Intel’s Discrete GPU Era Begins: Intel Launches Iris Xe MAX For Entry-Level Laptops

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Today may be Halloween, but what Intel is up to is no trick. Almost a year after showing off their alpha silicon, Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades has been released and is now shipping in OEM laptops. The first of several planned products using the DG1 GPU, Intel’s initial outing in their new era of discrete graphics is in the laptop space, where today they are launching their Iris Xe MAX graphics solution. Designed to complement Intel’s Xe-LP integrated graphics in their new Tiger Lake CPUs, Xe MAX will be showing up in thin-and-light laptops as an upgraded graphics option, and with a focus on mobile creation.

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Intel’s Discrete GPU Era Begins: Intel Launches Iris Xe MAX For Entry-Level Laptops

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Today may be Halloween, but what Intel is up to is no trick. Almost a year after showing off their alpha silicon, Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades has been released and is now shipping in OEM laptops. The first of several planned products using the DG1 GPU, Intel’s initial outing in their new era of discrete graphics is in the laptop space, where today they are launching their Iris Xe MAX graphics solution. Designed to complement Intel’s Xe-LP integrated graphics in their new Tiger Lake CPUs, Xe MAX will be showing up in thin-and-light laptops as an upgraded graphics option, and with a focus on mobile creation.

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ASUS ROG Strix B550-XE Gaming WiFi Preview

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With the next generation of Ryzen CPUs on the horizon it's the perfect time to take a look at the kind of motherboard that would be perfect for your new CPU.

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Best Intel Motherboards: October 2020

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Looking ahead into October, Intel not only announced its financial results for Q3 2020, but it also revealed that it plans to release its latest Rocket Lake CPUs with PCIe 4.0 sometime in Q1 2021. Along with Rocket Lake, there will be a wave of new 500-series LGA1200 motherboards to accompany it, but until then, Z490 is its current flagship chipset and will be for months to come. It's time to take a look at our Intel-based motherboard selections for October 2020.

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Intel’s 11th Gen Core Rocket Lake Detailed: Ice Lake Core with Xe Graphics

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During a time of increased competitor activity, Intel has decided to disclose some of the high level details surrounding its next generation consumer processor, known as Rocket Lake or Intel’s 11^th Gen Core. The new processor family is due in the market in the first quarter of 2021, and is expected to share a socket and motherboard compatibility with the current 10^th Gen Comet Lake processors, providing an upgrade path even for those with a Core i9-10900K, Intel’s highest performing desktop processor to date. New 500-series motherboards are also expected to be available.

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This CPU Cooler is SO GOOD – Arctic Freezer 50 Review

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The Arctic Freezer 50 claims to be the best CPU air cooler released in 2020 and its hard to find any fault with that claim from a performance standpoint

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AMD Reports Q3 2020 Earnings: Making Money and Settings Records Yet Again

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As part of this morning’s announcement from AMD that the company would be buying FPGA maker Xilinx for $35 billion in stock, the company also released its Q3 earnings report alongside the buyout news. An atypical earnings release to say the least, an early-morning release allowed AMD investors and others to get a look at the very latest in AMD’s financials while also digesting the decision to use the company’s sizable market capitalization to buy another company – and ultimately to help AMD justify why they’re in such a good position now to make the transaction. Coming on the heels of a record Q2 for the company, AMD closed out the third quarter of the year setting revenue records once again all the while trebling its profits.

For the third quarter of 2020, AMD reported $2.8B in revenue, a 56% jump over the same quarter a year ago. As a result, AMD has once again set new revenue records for the company, posting both their best Q3 ever, and their best single quarter period. Driving this was further growth in both of AMD’s major segments, with everything from consumer CPU sales to EPYC and semi-custom sales reported as being on the rise.

AMD Q3 2020 Financial Results (GAAP)
	Q3'2020	Q3'2019	Q2'2020
Revenue	$2.8B	$1.8B	$1.93B
Gross Margin	44%	43%	44%
Operating Income	$449M	$186M	$173M
Net Income	$390M	$120M	$157M
Earnings Per Share	$0.32	$0.11	$0.13

Most eye-popping, perhaps, has been AMD’s net income, which more than trebled over the year-ago quarter. For Q3’20, AMD booked $390M in GAAP net income, a 225% increase that dwarfs the $120M they took home at this point last year. Even on a quarterly basis AMD’s revenues and profits were up significantly across the board, with AMD again more than doubling its net income versus Q2. In fact the only aspect of AMD’s financials not showing significant growth at the moment is AMD’s gross margin, which at 44% is only up 1% over last year. According to the company, GM growth is being limited by relatively low margin semi-custom sales, with the PS5/XSX ramp-up counterbalancing the increase in CPU sales.

Breaking down the numbers by segment, AMD’s Computing and Graphics segment enjoyed a strong quarter based in large part on an increase in Ryzen processor sales. Overall the segment booked $1.67B in revenue, which is up 31% over the year-ago quarter. Carrying the segment were sizable increases in both AMD’s desktop and notebook CPU shipments, with AMD reporting double-digit growth in both and setting a new record for notebook processor shipments. AMD’s graphics division was the odd man out, however; the run-up to the RX 6000 series means that graphics revenue was down versus Q3’19.

AMD Q3 2020 Computing and Graphics
	Q3'2020	Q3'2019	Q2'2020
Revenue	$1667M	$1276M	$1367M
Operating Income	$384M	$179M	$200M

As for product average selling prices (ASPs), AMD is reporting that both client processor and graphics ASPs have taken a hit on a yearly basis. Graphics ASPs were down due to AMD’s current-generation RX 5000 products approaching the end of their lifecycle, while CPU ASPs declined due to higher sales of mobile chips, which tend to carry lower prices. Both of these should change for AMD in the next quarter, as the launch of Zen 3 and the Radeon RX 6000 series will put a fresh round of products on the market that can fetch higher prices.

Meanwhile, AMD’s Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom segment saw another greater quarter with Q3, with shipments of everything from EPYC processors to console SoCs on the rise. With the former, AMD has continued to grow its market share in the server space, and on the company’s earnings call CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that server sales have more than doubled over Q3’19, citing improved cloud and enterprise adoption. Meanwhile the ramp-up for the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X has pushed semi-custom sales higher as well, and that’s expected to grow even more in Q4.

AMD Q3 2020 Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom
	Q3'2020	Q3'2019	Q2'2020
Revenue	$1134M	$525M	$565M
Operating Income	$141M	$61M	$33M

And, like the consumer side of AMD’s business, the enterprise side is about to benefit as well from the launch of next-generation products. AMD has confirmed that their Zen 3 architecture-based EPYC “Milan” processors will begin shipping this quarter as previously promised, with the initial chips going out to cloud and “select HPC” customers. Meanwhile general OEM availability will follow in the first quarter of 2021.

Overall, AMD has a lot to be happy about for Q3, and even more to look forward to in Q4. With AMD posting record revenue and their traditionally strongest quarter still to come, the company is expecting an even better Q4. The combination of Zen 3 CPUs for desktops and servers, along with new Radeon hardware will mean that AMD has momentum and new products on their side. All of which comes at a critical time for the industry, as AMD seeks to use its technology advantages to carve a larger piece of the x86 processor market from an uncharacteristically dazed Intel.

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NVIDIA 3070 Founders Edition Review

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NVIDIA has released its newest graphics card, the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Founders Edition. Based on the current 3000 series card architecture we get a graphics card that is lower in price and lower in performance. With a suggested retail price of $499.00 USD, this makes the 3070 FE very affordable for almost everyone. But the biggest question is can it handle the workload or our demanding games we like to play. Can we crank up the graphics to the max and not have to worry about slow down? Make sure you watch the video for more insight into the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Founders Edition.

 

The NVIDIA 3070 FE has all the same visual features that the 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition graphics card have. The new bold style is quite different than what we have seen in the past. With a more refined and sleeker look, it kind of gives you the feeling that you are looking at a luxury vehicle.

The top of the 3070 FE is just as sleek with a solid back cover over two-thirds of the card. The remainder of the card is taken up by a pass-thru cooling fan.

A closer look does show us that the air pass through the card and a good portion of the cooling heat pipes and fins. The air that does exit the card here will be pushed up towards the top of a PC case and should be helped along with the normal fans mounted at the top. Thus this will help minimize any warm air that could be sucked into an air cooler. If you are water cooling your CPU you have nothing to really worry about.

 

This the other side of the pass-through fan that is located at the right side of the 3070 FE

The fan located on the left side of the card is identical to the other one, but this cooling fan does the normal job of pushing the air out through the card and exit out the rear where the video connections are located. The RTX 3070 flow-through system is up to 16dBA quieter and has a 44% higher thermal performance than the RTX 2070 Founders Edition.

 

 

Like the 3080 and 3090 FE card, the 3070 Founders Edition also uses the new 12 pin connector to power the card. But unlike the larger FE cards, this unit only requires 220 watts of power which not that much more than a 2070 but way less than the power-hungry 3090. We can also see some cooling vents, which are located in the middle of the card along with the 12 pin power connector

 

Connections to the NVIDIA 3070 FE is pretty normal with a single HDMI and three display ports. But the HDMI 2.1 — GeForce RTX 3070 GPUs (and all of the 3000 series cards) are the first available to feature HDMI 2.1 support with support for 4K@120Hz (4K120). HDMI 2.1 increases total bandwidth over HDMI 2.0b from 18Gigabits/sec to 48 and adds support for high-dynamic-range (HDR) supporting brighter images with higher contrast and more vibrant colors with better shadows and highlights.

 

The NVIDIA Ampere architecture Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) is the building block of the GPU, and it’s full of different Cores and Units and memory. One of the big changes in the NVIDIA Ampere architecture SM is with a 32-bit floating-point (FP32) throughput. NVIDIA designed a new datapath for FP32 and INT32 operations, which results in all four partitions combined executing 128 FP32 operations per clock. Does this help gaming? Yes. Graphics and compute operations and algorithms rely on FP32 executions, and so do modern shader workloads. Ray tracing denoising shaders benefit from FP32 speedups, too. The heavier the ray tracing rendering workload, the bigger the performance gains relative to the previous generation.

 

Let’s look at the numbers: RTX 3070 has 5888 CUDA cores—over twice the CUDA cores that the RTX 2070 has. It delivers 20.3 TFLOPs of shader performance plus dedicated RT Cores with the equivalent 39.7 TFLOPs of performance, for a total of 60 effective TFLOPs of performance while ray tracing.

 

 

GPU	GeForce RTX 2070 (Founders Edition)	GeForce RTX 3070 (Founders Edition)
SMs	36	46
CUDA Cores	2304	5888
Tensor Cores	288 (2nd Generation)	184 (3rd Generation)
RT Cores	36 (1st Generation)	46 (2nd Generation)
Texture Units	144	184
ROPs	64	96
GPU Boost Clock	1710 MHz	1725 MHz
Memory Clock	7000 MHz	7000 MHz
Total Video Memory	8192 MB GDDR6	8192 MB GDDR6
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	448 GB/s	448 GB/s
TGP	185 Watts	220 Watts

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AMD in $35 Billion All-Stock Acquisition of Xilinx

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After a couple of weeks of rumor, as well as a couple of years of hearsay, AMD has gone feet first into a full acquisition of FPGA manufacturer Xilinx. The deal involves an all-stock transaction, leveraging AMD’s sizeable share price in order to enable an equivalent $143 per Xilinx share – current AMD stockholders will still own 74% of the combined company, while Xilinx stockholders will own 26%. The combined $135 billion entity will total 13000 engineers, and expand AMD’s total addressable market to $110. It is believed that the key reasons for the acquisition lie in Xilinx’s adaptive computing solutions for the data center market.

 

This is breaking news. Will be updated.
Carousel Image is of AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su and Xilinx CEO Victor Peng

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AMD vs Intel CPUs for Game Loading

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Following up to last week's load time battle, instead of comparing storage with vastly different performance specs, today we're going to see how CPUs can make a difference in game loading times.





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Lenovo's Legion Slim 7 laptop weighs in at just 4 pounds, powered by Ryzen 9 4900H

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When Lenovo refreshed its Legion gaming laptop line this year, one of the notable changes was the addition of Ryzen 4000 mobile processors as an alternative to Intel's 10th-gen Comet Lake-H CPUs. The company is now introducing a new member into the family in the form of the Legion Slim...





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AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X is a ripper, notches top spot in PassMark single thread CPU test

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In PassMark’s CPU Mark test measuring single thread performance, the Ryzen 5 5600X scored a chart-topping 3,495 points. The next highest score on the list belongs to the Intel Core i9-10900K (a $550 CPU) at 3,175. Ouch.





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Quad GeForce RTX 3090 tested on a single PC running workstation benchmarks

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Here at Puget Systems, our customers range from those needing relatively modest workstations, all the way up to those that need the most powerful system possible. These extreme workstations used to be dual or quad CPU systems, but recently, the shift has been to quad GPU setups. Having this much...





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Intel: DG1 GPU Now Shipping, Xe-HPG DG2 GPU In Labs

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Alongside today’s profitable-but-uneasy earnings report from Intel, the company’s earnings presentation also offered a short update on the status of their discrete GPUs. As of today, Intel’s DG1 GPU is now shipping. Meanwhile the company announced their next GPU, appropriately named DG2, which is based on their upcoming Xe-HPG architecture. This GPU is now back from the fab and is in Intel’s lab, and is now far enough along to have been powered on.

First and foremost we have DG1, or as it’s better known by its commercial product name, Iris Xe Max. Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades, the company has since the beginning of this year been touting it as a companion to their Tiger Lake CPUs, pitching it as an upgraded graphics option for thin & light notebooks, and a successor of sorts to Intel’s GT3e and GT4e iGPU configurations from past generations. Until recently, we weren’t quite sure when it would show up in commercial products, but recent OEM notebook reveals along with Intel’s earnings announcement are now confirming that the GPU is shipping to OEMs. According to Intel, DG1-equipped notebooks are expected later in Q4. In the meantime, there are still scant few details on DG1 itself, such as expected performance and power consumption; so hopefully Intel will be getting ahead of its OEM partners on this one to set some expectations.

Meanwhile, today’s notes also announce for the very first time the next discrete GPU to come out of Intel, DG2. While obviously still some time off, Intel has completed tape-out and fabbing of the initial alpha silicon, with the company reporting that they’ve powered-on the GPU in their labs.

Somewhat surprisingly, CEO Bob Swan has also confirmed that this isn’t just a DG1 successor, but instead is a higher performing GPU based on the company’s forthcoming Xe-HPG(aming) architecture. First revealed this summer, Xe-HPG is Intel’s enthusiast/gamer-focused architecture, incorporating marquee features found in similar dGPUs like ray tracing. It’s also being manufactured completely external of Intel; while the company hasn’t said which fab and process node is being used, it’s none of Intel’s nodes. So this is the first major piece of external fabbed silicon that we know of to be up and running at Intel.

But like all teasers/financial disclosures, Intel isn’t saying too much more at this time. Nothing new was revealed about the Xe-HPG architecture, and Intel hasn’t clarified whether DG2 is a big, flagship-grade chip, or a more modest, high-volume part. For now, the company is simply saying that DG2 will “take our discrete graphics capability up the stack into the enthusiast segment.”

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Intel Reports Q3 2020 Earnings: Still Very Profitable, But Challenging Times Ahead

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Once again kicking off our earnings season coverage for the tech industry is Intel, who reported their Q3 2020 financial results this afternoon. The traditional leader of the pack in more than one way, Intel has been under more intense scrutiny as of late, particularly due to their previously disclosed delay in their 7nm manufacturing schedule. None the less, Intel has been posting record revenues and profits in recent quarters – even with a global pandemic going on – which has been keeping Intel in good shape. It’s only now, with Q3 behind them, that Intel is starting to feel the pinch of market shifts and technical debt – and even then the company is still well into the black.

For the third quarter of 2020, Intel reported $18.3B in revenue. A drop of $0.9B over the year-ago quarter. As previously mentioned, Intel has been setting a string of record revenues in previous quarters, but the boom is coming to an end as margins and revenues are slipping. Those declines are also having the expected knock-on effect to Intel’s profitability, with the company reporting $4.3B in net income, a 29% drop versus Q3’19.

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AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X CPU reportedly hits 5 GHz in benchmarks

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AMD CEO Lisa Su revealed the Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors based on the Zen 3 architecture earlier this month. At least on paper, these come with a lot of improvements such as a unified L3 cache, 19 percent average throughput improvement in terms of instructions per clock over Zen...





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AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs will reportedly have 16 Gbps GDDR6, 320 W TGP

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Earlier this month, AMD unveiled the Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series of desktop CPUs with absolute confidence that this time they'll take both the productivity performance and gaming performance crowns. The company has been relentless in delivering significant performance jumps since the first Ryzen release, which is why it gained...





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Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers

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Silicon Motion has announced the official launch of their first generation of PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controllers. These controllers have been on the roadmap for quite a while and have been previewed at trade shows, but the first models are now shipping. The high-end SM2264 and mainstream SM2267/SM2267XT controllers will enable consumer SSDs that move beyond the performance limits of the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface that has been the standard for almost all previous consumer NVMe SSDs.

The high-end SM2264 controller is the successor to Silicon Motion's SM2262(EN) controllers, and the SM2264 brings the most significant changes that add up to a doubling of performance. The SM2264 still uses 8 NAND channels, but now supporting double the speed: up to 1600MT/s. The controller includes four ARM Cortex R8 cores, compared to two cores on SMI's previous client/consumer NVMe controllers. As with most SSD controllers aiming for the high end PCIe 4.0 product segment, the SM2264 is fabbed on a smaller node: TSMC's 12nm FinFET process, which allows for substantially better power efficiency than the 28nm planar process used by the preceding generation of SSD controllers. The SM2264 also includes support for some enterprise-oriented features like SR-IOV virtualization, though we probably won't see that enabled on consumer SSD products. The SM2264 also includes the latest generation of Silicon Motion's NANDXtend ECC system, which switches from a 2kb to 4kB codeword size for the LDPC error correction.

The SM2264 controller will be competing with in-house controllers used by Samsung and Western Digital for their flagship consumer SSDs, and against the upcoming Phison E18 controller. Phison's E16 controller was the first consumer PCIe 4.0 controller to hit the market, but is now being outclassed by a second wave of PCIe 4.0 controllers that come much closer to using the full potential of a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. The SM2264 controller is currently sampling to drive vendors, but we don't have an estimate for when products will be hitting the shelves.

Silicon Motion Client/Consumer NVMe SSD Controllers
	SM2263(XT)	SM2267(XT)	SM2262EN	SM2264
Market Segment	Mainstream Consumer		High-End Consumer
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	12nm
Arm CPU Cores	2x Cortex	2x Cortex R5	2x Cortex	4x Cortex R8
Error Correction	2kB LDPC	2kB LDPC	2kB LDPC	4kB LDPC
DRAM Support	LPDDR3, DDR4 -XT: None	LPDDR4, DDR4 -XT: None	LPDDR3, DDR4	LPDDR4, DDR4
Host Interface	PCIe 3.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4	PCIe 3.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4
NAND Channels, Interface Speed	4ch 667 MT/s	4ch 1200MT/s	8ch 800MT/s	8ch 1600MT/s
CEs per Channel	4	8 -XT: 4	4	8
Sequential Read	2400 MB/s	3900 MB/s	3500 MB/s	7400 MB/s
Sequential Write	1700 MB/s	3500 MB/s	3000 MB/s	6800 MB/s
4KB Random Read IOPS	300k -XT: 280k	500k	420k	1000k
4KB Random Write IOPS	250k	500k	420k	1000k

For the more mainstream product segments, Silicon Motion's SM2267 and SM2267XT controllers are the replacements for the SM2263 and SM2263XT. These will help bring entry-level NVMe performance up to about the level that used to be standard for high-end PCIe 3.0 SSDs. The SM2267XT is the DRAMless variant of the SM2267 and also has half as many chip enables (CEs), which allow for a much smaller package size suitable for use on small form factors like M.2 2230. The SM2267(XT) controllers are still manufactured on the cheaper 28nm process. The SM2267 and SM2267XT controllers are in mass production and the first products using those parts have also entered the supply chain: we already have a sample of ADATA's Gammix S50 Lite with the SM2267 controller on our test bench.

The SM2267 will be competing against a mix of older 8-channel controllers like the Phison E12, and newer 4-channel solutions as seen in the SK hynix Gold P31. We expect this to be the most important consumer SSD product segment going into 2021 as these drives will not carry the steep price premium currently seen on high-end 8-channel PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and they'll still be plenty fast for almost all use cases. The DRAMless SM2267XT variant will be competing against controllers like the Phison E19T for entry-level NVMe SSDs that carry little or no price premium over SATA drives. These low-cost NVMe controllers are also increasingly popular for portable SSDs; the performance increases of the SM2267XT over the SM2263XT will not matter for drives using 20Gb/s USB to NVMe bridge chips, but will be helpful for Thunderbolt SSDs.

Related Reading

• The Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Review: A Spirit of Hope
• Western Digital Launches New WD Black NVMe SSDs And Thunderbolt Dock
• CES 2020: ADATA Preparing Three PCIe 4.0 Consumer SSDs
• Silicon Motion: PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD Controller in Development, Coming Q2 2020
• Phison At CES 2020: Preparing For QLC To Go Mainstream
• Phison Previews Next-Gen PCIe 4.0 SSD Controllers: Up to 7 GB/s, NVMe 1.4
• Marvell Announces Client SSD Controllers With PCIe Gen4

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ASRock B550 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

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The B550 Chipset from AMD is the mainstream chipset whereas the X570 is the high-end or enthusiast chipset. ASRock like many other manufactures has released a slew of B550 motherboards in all sizes and price ranges and as I am wrapping up my B550 reviews, they sent over the ASRock B550 Extreme4. The ASRock B550 Extreme4 is a full-size ATX motherboard featuring some of the latest innovations from ASRock. Interestingly, the B550 color scheme is not the standard black or green PCB and added a bit of color to it that flows well with the color of the heatsinks and other accessories on the board. Aside from the B550 chipset, the motherboard includes a 2.5 gigabit network adapter, USB 3 Gen2 ports, 14 phase power delivery with 50A Dr.MOS as well as supporting up to 4733+ MHz memory speeds and continues with their PolyChrome RGB. On paper, the ASRock B550 Extreme4 sounds pretty good so, let’s get into it and see if it is really as good as it claims to be.

 

Review Sample Provided By: ASRock
Product Name and Website: ASRock B550 Extreme4 Motherboard
Product was given in exchange for work to produce review.

 

 

 

Packaging

ASRock’s packaging has always been colorful and artistic. This helps the manufacture’s products stand out from one another when placed on a shelf at the brick and mortar stores. On the front side of the box, there is blue and pink line ard with the product name in large letters. Moving to the back of the box, ASRock lists out the specifications for the B550 Extreme4. Also included on the back is a clear graphic for which M.2 slot supports PCIe 4.0 and which is PCIe 3.0. There is another graphic showing the included connection type on the motherboards I/O panel and finally, ASRock goes into some of the details on the included features of the motherboard.

 

Once you’ve opened the box, you’ll be presented with a dual-chamber interior. The upper chamber contains the documentation for the motherboard. In this case, a quick installation guide and software set up guide are included.

 

The lower chamber contains the motherboard which is wrapped in an antistatic bag with the installation accessories housed below it.

 

ASRock Zip-tied the motherboard to the foam insert at all four corner holes. Not that it matters all that much, but I thought it was strange enough that it’s worth mentioning.

 

CPU	– Supports 3rd Gen AMD AM4 Ryzen™ / future AMD Ryzen™ Processors* – Digi Power design – 14 Power Phase design *Not compatible with AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G and Ryzen™ 3 3200G.
Chipset	– AMD B550
Memory	– Dual Channel DDR4 Memory Technology – 4 x DDR4 DIMM Slots – AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Matisse) support DDR4 4733+(OC) / 4666(OC) / 4600(OC) / 4533(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory* – AMD Ryzen series APUs (Renoir) support DDR4 4733+(OC) / 4666(OC) / 4600(OC) / 4533(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory* – Max. capacity of system memory: 128GB** – Supports Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules – 15μ Gold Contact in DIMM Slots
BIOS	– 256Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support – Supports “Plug and Play” – ACPI 5.1 compliance wake up events – Supports jumperfree – SMBIOS 2.3 support – CPU, CPU VDDCR_SOC, DRAM, VPPM, VTT_DDR Offset, CPU VDD 1.8 Voltage Multi-adjustment
Graphics	– Integrated AMD Radeon Vega Series Graphics in Ryzen Series APU* – DirectX 12, Pixel Shader 5.0 – Shared memory default 2GB. Max Shared memory supports up to 16GB.** – Supports HDMI 2.1 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096×2160) @ 60Hz – Supports Auto Lip Sync, Deep Color (12bpc), xvYCC, and HBR (High Bit Rate Audio) with HDMI 2.1 Port (Compliant HDMI monitor is required) – Supports HDR (High Dynamic Range) with HDMI 2.1 – Supports HDCP 2.3 with HDMI 2.1 Port – Supports 4K Ultra HD (UHD) playback with HDMI 2.1 Port – Supports Microsoft® PlayReady
Audio	– 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec) – Premium Blu-ray Audio support – Supports Surge Protection – 120dB SNR DAC with Differential Amplifier – NE5532 Premium Headset Amplifier for Front Panel Audio Connector (Supports up to 600 Ohm headsets) – Pure Power-In – Direct Drive Technology – PCB Isolate Shielding – Impedance Sensing on Rear Out Port – Individual PCB Layers for R/L Audio Channel – Gold Audio Jacks – 15μ Gold Audio Connector – Nahimic Audio
LAN	– 2.5 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000/2500 Mb/s – Dragon RTL8125BG – Supports Dragon 2.5G LAN Software – Smart Auto Adjust Bandwidth Control – Visual User-Friendly UI – Visual Network Usage Statistics – Optimized Default Setting for Game, Browser, and Streaming Modes – User Customized Priority Control – Supports Wake-On-LAN – Supports Lightning/ESD Protection – Supports Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az – Supports PXE
Slots	AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Matisse) – 2 x PCI Express x16 Slots (PCIE1: Gen4x16 mode; PCIE3: Gen3 x4 mode)* AMD Ryzen series APUs (Renoir) – 2 x PCI Express x16 Slots (PCIE1: Gen3x16 mode; PCIE3: Gen3 x4 mode)*- 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x1 Slots – Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™ – 1 x M.2 Socket (Key E), supports type 2230 WiFi/BT module – 15μ Gold Contact in VGA PCIe Slot (PCIE1)
Storage	– 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10), NCQ, AHCI, and Hot Plug* – 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) (with Matisse) or Gen3x4 (32 Gb/s) (with Renoir)** – 1 x M.2 Socket (M2_2), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s)**
Connector	– 1 x SPI TPM Header – 1 x Power LED and Speaker Header – 2 x RGB LED Headers* – 2 x Addressable LED Headers** – 1 x CPU Fan Connector (4-pin)*** – 1 x CPU/Water Pump Fan Connector (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)**** – 5 x Chassis/Water Pump Fan Connectors (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)***** – 1 x 24 pin ATX Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x 8 pin 12V Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x 4 pin 12V Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x Front Panel Audio Connector (15μ Gold Audio Connector) – 2 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 4 USB 2.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection) – 1 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Header (Supports 2 USB 3.2 Gen1 ports) (Supports ESD Protection) – 1 x Front Panel Type C USB 3.2 Gen1 Header (Supports ESD Protection) – 1 x Dr. Debug with LED – 1 x Power Button with LED – 1 x Reset Button with LED
Rear Panel I/O	– 2 x Antenna Mounting Points – 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port – 1 x HDMI Port – 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port – 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection) – 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection) – 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports (Supports ESD Protection) – 4 x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)* – 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED) – HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone (Gold Audio Jacks)
Software and UEFI	Software – ASRock Motherboard Utility (A-Tuning) – ASRock Dragon 2.5G LAN Software – ASRock Polychrome SYNC* UEFI – ASRock Full HD UEFI – ASRock Instant Flash
Support CD	– Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version), Google Chrome Browser and Toolbar
Accessories	– Quick Installation Guide, Support CD – 4 x SATA Data Cables – 3 x Screws for M.2 Sockets – 2 x Standoffs for M.2 Sockets
Hardware Monitor	– Temperature Sensing: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans – Fan Tachometer: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans – Quiet Fan (Auto adjust the chassis fan speed by CPU temperature): CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans – Fan Multi-Speed Control: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans – Voltage monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, CPU Vcore, CPU VDDCR_SOC, DRAM, VPPM, CPU VDD 1.8V
Form Factor	– ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm – 2oz Copper PCB
OS	– Microsoft® Windows® 10 64-bit
Certifications	– FCC, CE – ERP/EuP ready (ErP/EuP ready power supply is required)

 

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New Cadence Transient EM Simulation Tools: 3D Clarity

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In the realm of processor and product design, having the right series of tools to actually build and simulate a product has been a key driver in minimizing time to market. Cadence is one of the more prolific companies in the electronic design automation (EDA) software space, with tools for designing integrated circuits, PCBs, packaging, SoCs, radio frequency, as well as respective verification tools. What landed in my inbox this morning was an announcement for a new tool in Cadence’s solver portfolio to enable better full-system EM simulation while also scaling across CPU and GPU as well as to other systems.

Cadence’s 3D Transient Solver uses a finite difference time domain model to essentially model an anechoic chamber over a wide frequency range for both electromagnetic interference but also electromagnetic compliance. This is what the EC/FCC certification enablement is all about in order to enable sales of a product in a region – the more accurate (and scalable) the EM simulation work is, the idea is that the results from any anechoic chamber testing will be more in line with the simulation, resulting in fewer prototype sampling in advance of the certification test.

The Transient Solver is designed to work in conjunction with Cadence’s other tools, such as FEM and MoM, for whole product simulation – due to capacity, it has often been the case that products would be simulated part-by-part, and then a full scale simulation result would be interpolated. Cadence points to its full product potential, as the software is designed to scale almost linearly across as many CPU cores as can be thrown at it (either in a single system or in a multi-system environment), as well as leveraging GPU acceleration (note, something I did in my PhD for FDTD but for chemical simulations). Cadence also points to its ability to keep the simulation memory footprint low, often a difficult task with these sorts of simulations (especially FDTD), such that systems no longer need terabytes of DRAM just to run. The software can also be run via cloud services and scaled as needed. Due to the scalability, it also allows for quicker deformation testing, to avoid such areas as the iPhone 4 issues.

Anechoic chambers are marvellous things – if you ever get a chance to go in one, I highly recommend it. If the 30% reduced cycle time that one of Cadence’s partners is quoting is anything to go by, then there might be some chambers empty for a bit – perfect to get your company to convince that an employee tour is needed.

Cadence’s Clarity 3D Transient Solver is due for release in Q1 2021.

Source: Cadence

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• Samsung’s 5nm EUV Technology Gets Closer: Tools by Cadence & Synopsys Certified
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• Cadence Tapes Out GDDR6 IP on Samsung 7LPP Using EUV

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