Processors - Page 75

Intel's new 11th Gen Core processors are still a few weeks away, but AnandTech has performed some magic trick and has a review of the Core i7-11700K close to a month before its official launch.

The thing is that Intel hasn't even announced the new series of CPUs and have been light on details of its Rocket Lake-S family of chips even though there's been a mountain of leaks over the last few months. AnandTech purchased a retail version of the Intel Core i7-11700K and even though they've signed an NDA, there's no new information shared that breaches that contract.

Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech explains that the information shared in his Core i7-11700K review: "Units obtained by that method are not under NDA by definition, and we obtained the Core i7-11700K for this review at retail, and as such we are not under NDA for any information we have obtained through using this processor".

Intel has been slapped with a massive $2.2 billion fine by a federal jury in Texas over the chip giant violating patents held by Dutch semiconductor company VSLI Technology LLC.

The patent violation is over two patents held by VLSI along with NXP Semiconductor getting a slice of the pie, as it owns a part of the patents, with the split of $2.2 billion going into $1.5 billion and $675 million. VSLI acquired NXP Freescale Semiconductor back in 2015, with the patents transferred to VSLI in 2019.

The two patents are first (patent 7,523,373) allows a processor to switch to a low-power state called "sleeping" when it's not in use, which is done through two voltage regulators where one of them will lower power consumption while the other provides enough power to keep the chip's memory in an active state. Patent 7,725,759 allows the chip to switch between programs super-fast, boosting processing speed.

AMD is really aiming for the stars with its upcoming Zen 4 architecture, with the latest rumor on the next-gen EPYC Genoa CPU family is that it will feature up to an insane 96 cores and 192 threads.

The 96-core, 192-threads of CPU power are done through 12 chiplets and on the SP5 (LGA 6096 socket), with 12-channel DDR5 memory support and PCIe 5.0 support. The new rumors are coming from ExecutableFix, which tweeted out that the new Zen 4 architecture would pack some serious horsepower.

The new Zen 4 EPYC family of processors would pack 12 chiplets each with 8 compute cores, with a separate I/O chipset. Instead of increasing the core count per chiplet, AMD is increasing the number of chiplets in the packaging -- with Zen 4 EPYC packing 12 chiplets that usher in up to 96 cores and 192 threads of CPU domination.

AMD has its CPU and GPU technology inside of the AYA Neo console, an upcoming handheld console that has been in development for many years now. It's getting closer, and yeah -- it can run Crysis. Check out the specs:

As you can see it has some pretty beefy specs inside of it for a handheld console, with the AYA Neo powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U processor offering 6 cores and 6 threads -- no SMT here -- with a base clock of 2.3GHz and boost clock of up to 4.0GHz.

The AYA Neo console also features 16GB of LPDDR4X @ 4266MHz RAM, 512GB of NVMe SSD storage, a 7-inch 1280 x 800 IPS LCD display, Wi-Fi 6, BT 5.0, and a 47 Whr battery with 65W fast charging technology. The battery is said to be good for around 6 hours of normal use, or around 2 hours of gaming use.

Intel has the largest CPU architectural upgrade in over 5 years with its new Core i9-11900K processor... as up until now all Intel CPUs have been using the same architecture on the 14nm node -- we now have a new architecture -- and that same old dusty 14nm node that Intel continues to actually impress with.

Well, we now have a look at retail packaging for the new Intel Core i9-11900K flagship CPU and it looks fantastic. It's very different to the already great retail packaging of the Core i9-10900K processor, but with a radically tweaked retail box that I don't think I've seen a CPU ship in before.

Intel is also debuting their new 11th Gen Core desktop CPUs with the updated Core logos, but the flagship Core i9-11900K processor is the only one with the super-fancy retail packaging. The rest of the line up has some new design work and logo updates on the packaging, but they're just regular square boxes.

I'm a huge fan of these die shots and X-ray shots of any tech for that matter, but now we have some awesome pictures of the PlayStation 5 die. Check it out:

Twitter user @FritzchensFritz shared the images of the extremely close-up shot of the PS5 die, which shows that the PlayStation 5 doesn't have Infinity Cache like the RDNA 2-powered Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards do. There's no 128MB of purpose-built cache helping out the GDDR6 memory here, as you can see the caches are separated.

Why is that? Because Sony is using a semi-custom chip designed between Sony and AMD for the PS5, so it works differently to the off-the-shelf-if-you-can-find-it Radeon RX 6800 series cards with their 128MB of super-fast Infinity Cache. Remember that what we're looking at isn't just the GPU of the PS5, but the CPU + GPU (APU = Accelerated Processing Unity which is both the CPU and GPU combined).

We all know how impossible it is to find any of the new electronic and gaming products released from the last 6 months or so: AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs, and the new Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles.

New smartphones are harder to buy and will continue to get harder to buy, which will involve the likes of Qualcomm while Micron provides memory and flash products for all of their respective products.

These companies are now urging President Joe Biden "urging" him as Reuters reports, to provide them with "substantial funding for incentives for semiconductor manufacturing" as part of the Biden administration's economic recovery and infrastructure plans.

AMD has been making great strides between each of its Zen architectures, with the difference between Zen and Zen 2 being very noticeable -- but it was the jump from Zen 2 to Zen 3 with the recent Ryzen 5000 series CPUs that things really went up into another level.

But the fun isn't over, with the next-gen Zen 4 architecture in the oven and promising some truly gigantic IPC gains and overall performance uplifts over the current-gen CPUs. The new rumors are coming from ChipsandCheese, with news from AMD's next-gen server family codenamed Genoa. These new EPYC processors will be powered by the Zen 4 architecutre and will offer tremendous benefits all over the place.

The rumors tease that the current Genoa engineering samples with the identical cores and CPU clocks as the Milan EPYC processors, but the new Zen 4-powered CPUs are up to 29% faster.

Intel is preparing its 4th Gen Xeon CPUs for later this year, with the new Sapphire Rapids processors arriving on the Eagle Stream platform and will use the third refinement of Intel's 10nm process tech called 10nm Enhanced SuperFin.

Intel's new Sapphire Rapids CPUs should rock on-board HBM memory and Compute Express Link 1.1 technologies, and will mark the first server CPUs that Intel has made that support PCIe 5.0 technology. Intel will also have the first architecture to market that supports DDR5 memory, with rumors that it'll support 8-channel DDR5 memory.

We should see desktop and mobile CPUs shifting to DDR5 later this year, with Intel's upcoming desktop and mobile launches of Alder Lake CPUs.

AMD launched its Zen 3 architecture and Ryzen 5000 series processors late last year, to massive success -- but now we have some specific numbers.

The latest CPU market share results have been published by Mercury Research, with the Q4 2020 numbers showing that not just AMD but Intel did well in the 3 months to end 2020. AMD sold close to 1 million Ryzen 5000 series processors in Q4 2020, Mercury Research said: "The Ryzen 5000 supply ramp was record-breaking for AMD by a very wide margin".

Mercury Research reports that when it comes to desktop CPU market share, Intel has 80.7% of the market while AMD has 19.3% which is actually down from 20.1%.

Intel is set to launch its new Rocket Lake-S family of CPUs in March 2021, but it looks like the flagship Core i9-11900KF processor is going to be a hot one -- with temps hitting 98C -- even with a 360mm AIO cooler.

The news is coming from results leaked onto Chiphell, of Intel's new Core i9-11900KF processor -- an 8-core, 16-thread part with no integrated GPU. The TDP on the Core i9-11900KF is 125W, but you can see in the above screenshot that it is chewing through double that at 250W.

Intel's new Core i9-11900KF will have a base clock somewhere around 3.5GHz, with an all-core boost of up to 4.8GHz. We don't know what 360mm AIO cooler that the leaker was using, other than it being described as an "entry 360 AIO cooler". The CPU was being tested in an AVX workload, so we should see these temps lowered during regular/gaming workloads.

It was rumored but now it seems to be confirmed -- Intel is BFFs with TSMC -- from a DigiTimes report that RetiredEngineer tweeted about. The report teased: "Intel signed a contract to outsource CPUs to TSMC using 3nm. Crisis of shortages and process falling behind will be resolved by the end of next year".

Yep, it's happened -- Intel is outsourcing manufacturing of its CPUs after the clusterf*** that it has been over the last few years and into the talented hands of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). RetiredEngineer provided a translation of DigiTimes report, which highlights some juicy facts:

You can see there DigiTimes reports that its sources in the semiconductor industry say that Intel and TSMC have "already concluded negotiations on an outsourcing agreement. Unlike in the past where non-core products were outsourced to TSMC, the scale of these new orders are larger than expected, and will use TSMC's 3nm process slated to enter mass production in the second half of 2022. Intel is set to become TSMC's second largest customer, next to Apple. The cooperation between the two will continue through the 2nm generation, Intel would not comment on market rumors".

We knew that AMD was preparing to launch its new Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors in March 2021, but now we have some solid pricing on the flagship Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX chip that will cost $5489.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX packs a huge 64 cores and 128 threads, but with the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X around it's not something we haven't seen. The new PRO version is also 100MHz slower on its base clock (4.2GHz on 3995WX versus 4.3GHz on the 3990X).

Now we have official pricing on AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO series, which will be as follows:

ASUS is about to launch its slick new ROG RYUJIN II 240 CPU cooler, its new flagship dual-fan cooler for your new Intel or AMD CPU with a gigantic 3.5-inch LCD display.

The new design of the ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 240 CPU cooler was shown off by ASUS Technical Marketing Manager Juan Jose Guerrero III, showing off the new cooler installed into an ASUS Z590 ROG Maximus HERO motherboard. Check it out:

The ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 240 CPU cooler is an upgrade over its predecessor that featured a smaller 1.77-inch LiveDash OLED display, while the ROG RYUJIN II 240 CPU cooler packs a huge 3.5-inch display that as VideoCardz aptly points out... is the same size as the Apple iPhone 4 smartphone display.

Intel teased its next-next-gen 12th Gen Core CPUs at the all-virtual CES 2021 not too many days ago now, but it seems the 12th Gen Alder Lake platform could be coming much sooner than anticipated. September 2021, soon.

In a new tweet, Uniko's Hardware said that Intel would be launching its 12th Gen Core CPUs and new 600-series chipset motherboards in September 2021. As to what we should expect here: LGA 1700-based motherboards and the new Intel 600-series chipset that should support DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 support.

As for the 12th Gen Core CPUs themselves, the new Alder Lake platform will be built on an "enhanced" 10nm SuperFin architecture, and will tap Intel's Hybrid Technology which will see the pairing of high-efficiency and high-performance cores under a single chip.

A new rumor is floating around that could be a game-changer for the PC industry, with TSMC reportedly set to manufacture Intel CPUs starting this year.

TrendForce reports that Intel will procure wafers from TSMC starting in the second half of 2021, for around 20-25% of the production required for some of its non-CPU products but where it gets juicy is that TSMC is making some of Intel's own Core i3 processors on their 5nm manufacturing node.

Intel can't do 5nm now, and it won't be able to do it for many years -- instead, Intel is almost reaching into the future by using its competitor -- and now business partner, TSMC, to make its new Core i3 processors on TSMC's in-house 5nm manufacturing process.

AMD only just unveiled its new non-X Ryzen 7 5800 and Ryzen 9 5900 processors, with the Ryzen 7 5800 still an 8-core, 16-thread part but with 400MHz less base clock, 100MHz lower boost, and a 65W TDP.

But it seems as though the new Ryzen 7 5800 can be easily unlocked to a Ryzen 7 5800X through some PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) optimizations. Yeah, that non-X chip can be made into an X-series processor without much of a deal at all -- but remember, the new Ryzen 7 5800 is being sold as an OEM part to companies like Lenovo, Dell, and HP.

Out of the box the Ryzen 7 5800 is running at 4.55GHz while when PBO is enabled the Ryzen 7 5800 boosts up to 4.79GHz -- compare this to the 4.78GHz that the Ryzen 7 5800X runs at and you're effectively gaming or content creating away like a Ryzen 7 5800X processor.

AMD has just announced that its new Ryzen Threadripper PRO workstation CPUs will be able to be purchased directly, starting in March 2021.

At the moment, AMD's new Zen 3-based Ryzen Threadripper PRO chips are limited to the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstations exclusively, but that ends in March. We have seen motherboards from the likes of ASUS and GIGABYTE, ready for Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors on the sWRX8 package.

These new Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors break away from the regular Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series CPUs, with the new Ryzen Threadripper PRO chips using fully unlocked "ROME" multi-chip module re-configured for workstation. We're talking up to 64 cores and 128 threads (Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX), 8-channel DDR4 memory, and an insane 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes.

Qualcomm has just announced its second-gen 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2 technology, with it being the next big leap in their ultrasonic fingerprint sensor technology.

The new ultrasonic sensor has a 77% larger fingerprint reader area, something that captures 1.7x more data than the first-gen fingerprint sensor. It's also 50% faster than the last-gen fingerprint sensor, so the chip itself will spend less time trying to find where your finger is -- because the sensor is larger, and the chip is faster.

Qualcomm's new 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2 is also thinner, at just 0.2mm (0.008-inch) thick which is perfect for edge-to-edge flexible OLED displays inside of foldable smartphones. Better yet, the new technology will also be better at recognizing your fingerprints when they're wet -- which we all know can be annoying at times on current fingerprint sensors.

Intel is coming out much stronger at CES 2021 with a bunch of new technologies, processors, and even a glimpse of what's coming next with the 12th Gen Alder Lake platform.

The new 12th Gen "Alder Lake" CPUs that are coming in the second half of 2021, with the Alder Lake CPUs being a proper huge leap over the previous generation. Intel's new 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs represent a "significant breakthrough in x86 architecture" according to Intel.

Intel says that its next-gen Alder Lake CPUs will be the foundation for the future of desktop and mobile processors, where the first wave of 12th Gen Alder Lake parts will be its "most power-scalable system-on-chip" that drops in 2H 2021.