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.
AMD just released some details regarding its upcoming seventh generation of A-Series and FX APUs, formerly codenamed Bristol Ridge. Bristol Ridge is essentially a refresh of the previous generation Carrizo design and uses the same 28nm process. In lieu of a die shrink, however, AMD has made improvements to the manufacturing process, tweaked the transistor mix, and enabled new features that were previously dormant in Carrizo, and the end result is higher frequencies at a given power level, in addition to some IPC (instructions per clock) improvements. The newly activated features...
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Intel is officially launching a brand new series of Xeon processors today, the Xeon Processor E5 v4. Unlike mainstream desktop products, which feature Intel’s latest core technologies like the Skylake-based Core i7-6700K, mission-critical, big-iron parts like the Xeon E5 v4 series are more complex and go through much more qualification, and as such tend to leverage core technologies that have long been proven in the consumer space. The the Xeon Processor E5 v4 family, for example, is based on Broadwell, or more specifically Broadwell-EP. We’ve already got a plethora of Broadwell coverage up here...
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If you operate a Linux-based computer system, especially a server, here's something you will want to make sure you do if you haven't done so in the past week: update. Last week, researchers at Google and Red Hat jointly announced a severe vulnerability that plagues glibc, aka: GNU C Library, which virtually every Linux install will have. If you updated within the past week, you're likely safe, but if you're not sure you patched this particular bug, run the updater again just to double-check. As usual it's always better to be safe than sorry.“Essentially, through this flaw, attackers could...
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AMD made a number of platform and processor related announcements a few weeks back at the Consumer Electronics Show, but we already have some additional updates from the team to share with you today. At CES, the company revealed the upcoming A10-7890K APU, as well as its plans to move all next-gen processors to a single socket, dubbed socket AM4, and the new Wraith cooler. You can check out our initial coverage of the announcements right here.As it turns out, AMD wasn’t done making announcements just yet. Today we’ve got news of some more new APUs, processors, fansink coolers, motherboard...
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AMD is adding a new family of Opterons to its enterprise processor line-up today called the Opteron A1100 series. Unlike AMD’s previous enterprise offerings, however, these new additions are packing ARM-based processor cores, not the X86 cores AMD has been producing for years. The Opteron A1100 series is designed for a variety of use cases and applications, including networking, storage, dense and power-efficient web serving, and 64-bit ARM software development.The Opteron A1100 System-on-Chip (SoC), was formerly codenamed “Seattle” and it represents the first 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57-based platform...
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Although Intel is holding many of the architectural details regarding its latest Skylake-based, 6th generation Core processors back until the Intel Developers Forum goes down in San Francisco in a couple of weeks, the company is announcing a pair of new processors and a companion chipset today. Skylake is a “tock” in Intel’s release cadence, which signifies a new microarchitecture, built using a mature process—in this case the same 14nm process that brought us Broadwell. The new Skylake-based Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K squarely target performance enthusiasts, and pack all of the goodness we’ve...
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Intel's 6th Generation Skylake family of Core processors has been available for some time now. We previously gave you a look at the desktop variant that Intel initially rolled out. However, the mobile variant of Skylake is perhaps Intel's most potent incarnation of the new architecture that's power-optimized on 14nm technology and with a beefier graphics engine, for more capable thin and light notebooks. In late Q3, Intel started rolling out Skylake-U versions of the chip in a 15 Watt TDP flavor. This is the power envelope that most "ultrabooks" are built with and it's likely to be Intel's highest...
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Although working at a publication like HotHardware often involves tight deadlines and countless hours of benchmarking, product photography, and writing, plenty of fun activities get thrown into the mix as well. Case in point--I came home from the Intel Developers Forum this past week to a pair of boxes that were begging to be torn open in an unboxing video. So, I that’s what I did. And what I found inside the boxes is the kind of stuff tech-enthusiasts drool over. Not only was there some killer hardware to ogle, but it was presented in a very unique way...check this out... If you stay on top of...
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Intel is still keeping a number of details regarding its complete Skylake microarchitecture and product line-up under wraps for a few more weeks, but at a public session at IDF, some of the key technologies and design updates introduced with Skylake were discussed.During the session, Julius Mandelblat, Senior Principal Engineer at Intel, talked about changes to the CPU core in Skylake, along with some improvements made to the interconnects and memory interface, power and thermal characteristics, and platform level enhancements. Performance wasn’t discussed in detail, however; we’ve already tested...
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If you were planning a new PC build within the past several months, the phrase you might have heard over and over again was "wait for Skylake." Well, Skylake is here, and the new architecture comprises Intel's 6th generation Core line of CPUs. If you haven't done so already, be sure to check out our review of Intel's Core i7-6700K processor and Z170 chipset. Straight to the point, the Core i7-6700K is Intel's fastest quad-core desktop processor to date. However, one thing we didn't go too in-depth with is the integrated graphics, and that's because Intel kept a tight lid on the underlying...
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We have covered Intel’s Broadwell microarchitecture extensively over the last few months. The relatively high-performance and low-power characteristics of Broadwell make it a good fit for a wide range of devices and systems. And as such, Broadwell has found its way into everything from notebooks and tablets, to an array of All-In-Ones and Intel’s own NUC ultra-small-form-factor systems.Broadwell, however, just recently—as in the last few weeks—made it to the DIY and full-sized desktop market. 14nm Broadwell processors weren’t originally destined for the channel, but Intel ultimately changed course...
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AMD previously only teased bits of detail regarding their forthcoming 6th Generation A-Series APU, code named "Carrizo." We heard from AMD about this next generation, highly integrated mobile architecture as far back as CES 2015 in January and then again in February and more recently with AMD's HSA (Heterogenous System Architecture) 1.0 spec roll-out in March. It's safe to say AMD has been beating the drum on Carrizo with a regular cadence for the better part of 6 months now and today the company is finally going to full kimono on all details of their upcoming processor silicon and its platform....
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Intel has refreshed its line-up of processors in a number of categories over the last few months. Late last year, Intel’s current flagship desktop processors based on Haswell-E arrived, followed shortly thereafter by the low-power Core M series for ultra-mobile devices, and then 5th Generation Core processors for notebooks and all-in-ones. Intel has made some noise in some other markets as well in the same time period—see here for an example of a killer SSD—but today the company officially takes the wraps off of its latest processors for mission-critical enterprise server and pro workstation applications,...
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Intel just wrapped up an event at a location adjacent to the Game Developers Conference where the company talked about its vision for the future of gaming, and how Intel plans to further support the industry. Intel discussed some updates to its 5th Gen Core processor line-up, Intel graphics developments, the Intel Hardware SDK, and its various game developer tools. Some walk-on guest were also brought out to discuss a few new partnership announcements and programs designed to bring more diversity to gaming and the game industry.Pete Baker, Vice President in Intel’s Software and Services Group opened...
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