Processors - Page 82

With the heating up of the CPU race, one thing has been touted among PC enthusiasts forum and social media users far and wide. "The death of Moores Law is coming and will limit how far we can go now" or some derivative of this.

For those uninitiated, here is a simple explanation of what Moores law is, from Intel's co-founder, engineer, and the namesake of Moores Law itself, Gordon Moore. "the number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months."

So, basically, the density of a chip as far as transistor count should double roughly every two years along with refining and shrinking the package to make these substantially more compact packages smaller while offering up to double the amount of processing muscle.

AMD's Ryzen processors have been a massive success with the first-gen starting rocky, but AMD kept with its release cadence and has pushed it to be stronger every generation.

Well, they did not stop the train yet, and there are no signs of stopping if what we see today from China Times, along with AMD's claims on investor day (back in May 2019), are accurate. AMD has been pushing not just the newest Ryzen 3000 as was released a short while ago, but already have the next few steps completed or in development.

This is where today's story stems from, where China Times reports that TSMC's 5nm process is already showing good yield potential. AMD is presently on 7nm with its Zen 2 architecture, and we already hear news of 5nm tech, which will power Zen 4. Zen 3, which is 7nm+, has already been touted as offering a performance uplift similar to what you would expect with a new architecture.

It is no secret that Intel has struggled with 10nm, and this has led to massive struggles now with 14nm delivery and fulfillment.

Intel has apologized over the past two-plus years for their shortages of shipments on 14nm supply, which has been heavily refreshed at this point. But apologies only do so much as Intel has still struggled with meeting needs of OEM vendors, let alone retail/etail users who desire a new 14nm-based CPU. Intel initially had 10nm slated for a few years ago, but as we have observed and even written about, it has been one hurdle after another.

Recently Dell announced its lack of reaching revenue goals and places blame square on the shoulders of Intel not being able to fulfill their CPU needs to outfit their fully built systems. This has far-reaching implications as it makes us question what kind of trouble Intel truly is in, and how will they pull out of this apparent tailspin.

Intel has caught a lot of flack for their lack of answers to AMD's Ryzen series, especially with the launch of Ryzen 3000.

Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel, has painted a quite vivid picture in a presentation from the annual Credit Suisse technology conference, which to put it frankly, he is pivoting the direction of Intel away from chasing CPU dominance. Here is the direct quote from the conference courtesy of WCCFTech.

"We think about having 30% share in a $230 [silicon] TAM that we think is going to grow to $300B [silicon] TAM over the next 4 years, and frankly, I'm trying to destroy the thinking about having 90% share inside our company because, I think it limits our thinking, I think we miss technology transitions. we miss opportunities because we're, in some ways preoccupied with protecting 90, instead of seeing a much bigger market with much more innovation going on, both inside our four walls, and outside our four walls, so we come to work in the morning with a 30% share, with every expectation over the next several years, that we will play a larger and larger role in our customers success, and that doesn't just mean CPUs.

If you want a new smartphone in 2020 with an insane 200-megapixel camera, then you're going to be using Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 -- as it is the only SoC on the market that supports 200MP camera sensors.

Snapdragon 865 supports up to a 200-megapixel camera sensor, but that doesn't mean every single smartphone will ramp up with a 200MP sensor out of the box, but there will be smartphone makers that want to cram the biggest and most badass beast mode camera into a smartphone and if they want that... there's only one choice for the SoC: Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865.

Snapdragon 865 can not only shoot 4K 60FPS HDR video, but it can snap 64-megapixel photos at the same time thanks to the improvements Qualcomm made to the Spectra 480 ISP.

Qualcomm is slowly detailing its new Snapdragon 865 mobile platform at its annual Snapdragon Summit event here in Maui, Hawaii -- with more details on the GPU side of things in Adreno 650.

The new Adreno 650 GPU in the Snapdragon 865 has a very decent 25% faster graphics rendering over the previous-gen GPU, while being 35% more power-efficient. Qualcomm said that Adreno 650 is the "most efficient graphics core in the world".

Qualcomm made a strong point that the new Snapdragon 865 and Adreno 650-powered GPU offer sustained performance, versus turning up and killing benchmarks but losing power over time as speeds drop to keep heat and power consumption down.

Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon 865 in the opening keynote at its annual Snapdragon Summit here in Maui, Hawaii -- but it wasn't created overnight.

On day two of the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm said that IP development on Snapdragon 865 started all the way back in Q4 2016. Rewinding 3 years saw Qualcomm begin its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, with the first held in New York before trading pavement for sand in Maui, Hawaii for future Snapdragon Summit events.

Back in Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, the world of mobile technology wasn't anywhere near as advanced -- 5G wasn't in phones yet, but Qualcomm had already planted that seed. It was in 2017 that the world saw HDR playback, dual cameras, Gigabit LTE, and the first 90Hz display.

Qualcomm has a lot to share at its annual Snapdragon Summit, between their new Snapdragon 765 and Snapdragon 765G processors was the flagship Snapdragon 865.

But it is the Snapdragon 765 series that will push 5G into the mainstream, as it'll offer 5G connectivity in cheaper devices thus propelling next-gen connectivity into a much larger consumer base. Flagship device sales aren't anywhere near the mainstream market, something Qualcomm will continue to nail with Snapdragon 765.

The new Snapdragon 765 is powered by the Snapdragon X52 Modem-RF system, offering up multi-gigabit speeds of up to 3.7Gbps down over mmWave and sub-6. Impressive stuff for a mainstream chipset for future mainstream smartphones in 2020 and beyond.

Qualcomm has made its next-gen Snapdragon 865 chip official at its annual Snapdragon Summit, and while they won't deep dive into what makes it tick until tomorrow... we know that it is the most kick ass SoC ever made.

The new Snapdragon 865 takes things to the next level over the already impressive Snapdragon 855, with the new SoC taking out the #1 positions in virtually every category not just against its predecessor, but every Qualcomm competitor, too.

CPU, GPU, RF, modem, AI, and the camera -- Qualcomm dominates with its new Snapdragon 865. The new Snapdragon 865 supports up to 200-megapixel camera sensors, so we should expect some insane smartphones next year with 200MP cameras that will blow us away, again.

Qualcomm has kicked off its annual Snapdragon Summit here in Maui, Hawaii -- with another year starting off with the future of mobile: 5G.

Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon took the stage and went right into the arms of 5G, starting off the opening keynote at the Snapdragon Summit that the company has seen a stellar year for 5G in 2019. Unlike some of the reception of 5G, the company is seeing 5G roll out at a much faster pace than 4G all those years ago.

5G saw "tremendous momentum across all regions" for Qualcomm, with over 40 operators turning on 5G hardware, over 40 OEMs were announced, and over 325 operators in 109 countries are investing into 5G technology.

AMD has reached an all-time record high CPU market share with Germany's largest retailer, Mindfactory.de which has seen 82% of all CPUs sold in November being AMD Ryzen CPUs.

Even in October AMD saw a huge 78% CPU market share with Mindfactory.de sales, but November was an even better month with 82% -- most of the success is thanks to AMD's new Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 5 3600X processors which offer unbeatable value for money.

Intel's most popular CPU at Mindfactory.de is the Core i7-9700K, with the new Core i9-9900K and even newer Core i9-9900KF not really even making a scratch into AMD's total and utter dominance. Once again, the Ryzen 7 3700X is a massively popular CPU that you can see by the super-strong red bars that dominate that chart.

Intel has been having some seriously troubling times lately, and it seems these issues are now extending through to Intel's partners including one of their biggest -- Dell.

Dell has lowered its 2019 revenue forecast over issues with Intel's CPU shortages, seeing Dell stock drop by 5%. Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke explained: "Intel CPU shortages have worsened quarter-over-quarter the shortages are now impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments".

Even in the middle of massive Intel CPU shortages, Dell managed to see its PC business revenue increase in Q3 by 5% year-over-year to $11.4 billion. Commercial PC sales increased 9% to $8.3 billion, while shipments of consumer computers hit $3.1 billion -- an increase of 6%.

Update: Just as I finished the story, my good friend Sai tweeted me and referred me to Wccftech's story that has an update from Intel -- where the company has commented, and debunked the story completely. Intel said: "The letter from last week says we will increase our use of foundry so we can build more CPUs at Intel. The news reports about our use of third party foundries for CPUs are inaccurate". Now I wonder if Intel will comment on the impending layoffs...

Oh how the tables have turned... AMD has gone from beyond being the underdog to the new champion, in what can only resemble the scene from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Superman throws Batman around like he's nothing -- in this case Intel is Superman and AMD is Batman, and says "Stay down, if I wanted it... you'd be dead already", to which Batman fires a Kryptonite-filled grenade at Superman which renders him to mere mortal powers. That was Intel, and now they're breathing in all that fear.

Intel must have thought it had AMD painted into a corner, but then AMD has made a comeback that will be in the history books, and it seems Intel's struggles will only continue. We all know they've been really stumbling over the 10nm node and it appears they're needing to call in some help from industry giant Samsung.

AMD only just unleashed their crazy awesome new Ryzen Threadripper 3970X processor (our review here) and it has already been used to break a bunch of world records.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is a 32C/64T processor based on the new Zen 2 architecture, and while it has clock speeds of up to 4.5GHz at 280W -- these things are meant to be really pushed, at least for overclockers. A bunch of world records and global ranks have been smashed on HWBot, with the new Ryzen Threadripper 3970X hitting an insane 5.72GHz across all 32 cores.

The huge overclocking feat for the new Ryzen Threadripper 3970X was done on an MSI TRX40 Creator motherboard with 1.1V of power, LN2 cooling, and the talent of overclocker TSAIK in Taiwan. But that wasn't the only HWBot world record broken, as there is a list of new records thanks to AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 3970X processor:

We have been hearing for a while now that AMD's flagship Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor would rip threads with 64C/128T of brute power... and it seems they were right.

VideoCardz tweeted a few minutes ago, confirming that the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is a 64C/128T processor and will be the "One CPU to rule them all in 2020". Other specs on the Threadripper 3990X include 288MB of total cache, and a large (but not too damn bad considering there's 128 threads of processing power here) 280W TDP.

The other Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series include:

So it appears Rick from Rick and Morty has the only PC capable of running Crysis -- with the recent episode of the show 'The Old Man and the Seat' seeing Rick use one of his computers to perform a "reverse digestion extrapolation"... or a sh*t analysis, in laymen's terms.

Rick boots up his system and that's when we get a look at the specs, which are pretty insane. Rick is using a 128-bit CPU from AMD, while in the real-world we're limited to 64-bit right now with consumer AMD processors. It's not out of the realm of reality but it shows that Rick has a system that far outpaces your AMD Ryzen or Intel Core CPUs.

The system has 400TB of NVMe M.2 SSDs which once again is pretty crazy, but it's not petabytes of storage while Rick has 3,584,825,480GB of RAM. Rick isn't using Windows either, as he uses a Linux-based OS in Debian.

Intel Xeon CPUs are not usually known for their crappy stock heat sink and fans, but it seems Intel is stumbling a bit lately with Chipzilla recently recalling their Xeon E-2274G over the not-so-great stock CPU cooler.

Intel includes a basic fan in the box for the Xeon E-2274G, a fan made by Foxconn and is boxed up with much lower-end CPUs like Intel's own Pentium Gold and Core i3 lines of processors. The stock HSF we're talking about is normally handling heat loads of up to 65W, but the Xeon E-2274G is a workstation/SMB destined chip with an 88W TDP.

People buying an Intel Pentium Gold or Intel Core i3 CPU will not be maxing out their CPU at 100% all day long, but most people buying a Xeon processor would be doing just that. So the stock HSF should be really, really good... right?! Well, you'd think so -- but not in this case.

AMD recently announced and will soon launch its new third-gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, where we will eventually see up to 64C/128T on the desktop courtesy of the new sTRX4 socket -- a new socket from AMD that is actually worthy of being called "future-proof".

The reason we're able to call AMD's new sTRX4 socket 'future-proof' is that the company itself has confirmed on Reddit that sTRX has AMD's support in both "near- and long-term basis". AMD confirmed that while the new socket has the same 4094 pin count as the previous-gen Threadripper CPUs, it is the "mapping of those pins to voltage or data will be different" with sTRX4.

AMD confirmed you can't install a third-gen Ryzen Threadripper into an older motherboard, and you can't use an older Ryzen Threadripper CPU in a new sTRX4 motherboard. Now, before you get all mad and claim "this isn't how it should be done!" there are two reasons for this. AMD explains:

In a recent bout of leaked benchmarks which we reported on both here and here, Intel's upcoming Cascade Lake-X HEDT chip has been shown getting pounded by AMD's Ryzen 3000 mainstream lineup.

The beating continues as new leaked benchmarks have surfaced of the announced but not yet available Ryzen 9 3950X and the soon to release Intel Core i9-10980XE.

Credit to Twitter user @momomo_us for keeping the data coming. The field of battle this time is Geekbench, and unfortunately for Intel, the beatings have continued.

AMD is expected to announce its next-gen Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series on November 7, with the release of its 64C/128T flagship Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor in January 2020. But now it's time for a look at the packaging for the next-gen workstation CPUs.

VideoCardz is behind the leak once again, with the purported packaging of AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. This retail packaging could end up being a limited or collectors edition packaging, as it really is that good. This could be an early design from AMD and might have changed between its inception and final release, so I guess we'll find out once they fully announce and unveil the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 chips.

We are to expect the two slower/less core count Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X processors to launch first, with review NDAs expiring on November 19. The flagship Ryzen Threadripper 3990X with its purported 64C/128T should be arriving in a couple of months, with AMD reportedly set to drop the Threadripper 3990X in January 2020.