Processors - Page 53

A new leak about AMD Ryzen 8000 (Granite Ridge) processors fills in a good deal more info about the next-gen chips (bring your own salt), but it may disappoint because it puts forward a later timeframe for arrival than previously expected.

Let's get that nugget out of the way upfront, with a new report from Hilbert Hagedoorn at Guru3D claiming that the Zen 5 release date will be the second half of 2024.

Previously, we'd heard chatter from the rumor mill - courtesy of YouTube leaker Moore's Law is Dead - that Zen 5 desktop chips might be out in the first half of next year, and quite possibly Q1 2024.

Rapidus Corp. is a newly-formed Japanese semiconductor manufacturing company with pretty lofty goals, making it a significant player in the chip space in just four years. This would put it in direct competition with TSMC and Samsung, with Rapidus producing its 2-nanometer chips by 2027.

The company is already investing billions in the new plant, with strategic investments from the likes of Sony and Toyota and even the Japanese government. According to Bloomberg, the government has already budgeted over USD 2.4 billion (or ¥330 billion) annually for the new semiconductor manufacturer.

"Huge opportunities are ahead of us if we can become first in the market and focus on making chips for specific areas, such as AI," Rapidus chairman Tetsuro Higashi tells Bloomberg.

Intel's Arrow Lake processors, which in theory are set to follow Meteor Lake (and Raptor Lake refresh), could arrive late next year with a massive performance boost.

That's according to YouTube leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), whose latest video concerns Intel's upcoming processor ranges, encompassing all the aforementioned Core families.

For us, the most significant piece of news here is that 15th-gen Arrow Lake's performance cores will be hugely faster than Meteor Lake. MLID asserts that Arrow Lake will offer an IPC (Instructions per Clock) boost of 22% to 34%.

Recently we reported on a new and mandatory AMD AGESA 1.0.0.7 BIOS Firmware for all AM5 motherboards built for the new Ryzen 7000 CPUs. This a direct response to the burnout issues found on some Ryzen 7000X3D chips that were damaging both the chip and motherboard.

AMD's root cause for the issue was around voltage. The new firmware limits the SoC voltage to 1.3V. It adds other measures/fixes to ensure processors don't exceed their temperature specifications - while not affecting memory overclocking via AMD EXPO profiles.

With potentially damaged hardware on the line, no doubt there's a rush to get this out to as many customers (and board partners) as possible, but with ASUS using a BETA release of the new AGESA 1.0.0.7 BIOS firmware, it looks like there are still issues to work out, which could delay the proper and final rollout of firmware to fix the burnout issue by weeks.

Regarding non-memory chip manufacturing, Samsung has been trailing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in terms of cutting-edge process nodes and yields for some time. Even so, the company believes that when it comes to rolling out a 2-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process, it will catch up to TSMC and even surpass it.

Samsung's president and manager of the company's foundry business, Dr. Siyoung Choi, made these remarks during a keynote at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology in South Korea (via Wccftech) where he put a timeline of five years for Samsung to catch up to TSMC.

Dr. Siyoung Choi did note that TSMC is currently ahead of Samsung when it comes to chip production. However, he cites Samsung's use of GAA technologies for current 3nm production as a step ahead of TSMC, which still utilizes the tried and true FinFET.

AMD's next-gen Zen 5 processors are once again the subject of chatter on the grapevine, with a YouTube leaker toning down expectations (slightly) on how fast Ryzen 8000 chips could be.

The latest video from RedGamingTech (RGT) still sticks to the line that Zen 5 might offer an IPC (Instructions per Clock) uplift of between 20% and 25%, as the YouTuber said in their last leak.

This time around, though, RGT notes that while multiple sources in both cases are pegging IPC gains at about 20% and 25% respectively, the leaker believes that 20% is the more likely figure.

Quarterly reports and financial documents for large tech companies are often a mix of numbers and figures that require digging to find some of the most interesting takeaways. And that's still certainly the case with AMD's latest Q1 2023 financial results, but with the current state of the PC market, it's hard not to see the historic operating loss of USD 145 million as a cause for concern.

Especially when you compare that to the last year's operating income of USD 951 million, making it a 115% decrease and the first overall loss for AMD in years. As AMD's business encompasses several sectors, the Client Segment covering AMD Ryzen products looks to have seen the most notable decline, with revenue down 65% year on year, from over USD 2 billion to USD 700 million.

This segment alone reported an operating loss of USD 172 million, a stark contrast to the rapid growth seen in the Embedded Segment, which saw massive growth with revenue up 163%. This is reflected in the following statement from AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, who notes that AMD will prioritize its data center and embedded portfolio.

It looks like Intel might be preparing to change the name of its Core family of processors, departing from the terminology used for a long time now, namely (pun not intended) the Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 tiers of CPU.

This originates from a leak of an Intel processor via the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database, an 18-thread CPU with the name 'Core Ultra 5 1003H', apparently switching the Core i5 naming scheme with Core Ultra 5.

At the time, it wasn't clear whether this might just be a different codename used for an engineering sample chip, but now, as VideoCardz points out, Bernard Fernandes, who is Intel's Director of Global Communications, has tweeted on the subject.

A new tweet from @OreXda simply states that 'AMD signed to use Samsung Foundry 4nm,' which points to AMD using Samsung's 4nm process for future products. It's unclear what these products will be, but looking back at Samsung's plans in 2021, there was word that AMD was eyeing the Samsung Foundry to produce 4nm CPUs designed for Chromebooks.

All of this comes down to TSMC's limited capacity, which for 4nm is apparently at its absolute peak, and with recent reports pointing to Samsung's fabrication process yielding better results as time goes on - a switch for certain low-power products makes sense for AMD.

Sourcing chips from multiple sources, as long as the quality is there, is a sound strategy and will allow AMD to get products out on time instead of delaying things ala the Ryzen 7040 Phoenix APUs. However, it's worth stating that product delays can happen for several reasons beyond manufacturing.

Ryzen CPUs burning up has been one of the most talked about things in the PC space in recent weeks, with AMD releasing an official statement noting that excessively high voltages on AM5 motherboards with the new Ryzen 7000X3D chips were damaging both the chip and motherboard.

A catastrophic outcome that has led to several outlets conducting their own tests alongside AMD - with a deep dive from Gamers Nexus dropping on the weekend showcasing that it was able to get an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D to effectively "explode" and melt the motherboard-side connections.

Even though the issues and voltage spikes are seemingly linked with overclocked memory using EXPO or XMP kits, AMD's root cause does note that the new firmware limiting the SoC voltage to 1.3C won't affect how memory performs.

AMD's Zen 4 processors have recently been under the spotlight because of reported cases of the CPUs dying due to overheating, but there's good news in that a fix has been implemented, and BIOS updates carrying it should soon be available.

The burnout issue was related to SoC voltages being cranked up above safe limits, a theory previously proposed by multiple sources in the industry that turned out to be correct.

AMD had already issued a statement on this matter, but a second message clarifies the exact cause and outlines the fix.

AMD has formally announced new Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme processors designed for "handheld PC gaming consoles," like the upcoming ASUS ROG Ally, which will use the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. This is great news for the future of portable PCs as gaming consoles and will undoubtedly lead to several new devices in the coming years that will deliver incredible results.

With AMD RDNA 3 architecture-based graphics and "Zen 4" processing, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme features 8 cores and 16 threads with 12 AMD RDNA 3 Compute Units and 24 MB of cache. The baseline Ryzen Z1 features 6 cores and 12 threads with 4 AMD RDNA 3 Compute Units, and 22 MB of cache.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme sounds particularly impressive, with AMD noting that it can deliver up to 8.6 TFLOPS of graphics performance - more than the AMD hardware found inside the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. Designed for portable gaming handhelds that feature 1080p displays AMD has released the following in-game benchmark results for the Ryzen Z1 Series.

With reports of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors burning out and causing damage to the CPUs and motherboards, there are reports outlining what could be causing the issues. Earlier today, we reported that it looks to be related to overclocking SoC voltages.

The issue looks quite serious as the result is a damaged CPU and motherboard. Board partners like MSI and ASUS are releasing firmware updates designed to address the problems relating to the AM5 platform and AMD's new Ryzen 7000X3D processors with 3D V-Cache.

Voltage restrictions will minimize the chances of these processors experiencing physical damage to both the chip and motherboard socket. With several reports of the issue cropping up on Reddit, AMD has issued a statement (via Anandtech) below.

We've just seen a couple of fresh nuggets from the rumor mill pertaining to Intel's Meteor Lake processors, and it turns out there may still be desktop models incoming - at least up to Core i5 chips.

VideoCardz picked up on this, first of all pointing out a piece of spillage from Intel itself, namely an Intel Design-In Tools web page for an 'LGA1851-MTL-S Interposer for the Gen5 VR Test Tool'.

MTL-S stands for Meteor Lake-S, meaning desktop Meteor Lake processors, and the existence of such a test tool at least hints that we might still see desktop chips released. Rather than more recent rumors which have suggested that it's likely that all we'll get this year is a Raptor Lake refresh. (Most recently, that's been the line of thinking from Moore's Law is Dead, though the YouTuber did note that he couldn't rule out Meteor Lake desktop for 2023).

AMD Ryzen 7000 processors have been burning out - literally dying, and in some cases, there are reports of them damaging the motherboard they're in, too - and a reason why this is happening has now been put forward.

A report from Tom's Hardware informs us that the root cause is SoC voltages being jacked up to unsafe levels in affected CPUs. That's according to multiple industry sources who wish to stay anonymous for the time being.

Naturally, we must remain cautious around this as it's not an official declaration of the problem from AMD, but those sources are all saying the same thing, and are backed up by a statement from motherboard maker ASUS (made to expert overclocker Der8auer).

MSI has deployed a new BIOS release in which the motherboard manufacturer has implemented restrictions to stop Ryzen 7000X3D processors from having their voltage juiced up.

As you may have seen, this follows reports at the weekend on Reddit where some owners of Ryzen 7000 CPUs with 3D V-Cache posted about their chip dying (and motherboard, for that matter).

The original report was from a system with a Ryzen 7800X3D and an ASUS motherboard. The owner noted that a bulge was observed in the pad of the dead CPU, speculating that this was the result of too much heat causing the pad to expand.

AMD Radeon RX 580 GPUs are finding a new use, with the graphics chips being made into keychains, as seen over in China.

These novelty keychains consist of a GPU and a pair of memory modules on a PCB, although they look like rather chunky and impractical keychains, it has to be said.

As spotted by Olrak on Twitter, the keychains are being sold on a second-hand site in China, with a few of them on offer (apparently only one is left up for grabs now, though).

Yesterday we got word that the upcoming ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld PC would feature a custom AMD Ryzen Z1 Series processor. Built using AMD Phoenix silicon with Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architectures, a new leak via the Geekbench tool gives us more info on what's powering ASUS's Steam Deck competitor.

The processor is the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, with 8-cores and 16-threads and a maximum boost clock frequency of 5 GHz. The Geekbench results also confirm the existence of Radeon Graphics, but the exact model specs outside of the iGPU using 8GB of VRAM and featuring 6 Compute Units still need to be confirmed.

Still, this is more confirmation that ROG Ally's Z1 Extreme CPU is a customized version of the Ryzen 7 7840U CPU - with the benchmark results putting its performance in line with laptops sporting the processor and Radeon 780M integrated graphics. The overall score is on par with the GeForce GTX 1060 in OpenCL.

The ASUS ROG Ally is a gaming handheld running Windows 11, launching soon. However, we still don't have official word on the underlying hardware and specs apart from ASUS stating that it will feature the "fastest" AMD APU built on a custom 4nm process with Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architecture.

But, as with hardware mysteries, we have more info from two sources. One is a marketing image outlining the capabilities and broad specs of the ROG Ally handheld. The other is a shipping manifest calling out a specific Ryzen hardware as part of the "Handheld Console PC." Namely the Ryzen 7 7840U.

The marketing slide mentions a custom AMD Ryzen Z1 Series processor, which could be the Ryzen 7 7840U with modifications and specific custom features. Either way, the ROG Ally will ship with an AMD Phoenix APU, which can deliver double the in-game performance of Valve's Steam Deck with improved power efficiency.

Intel's Meteor Lake processors might hit 5.4GHz in their mobile configuration, which could make these CPUs top-notch for gaming laptops - providing Intel isn't too slow off the mark with getting them out of the door.

This is the latest spillage from well-known YouTube leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), who chews over fresh chatter on the subject of Meteor Lake in his latest video (among other topics).

MLID's source assures us that Meteor Lake will not fall short on clock speeds, even if it won't reach the same levels as Raptor Lake. We're told that currently, the top-end Meteor Lake laptop CPU is running at 4.7GHz, and it's expected to hit 5GHz - but the hope is it'll end up as high as 5.4GHz. The latter isn't something the source is confident about, but it's certainly what Intel is aiming for right now.