Search Results For: microprocessors
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Zak Killian - Wed, Jun 04, 2025
In the endless race for smaller and thinner devices, every micrometer counts. That's why device manufacturers are likely excited for Micron's latest LPDDR5X memory, which is 14% shorter than the last generation. For our part, though, we're...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Sep 09, 2024
Whatever it ends up being called in actuality, the "Switch 2" is definitely real and definitely on the way. We know that because Nintendo itself has tacitly confirmed that it is working on such a thing by saying that it won't be releasing...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Jun 03, 2024
It's midnight right now in your author's native Texas, but it's only 1:00 PM in Taiwan, and not long before, AMD wrapped up the opening keynote for this year's Computex Taipei. We've already covered numerous announcements made during the...
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Zak Killian - Fri, Mar 29, 2024
It's been a year and a half since AMD launched its Socket AM5 platform and its Zen 4 desktop processors, so the time is nigh for a new generation. Most people are expecting AMD to announce its second series of Socket AM5 processors at...
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Zak Killian - Wed, Oct 11, 2023
If you saw that headline and thought, "but wait, DDR5-7200 has been around a while now," remember that almost all of the DDR DIMMs that you buy as an end user are overclocked. When you buy a G.SKILL or Teamgroup memory kit that's rated for...
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Zak Killian - Wed, Aug 02, 2023
Jim Keller is a man who should need no introduction to an audience of tech nerds. He was part of the team that developed the legendary DEC Alpha microprocessors back in the 1990s, was the lead architect of AMD's groundbreaking K8...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Jul 31, 2023
As much as we love gushing about the latest hardware around here, the fact remains that most people don't care that much. As proof of this sad statement, check out the sales of the Nintendo Switch. That system's specifications were pretty...
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Zak Killian - Tue, Jun 13, 2023
When we're talking about microprocessors, "efficiency" is a two-way street. You can achieve efficiency by using very little power for the performance you're offering, or you can achieve efficiency by offering extremely high...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Jun 05, 2023
Microprocessors are the most complex things humans have ever constructed. In any complex system, radically changing one part of a system always has knock-on effects for other parts of the system. To combat this, you can try to...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Mar 06, 2023
Most of the details of the design and fabrication of microprocessors are not public. Major sources of information on these components are actually various analyses performed by enthusiasts using the detailed die shots released by...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Dec 05, 2022
Much has been written about the death of Moore's Law. The "law"more properly titled an "observation"was created by one of Intel's founders, Gordon Moore. He noted that the number of components in an integrated circuit was roughly doubling...
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Zak Killian - Tue, Nov 08, 2022
Right now, all of the fastest microprocessors in the world are made in one place: Taiwan. That country's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has the most advanced fabrication technology on the planet. As as result...
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Zak Killian - Wed, Oct 26, 2022
According to Chinese-language site MyDrivers, the famed leather jacket aficionado (who also happens to be the CEO of NVIDIA) Jensen Huang recently returned from a trip to Taiwan. While there, he reportedly visited TSMC to ensure that his...
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Zak Killian - Fri, Oct 07, 2022
Graphics cards are usually the most power-thirsty component in a gaming system, and that's been the case for quite some time now. Things are approaching absurd levels, though. The GeForce RTX 4090 has a total board power spec of 450 watts...
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Zak Killian - Wed, Sep 07, 2022
Power limits are going up and microprocessors are getting hotter. This is happening across the industry, and it's generally accepted to be the consequence of pushing performance ever higher despite gains from new fabrication...
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Chris Goetting - Mon, Aug 15, 2022
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged four individuals for selling a startup to a San Diego company for $150 million. The four are facing charges of fraud and money laundering, but this is not an average case of duping the...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Jun 27, 2022
It wasn't all that long ago that the majority of consumer CPUs came with regular old thermal paste under their heatspreaders. It's not just one vendor that did this, either; both AMD and Intel have shipped numerous microprocessors...
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Zak Killian - Mon, May 23, 2022
While it's early morning (or late night) here in the US, it's mid-afternoon in Taipei, and AMD just finished up its Computex 2022 keynote. Some of the talk in today's event was a recap of the company's recent releases, such as its Ryzen...
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Zak Killian - Fri, May 20, 2022
What do you think the biggest problem in CPU design is, right now? If you said "thermal density", you win today's prize. You don't actually get anything but our admiration and some well-deserved satisfaction, but that's its own reward...
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Zak Killian - Fri, May 06, 2022
At GTC in March, NVIDIA announced its baddest GPU to date: Hopper H100. Named after US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, it was announced alongside an upcoming CPU product called Grace. Hopper isn't quite the biggest GPU NVIDIA has ever...
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Zak Killian - Mon, Jan 24, 2022
We've been measuring integrated circuit feature sizes in nanometers for years now, but some folks reading this are probably as old or older than yours truly, who can recall when we first talked about microprocessors being fabricated...
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Paul Lilly - Tue, Nov 16, 2021
If you can remember when the Intel 4004 debuted, don't forget to take Ibuprofen for your backache. Recognized as the world' first commercially available processor, the Intel 4004 is now 50 years old after having launched back in November...
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