CPU, APU & Chipsets

AMD's upcoming flagship Strix Halo APU has been spotted, with the new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor getting churned through Geekbench, ahead of its CES 2025 reveal.

The new AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU was spotted on Geekbench with the full name of "AMD RYZEN AI MAX+ 395 w/ Radeon 8060S" confirming that the flagship Strix Halo includes the "Max+" naming scheme, dropping the "9" that we saw with Strix Point APUs.

AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor will feature 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 CPU power, with the largest amount of integrated GPU cores with 40 RDNA 3.5-based Compute Units. We should also see 32MB of L3 cache per CCD, for a total of 64MB of MALL cache. We'll see up to 96GB of RAM supported on the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, too.

AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D is the undisputed gaming champion - you can read about it in our in-depth review of Team Red's first Zen 5 X3D chip. After a string of somewhat lackluster CPU launches from both AMD and Intel this year, at least when viewed from the perspective of a PC gamer, the 9800X3D arrived on the scene like Duke Nukem 3D - ready to kick butt and chew some bubblegum.

With AMD's 3D V-cache technology, it's a CPU designed for gaming performance. However, its 8-core and 16-thread design also brought non-gaming performance improvements to the X3D line-up. This presents a best-of-both-worlds option to consumers, which has led to the AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D CPU selling out in several locations.

Currently, demand for the 9800X3D exceeds supply, and AMD is working to alleviate this. However, even though new CPUs are being sent to retailers every week, you might have to wait until 2025.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has departed the company ahead of what was meant to be a four-year stint as CEO, and seemingly at the same time as Intel announcing its new "Battlemage" GPU.

Intel has announced via a new press release that company CEO Pat Gelsinger will be departing the chipmaker as both a CEO and board member. Gelsinger's departure from the company came into effect on December 1, 2024. According to industry analyst Patrick Moorhead, chief analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, who theorized, Intel's board of directors "made a decision or overruled a decision that Gelsinger thought was a bad one and he was out." Adding, "Something happened in the last week."

The departure of Gelsinger comes at a tumultuous time for Intel, as the company is still recovering from numerous missteps over the past few years. 13th and 14th generation CPU failures and the lack of disclosure regarding the issue to its customers broke consumer trust. Additionally, Intel largely missed the massive AI boat which is now being absolutely dominated by NVIDIA. All of these mistakes and others resulted in Intel letting go of 15% of its employees, or 15,000 staff members.

Apple has reportedly ordered next-gen M5 chips for its new iPad Pro and Macs from TSMC, with mass production expected in 2H 2025.

In a new report from TheElec, we're learning that Apple's new M5 chips will be made on TSMC's new 3nm process node, and not the advanced 2nm node that was previously expected. Apple's current-gen M4 chips are made on TSMC 3nm process node, but the new M5 chips are NOT being made on 2nm most likely because of the higher costs involved.

Instead, Apple is expected to use TSMC's new System-on-Integrated-Chip (SoIC) technology, with the 3D chip-stacking approach boosts thermal management and reduces electrical leakage compared to traditional 2D designs for its new M5 processors.

Intel is navigating the "most difficult period in its 56-year history," from Foundry issues to a plummeting stock price, massive layoffs of its workforce, and controversies surrounding its desktop CPU products. With the company seemingly in damage control, there is speculation that it would split off its foundry or chip-making business as a measure to turn things around.

As it turns out, Intel's CHIPS Act deal with the U.S. government is worth $7.86 billion and has a particular "change of control" restriction. The restriction or stipulation of the agreement states that Intel needs to retain 50.1% of control or ownership of its Foundry business. If Intel plans to spin off this part of its business to become a separate entity (which it is doing), it will have to maintain control.

The CHIPS Act aims to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the US. Hence, this restriction aligns with the endeavor's goal of making virtually all industries within the country less reliant on overseas companies for chips and processors.

Qualcomm had a gigantic marketing push with its Snapdragon X laptops a few months ago, but the company has sold only 720,000 units worldwide capturing just 0.8% market share of the AI PC market.

According to recent reports, Qualcomm has sold just 720,000 units of its Snapdragon X laptops globally over Q3 2024, making up less than 1 in every 125 devices sold. Since launch, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series mobile processors have a tiny portion of the Windows laptop market, with less than 1.5% of the ecosystem.

Canalys told TechRadar Pro: "As this was the first full quarter of shipments for Snapdragon X Series PCs, we saw sequential growth of around 180% compared to Q2 2024. However, as a proportion of the total Windows market, the products remain very niche, at less than 1.5% share. The top shipping vendor was Microsoft, which has transitioned most of their Surface line to the platform. Behind them was Dell who has embraced the new platform quite strongly in terms of SKU count, followed by HP, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS (all four with similar volumes)".

We recently reported on Intel's plans to "fix" Intel Core Ultra 200S, or Arrow Lake, CPU performance at the BIOS and OS level. Robert Hallock, Intel's VP and GM of client AI and technical marketing, made the comments in response to the underwhelming gaming performance of Intel's latest desktop CPU range.

As highlighted in our Intel Core Ultra 9 285K review, where we wrote, "Enthusiasts looking for the best gaming performance should sit this one out, at least for now. Arrow Lake feels underdone. In time, we expect to see some gaming performance gains, whether it's via Windows, improved thread scheduling, game engine awareness, or BIOS updates."

Exactly one month after we reviewed Intel's new flagship desktop CPU, a Windows-specific update has arrived in the form of a new Intel Platform Power Management (or Intel PPM) driver. ASRock made the announcement, confirming that it's available for its Z890 series of motherboards, and encourages everyone "to download and install it promptly to enhance Intel Core Ultra series processor performance."

AMD's next-gen Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs have been spotted: in 96-core and 16-core form, ready with the new Zen 5 architecture for HEDT systems.

The company has successfully launched its new Zen 5 architecture inside of the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs and the new Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, but the HEDT side of things has been quiet. Well, it looks like Zen 5-powered Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs are coming, ready for that huge SP6 socket.

We saw the 96-core, 192-thread flagship Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPU in an NBD shipping manifest in August, with the latest shipping manifest including the flagship 96-core CPU, and the entry-level 16-core CPU. The shipping manifests don't mention "Shimada Peak" but we're pretty sure that's what we're looking at with these logs.

Ubitium has just revealed that it is developing the first Universal Processor, with the RISC-V startup combining CPU, GPU, DSP, and FPGA into a single chip that could change up the market.

Where this new universal processor from Ubitium is different, is that instead of APUs and AI GPUs and accelerators from AMD and NVIDIA, the approach by Ubitium will see each and every transistor on the Universal Processor to be reused for everything. There are no "specialized" cores like CPUs and GPUs, each transistor is capable of whatever it needs to do... universal.

Ubitium emerged from stealth status this year, with the developers on the team including semiconductor veterans who have worked for some of the most important tech companies in the US: Intel, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, as well as smaller places like PACT XPP Technologies.

AMD is preparing its higher-end Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D processors for a CES 2025 unveil, and late January launch on shelves.

The new Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor is already on the market and has been very well received, but the 8-core, 16-thread 9800X3D processor is soon to be joined by the Ryzen 9 9900X3D with 12 cores 24 threads, and then the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D with a huge 16 cores and 32 threads with the exciting new second-gen 3D V-Cache technology on-board.

In a new post on X by leaker Hoang Anh Phu we're told that the 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors will launch in late January 2025, with the new dual CCD (Core Complex Die) processors to NOT have a 3D V-Cache stack on each chiplet. AMD is using the same design as the 7950X3D and 7900X3D, where there is an extra 64MB of 3D V-Cache for a single die only.