PCHardCores: October 2017

Tuesday 31 October 2017

AMD Second Gen EPYC Beastly Server CPUs Could Rock 64 Cores, 128 Threads And 256MB ...

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AMD first gave us a taste of how powerful Zen is with the Ryzen 7 processors, which were followed up by Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3. Later, we were taken ...

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A Look at Intel 8th Generation Mobile Quad-Core Performance

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Could this "Kaby Lake Refresh" CPU provide the headroom to fit two more ... Would this mean that the processor fans would have to run out of control? ... The Zenbook 3 Deluxe is only slightly faster than the dual-core CPU X1 ...

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Architectures Battle for Deep Learning

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Chip vendors implement new applications in CPUs. If the application is suitable for ... Wave Computing has developed a dataflow processor for DNNs.

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Razer Launches Core v2 TB3 eGFX Enclosure: Dual TB3 Controllers

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Razer has launched a new version of its Thunderbolt 3 external graphics enclosure for video cards, the Core v2. The new Core v2 chassis uses dual Thunderbolt 3 controllers and a USB-C/USB PD controller for easier routing of traffic to/from GPU and other components located in the box. In addition, the Core v2 can support larger graphics adapters than the Core v1, according to the company. As for the price, it remained the same as in the case of the first-gen Razer Core.

The new Razer Core v2 looks exactly the same as the predecessor from the outside: it has the same design, dimensions, two zone RGB Chroma lighting, the same card mounting mechanism, one Thunderbolt 3 input, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a GbE connector and so on. Meanwhile, the internal architecture of the Razer Core v2 has been revamped to include two TB3 controllers in order to “ensure fluid gameplay”, as Razer puts it. While two TB3 controllers and one TB3 connector seem a little odd, the two Intel DSL6540 controller chips actually make sense in case of this box.

Every Thunderbolt 3 controller has one or two input/output ports used to connect to external device(s) as well as four PCIe 3.0 x1 input/output lanes to connect to the host and/or to other devices. Each TB3 controller is paired with a USB Type-C and Power Delivery (PD) controller that detects cable orientation, negotiates USB PD, and configures alternate mode settings for internal and external multiplexers, and virtually all eGFX enclosures use Texas Instruments TPS65982 or TPS65983 controllers for this. (The TI controllers are slightly different, with varying Mac compatibility depending on which one is used given macOS does not officially support eGFX at the moment, but this is an entirely different conversation).

In the first generation of the Razer Core the company used one Intel DSL6540 controller coupled with one TI TPS65982 to connect the PCIe GPU slot, a GbE controller, and a USB controller/hub to the external TB3 output (multiplexing all the clients across the PCIe lanes). When all three were used at the same time (when a mouse and a keyboard are plugged to USB Type-A ports and the GbE is used instead of Wi-Fi), they naturally fought for bandwidth and latency, which affected real-world performance, Razer says.

With its second generation Razer Core, the company uses two dual-port Intel DSL6540 ICs coupled with the newer TI TPS65983 controllers. The primary TB3 controller now uses all four PCIe lanes to connect the GPU to the host PC. The secondary TB3 controller is connected to the primary one using the downstream TB3 port of the primary DSL6540 (essentially creating an internal daisy chain) and uses its PCIe lanes for the GbE and the USB controllers (basically, the DSL6540 is used like a PCIe switch). In this scenario, the GPU always gets a priority and the traffic from the other clients is always routed properly. As a bonus, the Core v2 does not have compatibility problems because they now use the newer TI TPS65983 controller.

Razer Core v2 Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Chassis Specifications
Max Video Card Size	Double-Wide, 12.2" Long (312 x 145 x 43 mm)
Max Video Card Power	375W
Connectivity	4x USB 3.0 1x Gigabit Ethernet Laptop Charging via Thunderbolt 3
Chassis Size	4.13 x 13.9 x 8.66 inches (105 x 353 x 220mm)
Internal PSU	500W
System Requirements	Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Certified PC Thunderbolt 3 w/Active Cable Windows 10
Compatible Graphics Cads	AMD Radeon RX-series and later NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10-series and later
Shipping Date	Q4 2017
Price	$499

When it comes to compatibility with video cards, the Razer Core v2 supports all graphics adapters that consume no more than 375 W and have appropriate driver support. Razer claims that the optimized internal designs now allows installation of larger adapters with custom PCBs, but the difference with the v1 is not that significant.*

Comparison of Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Chassis
		ASUS ROG XG Station 2	AKiTiO Node	PowerColor Devil Box	Razer Core	Razer Core V2
Chassis Dimensions	Length	45.6 cm 17.95 in	42.8 cm 16.85 in	40 cm 15.748 in	34 cm 13.38 in
	Height	27.8 cm 10.94 in	22.7 cm 8.94 in	24.2 cm 9.52 in	21.84 cm 8.6 in
	Width	15.8 cm 6.22 in	14.5 cm 5.71 in	17.2 cm 6.77 in	10.5 cm 4.13 in
Max Dimension of Compatible Graphics Card	Length	31.2 cm 12.2 in
	Height (PCB+Cables)	over 14 cm over 5.51"	17 cm 6.7 in	14 cm 5.51 in	13 cm 5.12 in	14.5 cm 5.71 in
	Width	4.4 cm 1.73 in		5 cm 1.96 in	4.3 cm 1.69 in
Maximum GPU Power		500 W (?)	300 W (?)	375 W
PSU	Wattage	600 W	400 W	500 W
PSU	Form-Factor	internal proprietary	SFX	internal proprietary
Cooling Fans (mm)		3 × 80	120	unknown	3 × 80	3 × 80 (?)
Connectivity	Thunderbolt	1 × TB3	1 × TB3	1 × TB3
	Ethernet	1 × GbE	-	1 × GbE
	USB	4 × USB 3.0 1 × USB-B	-	4 × USB 3.0
	SATA	1×SATA 6Gb/s	-	1×SATA 6Gb/s	-
	DisplayPort	-	-	-
Availability		1/2017	12/2016	10/2016	4/2016	Q4 2017
Price		$?	$299	$379	$499

Razer intends to ship the Core v2 Thunderbolt 3 eGFX enclosure in the coming weeks in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, and Germany. The MSRP of one unit for the U.S. market is $499.

*Note that at some point Razer has changed internal specs of the Core v1 compared to the originally declared.

LeapMind Wades into Battle over Embedded Brains

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LeapMind traces these algorithms onto programmable chips called FPGAs that can chew through less power than embedded CPUs or GPUs.

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MACOM Sells AppliedMicro’s X-Gene CPU Business

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MACOM last week announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell the microprocessor-related assets it bought from AppliedMicro to Project Denver Holdings, a new company backed by The Carlyle Group asset management company.

MACOM closed the acquisition of AppliedMicro early in 2017. Back then, the company made no secret that it was primarily interested in Applied Micro’s MACsec and 100G to 400G solutions, but not in the company's X-Gene server CPUs. MACOM’s plan was to become a leader in datacenter communication technologies with a focus on optical networks in particular (analog, photonic and mixed-signal PHYs). That said, the X-Gene business was not exactly the best fit for MACOM and the future of the CPU division has been unclear.

The X-Gene 3 server platform looked promising when it was introduced last November. The CPU has 32 custom ARMv8 cores running at up to 3 GHz, with 32 MB of L3 cache, eight DDR4-2667 memory channels with ECC, and 42 PCIe 3.0 lanes. MACOM started to sample the X-Gene 3 among interested parties this March and Kontron even demonstrated a server based on the CPU at MWC 2017. MACOM has not started commercial shipments of the X-Gene 3 yet, nonetheless the X-Gene 3 and its possible successors were impressive enough for The Carlyle Group to establish a new entity that will finalize the X-Gene 3 and continue development efforts.

Neither MACOM nor Carlyle have disclosed the financial terms of the deal, but MACOM will get a minority stake in Project Denver Holdings. Speaking of the latter, it is necessary to say that the new company has its own leadership team and a strong financial backing from Carlyle Partners VI (which is a $13 billion U.S. buyout fund). Assuming that Project Denver Holdings will keep AppliedMicro’s development team and will invest sufficient amount of money in the X-Gene in general, the new company will have chances to remain a leading supplier of ARMv8-based server CPUs. At the moment, the X-Gene is used by over half of a dozen server makers, so Project Denver Holdings is getting a business with existing, incoming and future products as well as customers.

Antipiracy software on new 'Assassin's Creed' is reportedly hogging users' processors

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... that the digital rights management software on the new “Assassin's Creed Origins” is taking a heavy toll on their personal computer processors.

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Asic Land Co. Ltd Licenses Andes Technology Corp. N1337 with Single-Precision Floating-Point ...

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The Andes Technology N13 processor is a high-performance CPU core architected for compute intensive applications running either on an operating ...

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ASUS Releases the WS X299 Pro Motherboard

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Based on the X299 chipset, the WS X299 Pro supports LGA 2066 CPUs including both Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X based processors. It comes with ...

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AMD's new Ryzen Mobile chips could overthrow Intel

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The manufacturer's new CPU and GPU architectures have allowed it to ... mobile processor market is its new Ryzen processors built on its Zen CPU ...

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ASUS Releases the WS X299 Pro Motherboard

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ASUS has now released the WS X299 Pro, a motherboard designed to be a workstation level platform for X299 processors. None of the features seem to stand out as making this motherboard a true 'workstation' motherboard, however, it does support multiple storage types (dual M.2 and a U.2), dual Intel network controllers, a COM port interface, and reinforced PCIe slots.

The all-black PCB has a chipset heatsink with the ASUS name on it as well as some silver highlights, but the heatsink increases its surface area by extending into two M.2 heatsinks as well. There are two heatsinks connected via a heat pipe for the 8-phase power delivery, which uses dual EPS 12V pin connectors to supply enough power to the top processors. The design of the heatsinks is professional-like: simple with a brushed aluminum/silver look on it. The back panel IO is not covered with a shroud, and RGB LEDs are not integrated on this board given the workstation nature, but there are two RGB strip headers, oddly enough.

Based on the X299 chipset, the WS X299 Pro supports LGA 2066 CPUs including both Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X based processors. It comes with the typical complement of eight memory slots supporting up to 128GB of DDR4 running at speeds up to DDR4-4133 in quad channel. If a quad-core Kaby Lake-X CPU is installed, supported speeds remain the same; however maximum capacity is then 64GB in dual channel. The board and CPUs do not support ECC memory, nor do they support Xeon-W CPUs.

Storage options include six SATA ports, a PCIe 3.0 x4 U.2 port, and dual M.2 slots. The M.2 slots are both covered by heatsinks in order to help dissipate the heat generated from the drives underneath. Both M.2 ports support SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4 modules. The SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. Despite offering three PCIe based storage ports between U.2 and M.2, bandwidth is shared between the second M.2 slot and the U.2 port. SATA bandwidth is also shared between the first M.2 slot and the first SATA port when a SATA M.2 drive is installed - exact configurations available will be part of the manual. The motherboard also has Thunderbolt 3 support via a 5 pin header located on the bottom of the board for add-in cards.

Network capabilities on the WS X299 Pro are handled by a dual Intel I210-AT gigabit network controllers. Not making an appearance on the network side of things is a 10 Gigabit LAN port, nor wireless capabilities, perhaps indicating that this is going to be a 'cheaper' level workstation product.

ASMedia controllers handle USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) connectivity, with a Type-A and Type-C port on the back panel, and an internal header for a front panel port. The chipset manages six USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports with four found on the back panel and another two from internal headers, as well as six USB 2.0 ports in a similar fashion. The WS X299 Pro has a total of four full-length PCIe slots from the processor, all reinforced, and one open-ended PCIe x4 slot from the chipset. Lane breakdowns will vary by CPU used: when using a 44 lane CPU, we get an x16/x16/x4(c)/x8/x4, a 28 lane CPU is x16/x8/x4(c)/x4/x0 while a Kaby Lake 16 lane CPU is x8/x4/x4(c)/x4/x0.

Audio duties are handled by the Realtek ALC S1220A codec, featuring ASUS' enhancements under the Crystal Sound 3 banner. ASUS worked with Realtek on the S1220A to give their own spin on the base ALC1220 codec, essentially removing some un-needed hardware to save power. The board has an auto impedance sense for the front and rear headphone outputs, its own internal audio amplifier, support for DTS connect, de-pop circuitry, and premium Japanese audio capacitors.

ASUS WS X299 Pro
Warranty Period	Unknown
Product Page	Link
Price	N/A
Size	ATX
CPU Interface	LGA2066
Chipset	Intel X299 Express
Memory Slots (DDR4)	Up to Eight DDR4-4133 Supporting Up to 128GB (SKL-X) Supporting Up to 64GB (KBL-X) Quad/Dual Channel Support DDR4 4133+
Network Connectivity	2 x Intel I210-AT LAN
Onboard Audio	Realtek ALC S1220A
PCIe Slots	44 lane CPU : x16/x16/x4(c)/x8/x4, 28 lane CPU : x16/x8/x4(c)/x4/x0, 16 lane CPU : x8/x4/x4(c)/x4/x0.
Onboard SATA	6 x 6 Gbps, Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10
Onboard SATA Express	None
Onboard M.2	2 x Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA
Onboard U.2	1 x PCIe 3.0 x4
USB 3.1	1 x Back Panel Type-A 1 x Back Panel Type-C 1 x Internal Header
USB 3.0	4 x Back Panel 1 x Header
USB 2.0	4 x Back Panel 1 x Header
Power Connectors	1 x 24-pin EATX 2 x 8-pin ATX 12V
Fan Headers	4 x 4-pin + 5-pin Extension Fan connector
IO Panel	2 x RJ45 ports 2 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps ports 4 x USB 3.1 5 Gbps ports 4 x USB 2.0 1 x SPDIF 1 x Audio Stack 1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button
Onboard Headers	1 x COM Header 1 x VROC Header 1 x Thunderbolt Header

Pricing nor availability was listed at the time of writing. ASUS has not fully fleshed out its product page on the ASUS website yet, detailing any specific workstation features. It is possible that warranty might be one of them, which will be region dependent, or that they are offering this product as a B2B. We will add more information when we get it.

IBM's Phase Change Memory computer can tell you if it's raining

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... processing inside Phase Change Memory with no external CPU. Traditional computing requires a memory to hold data and an external processor to ...

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Ben Nevis Advanced Black CPU Cooler With Added RGB

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The four 6 millimetre thick copper heat pipes are now in direct contact with the CPU, absorbing the heat directly from the processor and then ...

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Core i5-8400 vs. Overclocked Ryzen 5 1600

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Our most recent CPU roundup pitted Intel's 7th and 8th-gen Core i5 and Core ... However making good sense of the numbers and the processors that ...

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Monday 30 October 2017

Intel's new 10nm CPUs will be in short supply until 2018

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Intel might have launched its new Core i7-8700K and Core i9-7980XE flagship processors for the Z370 and X299 platforms, but the company will be ...

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Intel's Cannonlake processor is still scheduled to fire off by the end of 2017

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Intel's promise to deliver a processor based on 10nm process technology by the end of the year translates into high-performance, super-ultra-thin ...

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i7-2600K vs. i7-8700K – Is Upgrading Worthwhile?

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Sandy Bridge processors like the i7-2600K were CPUs that defined a generation and they’ve stood the test of time. But with Coffee Lake now here, is it finally time to upgrade?

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The Origin of the worlds most powerful DRM revealed!

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... if your CPU can't handle the completely reasonable request to create and run ... The hardware VM's make use of the processor's native ISA and the ...

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i7-2600K vs. i7-8700K – Is Upgrading Worthwhile?

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Sandy Bridge processors like the i7-2600K were CPUs that defined a generation and they’ve stood the test of time. But with Coffee Lake now here, is it finally time to upgrade?

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Destiny 2 PC update coming today, removes SSSE3 processor requirement

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It fixes the SSSE3 requirement issue that prevented players whose CPUs do not support the feature from being able to play the game. After the patch ...

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Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

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Here is a resource to help you judge if a CPU is a reasonable value: The gaming CPU hierarchy chart groups CPUs with similar performance.

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AMD shares fall after Morgan Stanley downgrades on Crypto outlook

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Graphic processor chips are used by cryptocurrency miners to “mine” for cryptocurrencies more efficiently and faster than CPU. GPU's are also mainly ...

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Intel are launching 10nm chips before the end of the year, despite manufacturing hell

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Some OEM manufacturers are expected to forgo the 10nm Cannon Lake tech entirely in favour of Intel's ninth generation Ice Lake processors in 2019.

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New Destiny 2 Update Out Now, But Only On PC

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According to Bungie, this update removes the SSSE3 processor requirement from the game. This was problematic for anyone with a CPU that doesn't ...

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MSI Infinite X high-end desktop is fueled by Coffee Lake

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The Infinite X is built around the best gaming CPU on the market right now, ... That mobo enables overclocking the Core i7-8700K CPU, and has four ... to isolate the processor, graphics card, and power supply from one another.

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AMD reveals the world's fastest processor for ultra-thin notebooks

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AMD just unveiled Ryzen mobile CPUs for premium 2-in-1s, ultra-thin notebook computers, and convertibles. This comes just after AMD's fantastic ...

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Assassin's Creed Origins anti-piracy DRM is crushing PC gamers' CPUs

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Steam users have posted in the platform's forums that Assassin's Creed Origins is maxing out processors causing drops in frame rate and making the ...

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Assassin's Creed Origins' Denuvo tech reportedly adds 40% to CPU usage

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The group suggests that Ubisoft's implementation of VMProtect over top of Denuvo is the reason for the abnormally high processor usage. Our own ...

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Intel Core i5 3570 Quad Core CPU Processor 3.4GHz LGA1155

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Intel Core i5 3570 Stunning performer, perfect for a budget gaming rig as it is quad core or a wo.

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Intel Sees Future in Neuromorphic Chips and Quantum Computing

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Intel (INTC), a leader in the data processor market, is set to secure its position ... Unlike its Core PC (personal computer) and server processors, which ...

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Can Intel Keep Its Footing in Technology's Changing Landscape?

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... holding a strong position in the PC (personal computer) and data center processor markets. Since 1968, when it was founded, Intel has become a ...

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All you need to know about AMD Ryzen laptop processors

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In fact, AMD claims 200% and 128% increase in CPU and GPU performance respectively. Many laptop makers, such as Acer and HP have already ...

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Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

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Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM ... on all four cores of his processor even when lower graphics settings were used. ... As well as stutter, others have complained that this CPU overload has ...

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Intel will ship low volumes of its first 10-nanometer chips this year

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It seems that manufacturing of Intel’s follow-up to its Coffee Lake chips—the 10-nanometer Cannon Lake—is on target. The new CPUs are due to arrive in 2018, but Intel has confirmed that low volumes will be shipping before this year is out.

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Yet One More Neural Net Accelerator

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... but unlike Synopsys, the block attaches to a separate host processor. ... If it's data, the CPU or GPU or something else needs to process it, then we ...

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Destiny 2 PC Hotfix 1.05.1 Supports AMD Phenom II, Removes SSSE3 Processor Requirement

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... Phenom II CPUs but will also remove the SSSE3 Processor requirement and also solve crashing problems with the AMD RX Vega graphics cards.

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Assassins Creed Origin DRM Hammers Gamers' CPUs

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Assassin's Creed Origins gamers are reporting massive CPU utilization. ... The individual reported running an i7 processor, which is no slouch.

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Destiny 2 Upcoming Hotfix On PC To Fix AMD Phenom II Crash, Releasing Next Week

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It was further revealed that AMD Phenom II series CPU is below minimum ... "Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3" processor requirement.

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Purism switches off despised Intel management engine

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For those who came in late, the Intel Management Engine is a separate CPU which is part of the main chip. It is widely hated because it relies on ...

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Destiny 2 PC AMD Phenom II Hotfix 1.05.1 Inbound; Removes SSSE3 CPU Requirement

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“Destiny 2 on PC will receive Hotfix 1.0.5.1 tomorrow (10/30) at 10 AM PDT to remove the SSSE3 processor requirement”, the developer tweeted. ... Destiny 2 players running the game on an AMD Phenom II CPU have been ...

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Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) with Exynos 7885 CPU and 6GB RAM Revealed by GeekBench Leak

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Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) with Exynos 7885 CPU and 6GB RAM ... Moreover, the processor features eight cores and it uses an ARM 65 architecture.

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Intel Core i5-8600K 8th Gen 6-Core CPU Review

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Intel Core i5-8600K 8th Gen 6-Core CPU Review ... With this being a K-series processor, it's also overclockable, meaning you can squeeze even more ...

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Nokia 2 Will Feature Snapdragon 212 CPU and 1GB of RAM

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Nokia 2 Will Feature Snapdragon 212 CPU and 1GB of RAM ... This processor is not spectacular by any means, but this was to be expected since ...

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Sunday 29 October 2017

Intel i3-330m Processor CPU 2.133GHz

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Intel Core i3 Mobile Frequency (GHz) 2.133 Package type 988-pin micro-FCPGA Number of cores 2 L3 cache size (MB) 3.

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GIGABYTE GA-B85M-HD3-A motherboard/Intel Core i5-4460 processor

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GIGABYTE GA-B85-HD3-A (rev. 1.0) LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards ...

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Huawei Mate 10 Pro: How Powerful Is the Kirin 970 Processor.

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The Kirin 970 chipset is supported by an octa-core CPU. The chipset sports 10nm fabrication and there's also a 12-core GPU in the mobile phone.

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AMD 12nm EARLY 2018, AMD RYZEN 2ND GEN AND RADEON RX VEGA 2 TO BE RELEASED

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Sources say, AMD will release its next-generation Pinnacle Ridge (CPU) processors in February of 2018. AMD is expected to fight in higher-end with ...

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Saturday 28 October 2017

2 Acquisitions That Could Pay Off Big for Intel Corp.

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Soft Machines claimed that its processor technology could deliver a quantum ... That statement is true, but there's a catch: Intel's general-purpose CPU ...

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Can Vector Supercomputing Be Revived?

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... massively parallel compute engine to help CPUs do their math homework. ... And we think that the Aurora SX processor looks very similar, with more ...

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Curtiss-Wright Recognized by Mentor with 1st Place Technology Leadership Award for Military ...

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... 7th generation Intel Xeon “Kaby Lake” CPU processor mezzanine card. The accomplishment resulted from the Curtiss-Wright design team's success ...

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AMD's Ryzen laptop CPUs with Vega are ready for mobile warfare with Intel

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AMD decided not to mince words when introducing its Ryzen mobile processors with integrated Vega graphics (“Raven Ridge”) today, anointing its ...

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Friday 27 October 2017

Pirate Bay caught using visitors' CPUs to mine cryptocurrency

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And while it didn't pose a great amount of risk to the visitors, hijacking their processors for making money hasn't gone down too well with many.

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AMD launches Ryzen mobile APUs equipped with Vega graphics

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... the final step in AMD's performance resurrection was to launch mobile processors that combine its newest CPU and GPU architectures, and that day ...

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The announcement of the smartphone Oppo F5: CPU from MediaTek and a powerful camera

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Inside the Oppo F5 has 4 or 6 GB RAM, flash memory capacity 32 or 64 GB and also is not the most modern processor MediaTek Helio P23 on 8 cores ...

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AMD announces the world's fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks

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In Cinebench R15 nT (CPU performance), the Ryzen 7 2700U hits a score of 719 compared to Intel's Core i7-8550U (latest-gen) mobile processor (in ...

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Asus VivoBook S15 review

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Our Asus VivoBook S15 S510UQ has an Intel Core i5-7200U processor, with ... Chunkier quad-core laptops do have a lot more CPU power, but if you ...

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Get a Dell XPS desktop with a Core i5-8400 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti for $900

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The least expensive pairs a 6-core/12-thread Core i5-8400 processor with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. ... and a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, and the latter swaps out the CPU for an unlocked Core i7-8700K and graphics card ...

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Are AMD CPUs Finally Back in the Workstation Game?

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With the details of AMD's Zen processor architecture unveiled years ago, the ... Even rival NVIDIA might see a positive from an AMD CPU resurrection, ...

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UT's new supercomputer is twice as powerful—and uses half the energy of its predecessor

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... row after row of metal racks housing 300,000 computer processors, each blinking green, wires connecting each processor, and the deafening sound ...

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How video game tech makes neural networks possible

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By now, you're familiar with the term 'central processing unit,' or CPU. ... Instead of converting numbers into pictures, the processor converts pictures ...

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AMD Ryzen 7 2700U is the perfect mobile processor for ultrathin notebooks

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“We are pleased to deliver the world's fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, ... Its four-core (8-thread) is said to provide up to 3x CPU performance ...

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AMD Ryzen processors are here, eyeing to power ultra-thin laptops segment

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The AMD Ryzen 7 2700U is claimed to be the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, with up to 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance as well ...

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Intel Announces Q3 2017 Results

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As another quarterly earnings period continues, Intel has announced its earnings for the third quarter of their 2017 fiscal year. Due the slowing of the PC market, Intel has begun its transition to a “Data-Centric Business” which will embrace more than just CPUs. The results have already begun to pay off, which isn’t surprising since they unofficially began this transformation before it was ever announced. At their heart, they are still a chip fab company, but with more reach on what chips the fab. Let’s dig into the results.

Revenues for the quarter were $16.1 billion, up 2% from a year ago. Gross margin was down 1% to 62.3%, but despite the lower margins, operating income was up 15% for the quarter to $5.1 billion. Net income was $4.5 billion, which was up 34% year-over-year. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.94, up 36%.

Intel Q3 2017 Financial Results (GAAP)
	Q3'2017	Q2'2017	Q3'2016
Revenue	$16.1B	$14.8B	$15.8B
Operating Income	$5.1B	$3.8B	$4.5B
Net Income	$4.5B	$2.8B	$3.4B
Gross Margin	62.3%	61.6%	63.3%
Client Computing Group Revenue	$8.86B	+7.9%	-0.3%
Data Center Group Revenue	$4.88B	+11.6%	+7.4%
Internet of Things Revenue	$849M	+17.9%	+23.2%
Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group	$891M	+1.9%	+37.3%
Programmable Solutions Group	$469M	+6.6%	+10.3%
All Other Revenue	$202M	+40.3%	-65.2%

The new “Data-Centric Business” happens to include everything Intel does, outside of the Client Computing Group (CCG), however they’ve not quite shaken the shackles of the legacy PC business quite yet. The CCG had revenues this quarter of $8.9 billion, which is flat compared to Q3 2016. That sounds like it’s not a good thing, but considering the decline of the PC market, Intel has managed to grow this business over the last several years. That’s mostly been driven by demand for their more expensive products, because the only areas where the PC market is doing ok in is gaming, and convertible devices. Operating margins for the CCG were up three points, and the flat revenues were driven by average selling price going up 7%, but unit volumes were down 7%. Operating income for the segment grew 8% though, thanks to improvements in the 14-nanometer process (read: costs continue to drop for this node). Intel has also confirmed that 10-nanometer will be shipping in low volumes by the end of 2017, but higher volume products will be available starting in 2018. Using this as a benchmark, we should expect 10-nanometer to officially launch at CES, but that’s speculation.

The Data Center Group (DCG) had revenue growth of 7% to $4.9 billion, compared to the same quarter a year ago. Operating income for the DCG was $2.3 billion for the quarter, which was also up 7%. Unit volumes were up 4%, and ASP was up 2%. Intel should continue to see growth here as they transition away from the older 22-nanometer parts.

Internet of Things group had revenues go up 23% to $849 million. Intel attributes the growth to strength in industrial and video. Operating profit was $146 million, which is down 24% year-over-year, as they continue to invest in automotive, which many companies are seeing as a strong growth target.

Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NVMSG) had revenues of $891 million, which is up 37% year-over-year. Intel has seen strong demand for data center SSD solutions, and demand is outpacing supply. With the launch of 3D XPoint, they’ve created some new segments, but new products don’t come for free, and this segment had an operating loss of $52 million year-over-year, although that’s $82 million better than a year ago. Intel is predicting this unit to be profitable ahead of schedule, in 2018.

The Programmable Solutions Group, which is Intel’s FPGA business, had revenues up 10% to $469 million. FPGAs have seen a number of new markets, and Intel has found a firm foothold in data center, automotive, and military. Operating profit for this segment was $113 million, which is up 45% year-over-year.

Finally, the All Other group had revenues of $202 million, which is down significantly from a year ago when it was $581 million. Intel has recently acquired Mobileye, and has reported that Mobileye’s results will be in the All Other category going forward.

Looking forward, Intel is expecting revenues around $16.3 billion for Q4, plus or minus $500 million, with gross margin around 61%, plus or minus a couple of points.

Source: Intel Investor Relations

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AMD Made World's Fastest Processor CPU for Ultrathin Notebooks, Ryzen 7 2700U

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AMD has Just announced that they have madeWorld's Fastest Processor CPU for Ultrathin Notebooks AMD Ryzen Processor + Radeon Vega ...

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Best Video Editing Laptops of 2017

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While you can trim small clips with even an inexpensive laptop, to work with raw HD or 4K video or to create special effects, you need a fast processor, ...

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Assassin's Creed Origins PC Performance Review

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You'll need an Core i5 at the very least or an AMD FX processor. ... at Assassin's Creed Origins' Very High preset with our CPU being the very obvious ...

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Should you upgrade or purchase a budget gaming PC?

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However, the tricky question is which CPU is right for you, when you are on a ... Intel has changed the processor socket to optimise core performance.

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AMD's new notebook processor will put Intel on notice

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AMD's new notebook processor will put Intel on notice ... The Ryzen line combines CPU and an integrated GPU on one chip, and AMD produces both ...

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Call of Duty: WWII PC Final System Requirements Revealed

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Aside from this, the only other notable change is the shift in minimum CPU ... Games is recommending the very latest AMD Ryzen 5 1400 processor.

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Intel reveals robust financial results, but it's losing turf to AMD's Ryzen CPUs

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This is, essentially, the other piece of the jigsaw showing that AMD is plowing ahead in the processor arena thanks to Ryzen. AMD's CEO even said ...

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70x54mm ARM Cortex A15 module packs plenty of memory

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The 70x54mm² module comes with camera interfaces integrated into both processors and all external usable signals of the CPU are accessible via ...

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AMD unveils Ryzen Mobile processors

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According to AMD, the upcoming Raven Ridge should be up to 44% faster in multi-threaded CPU performance and 161% more graphics performance ...

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AMD's Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 with Vega muscle into Intel's mobile space

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AMD just opened a new beachhead in its war with Intel by launching two Ryzen laptop CPUs it claims with being the “world's fastest processor” for ...

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Nexus 6P vs Nexus 7: Two of Google's Best Step Inside the Ring

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First off, we have Nexus 7 that's fueled by an NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L quad-core CPU. This processor is also paired with an ULP GeForce GPU and 1GB ...

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TechNave NewsBytes #7 - AMD Ryzen mobile processors, The Pantheon, Grab Better 365 ...

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Featuring up to 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance and a 161% better Radeon Vega graphics built into the System-on-Chip (SoC) the new ...

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AMD's New Chips Could Finally Offer A Good Alternative To Intel In Laptops

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Instead AMD will be initially launching the new Ryzen mobile processor in three notebooks: The 41cm HP Envy x360, ... gained from being the only laptop chipmaker that produces CPUs and GPUs to make the wicked fast chips.

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AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors Featuring 'Zen' CPU Cores and 'Vega' Graphics Architecture ...

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AMD has updated it entire CPU product range this year. The company has targeted virtually everyone, from entry-level users for who it released its ...

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System76 and ZaReason both sell Linux laptops with Kaby Lake Refresh chips

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A few months after Intel launched its 8th-gen Core processors for laptops, there are still ... But that price only gets you a Core i3-7100U dual-core CPU.

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AMD Ryzen Mobile release date and specs

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It's tit for tat in the processor market as per usual and AMD claims it's new Ryzen ... Overall AMD is claiming improvements of up to three times the CPU ...

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Synology DS418j Budget-Friendly 4-Bay NAS Review

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Both parts are of newer generations too, with the CPU now being a 64-bit processor and the memory now being DDR4. The DS418j is a perfect device ...

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Intel reveals robust financial results, but it’s losing turf to AMD’s Ryzen CPUs

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Intel has revealed its latest financial results with an impressive picture of growth that beat analyst estimates, although there was one wobbly area, namely desktop chips, where AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have made a clearly visible dent in Intel’s armor.

Overall, Intel raked in revenue of $16.1 billion (around £12.2 billion, AU$21 billion) for Q3 which was up 6% compared to the previous year, with a net income of $4.5 billion (around £3.4 billion, AU$5.9 billion) which represented a strong increase of 34% year-on-year.

And here comes the ‘but’ – desktop chip sales dropped by 6%, and it’s not hard to guess why, particularly when you look at AMD’s third quarter results as we did yesterday.

AMD announced that its computing and graphics group (Ryzen and Radeon) secured revenues of $819 million (around £620 million, AU$1.05 billion), which was up a massive 74% on the previous year.

Meanwhile, Intel’s client computing group (desktop and notebook chips, along with mobile devices, and wireless chips) saw its revenue remain flat, with no growth, whereas all other groups showed strong double-digit revenue growth (except data centers, which was up 7%). The IoT group was up 23% and Intel’s non-volatile memory solutions group shifted up several gears with 37% growth.

This is, essentially, the other piece of the jigsaw showing that AMD is plowing ahead in the processor arena thanks to Ryzen. AMD’s CEO even said that at some online retailers, Ryzen desktop CPUs accounted for around 40-50% of sales; effectively almost pulling level with Intel.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that Intel has been firing marketing flak at AMD over the course of this year.

We discuss who wins in the AMD vs Intel war of the CPUs

Wake up and smell the Coffee Lake

That said, Intel does have a potential ace emerging from its sleeve in the form of new Coffee Lake desktop CPUs which bring six-core desktop chips into the mainstream for the first time, in an obvious effort to battle Ryzen’s impressive core counts.

Coffee Lake officially went on sale this month, and while you can purchase a processor if you hunt around online, there appear to be considerable stock issues, with some major retailers not showing availability until the beginning of next month.

AMD is also predicting that its growth will slow down thanks to a forecasted diminishing demand for cryptocurrency mining GPUs, and all this could add up to a swing back in Intel’s favor in the overall financial picture.

The good thing is, whichever way you look at it, the processor market is clearly becoming a far more competitive place, and that has to be good news for the consumer on the hunt for keenly priced CPUs.

Maybe Black Friday will bring further joy when it comes to bargain-basement CPUs

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AMD Ryzen processors are here, watch to power ultra-thin laptops segment

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According to AMD, the Ryzen 7 2700U is the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks with up to 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance as well ...

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AMD introduces new Ryzen mobile processors for ultra-thin notebooks

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AMD today announced the launch of the AMD Ryzen mobile processor, ... processor performance in workloads using from one to many CPU cores.

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Thursday 26 October 2017

Oppo F5 official with mid-range CPU and bezel-less design

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It is powered by a mid-range MediaTek MT6763T octa-core processor matched with either 4 GB or 6 GB of RAM. The 4 GB models come with 32 GB of ...

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Best Desktop PCs for Windows Mixed Reality

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HP's Pavilion 570 (about $550) is a relatively compact tower PC with an Intel Core i5-7400 processor (CPU) and integrated Intel HD Graphics 630.

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Intel Core i5 6500 cpu processor

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Comes with original packaging. Works perfectly fine, great cpu for a 1151 socket build.

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AMD reveals first Ryzen processors for laptops to take on Intel U-series

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The Ryzen line combines CPU and an integrated GPU on one chip, and AMD produces both pieces, unlike Intel's need to rely on outside GPU makers ...

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Intel Coffee Lake Supported Motherbaords and Intel Z370

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Currently the only motherboards that support the Coffee Lake CPU's are ... more and efficiency that is require for the 8th Generation Intel Processors.

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Why AMD's New Laptop Chip Might Be Its Best Performer Yet

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Dubbed the “Ryzen Mobile Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics,” the chips consume less power than desktop CPUs, making them ideal for ...

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Best X299 motherboard

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No matter how you feel about 2017, it's been a great year for CPU releases. Intel and AMD have doubled down on core counts, prodding processor ...

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Mac Pro (2009) MacPro 4.1 CPU Processor Tray 2.26Ghz 8 core 8Gb ram

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Mac Pro 2009 2.26Ghz 8 core tray with 8gb ram bundle Pulled from working Mac Pro unit.

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AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors Are Finally Here: The Fusion of Zen CPU and Vega GPU

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Since the CPU portion of Ryzen Mobile processors is based on Zen architecture, it is not surprising that the AI-powered SenseMI technology from ...

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AMD Introduces First Two Ultrathin-bound Ryzen Mobile Processors

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When AMD launched its Ryzen series of processors earlier this year, many (including me) exclaimed such things as, “Finally! AMD's CPUs are ...

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AMD's Ryzen laptop CPUs with Vega are ready for mobile warfare with Intel

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AMD decided not to mince words when introducing its Ryzen mobile processors with integrated Vega graphics ("Raven Ridge") today, anointing its ...

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Who needs a CPU? Phase change memory acts as an analog computer

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Historically, one of the larger bottlenecks to computing performance hasn't been processor speed; it has been getting data and instructions to and from ...

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A Quick Breakdown Of AMD's New Ryzen Mobile Processors

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AMD claimed that the Ryzen 7 2700U is the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, with 44 percent more multi-threaded CPU performance and up to ...

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PCI-SIG Finalizes and Releases PCIe 4.0, Version 1 Specificaiton: 2x PCIe Bandwidth and More

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This week, PCI-standards consortium PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) has ratified and released specifications for PCIe 4.0 Specification Version 1, uploading the documents to their PCI-SIG Specification Library. This marks the full release of PCIe 4.0, following up on June’s revision 0.9 specification publication. Doubling PCIe 3.0’s 8 GT/s (~1 GB/s) of bandwidth per lane, PCIe 4.0 offers a transfer rate of 16 GT/s with flexible lane width configurations, providing significant I/O performance benefits useful for storage, networking, and AI applications. At the same time, PCI-SIG has targeted Q2 2019 for releasing the finalized PCIe 5.0 specification, so PCIe 4.0 won't be quite as long-lived as PCIe 3.0 has been.

In context, PCI-SIG has previously kept to a four year cadence for PCIe 1.0 (2003), PCIe 2.0 (2006), and PCIe 3.0 (2010). In regards to the seven year delay, PCI-SIG noted that PCIe 3.0 provided sufficient bandwidth for some time before the developments and rising demands of AI compute workloads, PCIe NVMe and 3D XPoint storage, and networking speeds, particularly as 10GbE becomes more and more accessible to consumers. For compute GPUs, the bandwidth limitations of PCIe 3.0 had already driven NVIDIA in developing their proprietary NVLink interconnect. Consequently, with PCIe 4.0 and beyond, the PCI-SIG is looking to get back towards a more normal cadence, especially as they've now resolved some of the major technical hurdles in enabling faster transfer rates via the PCIe 4.0 standard.

The other aspect is the nature of the organization. PCI-SIG has almost 800 member companies, from which they annually elect a board of directors; for 2017-2018, the Board includes members from AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. In developing and maintaining the open PCI specifications, members collaborate in committees and technical workgroups, submitting and reviewing specification changes. Part of PCI-SIG’s recent work is in streamlining in this process.

Once the specifications are finalized, members must have products pass interoperability and compliance tests at one of PCI-SIG’s many Compliance Workshops throughout the year, in order for the product to be added to the Integrators List, which OEMs and system integrators use in choosing hardware. For PCIe 4.0, PCI-SIG offered pre-publication Compliance Workshops for the first time, utilizing the earlier revision 0.9, but only at a preliminary “FYI Testing” level. For the rest of the year, PCI-SIG will offer PCIe 4.0 FYI Testing at Compliance Workshops; for the time being, PCIe 4.0 is not listed on either the official Compliance Program and Integrators List.

Like the previous PCIe iterations, PCIe 4.0 features backwards compatibility, and PCIe 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x cards will fit PCIe 4.0 slots and operate normally. PCIe 4.0 also maintains PCIe 3.0’s 128b/130b encoding, which will continue to be used in PCIe 5.0.

Among the other improvements, several features are more relevant for designers and developers than end users. As data rates increase, performance variation rises and signal integrity degrades. With that in mind, PCIe 4.0 brings lane margining at the PHY receiver, where the PCIe controller obtains electrical margin information of each PCIe lane in order to measure variation tolerance. PCIe 4.0 also has extended tags and credits, features that work together to mask latency and promote full bandwidth saturation. Other improvements include overall reduced system latency, I/O virtualization and platform integration, and added lanes/bandwitdth scalability, as well as enhanced Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) capabilities.

While gaming graphics cards are the most visible PCIe device to consumers, additional PCIe bandwidth overhead is unlikely to affect gaming performance, at least right away. However given the limited amount of PCIe bandwidth available with most consumer CPUs - just 16 general purpose lanes from the CPU with another 4 lanes for the chipset - this will also go a long way towards easing the pressure that the combination of GPUs, NVMe SSDs, and 10GigE networking can place on system I/O bandwidth. What may also be relevant is increased power capability from the secondary connectors, but at this point there are no further details, and a PCIe 4.0 Electromechanical Specification has not been disclosed.

As far as PCIe 4.0 vendor solutions go, Synopsys and Cadence, among others, are developing or offering 16GT/s PHYs and controllers, validation tools, and many other applications. IBM’s POWER9 feature PCIe 4.0 connections and Intel’s 10nm Falcon Mesa FPGA supports PCIe 4.0 as an IP block embedded via EMIB. Meanwhile, AMD have targeted 2020 for PCIe 4.0 support. But before products hit shelves, the PCIe 4.0 compliance and interoperability tests need to be finalized with both specifications and tools/procedures, and with the 32GT/s PCIe 5.0 fast-tracked to 2019, there may be very few, if any, consumer PCIe 4.0 devices. In any case, PCI-SIG only referred to the current PCIe 5.0 version 0.3, despite targeting Q4 2017 for version 0.5 at Hot Chips 2017.

PCI-SIG members may download the PCIe 4.0 specification for free at the Specification Library. Non-members may purchase a hard copy of the specification for $4,500.

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Lenovo Yoga 920 review: Return of the master

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It has inside an eighth-generation Intel Core i7-8550U quad-core processor (CPU), 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD).

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AMD launches Ryzen mobile APUs equipped with Vega graphics

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According to AMD, the Ryzen 7 2700U is the fastest processor around for ultra-thin gaming notebooks, with up to 44 percent more multi-threaded CPU ...

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AMD announces their Ryzen Mobile series of processors

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Up to 200% more CPU performance while consuming 58% less power

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AMD Ryzen mobile processors launch to take on Intel

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Both also boast a 15W nominal CTDP, and compared to previous AMD mobile processors, AMD is promising up to 3 times the CPU performance and ...

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AMD officially launches Mobile Ryzen, Zen meets Vega

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While desktop Ryzen, Threadripper and server EPYC CPUs and its RX Vega ... Featuring four Zen CPU cores, up to 10 Vega Compute Units (CUs), and at ... "accelerate processor performance by using from one to many CPU cores", ...

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First Ryzen laptop chips: AMD promises big gains in performance and efficiency

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While AMD has been shipping Ryzen desktop CPUs for some time, these Ryzen mobile processors are important because they will make AMD more ...

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AMD Brings Ryzen Mobile to Notebooks

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AMD claims the Ryzen 7 2700U is “the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, with up to 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance as well as up ...

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Should you buy the 128GB Surface Laptop?

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The baseline Surface Laptop, which comes with a seventh-generation Intel Core i5-7200U processor (CPU), 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 128GB ...

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AMD Announces New Ryzen Powered Ultrathin Notebooks And Convertibles

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Compared to the previous generation, the AMD Ryzen mobile processor delivers up to 3x more CPU performance, 2.28x more GPU performance ...

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AMD Launches Ryzen Mobile Processors

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According to AMD, the Ryzen Mobile processors provide explosive performance gains of 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance and 161% more graphics performance than Intel's new Kaby Lake Refresh mobile processors.

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AMD Ryzen Processors For Laptops Launched

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AMD today announced its lineup of Ryzen processors for laptops. ... What that means is that the chips have a CPU and an integrated GPU into one ...

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AMD Ryzen processors want to power your next skinny laptop

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AMD Introduces Ryzen Mobile Processors with Vega Graphics

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AMD is officially announcing their Ryzen line of mobile processors. Formerly codenamed “Raven Ridge”, these CPUs bring a new level of efficiency ...

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AMD announces the world's fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks

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... nominal processor TDP is the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, with up to 44% more multi-threaded CPU performance as well as up to 161% ...

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AMD's Ryzen mobile processors arrive to seriously power-up laptops

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AMD has officially unveiled its first Ryzen mobile processors (or APUs as the company calls these CPU plus GPU chips), complete with some ...

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HP Announces ENVY x360 15 With Ryzen Mobile

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But the star of the show is going to be the Ryzen Mobile processor. HP is offering the ... The CPU change is clearly the big change. The rest of the ...

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AMD’s Ryzen mobile processors arrive to seriously power-up laptops

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AMD has officially unveiled its first Ryzen mobile processors (or APUs as the company calls these CPU plus GPU chips), complete with some impressive benchmarks showing them outpacing Intel’s latest 8th-gen offerings for laptops.

The wraps were taken off the Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U, both of which are quad-core processors with eight-threads and integrated Radeon Vega Graphics.

The 2700U has a base clock speed of 2.2GHz with boost to 3.8GHz, and 10 CUs (compute units). The 2500U drops things back a bit to a base clock of 2GHz with boost to 3.6GHz, along with 8 CUs.

Naturally, the focus is on powerful performance, but also on power-efficiency, which is always a major concern when it comes to notebooks and battery life.

On the speed front, AMD provided a range of benchmarks to demonstrate the power of the new Ryzen chips.

In Cinebench R15 nT (CPU performance), the Ryzen 7 2700U hits a score of 719 compared to Intel’s Core i7-8550U (latest-gen) mobile processor (in an Acer Spin 5 notebook) which scores 498.

The AMD chip also wins with the PCMark 10 Extended benchmark hitting 163% over and above the performance of the AMD FX-9800P (which is picked as a baseline measure), compared to 133% for Intel’s CPU. The 8550U, however, wins at PassMark 9 to the tune of 188% plays 176%.

AMD further boasts that apps launch much faster with these new processors compared to the FX-9800P, with image editor GIMP, for example, starting around 40% faster with both the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 chips.

Gaming goodness

So, what about gaming benchmarks – how much impact does the integrated Radeon Vega Graphics subsystem make? AMD performed the following benchmarks with an HP Envy x360 laptop with a Ryzen 7 2700U processor and 8GB of system RAM (using integrated graphics).

In 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, the 2700U-powered machine racked up an impressive score of 915 compared to 350 for Intel’s Core i7-8550U in an Acer Swift 3, an impressive looking victory for the AMD chip.

As for in-game frame rates, running Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080) with medium details in popular MOBA League of Legends (DX9) witnessed an average frame rate of 59 fps, effectively hitting the accepted 60 fps mark for smooth gaming.

At the same settings, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive managed 49 fps (with no anti-aliasing). And at Full HD with fastest+ settings, DOTA 2 also achieved 49 fps. Overwatch hit 66 fps, although that was done at a lower resolution of 1,280 x 720 with low details.

And finally, what about power-efficiency and battery longevity? A system using the Ryzen 7 2700U chip with a 50Wh battery lasts for a claimed battery life ‘target’ of 13.5 hours in MobileMark 14, and for just over 12 hours of 1080p H.264 video playback.

Assuming we find similar results across all our suite of benchmarks when we actually get to review some of these Ryzen-powered notebooks, that’s a big step forward in terms of performance and power consumption, which will surely have Intel worried.

And those who enjoy a spot of casual gaming while on the move will certainly be rubbing their hands together in anticipation.

Better power-efficiency could also mean thinner and lighter laptops, if instead of looking at battery longevity, vendors focus on making the battery smaller (while still maintaining current levels of battery life).

Both these Ryzen 7 and 5 APUs will be launched before the year is out, and will be found in laptops initially including the Lenovo IdeaPad 720S (pictured top), Acer Swift 3, and HP Envy x360 (the latter will only run with the lesser-spec Ryzen 5).

Ryzen 3 (entry-level) mobile wizardry won’t be far behind, along with Ryzen Pro (for business notebooks), with both of these expected to emerge in the first half of 2018.

Some of the best laptops could switch to AMD Ryzen APUs

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Ryzen processors show strong sales, proving to be just the tonic AMD needs

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AMD obviously pinned a lot of hopes on Ryzen turning its fortunes around in the processor market, and indeed the new CPUs (introduced in the spring) have been selling strongly, playing a big part in ensuring a healthy financial report in the latest quarter (Q3).

Ryzen and Radeon (the firm’s CPUs and GPUs) drove the computing and graphics group to rake in revenues of $819 million (around £620 million, AU$1.05 billion), not too far off double the sales AMD managed in the same quarter last year ($472 million – that’s around £360 million, AU$610 million).

Chief executive Lisa Su made a bold claim along with the revelation of these figures, namely that Ryzen desktop processors represented around 40 to 50% of sales at some (unspecified) online retailers. In other words, AMD was practically level pegging with Intel – at certain outlets, that is.

And all this was just the tonic AMD needed to help push revenue up an impressive 26% year-on-year, to a total of $1.64 billion (around £1.25 billion, AU$2.1 billion). That was considerably ahead of analyst estimates which had forecasted revenues of around $1.51 billion.

Su noted that: “Strong customer adoption of our new high-performance products drove significant revenue growth and improved financial results from a year ago.”

Miners’ strike

The not-so-good news came with AMD’s forecast for the next quarter, which predicts that revenue will decline by between 12% to 18% (quarter-on-quarter). Part of this equation will be sales for cryptocurrency mining GPUs cooling off.

So that’s not all bad news for some, and certainly gamers who have encountered shortages of graphics cards thanks to miners this year will doubtless be pleased to hear this.

Another point of caution here is that this month saw Intel’s new Coffee Lake desktop CPUs being unleashed, finally bringing six-core models to the mainstream in an effort to hit back at Ryzen’s multi-core advantage.

Obviously enough, we’d expect these new Intel offerings to make a serious impact, and they could well cause some big waves that seriously wobble the good ship Ryzen.

That said, Coffee Lake CPU stock seems to be an issue right now, with processors seemingly thin on the ground (at least in the UK, where the major online retailers are showing November 1 as the ship date for the likes of the Core i7-8700K and i5-8600K).

But for now, it’s ‘Ryzen shine’ time, for sure…

Via: The Register

Meanwhile Ryzen mobile CPUs could soon be heading to our best laptops

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AMD's New Chips Could Finally Offer a Good Alternative to Intel in Laptops

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AMD unveils world's fastest CPUs for ultrathin notebooks

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Overall, these AMD Ryzen mobile processors provide blazing fast ... processor performance in workloads using from one to many CPU cores.

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AMD Brings Ryzen to Laptops: What You Need to Know

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The first three laptops to feature Ryzen Mobile APUs (AMD calls its processors APUs rather than CPUs) will be configurations of the HP Envy x360, the ...

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AMD Launches Ryzen Mobile Processors

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AMD announced that its Ryzen Mobile processors, the APUs formerly ... more multi-threaded CPU performance and 161% more graphics performance ...

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AMD launches Ryzen-Vega combo chips for world's fastest, most power-efficient laptops

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AMD Announces Ryzen Mobile With Vega Graphics

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AMD just announced the first two Ryzen Mobile processors with Vega ... Ryzen Mobile chips have both CPU and GPU features in a single package.

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AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors With AMD Vega Graphics Launched, Feature Precision Boost 2 ...

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AMD crams desktop performance into ultra-thin laptops with its new Ryzen APUs

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AMD Takes Aim At Notebooks: Ryzen Mobile, Radeon Vega Graphics And Ryzen 2 Tech Detailed

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Even more interestingly, the new CPUs will sport new features that will be introduced in the company's next generation Ryzen 2 desktop processors.

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AMD's Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 with Vega muscle into Intel's mobile space

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Ryzen Mobile is Launched: AMD APUs for Laptops, with Vega and Updated Zen

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AMD Launches Ryzen Mobile APUs Combining Zen And Vega For Powerhouse Laptops

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AMD launches mobile Ryzen chips with onboard Vega graphics

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AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

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AMD's Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U APUs revealed

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AMD Ryzen Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics Launch - Ryzen and Vega hit notebooks

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AMD announces Ryzen 7 mobile APUs with Vega Graphics

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AMD stuffs Radeon Vega graphics into its Ryzen Mobile chips

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AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors Launched With 'Zen' CPU Cores and 'Vega' Graphics Architecture

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AMD's Ryzen CPU with Vega graphics threatens to blow Kaby Lake out of the water

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AMD's Progress on Its 25x20 Goal: The Task Ahead

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When AMD announced it was creating the new high-performance Zen core, they set a lofty goal. They wanted to produce products that offered 25x the relative efficiency (performance per watt) between 2014 and 2020. This was called the 25x20 goal, and AMD gave an update.

Starting from a baseline of Kaveri, AMD has put the Ryzen Mobile processors currently at 5.86x the performance efficiency in 3 years. That leaves another ~5x performance to get in the next three years. That’s a steep hill to climb, and it is clear that the scale of the graph above seems to be wrong, with Ryzen Mobile being half-way up the graph, rather than around 20% up the graph. If AMD is set to make that target, then they are expecting a huge jump in efficiency coming up. Is that what Navi is?

For this data, AMD also gave some insight into how they are calculating it. In the footnotes, we get the following steps:

Overall performance efficiency is C divided by E
Performance is a 50:50 average of CPU and GPU performance (variable ‘C’) compared to Kaveri
- CPU Performance from Cinebench 15 Multi-Threaded
- GPU Performance from 3DMark 11 P
Energy Use (variable ‘E’) defined by ETEC ‘Typical Energy Consumption from Notebooks’ as per Energy Star Program Requirements Rev 6.1 Oct-2014
Kaveri is the Baseline where C/E = 1.00x

To calculate C, the following equation is used:

So say for example the base processor scored 100 in Cinebench and 1000 in 3DMark 11. If the upgraded processor scored 150 and 2000, the overall value of C would be 0.5 x (150/100 + 2000/1000) = 1.75.

To calculate C, we have to go to the Energy Star documents and pull out this long equation:

The PT(x) options are the power consumed in those modes multiplied by a given weighting factor in the document listed above. But it is worth noting that because it involves system level power in off/sleep/idle states, it is also subject to any efficiency improvements from the other component manufacturers as well, such as DRAM, IO, power delivery and display. Part of the goal here is performed by the vendors, not AMD.

AMD provided all the benchmark data for the CPU and GPU parts, as well as ‘overall’ values for E. These are all taken from mobile APU parts.

AMD's 25x20 Goal: Progress
	Cinebench R15 nT	3DMark 11 P	Variable C	Variable E	Performance Efficiency
Raven Ridge	719	4315	2.56	0.44	5.86x
Bristol Ridge	279	3234	1.36	0.34	3.97x
Carrizo	277	2709	1.23	0.35	3.51x
Kaveri	232	2142	1.00	1.00	1.00x

From the table, we can clearly see that moving from Kaveri to Carrizo was mainly about the power consumption under the Energy Star test, moving the denominator to a nice low number. Moving from Carrizo to Bristol Ridge was about GPU performance, extracting the most out of the 28nm process for frequency at the same power and some better binning. The jump to Raven Ridge/Ryzen Mobile marks a big step for Cinebench, given the new high-performance core, and a bump in 3D Mark performance.

What is interesting to note is that the variable ‘E’ has gone up from Bristol Ridge to Raven Ridge, from 0.34 to 0.44. This is despite AMD claiming a 58% power reduction in workloads like Cinebench. This will be down to how the Energy Star guidelines are set out, which in this instance do not favor how a system is applying the power (regardless of performance).

It brings up how AMD is going to achieve its 25x goal by 2020. Ryan and I discussed this at length before I wrote this segment, but there are a few interesting things to note.

Calculating E: It's in the System

In order to calculate E, AMD relies on a good representation of the whole system, not just the processor. That includes things like memory, the display, and other components. This means that the improvements in these segments should help significantly towards that goal. One major thing that AMD could do with the next generation is swap support for DDR4 to either LPDDR3 or LPDDR4. The reason why is the low power states.

When we asked why AMD is not supporting LPDDR memory on Ryzen Mobile, the response was related to performance. If we look at almost every single Intel 15W notebook on the market, despite the processors supporting both LPDDR3 and DDR4, they all use LPDDR3 by default. If we ask the OEMs, the answer lies in the power consumption during lower power modes such as idle: LPDDR memory can achieve much, much lower power modes than standard DDR. We put this to AMD and they looked confused, saying that literally none of their OEM partners had ever brought this up in conversation as a requirement for a future platform.

Nonetheless, that value of E could take a nice tumble when AMD implement LPDDR on a future APU. I’d bet some money on that being the case.

Process Nodes Matter

Ryan also pointed out that AMD could implement a super low power SKU, something like Intel’s Core-M line that sits at 4.5W. At that low power, the value for E should be cut considerably. However, we have to think if these parts actually have a lower idle/off power than Intel’s 15W, or if it is, in fact, all in the binning. They would certainly have lower VRM losses by having fewer VRMs in play anyway. This is something AMD could pursue, assuming the performance values could be kept high.

We are also expecting AMD to implement GlobalFoundries 7nm process before 2020. That should yield a number of improvements for power, especially if AMD decides to fab a chip on a low power node.

The Future of Performance

On the C side of the equation, more is better. There are still a couple of iterations in the public roadmap for Zen from now until 2020, so the CPU performance could increase another 10-25%. Moving to 7nm could also lend itself to doubling the core count, giving a sizeable increase in the Cinebench or 3DMark score. With extra transistors and new GPU architectures (like Navi, or beyond), there is room to grow.

We did some mockup numbers to see where AMD would sit. The new 25x20 table would look like this based on three potential scenarios.

AMD's 25x20 Goal: Future?
	Cinebench R15 nT	3DMark 11 P	Variable C	Variable E	Performance Efficiency
Same Power	2000	18000	8.51	0.34	25.04x
Half Power	1000	8000	4.02	0.16	25.14x
Low Power	800	4400	2.75	0.11	25.01x
Raven Ridge	719	4315	2.56	0.44	5.86x
Bristol Ridge	279	3234	1.36	0.34	3.97x
Carrizo	277	2709	1.23	0.35	3.51x
Kaveri	232	2142	1.00	1.00	1.00x

In the same power scenario (0.34E, like Bristol Ridge), AMD would have to severely increase both CPU performance by 3x and GPU performance by over 4x. An obvious way to go in that direction would be to double everything, although that is not always an easy task when it requires keeping power the same, even over several generations. A crystal ball will predict 8-core laptops, though it will be interesting to see the power, the frequencies, and the process node.

For a half-power scenario (0.16E), we took the fact that AMD is likely to increase its IPC over the next few generations by 5-15% each year. By 2020, assuming the same core count as today, this would give a Cinebench score of about 1000. In order to reach the 25x performance efficiency metric with that increase in CPU performance, the GPU would have to almost double in performance. One of the outcomes of moving to 7nm could be that AMD keeps the quad-core design but instead increases the number of compute units in the integrated GPU. Doubling the compute units, halving the power consumption, and increasing IPC by 30% is a tall order in three years, even with a node change and new architectures.

Ryan’s preferred option is the low power scenario. If AMD created a 4.5W-like processor which overall reduced the variable ‘E’ by ~75%, along with the general system improvements like LPDDR, but kept about the same performance as the 15W chips of today, then AMD could hit the 25x metric fairly comfortably. This might be considered an easier task than the others, and it will depend on how AMD is able to manage the power with such a low ceiling.

This is where I put in a poll to see what people think of where AMD will sit come 2020:

[twitter poll]

I have set the poll to last for 7 days. The results should speak for themselves.

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Tuesday 31 October 2017

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Monday 30 October 2017

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Thursday 26 October 2017

Gaming goodness

Miners’ strike

Calculating E: It's in the System