CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 119

Two new Exynos SoCs have leaked online suggesting that Samsung could be introducing new SoCs for mid-range devices.

The first processor is the Exynos 9610 which is a step below the company's current leading SoC, the Exynos 8895. The Exynos 9610 is expected to use the 14nm process similar to the one used by the Exynos 8890 inside of the Galaxy S7.

The 9610 doesn't use a combination of Samsung's Mongoose cores with A53 cores, but rather off-the-shelf A73 cores instead. The interesting development is the inclusion of ARM's new G72 GPU which was announced at Computex and should be a pretty sizable upgrade over the G71 in the previous generation. It also has Cat. 13 LTE which isn't quite as fast as what's in the Exynos 8895.

We're living in a world where our new graphics cards are made on the impressive 14nm and 16nm nodes, and we have companies like Qualcomm and Samsung making the latest and greatest SoCs on the small 10nm node - but IBM has trumped them all.

IBM has recently began testing their new 5nm process, with a huge 30 billion transistors - 30,000,000,000 transistors on something as small as your finger nail, just let that sink in. A couple of years ago the team hit 7nm and had 20 billion transistors which was impressive back then, but now we're at 5nm and 30 billion transistors. Amazing stuff.

The team at IBM hopes to see the impressive new 5nm chip helping their own cognitive computing efforts, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other "data intensive" tasks. The new chip could also help smartphones, with "two to three times" more battery life than we have now. We shouldn't expect that, but maybe a blend of improved battery life and speed - all balanced perfectly on 5nm. We shouldn't expect 7nm any time before 2018 at the earliest, so 5nm is still quite a while away.

Intel might have unveiled their new Core i9 range of processors at Computex 2017, led by the flagship Core i9-7980XE processor and its 18C/36T of power. Except, that monster will not see the light of day until 2018 according to an ASUS representative.

"Raja@ASUS" on the ASUS ROG forums replied to someone asking about the benefits of Intel's new 18-core CPU, to which he responded with: "The 18-core CPUs are not scheduled until later this year. Won't have them for a while. Either way, unless you're using the rig for rendering or encoding to make a living, no need".

I don't think we'll see the Core i9-7980XE until early 2018, which will let AMD have plenty of time to get ThreadRipper into the hands of consumers with the full 16C/32T of power and a full 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes compared to the 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes on X299 from Intel.

Computex 2017 - AMD had its big reveal of its upcoming Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs this week at Computex 2017, but now we're hearing that the new 16C/32T variant will cost just $849... and if that's true, Intel is in for a world of hurt.

Intel's upcoming flagship Core i9-7980XE will cost $1999 and offer 18C/36T, slightly more than AMD's flagship Ryzen ThreadRipper and 16C/32T of CPU grunt. But if the $849 price is right, AMD will be charging less than half the cost, at $1150 cheaper. For that cost, you could get the motherboard and a good kit of DDR4 RAM and still have change left over.

Intel's upcoming 16C/32T chip is $1699, which is still massively more expensive than the rumored $849 price on the Ryzen ThreadRipper 16C/32T processor. If we are going to be in a world where AMD is charging $849 for a processor with similar performance to Intel's CPU that costs $2000... well... we're going to be in for a wild ride.

Computex 2017 - AMD unleashed their new ThreadRipper CPUs at Computex, offering a full stack of multi-threaded processors with up to 16C/32T, and 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes through the new X399 chipset - but, Ryzen 7 pricing is now dropping big time.

AMD's current Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 7 1700X, and Ryzen 7 1700 have all had price drops - and are in effect on Amazon and Newegg. The AMD Ryzen 7 1800X was $49 and can now be found for $459, while the Ryzen 7 1700X was $399 and is now just $349, while the Ryzen 7 1700 drops from $329 to just $299.

I thought it would be Intel that would drop the prices on their Core range of processors, but this puts AMD in a great position ahead of the big launch for ThreadRipper.

Computex 2017 - AMD unleashed their new HEDT platform at Computex 2017, detailing ThreadRipper and its new X399 chipset. Intel fought back with its new Core X-Series announcement and the new $1999 flagship CPU with Core i9-7980XE.

AMD might not have a consumer CPU with 18C/36T, but it will be offering 16C/32T with their flagship ThreadRipper 1998X processor. Interestingly, AMD has nailed the TDP on ThreadRipper where they're offering far superior TDP numbers on their processors. For example, Intel's new 6C/12T right up to the 10C/20T have 140W TDPs, while AMD sips 125W. It's only 15W, but traditionally it has been Intel that has superior TDP numbers.

There will be 9 different Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs in total, with the 'X' models featuring XFR (Extended Frequency Range), which allows the ThreadRipper CPUs to scale their clock speeds past the traditional boost clocks, and it scales the CPU clocks with cooling. So if you have air cooling, you'll hit a certain frequency, but AIO water cooling and LN2 setups will benefit more with XFR.

Computex 2017 - AMD might not have Radeon RX Vega anywhere near ready for consumer and gamers' consumption, but that didn't stop them from unleashing their new ThreadRipper CPU at Computex.

AMD detailed their new ThreadRipper in Taipei, announcing it has a whopping 16C/32T of CPU performance, 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes (more on why this is the most important part in a minute), quad-channel DDR4 support, and their new X399 chipset for HEDT.

The new X399 chipset supports 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes which is perfect for 2/3/4-way GPU setups (4-way Radeon RX Vega anyone?!) and the world of M.2 SSDs that use those precious PCIe lanes. Not only that, but we have quad-channel DDR4 support with up to 8 x DIMMs on high-end motherboards.

Computex 2017 - Intel has just launched its new HEDT offensive with the introduction of the new Core i9-7980XE processor offering 18C/36T of CPU performance for a whopping $2000.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-7980XE will have 18C/36T of CPU performance at a yet unknown frequency, but their new 10C/20T chip in the Core i9-7900X sees a base clock of 3.3GHz, Turbo Boost 2.0 clock of 4.3GHz, and scales right up to 4.5GHz under Turbo Boost Max 3.0 tech.

The new Core i9 Extreme processor will feature support for Intel's AVX-512 instruction set, Turbo Boost Max 3.0, 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes, quad-channel DDR4 support at up to DDR4-2666, rebalanced Intel Smart Cache hierarchy, and support for Intel's Optane memory.

At Computex 2017, ARM announced two new CPUs and a new GPU to update their product line for devices coming in 2018. ARM always announces their newest processors ahead of time because their customers, the chip makers, need to build the chips with those new processors.

The two new CPUs that ARM has announced are the Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 which are supposed to replace the Cortex-A73 and A53 in smartphones today. ARM says that their 'big' processors like the A75 will get refreshes once every year while the smaller or 'LITTLE' CPUs will get refreshes every 2-3 years, like we are seeing now with the A55.

The interesting part about these new processors other than the obvious performance and power improvements is that ARM's CPU cores can now be configured in a single cluster in odd numbers like 1 + 7 or 2 + 5 which wasn't possible before. ARM's new DynamIQ technology helps to make these new cluster combinations possible. These combinations can also be made within a single cluster of cores rather than multiple clusters as long as they are under 8 cores total. More clusters are possible, but most people will rarely see over 8 in a smartphone.

When we first reported that AMD would be calling its now current-gen processors Ryzen, the name just didn't stick at first - but here we are, with a slew of Ryzen processors that are starting to make Intel squirm.

But according to a new trademark filing, it looks like AMD is working on new products called Kyzen, Aragon, Pharos, Promethean, Zenso, and CoreAmp. All of these product names were trademarked in March, with a few of them already released. What can we expect from these new, interestingly named AMD products?

Well, Kyzen sounds just like Ryzen - so maybe this is a new CPU from AMD, or maybe even a new APU. I have a 'cryo' feel from Kyzen, so maybe we're looking at a heavily overclockable Ryzen processor that will be released as Kyzen? Who knows. Next up we have Aragon - very Lord of the Rings. Promethean will most likely end up as a chipset, as AMD named their Ryzen chipset Promontory - with Promethean being very close to that.