy to build things which are new but not better,” Novak said. Novak stated that most gamers want their gaming experience familiar, fast and comfortable. They should feel connected to what they are looking for as quickly as possible. If you try to do something different, it might make them think of a new flow or use another button. They might get frustrated by the .”

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Image: Microsoft

Novak continued: “Getting that balance is a continuous challenge.”

Novak announced that he is leaving Microsoft in order to take a break from Microsoft and refocus his personal life. After losing a person close to him three years ago, Novak said he wanted to take time off to learn new things. He won’t move on to a new company immediately.

“I’m just about to be 20 years with Xbox,” Novak said. Novak stated that some of the exciting things coming to Xbox include putting in years of hard work. That would be incredible. Do I really want to do that? Or do I want to acknowledge that I’m happy with what we’ve shipped? Do I actually need to go out on my own and continue my own learning journey, trying some other things. If I don’t do that now, when do I do that?”

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will finally whisk players away to the Dragon Isles, where they’ll be able to roll new Dracthyr characters and play the new Evoker class. But outside of the fancy new content, Blizzard will also be focusing on revamping older systems with Dragonflight. More specially, the much maligned talent tree will see its first major overhaul in nearly a decade.

In a pre-brief session, Polygon interviewed lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead combat designer Brian Holinka about what the revamped talent tree brings to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight.

Back in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard replaced the original tree-based talent system for a small group of very powerful skills players could choose from. The game was easier to read, especially for novice players. However, it has lost some of its depth and Blizzard wants it back.

In Dragonflight, Blizzard will completely overhaul the talent system, and return it to a version of the tree form. Players can unlock skill points when they level up to add one or both of the two skill trees to their character. One is the class skill tree, while the second is the specialization skill tree. The specialization tree can change depending on the spec players who are active.

While players won’t be able to put points into multiple specializations like in the Wrath of the Lich King, the new system does allow for customization and hybridization. Are you interested in playing into your class fantasy? Or push their unique specialization further? With the new loadout system, players will have a limited number of points, but can quickly switch to other talent loadouts within raid bosses or activities.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

With the new trees, players will be able to expand and customize their classes to fit their needs. But Blizzard stressed that while players will be able to stretch their classes in new ways, they’re still the classes they know (outside of the new Evoker class, of course).

” The intention is for players to still be comfortable with the classes they already know.” Holinka said. “We don’t want to be overly disruptive and someone logs in on patch day, and they just are like ‘everything on my action bars changed, I don’t even know how to play this class I’ve been playing for 10 years anymore.'”

Holinka made it clear that the team wants to preserve what players know, and players looking for something familiar will be able to craft their character in a “very comfortable and familiar way.” However, the opposite is also true, and players will be able to build out an almost greatest hits list for their favorite class.

“A lot talent, you know. We’ve tried to say “hey, what’s the best thing that we have created for these specs and classes throughout the years,” said Holinka. “‘Azerite traits, Artifacts, Covenant abilities. What are some of the coolest things we have, and let’s put it in a talent tree so that players can make some choices and get those cool things back.”

Holinka explained that players will be choosing the most popular traits and abilities for each class. However, they shouldn’t expect to have every ability or trait they had before. However, anything that players consider “iconic” is a safe bet.

Finally, we asked if the talent trees will be easier to expand in the future, which Holinka confirmed is part of the thinking.

After nearly a decade of very rigid selection process — Holinka said you currently make “about seven choices about your character” — and no major Azerite, Artifact, or Covenant-adjacent system in Dragonflight, the talent rework is looking to be the most significant change in the expansion. The new talent system is the key feature that will determine the future of World of Warcraft . As thrilling as new classes can be.