CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 130

Intel's new Kaby Lake architecture is so close I can smell it, with the upcoming Core i7-7700K processor already up for pre-order on an Estonian online retailer website for what equates to $402.

The specs listed on the website state the Core i7-7700K is a quad-core processor with 8 threads at 4.2GHz, but it'll hit 4.5GHz under Turbo Boost, a higher frequency than previously reported. Intel's upcoming Core i7-7700K should rock 8MB of L3 cache, and a 95W TDP, while slotting into the LGA1151 socket.

Kaby Lake will work on some current Z170-based motherboards, while newer Z270-based boards should be launching in the near future. The new Kaby Lake architecture is made on Intel's latest 14nm+ node, which provides up to 12% more performance over the older Skylake architecture made on 14nm.

AMD's upcoming Zen CPUs and new AM4 socket are closer and closer to being revealed, and now we have leaked shots of the PGA (Pin Grid Array) design which looks to have 1331 pins - just 6 short of that awesome 1337 number, AMD.

The current AM3+ socket from AMD is running out of steam, with the upcoming AM4 socket delivering native PCIe 3.0 support as well as native USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 functionality. AM4 will support dual-channel DDR4 RAM with up to 4 x DDR4 DIMMs at 3200MHz. The new socket will support up to 24 PCIe lanes, depending on the chipset - bringing AMD to an equal playing field against Intel's mainstream LGA 1151 socket.

AM4, just like previous sockets from AMD, is a PGA socket with zero insertion force. The same locking mechanism is in play, with the same 40x40mm space used on AM4, just like AM3+ before it. AMD has changed the pin count up on the AM4 however, with 1331 pins over the 942 of AM3+ and even more than Intel's current LGA 1151 socket - a first for AMD.

AMD will be launching its next-gen Zen architecture in February 2017, alongside a new high-end X370 series chipset. The news is coming from Benchlife, teasing the Bristol Ridge series of APUs based on the Excavator CPU architecture, and GCN 3.0-based graphics architecture.

The upcoming AM4 socket will be split into three different chipsets, with the high-end X370 leading the way, and behind it we have the B350 and A320 chipsets. The Zen FX-based CPUs will be part of the upcoming Summit Ridge family of processors, including PCIe 3.0 support, dual channel DDR4 memory controllers, lots of L3 cache, updated storage features including USB 3.1 and NVMe, and more. We can also expect to see CPUs arrive with between 4/8 cores with 8/16 threads, and consuming between 65-95W of power.

Motherboard makers are already reportedly building their inventories of X370-based motherboards, with companies preparing to unveil some of their AM4 motherboards in October. AMD will most likely show off their Zen CPUs and new X370 chipset during CES 2017 in January.

Intel had previously pegged its upcoming shift to the 7nm node for 2020, but according to the latest rumors it has been delayed through to 2020.

The company has been looking for a processor designer to work in their new Microarchitecture Research Lab that's based in Bangalore, India. The new processor designer would join a team of engineers to "spearhead the research and advanced development" of both processor cores and graphics processors that will be deployed in the "2020 and beyond timeframe" using Intel's "futuristic" 7nm manufacturing tech.

Intel has recently updated the job advertisement, changing the date of its 7nm node from 2020 to 2022, with the job noting: "The India Lab specifically, in collaboration with MRL-US and Intel product architecture teams worldwide, will spearhead the research and advanced development of Microprocessor Cores in the 2022 and beyond timeframe. By conceiving of and prototyping radical approaches, the Lab will aim to deliver much greater CPU power and area efficiency while still delivering industry-leading performance. The microarchitecture and design of these advanced CPUs will be aggressively co-optimized with Intel's sub-10nm technology nodes deep into the next decade".

AMD's upcoming Zen architecture continues to build hype, with the new Zen-based Naples processor having benchmarks leaked onto the web over the weekend.

The Geekbench database had a new addition with the codename for the platform teased as 2S1451A4VIHE4_29/14_N, which looks to be a dual-socket platform that can take two of AMD's next-gen Naples CPUs. Each CPU has 32 cores and 64 threads, meaning we will see 128-threaded systems in 2017 from AMD, running at 1.44GHz base, and 2.9GHz boost (at least for now, these clocks could improve with time).

Each CPU complex has 4 cores with 8MB of L3 cache, which means the 32-core variant will feature up to 64MB of L3 cache, which means Intel might have something to worry about in 2017. The motherboard used was codenamed "AMD Corporation Diesel", which was powered by a huge 128GB of DDR4 memory, leaving the Geekbench results at 1141 points for single-threaded operation, and 15,620 for multi-threaded performance.

AMD has been making strides in its CPU division, but the next big leap looks like it'll come from something called 'Starship'. What is Starship? According to our friends at Fudzilla, Starship rocks 48 physical CPU cores, and 96 threads in total - yeah, it's a beast.

Starship is a concept project right now, with AMD looking to land the CPU sometime in 2018 or beyond. AMD will tap the 7nm process, skipping the 10nm node for Starship, using GlobalFoundries as their semiconductor manufacturer.

Fudzilla reports - and yes we know, this report is from June - that AMD's next-gen Starship will arrive in TDPs of 35W and 180W, so we're sure the 180W part will be the 96-threaded beast.

The latest CPUs from Intel and AMD won't be supported on Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Much to the dismay of Windows 7 users everywhere, Microsoft is keeping its word: Intel's new 7th-generation Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen processors will only work with Windows 10 PCs.

Back in January Microsoft wrote up a controversial edict that tried to shorten Skylake's lifecycle on legacy Windows OS and lock newer CPU hardware--including Kaby Lake and Zen--exclusively to Windows 10. After tons of pressure from the PC crowd, Redmond relented on Skylake...but what about Kaby Lake and Zen? Both processors are on the horizon, and PC enthusiasts need to know if their OS will be compatible.

Earlier this year Tesla showed their intent to beef up their chip expertise with the hiring of former AMD and Apple CPU designer Jim Keller. That move indicated that Tesla might be considering building their own chips for their cars which previously seemed far-fetched since they had stuck with NVIDIA and Mobileye for so long.

Then, following a high-profile accident which resulted in a death of a customer Tesla dropped Mobileye as a chip supplier which seemed sudden but may have made more sense since they were acquiring chip experts like Jim Keller.

Now, Tesla appears to be expanding their hiring to GPU engineers with the hiring of Anand Mandapati who was most recently employed by Apple according to his LinkedIn. Prior to that, he was employed by AMD for quite some time and helped them with their Nintendo console design wins. This puts him in similar company to Jim Keller who is also an alum of both AMD and Apple. It will be interesting to see how Tesla utilizes his expertise in GPUs, much like Jim's in CPUs.

Just as we're recovering from the massive $1650 price of the Core i7-6950X, we're now seeing leaked benchmarks of Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-based Core i7-7700K processor.

Some CPU benchmark results have been spotted on SiSoft SANDRA 2015, with the Intel Core i7-7700K processor rocking a default clock speed of 4.2GHz, and a Turbo Boost frequency of 4.5GHz. The Core i7-7700K looks like it might feature 8MB of L3 cache, and of course - HyperThreading technology.

We can expect a refreshed Z270 chipset that will co-exist with the current Z170 platform, meaning that LGA1151-based boards might support the new Kaby Lake processors with a simple BIOS update.

Researchers at Princeton University have created an open-source 25-core processor that can be scaled in an array to create "a single system containing millions of cores."

Princeton's new computer chip is called Piton, and it's a many-core open-source research processor aimed at revolutionizing data-center and enterprise-grade cloud-based solutions that power the internet--from email to Facebook and Twitter--with a cheap yet extremely efficient new scalable CPU architecture.

The Princeton Piton Processor is a 25-core customized CPU designed by Professor David Wentzlaff and his team, featuring 25 modified OpenSPARC T1 cores that operate at a 1GHz per-core clock frequency. Piton is also outfitted with 460 million transistors, and was taped-out in IBM's 32m SOI process. Piton's main advantage is that it's scalable, meaning an array of some thousand Piton chips could be combined in an array to "enable thousands of cores on a single chip."