Components
Last week, Arm showed off the inner workings of its new Machine Learning Processor design, but that is not all that company had waiting in the wings. Arm is also detailing more cutting-edge technology in the form of its Cortex-A76 CPU, Mali-G76 GPU, and Mali-V76 VPU designs. All three chips are slated to be heavy-hitters in their respective categories, and thanks to some on-campus, in depth briefings earlier this month, we have all of the details to share... Cortex A-76 The Cortex-A76 represents Arm’s most radical overhaul over previous designs. The A76’s brand-new architecture...
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Qualcomm is looking to make Extended Reality (XR) the next big thing in mobile computing. XR is the term that Qualcomm has coined to describe the full gamut of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) experiences. With XR, Qualcomm is looking to provide a single platform that developers will be able to leverage for an array of different devices. This is how Qualcomm describes XR: At some point in the future, we envision the convergence of the smartphone, mobile VR headset, and AR glasses into a single XR wearable. In this scenario, a single pair of XR glasses will primarily...
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After taking a measured, wait-and-see approach to machine learning, Arm is ready to jump into the fold full throttle. Today, the company is following up on its Project Trillium announcement from back in February with new details surrounding its machine learning processor, also known as the neural-network processing unit or NPU. To quickly recap, Project Trillium encompasses Arm’s push to leverage machine learning and neural network operations across their line-up of processors – whether that processing takes place on the CPU, GPU, or its new NPU. Arm’s goal is to make machine...
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Today marks the official launch of AMD’s latest additions to the Ryzen Pro family, which include new processors with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. AMD has released Ryzen Pro APUs for both desktop and mobile form-factors, and all include features specifically geared towards business customers. With AMD's new Ryzen Pro offerings, you’ll find security-centric features like AMD GuardMI Technology with on-chip DRAM memory encryption, secure boot, fTPM/TPM 2.0, and what the company calls “enterprise-grade” reliability. On that latter point, AMD is guaranteeing a...
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Western Digital recently launched a new family of NVMe-based solid state drives targeting gamers and enthusiasts. The simply-branded WD Black NVMe SSD family has a similar naming convention to some previous-generation solid state drives built by the company, but these latest offerings are packing some new technology and offer performance much higher than any of the earlier WD-made storage product offerings that came before it. The WD Black NVMe SSD family features a new controller, 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash memory, an intelligently laid-out PCB that optimizes thermal characteristics, and...
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Intel is upping the ante in the enthusiast storage space again, with a brand-new 3D Xpoint-based drive called the Optane SSD 905P. As its name implies, the Optane SSD 905P isn’t a major departure from the Optane SSD 900P that was released a few month back, but Intel was worked a bit of magic to improve performance in a few ways. Peak capacity of the drive has also been doubled, and a new, edgier design language makes a debut – complete with integrated lighting. We put the Intel Optane SSD 905P through a battery of benchmarks on our updated test bed and have our results laid out for...
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Samsung has been at the forefront of NVMe-based solid state storage essentially since the standard’s inception. The Samsung SSD 960 Pro and 960 EVO that were released all the way back in 2016 have been among the best performing, most sought after M.2 NVMe-based gumsticks available. It’s kind of hard to believe the 960 Pro and 960 EVO have been riding high for so long in such a rapidly advancing space, but it’s true. Samsung, however, is finally ready to supplant its popular drives with the brand-new – you guessed it – SSD 970 Pro and 970 EVO series that we’re...
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AMD initially announced its 2nd Generation Ryzen desktop processors back at CES earlier this year. Our coverage of the event is available for you here, but to quickly recap, 2nd Generation Ryzen processors are based on a refined update to the Zen architecture, dubbed Zen+, that offers higher clocks, lower latencies, and a more intelligent Precision Boost 2 algorithm that improves performance, system responsiveness, and power efficiency characteristics. The chips are also manufactured using a more advanced process, however, they still leverage the existing AM4 infrastructure and are compatible with...
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Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that AMD's second-generation Ryzen processors have been making the rounds on the internet for a while now, at least unofficially. Production processors were sold accidentally ahead of schedule, giving us all some good looks at the overall performance and overclocking ability of AMD's latest Ryzen processors. Today, however, AMD is giving us our first official details regarding the new mainstream 2nd Gen Ryzen family of processors, and there aren't too many surprises, given what we've already seen from the plethora...
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EVGA is best known for its graphics cards, and for good reason. EVGA is the number one NVIDIA authorized board partner in the U.S. and they have been for a long time. Like many brands in the PC enthusiast space, however, EVGA has started to branch out beyond just graphics cards and today they have a wide range of items in their product stack, ranging from motherboards and notebooks to peripherals and power supplies. Despite being in the peripherals game for a relatively short while, however, EVGA already has five gaming mice in the market, and it just introduced its first mechanical keyboard, the...
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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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Of the over 28,000 attendees at NVIDIA’s GTC 2018 GPU Technology Conference, many converged on the San Jose Convention Center this week to learn about advancements in AI and Machine Learning that the company would bring to the table for developers, researchers and service providers in the field. Today, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage to unveil a number of GPU-powered innovations for Machine Learning, including a new AI super computer and an updated version of the company’s powerful Tesla V100 GPU that now sports a hefty 32 Gigabytes of on-board HBM2 memory. NVIDIA Tesla V100...
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The Commodore 64 holds a Guinness World record as the highest-selling single computer model of all time. After its initial release in August 1982, the C64 went on to sell millions of units – outselling all other popular 8-bit machines at the time, including the Apple II. For many long-time technology geeks, including me, the Commodore 64 was the first personal computer they ever owned. So, it’s no surprise that all these years later, the machine still hold a special place in our hearts. It is with that in mind, along with knowing how popular our Building An Amiga Emulator article was,...
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NVIDIA has been dabbling in real-time ray tracing for over a decade, and as made acquisitions in the space to leverage the technology. Now, the company is introducing NVIDIA RTX, which is its latest effort to deliver real-time ray tracing to game developers and content creators for implementation in actual game engines. The above image was rendered by NVIDIA IRay, a technology the company developed for designers and photographers who work with digital assets. That level of realism, especially with respect to lighting, is what real-time ray tracing can bring to game engines. Roughly a decade...
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