CPU, APU & Chipsets - Page 171

It's an end of an era: Intel has confirmed through their latest K-10 filing that its infamous 'tick-tock' process development cycle is dead.

Instead of having two processor families on each die shrink, Intel will be using three or more over the coming years. The K-10 filing states that Intel will "expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14 [nanometer] and our next-generation 10 [nanometer] process technologies".

Intel will continue to release new products each year, but there will be a tighter control over architecture optimization, as the development of process technology slows. So... what does this mean? It confirms that Intel's next-gen 'Kaby Lake' platform will be made on 14nm. It also confirms that the release window for 10nm from Intel will be 2017 at the earliest, and 7nm - well, that's 2019-2020 or beyond now.

One of the fastest APUs from the Bristol Ridge family will be just as fast as the Xbox One, according to a new rumor from Bitsnchips.

AMD's new Bristol Ridge family will feature a powerful APU that will be quite powerful, easily taking on the consoles in providing a 1080p gaming experience, in a small package and price. AMD is expected to launch its new Bristol Ridge family at Computex, so we should expect more details in June.

As for the rumor, the flagship Bristol Ridge-based APU would feature 16 compute units that are based on the GCN 1.3 architecture. The 16 compute units would include 1024 stream processors, which is the same SP count as AMD's Radeon HD 7850. The HD 7850 launched in 2012, and was a great budget/mid-range GPU - if we see this performance in an APU, things could get very exciting for AMD.

Marvell just expanded their line of ARMADA SoC ecosystem, that are frequently used in NAS and other networking devices, to include native support for open-source software platforms like OpenWRT and openSUSE.

Before now Marvell didn't officially support any other software than that which was initially installed on their platforms. Adding support in the kernel of the various open-source OS's required a lot of time from volunteers to make it work properly. Because of that, support was always a bit precarious, and it could take quite awhile for new devices to be added to the compatibility lists.

Now, however, their 64-bit ARMv8 powered ARMADA 3700 Cortex-A53 device family and ARMADA 7K and ARMADA 8K Cortex-A72 device families are getting full-fledged support for the Linux kernel as well as U-Boot support. That means that it'll be compatible with a much wider range of OS's, anything that has ARM support baked in can run on their chips, essentially.

AMD is doubling down on their embedded G-Series SoC's, tiny APU's designed with industrial applications in mind. The newest members of the family are the 3rd generation of their embedded platform, putting Excavator based cores in the high-end and Jaguar-based cores in the low-end, and they're completely pin compatible with earlier iterations of the G series (and R for the high-end chips being announced), allowing easier upgrading for customers on older hardware.

The new G-Series LX fills in the low-end with two Jaguar cores with GCN and AMD's ARM-based security co-processor. It operates at a very low 6-15W and can withstand far harsher conditions than the typical desktop processor. Available in March, this new SoC is designed for the point-of-sale market and even arcade gaming market. With their ARM co-processor it might even make a good companion to industrial automation in the connected age.

The high-end G-Series marries two Excavator cores with four GCN compute units that allow for a much better compute load if OpenCL is used. AMD is targeting similar industries that need higher compute load at a low 6-15W TDP. They expect that it'll be a good fit for the digital signage and even set-top boxes, despite that arena being dominated by ARM. This too has an integrated ARM-based security co-processor.This new processor is actually pin compatible with the higher-end R series of SoC's letting customers choose between what sort of power-envelope they want.

MWC 2016 - Analogix is a company that never ceases to amaze me, with the announcement of their new SlimPort ANX7688 single-chip mobile transmitter. What makes the new SlimPort ANX7688 so special? Well now.

The SlimPort ANX7688 is capable of driving 4K 60FPS (4096x2160) or 1920x1080 at 120FPS - both from a smartphone or a tablet with full USB-C capabilities. Analogix is forward-thinking with its SlimPort ANX7688 with support and technological capabilities of driving AR and VR technologies, which require much more performance for video processing, and more.

Analogix has created the SlimPort ANX7688 with Qualcomm-based USB-C smartphones and tablets in mind, as it converts the HDMI and USB interfaces to DisplayPort. This is done with Analogix integrating a converter bridge, a high-speed mux, USB-PD support for fast-charging, and the latest HDCP 2.2 content protection. Andre Bouwer, VP of Marketing for Analogix, explains: "ANX7688 puts Analogix years ahead of the competition to enable DisplayPort over USB-C capability on smartphones and tablets".

There have been rumors of Intel delaying its 10nm technology, but the company has come out and squashed those rumors, in an ad.

Motley Fool spotted the ad, which has since been taken down, which had Intel saying that its 10nm CPU manufacturing technology would begin mass production "approximately two years" from the posting date. Intel said that the advert was wrong, reiterating that its "first 10-nanometer product is planned for the second half of 2017".

Intel should be positioning itself to have 10nm server processors ready for launch in the first half of 2018, with the consumer market to continue making good use of the 14nm CPUs until 10nm supplies become available in larger numbers.

Intel launched their new Broadwell-based Xeon D processors last week, led by the impressive Xeon D-1587. Intel's new Xeon D family includes a few system-on-chip (SoCs) that are aimed at the microserver and storage markets, thanks to Intel being able to make the new Xeon D family in a low TDP package.

The flagship Xeon D-1587 is a beast in itself, with 16 physical cores with 32 logical threads. It boasts 24MB of cache, and has its 16 cores clocked at 1.7GHz, best of all - it rocks this all at 65W. Impressive, eh? The next one down is the Xeon D-1577 which has the same specifications, 16 cores and the same 24MB cache, but a 1.3GHz clock speed and only 45W TDP. Last of all, is the Xeon D-1571 which features the same 16-core goodness, falling in line with the Xeon E5 V4 processors powered by Broadwell-EP. But, it gets a clock speed of 1.3GHz, 24MB cache, and same 45W TDP.

Intel's new Broadwell-powered Xeon D processors arrive in BGA packaging, so you'll need to purchase them directly from Intel's AIB partners, such as SuperMicro, GIGABYTE, or others. As for pricing, the Xeon D-1571 is priced at $1222, so expect the Xeon D-1587 to be priced a little higher than that. But the next question is: what about performance? Yeah well, Intel has you covered there, too. Before that, we have support for dual-channel DDR4 2133MHz, or DDR3L at 1600MHz. The system would support up to 128GB of RDIMM, 64GB of UDIMM/SO-DIMM in ECC or non-ECC. The SoC features a total of 24 x PCIe 3.0 lanes and 8 x PCIe 2.0 lanes, while we have dual 10GbE for networking, 4 x USB 3.0 and 4 x USB 2.0 ports, with 6 x SATA 6Gbps ports for HDD connectivity.

It seems that the Oculus website doesn't quite agree with AMD's current lineup of CPU's, and won't certify you as having a VR ready PC if you happen to have one, either. Now, it's well known, and not refuted by any means, that the performance is certainly not on par with Intel's current generation (and last generation) of CPU's, but that doesn't mean that they won't be able to provide a good VR experience, either. So AMD has released their own list of VR ready processors so that AMD owners, and fans, aren't left out.

The list contains CPU's that have been tested to a certain standard of performance, internally, when using VR. Essentially, Vishera is more than capable of handling the complex tasks in VR with higher clock speeds. The FX 8350 all the way to the FX 9590 make the list, as well as the higher clocked six core variants. A note, however, is that AMD has amended their list and take off the APU's and Athlon X4 880 an 870K, though not because they can't do VR, but because they haven't been qualified internally yet.

Going to the Oculus site definitely shows a lack of enthusiasm, perhaps rightfully so, for 32nm technology first introduced in 2012. The platform may be somewhat old, but it isn't lacking in it's ability to provide a good experience. They'll happily push Intel's products, of course, as well as NVIDIA's too. It's somewhat disconcerting for those that have already invested in AMD's parts to not see their processors mentioned anywhere regarding VR. So just remember that just because it isn't on the list, it doesn't mean it can't play VR with decent visuals, just that it probably hasn't been tested quite yet.

AMD's upcoming Zen architecture is exciting on its own, but what about the Opteron line of processors? According to the latest slides used by Liviu Valsan, a Computer Engineer with CERN, the Zen-based Opteron is going to be a beast.

The slide teases that the Zen-based Opteron would be made on the 14nm process, "expected to bring a 40% improvement for Instructions Per Clock compared to current generation AMD processors", and a huge 32 physical cores. We should also see 8-channel DDR4 support, up from the quad-channel DDR4 on enthusiast platforms from Intel.

With AMD offering its Zen-based Opteron with up to 32 CPU cores, it means the company can scale right down to SKUs with 8, 16, and 24 cores, too. This means on the consumer desktop platform, AMD will have 8-core FX series CPUs, but it would be nice to see 16-core processors based on Zen, too.

Deep neural-networks require a tremendous amount of power to actually be as effective as the human brain. Sure your Tesla Model S might ave a small DNN powered by NVIDIA inside, but it isn't nearly complex enough to to provide a full true-to-life aritifical intelligence experience. New breakthroughs from MIT might be able to provide full-on human-brain inspired AI experience on your phone.

Researchers at MIT presented a new chip mobile chip that's designed specifically for neural networks and it happens to be 10 times more efficient than any mobile GPU currently in production. They're calling it the "Eyeriss" and the researchers are hoping that it can potentially change small-device computing. Just imagine having Siri or Cortana being that much more useful because they've got the processing power local to them.

And beyond that this innovation could help to further develop the idea of the Internet of Things, where powerful AI programs can communicate with other devices and coordinate tasks to get things done nearly invisible to the user. The possiblities are endless with the way that individual small-machines needn't be connected to the Internet itself for the compute power itself, but instead merely for communication.