CPU, APU & Chipsets - Page 176
All the latest CPU and chipset news, with everything related to Intel, AMD, ARM, and Qualcomm processors & plenty more - Page 176.
Skylake CPUs can be damaged by some coolers
PCgameshardware.de has tested Intel's Skylake CPUs and found because of its thinner substrate versus its previous processors, coolers that apply a lot of pressure to the CPU and socket can damage both.
As of now, just Scythe -- who have confirmed damage to Skylake CPUs with their coolers is possible -- is the only company confirmed as affected by it as of yet. Arctic says it has verified no issues with its coolers, though it advises you don't travel with your cooler mounted; NZXT and EK Water Blocks both have stated their coolers do not experience the reported issues, with the exception of its older gen large tower coolers like the Havik 120/140 from NZXT and the older generation of compatible LGA-1151 water blocks with a "classic, undefined clamping force type mounting mechanism". These are compatible with Skylake CPUs, but both companies recommend erring on the side of caution and not using them with Skylake.
Scythe is redesigning its cooler mounting mechanism in light of it, changing screws to reduce mounting pressure. If you have a Scythe Ashura, Mugen 4, Mugen 4 PCGH-Edition, Fuma, Ninja 4, Grand Kama Cross 4, Mugen Max, or Kotetsu cooler, fill out this form to be sent a free set of these screws.
Continue reading: Skylake CPUs can be damaged by some coolers (full post)
AMD's new Zen APUs to deliver Xbox One/PS4 level performance in 2017
AMD has been teasing its Zen architecture for a little while now, but the new Zen-based APUs will be packing quite the performance punch when they drop in 2017.
It's said that we're looking at Xbox One and PS4 level performance, even when the Zen APU is found inside of notebooks - and personally, I think we might see it in VR headsets, too. Another exciting part of this news is that there's a rumor that AMD is working on a Zen APU that would feature High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM.
If AMD did this, it could really begin to make a dent in CPU sales for Intel, as people could choose a semi-powerful APU with HBM over a traditional CPU from Intel and DDR4 RAM.
Continue reading: AMD's new Zen APUs to deliver Xbox One/PS4 level performance in 2017 (full post)
Intel's leaked roadmap confirms 10-core, 20-thread Broadwell-E CPUs
We knew they were coming, but the 10-core/20-thread Broadwell-E CPUs have been confirmed through a leaked roadmap from Intel. We should expect the chipmaker to launch an entire family of Broadwell-E processors throughout 2016.
Intel is expected to launch 6-, 8-, and 10-core offerings - with the assistance of Hyper-Threading boosting those up to 12-, 16-, and 20-threaded processors. Not only that, but we should expect new Broadwell, Skylake-S, and Skylake-U processors throughout 2016, where in Q4 2016 it looks like we should see Skylake-S 4+4e and Kaby Lake-S offerings unveiled.
The Broadwell-E offerings from Intel will arrive as the Core i7-6950X, with this CPU being the flagship 20-threaded beast. Under that, we have the Core i7-6900K, Core i7-6850K, and Core i7-6800K.
Continue reading: Intel's leaked roadmap confirms 10-core, 20-thread Broadwell-E CPUs (full post)
Intel's new Xeon Phi co-processor has 16GB of RAM, 5x faster than DDR4
Intel has provided more details on its second-generation Xeon Phi co-processor at the annual SC conference, with the new Knights Landing beast nearly ready to be shipped.
The company has said they've already sent out various pre-production systems to clients through its early ship program, with Cray enjoying the new Xeon Phi co-processor, with it handling multiple customer applications in preparation for supercomputer deployments at Los Alamos and NERSC. Intel has said that the new Knights Landing chip has various innovative features that provide unmatched performance.
For example, Xeon Phi co-processor powered systems will be capable of delivering single-precision performance that is over 8TFlops with double-precision performance sitting at around 3TFlops. Inside, the Xeon Phi co-processor features 16GB of stacked memory that Intel says has 5x the bandwidth of DDR5, and is also 5x more power efficient and 3x denser than GDDR5 that is used on today's video cards.
Continue reading: Intel's new Xeon Phi co-processor has 16GB of RAM, 5x faster than DDR4 (full post)
Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 v4 will feature 44 threads of CPU power
While we just found out some details on the upcoming Broadwell-E platform, including the flagship Core i7-6950X and Core i7-6900K SKUs, there is some more exciting stuff for the Xeon family of processors.
The Broadwell-EP update will arrive in Q1 2016, with the new Xeon E5-2600 v4 processor featuring up to 22 CPU cores, with 44 threads thanks to HyperThreading technology. Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors will boast up to 55MB of L3 cache, and have TDPs of up to 145W. The new Xeon processors will be slotted into the Grantley family, with quad-channel DDR4 support to boot.
Over the next few years, we'll see the new Skylake-EP and Skylake-EX processors from Intel, with the Xeon CPUs featuring up to 56 and 64 CPU threads. From there, in 2018 we can expect the Cannonlake-EP and Cannonlake-EX processors to really hit their stride, being made on the incredibly small 10nm process on the new Socket P platform. These processors should rock up to 68 or more CPU threads and have between 80-85MB of L3 cache. Exciting times.
Continue reading: Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 v4 will feature 44 threads of CPU power (full post)
Intel's next-gen Core i7-6950X to feature 10 CPU cores, 20 threads
Intel's next generation Broadwell-E platform is on its way, where we're learning about the next-gen HEDT family that will still work on existing X99 platform, with an entire new SKU lineup of exciting processors.
The flagship CPU in the new Broadwell-E family will be the Core i7-6950X, which will feature 10 x CPU cores and thanks to Hyper-Threading, 20 threads. The Core i7-6950X should be clocked at around 3GHz, but this will change between now and its release which is expected in the first half of 2016. But can you imagine 20 x 4GHz processors being inside of your PC?
There will be plenty of other CPUs released in the Broadwell-E family, including the new Core i7-6900K. The new Core i7-6900K will also be manufactured on Intel's impressive 14nm technology, with 16 threads of power behind it. The Core i7-6900K should rock a frequency of 3.3GHz, and 20MB of L3 cache. It will reportedly land on the X99 platform, which will confuse most people as the Core i7-6700K fits onto the Z170 chipset.
Continue reading: Intel's next-gen Core i7-6950X to feature 10 CPU cores, 20 threads (full post)
GlobalFoundries finds first 14nm FinFET LPP AMD product success
GlobalFoundries has achieved its first success in producing AMD products using the performance-enhanced version of its 14nm FinFET process technology known as 14nm Low Power Plus (14LPP).
With that, the tech will be officially integrated into a new set of AMD compute and graphics products, which it's said will be simultaneously high-performing and power-efficient.
Mark Papermaster, senior vice president and chief technology officer at AMD, said of the milestone, "FinFET technology is expected to play a critical foundational role across multiple AMD product lines, starting in 2016. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has worked tirelessly to reach this key milestone on its 14LPP process. We look forward to GLOBALFOUNDRIES' continued progress towards full production readiness and expect to leverage the advanced 14LPP process technology across a broad set of our CPU, APU, and GPU products."
Continue reading: GlobalFoundries finds first 14nm FinFET LPP AMD product success (full post)
AMD Embedded R-Series SOC processors first to support DDR4
AMD has a new Embedded single-chip system-on-chip (SOC) processor family on the scene with its new R-Series. It's aimed at the high-end market, and packs its latest 64-bit CPU core "Excavator", as well as a third-gen GCN GPU architecture. It's also the first of its kind to support dual-channel 64-bit DDR4 (with speeds as high as DDR4-2400; DDR3 is also supported with speeds up to 2133).
On the graphics and video front, the R-Series supports High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)1 for full 4K decode and DirectX 12; the specifications note up to eight compute units and two rendering blocks and GPU clock speeds up to 800MHz resulting in 819 GFLOPS. The company claims 22 percent better performance over the 2nd Generation AMD Embedded R-Series APU2 and 58 percent better performance over the Intel Broadwell Core i7 in graphics-intensive benches.
As for efficiency, AMD boasts full HSA implementation and hUMA utilization for what they feel results in great CPU, GPU, and memory performance. Additionally, thermal design power is configurable, and power usage is said to be reduced 35 percent compared to the 2nd Generation AMD Embedded R-Series APU.
Continue reading: AMD Embedded R-Series SOC processors first to support DDR4 (full post)
AMD affirms commitment to performance CPUs, Zen And K12 coming soon
AMD CEO and President Lisa Su affirmed her company's commitment to high performance x86 CPUs in its earnings call last week, for anyone in doubt following the recent news of financial troubles.
"In terms of long-term roadmap we are extremely committed to high performance x86 CPUs," she says. "And there should be no confusion on that point. [Chief Technology Officer] Mark Papermaster is currently directly engaging with the team on that execution and we'll have more details to come. But [we're] overall pleased with the execution and it continues to be our number one priority for the company."
More, she states Zen's impressive target 40% IPC performance is "on track" and that multiple FinFET designs have been taped out (meaning design is finalized, and the chips need only be produced).
Continue reading: AMD affirms commitment to performance CPUs, Zen And K12 coming soon (full post)
AMD's new 8-core 'Hierofalcon' SoC spotted, based on 28nm at 2GHz
It looks like AMD is preparing to launch a new 8-core server SoC codenamed "Hierofalcon", based on a 64-bit ARM design using eight A57 cores clocked at 2GHz each. AMD's new Hierofalcon SoC has a TDP of 30W, so we should expect some decent performance from the new chip.
An engineering sample of the new 8-core "Hierofalcon" processor has been spotted, where it has been put up against a bunch of desktop processors from both Intel and AMD. We have those results above. These results are looking at the performance on a single core, at a normalized clock speed. The new Hierofalcon processor does quite well, taking swings at some of AMD's desktop chips.
When it comes to "Whetstone" performance, the desktop processors kick some serious ass, but that's to be expected. The same thing goes for the Execl benchmark and the kCopy and kPipe results.
Continue reading: AMD's new 8-core 'Hierofalcon' SoC spotted, based on 28nm at 2GHz (full post)