Search Results For: microprocessors
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 also pretty keen on the upgraded transfer rate, which is a speedy 10.7 Gbps per...
Read more...
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 this fiscal year, which ends in March 2025 for Nintendo. We might hear something...
Read more...
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 keynote, including the Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs, the Ryzen AI 300 mobile...
Read more...
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 Computex in May, and then launch them not long after. There's a new piece of...
Read more...
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 DDR4-4000, DDR5-6400, or DDR5-7200, you're almost assuredly buying a kit with...
Read more...
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 processors, helped out with Apple's A4 and A5 SoCs, went back to AMD to supervise...
Read more...
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 mediocre when it came out back in 2017, even for a tablet. Despite that, it's...
Read more...
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 performance. Intel has taken the latter path, and it wants everyone to know that its...
Read more...
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 de-couple interconnected parts of the system, and that's been a popular idea in...
Read more...
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 Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD. One component we'd been lacking a die shot for was the...
Read more...
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 every year, then later revised his observation to every two years in 1975. While...
Read more...
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, companies like Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and recently, even Intel are elbowing in for a...
Read more...
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 company would be among the first to have access to the foundry's 3nm process when...
Read more...
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, and NVIDIA itself recommends an 850-watt power supply to support it. Some of...
Read more...
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 processes becoming thinner and thinner. Rumor has it that AMD's next-generation Zen...
Read more...
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 buyer.
While the DOJ release does not name the victim company, all signs point to...
Read more...
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 with thermal goop between the silicon die and the nickel plate that serves as an...
Read more...
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 6000 series mobile processors and the laptops arriving in market powered by them...
Read more...
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, right?
As transistors continue to get smaller and smaller, their power...
Read more...
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 createdby a scant few square millimetersbut it's certainly the fastest.
Until...
Read more...
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 at the sub-micron feature size. If you don't know, one micron is one...
Read more...
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 1971. How do you celebrate 50 years? By stripping down and showing you still got...
Read more...
