Processor Technology Reviews, Analysis And News
Processors come in many types for different applications. However, when it comes to computing, whether mobile, on the desktop or in the Internet of Things, these chips are widely known as the "brains" of the operation. Here you'll find Hot Hardware reviews and news on products from the biggest names in PC and mobile processors from Intel and AMD, to Qualcomm, ARM and more.
After years of delays, Intel is ready to put the pedal to metal with its 10nm computing products. Although it's been on Intel's roadmap for quite some time, Intel's first-generation 10nm platform, codenamed Ice Lake, is currently still tracking for a holiday 2019 launch for thin and light notebooks and 2-in-1 convertibles. Intel's 10nm Ice Lake The Ice Lake platform is highly integrated, but at its core is Intel's 10nm Sunny Cove processor microarchitecture. Also along for the ride is are all-new instructions dedicated to machine learning (DL Boost), native Thunderbolt 3 connectivity...
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Intel held its 2018 “Architecture Day” yesterday, where top execs plotted out the company’s direction for architecture and product roadmaps in the near-future and further out on the horizon. The event was held at a home once owned by Robert Noyce. Noyce, known as the "Mayor of Silicon Valley" back in the day, co-founded Intel in 1968 with Gordon Moore. This mansion setting was a perfect backdrop for Intel to underscore its new direction for the analysts and journalists in attendance. Intel has been under intense pressure due to delays of volume ramp of its 10nm process fabricated...
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Intel held an Architecture Day in Los Altos yesterday, where it disclosed a number of details regarding next-generation CPU and GPU architectures and manufacturing process technologies. In addition to the technical disclosures divulged to an exclusive group of attendees, Intel also talked about a shift in the company’s design and engineering model based on six strategic pillars -- Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security, and Software – which it hopes will allow it to better address the needs of the current computing landscape moving forward. In addition to the architecture...
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When Intel officially announced its 9th Generation Core processors at an event in NYC a few weeks back, it used the opportunity to also unveil a beastly, unlocked 28-core Xeon processor that’ll be arriving at a later date, and a refreshed line-up of 9th Gen-branded Core-X series processors as well. Unlike the 9th Gen Core i products, however, which leverage an updated Coffee Lake microarchitecture, the “new” Core X series remains based on Skylake-X – just like the 7th Gen Core X series processors we evaluated here. Some folks are likely to shout “re-brand” from...
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After what seemed like months of leaks and speculation, Intel officially announced its 9th Generation Core desktop CPU line-up a couple of weeks back, at a lavish event in New York City. Though the upcoming Core X series processors, the beastly 28-core Xeon W-3175X, and the 9th Gen Core i family don’t feature new architectures, all of the parts bring something fresh to the table, whether it be soldered thermal interface material, unlocked multipliers in the case of the Xeon, or updated silicon designs that incorporate more core resources, among other things. One of the most anticipated and...
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Today is a big day for Intel -- the company is announcing a massive update to its processor families with new 8th generation Coffee Lake-based Core SKUs for both mobile and desktop platforms. On the mobile side of the equation, the most interesting processors are no doubt Intel's new six-core Coffee Lake parts, starting with the Core i7-8750H. This processor comes with base/max single-core turbo boost clocks of 2.2GHz and 4.2GHz respectively, while the Core i7-8850H bumps those clocks to 2.6GHz and 4.3GHz respectively. Both processors have six cores (12 threads), a TDP of 45 watts and 9MB...
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Intel and AMD rocked the tech industry to its core late last year, when the pair announced that forthcoming Intel 8th Gen Core processors would feature integrated Radeon graphics. We had heard rumors of the two rivals working together in such a fashion for well over a year, but it seemed like such a far-fetched idea that we didn't lend much credence to the potential. Well, here we are at CES 2018, and Intel is giving us more details on its 8th generation Intel Core processors with integrated Radeon RX Vega M graphics. The mashup of an Intel processor with an AMD GPU is made possible by the...
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Intel’s newest 8th generation Core processors are here and have delivered promising early results in our initial tests on the desktop, and more recently in Dell's XPS 13 laptop. The biggest change with Intel's 8th Gen Core Mobile processors comes by way of doubled core counts. This makes many of this new generation of Core i5 and i7 mobile chips true quad-core processors now, with support for up to eight threads with Hyper Threading, all within a 15W TDP target. This improvement does not come without trade-offs, of course, as we see base clocks dropped by up to 900MHz relative to each chip’s...
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The upheaval of the high-end desktop processor segment continues today with the official release of Intel’s latest Coffee Lake-based 8th Generation Core processors. 2017 easily been one of the most exciting years in a decade for desktop processors, thanks in no small part to AMD’s entire line-up of Ryzen products, including the monstrous Threadripper, which propelled the company back into contention at virtually every price point.Intel was at the ready with a host of ultra-high-end processors – namely the Core X series – that allow the company to lay claim to the fastest desktop processor on the...
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Over the last few months, Intel slowly divulged a number of details regarding the two processors we’ll be covering today, its flagship 18-core, behemoth Core i9-7980XE and its slightly smaller sibling, the 16-core Core i9-7960X. The fact that these two processors were in the works was officially disclosed all the way back in May, no doubt in an attempt to quell the impending AMD Threadripper firestorm, but specifics like frequencies, cache, and TDP were initially held back.Those specifications were eventually revealed, and some benchmarks leaked as well, but today we’ve got the full, official scoop....
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Intel announced its Xeon Scalable processor family based Skylake-SP a few weeks back, but today marks the official launch of the platform. These new processors feature a new microarchitecture versus previous-generation Xeons and Intel has revamped the naming convention and arrangement of the product stack as well. Whereas previous-generation Xeon processors carried version, class, and model number designations – for example, Xeon E5-2697 v4 – the Xeon Scalable processor family is now designated by Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories, with a single model number.The new naming convention...
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Over the next few months, Intel will be releasing an array of new high-end desktop processors in the recently-announced Core X Series, based on the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X micro-architectures. The first chips in the series to arrive in the lab are the 10-core Core i9-7900X and quad-core Core i7-7740X. We’ve got an array of benchmarks and overclocking data on tap with the processors, but due to some unexpected shipping issues, we weren't able to complete all of the test we would have liked. Rest assured, we’ll update this piece as soon as we can with a full set of numbers -- it will just take...
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Intel announced its family of Xeon Scalable Processors in early May, featuring the Skylake-SP microarchitecture. Those processors haven’t officially launched just yet, but today the chip giant is revealing one of the key technologies being leveraged in the Xeon Scalable Processor family. A new mesh interconnect architecture has been designed to increase bandwidth between on-chip elements, while simultaneously decreasing latency, and improving power efficiency and scalability.In a blog post on the company’s website, Akhilesh Kimar, Skylake-SP CPU Architect explains, “The task of adding more cores...
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We’ve heard rumors regarding Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors for the past few months, but today it's finally time for the official roll-out of these new flagship Intel CPUs. We were no doubt impressed by the initial specs that leaked (especially over the past week), but the final product may actually be a bit more impressive than we initially thought.Intel bills these new Core i5 X-Series, Core i7 X-Series, Core i9 X-Series, and Core i9 Extreme Edition processors as its “Most Powerful, Most Scalable” desktop processors to date. We’ve known for a few weeks now that Intel would...
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