Items tagged with processor
We’ve been hearing about AMD’s next-generation Zen-based processors for quite a while now, though the company just officially announced that desktop and mobile variants will be branded RYZEN. Over the past few months, we’ve seen Zen in action in both high-performance desktop and server applications and have been able to disclose a handful of features, specifications, and performance details. Today however, with AMD poised to host its “New Horizon” webcast, we have some more information to share related to the RYZEN branding, the ZEN architecture, and AM4 platform as a whole. First and foremost is the actual branding for its Zen-based processors for desktops, formerly codenamed “Summit Ridge”....
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There are a lot of questions surrounding Zen, the new and potentially game changing CPU architecture that AMD has been working on. The biggest one on everyone's mind is will it live up to the hype and offer competitive performance with Intel's top end parts, or are we destined to be disappointed? We'll have our answer in the first quarter of next year, but in the meantime, AMD is planning to livestream a preview of Zen in a couple of weeks. The livestream event is called New Horizon. It will take place on December 13 starting at 3 PM Central (1 PM Pacific, 4 PM Eastern) with Canadian video game journalist Geoff Keighley hosting the event. Viewers will also see former esports star "PPD" (Peter...
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Intel is expected to launch Kaby Lake to the desktop in January. That's not far away at this point, though if you're curious about how well the processors will overclock, it's starting to feel like an agonizing wait. That's because early results show that Kaby Lake is going to be a fun architecture to play with. Anyone needing further proof of that need only look at a Facebook post containing screenshots of a Core i7-7700K processor hitting 4.9GHz.The overclocking effort was posted by Luning Duan, a former employee at Lenovo, according to his Facebook profile. He posted a couple of shots showing the actual processor, along with CPU-Z and AIDA64 screen captures showing the processor's overclocked...
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Are you looking for a reason to be excited about Kaby Lake? You're in the same boat as many enthusiasts who hoped we'd be close to a Cannonlake launch by now. As it turns out, getting to 10nm isn't all that easy, so Intel delayed Cannonlake until late 2017 and decided to fill the gap between it and Skylake with Kaby Lake, a surprise processor architecture that disrupts Intel's traditional tick-tock release cadence. While power users aren't exactly frothing at the mouth waiting for Kaby Lake to arrive, some leaked benchmark results suggest Kaby Lake is worth getting excited about, especially if you're into overclocking.Over at Geekbench, Intel's upcoming Core i3-7350K put on a show by scoring...
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AMD needs a win in the high-end processor category as badly as the Cleveland Browns could use one in football. The only difference is AMD is more likely to get one (sorry Cleveland, at least you have the Cavaliers). If the latest leak turns out to be accurate, AMD could get its much needed victory when its unreleased Zen SR7 processor takes the field with eight cores in tow.The 8-core Zen part is said to perform better than Intel's muscular Core i7-5960X, a Haswell-E chip with eight cores clocked at 3GHz to 3.5GHz, 16 threads, and 20MB of cache. Not for the faint of wallet, the Core i7-5960X tops $1,000 in street pricing even when it's on sale. AMD's competing Summit Ridge part is said to cost...
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Since Intel disrupted its traditional tick-tock processor release cadence with Kaby Lake, the second consecutive tock behind Skylake and the third generation CPU family based on a 14-nanometer manufacturing process, it's had free rein to mix things up. That makes things interesting when it comes to leaked roadmaps—you never quite know what to expect. For example, there was speculation that Intel would base its upcoming Coffee Lake architecture on Cannonlake and officially enter Intel into the 10nm era for consumer CPUs, but newly discovered info suggests that won't be the case. New slides show Coffee Lake replacing Kaby Lake in the second half of 2018. It is expected that Intel will have already...
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It looks as though one of the ways Intel plans to generate some buzz for its Kaby Lake architecture on the desktop by focusing on overclocking performance. The Santa Clara chip maker is readying several unlocked processors based on Kaby Lake, and the overclockable parts aren't just limited to the high end SKUs, either—budget buyers are welcome to come along for the ride, too.We've already seen leaks of unlocked Core i7 and Core i5 processors wading in Kaby Lake. However, the latest leak suggests that Intel will target cost conscious system builders with at least one unlocked Core i3 series processor, that being the Core i3-7350K.A leaked price list shows the retail box version going for $177....
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To remain competitive with Intel, AMD needs its upcoming Zen architecture to impress on both the performance and power side of things. If Zen is impressive, then it could mean great things for AMD. For the first time in recent memory, it'd actually be able to compete with Intel in key segments. It's always hard to guess just how impressive a new launch is going to be; we can take the promises of companies, but all too often those fall flat. The latest rumors surrounding Zen, though, put the architecture in a great light. New reports are showing that AMD could launch a Zen APU in 2019 that would contain 4 cores and 8 threads - and offer a power rating as low as 10W. Compound that with the...
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Intel 7th Gen Core Series Kaby Lake WaferIntel is readying a new family of processors based on its next-gen Kaby Lake microarchitecture. We’ve heard quite a bit about Kaby Lake over the last few months, and were even able to show you it in action last week while covering IDF, but today we’ve got many more details to share on the microarchitecture that will be foundation of Intel’s upcoming 7th Generation Core processors.If you’re unfamiliar with Kaby Lake, it is the follow-up product to last year’s Skylake. Kaby Lake borrows heavily from Skylake; its CPU cores, cache structure, and graphics engine are similar, and Kaby Lake is still manufactured using a 14nm process. There have been a number...
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For the better part of the year, one of the most sought after System-on-Chips (SoCs) for flagship devices in the mobile world has been Qualcomm's speedy Snapdragon 820, an efficient chip highlighted by the company's first ever custom designed 64-bit Kyro CPU with clockspeeds up to 2.2GHz. Well, now there's the Snapdragon 821, an even faster SoC that delivers a 10 percent bump in performance, according to Qualcomm.The heart and soul of the of the Snapdragon 821 is still Kyro, a potent part built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. But instead of topping out at 2.2GHz, Snapdragon 821 can reach clockspeeds of up to 2.4GHz for a bit of added oomph (and bragging rights). A 200MHz advantage...
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Have you ever wanted to play a classic video game on a massive computer? James Newman of Cambridge, United Kingdom has you covered. He has completed his 33ft wide and 6ft high “Megaprocessor”. Newman started building the “Megaprocessor” in 2012 and recently finished it this past June. He has spent £40,000 GBP ($53,000 USD) on the project. It includes five 8-bit ladders at roughly a foot long, 40,000 transistors, 10,000 LED lights and it weighs around half a ton (500kg). Why did Newman build such a massive processor? His short answer was, “Because I want to”. Newman is a digital electronics engineer who who was learning about transistors. He wanted to be able to visualize how a microprocessor...
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It has been suggested that the microprocessors we use each and every day could pack in a bit more than we bargained for; namely, the tools needed for spying or undetectable access. And unfortunately, according to security researcher and developer Damien Zammit, there's a potential reason to be concerned over the "ME" or Management Engine module found in all Intel chipsets manufactured after the Core 2 era. If you've built your own Intel-based PC in recent years, or have at least reinstalled the OS and needed to install all of the drivers on your own, you've probably noticed a piece of software called "Intel Management Engine". What this corresponds to is a feature in modern Intel chipsets...
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Back in March, Intel launched its Xeon Processor E5 v4 family of products, based on the Broadwell-EP core. We had the chance to evaluate a dual Xeon E5-2697 v4-based system with a total of 36 cores (72 Threads) and detailed some of the changes and new features in Broadwell-EP. As powerful as that 36-core system was, the E5 v4 family is not Intel’s top-end server offering. That designation belongs to the Xeon E7 v4 product family being announced today, which typically features more cores, more cache, and support for additional sockets.Xeon E7 v4 Processor, Top And BottomThough they are a different family of products, the Xeon Processor E7 v4 family still leverages Intel’s Broadwell core technology...
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It's almost hard to believe, but it's already been over 9 months since Intel released its latest processors based on the Skylake microarchitecture. If you'll recall, Skylake landed at a bit of a strange time, as its predecessor, Broadwell, had been released only a couple of months earlier. Never before did we see an CPU series replaced so quickly, but as we found out not long after, Broadwell wasn't going to be the only odd duckling in Intel's processor lineup. In November, a new leak showed us that Skylake's original successor, Cannonlake, was definitely not going to be happening on time. Instead, Intel had to push back the release of that new "tick" to give us something else in the meantime:...
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AMD reported its first quarter financial results for 2016 earlier today, which continued to show losses and increased expenses in multiple areas. The company showed a net loss of $109 million, a loss per share of $0.14, and a non-GAAP net loss of $96 million, or $0.12 per share. Revenue was $832 million, which was down 13 percent sequentially, and down 19 percent year-over-year. According to the company, the losses and increased expenses were primarily due to lower sales of semi-custom SoCs and client notebook processors, and increased R&D expenses related to new and upcoming products.But slipped into the release was a very interesting blurb about a new licensing deal AMD has struck in a...
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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 within Bristol Ridge include adaptive voltage frequency scaling, among other undisclosed features.AMD...
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Intel’s Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition 10-Core Broadwell-E Monster Processor Breaks Cover, 25MB Cache
It's a good thing Intel waited until the weekend to let slip a mention of its forthcoming Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition processor on its website, because had the Santa Clara chip maker jumped the gun, everyone might assume it was an April Fool's Day prank. That's not the case for what we surmise is a mighty 10-core CPU (more on that in a moment).To be clear, Intel hasn't launched the Core i7-6950X, not yet anyway. But what the company did do is update its support website for its latest Management Engine software, listing the much anticipated Broadwell-E part as a compatible chip. So in that way, you can say Intel confirmed its existence, whether that was intentional or someone on the company's...
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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 at HH, so we won’t go into detail again. But if you’d like a refresher, here are some links to our...
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For nearly a decade, Intel has followed a "tick-tock" release strategy for its processors. However, as Intel attempts to transition its manufacturing process from 14 nanometers to 10 nanometers, it's running into challenges that has the Santa Clara chip maker seemingly thinking about abandoning its tick-tock model.Before we go any further, let's talk about the tick-tock model for a moment. Starting in 2007, Intel followed a cadence that consisted of transitioning existing architectures to a new process node (tick) followed by releasing a new architecture on that same node (tock). For example, Broadwell was a tick, as it was a 14nm die shrink of Haswell (22nm), whereas today's Skylake architecture...
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It's 2016, and it feels like we've been waiting forever for AMD to launch a strong attack against Intel with a fresh group of desktop processors that compete in the high-end. With Intel dominating the CPU scene for so long, three user groups have emerged: those who still buy AMD chips because the value proposition is still quite good, those who want to buy AMD to support the company but can't resist the allure of higher-performing competitive CPUs, and those who are completely indifferent to a brand and just buy whatever suits them. With Zen, AMD is hoping that the latter two groups will be swayed. That might sound like a lofty goal and a pipe dream at this point, but AMD is having...
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We've said it before and we'll say it again, it's ridiculously difficult to keep a secret in the Internet era. That applies to companies both small and big—even Intel isn't immune from this. Case in point, you're not supposed to know this yet, but Intel is preparing to launch a new flagship Xeon D processor.It's the Xeon D-1571 based on Intel's 14nm Broadwell architecture. Intel hasn't announced the CPU yet, but for a short while, it appeared on an updated CPU price list. Intel yanked the price list offline and replaced it with an old one, but not before the folks at CPU World could screenshot it and report on the details.The Xeon D-1571 sits atop the Xeon D-1500 family of processors, though...
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GIGABYTE is a big fan of giving its customers choice on the motherboard front, which sometimes involves releases that support brand-new architectures on older hardware, or hardware you might not even expect. This past spring, for example, the company released EFI updates to allow its FM2+ boards to run AMD's Godavari chips, and it did the same thing for Intel's Broadwell-based chips. Now, the company is releasing a full series of motherboards that targets a different niche: workstation. Its X170 and X150 series of motherboards are based on Intel's C236 and C232 chipsets and are designed for use with Intel's Xeon processors. These are typically used in servers and workstations and carry a perk...
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