Processors - Page 99

We have been hearing about this silent monster that AMD has with 16C/32T of CPU performance, something that has been referred to as ThreadRipper and is launching in June. Now we're hearing that AMD will have 10/12/14/16 core versions, meaning we'll have CPUs with 10C/20T, 12C/24T, 14C/28T, and 16C/32T.

ThreadRipper will be compatible with a modified version of AMD's current SP3 socket, something that's codenamed SP3r2, and was designed for AMD's upcoming Naples server platform. AMD's new Whitehaven platform will provide quad-channel DDR4 with 44 PCIe lanes for multi-GPU users, enthusiasts and workstation users.

Better yet, we know the names of AMD's new ThreadRipper processors with a rather large purported list of Ryzen 9 processors.

Intel first launched its Itanium processor back in 2001, with chipzilla hoping its 64-bit processor would destroy the x86 dominance over the decades before it - but yeah, that didn't happen and now Intel has killed Itanium.

Before it's officially dead, Intel has pushed out a final Itanium 9700 series processor family that are the end of a failed era. Itanium co-creator HP and its enterprise arm HPE will be the last major customer of Itanium processors, with its Integrity i6 servers to receive the improved hardware, but other than that - Itanium is dead.

Itanium launched with a huge marketing campaign where Intel expected its exciting (at least at the time) 64-bit processor to take a huge chunk out of the massive wave of x86, aiming for high-end servers and workstations before cloud computing was even a thing. The first Itanium processors were power hungry, and then AMD decided it would launch consumer 64-bit processors in x86 form, disrupting Intel's plans.

According to DigiTimes, a Taiwanese technology rumor website, Apple has already placed orders with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) for their new iPhone 8 processors.

While we still don't actually know whether or not Apple will call their new phone the iPhone 7S or iPhone 8, DigiTimes is already claiming to know that TSMC has taken orders from Apple for their newest phone using TSMC's upcoming 10nm process.

Currently, TSMC only produces chips for most of their clients at 16nm, while they introduced only this week their new 12nm process for NVIDIA's Volta GPUs. It seems that 10nm will be used for phones primarily because Apple is accompanied by HiSilicon and Mediatek as additional customers for TSMC's upcoming 10nm process.

AMD will be launching a next-gen 16C/32T processor next month according to the latest rumors, with the new Ryzen processor teased as ThreadRipper - something we reported when we unveiled the Ryzen brand name months ago. This news runs right on the heels of the super-hot Core i9 processor from Intel, and news of AMD's next-gen Starship platform with 48C/96T of CPU insanity.

But now there are new rumors from Bitsandchips.it that point towards a new processor called ThreadRipper, and it'll be compatible with a modified version of AMD's current SP3 server socket, which will be deployed with Naples. The new ThreadRipper CPU will be launching with the Whitehaven platform, something we've been hearing rumbles of over the last couple of days.

The new ThreadRipper CPUs will rock 16C/32T of enthusiast power, with quad-channel DDR4 support, 180W max TDP, and comes on the huge 4094-pin SR3 socket. The difference between Naples and the new SR3r2 chip that ThreadRipper arrives as, Naples will support more than one CPU. So you can only imagine a single board with two or more 32C/64T processors powered by Zen CPU cores on the huge Naples platform, which also supports 8-channel DDR4, too.

AMD has been getting all of the CPU spotlight lately with their Ryzen 7 1800X processor and its 8C/16T of power, with the tease of their next-gen Naples platform and even Starship: rocking 48C/96T of CPU grunt.

Well, now it's Intel's turn with yet another HEDT family of processors, with a next-gen Core i9 family on the way. Right now Intel has the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors - but they will be joined by the high-end Core i9 family led by the Core i9-7920X processor reportedly launching in August. Intel's purported Core i9 processor will come in up to 12C/24T, matching the rumored next-gen Ryzen processors with 12C/24T of power.

Intel's upcoming i9-7900 series processors will support up to 44 PCIe lanes, while the i9-7800 will have 28 lanes, and the i7-7700/7600 have up to 16. We should expect TDPs in the 112-160W range, depending on the chip, while the i9 processors will rock a third clock state that Intel will call Turbo Clock 3.0, something that will allow the new CPUs to reach much higher clock speeds than Broadwell-E is capable of.

We know that AMD is working on its next-gen Naples platform that will usher in monstrous 16C/32T processors, but now we're seeing engineering samples of these purported CPUs - with the new processors arriving on the unannounced 'Whitehaven 'platform.

Our friends over at VideoCardz have spotted some new engineering sample details on two 16C/32T processors, with both of the engineering samples rocking base/boost clocks of 3.1GHz and 3.6GHz respectively. There was also a 12C/24T chip in the list that features a base/boost clock of 2.7GHz and 3.2GHz, respectively.

There's not much else known, but holy crap is it exciting.

It looks as though one of the first engineering samples of AMD's next-gen Raven Ridge APUs has leaked onto the SiSoftware Database, giving us some details on the processor - and as always this is a hot and steamy rumor, and nothing else.

AMD has launched its new Ryzen CPU family with multiple SKUs in the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 lines, but we haven't seen Ryzen 3 yet. Later this year AMD will launch Raven Ridge, a new APU using Zen CPU cores, but it'll also rock Vega NCUs as well. The engineering sample in question was a 4C/8T part at 3GHz base clock and 3.3GHz turbo clock, with 704 Vega NCUs at 800MHz.

The Raven Ridge engineering sample featured 2MB of L2 cache and 4MB of L3 cache, while the new chip sported 11 compute units - so if we blend in 64 stream processors per CU, we should see 704 stream processors in total on the Vega NCU. The chip was pushing 572.68 Mpix/s, too.

Qualcomm has announced their newest mid-range SoCs, the Snapdragon 660 and 630, which will be succeeding the Snapdragon 653 and the Snapdragon 626.

The Snapdragon 660 is built on 14nm technology and has a 8x Kryo 260 CPU cores clocked at 2.2GHz. The Kryo 260 CPU has up to 20% higher performance than the prior generation.

The GPU is an Adreno 512, which is said to be 30% faster than the Adreno 510 in the 653. The Snapdragon 660 supports Quick Charge 4, a technology that the company announced last year. The Quick Charge 4 gives you 5 hours of talk time in just 5 minutes of charging.

We all know that AMD's mid-range Ryzen 5 family of processors have been one of the best bang for buck CPUs released in quite a while, but according to a new survey that 3DCenter ran - AMD's Ryzen 5 processors are the best CPU product launch since they first started doing these surveys... all the way back in 2010.

The survey saw 83.9% of people having a "positive" view on Ryzen 5, while 9.4% were "indifferent" and just 6.7% thought negatively of Ryzen 5. Personally, I think Ryzen 5 is one of the best launches in years, mainly from a cores/thread value per dollar perspective. Intel will offer 4C/4T or 4C/8T for the same cost as AMD's new Ryzen 5 chips which provide 6C/12T for the same cost.

AMD will be pushing out a new microcode update for its Ryzen CPU architecture, something that will provide support for 20+ new RAM kits in the wild.

The new AGESA 1006 microcode update is something that was announced by a GIGABYTE spokesperson through a forum post, an update that will add over 20 new memory registers that will allow compatibility with existing Intel friendly DDR4 RAM.

Until now, the recommendation for DDR4 RAM with Ryzen processors were on Samsung's 'B die' memory chips, something that G.Skill and GeIL make. AMD's Technical Marketing Lead, Robert Hallock, confirmed that B die chips from Samsung were the best for out-of-the-box compatibility with Ryzen processors, and allowed for the highest overclocking results as well.

The Snapdragon 845 is the next rumored SoC from Qualcomm that is expected to be announced this year and ship in devices next year.

Although the current Snapdragon 835 was announced just a couple of months ago, we have already heard some rumors that Samsung and Qualcomm are negotiating over Snapdragon 845.

Up until now, it wasn't even certain that the next flagship platform will carry that name, but Qualcomm has accidentally revealed the name of the upcoming SoC, and it will, in fact, be named Snapdragon 845.

As we previously reported, Qualcomm is set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

After launching their latest top-tier chipset in January, Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm is all set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

For the first time in over 10 years, AMD is beginning to take back some of that glorious CPU market share pie from Intel - thanks to the release of their new Ryzen processors.

The latest quarterly market share report from PassMark, which is based on thousands of submissions that enter their database every quarter, AMD is making strides in CPU market share - even though it's a small uptick, it's a valuable one. You can see that the uptick is pretty large considering the slowly dwindling numbers from 2006, where AMD didn't really have anything worthwhile for consumers to buy in the CPU business.

Everything changed with Ryzen, and while a 2% increase isn't much - the new Ryzen 7 processors sold like hotcakes - selling out as soon as they hit. Keep in mind that AMD was also bottlenecked by AM4 motherboard availability, but we should begin to see all of this disappear as the weeks and months fly past - so the Q2 2017 numbers for AMD should be even more interesting.

AMD hasn't had the smoothest launch with Ryzen, but the company is quickly refining its new CPU architecture and now we have the latest release of its core logic (chipset) drivers, for Windows 7, 8.1, and 10.

AMD's new v17.10 WHQL drivers include the new Windows power management plan 'Ryzen Balanced Power' which will be better than the stock 'Balanced' power plan in Windows 10, something that will allow better power management through Windows, to the silicon-level power management logic inside of Ryzen processors through SenseMI.

This includes fine-grained voltage and clock gating over individual cores, something that would normally trip up latency problems with OS-level power management through P-state triggers. The new power plan is compatible with AMD's new A320, B350, and X370 chipsets, and is available right here.

Intel is continuing to show signs that it is scared to its core over AMD's new Ryzen processors, and the threat of the Naples-based 32C/64T processor has Intel pre-emptively launching its new Xeon Gold and Platinum platforms. The new series of CPUs from Intel are based on the new Purley platform, on LGA 3647.

There's a huge line of up new Xeon processors, with up to 28 cores and 56 threads at 2.5GHz, while they are going to be slotting into the new R3 socket. The new Xeon Gold and Platinum processors are available with less cores and higher frequencies of up to 3.6GHz, while low-power Xeon processors will arrive with 2GHz speeds.

Intel is splitting its new Xeon CPUs into four families: Platinum is the 8000 series, Gold with the 6000 and 5000 series, while the 4000 series will be Silver, and the 3000 series is Bronze. Intel will use between 10 cores on the new Xeon processors, right up to the monster 28-core chip with Hyper-Threading, rolling the CPU threads up to 56.

Just as Samsung and Qualcomm have begun to ship the Galaxy S8 and S8+ which feature the Snapdragon 835, rumors have already begun to suggest a similar partnership for the Galaxy S9.

The Snapdragon 845 is the next rumored SoC from Qualcomm that is expected to be announced this year and ship in devices next year.

While it is unknown whether Samsung will actually use the rumored Snapdragon 845, the two companies are reportedly in talks to determine exactly which models will ship with Snapdragon inside. Currently, the Snapdragon 835 is shipping in the Samsung Galaxy S8 in the United States, China, and Japan. Depending on how the talks go, we could see that existing relationship either expand or contract.

We've already written about Intel's next-gen CPUs launching two months early, but now we have a date: May 30. Intel will reportedly announce its next-gen CPUs and new X299 chipset during their conference at Computex 2017 in Taipei.

The latest news is coming from Bench.life, which is reporting that Intel's Senior VP Navin Shenoy will make the announcement during his keynote speech on May 30, while general availability of the new CPUs will start on June 26. Now, what new CPUs can we expect from Intel, especially now since AMD kicked them pretty hard in the pants with their new Ryzen CPUs.

Intel is reportedly preparing new 4, 6, 8, 10, and even new 12-core CPUs - so expect Hyper-Threading on most of them, making them 4C/8T, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, 10C/20T, and a monstrous 12C/24T. We should expect Basin Falls X-Series to include new Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors. Kaby Lake-X will be the family of quad-core processors, while Skylake-X will handle the higher-end SKUs.

As the first devices with Samsung's 10nm process start to hit the market, like the Galaxy S8, the company is already starting to spin up the next generation of their 10nm process in Korea.

Samsung has announced that they have already qualified their 10nm LPP manufacturing process which is expected to offer double digit improvements to performance or power.

Samsung started production for the current LPE process in October with devices hitting the market this week. That puts us at around a six month lead time between the beginning of production and an actual availability date. However, much of the equipment and processes should be the same as 10nm LPE, the current lead manufacturing process at Samsung which could mean a shorter time to market.

AMD never needed to knock Intel off its CPU leadership position to win, it just needed to disrupt the market enough so that it forced their main competitor out of a zombie-like dominant state. Intel has been winning for far too long, and within weeks of AMD's launch of the Ryzen CPU family - now available in Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5, Intel has reacted in multiple ways. The 52% IPC improvement in the Zen architecture must have taken Intel by surprise, with some amazing value for money in the Ryzen 7 1800X as it's a 8C/16T part on the cheap.

First, were the rumors of the next-gen X299 platform - and then the news of the weirdly-placed Core i7-7740K, a HEDT part on LGA2011, but with 4C/8T. Intel launching an 8-threaded CPU, a little faster than the much cheaper LGA1151-based Core i7-7700K, but on the more expensive LGA2011 platform, strange. Then the news of Intel cancelling its IDF (Intel Developer Forum) convention, after nearly 20 years in operation. IDF17 was cancelled in the process.

Now there is news that continues this strange Bizarro world that we're living in, with Team Blue now rumored to be bringing the launch of its Basin Falls platform by two months, with the new family bringing us the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors. The new Basin Falls platform will arrive with the new X299 chipset, while the 'accelerated launch' of the next-gen Coffee Lake architecture is reportedly primed for an August 2017 release, pulled up 5 months from January 2018.