For numerous generations of their desktop processor releases, Intel has made available a selection of high-performance special edition "KS" CPUs that add a little extra compared to their flagship chip. With a lot of interest, primarily from the enthusiasts looking for the fastest processors, Intel's latest Core i9-14900KS represents a super-fast addition to its 14th Generation Core lineup with out-of-the-box turbo clock speeds of up to 6.2 GHz and represents the last processor to end an era as Intel is removing the 'i' from its legendary nomenclature for future desktop chip releases.

Reaching speeds of up to 6.2 GHz, this sets up the Core i9-14900KS as the fastest desktop CPU in the world right now, at least in terms of frequencies out of the box. Building on their 'regular' flagship chip, the Core i9-14900, the Core i9-14900KS is also using their refreshed Raptor Lake (RPL-R) 8P+16E core chip design with a 200 MHz higher boost clock speed and also has a 100 MHz bump on P-Core base frequency. 

This new KS series SKU shows Intel's drive to offer an even faster alternative to their desktop regular K series offerings, and with the Core i9-14900KS, they look to provide the best silicon from their Raptor Lake Refresh series with more performance available to unlock to those who can. The caveat is that achieving these ridiculously fast clock speeds of 6.2 GHz on the P-Core comes at the cost of power and heat; keeping a processor pulling upwards of 350 W is a challenge in its own right, and users need to factor this in if even contemplating a KS series SKU.

In our previous KS series review, the Core i9-13900KS reached 360 W at its peak, considerably more than the Core i9-13900K. The Core i9-14900KS, built on the same core architecture, is expected to surpass that even further than the Core i9-14900K. We aim to compare Intel's final Core i series processor to the best of what both Intel and AMD have available, and it will be interesting to see how much performance can be extrapolated from the KS compared to the regular K series SKU.

Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement.  Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).

The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to Mercury Research, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4^th Generation EPYC processors.

"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.

Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade 

Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.

As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.

As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.

Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp

AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.

In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.

Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel

Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.

But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budget and fewer premium processors overall. But the company still made a strong 3.8% gain since the first quarter 2023, when its revenue share was around 12.5% amid unit share of 17%.

Servers: AMD Grabs Another Piece of the Market

AMD's EPYC datacenter processors are undeniably the crown jewel of the company's CPU product lineup. While AMD's market share in desktops and laptops fluctuated in the recent years, the company has been steadily gaining presence in servers both in terms of units and in terms of revenue in the highly lucrative (and profitable) server market.

In Q1 2024, AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for servers increased to 23.6%, a 0.5% gain sequentially and a massive 5% gain year-over-year driven by the ramp of platforms based on AMD's 4^th Generation EPYC processors. With a 76.4% unit market share, Intel continues to dominate in servers, but it is evident that AMD is getting stronger.

AMD's revenue share of the x86 server market reached 33%, up 5.2% year-over-year and 1.2% from the previous quarter. This signals that the company is gaining traction in expensive machines with advanced CPUs. Keeping in mind that for now Intel does not have direct rivals for AMD's 96-core and 128-core processors, it is no wonder that AMD has done so well growing their share of the server market.

"As we noted during our first quarter earnings call, server CPU sales increased YoY driven by growth in enterprise adoption and expanded cloud deployments," AMD said in a statement.

Sabrent tends to get into news when it launches ultra-high-performance SSDs for enthusiast-grade desktops, but this week the company introduced a completely different type of product: a small form-factor M.2-2242 SSD aimed at Lenovo's Legion Go handheld and ultra-thin laptops that don't accomodate M.2-2280 drives. And even though it's not an enthusiast-grade drive, the Rocket Nano still boasts with quite decent performance and capacity.

The Sabrent Rocket Nano 2242 (SB-2142) drive is based on the Phison E27T platform, a PCIe 4.0 x4 controller that is that is designed for mainstream DRAM-less SSDs, and in the case of the Rocket Nano, is paired with 3D TLC memory. The SSD is available in a single 1TB configuration, and is rated for read speeds up to 5 GB/s. Interestingly, the Phison E27T controller itself is rated for read speeds up to 7 GB/s, so it appears that the petite Rocket Nano isn't making full use of the controller's performance.

Sabrent positions its Rocket Nano 2242 SSD as drives for upgrading Lenovo's Legion Go portable game console, select Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other M.2-2242-sized PCs that can't accomodate larger 2280 drives. Keeping in mind that most devices shipping with M.2-2242 SSDscome with pretty slow stock drives, Sabrent solution seems to be a viable product for such upgrades. All the while, Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 will also work in systems with a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, so the market for these drives is pretty wide.

Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 SSD 1 TB (SB-2142-1TB) SSD has a recommended price of $99.99, which is more or less in line with other 1 TB drives in the same form-factor and offering comparable performance. The SSD is currently available at Amazon for $101.

Sources: Tom's Hardware, Sabrent

As LPCAMM2 adoption begins, the first retail memory modules are finally starting to hit the retail market, courtesy of Micron. The memory manufacturer has begun selling their LPDDR5X-based LPCAMM2 memory modules under their in-house Crucial brand, making them available on the latter's storefront. Timed to coincide with the release of Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptop – the first retail laptop designed to use the memory modules – this marks the de facto start of the eagerly-awaited modular LPDDR5X memory era.

Micron's Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module 2 (LPCAMM2) modules are available in capacities of 32 GB and 64 GB. These are dual-channel modules that feature a 128-bit wide interface, and are based around LPDDR5X memory running at data rates up to 7500 MT/s. This gives a single LPCAMM2 a peak bandwidth of 120 GB/s. Micron is not disclosing the latencies of its LPCAMM2 memory modules, but it says that high data transfer rates of LPDDR5X compensate for the extended timings.

Micron says that LPDDR5X memory offers significantly lower power consumption, with active power per 64-bit bus being 43-58% lower than DDR5 at the same speed, and standby power up to 80% lower. Meanwhile, similar to DDR5 modules, LPCAMM2 modules include a power management IC and voltage regulating circuitry, which provides module manufacturers additional opportunities to reduce power consumption of their products.

Source: Micron LPDDR5X LPCAMM2 Technical Brief

It's worth noting, however, that at least for the first generation of LPCAMM2 modules, system vendors will need to pick between modularity and performance. While soldered-down LPDDR5X memory is available at speeds up to 8533 MT/sec – and with 9600 MT/sec on the horizon – the fastest LPCAMM2 modules planned for this year by both Micron and rival Samsung will be running at 7500 MT/sec. So vendors will have to choose between the flexibility of offering modular LPDDR5X, or the higher bandwidth (and space savings) offered by soldering down their memory.

Micron, for its part, is projecting that 9600 MT/sec LPCAMM2 modules will be available by 2026. Though it's all but certain that faster memory will also be avaialble in the same timeframe.

Micron's Crucial LPDDR5X 32 GB module costs $174.99, whereas a 64 GB module costs $329.99.

Further to our last piece which we detailed Intel's issue to motherboard vendors to follow with stock power settings for Intel's 14th and 13th Gen Core series processors, Intel has now issued a follow-up statement to this. Over the last week or so, motherboard vendors quickly released firmware updates with a new profile called 'Intel Baseline', which motherboard vendors assumed would address the instability issues. 

As it turns out, Intel doesn't seem to accept this as technically, these Intel Baseline profiles are not to be confused with Intel's default specifications. This means that Intel's Baseline profiles seemingly give the impression that they are operating at default settings, hence the terminology 'baseline' used, but this still opens motherboard vendors to use their interpretations of MCE or Multi-Core Enhancement.

To clarify things for consumers, Intel has sent us the following statement:

Several motherboard manufacturers have released BIOS profiles labeled ‘Intel Baseline Profile’. However, these BIOS profiles are not the same as the 'Intel Default Settings' recommendations that Intel has recently shared with its partners regarding the instability issues reported on 13th and 14th gen K SKU processors.

These ‘Intel Baseline Profile’ BIOS settings appear to be based on power delivery guidance previously provided by Intel to manufacturers describing the various power delivery options for 13th and 14th Generation K SKU processors based on motherboard capabilities.

Intel is not recommending motherboard manufacturers to use ‘baseline’ power delivery settings on boards capable of higher values.

Intel’s recommended ‘Intel Default Settings’ are a combination of thermal and power delivery features along with a selection of possible power delivery profiles based on motherboard capabilities.

Intel recommends customers to implement the highest power delivery profile compatible with each individual motherboard design as noted in the table below:

Click to Enlarge Intel's Default Settings

What Intel's statement is effectively saying to consumers, is that users shouldn't be using the Baseline Power Delivery profiles which are offered by motherboard vendors through a plethora of firmware updates. Instead, Intel is recommending users opt for Intel Default Settings, which follows what the specific processor is rated for by Intel out of the box to achieve the clock speeds advertised, without users having to worry about firmware 'over' optimization which can cause instability as there have been many reports of happening.

Not only this, but the Intel Default settings offer a combination of thermal specifications and power capabilities, including voltage and frequency curve settings that apply to the capability of the motherboard used, and the power delivery equipped on the motherboard. At least for the most part, Intel is recommending users with 14th and 13th-Gen Core series K, KF, and KS SKUs that they do not recommend users opt in using the Baseline profiles offered by motherboard vendors.

Digesting the contrast between the two statements, the key differential is that Intel's priority is reducing the current going through the processor, which for both the 14th and 13th Gen Core series processors is a maximum of 400 A, even when using the Extreme profile. We know those motherboard vendors on their Z790 and Z690 motherboards opt for an unrestricted power profile, which is essentially 'unlimited' power and current to maximize performance at the cost of power consumption and heat, which does exacerbate problems and can lead to frequent bouts of instability, especially on high-intensity workloads.

Another variable Intel is recommending is that the AC Load Line must match the design target of the processor, with a maximum value of 1.1 mOhm, and that the DC Load Line must be equal to the AC Load Line; not above or below this recommendation for maximum stability. Intel also recommends that CEP, eTVB, C-states, TVB, and TVB Voltage Optimizations be active on the Extreme profile to ensure stability and performance are consistent.

Given Intel is essentially recommending users not to use what motherboard vendors are offering to fix, we agree that when motherboards come out of the box, they should operate at 'Default' settings until asked otherwise. We understand that motherboard vendors have the desire to showcase what they can do with their wares, features, and firmware, but ultimately there is some real lack of communication between Intel and its partners regarding this issue.

Following Intel's statement, they do recommend customers implement the highest power delivery profile which is compatible with the caliber of motherboard used by following the specification and design. According to Intel, this isn't open for interpretation despite what motherboard vendors have offered so far, and we do expect that there is likely to be more to come in this saga of constant developments regarding the instability issue.

Asus on Tuesday said that it would announce its first 'AI PC' based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite system-on-chips later this month. The new laptop is set to be introduced at the Next Level. AI Incredible virtual launch event on May 20.

The launch of Asustek's new Vivobook S 15 will be hosted by Asus and will be joined by representatives of Qualcomm and Microsoft, who will reveal how they collaborated with PC maker to develop the first notebook based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors. These new SoCs promise to have a significant impact on the PC market in the coming quarters as they are based on the Arm instruction set architecture and are expected to bring together high performance, on-device AI acceleration, and long battery life. 

Qualcomm itself calls systems powered by its Snapdragon processors as AI PCs, which is exactly how Asus calls it Vivobook S15 as well. Meanwhile, the only things we know about the machine for now is that it will be based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus processors with 12 or 10 Oryon CPU cores (originally developed by Nuvia), a high-end Adreno GPU, and a 45 TOPS NPU; will come in a metallic chassis, and will feature a 15-inch display.

"The launch event, which will feature a collaboration between Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Asus, celebrates the first of the new-era Asus AI PCs, which are set to redefine the very fabric of computing," a statement by Asus reads. "The new laptop will usher in a new era of Asus AI PCs, breaking traditional boundaries and harnessing advanced AI capabilities. With comprehensive support for the latest AI functionality from Asus and Microsoft, it offers personalized AI experiences tailored to individual requirements."

Asus is also scheduled showcase its Vivobook laptops based on Qualcomm's processors at Computex in June. Actual systems will be available later this year.

In what appears to be a mistake or a jump of the gun by ASUS, they have seemingly published a list of specifications for one of its key notebooks that all but allude to the next generation of AMD's mobile processors. While we saw AMD toy with a new nomenclature for their Phoenix silicon (Ryzen 7040 series), it seems as though AMD is once again changing things around where their naming scheme for processors is concerned.

The ASUS listing, which has now since been deleted, but as of writing is still available through Google's cache, highlights a model that is already in existence, the VivoBook S 16 OLED (M5606), but is listed with an unknown AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor. Which, based on its specificiations, is certainly not part of the current Hawk Point (Phoenix/Phoenix 2) platform.

The cache on Google shows the ASUS Vivobook S 16 OLED with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 Processor

While it does happen in this industry occasionally, what looks like an accidental leak by ASUS on one of their product pages has unearthed an unknown processor from AMD. This first came to our attention via a post on Twitter by user @harukaze5719. While we don't speculate on rumors, we confirmed this ourselves by digging through Google's cache. Sure enough, as the image above from Google highlights, it lists a newly unannounced model of Ryzen mobile processor. Under the listing via the product compare section for the ASUS Vivobook S 16 OLED (M5606) notebook, it is listed with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170, which appears to be one of AMD's upcoming Zen 5-based mobile chips codenamed Strix Point.

So with the seemingly new nomenclature that AMD has gone with, it has a clear focus on AI, or rather Ryzen AI, by including it in the name. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 looks set to be a 12C/24T Zen 5 mobile variant, with their Ryzen AI NPU or similar integrated within the chip. Given that Microsoft has defined that only processors with an NPU with 45 TOPS of performance or over constitute being considered an 'AI PC', it's likely the Xilinx (now AMD Xilinx) based NPU will meet these requirements as the listing states the chip has up to 77 TOPS of AI performance available. The HX series is strikingly similar to AMD's (and Intel's) previous HX naming series for their desktop replacement SKUs for laptops, so assuming any of the details of ASUS's error are correct, then this is presumably a very high-end, high-TDP part.

AMD Laptop Roadmap from Zen 2 in 2019 to Zen 5 on track for release in 2024

We've known for some time that AMD plans to release AMD's Zen 5-based Strix Point line-up sometime in 2024. Given the timing of Computex 2024, which is just over four weeks away, we still don't quite have the full picture of Zen 5's performance and its architectural shift over Zen 4. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su also confirmed that Zen 5 will come with enhanced RDNA graphics within the Strix Point SoC by stating "Strix combines our next-gen Zen 5 core with enhanced RDNA graphics and an updated Ryzen AI engine to significantly increase the performance, energy efficiency, and AI capabilities of PCs,"

While it's entirely possible as we lead up to Computex 2024 that AMD is prepared to announce more details about Zen 5, nothing is confirmed. We do know that the CEO of AMD, Dr. Lisa Su is scheduled to deliver the opening keynote of the show, Dr. Lisa Su unveiled their Zen 4 microarchitecture at Computex 2022 during AMD's keynote and even unveiled their 3D V-Cache stacking, which we know today as the Ryzen X3D CPUs back at Computex 2021.

With that in mind, AMD and Dr. Lisa Su love to announce new products and architectures at Computex, so we just have to wait until the beginning of next month. How AMD denotes the nomenclature for the upcoming Zen 5 mobile and desktop processors remains to be seen, but hopefully, all will be revealed soon. Regarding the ASUS Vivobook S 16 OLED (M5606), we currently don't know any of the other specifications at this time. Still, we expect them to be available once AMD has updated us with information on Zen 5 and Strix Point.

Setting things up for what is certainly to be an exciting next few months in the world of CPUs and SoCs, Apple this morning has announced their next-generation M-series chip, the M4. Introduced just over six months after the M3 and the associated 2023 Apple MacBook family, the M4 is going to start its life on a very different track, launching alongside Apple’s newest iPad Pro tablets. With their newest chip, Apple is promising class-leading performance and power efficiency once again, with a particular focus on machine learning/AI performance.

The launch of the M4 comes as Apple’s compute product lines have become a bit bifurcated. On the Mac side of matters, all of the current-generation MacBooks are based on the M3 family of chips. On the other hand, the M3 never came to the iPad family – and seemingly never will. Instead, the most recent iPad Pro, launched in 2022, was an M2-based device, and the newly-launched iPad Air for the mid-range market is also using the M2. As a result, the M3 and M4 exist in their own little worlds, at least for the moment.

Given the rapid turn-around between the M3 and M4, we’ve not come out of Apple’s latest announcement expecting a ton of changes from one generation to the next. And indeed, details on the new M4 chip are somewhat limited out of the gate, especially as Apple publishes fewer details on the hardware in its iPads in general. Coupled with that is a focus on comparing like-for-like hardware – in this case, M4 iPads to M2 iPads – so information is thinner than I’d like to have. None the less, here’s the AnandTech rundown on what’s new with Apple’s latest M-series SoC.

Apple M-Series (Vanilla) SoCs
SoC	M4	M3	M2
CPU Performance	4-core	4-core 16MB Shared L2	4-core (Avalanche) 16MB Shared L2
CPU Efficiency	6-core	4-core 4MB Shared L2	4-core (Blizzard) 4MB Shared L2
GPU	10-Core Same Architecture as M3	10-Core New Architecture - Mesh Shaders & Ray Tracing	10-Core 3.6 TFLOPS
Display Controller	2 Displays?	2 Displays	2 Displays
Neural Engine	16-Core 38 TOPS (INT8)	16-Core 18 TOPS (INT16)	16-Core 15.8 TOPS (INT16)
Memory Controller	LPDDR5X-7500 8x 16-bit CH 120GB/sec Total Bandwidth (Unified)	LPDDR5-6250 8x 16-bit CH 100GB/sec Total Bandwidth (Unified)	LPDDR5-6250 8x 16-bit CH 100GB/sec Total Bandwidth (Unified)
Max Memory Capacity	24GB?	24GB	24GB
Encode/ Decode	8K H.264, H.265, ProRes, ProRes RAW, AV1 (Decode)	8K H.264, H.265, ProRes, ProRes RAW, AV1 (Decode)	8K H.264, H.265, ProRes, ProRes RAW
USB	USB4/Thunderbolt 3 ? Ports	USB4/Thunderbolt 3 2x Ports	USB4/Thunderbolt 3 2x Ports
Transistors	28 Billion	25 Billion	20 Billion
Mfc. Process	TSMC N3E	TSMC N3B	TSMC N5P

At a high level, the M4 features some kind of new CPU complex (more on that in a second), along with a GPU that seems to be largely lifted from the M3 – which itself was a new GPU architecture. Of particular focus by Apple is the neural engine (NPU), which is still a 16-core design, but now offers 38 TOPS of performance. And memory bandwidth has been increased by 20% as well, helping to keep the more powerful chip fed.

One of the few things we can infer with a high degree of certainty is the manufacturing process being used here. Apple’s description of a “second generation 3nm process” lines up perfectly in timing with TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, N3E. The enhanced version of their 3nm process node is a bit of a sidegrade to the N3B process used by the M3 series of chips; N3E is not quite as dense as N3B, but according to TSMC it offers slightly better performance and power characteristics. The difference is close enough that architecture plays a much bigger role, but in the race for energy efficiency, Apple will take any edge they can get.

Apple’s position as TSMC’s launch-partner for new process nodes has been well-established over the years, and Apple appears to be the first company out the door launching chips on the N3E process. They will not be the last, however, as virtually all of TSMC’s high-performance customers are expected to adopt N3E over the next year. So Apple’s immediate chip manufacturing advantage, as usual, will only be temporary.

Apple’s early-leader status likely also plays into why we’re seeing the M4 now for iPads – a relatively low volume device at Apple – and not the MacBook lineup. At some point, TSMC’s N3E production capacity will catch up, and then-some. I won’t hazard a guess as to what Apple has planned for that lineup at that point, as I can’t really see Apple discontinuing M3 chips so quickly, but it also leaves them in an awkward spot having to sell M3 Macs when the M4 exists.

No die sizes have been quoted for the new chip (or die shots posted), but at 28 billion transistors in total, it’s only a marginally larger transistor count than the M3, indicating that Apple hasn’t thrown an excessive amount of new hardware into the chip. (ed: does anyone remember when 3B transistors was a big deal?)

M4 CPU Architecture: Improved ML Acceleration

Starting on the CPU side of things, we’re facing something of an enigma with Apple’s M4 CPU core design. The combination of Apple’s tight-lipped nature and lack of performance comparisons to the M3 means that we haven’t been provided much information on how the CPU designs compare. So if M4 represents a watershed moment for Apple’s CPU designs – a new Monsoon/A11 – or a minor update akin to the Everest CPU cores in A17, remains to be seen. Certainly we hope for the latter, but absent further details, we’ll work with what we do know.

Apple’s brief keynote presentation on the SoC noted that both the performance and efficiency cores implement improved branch predication, and in the case of performance cores, a wider decode and execution engine. However these are the same broad claims that Apple made for the M3, so this is not on its own indicative of a new CPU architecture.

What is unique to Apple’s M4 CPU claims however are “next-generation ML accelerators” for both CPU core types. This goes hand-in-hand with Apple’s broader focus on ML/AI performance in the M4, though the company isn’t detailing on just what these accelerators entail. With the NPU to do all of the heavy lifting, the purpose of AI enhancements on the CPU cores is less about total throughput/performance and more about processing light inference workloads mixed inside more general-purpose workloads without having to spend the time and resources firing up the dedicated NPU.

A grounded guess here would be that Apple has updated their poorly-documented AMX matrix units, which have been a part of the M series of SoCs since the beginning. However recent AMX versions already support common ML number formats like FP16, BF16, and INT8, so if Apple has made changes here, it’s not something simple and straightforward such as adding (more) common formats. At the same time if it is AMX, it’s a bit surprising to see Apple mention it at all, since they are otherwise so secretive about the units.

The other reasonable alternative would be that Apple has made some changes to their SIMD units within their CPUs to add common ML number formats, as these units are more directly accessible by developers. But at the same time, Apple has been pushing developers to use higher-level frameworks to begin with (which is how AMX is accessed), so this could really go either way.

In any case, whatever the CPU cores are that underpin M4, there is one thing that is certain: there are more of them. The full M4 configuration is 4 performance cores paired with 6 efficiency cores, 2 more efficiency cores than found on the M3. Cut-down iPad models get a 3P+6E configuration, while the higher-tier configurations get the full 4P+6E experience – so the performance impact there will likely be tangible.

Everything else held equal, the addition of two more efficiency cores shouldn’t massively improve on CPU performance over the M3’s 4P+4E configuration. But then Apple’s efficiency cores should not be underestimated, as even Apple’s efficiency cores are relatively powerful thanks to their use of out-of-order execution. Especially when fixed workloads can be held on the efficiency cores and not promoted to the performance cores, there’s a lot of room for energy efficiency gains.

Otherwise, Apple hasn’t published any detail performance graphs for the new SoC/CPU cores, so there’s little in the way of hard numbers to talk about. But the company is claiming that the M4 delivers 50% faster CPU performance than the M2. This presumably is for a multi-threaded workload that can leverage the M4’s CPU core count advantage. Alternatively, in their keynote Apple is also claiming that they can deliver M2 performance at half the power, which as a combination of process node improvements, architectural improvements, and CPU core count increases, seems like a reasonable claim.

As always, however, we’ll have to see how independent benechmarks pan out.

M4 GPU Architecture: Ray Tracing & Dynamic Caching Return

Compared to the CPU situation on the M4, the GPU situation is much more straightforward. Having just recently introduced a new GPU architecture in the M3 – a core type that Apple doesn’t iterate on as often as the CPU – Apple has all but confirmed that the GPU in the M4 is the same architecture that was found in the M3.

With 10 GPU cores, at a high level the configuration is otherwise identical to what was found on the M3. Whether that means the various blocks and caches are truly identical to the M3 remains to be seen, but Apple isn’t making any claims about the M4’s GPU performance that could be in any way interpreted as it being superior to the M3’s GPU. Indeed, the smaller form factor of the iPad and more limited cooling capabilities means that the GPU is going to be thermally constrained under any sustained workload to begin with, especially compared to what the M3 can do in an actively-cooled device like the 14-Inch MacBook Pro.

At any rate, this means the M4 comes with all of the major new architectural features introduced with the M3’s GPU: ray tracing, mesh shading, and dynamic caching. Ray tracing needs little introduction at this point, while mesh shading is a significant, next-generation means of geometry processing. Meanwhile, dynamic caching is Apple’s term for their refined memory allocation technique on M-series chips, which avoids over-allocating memory to the GPU from Apple’s otherwise unified memory pool.

GPU rendering aside, the M4 also gets the M3’s updated media engine block, which coming from the M2 is a relatively big deal for iPad uses. Most notably, the M3/M4’s media engine block added support for AV1 video decoding, the next-generation open video codec. And while Apple is more than happy to pay royalties on HEVC/H.265 to ensure it’s available within their ecosystem, the royalty-free AV1 codec is expected to take on a lot of significance and use in the coming years, leaving the iPad Pro in a better position to use the newest codec (or, at least, not have to inefficiently decode AV1 in software).

What is new to the M4 on the display side of matters, however, is a new display engine. The block responsible for compositing images and driving the attached displays on a device, Apple never gives this block a particularly large amount of attention, but when they do make updates to it, it normally comes with some immediate feature improvements.

The key change here seems to be enabling Apple’s new sandwiched “tandem” OLED panel configuration, which is premiering in the iPad Pro. The iPad’s Ultra Retina XDR display places two OLED panels directly on top of each other in order allow for a display that can cumulatively hit Apple’s brightness target of 1600 nits – something that a single one of their OLED panels is apparently incapable of doing. This in turn requires a display controller that knows how to manipulate the panels, not just driving a mirrored set of displays, but accounting for the performance losses that would stem from having one panel below another.

And while not immediately relevant to the iPad Pro, it will be interesting to see if Apple used this opportunity to increase the total number of displays the M4 can drive, as vanilla M-series SoCs have normally been limited to 2 displays, much to the consternation of MacBook users. The fact that the M4 can drive the tandem OLED panels and an external 6K display on top of that is promising, but we’ll see how this translates to the Mac ecosystem if and when the M4 lands in a Mac.

M4 NPU Architecture: Something New, Something Faster

Arguably Apple’s biggest focus with the M4 SoC is the company’s NPU, otherwise known as their neural engine. The company has been shipping a 16-core design since the M1 (and smaller designs on the A-series chips for years before that), each generation delivering a modest increase in performance. But with the M4 generation, Apple says they are delivering a much bigger jump in performance.

Still a 16-core design, the M4 NPU is rated for 38 TOPS, just over twice that of the 18 TOPS neural engine in the M3. And coincidentally, only a few TOPS more than the neural engine in the A17. So as a baseline claim, Apple is pitching the M4 NPU as being significantly more powerful than what’s come in the M3, never mind the M2 that powers previous iPads – or going even farther back, 60x faster than the A11’s NPU.

Unfortunately, the devil is (once again) in the details here as Apple isn’t listing the all-important precision information – whether this figure is based on INT16, INT8, or even INT4 precision. As the precision de jure for ML inference right now, INT8 is the most likely option, especially as this is what Apple quoted for the A17 last year. But freely mixing precisions, or even just not disclosing them, is headache-inducing to say the least. And it makes like-for-like specification comparisons difficult.

In any case, even if most of this performance improvement comes from INT8 support versus INT16/FP16 support, the M4 NPU is slated to deliver significant performance improvements to AI performance, similar to what’s already happened with the A17. And as Apple was one of the first chip vendors to ship a consumer SoC with what we now recognize as an NPU, the company isn’t afraid to beat its chest a bit on the matter, especially comparing it to what is going on in the PC realm. Especially as Apple’s offering is a complete hardware/software ecosystem, the company has the advantage of being able mold their software around using their own NPU, rather than waiting for the killer app to be invented for it.

M4 Memory: Adopting Faster LPDDR5X

Last, but certainly not least, the M4 SoC is also getting a notable improvement in its memory capabilities. Given the memory bandwidth figures Apple is quoting for the M4 – 120GB/second – all signs point to them finally adopting LPDDR5X for their new SoC.

The mid-generation update to the LPDDR5 standard, LPDDR5X allows for higher memory clockspeeds than LPDDR5, which topped out at 6400 MT/second. While LPDDR5X is available at speeds up to 8533 MT/second right now (and faster speeds to come), based on Apple’s 120GB/second figure for the M4, this puts the memory clockspeed at roughly LPDDR5X-7500.

Since the M4 is going into an iPad first, for the moment we don’t have proper idea of its maximum memory capacity. The M3 could house up to 24GB of memory, and while it’s highly unlikely Apple has regressed here, there’s also no sign whether they’ve been able to increase it to 32GB, either. In the meantime, the iPads Pro will all either come with 8GB or 16GB of RAM, depending on the specific model.

2024 M4 iPad Pros: Coming Next Week

Wrapping things up, in traditional Apple fashion, prospective tablet buyers will get the chance to see the M4 in action sooner than later. The company has already opened up pre-orders for the new iPad Pros, with the first deliveries slated to take place next week, on May 15^th.

Apple is offering two sizes of the 2024 iPad Pro: 11 inches and 13 inches. Screen size aside, both sizes are getting access to the same M4 and memory configurations. 256GB/512GB models get a 3P+6E core CPU configuration and 8GB of RAM, meanwhile the 1TB and 2TB models get a fully-enabled M4 SoC with a 4P+6E CPU configuration and 16GB of RAM. The GPU configuration on both models is identical, with 10 GPU cores.

Pricing starts at $999 for the 256GB 11-inch model and $1299 for the 256GB 13-inch model. Meanwhile a max-configuration 13-inch model with 2TB of storage, Apple’s nano-texture matte display, and cellular capabilities will set buyers back a cool $2599.

VESA this morning is taking the wraps off of the next iteration of its DisplayHDR monitor certification standard, DisplayHDR 1.2. Designed to raise the bar on display quality, the updated DisplayHDR conformance test suite imposes new luminance, color gamut, and color accuracy requirements that extend across the entire spectrum of DisplayHDR tiers – including the entry-level DisplayHDR 400 tier. With vendors able to begin certifying displays for the new standard immediately, the display technology group is aiming to address the advancements in the display technology market over the last several years, while enticing display manufacturers to make use of them to deliver better desktop and laptop displays than before.

Altogether, the DisplayHDR 1.2 is easily the biggest update to the standard since it launched in 2017, and in many respects the first significant overhaul to the standard since that time as well. DisplayHDR 1.2 doesn’t add any new tiers to the standard (e.g. 1400), instead it’s all about increasing and/or tightening the specifications at each of its tier levels. In short, the VESA is raising the bar for displays to reach DisplayHDR compliance, requiring a higher level of performance and testing for more corner cases that trip up lesser displays.

All of these changes are coming, in turn, after over half a decade of technology improvements in the display space. Whereas even the original DisplayHDR 400 requirements represented a modestly premium display in 2017, nowadays even sub-$200 displays can hit those relatively loose requirements as panels and backlighting solutions have improved. And even at the high-end of things, full array local dimming (FALD) displays have gone from hundreds of zones to thousands. All of which has finally pushed VESA’s member companies into allowing higher standards going forward.

This week Samsung Electronics and Synopsys announced that Samsung has taped out its first mobile system-on-chip on Samsung Foundry's 3nm gate-all-around (GAA) process technology. The announcement, coming from electronic design automation Synopsys, further notes that Samsung used the Synopsys.ai EDA suite to place-n-route the layout and verify design of the SoC, which in turn enabled higher performance.

Samsung's unnamed high-performance mobile SoC relies on 'flagship' general-purpose CPU and GPU architectures as well as various IP blocks from Synopsys. SoC designers used Synopsys.ai EDA software, including the Synopsys DSO.ai to fine-tune design and maximize yields as well as Synopsys Fusion Compiler RTL-to-GDSII solution to achieve higher performance, lower power, and optimize area (PPA).

And while the news that Samsung has developed a high-performance SoC using the Synopsys.ai suite is important, there is another, even more important dimension to this announcement: this means that Samsung has finally taped out an advanced smartphone application processor on its cutting-edge 3nm GAAFET process.

Although Samsung Foundry has been producing chips on its GAA-equipped SF3E (3 nm-class, 'early' node) process for almost two years now, Samsung Electronics has never used this technology for its own system-on-chips for smartphones or other complex devices. To date, SF3E has been used mainly for cryptocurrency mining chips, presumably due to the inevitable early teething and yield issues that come with being the industry's first commercial GAAFET process.

For now, Samsung isn't disclosing what specific process node is being used for the SoC; the official Samsung/Synposys announcement only notes that it's for a GAA process node. Along with their first-generation 3nm-class SF3E, Samsung Foundry has a considerably more sophisticated SF3 manufacturing technology that offers numerous improvements over SF3E, and is due to be used for mass production in the coming quarters. Given the timing of the announcement, the reasonable bet is that they're using SF3.

As for Samsung's tooling partnership with Synopsys, the latter's tools are being credited for delivering some significant performance improvements to the chip's design. In particular, the two firms are crediting those tools for improving the chip's peak clockspeed by 300MHz while cutting down on dynamic power usage by 10%. To accomplish that, Samsung Electronics' SoC developers used design partitioning optimization, multi-source clock tree synthesis (MSCTS), and smart wire optimization to reduce signal interference, along with a simpler hierarchical approach. And by using Synopsys Fusion Compiler, they did all this while being able to skip weeks of 'manual' design work, according to the joint press release.

"Our longstanding collaboration has delivered leading-edge SoC designs," said Kijoon Hong, vice president of SLSI at Samsung Electronics. "This is a remarkable milestone to successfully achieve the highest performance, power and area on the most advanced mobile CPU cores and SoC designs in collaboration with Synopsys. Not only have we demonstrated that AI-driven solutions can help us achieve PPA targets for even the most advanced GAA process technologies, but through our partnership we have established an ultra-high-productivity design system that is consistently delivering impressive results."

Demand for high-performance processors for AI training is skyrocketing, and consequently so is the demand for the components that go into these processors. So much so that SK hynix this week is very publicly announcing that the company's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production capacity has already sold out for the rest of 2024, and even most of 2025 has already sold out as well.

SK hynix currently produces various types of HBM memory for customers like Amazon, AMD, Facebook, Google (Broadcom), Intel, Microsoft, and, of course, NVIDIA. The latter is an especially prolific consumer of HBM3 and HBM3E memory for its H100/H200/GH200 accelerators, as NVIDIA is also working to fill what remains an insatiable (and unmet) demand for its accelerators.

As a result, HBM memory orders, which are already placed months in advance, are now backlogging well into 2025 as chip vendors look to secure supplies of the memory stacks critical to their success.

This has made SK hynix the secnd HBM memory vendor in recent months to announce that they've sold out into 2025, following an earlier announcement from Micron regarding its HBM3E production. But of the two announcements, SK hynix's is arguably the most significant yet, as the South Korean firm's HBM production capacity is far greater than Micron's. So while things were merely "interesting" with the smallest of the Big Three memory manufacturers being sold out into 2025, things are taking a more concerning (and constrained) outlook now that SK hynix is as well.

SK hynix currently controls roughly 46% - 49% of HBM market, and its share is not expected to drop significantly in 2025, according to market tracking firm TrendForce. By contrast, Micron's share on HBM memory market is between 4% and 6%. Since HBM supply of both companies is sold out through the most of 2025, we're likely looking at a scenario where over 50% of the industry's total HBM3/HBM3E supply for the coming quarters is already sold out.

This leaves Samsung as the only member of the group not to comment on HBM demand so far. Though with memory being a highly fungible commodity product, it would be surprising if Samsung wasn't facing similar demand. And, ultimately, all of this is pointing towards the indusry entering an HBM3 memory shortage.

Separately, SK hynix said that it is sampling 12-Hi 36GB HBM3E stacks with customers and will begin volume shipments in the third quarter.

Just over 18 months ago, Intel launched their significantly revised ATX v3.0 power supply standard, and with it, the 600 Watt-capable 12VHPWR cable to power video cards and other high-drain add-in cards. The release of the standard came with a lot of fanfare and excitement – the industry was preparing for a future where even flagship video cards could go back to being powered by a single cable – but shortly after, things became exciting again for all the wrong reasons.

The new 12VHPWR connector proved to be less forgiving of poor connections between cables and devices than envisioned. With hundreds of watts flowing through the relatively small pins – and critically, insufficient means to detect a poor connection – a bad connection could result in a thermal runaway scenario, i.e. a melted connector. And while the issue was an edge case overall, affecting a fraction of a fraction of systems, even a fraction is too much when you're starting from millions of PCs, never mind the unhappy customers with broken video cards.

So the PC industry is taking a mulligan on the matter, quickly revising the ATX specification and the 12VHPWR connector to fix their design flaws. In its place we have the new ATX v.3.1 power supply specification, as well as the associated 12V-2×6 connector, the combination of which are intended to serve the same goals, but with far less of a chance of errant electricity causing damage.

Ultimately, the combination of the two new standards has required backwards-compatible changes on both the device (video card) side, as well as the power supply side. And as a result, power supply manufacturers are now in the process of releasing ATX v3.1-compliant PSUs that implement these revisions. For PSU vendors, the changes are relatively trivial overall, but they are none the less important changes that for multiple reasons, they are making sure to promote.

Getting down to business, the first ATX v3.1 power supply to enter our testing labs comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, a prolific player in the PSU market. XPG recently expanded its product lineup with the introduction of the Core Reactor II VE series, the company's first foray into ATX 3.1-compliant PSUs. As a direct successor of the Core Reactor II series, the Core Reactor II VE is a relatively simple 80Plus Gold unit that distinguishes itself with its straightforward design, aimed at providing steady performance without the high expense.

In today’s review, we are taking a look at the 850W version of the Core Reactor II VE series, which is, for the time being, the most powerful ATX 3.1 unit XPG offers.

As part of AMD's Q1'2024 earnings announcement this week, the company is offering a brief status update on some of their future products set to launch later this year. Most important among these is an update on their Zen 5 CPU architecture, which is expected to launch for both client and server products later this year.

Highlighting their progress so far, AMD is confirming that EPYC "Turin" processors have begun sampling, and that these early runs of AMD's next-gen datacenter chips are meeting the company's expectations.

"Looking ahead, we are very excited about our next-gen Turin family of EPYC processors featuring our Zen 5 core," said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, at the conference call with analysts and investors (via SeekingAlpha). "We are widely sampling Turin, and the silicon is looking great. In the cloud, the significant performance and efficiency increases of Turin position us well to capture an even larger share of both first and third-party workloads."

Overall, it looks like AMD is on-track to solidify its position, and perhaps even increase its datacenter market share with its EPYC Turin processors. According to AMD, the company's server partners are developing a 30% larger number of designs for Turin than they did Genoa. This underscores how AMD's partners are preparing for even more market share growth on the back of AMD's ongoing success, not to mention the improved performance and power efficiency that the Zen 5 architecture should offer.

"In addition, there are 30% more Turin platforms in development from our server partners, compared to 4th Generation EPYC platforms, increasing our enterprise and with new solutions optimized for additional workloads," Su said. "Turin remains on track to launch later this year."

AMD's EPYC 'Turin' processors will be drop-in compatible with existing SP5 platforms (i.e., will come in an LGA 6096 package), which will facilitate its faster ramp and adoption of the platform both by cloud giants and server makers. In addition, AMD's next-generation EPYC CPUs are expected to feature more than 96 cores and a more versatile memory subsystem.

The PCI-SIG sends word over this morning that the special interest group has completed their development efforts on the group’s new PCI-Express cabling standard, CopprLink. Designed to go hand-in-hand with PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0, CopprLink defines both internal and external copper cabling for the latest PCIe standards, giving system vendors and assemblers the ability to use wires to connect devices within a system, or even whole systems.

The CopprLink standard is, in practice, a pair of standards sharing the same brand-name under the PCI-SIG umbrella. The internal standard, “CopprLink Internal Cable”, is designed to allow for a new generation of PCIe cables up to 1 meter in length that are capable of sustaining PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 signaling. Internal CopprLink effectively supplants a host of older internal PCIe cabling standards (including the abandoned OCuLink), which were originally designed for earlier generations of PCIe signaling.

At a high level, internal CopprLink is intended to provide not only host-to-device connectivity, but even more transparent backhaul applications such as motherboard-to-backplane connectivity, and unique applications such as chip-to-chip PCIe connections. In other words, CopprLink allows for cabled PCIe to be used in almost any situation where a PCIe connection needs to be established within a system. Strictly speaking, CopprLink doesn't replace the PCIe CEM connector in any way – but the relatively thick copper cables have less signal loss than PCB traces, making a cabled standard extremely useful even for internal connections. PCI-SIG sees CopprLink cables taking hold in the storage and data center markets, product categories where we already see PCIe cabling in use today.

The companion connector standard for internal CopprLink is the SNIA-developed SFF-TA-1016 connector, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the widely-used SFF-8654 (SlimSAS) connector. SFF-TA-1016 is available in x4, x8, and x16 configurations, and while the PCI-SIG doesn’t go so far as to defining widths within their own standard, the connectors available paint a clear picture of the options at hand. Internal CopprLink x4 should be especially popular with storage, as we already see today.

Top: SFF-TA-1016 Family of Connectors (Figure 4-1, Image Courtesy SNIA)
Bottom: Sample SFF-TA-1016 x4 Contact Plug and Recepticle (Figure 4-2, Image Courtesy SNIA)

Meanwhile, the group has also developed an external cabling standard to cover those same PCIe 5.0/6.0 data rates. External CopprLink cables can go up to 2 meters, allowing for board-to-board connections within a rack, and even short rack-to-rack PCIe connections.

The external version of CopprLink also uses a more robust connector, relying on SNIA’s SFF-TA-1032 standard. Like internal/1016, this is available with x4, x8, and x16 configurations, using 44, 68, and 120 positions/pins respectively. The PCI-SIG is expecting this version of the standard to be primarily adopted by the AI/Machine Learning markets, which need to move heaps of data between systems. Notably, however, they don’t really expect the storage market to make use of this spec – instead, they’ll be served by an updated version of the classic PCI Express External Cabling standard.

SFF-TA-1032 x16 Plug and Connector (Figure 4-1, Image Courtesy SNIA)

Finally, a bit farther out on the group’s roadmap, PIG-SIG is also reiterating that they’re working on a new optical cabling standard as well. The workgroup for this project was established in 2023, so the project is still in its early days. Notably, the forthcoming optical standard is intended to be optical technology-agnostic, allowing for PCIe to be paired with a variety of optical technologies.

In the meantime, with the internal and external CopprLink standards completed, the PCI-SIG is hoping to quickly move this cabling into production. Since these are solely cabling standards – and thus don’t require intensive development efforts such as new controllers or the like – the group is hoping that their members will have something to show off in time for the group’s developer conference this summer, or the Flash Memory Summit in August. After which, hardware vendors should be able to deploy the new cables relatively quickly.

As part of Samsung's Q1 earnings announcement, the company has outlined some of its foundry unit's key plans for the rest of the year. The company has confirmed that it remains on track to meeting its goal of starting mass production of chips on its SF3 (3 nm-class, 2nd Generation) technology in the second half of the year. Meanwhile in June, Samsung Foundry will formally unveil its SF2 (2 nm-class) process technology, which will offer a mix of performance and efficiency enhancements. Finally, the company the company is preparing a variation of its 4 nm-class technology for integration into stacked 3D designs.

SF2 To Be Unveiled In June

Samsung plans to disclose key details about its SF2 fabrication technology at the VLSI Symposium 2024 on June 19. This will be the company's second major process node based upon gate-all-around (GAA) multi-bridge channel field-effect transistors (MBCFET). Improving over its predecessor, SF2 will feature a 'unique epitaxial and integration process,' which will give the process node higher performance and lower leakage than traditional FinFET-based nodes (though Samsung isn't disclosing the specific node they're comparing it to).

Samsung says that SF2 increases performance of narrow transistors by 29% for N-type and 46% for P-type, and wide transistors by 11% and 23% respectively. Moreover, it reduces transistor global variation by 26% compared to FinFET technology, and cuts product leakage by approximately 50%. This process also sets the stage for future advancements in technology through enhanced design technology co-optimization (DTCO) collaboration with its customers.

One thing that Samsung has not mentioned in context of SF2 is backside power delivery, so at least for the moment, there is no indication that Samsung will be adopting this next-gen power routing feature for SF2.

Samsung says that the design infrastructure for SF2 – the PDK, EDA tools, and licensed IP – will be finalized in the second quarter of 2024. Once this happens, Samsung's chip development partners will be able to begin designing products for this production node. Meanwhile, Samsung is already working with Arm to co-optimize Arm's Cortex cores for the SF2 process.

SF3: On Track for 2H 2024

As the first fab to introduce a GAAFET-based node, Samsung has been on the cutting edge of chip construction. At the same time, however, that has also meant that they're the first fab to encounter and solve the inevitable teething issues that come with such a major transistor design change. Consequently, while Samsung's first-generation SF3E process technology has been in production for a little less than two years now, the only publicly-disclosed chips made on the process so far have been relatively small cryptocurrency mining chips – exactly the kind of pipecleaner parts that do well on a new process node.

But with that experience in hand, Samsung is preparing to move on to making bigger and better chips with GAAFETs. As part of their earnings announcements, the company has confirmed that their updated SF3 node, which was introduced last year, remains on schedule to enter production in the second half of 2024.

A more mature product from the get-go, SF3 is being prepared to be used for building larger processors, including datacenter products. Compared to its direct predecessor, SF4, SF3 promises a 22% performance boost at the same power and transistor count, or a 34% lower power at the same frequency and complexity, as well as a 21% logic area reduction. In general, Samsung pins a lot of hopes on this technology, as it's this generation of their 3nm-class technology that is poised to compete against TSMC's N3B and N3E nodes.

SF4: Ready for 3D Stacking

Finally, Samsung is also preparing a variant of their final FinFET technology node, SF4, for use in 3D chiplet stacking. As transistor density improvements have continued to slow, 3D chip stacking has emerged as a way to keep boosting overall chip performance, especially with modern, multi-tile processor designs.

Details on this node are limited, but it would seem that Samsung is making some changes to account/optimize for using SF4-fabbed chiplets in a 3D-stacked design, where chips need to be able to communicate both up and down. According to the company's Q1 financial report, Samsung expects to complete their preparatory work on the chip-stacking SF4 variant during the current quarter (Q2).

Sources: Samsung, Samsung

TSMC is no stranger to building big chips. Besides the ~800mm2 reticle limit of their normal logic processes, the company already produces even larger chips by fitting multiple dies on to a single silicon interposer, using their chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) technology. But even with current-gen CoWoS allowing for interposers up to 3.3x TSMC's reticle limit, TSMC plans to build bigger still in response to projected demand from the HPC and AI industries. To that end, as part of the company's North American Technology Symposium last week, TSMC announced that they are developing the means of building super-sized interposers that can reach over 8x the reticle limit.

TSMC's current-generation CoWoS technology allows for building interposers up to 2831 mm² and the company is already seeing customers come in with designs that run up to those limits. Both AMD's Instinct MI300X accelerator and NVIDIA's forthcoming B200 accelerator are prime examples of this, as they pack huge logic chiplets (3D stacked in case of AMD's product) and eight HBM3/HBM3E memory stacks in total. The total space afforded by the interposer gives these processors formidable performance, but chip developers want to go more powerful still. And to get there as quickly as possible, they'll need to go bigger as well in order to incorporate more logic chiplets and more memory stacks.

For their next-generation CoWoS product that's set to launch in 2026, TSMC plans to release CoWoS_L, which will offer a maximum interposer size of approximately 5.5 times that of a photomask, totaling 4719 mm² altogether. This next generation package will support up to 12 HBM memory stacks and will necessitate a larger substrate measuring at 100×100 mm. Coupled with process node improvements over the next few years, and TSMC expects chips based on this generation of CoWoS to offer better than 3.5x the compute performance of current-generation CoWoS chips.

Farther down the line, in 2027 TSMC intends introduce a version of CoWoS that allows for interposers up to 8 times larger than the reticle limit. This will offer an ample 6,864 mm² of space for chiplets on a substrate that measures 120×120 mm. TSMC envisions leveraging this technology for designs that integrate four stacked systems-on-integrated chips (SoICs), with 12 HBM4 memory stacks and extra I/O dies. TSMC roughly projects that this will enable chip designers to once again double performance, producing chips that surpass 7x the performance of current-generation chips.

Of course, building such large chips will come with its own set of consequences, above and beyond what TSMC will have to deal with. Enabling chip designers to build such grand processors is going to impact system design, as well as how datacenters accommodate these systems. TSMC's 100×100mm substrate will be riding right up to the limit of the OAM 2.0 form factor, whose modules measure 102×165mm to begin with. And if that generation of CoWoS doesn't break the current OAM form factor, then 120×120mm chips certainly will. And, of course, all of that extra silicon requires additional power and cooling, which is why we're already seeing hardware vendors prepare for how to cool multi-kilowatt chips by investigating liquid and immersion cooling.

Ultimately, even if Moore's Law has slowed to a crawl in terms of delivering transistor density improvements, CoWoS offers an out for producing chips with an ever-larger number of transistors. So with TSMC set to offer interposers and substrates with over twice the area of today's solutions, big chips intended for HPC systems are only going to continue to grow in both performance and size.

Related Reading

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC 2nm Update: N2 In 2025, N2P Loses Backside Power, and NanoFlex Brings Optimal Cells
• TSMC Preps Cheaper 4nm N4C Process For 2025, Aiming For 8.5% Cost Reduction
• TSMC's System-on-Wafer Platform Goes 3D: CoW-SoW Stacks Up the Chips
• TSMC Jumps Into Silicon Photonics, Lays Out Roadmap For 12.8 Tbps COUPE On-Package Interconnect

Across the internet, from online forums such as Reddit to various other tech media outlets, there's a lot of furor around reports of Intel's top-end 14th and 13th Gen K series of processors running into stability issues. As Intel's flagship chips, these parts come aggressively clocked in order to maximize performance through various implementations of boost and turbo, leaving them running close to their limits out of the box. But with high-end motherboards further goosing these chips to wring even more performance out of them, it would seem that the Intel desktop ecosystem has finally reached a tipping point where all of these efforts to boost performance have pushed these flagship chips to unstable conditions. To that end, Intel has released new gudiance to its consumer motherboard partners, strongly encouraging them to actually implment Intel's stock power settings, and to use those baseline settings as their out-of-the-box default.

While the underlying conditions are nothing new – we've published stories time and time again about motherboard features such as multi-core enhancement (MCE) and raised power consumption limits that seek to maximize how hard and how long systems are able to turbo boost – the issue has finally come to a head in the last couple of months thanks to accumulating reports of system instability with Intel's 13900K and 14900K processors. These instability problems are eventually solved by either tamping down on these motherboard performance-boosting features – bringing the chips back down to something closer to Intel's official operating parameters – or downclocking the chips entirely.

Intel first began publicly investigating the matter on the 27th of February, when Intel's Communications Manager, Thomas Hannaford, posted a thread on Intel's Community Product Support Forms titled "Regarding Reports of 13th/14th Gen Unlocked Desktop Users Experiencing Stability Issues". In this thread, Thomas Hannaford said, "Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads. We're engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues. If you are experiencing these issues, please reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance in the interim."

Since that post went up, additional reports have been circulating about instability issues across various online forums and message boards. The underlying culprit has been theorized to be motherboards implementing an array of strategies to improve chip performance, including aggressive multi-core enhancement settings, "unlimited" PL2 turbo, and reduced load line calibration settings. At no point do any of these settings overclock a CPU and push it to a higher clockspeed than it's validated for, but these settings do everything possible to keep a chip at the highest clockspeed possible at all times – and in the process seem to have gone a step too far.

From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"

We wrote a piece initially covering multi-core enhancement in 2012, detailing how motherboard manufacturers try to stay competitive with each other and leverage any headroom within the silicon to output the highest performance levels. And more recently, we've talked about how desktop systems with Intel chips are now regularly exceeding their rated TDPs – sometimes by extreme amounts – as motherboard vendors continue to push them to run as hard as possible for the best performance.

But things have changed since 2012. At the time, this wasn't so much of an issue, as overclocking was actually very favorable to increasing the performance of processors. But in 2024 with chips such as the Intel Core i9-14900K, we have CPUs shipping with a maximum turbo clock speed of 6.0 GHz and a peak power consumption of over 400 Watts, figures that were only a pipe dream a decade ago.

Jumping to the present time, over the weekend Intel released a statement about the matter to its partners, outlining their investigation so far and their suggestions/requests to their partners. That statement was quickly leaked to the press, with Igorslab.de and others breaking the news. Since then, we've been able to confirm through official sources that this is a real and accurate statement from Intel.

This statement reads as follows:

One subtle undertone in this statement is that everything seems to revolve around motherboards, specifically their default settings. Looking to clarify matters, Intel has told me today that they aren't blaming motherboard vendors in the above statement to partners and OEMs. However, having had experience with multiple Z790 motherboards with Intel's Core i9-14900K, we know each vendor has a different idea of what the word 'default' means – and that none of them involve strictly sticking to Intel's own suggested values. These profiles within the firmware unlock power constraints to a very high level and go above and beyond what Intel recommends. One example is ICCMAX, which Intel recommends at 400A or below, whereas multiple Z790 motherboards will greatly exceed this value out of the box.

Impressing buyers and outperforming the competitors has become integral to every motherboard manufacturer's strategy, thanks to the highly competitive and commoditized nature of the motherboard market. As a result, the user experience is sometimes relegated to a low-priority goal. And while this focus on performance and overclocking features plays well in reviews and to overclockers and tinkerers looking to push their CPU to its very limit, as we are now seeing, it seems to have come at the cost of out-of-the-box stability, with overly-aggressive settings leading to systems being unstable even at default settings.

Especially concerning here is what all of this means for a CPU's VCore voltage, which is another aspect of system performance that motherboard vendors have complete control over. With the need to quickly modulate the VCore voltage to keep up with the load on the processor – to keep it high enough for stability, but not allow it to spike so high as to risk damage – it's a careful balancing act for motherboard vendors even when they're not trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance from a CPU. And when they are trying to squeeze out every last bit, then VCore is something to minimize in order to improve how long and hard a CPU can turbo, pushing a chip further towards potential instability.

Pivoting to some real-world data highlighting these potential issues, when we reviewed the Intel Core i9-14900K, Intel's flagship Raptor Lake Refresh (RPL-R) processor, we tested with the default settings on both of our Z790 motherboards. From the above data, we can see the MSI MEG Z790 Ace Max was drawing up to 415 W when using Linx to place a very heavy workload on the chip. We also ran the same chip and workload on ASRock's Z790 Taichi Carrara to provide additional data points, where we found that it's power consumption maxed out at 375 W, around 10% lower than the MSI board.

In both cases, this is much higher than Intel's official PL2 limit for the Intel Core i9-14900K, which says that the chip should top out at 253 W for moderate periods of load. But, as we've seen time and time again, the official TDP ratings from Intel do not mean much to high-end motherboards, which almost universally default to higher settings. Motherboard vendors want to be competitive, and as such, higher default power settings allow vendors to claim that they deliver better performance than their rivals.

As further evidence of this, check out some of our recent motherboard reviews. I have assembled a small list of links to those reviews, where we've seen excessive CPU voltage or power consumption (or more often, both) when using the default settings on each motherboard, in each of the below reviews we see much higher power levels than Intel's official TDP values, which over the last several years we've come to expect. Still, some can be too high, especially with an already close-to-the-limit Core i9-14900K.

• ASRock Z790 Taichi Carrara Motherboard Review: ASRock Rocks With White Marble
• MSI MEG Z690 Unify (DDR5) Motherboard Review: The All-Black Option
• ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi Review: The Tale of Two Motherboards

We have been communicating with Intel for most of the day to get official answers to what's happening. To that end, we have received an official statement from Intel, which reads as follows:

Intel's official statement to us, which is likely their standpoint for the general public, highlights a list of recommended BIOS and software settings, such as those found in Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU). There's no mention of specific motherboard vendors or models, but the above settings should alleviate crashing and instability issues by preventing motherboards from pushing CPUs too hard.

It remains to be seen just how motherboard vendors will opt to address the issue, as all of the motherboard vendors we contacted today didn't have anything official to say about the matter. With that said, however, a few motherboard vendors have recently released a wave of new BIOSes, adding a new profile called "Intel Baseline" or similar. In all cases, these new BIOSes seem to do exactly what it says on the label, configuring the system to run at Intel's actual, suggested stock settings, and thus ensuring the stability of system in exchange for reduced performance.

With that said, these new Intel baseline settings are still not being used as the default settings for high-end motherboards. So the out-of-the-box user experience is still for MCE and other features to be enabled, pushing these processors to their performance limit. Users who actually want baseline performance – and the guaranteed stability it comes with – will still need to go into the BIOS and explicitly select this profile.

Ultimately, given the spec-defying state of high-end motherboards over the last decade, this is a badly-needed improvement. But still, as Intel has yet to wrap up their root cause investigation and issue formal guidance to consumers, we're not quite to the end of this saga just yet. There are still some developments to come, as we expect to hear more in May.

While the all-in-one CPU cooler industry is dominated, at least in mindshare, by flagship coolers from the industry’s biggest brands, the market segment overall has grown over the years to cover a much larger gamut of users. From flagship coolers to sub-$100 specials, effective AIO coolers have become available and affordable for most mid-range and higher builds. Thanks in part to some intensive competition in this space, we’ve seen several vendors bring down even 360mm coolers to the sub-$100 market in an effort to get in an edge over their competitors, and a sale in the process.

Looking at an opportunity to grow their own customer base, even the normally premium-focused AlphaCool has opted to get into this action with their Core Ocean lineup of coolers. And today, we're taking a closer look at the Core Ocean T38 360mm, AlphaCool's latest entry-level AIO cooler.

At a high level, the Core Ocean T38 has been designed to balance performance with manufacturing costs, allowing the company to put together an effective cooler that can still be priced low enough to reach budget-conscious consumers. Sticking with an aluminum radiator and keeping the frills such as RGB lighting to a minimum, the T38 is primarily aimed at system builders who require straightforward, effective cooling solutions – and without the complexity of AlphaCool's renowned open-loop custom liquid cooling kits. As we'll see, nothing comes for free, but AlphaCool has been able to put together a rather effective CPU cooler for $100 that's hard to ignore.

Optical connectivity – and especially silicon photonics – is expected to become a crucial technology to enable connectivity for next-generation datacenters, particularly those designed HPC applications. With ever-increasing bandwidth requirements needed to keep up with (and keep scaling out) system performance, copper signaling alone won't be enough to keep up. To that end, several companies are developing silicon photonics solutions, including fab providers like TSMC, who this week outlined its 3D Optical Engine roadmap as part of its 2024 North American Technology Symposium, laying out its plan to bring up to 12.8 Tbps optical connectivity to TSMC-fabbed processors.

TSMC's Compact Universal Photonic Engine (COUPE) stacks an electronics integrated circuit on photonic integrated circuit (EIC-on-PIC) using the company's SoIC-X packaging technology. The foundry says that usage of its SoIC-X enables the lowest impedance at the die-to-die interface and therefore the highest energy efficiency. The EIC itself is produced at a 65nm-class process technology.

TSMC's 1st Generation 3D Optical Engine (or COUPE) will be integrated into an OSFP pluggable device running at 1.6 Tbps. That's a transfer rate well ahead of current copper Ethernet standards – which top out at 800 Gbps – underscoring the immediate bandwidth advantage of optical interconnects for heavily-networked compute clusters, never mind the expected power savings.

Looking further ahead, the 2nd Generation of COUPE is designed to integrate into CoWoS packaging as co-packaged optics with a switch, allowing optical interconnections to be brought to the motherboard level. This version COUPE will support data transfer rates of up to 6.40 Tbps with reduced latency compared to the first version.

TSMC's third iteration of COUPE – COUPE running on a CoWoS interposer – is projected to improve on things one step further, increasing transfer rates to 12.8 Tbps while bringing optical connectivity even closer to the processor itself. At present, COUPE-on-CoWoS is in the pathfinding stage of development and TSMC does not have a target date set.

Ultimately, unlike many of its industry peers, TSMC has not participated in the silicon photonics market up until now, leaving this to players like GlobalFoundries. But with its 3D Optical Engine Strategy, the company will enter this important market as it looks to make up for lost time.

Related Reading

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC 2nm Update: N2 In 2025, N2P Loses Backside Power, and NanoFlex Brings Optimal Cells
• TSMC Preps Cheaper 4nm N4C Process For 2025, Aiming For 8.5% Cost Reduction
• TSMC's System-on-Wafer Platform Goes 3D: CoW-SoW Stacks Up the Chips

TSMC has been offering its System-on-Wafer integration technology, InFO-SoW, since 2020. For now, only Cerebras and Tesla have developed wafer scale processor designs using it, as while they have fantastic performance and power efficiency, wafer-scale processors are extremely complex to develop and produce. But TSMC believes that not only will wafer-scale designs ramp up in usage, but that megatrends like AI and HPC will call for even more complex solutions: vertically stacked system-on-wafer designs.

Tesla Dojo's wafer-scale processors — the first solutions based based on TSMC's InFO-SoW technology that are in mass production — have a number of benefits over typical system-in-packages (SiPs), including low-latency high-bandwidth core-to-core communications, very high performance and bandwidth density, relatively low power delivery network impendance, high performance efficiency, and redunancy.

But with InFO-SoW and other wafer scale integration methods, processor designers have to rely solely on on-chip memory. This is perfectly adequate for many applications, but it may not be enough for next-generation AI workloads. Furthermore, with InFO-SoW, the whole wafer has to be processed using one fabrication technology, which may not be optimal, or too expensive for certain designs.

So, with its next-generation system-on-wafer platform, TSMC plans to bring together two of its packaging technologies: InFO-SoW and System on Integrated Chips (SoIC), which will allow it to stack memory or logic on top of a system-on-wafer using its Chip-on-Wafer (CoW) method. The CoW-SoW technology, which the company announced at its North American Technology Symposium, will be ready for mass production in 2027.

For now, TSMC is mostly talking about wedding wafer scale processors with HBM4 memory. And given that HBM4 stacks will feature a 2048-bit interface, its tighter integration with logic is something that the industry is considering.

"So, in the future, using wafer level integrations [will allow] our customers to integrate even more logic and memory together," said Kevin Zhang, Vice President of Business Development at TSMC. "SoW is no longer a fiction, this is something we already work with our customers [on] to produce some of the products already in place. This we think by leveraging our advanced wafer level integration technology, we can provide our customer a very important the path allow them to continue to grow their capability to bring in more computation, more energy efficient computation, to their AI cluster or [supercomputer]."

Related Reading

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC 2nm Update: N2 In 2025, N2P Loses Backside Power, and NanoFlex Brings Optimal Cells
• TSMC Preps Cheaper 4nm N4C Process For 2025, Aiming For 8.5% Cost Reduction

While the bulk of attention on TSMC is aimed at its leading-edge nodes, such as N3E and N2, loads of chips will continue to be made using more mature and proven process technologies for years to come. Which is why TSMC has continued to refine its existing nodes, including its current-generation 5nm-class offerings. To that end, at its North American Technology Symposium 2024, the company introduced a new, optimized 5nm-class node: N4C.

TSMC's N4C process belongs to the company's 5nm-class family of fab nodes and is a superset of N4P, the most advanced technology in that family. In a bid to further bring down 5nm manufacturing costs, for TSMC is implementing several changes for N4C, including rearchitecting their standard cell and SRAM cell, changing some design rules, and reducing the number of masking layers. As a result of these improvements, the company expects N4C to achieve both smaller die sizes as well as a reduction in production complexity, which in turn will bring die costs down by up to 8.5%. Furthermore, with the same wafer-level defect density rate as N4P, N4C stands to offer even higher functional yields thanks to its die area reduction.

"So, we are not done with our 5nm and 4nm [technologies]," said Kevin Zhang, Vice President of Business Development at TSMC. "From N5 to N4, we have achieved 4% density improvement optical shrink, and we continue to enhance the transistor performance. Now we bring in N4C to our 4 nm technology portfolio. N4C allows our customers to reduce their costs by remove some of the masks and to also improve on the original IP design like a standard cell and SRAM to further reduce the overall product level cost of ownership."

TSMC says that N4C can use the same design infrastructure as N4P, though it is unclear whether N5 and N4P IP can be re-used for N4C-based chips. Meanwhile, TSMC indicates that it offers various options for chipmakers to find the right balance between cost benefits and design effort, so companies interested in adopting a 4nm-class process technologies could well adopt N4C.

The development of N4C comes as many of TSMC's chip design customers are preparing to launch chips based on the company's final generation of FinFET process technology, the 3nm N3 series. While N3 is expected to be a successful family, the high costs of N3B have been an issue, and the generation is marked by diminishing performance and transistor density returns altogether. Consequently, N4C could well become a major, long-lived node at TSMC, serving as a good fit for customers who want to stick to a more cost-effective FinFET node.

"This is a very significant enhancement, we are working with our customer, basically to extract more value from their 4 nm investment," Zhang said.

TSMC expects to start volume production of N4C chips some time next year. And with TSMC having produced 5nm-class for nearly half a decade at that point, N4C should be able to hit the ground running in terms of volume and yields.

Related Reading

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC 2nm Update: N2 In 2025, N2P Loses Backside Power, and NanoFlex Brings Optimal Cells
• TSMC's System-on-Wafer Platform Goes 3D: CoW-SoW Stacks Up the Chips
• TSMC Jumps Into Silicon Photonics, Lays Out Roadmap For 12.8 Tbps COUPE On-Package Interconnect

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. provided several important updates about its upcoming process technologies at its North American Technology Symposium 2024. At a high level, TSMC's 2 nm plans remain largely unchanged: the company is on track to start volume production of chips on it's first-generation GAAFET N2 node in the second half of 2025, and N2P will succeed N2 in late 2026 – albeit without the previously-announced backside power delivery capabilities. Meanwhile, the whole N2 family will be adding TSMC's new NanoFlex capability, which allows chip designers to mix and match cells from different libraries to optimize performance, power, and area (PPA). 

One of the key announcements of the event is TSMC's NanoFlex technology, which will be a part of the company's complete N2 family of production nodes (2 nm-class, N2, N2P, N2X). NanoFlex will enable chip designers to mix and match cells from different libraries (high performance, low power, area efficient) within the same block design, allowing designers to fine tune their chip designs to improve performance or lower power consumption.

TSMC's contemporary N3 fabrication process already supports a similar capability called FinFlex, which also allows designers to use cells from different libraries. But since N2 relies on gate-all-around (GAAFET) nanosheet transistors, NanoFlex gives TSMC some additional controls: firstly, TSMC can optimize channel width for performance and power and then build short cells (for area and power efficiency) or tall cells (for up to 15% higher performance).  

When it comes to timing, TSMC's N2 is set to enter risk production in 2025 and high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in the second half of 2025, so it looks like we are going to see N2 chips in retail devices in 2026. Compared to N3E, TSMC expects N2 to increase performance by 10% to 15% at the same power, or reduce power consumption by 25% to 30% at the same frequency and complexity. As for chip density, the foundry is looking at a 15% density increase, which is a good degree of scaling by contemporary standards.

N2 will be followed by performance-enhanced N2P, as well as the voltage-enhanced N2X in 2026. Although TSMC once said that N2P would add backside power delivery network (BSPDN) in 2026, it looks like this will not be the case and N2P will use regular power delivery circuitry. The reason for this is unclear, but it looks like the company decided not to add a costly feature to N2P, but to reserve it to its next-generation node, which will also be available to customers in late 2026.

N2 is still expected to feature a major innovation related to power: super-high-performance metal-insulator-metal (SHPMIM) capacitors, which are are being added to improve power supply stability. The SHPMIM capacitor offers more than twice the capacity density of TSMC's existing super-high-density metal-insulator-metal (SHDMIM) capacitor. Additionally, the new SHPMIM capacitor cuts sheet resistance (Rs in Ohm/square) and via resistance (Rc) by 50% compared to its predecessor.

Related Reading

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC Preps Cheaper 4nm N4C Process For 2025, Aiming For 8.5% Cost Reduction
• TSMC's System-on-Wafer Platform Goes 3D: CoW-SoW Stacks Up the Chips
• TSMC Jumps Into Silicon Photonics, Lays Out Roadmap For 12.8 Tbps COUPE On-Package Interconnect

With the arrival of spring comes showers, flowers, and in the technology industry, TSMC's annual technology symposium series. With customers spread all around the world, the Taiwanese pure play foundry has adopted an interesting strategy for updating its customers on its fab plans, holding a series of symposiums from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. Kicking off the series every year – and giving us our first real look at TSMC's updated foundry plans for the coming years – is the Santa Clara stop, where yesterday the company has detailed several new technologies, ranging from more advanced lithography processes to massive, wafer-scale chip packing options.

Today we're publishing several stories based on TSMC's different offerings, starting with TSMC's marquee announcement: their A16 process node. Meanwhile, for the rest of our symposium stories, please be sure to check out the related reading below, and check back for additional stories.

• TSMC's 1.6nm Technology Announced for Late 2026: A16 with "Super Power Rail" Backside Power
• TSMC 2nm Update: N2 In 2025, N2P Loses Backside Power, and NanoFlex Brings Optimal Cells
• TSMC Preps Cheaper 4nm N4C Process For 2025, Aiming For 8.5% Cost Reduction
• TSMC's System-on-Wafer Platform Goes 3D: CoW-SoW Stacks Up the Chips
• TSMC Jumps Into Silicon Photonics, Lays Out Roadmap For 12.8 Tbps COUPE On-Package Interconnect
• TSMC Readies 8x Reticle Super Carrier Interposer For Next-Gen Chips Twice as Large As Today's

Headlining its Silicon Valley stop, TSMC announced its first 'angstrom-class' process technology: A16. Following a production schedule shift that has seen backside power delivery network technology (BSPDN) removed from TSMC's N2P node, the new 1.6nm-class production node will now be the first process to introduce BSPDN to TSMC's chipmaking repertoire. With the addition of backside power capabilities and other improvements, TSMC expects A16 to offer significantly improved performance and energy efficiency compared to TSMC's N2P fabrication process. It will be available to TSMC's clients starting H2 2026.

TSMC A16: Combining GAAFET With Backside Power Delivery

At a high level, TSMC's A16 process technology will rely on gate-all-around (GAAFET) nanosheet transistors and will feature a backside power rail, which will both improve power delivery and moderately increase transistor density. Compared to TSMC's N2P fabrication process, A16 is expected to offer a performance improvement of 8% to 10% at the same voltage and complexity, or a 15% to 20% reduction in power consumption at the same frequency and transistor count. TSMC is not listing detailed density parameters this far out, but the company says that chip density will increase by 1.07x to 1.10x – keeping in mind that transistor density heavily depends on the type and libraries of transistors used.

The key innovation of TSMC's A16 node, is its Super Power Rail (SPR) backside power delivery network, a first for TSMC. The contract chipmaker claims that A16's SPR is specifically tailored for high-performance computing products that feature both complex signal routes and dense power circuitry.

As noted earlier, with this week's announcement, A16 has now become the launch vehicle for backside power delivery at TSMC. The company was initially slated to offer BSPDN technology with N2P in 2026, but for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the tech has been punted from N2P and moved to A16. TSMC's official timing for N2P in 2023 was always a bit loose, so it's hard to say if this represents much of a practical delay for BSPDN at TSMC. But at the same time, it's important to underscore that A16 isn't just N2P renamed, but rather it will be a distinct technology from N2P.

TSMC is not the only fab pursuing backside power delivery, and accordingly, we're seeing multiple variations on the technique crop up at different fabs. The overall industry has three approaches for BSPDN: Imec's Buried Power Rail, Intel's PowerVia, and now TSMC's Super Power Rail.

The oldest technique, Imec's Buried Power Rail, essentially places power delivery network on the backside of the wafer and then connects power rail of logic cells to power contact using nano TSVs. This enables some area scaling and does not add too much complexity to production. The second implementation, Intel's PowerVia, connects power to the cell or transistor contact, which provides a better result, but at the cost of complexity.

Finally, we have TSMC's new Super Power Rail BSPDN technology, which connects a backside power network directly to each transistor's source and drain. According to TSMC, this is the most efficient technology in terms of area scaling, but the trade-off is that it's the most complex (and expensive) when it comes to production.

That TSMC has opted to go with the most complex version of BSPDN may be part of the reason that we've seen it removed from N2P, as implementing it will ultimately add to both time and costs. This leaves A16 as TSMC's premiere performance node for the 2026/2027 time-frame, while N2P can be positioned to offer a more balanced combination of performance and cost efficiency.

Angstrom Era Kicks Off In Late 2026 With New Node Naming Convention

Finally, as with Intel, we're also seeing TSMC adopt a new process node naming convention starting with this generation of technology. The name itself is largely arbitrary – and this has already been the case in the fab industry for several years now – but with current node names already in the single digits (e.g. N2), the industry has needed to re-calibrate node names to something smaller than the nanometer. And thus we've arrived at the 'angstrom era.' But regardless of what exactly it's called or why it's called that, the important point is that A16 will be the next generation node beyond TSMC's 2nm-class products.

TSMC expects to start volume production on A16 in H2 2026, so it is likely that the first products based on this technology will hit the market in 2027. Given the timing, the production node will presumably compete against Intel's 14A; though at 2+ years out and with no one producing BSPDN in volume today, there's still a lot of time for plans and roadmaps to change.

Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce.

According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and could increase further as a reault of the ongoing challenges faced by the storage industry.

The primary driver behind Seagate's decision is increased demand for high-capacity HDDs, which are used to train AI models. This demand spike, coupled with a reduction in production output from hard drive makers, has created a significant supply-demand imbalance. As a result, Seagate has decided to adjust their pricing strategy to manage the situation. Further exacerbating the issue are global inflationary pressures which continue to inflate costs across the board, which also contributed to the company's decision to increase prices, Seagate said in a message to clients published by TrendForce.

Seagate emphasized that its reduced production capacity has been a major challenge, hindering the company's ability to fulfill customer demands fully and promptly.

"As a result, we will be implementing price increases effective immediately on new orders and for demand that is over and above previously committed volumes," the alleged memo from Seagate reads. "Supply constraints are expected to continue and as such we anticipate that prices will continue to increase in the coming quarters."

Earlier this month Western Digital also informed its customers about price hikes for its HDD and SSD products. This notification was based on similar issues — higher than anticipated demand across the whole product range and additional supply chain challenges affecting the electronics sector. Western Digital's announcement made it clear that these disruptions are likely to continue, prompting further price adjustments.

Sources: TrendForce, TrendForce, TechNews

As Qualcomm prepares for the mid-year launch of their forthcoming Snapdragon X SoCs for PCs, and the eagerly anticipated Oryon CPU cores within, the company is finally shoring up their official product plans, and releasing some additional technical details in the process. Thus far the company has been demonstrating their Snapdragon X Elite SoC in its highest-performing, fully-enabled configuration. But the retail Snapdragon X Elite will not be a single part; instead, Qualcomm is preparing a whole range of chip configurations for various price/performance tiers in the market. Altogether, there will be 3 Snapdragon X Elite SKUs that differ in CPU and GPU performance.

As well, the company is introducing a second Snapdragon X tier, Snapdragon X Plus, for those SKUs positioned below the Elite performance tier. As of today, this will be a single configuration. But if the Snapdragon X lineup is successful and demand warrants it, I would not be surprised to see Qualcomm expand it further – as they have certainly left themselves the room for it in their product stack. In the meantime, with Qualcomm’s expected launch competition now shipping (Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake and AMD Ryzen Mobile 8040 Hawk Point), the company is also very confident that even these reduced performance Snapdragon X Plus chips will be able to beat Intel and AMD in multithreaded performance – never mind the top-tier Snapdragon X Elite chips.

Qualcomm will be launching this expanded four chip stack at once; so both Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus tier devices should be available at the same time. The company’s goal is still to have devices on the shelf “mid-year”, although the company isn’t providing any more precise guidance than that. With Qualcomm’s CEO, Cristiano Amon, set to deliver a Computex keynote in June, I expect we’ll get more specific details on timings then, along with the company and its partners using the event to announce and showcase some retail laptop designs. So this is very much looking like a summer launch at the moment.

In the meantime, Qualcomm is already showing off what their Snapdragon X Plus chips can do with a fresh set of live benchmarks, akin to their Snapdragon X Elite performance previews from October 2023. We’ll dive into those in a bit, but suffice it to say, Qualcomm knows the score, and they want to make sure the entire world knows when they’re winning.

As Seagate ramps up shipments of its new heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)-based Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform, the company is both in the enviable position of shipping the first major new hard drive technology in a decade, and the much less enviable position of proving the reliability of the first major new hard drive technology in a decade. Due to HAMR's use of temporal heating with its platters, as well as all-new read/write heads, HAMR introduces multiple new changes at once that have raise questions about how reliable the technology will be. Looking to address these matters (and further promote their HAMR drives), Seagate has published a fresh blog post outlining the company's R&D efforts, and why the company expects their HAMR drives to last several years – as long or longer than current PMR hard drives.

According to the company, the reliability of Mozaic 3+ drives on par with traditional drives relying on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), the company says. In fact, components of HAMR HDDs have demonstrated a 50% increase in reliability over the past two years. Seagate says that Mozaic 3+ drives boast impressive durability metrics: their read/write heads have demonstrated capacity to handle over 3.2 petabytes of data transfer over 6,000 hours of operation, which exceeds data transfers of typical nearline hard drives by 20 times. Accordingly, Seagate is rating these drives for a mean time between failure (MTBF) 2.5 million hours, which is in-line with PMR-based drives.

Based on their field stress tests, involving over 500,000 Mozaic 3+ drives, Seagate says that the heads of Mozaic 3+ drives will last over seven years, surpassing the typical lifespan of current PMR-based drives. Generally, customers anticipate that modern PMR drives will last between four and five years with average usage, so these drives would exceed current expectations.

Altogether, Seagate is continuing aim for a seamless transition from PMR to HAMR drives in customer systems. That means ensuring that these new drives can fit into existing data center infrastructures without requiring any changes to enterprise specifications, warranty conditions, or form factors.

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market.

Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups that to 290 layers, though this remains to be confirmed.

Regardless, Samsung says that its 9th generation V-NAND memory boasts an approximate 50% improvement in bit density over its 8th generation predecessor. Driving this gains, the company cites the miniaturization of the cell size, as well as the integration of enhanced memory cell technologies that reduce interference and extend the lifespan of the cells. With their latest NAND technology, Samsung has also been able to eliminate dummy channel holes, thus reducing the planar area of the memory cells.

Interestingly, today's announcement also marks the first time that Samsung has publicly confirmed their use of string stacking in their NAND, referring to it as their "double-stack structure." The company is widely believed to have been using sting stacking back in their 8th generation NAND as well, however this was never confirmed by the company. Regardless, the use of string stacking is only going to increase from here, as vendors look to keep adding layers to their NAND dies, while manufacturing variability and channel hole tolerances make it difficult to produce more than 150-200 layers in a single stack.

Samsung TLC V- NAND Flash Memory
	9th Gen V-NAND	8th Gen V-NAND
Layers	290?	236
Decks	2 (x145)	2 (x118)
Die Capacity	1 Tbit	1 Tbit
Die Size (mm2)	?mm2	?mm2
Density (Gbit/mm2)	?	?
I/O Speed	3.2 GT/s (Toggle 5.1)	2.4 GT/s (Toggle 5.0)
Planes	6?	4
CuA / PuC	Yes	Yes

Speaking of channel holes, another key technological enhancement in the 9th gen V-NAND is Samsung's advanced 'channel hole etching' technology. This process improves manufacturing productivity by enabling the simultaneous creation of electron pathways within a double-stack structure. This method is crucial as it enables efficient drilling through more layers, which is increasingly important as cell layers are added.

The latest V-NAND also features the introduction of a faster NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.1, which boosts peak data transfer rates by 33% to 3.2 GT/s, or almost 400MB/sec for a single die. Additionally, 9th gen V-NAND's power consumption has been reduced by 10%, according to Samsung. Though Samsung doesn't state under what conditions – presumably, this is at iso-frequency rather than max frequency.

Samsung's launch of 1Tb TLC V-NAND is set to be followed by the release of a quad-level cell (QLC) model later this year.

"We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product. Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar SL500 Portable SSD is one of the moderately priced 20 Gbps PSSDs in that set.

The SL500 is able to achieve its price point thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller - the Silicon Motion SM2320. The unique aspect is the use of YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have seen in previous SM2320-based PSSDs). Read on for a detailed look at the SL500, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power consumption, and thermal profile.

While desktop PC power supplies receive the bulk of enthusiasts’ attention for good reasons – not the least of which being the vast selection of options that comes from being a standardized part – power supplies as a whole aren’t just a concern for big PCs. With the majority of PC sales having flipped to notebook sales some years ago, notebook power supplies already lead the market in volume. And while most laptops don’t need the kind of massively powered PSUs that dominate the desktop space, even that is slowly changing as desktop replacement-class laptops increasingly grow in performance and power consumption.

Perhaps the poster-child for the high-performance, high-powered laptop is Eurocom, who has a long history of developing heavy-duty DTR laptops that are all but portable desktop systems. Following recent trends in GPU power consumption and in GPU popularity for both gaming and AI workloads, the company has been selling a range of “mobile supercomputers”, which are practically large, tailor-made laptops that rival even the best of desktop computers – and have the power requirements to match.

In order to power their own high-end laptops, Eurocom has developed a rather unusual 780W AC adapter for high-performance laptops. Intended to power the most powerful of powerful laptops, their latest power adapter can supply over three-quarters of a kilowatt of DC power; a desktop-like wattage for a desktop-like device. It’s a laptop power adapter that’s unique in its scale, and with some room to scale up even further.

Eurocom 780W AC Adapter Power specifications
RAIL	+20V
MAX OUTPUT	39A
	780W
DIMENSIONS	325 x 110 x 40mm, 1.38kg
AC INPUT	90 - 264 VAC, 50 - 60 Hz
MSRP	PSU: $299, Cable: $129+

Eurocom has offered this adapter for a few years now. But it’s taken on a new life as more laptops have been released that use such a large adapter (or two smaller 300W-ish power adapters). And, critically, Eurocom has made additional DC cable/connector sets for other manufactuers’ laptops, significantly increasing the number of systems it’s compatible with. Currently, Eurocom offers DC cables for the following laptops:

• Alienware M17x M18x; 1x DC Cable ; w/ barrel AW connector; 193cm/6.4ft 
• Alienware AREA 51m; 1x DC Cable + Splitter Box w/ 2x barrel AW connectors; 152cm/5ft 
• ASUS ROG G18 Strix; GX501V; GM501; GM501GM; GX531GM; 1x DC Cable; w/ barrel ROG connector 
• ASUS G703GX, GZ700GX; 1x DC Cable w/ 2x ROG barrel connectors; 152cm/5ft 
• CLEVO, OriginPC, Sager, XMG, EUROCOM laptops; 1x DC Cable; w/ 4-pin round connector; 182cm / 6ft 
• CLEVO X370SNx; 1x DC Cable; w/ square connector; 120cm / 3.8ft 
• CLEVO X170SM/X170KM; 1x DC Cable; w/ dual square connectors; 152cm / 5ft 
• Dell Precision 7720/7710; 1x DC Cable; w/ barrel Dell connector; 120cm / 3.8ft 
• MSI GE76, GT76, GT77, GE78HX Raider, Titan 18HX 1x DC Cable; w/ single square connector; 120cm / 3.8ft 
• MSI laptops & MSI Trident AS Gaming Desktops; 1x DC Cable; w/ 4-pin round connector; 182cm / 6ft 

The Eurocom 780W AC Adapter

Externally, the Eurocom 780W AC adapter looks like a hybrid between a PC PSU and a laptop adapter. It is shaped like an oversized laptop AC adapter but has a metallic body and cooling vents/fans. Eurocom advertises that it weighs “only 1.34kg”, which is the weight of an entire 14-inch laptop by comparison, but is relatively lightweight for a PSU with that kind of power output. The company logo is debossed across the top side of the adapter, with four round anti-slip pads found at its bottom. Care needs to be taken while moving it around because the metallic edges and weight can spell trouble for wooden surfaces.

Eurocom installed a small information display on the AC adapter, which shows the current, voltage, and power output, as well as the temperature of the adapter. It is not perfectly accurate – we can see it was reading a 12W load without a DC cable attached to the adapter – but it works as a basic reference. Next to it, there is a heavy-duty metallic connector for the DC cable. On the other side we can find a typical three-prong C14 AC cable receptacle, as well as an on/off switch, which is not something commonly found on laptop AC adapters.

 

Opening up the chassis, we can see that the Eurocom 780W AC adapter is not unlike common PC PSUs – just less complex due to the need to only generate a single 20V rail. The basic layout is identical, with an AC filter at the input consisting of four Y capacitors, two X capacitors, and two substantial filtering inductors, that leads to a rectifying bridge. The GBJ1508 bridge is made by HY Electronic Cayman Ltd, a Taiwanese company we're encountering for the first time.

 

Then we have an APFC circuitry with a massive Aishi 450V/560μF capacitor and a large filtering coil being its passive components, with a Toshiba K31N60W regulator on the same heatsink as the two MOSFETs that form a typical half-bridge configuration. Following that we have a small transformer and two Infineon 045N10N MOSFETs to generate the 20V power output. Cooling is provided by two Protechnic Electric MGT3812XB-W20 38 mm fans, which are small but high quality products with a double-ball bearing engine.

Test Results (~25°C Ambient)

For the testing of PSUs, we are using high precision electronic loads with a maximum power draw of 2700 Watts, a Rigol DS5042M 40 MHz oscilloscope, an Extech 380803 power analyzer, two high precision UNI-T UT-325 digital thermometers, an Extech HD600 SPL meter, and various other bits and parts. 

The average efficiency of the Eurocom 780W AC adapter is very high, at 91.6% when the PSU is powered from an 230V AC source and drops down to 90.9% when powered from an 115V AC source. There is no 80Plus or similar efficiency certification covering this PSU, but there is legislation such as the Ecodesign 2019/1782 directive, and, even though the manufacturer does not fully publish its performance specs as the directive requires, the Eurocom 780W adapter seems to easily meet them. We must mention that this kind of PSU has an advantage over classic PC PSUs because it only generates a single voltage line, and conversion losses are lower, so it should not be directly compared to any multi-voltage output PSU.

The two small fans of the Eurocom 780W AC adapter seem hardwired to the power output of the unit, largely ignoring the temperature of the adapter and adjusting their speed only according to the load. Up to 40% load, which should cover the power needs of most gaming laptops anyway, the adapter is practically entirely silent. The speed of the fan gradually increases when the load is greater than 330 Watts, reaching terrifying noise figures at maximum load. Given the nature of the adapter, it is highly unlikely that it will operate at such high a load for prolonged periods of time, as even the laptops that require 2x330 Watt adapters will not continuously sustain such a high load.

Power Supply Quality 

The electrical performance of the Eurocom 780W AC adapter is surprisingly good compared to its datasheet specifications. Eurocom claims a maximum voltage ripple of 200 mV but we recorded a maximum of 116 mV, which is alright for a 20 V rail and better than we expected due to the mediocre secondary side filtering. Voltage regulation is very good, at just 1.2% across the nominal load range.

Main Output
Load (Watts)	158.03		394.68		586.46		780.78
Load (Percent)	20% Load		50% Load		75% Load		100% Load
	Amperes	Volts	Amperes	Volts	Amperes	Volts	Amperes	Volts
20 V	7.8	20.26	19.5	20.24	29.25	20.05	39	20.02

 

Line	Regulation (20% to 100% load)	Voltage Ripple (mV)
		20% Load	50% Load	75% Load	100% Load
20V	1.2%	44	66	82	116

During our routine evaluation, we examine the fundamental protection features of all power supply units we review, including Over Current Protection (OCP), Over Voltage Protection (OVP), Over Power Protection (OPP), and Short Circuit Protection (SCP). The Eurocom 780W AC adapter behaves quite oddly here, as it has a rated output of 39 A and a maximum output of 45 A for 25 ms. However, we were able to draw 50 A from the unit, which is nearly 1000 Watts, for several minutes without triggering the OCP/OPP protection. The PSU did not show any serious signs of stress or overheating over that time, nor poor electrical performance. The OPP protection triggers immediately once the load is greater than 50.3 A – and also immediately resets and restarts the PSU when the load drops below 50.2A. It would seem that this platform was initially designed to be significantly more powerful and the OEM “forgot” to adjust the OCP/OPP trigger points.

Conclusion

The Eurocom 780W AC adapter melds raw power with innovation, presenting a piece that's as formidable as it is intriguing. With its substantial weight and metallic edges, it demands respect and caution, especially on delicate surfaces. However, its weight is justified by the impressive power output it delivers, making it a powerhouse that somewhat overshadows its bulky, heavy-set design. The inclusion of a display for monitoring performance is a smart touch, though its accuracy leaves room for improvement.

On the inside, Eurocom doesn't skimp on quality. The adapter's internals are a testament to careful selection and engineering, closely mirroring the complexity and efficiency of high-end PC PSUs. Its cooling system, though compact, functions well and provides good performance without compromising on noise levels — at least under most loads. That said, the adapter's noise profile at maximum load might not be everyone's cup of tea, hinting at a balance yet to be perfected between power and tranquility.

Overall, Eurocom's 780W AC adapter boasts commendable efficiency and electrical performance. But as a premium-priced product – a complete unit and cable will set you back at least $429 – it could benefit from a touch more finesse, particularly in terms of user safety and operational noise at high loads. Otherwise, I'm personally a bit surprised that Eurocom isn't offering a open-ended cable for DIY enthusiasts, which could broaden its appeal and utility. Such an addition would not only cater to a wider audience but also underscore Eurocom's commitment to versatility and innovation.

In sum, while the adapter stands out for its power and performance, there's also a clear avenue for Eurocom to enhance its appeal through minor, yet impactful, improvements.