Intel Raptor Lake CPU launch could come sooner than you think

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs could arrive in Q3 of 2022, earlier than was broadly anticipated – meaning that the processors might just be here in August, or even July technically.

This comes from regular rumor peddler @momomo_us on Twitter, who tweeted (rather obliquely) that a Q3 launch date is now the expected timeframe for both Raptor Lake and high-end desktop Sapphire Rapids-X (that’s what the fish represents: this will be Intel’s Fishhawk Falls HEDT platform).

😵🐟Q3🦖Q3November 15, 2021

See more

Of course, this is just speculation, but it’s interesting to see the assertion made that Raptor Lake might turn up earlier than we thought – and by September at the latest, in theory.

The default expectation has been the likely usual gap of a year (or so) between generations, and with Alder Lake having been released earlier this month, that would leave Q4 as the most likely pitch for a Raptor Lake launch.

---

Analysis: Rapid Raptor release is certainly a solid possibility

It’s possible that Intel could be quick with its next-gen release, given that as we’ve already heard, Raptor Lake is purportedly more or less a simple refresh of Alder Lake. And while there’s usually a year between processor generations as we mentioned above, note that Alder Lake was here well inside a year after Rocket Lake (only seven months later, in fact; but that was unusual).

On balance, September 2022, then, could be the date to tentatively pencil in should you be waiting for Intel’s 13th-gen chips, and not jumping on board the hybrid tech (performance and efficiency cores) bandwagon in its first (12th-gen) iteration. There are probably more than a few folks in that boat.

Raptor Lake could be particularly interesting for laptops, as we saw yesterday, because Intel might be planning some new power-efficiency tricks which could augment battery longevity gains from the CPU’s efficiency cores.

As for Sapphire Rapids CPUs, these have been a long time coming, as Cascade Lake-X HEDT models have been around since 2017, so it’ll have been five years in the making if Sapphire Rapids does indeed emerge in Q3 of next year. Meanwhile, AMD is expected to have new Threadripper 5000 chips (Zen 3-based) before too long…

Remember that Intel has Sapphire Rapids CPUs for data centers ready to roll for Q2 of 2022, as well.

• Check out the best PC components for your rig

Via PC Gamer

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/3Cw0MLC
via IFTTT

Next-gen Raptor Lake CPUs could fix Intel’s biggest weakness

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Intel could shore up one of its biggest weak points with CPUs in that next-gen Raptor Lake processors might advance considerably in terms of power-efficiency.

As you may be aware, power usage has been something Intel has struggled with in recent times, and Alder Lake – while admittedly being better than its predecessor Rocket Lake – still looks power-hungry compared to Ryzen 5000 chips (and particularly the 12900K, with the flagship chip once again remaining a Watt-guzzling monster).

Raptor Lake could change that, though, thanks to a fresh innovation which the rumor mill reckons (apply salt here) might just pop up in time for the 13th-gen chips, spotted in an Intel patent.

As Tom’s Hardware reports, Twitter user Underfox pointed out the Intel patent in a tweet (a while back – actually in August) and described how it aims to reduce power usage.

The basic idea behind Raptor Lake's new power delivery architecture proposal is to include a digital linear voltage regulator (DLVR) as a voltage clamp placing in parallel to the primary VR, reducing CPU VID and thereby also reducing processor core power consumption. pic.twitter.com/n7kwjwTY9CAugust 19, 2021

See more

The DLVR (digital linear voltage regulator) power delivery system is a “voltage clamp placing in parallel to the primary VR [voltage regulator]” which reduces the CPU VID (the voltage the CPU requires to be delivered) and therefore power consumption of processor cores.

That power-efficiency improvement could amount to a 20% to 25% decrease in the power needed by the CPU, and that may translate to a roughly 7% performance gain.

The enhancement comes at only a “small extra cost for the silicon, low complexity of tuning, and a relatively small additional motherboard VR”, Intel asserts.

---

Analysis: Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency – is Intel poised for major laptop success?

Raptor Lake is thought to be arriving later in 2022 to take the baton from the freshly released Alder Lake chips. It’s expected to be a simple refresh of Alder Lake, but will obviously sport performance gains in terms of IPC (Instructions per Clock), with a flagship that’s rumored to run with 24-cores (8 performance cores plus 16 efficiency cores, which as the latter don’t have hyper-threading means 32-threads in total).

Better power-efficiency for Raptor Lake would clearly be good news, because as we already mentioned, power consumption is an area Intel has continued to struggle with keeping a lid on while eking more performance from its chips in recent generations.

Where this could be particularly exciting is with mobile CPUs, as if the rumor mill is correct, Raptor Lake is going to really push with the efficiency cores (with 16 in the flagship, doubling up from 8 in Alder Lake), and on top of that, we could have an overall improvement with power-efficiency in the underlying architecture, too.

That’s a prospective double whammy which might mean that Raptor Lake laptop CPUs could promise huge battery life boosts as a result – assuming that this patent is indeed for tech which will be ready and in Intel’s next-gen processors.

• Check out the best PC components for your rig

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/3wPS9u3
via IFTTT

Nvidia CEO says there’s no magic cure for GPU shortage that’ll last until 2023

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Nvidia has some bad news for those who were hoping that GPU stock shortages might be a thing of the past before too long, because these supply issues are apparently going to be felt throughout next year.

The latest from Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang came in an interview with Yahoo Finance, in which he observed: “I think that through the next year, demand is going to far exceed supply. We don’t have any magic bullets in navigating the supply chain.”

So, we can broadly expect 2022 to be much like 2021, in that there won’t be enough graphics cards to go around, and inventory shortages will lead to scalping and price gouging which worsens the overall situation. Meh.

Currently, you’ll struggle to find an RTX 3080, for example – unless you want to buy a whole PC with one of the GPUs inside (which will, of course, be a very costly endeavor). And the same remains true of other RTX 3000 models by and large, with that scenario of the demand seesaw being tipped against supply in a major way to continue for the foreseeable (and, of course, for Black Friday).

---

Analysis: General consensus among CEOs and analysts is seriously gloomy

This is the latest prediction in a bunch of other gloomy forecasts which indicate that component supply problems will continue to be a blight on the broad tech industry throughout next year.

Intel’s chief executive Pat Gelsinger recently asserted that the ‘supply-demand balance’ won’t be back in a more normal state of equilibrium until 2023, in a CNBC interview in October. Plus Toshiba, along with IBM and TSMC have issued similarly dire predictions.

Lisa Su, CEO of Nvidia and Intel arch-rival AMD, hit a slightly more optimistic note in September when she indicated that we were looking at later in 2022 for a potential resolution – although even in that case, any improvement could still be the best part of a year away.

If Nvidia and others are right, and problems persist all the way through 2022, then that will encompass the launch of its next-gen ‘Lovelace’ graphics cards, which are rumored to debut at some point in Q3 next year. These GPUs are expected to do amazing things on the performance front, and if that speculation pans out, pricing will likely be in line with the power on tap – with availability issues and the aforementioned scalpers reselling on eBay for big profits only adding to the misery and expense, no doubt.

Our best hope now seems to be that these CEOs are looking on the pessimistic side in order to not spark any false hope of a recovery in the nearer future, but given the overall consistency of the message from these execs and also analyst firms, it’s really not looking good for 2022.

• Find the best Nvidia GPU for you

Via PC Gamer

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/3nfAgla
via IFTTT

Intel: Sapphire Rapids With 64 GB of HBM2e, Ponte Vecchio with 408 MB L2 Cache

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This week we have the annual Supercomputing event where all the major High Performance Computing players are putting their cards on the table when it comes to hardware, installations, and design wins. As part of the event Intel is having a presentation on its hardware offerings, which discloses additional details about the next generation hardware going into the Aurora Exascale supercomputer.

from AnandTech https://ift.tt/3kFB80B
via IFTTT

Fresh leak hints at how AMD vs Nvidia next-gen GPU battle is shaping up

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

We’ve had some new material float down from the GPU grapevine, theorizing how both the next-gen Nvidia ‘Lovelace’ and AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards will pan out.

This comes from Greymon55, now a regular hardware leaker on Twitter, who has shared what they believe to be the likely core spec of the flagship GPUs from both Teams Green and Red – although note the use of question marks with some of the contended details, meaning that those parts are educated guesswork at this stage.

Let me add more:N31=GFX11=5nm+6nm TSMC=120WGP 15360SP≈256bit 32G GDDR6 18Gbps?≈256/512mb Infinity Cache?=3D Infinity Cache≈2.4~2.5GHz?≈75T FP32?November 9, 2021

See more

Of course, this is an early stage rumor so all of it should be treated with a very healthy dollop of skepticism, but Greymon asserts that what will presumably be the RTX 4090 will run with 18,432 CUDA cores, plus 24GB of GDDR6X video memory and a 384-bit memory interface.

Clock speeds will be pitched in the area of 2.3GHz to 2.5GHz – that’s one of the nuggets of info with a big question mark hanging over it – offering something in the order of around 90TFlops of raw (FP32) performance (ditto on the question mark there).

Moving to the AMD RDNA 3 champion, this GPU is purportedly set to come bristling with 15,360 stream processors (cores), as previously rumored, and 32GB of GDDR6 with a 256-bit memory interface – plus the key addition of 3D Infinity Cache to stay competitive with Nvidia, as we heard recently from Greymon (there could be 256MB or 512MB of Infinity Cache).

As you may know, 3D V-Cache or vertical cache – meaning simply that it’s stacked up vertically – is what’s coming to Ryzen CPUs with new models (possibly Ryzen 6000 chips) at the start of 2022.

Clock speeds for the next-gen AMD flagship, presumably the RX 7900, are roughly pegged at around the same as Nvidia – 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz – offering about 75Tflops of FP32 performance, Greymon reckons.

---

Analysis: Worrying about the wrong thing…

We’d be foolish to try to engage in any real comparative debate based on the above-rumored specs at this stage in the next-gen GPU game, so bear that firmly in mind. Still, it’s worth putting some tentative initial thoughts together, huge amounts of salt clutched in both hands.

So, the theory is that the RTX 4000 flagship will pull around 85-90TFlops of raw (FP32) performance. Now, the RTX 3090 comes in at 36TFlops, so that’d make its successor around 2.5x more performant, in theory: a huge leap.

On the AMD side, the RDNA 3 flagship is pulling a purported 75Tflops, as noted, which isn’t far off Nvidia, but it’s a bit behind. However, even if these figures are in the correct ballpark – which is obviously a big if – that performance metric does not equate to real-world gaming performance.

We’ve also heard this week that Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards could be twice as powerful as current models, and these purported specs look to back up this assertion. And with AMD set to crank the cache (and use that 3D V-Cache, of course), plus adopt a fresh multi-chip module strategy with the RX 7900, according to previous rumors, Team Red’s flagship could also turn out to be ridiculously powerful as we’ve reported before.

The reality is that it sounds like both Nvidia and AMD’s next GPUs are shaping up very nicely, and will represent big jumps in performance above the current graphics cards on both teams.

The real worry, perhaps, is not exactly how powerful these cards will turn out to be in comparison to each other, but how much they will cost. Indeed, the true next-gen GPU battle may be fought on value proposition and availability (if component shortages continue as predicted) – and indeed with power consumption being a further concern (and it’s here that what we’ve been hearing about Nvidia in recent times is rather alarming, condiments aplenty of course).

• Find the best Nvidia GPU for you

Via Wccftech

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/30pWF6H
via IFTTT

Intel Alder Lake rumor spills specs of incoming 12th-gen CPUs – with an eye-opening change

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Intel Alder Lake processors are now out, or at least the first clutch of desktop CPUs, but more will follow – and we now have purported specs for what could be the next models to arrive for the 12th-gen range.

To begin with, Intel unleashed K series processors (12900K, 12700K and 12600K, plus KF variants with no integrated GPU), which are unlocked chips that overclockers can ramp up clock speeds with. The next models to come could be the vanilla non-K versions of these chips, most likely, and their (unchangeable) clock speeds have been shared on Twitter by prolific leaker @momomo_us.

「こちら」じゃねぇんよなぁ。 pic.twitter.com/YN5hglijOoNovember 11, 2021

See more

So, if this rumor is right the Core i9-12900 (and again, its F counterpart with no integrated graphics) will have a base clock of 2.4GHz, considerably slower than the 12900K’s speed of 3.2GHz. Boost for the 12900 will run up to 5.1GHz compared to 5.2GHz for the 12900K (of course, the K processor can be pushed further still with overclocking, if you have the cooling to handle it, that is).

Those are the purported clock speeds for the standard performance cores, whereas the efficient cores (low-power ones) are theoretically pegged at 1.8GHz with the 12900, versus 2.4GHz for the 12900K’s base clock. The TDP difference is 125W plays 65W, and the core configurations (of performance and efficient cores) remain the same as the K version.

Moving on to the Core i7-12700, with its performance cores you’ll supposedly get a base clock and turbo of 2.1GHz and 4.9GHz respectively, compared to the 12700K at 3.6GHz and 5GHz. The base clock of the efficient cores is 1.6GHz for the 12700 and 2.7GHz for the 12700K. Again, the core configuration remains the same between vanilla and K variants.

Finally, we have a snippet of a leak on the Core i5-12600, plus also the entirely new Core i5-12400F, both of which could be six-core (12-thread) chips with no efficient cores.

The 12600 will supposedly boast a base clock of 3.3GHz compared to the 3.7GHz of the 12600K. Note that the 12600K has a different core configuration, not just having six performance cores, but also four efficient cores.

As for the 12400F, that’ll run with a base clock of 2.5GHz for its performance cores (which as mentioned will be the only type of core it has). There’s no info leaked regarding boost speed here.

---

Analysis: Potential confusion for the consumer?

As ever, we should be very skeptical around leaked details, and there are certainly a couple of odd things with this particular bit of Alder Lake spillage which have some alarm bells lightly ringing.

For starters, the efficient cores of the 12700 are slower than the 12900 (by 200MHz), and the opposite is true with the existing K versions (the vanilla variant is 300MHz faster, not slower).

What’s stranger is that the Core i5-12600 is marked down as having no efficient cores, with just six performance ones (meaning 12-threads in total), whereas the 12600K has four efficient cores on top of those six standard cores (for 16-threads in total). To change the core configuration between K and vanilla models would be odd for Intel, and as other rumors have held that they should both maintain the same core loadout and 16-thread count, we’re betting this will likely be the case.

If it isn’t, and there is a difference in the actual core config between the 12600 and 12600K, that could be very confusing for consumers, who may well assume that as is usually the case – and as is the case with the 12900 and 12700 here – they’re the same chip with the vanilla model as the K spin, other than clock speed differences and a lack of overclocking. Theoretically, with a different core count as well as the latter changes, the typical pricing gap between K and non-K chips isn’t really going to work out well for the lesser model’s value proposition here.

• Check out the best PC components for your rig

Via Wccftech

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/3qrh71y
via IFTTT

No, Gigabyte didn’t shatter Intel Alder Lake world record with 8GHz overclock

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Intel’s Alder Lake chips are freshly out and you may have seen that Gigabyte recently claimed a world record 12th-gen overclock, tipping 8GHz with the Core i9-12900K flagship – but this achievement has now been officially refuted by CPU-Z.

The story here is that Gigabyte’s overclocking expert HiCookie submitted the 8GHz overclock (using liquid nitrogen) to CPU-Z last week, and bear in mind this was a staggering figure for Intel’s 12th-gen processors, given that 11th-gen chips came nowhere near 8GHz (the 11900K managed around 7.3GHz).

While Alder Lake was expected to be a good overclocker, this was a serious eye-opener, but doubt was immediately cast on the 8GHz clock speed by another overclocking expert, der8auer, who called it a ‘fake result’.

That has now been confirmed by Doc TB, the developer of CPU-Z Validator, who has rejected the 8GHz record-breaking submission to CPU-Z, following Gigabyte’s apparent failure to provide any concrete proof of the feat, as Tom’s Hardware reports.

Tom’s further notes that HiCookie couldn’t reproduce this 8GHz result with the Gigabyte rig built around its top-end Z690 Aorus Tachyon motherboard.

---

Analysis: Extremely complex trickery at work seems the most likely explanation

So, what exactly is going on here? Doc TB from CPU-Z observed that it’s “very unlikely” that the 12900K hit 8GHz, while detailing an apparent way to trick the CPU into reporting a falsely high speed if the overclocker has access to BIOS source code (which some of the in-house experts with motherboard manufacturers do).

Indeed, with Alder Lake pre-release samples, there were people exploiting a CPU PLL lock bug to fake reported overclocks of 8GHz or even higher (as much as 12GHz), and it seems that while Intel patched against this with a microcode update before the 12th-gen launch, there is another route still open to potentially leverage this same flaw.

Doc TB concludes that: “The issue is now on Intel’s hands, needing a new hardware stepping or maybe another microcode patch. Solving such a niche issue to prevent ppls messing with BIOS source code is a real challenge and probably not on the top list.”

The other thing to note here, as the CPU-Z dev also points out in the extensive explanation on Twitter, is that all other overclocking experts were managing to set records around the 7.5GHz to 7.6GHz mark, so 8GHz is a huge outlier compared to the general consensus from all the other major motherboard makers and their in-house overclockers. Remember, those efforts consisted of “tens of overclockers [testing] hundreds of CPUs on a bunch of motherboards while all struggling around 7.5GHz”, so an 8GHz result appearing out of the blue was “quite suspicious at least”, Doc TB asserts.

The general consensus for all-core benchmark stability for the 12900K is pegged at around 7GHz, by the way.

In case you’re wondering how fast 8GHz is in the overall scheme of things, the fastest validated processor clock speed ever achieved on CPU-Z is 8794MHz or very nearly 8.8GHz, a feat managed by an AMD FX-8350 almost a decade ago now.

• Check out the best PC components for your rig

from TechRadar: computing components news https://ift.tt/2YBoLLo
via IFTTT