TSMC Shares More Info on 2nm: New MIM Capacitor and Backside PDN Detailed

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TSMC has revealed some additional details about its upcoming N2 and N2P process technology at its European Technology Symposium 2023. Both production nodes are being developed with high-performance computing (HPC) in mind, so, they feature a number of enhancements designed specifically to improve performance. Meanwhile, given the performance-efficiency focus that most chips aim to improve upon, low-power applications will also take advantage of TSMC's N2 nodes as they will naturally improve performance-per-watt compared to predecessors.

"N2 is a great fit for the energy efficient computing paradigm that we are in today," said Yujun Li, TSMC's director of business development who is in charge of the foundry's High Performance Computing Business Division, at the company's European Technology Symposium 2023. "The speed and power advantages of N2 over N3 over the entire voltage supply ranges as shown is very consistent, making it suitable for both low-power and high-performance applications at the same time."

TSMC's N2 manufacturing node — the foundry's first production nodes to use nanosheet gate-all-around (GAAFET) transistors — promises to increase transistor performance by 10-15% at the same power and complexity, or lower power usage by 25-30% at the same clock speed and transistor count. Power delivery is one of the corner stones when it comes to improving transistor performance and TSMC's N2 and N2P manufacturing processes  introduce several interconnects-related innovations to squeeze some additional performance. Furthermore, N2P brings in backside power rail to optimize power delivery and die area. 

Fighting Resistance

One of the innovations that N2 brings to the table is super-high-performance metal-insulator-metal (SHPMIM) capacitor to enhance power supply stability and facilitate on-chip decoupling. TSMC says that the new SHPMIM capacitor offers over 2X higher capacity density compared to its super-high-density metal-insulator-metal (SHDMIM) capacitor introduced several years ago for HPC (which increased capacitance by 4X when compared to previous-generation HDMIM). The new SHPMIM also reduces Rs sheet resistance (Ohm/square) by 50% compared to SHDMIM as well as Rc via resistance by 50% compared to SHDMIM.

Yet another way to reduce resistance in the power delivery network has been to rearchitect the redistribution layer (RDL). Starting from its N2 process technology, TSMC will use a copper RDL instead of today's aluminum RDL. A copper RDL will provide a similar RDL pitch, but will reduce sheet resistance by 30% as well as cut down via resistance by 60%.

Both SHPMIM and Cu RDL are parts of TSMC's N2 technology that is projected to be used for high volume manufacturing (HVM) in the second half 2025 (presumably very late in 2025).

Decoupling Power and I/O Wiring

The use of a backside power delivery network (PDN) is a yet another major improvement that will be featured by N2P. General advantages of backside power rail are well known: by separating I/O and power wiring by moving power rails to the back, it is possible to make power wires thicker and therefore reduce via resistances in the back-end-of-line (BEOL), which promises to improve performance and cut down power consumption. Also, decoupling I/O and power wires allows to shrink logic area, which means lower costs. 

At its Technology Symposium 2023 the company revealed that backside PDN of its N2P will enable 10% to 12% higher performance by reducing IR droop and improving signaling, as well as reducing the logic area by 10% to 15%. Now, of course, such advantages will be more obvious in high-performance CPUs and GPUs that have dense power delivery network and therefore moving it to the back makes a great sense for them.

Backside PDN is a part of TSMC's N2P fabrication technology that will enter HVM in late 2026 or early 2027. 

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Asus Details ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090: Liquid Cooling Meets Liquid Metal

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Asus has introduced a new flagship RTX 4090 graphics card that uses an all-in-one liquid cooling system combined with liquid metal thermal interface. Dubbed the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090, Asus says that its advanced cooler combined with extremely efficient thermal interface will ensure the maximum boost clocks possible, with Asus taking clear aim of producing the fastest gaming graphics card on the market.

Proper power delivery and efficient cooling are main ways to enable consistently high CPU and GPU performance these days, so when designing its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090, the company used its own proprietary printed circuit board (PCB) with an advanced voltage regulating module (VRM). Meanwhile cooling is being provided by an all-in-one liquid cooling system that removes heat not only from GPU, but also from memory and VRM, exhausting that heat via the attached "extra-thick" 360mm radiator.

But Asus says that its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 has a secret ingredient that its rivals lack: liquid metal thermal interface material (TIM) that ensures superior heat transfer from hot components to cooling systems. 

Asus does not disclose what type of liquid metal TIM it uses for graphics cards (it uses ThermalGrizzly's Conductonaut Extreme for some laptops), bus usually such thermal interfaces are made from gallium or gallium alloys, which are liquid at or near room temperature and are great conductors of heat.

But there are also some risks and challenges associated with using liquid metal thermal interfaces. Firstly, they are electrically conductive, which means that if the material spills or is not properly contained, it could cause a short circuit. Secondly, these materials can be corrosive to certain metals like aluminum. Thirdly, applying liquid metal can be more complicated than using other types of thermal paste, requiring careful handling and precision.

Asus says that it has been using liquid metal TIMs in its laptops for years, so using them for graphics cards does not seem to be a big challenge for the company. 

Image Credit: Future/TechRadar

Asus is not disclosing the complete specifications of the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 for the moment, but it certainly hopes to make the graphics card the world's fastest. It remains to be seen whether the product will indeed be the fastest out-of-box, but it will certainly offer a noteworthy overclocking potential when compared to regular GeForce RTX 4090 graphics boards with regular coolers.

The Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 will be a limited-edition card available for sale in Q3.

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Phison Unveils PS5031-E31T SSD Platform For Lower-Power Mainstream PCIe 5 SSDs

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At Computex 2023, Phison is introducing a new, lower-cost SSD controller for building mainstream PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The Phison PS5031-E31T is a quad channel, DRAM-less controller for solid-state drives that is designed to offer sequential read/write speeds up to 10,8 GB/s at drive capacities of up to 8 TB, which is in line with some of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs available today.

The Phison E31T controller is, at a high level, the lower-cost counterpart to Phison's current high-end PCIe 5.0 SSD controller, the E26. The E31T is based around multiple Arm Cortex R5 cores for realtime operations, and in Phison designs these are traditionally accompanied by special-purpose accelerators that belong to the company's CoXProcessor package. The chip supports Phison's 7^th Generation LDPC engine with RAID ECC and 4K code word to handle the latest and upcoming 3D TLC and 3D QLC types of 3D NAND. The controller also supports AES256, TCG Opal, and Pyrite encryption.

The SSD controller is organized in four NAND channels with 16 chip enable lines (CEs) in total, allowing it to address 4 NAND dies per channel. For now Phison is refraining from disclosing NAND interface speeds the controller supports, though given the fact that the controller is set to support sequential read/write throughput of 10,800 MB/s over four channels, napkin math indicates they'll need to support transfer rates of at least 2700 MT/s. This is on the upper-end of current ONFi/Toggle standards, but still readily attained. For example, Kioxia's and Western Digital's latest 218-layer BICS 3D NAND devices support a 3200 MT/s interface speed (which provides a peak sequential read/write speed of 400 MB/s).

Phison says that its E31T controller will enable M.2-2280 SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and a capacities of up to 8 TB. Phison's DRAM-less controllers tend to remain in use in SSD designs for quite a while due to their mainstream posiitoning and relatively cheap price, so, unsurprisingly, Phison traditionally opts to plan for the long term with regards to capacity. 8 TB SSDs will eventually come down in price, even if they aren't here quite yet.

Phison NVMe SSD Controller Comparsion
	E31T	E21T	E19T	E26	E18
Market Segment	Mainstream Consumer			High-End Consumer
Manufacturing Process	7nm	12nm	28 nm	12nm	12nm
CPU Cores	1x Cortex R5	1x Cortex R5	1x Cortex R5	2x Cortex R5	3x Cortex R5
Error Correction	7th Gen LDPC	4th Gen LDPC		5th Gen LDPC	4th Gen LDPC
DRAM	No	No	No	DDR4, LPDDR4	DDR4
Host Interface	PCIe 5.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4	PCIe 5.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe Version	NVMe 2.0?	NVMe 1.4	NVMe 1.4	NVMe 2.0	NVMe 1.4
NAND Channels, Interface Speed	4 ch, 3200 MT/s?	4 ch, 1600 MT/s	4 ch, 1400 MT/s	8 ch, 2400 MT/s	8 ch, 1600 MT/s
Max Capacity	8 TB	4 TB	2 TB	8 TB	8 TB
Sequential Read	10.8 GB/s	5.0 GB/s	3.7 GB/s	14 GB/s	7.4 GB/s
Sequential Write	10.8 GB/s	4.5 GB/s	3.0 GB/s	11.8 GB/s	7.0 GB/s
4KB Random Read IOPS	1500k	780k	440k	1500k	1000k
4KB Random Write IOPS	1500k	800k	630k	2000k	1000k

Compared to the high-end E26 controller, the E31T supports fewer NAND channels and NAND dies overall, but enthusiasts will also want to take note of the manufacturing process Phison is using for the controller. Phison is scheduled to build the E31T on TSMC's 7nm process, which although is no longer-cutting edge, is a full generation ahead of the 12nm process used for the E26. So combined with the reduced complexity of the controller, this should bode well for cooler running and less power-hungry PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

The smaller, mainstream-focused chip should also allow for those PCIe 5.0 SSDs to be cheaper. Though, as always, it should be noted that Phison doesn't publicly talk about controller pricing, let alone control what their customers (SSD vendors) charge for their finished drives.

As for availability of drives based on Phison's new controller, as Phison has not yet announced an expected sampling date, you shouldn't expect to see E31T drives for a while. Phison typically announces new controllers fairly early in the SSD development process, so there's typically at least a several month gap before finished SSDs hit the market. As Phison's second PCIe 5.0 controller, the E31T should hopefully encounter fewer teething issues than the initial E26, but we'd still expect E31T drives to be 2024 products.

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Arm Unveils 2023 Mobile CPU Core Designs: Cortex-X4, A720, and A520 - the Armv9.2 Family

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Throughout the world, if there's one universal constant in the smartphone and mobile device market, it's Arm. Whether it's mobile chip makers basing their SoCs on Arm's fully synthesized CPU cores, or just relying on the Arm ISA and designing their own chips, at the end of the day, Arm underlies virtually all of it. That kind of market saturation and relevance is a testament to all of the hard work that Arm has done in the last few decades getting to this point, but it's also a grave responsibility – for most mobile SoCs, their performance only moves forward as quickly as Arm's own CPU core designs and associated IP do.

Consequently, we've seen Arm settle into a yearly cadence for their client IP, and this year is no exception. Timed to align with this year's Computex trade show in Taiwan, Arm is showing off a new set of Cortex-A and Cortex-X series CPU cores – as well as a new generation of GPU designs – which we'll see carrying the torch for Arm starting later this year and into 2024. These include the flagship Cortex-X4 core, as well as Arm's mid-core Cortex-A720. and the new little-core Cortex-A520.

Arm's latest CPU cores build upon the foundation of Armv9 and their Total Compute Solution (TSC21/22) ecosystem. For their 2023 IP, Arm is rolling out a wave of minor microarchitectural improvements through its Cortex line of cores with subtle changes designed to push efficiency and performance throughout, all the while moving entirely to the AArch64 64-bit instruction set. The latest CPU designs from Arm are also designed to align with the ongoing industry-wide drive towards improved security, and while these features aren't strictly end-user facing, it does underscore how Arm's generational improvements are to more than just performance and power efficiency.

In addition to refining its CPU cores, Arm has undertaken a comprehensive upgrade of its DynamIQ Shared Unit core complex block, with the DSU-120. Although the modifications introduced are subtle, they hold substantial significance in terms of improving the efficiency of the fabric holding Arm CPU cores together, along with extending Arm's reach even further in terms of performance scalability with support for up to 14 CPU cores in a single block – a move designed to make Cortex-A/X even better suited for laptops.

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AMD Launches Zen 2-based Ryzen and Athlon 7020C Series For Chromebooks

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Last year, AMD unveiled their entry-level 'Mendicino' mobile parts to the market, which combine their 2019 Zen 2 cores and their RDNA 2.0 integrated graphics to create an affordable selection of configurations for mainstream mobile devices. Although much of the discussion over the last few months has been about their Ryzen 7040 mobile parts, AMD has launched four new SKUs explicitly designed for the Chromebook space, the Ryzen and Athlon 7020C series.

Some of the most notable features of AMD's Ryzen/Athlon 7020C series processors for Chromebooks include three different configurations of cores and threads, ranging from entry-level 2C/2T up to 4C/8T, all with AMD's RDNA 2-based Radeon 610M mobile integrated graphics. Designed for a wide variety of tasks and users, including and not limited to consumers, education, and businesses, AMD's Ryzen 7020C series looks to offer similar specifications and features to their regular 7020 series mobile parts but expands things to the broader Chromebook and ChromeOS ecosystem too.

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Voltage Lockdown: Investigating AMD's Recent AM5 AGESA Updates on ASRock's X670E Taichi

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It's safe to say that the last couple of weeks have been a bit chaotic for AMD and its motherboard partners. Unfortunately, it's been even more chaotic for some users with AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D processors. There have been several reports of Ryzen 7000 processors burning up in motherboards, and in some cases, burning out the chip socket itself and taking the motherboard with it.

Over the past few weeks, we've covered the issue as it's unfolded, with AMD releasing two official statements and motherboard vendors scrambling to ensure their users have been updating firmware in what feels like a grab-it-quick fire sale, pun very much intended. Not everything has been going according to plan, with AMD having released two new AGESA firmware updates through its motherboard partners to try and address the issues within a week.

The first firmware update made available to vendors, AGESA 1.0.0.6, addressed reports of SoC voltages being too high. This AGESA version put restrictions in place to limit that voltage to 1.30 V, and was quickly distributed to all of AMD's partners. More recently, motherboard vendors have pushed out even newer BIOSes which include AMD's AGESA 1.0.0.7 (BETA) update. With even more safety-related changes made under the hood, this is the firmware update AMD and their motherboard partners are pushing consumers to install to alleviate the issues – and prevent new ones from occurring.

In this article, we'll be taking a look at the effects of all three sets of firmware (AGESA 1.0.0.5c - 7) running on our ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard. The goal is to uncover what, if any, changes there are to variables using the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, including SoC voltages and current drawn under intensive memory based workloads.

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Noctua Publishes Roadmap: Next-Gen AMD Threadripper Coolers Incoming

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Unlike other makers of cooling systems, Noctua has its roadmap advertised on its websites and always updates it to reflect changes in its product development plans. The company's May 2023 roadmap brings several surprises as it adds 'Next-gen AMD Threadripper coolers' and removes white fans from its plans.

The main thing that strikes the eye in Noctua's roadmap is the mention of 'next-gen AMD Threadripper coolers' coming in the third quarter. These products were not on the roadmap in January, per a slide published by Tom's Hardware. AMD has been rumored to introduce its next-generation Ryzen Threadripper processors for workstations for a while, but this is almost the first time when we have seen a more or less official confirmation about the existence of such plans, albeit not from AMD, but one of its partners. 

Since the confirmation does not come from the CPU developer, we would not put our money into launching the next-generation Ryzen Threadripper based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture in Q3. Meanwhile, it is reasonable to expect AMD's codenamed Storm Peak processor to arrive sooner than later since the company has not updated this lineup in a while.

Other notable things in Noctua's roadmap are a bunch of Chromax black products due in Q4, a 24V to 12V voltage converted set to arrive in Q2, and a 24V 40-mm fan, which emphasizes that the company considers the ATX12VO ecosystem essential to address. In addition, the firm is prepping its next-generation 140-mm fans, which will arrive in Q1 2024 in regular colors and then later in the year in Chromax—black version.

Unfortunately, Noctua's next-generation NH-D15 cooler, which once was promised to arrive in Q1 2023, is not slated for sometime in 2024. Meanwhile, the company's roadmap no longer includes white fans for a reason we cannot explain. Perhaps, the company decided to devote its resources elsewhere, or maybe white plastic that the company considered for white fans did not meet its expectations.

Source: Noctua

Gallery: Noctua Publishes Roadmap: Next-Gen AMD Threadripper Coolers Incoming

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Topgro's $499 Fanless PC Packs Core i7-1255U 'Alder Lake' CPU

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One of the perks of modern mobile CPUs is that, being designed for laptops and their very limited cooling capacity, they can be placed in a NUC-sized (or smaller) miniature desktop PC with little difficulty. Better still, with desktops providing room for proper heatsinks (i.e. fins), even passively cooled mini-PCs using laptop-grade silicon are more than viable. The only real drawback to these mini-PCs has largely been the niche nature of the market – leading to high prices and limited choices for higher-performing systems – which is why Topgro has been turning heads as of late with the release of their aggressively priced Intel 12th Gen Core-based K3 Mini PC.

Topgro is not a household name, but it sells a collection of compact desktop PCs at Amazon, including inexpensive machines for office and neat gaming systems. As discovered by FanlessTech, Topgro's K3 is the latest addition to the company's lineup, offering a passively cooled mini-PC system based around Intel's mobile 12^thGeneration Core 'Alder Lake' processors with Iris Xe integrated GPU with 96 EUs.

Recently posted on Amazon, Topgro had initially listed a complete Core i7-1255U system that shipped with 512GB of solid state storage and 16GB of DDR4 memory for just $369 (after discount), a dirt-cheap price for a Core-based mini-PC that is complete and usable out of the box. Though in a sign that Topgro may have been a bit too aggressive with their new PC, the price already went up by $100 to $469 just in the time it took to finish writing this article.

Measuring 174 mm × 128 mm × 45 mm (6.85 × 5 × 1.77 inches), Topgro's K3 Mini PC is a rather compact machine. And since Alder Lake CPUs for notebooks are heavily packed with features, these K3 machines are quite capable. The small form-factor PC not only comes with a 96 EU integrated Intel Xe-LP GPU, it supports up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory using two SO-DIMM modules, two M.2-2280 SSDs (with a PCIe 4.0 and a PCIe 3.0 interface), and can house one 2.5-inch SATA HDD or SSD for bulk storage. Even Thunderbolt 4 is supported, owing to the fact that it's natively baked into Intel's mobile CPUs.

As for connectivity, Topgro's K3 provides everything that Intel's 12^th Gen Core platform for laptops has to offer and then some. This includes Wi-Fi 6 (enabled by Intel's AX200 module), two 2.5GbE ports (making the systems plausible for corporate environments), the aforementioned Thunderbolt 4-capable USB Type-C connector, four display outputs (DP 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, USB-C), and six USB Type-A ports (three USB 3.0, two USB 2.0), and audio jacks.

As noted earlier, arguably the most notable aspect of this PC is Topgro's aggressive pricing, especially given that it's a fanless machine. The sole K3 configuration Topgro is offering pairs Intel's Core i7-1255U (2P + 8E cores, 12 threads, 4.70 GHz, 12 MB L3, Iris Xe GPU with 96 EUs) with 16 GB of DDR4-3200 and a 512 GB NVMe SSD, with Windows 11 pre-loaded. The manufacturer is offering a $30 digital coupon on top of a (now) $499 base price, bringing the final price of the sytem down to $469.

Coincidentally or not, $469 is also Intel's list price for the Core i7-1255U. And while system vendors rarely pay the listed price – especially over a year after the CPU has launched – systems such as the K3 underscore how aggressive PC vendors are needing to be in order to move PCs amidst the current slump in the market. Coupled with DRAM and NAND prices that are bottoming out at record lows, it's increasingly becoming possible to find decent systems at a low price.

And while this is the only fanless model in Topgro's profile, the company is also offering actively cooled mini-PCs in a similar form factor, and with similarly aggressive pricing. A Core i9-12900H box with the same RAM and NAND runs for $679 after discounts; which although is a big step up from the K3 in terms of pricing, does net you Intel's top Alder Lake mobile CPU.

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AMD promises its new laptop chips will crush the Apple M2 - and it’s got receipts

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Well folks, they’re finally here: after a spate of delays, AMD has unveiled its shiny new laptop processors, the Ryzen 7040U series. Designed to power a new wave of next-generation ultra-thin devices, these chips could take laptop performance to a whole new level - and AMD is clearly feeling confident about it.

Why do I say this? Well, Team Red isn’t messing about with its promotional material: we’ve got direct comparisons not just to Intel’s competing 13th-gen CPUs, but also Apple’s powerhouse M2 chip.

AMD doesn’t beat around the bush; the Ryzen 7 7840U, the initial flagship APU of the new series, apparently offers 9% better 3D rendering performance, 14% better responsiveness, and a whopping 72% better multiprocessing performance than the standard M2. That’s the one you’ll find in the latest MacBook Air - we can probably expect the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips found in this year’s MacBook Pro.

Packing up to 8 Zen 4 cores and AMD’s Radeon 780M integrated graphics as well as XDNA AI architecture, these new chips - previously codenamed ‘Phoenix’ - are purpose-built for the best ultrabooks around. With that in mind, they use impressively tiny amounts of power; even the flagship 7840U uses just 15W of power at base, almost half that of the base TDP of the competing Intel Core i7-1360P.

The RDNA 3 iGPUs are hugely improved here too, apparently crushing Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics, with performance as much as 139% better than the i7-1360P’s graphics. That’s at 1080p Low settings, but still impressive for a system without a dedicated GPU!

There will be four new chips: the aforementioned Ryzen 7 7840U, the midrange Ryzen 5 7640U and 7540U, and the affordable Ryzen 3 7440U. No Ryzen 9 chip just yet - we don't know if that's not planned, or if AMD is holding it in reserve for a later release.

The future of gaming laptops?

I’ve already noted that AMD’s new chips could be a huge blow to Nvidia and the discrete graphics card market as a whole, and while the performance figures shown here don’t exactly blow me away (showing percentage comparisons rather than real-world framerates is telling), it’s still impressive.

AMD is really committing to its integrated graphics, and I couldn’t be happier about that: I’ve long believed that discrete graphics cards should be left in the past, and processors like this are a step in the right direction.

After all, AMD already makes the chips that power our modern consoles, from the Nintendo Switch to the PS5. More recently, Team Red has pushed its new Z1-series APUs, which will be powering the intriguing new PC gaming handheld from Asus - the ROG Ally.

Low-power processors with impressive integrated graphics could prove to be the future of gaming laptops - if you’ve ever used a gaming laptop, you’ll probably know that most of them are big, bulky, heavy machines. That’s because they need to pack in a whole graphics card; and not just that, but a cooling solution and a large battery to support it.

Cut out the dedicated GPU, and you end up with laptops like the gorgeous Dell XPS 13: sleek, lightweight, and without the jet-engine fan whine of a beefy gaming rig. This is the future, folks! I’m tired of lugging around my chunky old Razer Blade! I want something slim and light, dammit! Let’s go, AMD!

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Solidigm Synergy 2.0 Amplifies P41 Plus and P44 Pro Performance with Custom Driver

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Solidigm has been active in the PC client SSD market with the QLC-based P41 Plus and the traditional TLC-based P44 Pro for the high-end market. While introducing the P41 Plus, Solidigm had also talked about the implementation of a read cache using the pSLC segment of the drive. This required the installation of Solidigm Synergy software. Over the last few quarters, the company has been hard at work perfecting the Solidigm Synergy 2.0 software release, with the promise of delivering even better performance for real-world workloads (compared to performance at launch) when used with the P41 Plus and the P44 Pro. While most SSD vendors work at the hardware and firmware levels, Solidigm believes there is performance benefits to be exploited at the software / driver level also.

Solidigm's Synergy 2.0 has two components - a Synergy Toolkit, and a Synergy Driver. While the toolkit taps into the SMART support and Windows performance counters and supports a variety of SSDs, the Synergy Driver is obviously supported only on Solidigm's client SSDs.

The toolkit itself is similar to the ones released by almost every other SSD vendor for the purpose of storage monitoring and maintenance. It collates a bunch of features that are spread over multiple tools and may be useful as a one-stop shop for mainstream users. The more interesting component is actually the Solidigm Synergy Driver that operates at the kernel level. Currently, this driver works only with Windows 10 or 11. Solidigm claims much better performance with its custom driver, with the QLC-based drive seeing significant improvement.

The driver is able to achieve this performance improvement using three different aspects:

• Dynamic Queues
• Prefetch for QD1 accesses
• FastLane (host-managed caching)

Out of these three, FastLane is available only for the P41 Plus currently. This host-managed caching scheme was already discussed in detail in our launch coverage of the P41 Plus, though it didn't have the FastLane moniker at that time.

Read caching is of help only when the drive is not full enough to actually make the cache size too small to be of good use. Solidigm claims that this technique helps most in drives that are between 25% to 75% full

The Synergy Driver includes a feature that analyzes the storage trace of an application in real-time to detect predictable read operations. When the access queue depth is low and operations are sequential in nature, it is possible to predict the next access and prefetch it prior to the actual application request. This can increase responsiveness from an user experience perspective.

The driver allows up to 8 streams to be fetched, each with a buffer size of 512KB and maximum request size of 128KB. The driver's prefetch behavior can be controlled via a registry parameter.

On systems with a large number of CPU cores, Solidigm claims that their driver can do a better job at routing I/O requests to relatively idle cores compared to the native Windows driver. The driver taps into the I/O request load, request size, and I/O processing times with / without CPU core redirection to decide whether to activate the dynamic queues. This process is dynamic - if the driver detects that the redirection makes completion times worse, or there is a change in workload, the dynamic queueing behavior is dropped. Similar to the smart prefetching, this aspect can also be deactivated using the registry.

Solidigm's approach to delivering value additions to their client SSD customers after purchase is a marked departure from other vendors who rely solely on firmware updates - mostly for bug fixes. Providing better performance over time with driver releases is welcome from the end-user viewpoint. A point to keep in mind here is that these features help with real-world workloads - and not for use-cases primarily dealing with large sequential transfers, and measured using ATTO or CrystalDiskMark.

Gallery: Solidigm Synergy 2.0 Amplifies P41 Plus and P44 Pro Performance with Custom Driver

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AMD: Ryzen Mobile 7040HS “Phoenix” Laptops to Reach Retailers in a Couple More Weeks

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Alongside AMD’s usual slate of financial figures as part of their quarterly earnings call, the company also offered a brief update on the state of the next-generation Ryzen Mobile 7040HS “Phoenix” CPUs. After initially being slated for a March arrival – and then pushed back to April – the laptops are finally launching. According to AMD, the first systems should start arriving at retailers in the next few weeks.

First detailed during AMD’s CES 2023 keynote, the Ryzen Mobile 7040HS series (codename Phoenix) is AMD’s first mobile-focused, monolithic die CPUs based on the Zen 4 architecture, and will be their flagship silicon for mobile devices for 2023. Besides incorporating AMD’s latest CPU architecture, Phoenix also adds into the mix an updated RDNA3 architecture iGPU, and for the first time in any AMD CPU, a dedicated AI processing block, which AMD has aptly named the Ryzen AI. All of which, in turn, is fabbed using TSMC’s 4nm process – making it the single most advanced piece of silicon out of AMD yet.

AMD Ryzen 7040 Mobile CPUs 'Phoenix' on 4nm
AnandTech	C/T	Base Freq	Turbo Freq	GPU	GPU Freq	L3 Cache (MB)	TDP
HS-Series 35W - 54W
Ryzen 9 7940HS	8/16	4000	5200	RDNA 3 12 CUs	3000	16	35W - 54W
Ryzen 7 7840HS	8/16	3800	5100	RDNA 3 12 CUs	2900	16	35W - 54W
Ryzen 5 7640HS	6/12	4300	5000	RDNA 3 8 CUs	2800	16	35W - 54W

During a post-call Q&A with the press and analysts, AMD representatives offered an update on the state of 7040HS series processors, and the laptops they powered. According to AMD, the 7040HS series chips began ramping in Q1 – contributing to AMD’s client revenue for the quarter – and are now shipping to OEMs. As a result, AMD expects the first systems to hit retailers in the next couple of weeks.

If nothing else, the extended launch timeline underscores the difference between how AMD and arch rival Intel communicate product launches – and what they count as shipping. Whereas Intel’s massive client volume requires a large product ramp-up such that they’ll ship mobile chips to OEMs sometimes months before anything is announced, AMD has in recent years been satisfied to announce new mobile hardware well in advance of system availability. As a result, whether it’s intentional or not, most of the time AMD ends up defining a mobile launch as when chips are shipping to OEMs, rather than the availability of OEM systems. And that seems to be what has happened here.

For our part, back on April 30^th AnandTech did find a single US retail listing claiming to have a Ryzen 7040HS laptop in stock. However, that listing from EXCaliberPC, for an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, now reads as a pre-order, with the retailer expecting it in stock on May 5^th. Assuming they do receive systems on that day, then this would put the arrival of the very first systems a bit ahead of AMD’s latest projections – though still missing the previous claim of “OEM partners to launch the first notebooks powered by Ryzen 7040HS Series processors in April” by a week.

Ultimately, despite the delays in getting Phoenix out the door, AMD does have big plans for their first monolithic Zen 4 product. Besides serving as the cornerstone of their high-performance mobile offerings for the next year, Phoenix is also expected to be used in AMD's Ryzen Z1 processors for handheld PC game consoles. And an eventual Ryzen Embedded product using the silicon is practically obigatory. So Phoenix will indeed rise high at AMD, eventually.

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AMD Reports Q1 2023 Earnings: Slipping Back into the Red as Client Sales Crumble

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Continuing our earnings season coverage for Q1’2023, today we have the yin to Intel’s yang, AMD. The number-two x86 chip and discrete GPU maker has been enjoying a growing diet of Intel’s lunch for much of the past two years, but like the rest of the tech industry, AMD is now seeing a significant drop-off in sales as businesses and consumers alike curtail tech spending. So, like numerous other companies in this field, AMD has been bracing themselves for a rough first half of the year, after managing to beat the pack in Q4’2022 by posting a small profit.

For the first quarter of 2023, AMD reported $5.4B in revenue, continuing the year-over-year slide they’ve been experiencing throughout the past few quarters. All told, AMD’s top-line revenue dropped by 9% versus Q1’22, which is a much smaller drop than some of its rivals, but it’s a situation that has also been artificially buoyed by the Xilinx acquisition. That acquisition, which closed late into Q1’22, has boosted AMD’s revenue significantly on a year-over-year basis for the past few quarters – suffice it to say, it was not a small acquisition – though that is coming to an end now that AMD has owned Xilinx for over a full year.

The additional revenue and sales that Xilinx has brought to the table has shifted AMD in some important ways, but it hasn’t helped to halt the fundamental drop in sales that the tech industry is facing. As a result, the hit to AMD’s income has been significant; operating incomes dropped by 115% to negative $145M, and net income saw a similar dive into the red with a 118% drop, for a final tally of a $139M loss.

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Intel CPUs could soon swap their iconic ‘i’ for some confusing new names

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It looks like Intel could be ditching its iconic ‘i’ branding for CPU names in the not-too-distant future. That means no more i5, i7, and so on. Why? That’s for Intel to know, and us to wonder.

The news comes from Intel’s director of global communications, Bernard Fernandes, who confirmed in a tweet that Intel has plans for ‘brand changes’ as the company is at what he calls an ‘inflection point’ in its roadmap for future CPU generations.

Yes, we are making brand changes as we’re at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our #MeteorLake processors. We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks! #IntelMay 1, 2023

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It shouldn’t be shocking for anyone with their fingers on the pulse; Intel has plans to release a whole new CPU architecture (hopefully this year) under the ‘Meteor Lake’ codename, and a recent benchmark result found in the test results database of strategy game Ashes of the Singularity revealed a mysterious processor named the Intel Core Ultra 5 1003H.

So, Intel could be dropping the ‘i’ – and replacing it with Ultra. Of course, this could merely be a codename, or we might see Ultra and non-Ultra versions of Meteor Lake processors. Notably, we might get at least one more ‘i’ generation before this big rebrand hits, with some leaks indicating that Intel’s 14th-gen Core CPUs won’t exclusively use the new architecture.

Unnecessary confusion?

I have to ask, Intel: why this? Why now? Sure, Meteor Lake does represent a fresh start for its processor products, but the ‘Core’ branding is evidently sticking around, so why lose the ‘i’? Judging by the leaked CPU name, Intel doesn’t plan to drop the 3/5/7/9 ‘tier’ numerals for its chips either.

If this leak is accurate – and it could well amount to nothing, with the rebrand giving us something entirely different – I really have to question the logic behind it. ‘Ultra’ isn’t exactly an original name, after all.

Phone manufacturers love to shove the word into product names to indicate that you’re getting a ‘souped-up’ version of the phone. ‘Ultra HD’ is common parlance for 4K resolution when it comes to displays. And, perhaps most critically, Apple – which is now a key competitor for Intel in the processor space – is using the moniker in its own high-end SoCs like the M1 Ultra.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s second only to slapping ‘Pro’ on the end of a product name in the ‘garbage tech naming conventions’ race. Even setting aside my dislike of the term, big rebrands often pose the risk of simply being confusing for consumers.

Intel’s ‘i’ branding has been around for a long time now – more than two decades, in fact. It’s become synonymous with Intel’s name: the company doesn’t even capitalize the first letter of its name in logos and branding material. To ditch it would be a major move, and consumers with only a limited degree of familiarity with Intel products (say, knowing that an i9 is better than an i5) could end up unsure of where they stand.

Hey, this could be no big deal. Maybe Intel wants to shake up its numbering conventions instead (which would also suck). Maybe even ‘Core’ is going away. ‘Intel Inside’ was a masterstroke of brand campaigning, but it didn’t last forever. All things change, and perhaps it’s time for something new. All those ‘i’s will be lost in time, like tears in rain…

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