5 nodes in 4 years. This is what Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger promised Intel’s customers, investors, and the world at large back in 2021, when he laid out Intel’s ambitious plan to regain leadership in the foundry space. After losing Intel’s long-held spot as the top fab in the world thanks to compounding delays in the 2010s, the then-new Intel CEO bucked calls from investors to sell off Intel’s fabs, and instead go all-in on fabs like Intel has never done before, to become a top-to-bottom foundry service for the entire world to use.

Now a bit over two years later, and Intel is just starting to see the first fruits from that aggressive roadmap, both in terms of technologies and customers. Products based on Intel’s first EUV-based node, Intel 4, are available in the market today, and its high-volume counterpart, Intel 3, is ready as well. Meanwhile, Intel is putting the final touches on its first Gate-All-Around (GAAFET)/RibbonFET for 2024 and 2025. It’s a heady time for the company, but it’s also a critical one. Intel has reached the point where they need to deliver on those promises – and they need to do so in a very visible way.

To that end, today Intel’s Foundry group – the artist formally known as Intel Foundry Services – is holding its first conference, Direct Connect. And even more than being a showcase for customers and press, this is Intel’s coming-out party for the fab industry as a whole, where Intel’s foundry (and only Intel’s foundry) gets the spotlight, a rarity in the massive business that is Intel.

A bit over 5 years ago, Arm announced their Neoverse initiative for server, cloud, and infrastructure CPU cores. Doubling-down on their efforts to break into the infrastructure CPU market in a big way, the company set about an ambitious multi-year plan to develop what would become a trio of CPU core lineups to address different segments of the market – ranging  from the powerful V series to the petite E series core. And while things have gone a little differently than Arm initially projected, they’re hardly in a position to complain, as the Neoverse line of CPU cores has never been as successful as it is now. Custom CPU designs based on Neoverse cores are all the rage with cloud providers, and the broader infrastructure market has seen its own surge.

Now, as the company and its customers turn towards 2024 and a compute market that is in the throes of another transformative change due to insatiable demand for AI hardware, Arm is preparing to release its next generation of Neoverse CPU core designs to its customers. And in the process, the company is reaching the culmination of the original Neoverse roadmap.

This morning the company is taking the wraps off of the V3 CPU architecture (codename Poseidon) for high-performance systems, as well as the N3 CPU architecture (codename Hermes) for balanced systems. These designs are now ready for customers to begin integrating into their own chip designs, with both the individual CPU core designs as well as the larger Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS) available. Between the various combinations of IP configurations, Arm is looking to offer something for everyone, and especially chip designers who are looking to integrate ready-made IP for a quick turnaround in developing their own chips.

With that said, it should be noted that today’s announcement is also a lighter one than what we’ve come to expect from previous Neoverse announcements. Arm isn’t releasing any of the deep architectural details on the new Neoverse platforms today, so while we have the high-level details on the hardware and some basic performance estimates, the underlying details on the CPU cores and their related plumbing is something Arm is keeping to themselves until a later time.

This morning, Intel is set to provide updates on its foundry business (IFS) and process roadmap at its IFS Direct Connect event in Santa Clara. Intel is expected to unveil plans for how the company will transform the foundry industry and how it is set to become the world's first and only fully integrated systems foundry in the AI space. Led by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Stuart Pann, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel Foundry Services, both will deliver the event's opening keynote. Expected guests throughout the keynote include Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, Gina Raimondo, the US Secretary of Commerce, and Satya Nadella, the Chairman and CEO of Microsoft.

Join us at 8:30 am PT/16:30 pm UTC.

Alphacool, a renowned name in the realm of PC cooling solutions, recently launched their Apex Stealth Metal series of cooling fans. Prior to their launch, the new fans had amassed a significant amount of hype in the PC community, in part because of the unfortunate misconception that the entire fan would be made out of metal.

Regardless of whether they're made entirely out of metal or not, however, these fans are notable for their unique construction, combining a metallic frame with plastic parts that are decoupled from the metal. This design choice not only contributes to the fan's aesthetic appeal but also plays a role in its operational efficiency.

The series includes two distinct models, the Apex Stealth Metal 120 mm and the Apex Stealth Metal Power 120 mm, distinguished primarily by their maximum rotational speeds. The former reaches up to 2000 RPM, while the latter, designed for more demanding applications, can achieve a remarkable 3000 RPM. Available in four color options – White, Matte Black, Chrome, and Gold – these fans offer a blend of style and functionality, making them a versatile choice for various PC builds.

Crucial is unveiling the latest addition to its Gen5 consumer NVMe SSD lineup today - the T705 PCIe 5.0 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. It takes over flagship duties from the Crucial T700 released last year. The company has been putting focus on the high-end consumer SSD segment in the last few quarters. The T700 was one of the first to offer more than 12 GBps read speeds, and the T705 being launched today is one of the first drives available for purchase in the 14+ GBps read speeds category.

The Crucial T705 utilizes the same platform as the T700 from last year - Phison's E26 controller with Micron's B58R 232L 3D TLC NAND. The key difference is the B58R NAND operating at 2400 MT/s in the new T705 (compared to the 2000 MT/s in the T700). Micron's 232L NAND process has now matured enough for the company to put out 2400 MT/s versions with enough margins. Similar to the T700, this drive is targeted towards gamers, content creators, and professional users as well as data-heavy AI use-cases.

The move to 2400 MT/s NAND has allowed Crucial to claim an increase in the performance of the drive in all four corners - up to 20% faster random writes, and 18% higher sequential reads. Additionally, Crucial also claims more bandwidth in a similar power window for the new drive.

The T705 is launching in three capacities - 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. Both heatsink and non-heatsink versions are available. Crucial is also offering a white heatsink limited edition for the 2TB version. This caters to users with white-themed motherboards that are increasingly gaining market presence.

Phison has been pushing DirectStorage optimizations in its high-end controllers, and it is no surprise that the T705 advertises the use of Phison's 'I/O+ Technology' to appeal to gamers. Given its high-performance nature, it is no surprise that the E26 controller needs to be equipped with DRAM for managing the flash translation layer (FTL). Crucial is using Micron LPDDR4 DRAM (1GB / TB of flash) in the T705 for this purpose.

Crucial is confident that the supplied passive heatsink is enough to keep the T705 from heavy throttling under extended use. The firmware throttling kicks in at 81C and protective shutdown at 90C. Flash pricing is not quite as low as it was last year, and the 2400 MT/s flash allows Micron / Crucial to place a premium on the product. At the 4TB capacity point, the drive can be purchased for as low as 18¢/GB, but the traditional 1TB and 2TB ones go for 20 - 26 ¢/GB depending on the heatsink option.

There are a number of Gen5 consumer SSDs slated to appear in the market over the next few months using the same 2400 MT/s B58R 3D TLC NAND and Phison's E26 controller (Sabrent's Rocket 5 is one such drive). The Crucial / Micron vertical integration on the NAND front may offer some advantage for the T705 when it comes to the pricing aspect against such SSDs. That said, the Gen5 consumer SSD market is still in its infancy with only one mass market (Phison E26) controller in the picture. The rise in consumer demand for these high-performance SSDs may coincide with other vendors such as Innogrit (with their IG5666) and Silicon Motion (with their SM2508) gaining traction. Currently, Crucial / Micron (with their Phison partnership) is the only Tier-1 vendor with a high-performance consumer Gen5 SSD portfolio, and the T705 cements their leadership position in the category further.

The United States Department of Commerce and GlobalFoundires announced on Monday that the US will be awarding GlobalFoundries with $1.5 billion in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act. The latest domestic chip fab to receive money under the act, GlobalFoundries's funding will be spent to upgrade company's New York and Vermont fabs as well as build a brand-new fab module. In addition, GlobalFoundries is set to get $600+ million funding from the state of New York to support its expansion and modernization efforts over the next 10 years.

"These proposed investments, along with the investment tax credit (ITC) for semiconductor manufacturing, are central to the next chapter of the GlobalFoundries story and our industry," said Dr. Thomas Caulfield, president and CEO of GlobalFoundries. "They will also play an important role in making the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem more globally competitive and resilient and cements the New York Capital Region as a global semiconductor hub. With new onshore capacity and technology on the horizon, as an industry we now need to turn our attention to increasing the demand for U.S.-made chips, and to growing our talented U.S. semiconductor workforce."

There are three projects that GlobalFoundries is set to fund using the direct subsidies in the coming quarters.

First up, the company plans to expand its Fab 8 in Malta, NY, and enable it to build chips for automotive industry on technologies already adopted by its sites in Germany and Singapore. This expansion is crucial for meeting the increasing demand for chips by the transforming automotive industry. Furthermore, the project will diversify GF's flagship Malta fab into different technologies and end markets, which is something that will ensure its utilization going forward.

In addition to the Malta expansion, GlobalFoundries plans to construct a new state-of-the-art fab (or rather a module) on the same campus. This new facility aims to meet the anticipated demand for U.S.-made essential chips across a wide range of markets, including automotive, aerospace, defense, and AI. The construction of this new fab, along with the expansion of the existing production facility, is expected to triple Malta's current capacity over the next decade, with a projected increase in wafer production to one million per year.

Finally, GlobalFoundries plans modernization of its Essex Junction, Vermont facility focuses on upgrading existing infrastructure and expanding capacity. This project will also establish the first U.S. facility capable of high-volume manufacturing of next-generation gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. These chips are vital for various applications, including electric vehicles, datacenters. power grids, and communication technologies.

In general, GlobalFoundries's investment plan exceeds $12 billion across its two U.S. sites over the next decade, supported by public-private partnerships with federal and state governments and strategic ecosystem partners. According to the company, this investment is expected to generate over 1,500 manufacturing jobs and approximately 9,000 construction jobs, which the company is promoting as contributing significantly to the local economy.

The funding and expansion efforts by GlobalFoundries, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Commerce and New York State, are aimed at enhancing the competitiveness and resilience of the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem. These initiatives also underscore the contract chipmaker's commitment to sustainable operations and workforce development, aligning with the company's strategic goals to strengthen the semiconductor talent pipeline and support the growing demand for U.S.-made chips.

AMD, Qualcomm, General Motors, and Lockheed Martin welcomed the grants and highlighted importance of the U.S. semiconductor supply chain for emerging applications like software defined vehicles and autonomous vehicles as well as global trends like 5G, AI, HPC, and edge computing.

Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, GlobalFoundries

When GlobalFoundries abandoned development of its 7 nm-class process technology in 2018 and refocused on specialty process technologies, it ceased pathfinding, research, and development of all technologies related to bleeding-edge sub-10nm nodes. At the time, this was the correct (and arguably only) move for the company, which was bleeding money and trailing behind both TSMC and Samsung in the bleeding-edge node race. But in the competitive fab market, that trade-off for reduced investment was going to eventually have consequences further down the road, and it looks like those consequences are finally starting to impact the company. In a recent earnings call, GlobalFoundries disclosed that some of the company's clients are leaving for other foundries, as they adopt sub-10nm technologies faster than GlobalFoundries expected.

"Our communications infrastructure and data center segment continued to show weakness through 2023, partly due to the prolonged channel digestion of wireless and wired infrastructure inventory levels across our customers, as well as the accelerated node migration of data center, and digital-centric customers to single-digit nanometers," said Tom Caulfield, chief executive of GlobalFoundries, at the company's earnings call with financial analysts and investors (via SeekingAlpha).

There are four key reasons why companies migrate to 'single-digit nanometers' (e.g., 5 nm, 7 nm): they want to get higher performance, they want to get lower power, they want to reduce their costs by reducing die size, and most often, they want a combination of all three factors. There could be other reasons too, such as support for lower voltages or necessity to reduce form-factor. For now, the best node that GlobalFoundries has to offer is its 12LP+ fabrication process which is substantially better than its 12LP and 14LPP process technologies and should be comparable to 10nm-class nodes of other foundries.

Meanwhile, based on characteristics of 12LP+ demonstrated by GlobalFoundries, it cannot really compete against 7nm-class process technologies in terms of transistor density, performance, and power. Assuming that TSMC or Samsung Foundry offer competitive prices for their 7 nm-class nodes, at least some of 12LP+ customers are probably inclined to use 7 nm fabrication technologies instead, which is what GlobalFoundries confirms.

"We are actively [watching] these industry trends and executing opportunities to remake some of our excess capacity to serve this demand in more durable and growing segments such as automotive, and smart mobile devices," Caulfield said.

Back in 2022, communication infrastructure and datacenter revenue accounted for 18% of the company's earnings, but in 2023, that share dropped to 12%. Shares of PC and smart mobile devices declined from 4% and 46% in 2022 to 3% and 41%, respectively. Meanwhile the share of automotive-related revenue increased from 5% in 2022 to 14% in 2023, which is a reason for optimism as GlobalFoundries expects automotive growth to offset declines of other applications that transit from 12LP+ to newer nodes.

"[Automotive] products span the breadth of our portfolio from 12 LP+, our FinFET platform, all the way through our expanded voltage handling capabilities at a 130 nm and a 180 nm technologies," said Caulfield. "Through these offerings, we believe that GF will play a key role in the long-term transition of the automotive industry, and our customer partnerships are central to that.

GlobalFoundries revenue topped $7.392 billion for the whole year 2023, down from $8.108 billion in 2022 due to inventory adjustments by some customers and migration of others to different foundries and nodes. Meanwhile, the company remained profitable and earned $1.018 billion, down from $1.446 billion a year before.

ASML began to ship its first High-NA lithography tool to Intel late last year ,and the machine will be fully assembled in Oregon in the coming months. Shipping only a single extreme ultraviolet (EUV) system with a 0.55 numerical aperture lens may not seem like too impressive, but the company aims to ship a much larger number of such devices this year, and further production increases in the coming years.

ASML did not disclose how many High-NA EUV litho tools it plans to ship this year, but the company has already announced that it had obtained orders for these machines from all leading makers of logic chips (Intel, Samsung Foundry, TSMC) and memory (Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix), and that the total number currently stands between 10 and 20 systems. Essentially, this means that High-NA EUV will be widely used. But the question is when.

ASML's High-NA EUV Twinscan EXE lithography systems are the company's next-generation flagship production tools that will enable chipmakers to decrease critical dimensions of chips to 8nm in a single exposure, a substantial improvement over 13nm offered by today's Low-NA EUV Twinscan NXE. But that improvement comes at a cost. Each Twinscan EXE costs €350 million ($380 million), which is over two times more than the price of a Twinscan NXE (€170 million, $183 million).

The steep price tag of the new tools has led to debates on its immediate economic feasibility as it is still possible to print 8nm features using Low-NA tools, albeit using double patterning, which is a more expensive and yield-impacting technique. For example, Intel is expected to insert High-NA EUV lithography into its production flow for its post-18A fabrication process (1.8 nm-class) sometimes in 2026 – 2027, whereas analysts from China Renaissance believe that TSMC only intends to start using these tools for its 1 nm-class production node sometime in 2030. Other industry analysts, like Jeff Koch from Semianalysis, also believe that the broader adoption of these high-cost machines might not occur until it becomes economically sensible, anticipated around 2030-2031.

Nevertheless, ASML executives, including chief executive Peter Wennink, argue that elimination of double patterning by High-NA EUV machines will provide enough advantages — such as process simplification and potentially shorter production cycle — to deploy them sooner than analysts predict, around 2026-2027.

Having secured between 10 and 20 orders for the High NA EUV machines, ASML is preparing to increase its production capacity to meet the demand for 20 units annually by 2028. That said, the uncertainties around other chipmakers' plans to use High-NA tools in the next two or three years raises concerns about potential overcapacity in the near term as ASML ramps up production.

Sources: Bloomberg, Reuters

For established PC peripheral vendors, the biggest challenge in participating in the highly commoditized market is setting themselves apart from their numerous competitors. As designs for coolers and other peripherals have converged over the years into a handful of basic, highly-optimized designs, developing novel hardware for what is essentially a "solved" physics problem becomes harder and harder. So often then, we see vendors focus on adding non-core features to their hardware, such as RGB lighting and other aesthetics. But every now and then, we see a vendor go a little farther off of the beaten path with the physical design of their coolers.

Underscoring this point – and the subject of today's review – is Enermax's latest all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler, the LiqMaxFlo 360mm. Designed to compete in the top-tier segment of the cooling market, Enermax has opted to play with the physics of their 360mm cooler a bit by making it 38mm thick, about 40% thicker than the industry average of 27mm. And while Enermax is hardly the first vendor to release a thick AIO cooler, they are in much more limited company here due to the design and compatibility trade-offs that come with using a thicker cooler – trade-offs that most other vendors opt to avoid.

The net result is that the LiqMaxFlo 360mm gets to immediately start off as differentiated from so many of the other 360mm coolers on the market, employing a design that can give Enermax an edge in cooling performance, at least so long as the cooler fits in a system. Otherwise, not resting on just building a bigger cooler, Enermax has also equipped the LiqMaxFlo 360mm with customizable RGB lighting, allowing it to also cater to the aesthetic preferences of modern advanced PC builders. All together, there's a little something for everyone with the LiqMaxFlo 360mm – and a lot of radiator to cram into a case. So let's get started.

With its highly successful A100 and H100 processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications, NVIDIA dominates AI datacenter deployments these days. But among large cloud service providers as well as emerging devices like software defined vehicles (SDVs) there is a global trend towards custom silicon. And, according to a report from Reuters, NVIDIA is putting together a new business unit to take on the custom chip market.

The new business unit will reportedly be led by vice president Dina McKinney, who has a wealth of experience from working at AMD, Marvell, and Qualcomm. The new division aims to address a wide range of sectors including automotive, gaming consoles, data centers, telecom, and others that could benefit from tailored silicon solutions. Although NVIDIA has not officially acknowledged the creation of this division, McKinney’s LinkedIn profile as VP of Silicon Engineering reveals her involvement in developing silicon for 'cloud, 5G, gaming, and automotive,' hinting at the broad scope of her alleged business division.

Nine unofficial sources across the industry confirmed to Reuters the existence of the division, but NVIDIA has remained tight-lipped, only discussing its 2022 announcement regarding implementation of its networking technologies into third-party solutions. According to Reuters, NVIDIA has initiated discussions with leading tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, to investigate the potential for developing custom chips. This hints that NVIDIA intends to extend its offerings beyond the conventional off-the-shelf datacenter and gaming products, embracing the growing trend towards customized silicon solutions.

While using NVIDIA's A100 and H100 processors for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) instances, major cloud service providers (CSPs) like Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft are also advancing their custom processors to meet specific AI and general computing needs. This strategy enables them to cut costs as well as tailor capabilities and power consumption of their hardware to their particular needs. As a result, while NVIDIA's AI and HPC GPUs remain indispensable for many applications, an increasing portion of workloads now run on custom-designed silicon, which means lost business opportunities for NVIDIA. This shift towards bespoke silicon solutions is widespread and the market is expanding quickly. Essentially, instead of fighting custom silicon trend, NVIDIA wants to join it.

Meanwhile, analysts are painting the possibility of an even bigger picture. Well-known GPU industry observer Jon Peddie Research notes that they believe that NVIDIA may be interested in addressing not only CSPs with datacenter offerings, but also consumer market due to huge volumes.

"NVIDIA made their loyal fan base in the consumer market which enabled them to establish the brand and develop ever more powerful processors that could then be used as compute accelerators," said JPR's president Jon Peddie. "But the company has made its fortune in the deep-pocked datacenter market where mission-critical projects see the cost of silicon as trivial to the overall objective. The consumer side gives NVIDIA the economy of scale so they can apply enormous resources to developing chips and the software infrastructure around those chips. It is not just CUDA, but a vast library of software tools and libraries."

Back in mid-2010s NVIDIA tried to address smartphones and tablets with its Tegra SoCs, but without much success. However, the company managed to secure a spot in supplying the application processor for the highly-successful Nintendo Switch console, and certainly would like expand this business. The consumer business allows NVIDIA to design a chip and then sell it to one client for many years without changing its design, amortizing the high costs of development over many millions of chips.

"NVIDIA is of course interested in expanding its footprint in consoles – right now they are supplying the biggest selling console supplier, and are calling on Microsoft and Sony every week to try and get back in," Peddie said. "NVIDIA was in the first Xbox, and in PlayStation 3. But AMD has a cost-performance advantage with their APUs, which NVIDIA hopes to match with Grace. And since Windows runs on Arm, NVIDIA has a shot at Microsoft. Sony's custom OS would not be much of a challenge for NVIDIA."

The global semiconductor industry saw its sales dropped around $47 billion to nearly $527 billion in 2023, according to estimations by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This was a sharp downturn from the record 2022, but good news is that sales picked up significantly in the second half of the year, showing signs of a strong recovery and positive expectations for the future.

"Global semiconductor sales were sluggish early in 2023 but rebounded strongly during the second half of the year, and double-digit market growth is projected for 2024," said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. "With chips playing a larger and more important role in countless products the world depends on, the long-term outlook for the semiconductor market is extremely strong."

As far as sales of chips across different parts of the world are concerned, Europe was the only region that saw an increase in sales, growing by 4%. Other regions did not perform this well: sales of chips in the Americas declined by 5.2%, Japan declined by 3.1%, and China experienced the biggest drop at 14%, according to the SIA.

"Advancing government policies that invest in R&D, strengthen the semiconductor workforce, and reduce barriers to trade will help the industry continue to grow and innovate for many years to come," Neuffer said.

Graphs generated by DALL-E/OpenAI based on data from the SIA

A recall on 12VHPWR angled adapters from CableMod has reached its next stage this week, with the publication of a warning document from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Referencing the original recall for CableMods' V1.0 and V1.1 adapters, which kicked off back in December, the CPSC notice marks the first involvement of government regulators. And with that has come to light a bit more detail on just how big the recall is overall, along with an estimated failure rate for the adapters of a hair over 1%.

According to the CPSC notice, CableMod is recalling 25,300 adapters, which were sold between February, 2023, and December, 2023. Of those, at least 272 adapters failed, as per reports and repair claims made to CableMod. That puts the failure rate for the angled adapters at 1.07% – if not a bit higher due to the underreporting that can happen with self-reported statistics. All told, the manufacturer has received at least $74,500 in property damage claims in the United States, accounting for the failed adapters themselves, as well as the video card and anything else damaged in the process.

As part of the recall, CableMod has asked owners of its angled 12VHPWR adapters V1.0 and V1.1 to stop using them immediately, and to destroy them to prevent future use. Buyers can opt for a full refund of $40, or a $60 store credit.

It is noteworthy that, despite the teething issues with the initial design of the 12VHPWR connector – culminating with the PCI-SIG replacing it with the upgraded 12V-2x6 standard – the issue with the CableMod adapters is seemingly distinct from those larger design flaws. Specifically, CableMod's recall cites issues with the male portion of their adapters, which was not altered in the 12V-2x6 update. Compared to 12VHPWR, 12V-2x6 only alters female plugs (such as those found on video cards themselves), calling for shorter sensing pins and longer conductor terminals. Male plugs, on the other hand, remain unchanged, which is why existing PSU cables made for the 12VHPWR remain compatible (and normally safe) with 12V-2x6 video cards. Though as cable mating is a two-way dance, it's unlikely having to plug into inadequate 12VHPWR female connectors did CableMod any favors here.

Sources: Consumer Product Safety Commission, HotHardware, CableMod

Minisforum has formally announced its V3, one of the industry's first AMD Ryzen 7 8840U-based hybrid PCs that can serve as a tablet, a laptop, and an external display, which is why the company positions it as a '3-in-1' system. As the machine packs an eight-core CPU, it may offer the performance of some mid-range laptops. Meanwhile, despite being a 'tablet,' it has two USB4 ports and an SD card reader, a rare feature for this class of devices.

The Minisforum V3 is closer to a classic laptop than a tablet, but this happens often. The system features a 14-inch detachable multitouch display with a 2560×1600 resolution, a 500 nits brightness, a 165 Hz refresh rate (which will undoubtedly be appreciated by gamers), and a stylus support that measures 323.26×219×9.8 mm and weighs 946 grams without the keyboard. The device is made of die-cast magnesium alloy and packs all the common sensors and features for tablets, such as a 5MP rear and 2MP front camera, gyroscopes, and a fingerprint reader.

The Minisforum V3 is powered by AMD's Ryzen 7 8840U (8C/16T, 3.30 GHz – 5.10 GHz, up to 28W) with built-in Radeon 780M graphics (768 stream processors) and is mated to up to 32 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory as well as an up to 2 TB M.2-2280 SSD with a PCIe interface. To ensure consistent performance under high loads, Minisforum squeezed a cooling system into the tablet with four copper tubes and two fans, a rare feature. 

When it comes to connectivity, the Minisforum V3 comes with a Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth 5.3 adapter, two USB4 ports, a V-Link connector (a USB-C that acts like a DisplayPort In), a UHS-II SD card reader, and a 3.5-mm jack for headsets. Thanks to the V-Link connector, Minisforum's V3 can act like a tablet and a laptop and as a display for another notebook.

Minisforum V3 comes with an integrated 50 Wh battery, which is more or less in line with what some other thin-and-light 14-inch laptops offer. To easily balance between a long battery life and maximum performance, V3 has three power profiles, including power-saving mode (15W), balanced mode (18W – 22W), and high-performance (28W). Meanwhile, Minisforum does not estimate the actual battery life of the device for now.

Minisforum is expected to announce the pricing of its V3 hybrid PC next month.

Today we're looking at a all-in-one closed loop cooler from a face that's new to AnandTech: Geometric Future. Founded in 2020, Geometric Future is a PC components manufacturer with a goal of setting themselves apart in the crowded PC marketplace by redefining modern aesthetics. Their approach to design emphasizes the application of geometric elements and minimalist philosophy, as reflected in their slogan, "Simplify". They regard themselves as a potential future backbone in China's design industry, starting with a small step in the IT sector.

For such a new company, Geometric Future has already made significant strides in the realm of PC power and cooling products. One of their most notable products – and what we're reviewing today – is the Eskimo Junior 36, an all-in-one CPU liquid cooler available in 240mm and 360mm sizes. This cooler is designed with a minimalist aesthetic in mind, featuring a simplistic CPU block and equipped with high-performance Squama 2503 fans. Geometric Future pitches the Eskimo Junior 36 as being engineered to provide an optimal balance of cooling efficiency and aesthetics, making it able to achieve excellent cooling capabilities while maintaining low noise levels.

But marketing claims aside, we shall see where it stands in today’s highly competitive market in this review.

Patriot has formally introduced its first solid-state drives featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at demanding users. The Viper PV553 SSD uses the company's all-new active cooling system boasting an aluminum radiator, a blower fan, and a special heat shield that promises to ensure the best possible cooling for consistent performance under high workloads.

Set to be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations, Patriot's Viper PV553 uses Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory and we presume Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as Patriot is a loyal partner of the Taiwan-based SSD controller developer.

As for performance, Patriot rates its 2 TB and 4 TB PV553 for sequential read/write speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s as well as up to 1.4 million random 4K read and write IOPS. Meanwhile, the 1 TB model is slightly slower and offers read/write speeds of up to 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s as well as up to 1.3/1.4 million read/write IOPS.

The drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are compatible with desktops that have sufficient space inside as Patriot's Viper PV553 SSDs are equipped with quite an extraordinary cooling system to take away 11W of thermal power that they can dissipate. The cooler (which features a 16.5 mm z-height) employs a rather big aluminum radiator that covers both the controller and memory chips, a blower fan, thermal pads on both sides of the drive, and an aluminum casing — which the company calls heat shield — that directs air produced by the fan through the radiator's fins to maximize cooling performance.

The extensive cooling is supposed to ensure that Patriot's Viper PV553 drives sustains performance even under severe workloads. In fact, Patriot says that the cooler ensures that the drive maintains temperature at about 45ºC in normal room temperature conditions.

Meanwhile, PV553 SSDs are not Patriot's fastest drives. Recently the company demonstrated its Viper PV573 SSDs that use Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and offer a sequential read and write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. That drive will perhaps get more benefits from the new cooling system, but it will be available at a later date.

As it is always the case with Patriot's premium SSDs, the Viper PV553 drives are backed by a five-year warranty and are guaranteed to sustain 700, 1400, and 3000 terabytes to be written.

A German court has sided with R2 Semiconductor against Intel, ruling that the chip giant infringed one of R2's patent. This decision could lead to sales ban of select Intel processors as well as products based on them in Germany. Intel, for its part, has accused R2 of being a patent troll wielding a low-quality patent, and has said that it will appeal the decision.

The regional court in Düsseldorf, Germany, ruled that Intel infringed a patent covering an integrated voltage regulator technology that belongs to Palo Alto, California-based R2 Semiconductor. The court on Wednesday issued an injunction against sales of Intel's Core-series 'Ice Lake,' 'Tiger Lake,' 'Alder Lake,' and Xeon Scalable 'Ice Lake Server' processors as well as PCs and servers based on these CPUs. Some of these processors have already been discontinued, but there are Alder Lake chips are available in retail and inside many systems that are still on the shelves. Though the ruling does not mean that these CPUs will disappear from the German market immediately.

Meanwhile, the injunction does not cover Intel's current-generation Core 'Raptor Lake' and Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' processors for desktops and laptops, according to The Financial Times, so the impact of the injunction is set to be fairly limited.

Intel has expressed its disappointment with the verdict and announced its intention to challenge the decision. The company criticized R2 Semiconductor's litigation strategy, accusing it of pursuing serial lawsuits against big companies, particularly after Intel managed to invalidate one of R2's U.S. patents.

"R2 files serial lawsuits to extract large sums from innovators like Intel," a statement by Intel reads. "R2 first filed suit against Intel in the U.S., but after Intel invalidated R2's low-quality U.S. patent R2 shifted its campaign against Intel to Europe. Intel believes companies like R2, which appears to be a shell company whose only business is litigation, should not be allowed to obtain injunctions on CPUs and other critical components at the expense of consumers, workers, national security, and the economy."

In its lawsuit against Intel, R2 requested the court to halt sales of infringing processors, sales of products equipped with these CPUs, and to mandate a recall of items containing these processors, as Intel revealed last September. The company contended that imposing an injunction would be an excessive response.

Meanwhile, it is important to note that in this legal battle Intel is safeguarding its customers by assuming responsibility for any legal expenses or compensations they may incur. Consequently, as of September, Intel was unable to provide a reliable estimate of the possible financial impact or the scope of potential losses that could result from the legal battle as they can be vast.

In a stark contrast with Intel, R2 welcomes the court's decisions and presents the company's own view on the legal dispute.

"We are delighted that the highly respected German court has issued an injunction and unequivocally found that Intel has infringed R2's patents for integrated voltage regulators," said David Fisher, CEO of R2. "We intend to enforce this injunction and protect our valuable intellectual property. The global patent system is here precisely for the purpose of protecting inventors like myself and R2 Semiconductor."

R2 claims that Intel planned to invest in R2 in 2015, about two years after the company first brought its Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator (FIVR) technology to market with its 4^th Generation Core 'Haswell' processors, but then abandoned talks.

"R2 has been a semiconductor IP developer, similar to Arm and Rambus, for more than 15 years," Fisher said. "Intel is intimately familiar with R2's business — in fact, the companies were in the final stages of an investment by Intel into R2 in 2015 when Intel unilaterally terminated the process. R2 had asked if a technical paper Intel had just published about their approach to their FIVR technology, which had begun shipping in their chips, was accurate. The next and final communication was from Intel's patent counsel. That was when it became clear to me that Intel was using R2's patented technology in their chips without attribution or compensation."

The head of R2 states that Intel is the only company that R2 has ever sued, which contradicts Intel's R2 accusation of being a patent troll.

"That is how these lawsuits emerged, and Intel is the only entity R2 has ever accused of violating its patents," Fisher stated. "It is unsurprising but disappointing that Intel continues to peddle its false narratives rather than taking responsibility for its repeated and chronic infringement of our patents."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Tuesday formally announced plans to build a second fab in Japan. The fab will be run by Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), a majority-owned TSMC subsidiary, and will make chips on 6 nm and 7 nm-class process technologies, which will make it the most advanced semiconductor production facility for logic chips in Japan.

JASM is currently gearing up to start operating its first fab in Japan. This semiconductor production facility — set to be formally opened on February 24 — will be able to process up to 55,000 300-mm wafer starts per month (WSPM) using TSMC's 40 nm, 28 nm, 22 nm, 16 nm, and 12 nm-class process technologies. This fab is set to serve needs of JASM's minor investors, such as Sony, Toyota, and Denso, and other Japanese companies, such as automakers.

The new N6 and N7-capable fab will be located adjacent to JASM's upcoming fab in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. This facility will increase capacity of the site to over 100,000 300-mm wafer starts per month when it begins operations by the end of calendar 2027, according to TSMC. Capacity of the fab may be adjusted based on demand and other factors.

The initial Fab 23 that is coming online in the coming weeks or months was designed to address needs of Japanese companies like Sony and Toyota and ensure that they do not run into shortages of various commodity chips vital for their products yet not requiring advanced process technologies. The second fab, which is set to adopt 6 nm and 7 nm class process technologies will be able to produce considerably more sophisticated processors and will bring these production nodes for the first time in Japan. Essentially, the announcement of the new fab indicates that JASM is poised to slowly by surely catch up with TSMC's leading-edge fabs in Japan.

To build the new fab, owners of JASM will invest additional money in the venture and their total investments in the site will exceed $20 billion with 'strong support from the Japanese government,' TSMC said. As a result, JASM will be able to produce chips for a wide range of applications, including automotive, industrial, consumer and HPC-related applications.

Under the new investment agreement JASM's ownership will be divided as follows: TSMC will hold the largest stake at 86.5%, followed by SSS at 6.0%, DENSO at 5.5%, and Toyota at 2.0%.

One area of AMD's product portfolio that doesn't get as much attention as the desktop and server parts is their Embedded platform. AMD's Embedded series has been important for on-the-edge devices, including industrial, automotive, healthcare, digital gaming machines, and thin client systems. Today, AMD has unveiled their latest Embedded architecture, Embedded+, which combines their Ryzen Embedded processors based on the Zen+ architecture with their Versal adaptive SoCs onto a single board.

The Embedded+ architecture integrates the capabilities of their Ryzen Embedded processors with their Versal AI Edge adaptive SoCs onto one packaged board. AMD targets key areas that require good computational power and power efficiency. This synergy enables Embedded+ to handle AI inferencing and manage complex sensor data in real-time, which is crucial for applications in dynamic and demanding environments.

Giving ODMs the ability to have both Ryzen Embedded and their Versal SoCs onto a single board is particularly beneficial for industries requiring low-latency response times between hardware and software, including autonomous vehicles, diagnostic equipment in healthcare, and precision machinery in industrial automation. The AMD Embedded+ architecture can also support various workloads across different processor types, including x86 and ARM, along with AI engines and FPGA fabric, which offers flexibility and scalability of embedded computing solutions within industries.

The Embedded+ platform from AMD offers plenty of compatibility with various sensor types and their corresponding interfaces. It facilitates direct connectivity with standard peripherals and industrial sensors through Ethernet, USB, and HDMI/DP interfaces. The AMD Ryzen Embedded processors within the architecture can handle inputs from traditional image sensors such as RGB, monochrome, and even advanced neuromorphic types while supporting industry-standard image sensor interfaces like MIPI and LVDS.

Further enhancing its capability, the AMD Versal AI Edge adaptive SoCs on the Embedded+ motherboard offer adaptable I/O options for real-time sensor input and industrial networking. This includes interfacing with LiDAR, RADAR, and other delicate and sophisticated sensors necessary for modern embedded systems in the industrial, medical, and automotive sectors. The platform's support for various product-level sensor interfaces, such as GMSL and Ethernet-based vision protocols, means it is designed and ready for integration into complex, sensor-driven systems.

AMD has also announced a new pre-integrated solution, which will be available for ODMs starting today. The Sapphire Technology VPR-4616-MB platform is a compact, Mini-ITX form factor motherboard that leverages the AMD Versal AI Edge 2302 SoC combined with an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 processor, which is based on Zen+ and has 4C/4T with 6 Radeon Vega compute units. It features a custom expansion connector for I/O boards, supporting a wide array of connectivity options, including dual DDR4 SO-DIMM slots with up to 64 GB capacity, one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, and one SATA port for conventional HDDs and SSDs, The VPR-4616-MB also has a good array of networking capabilities including 2.5 Gb Ethernet and an M.2 Key E 2230 PCIe x1 slot for a wireless interface. It also supports the Linux-based Ubuntu 22.04 operating system.

Also announced is a series of expansion boards that significantly broaden support for the Embedded+ architecture. The Octo GMSL Camera I/O board is particularly noteworthy for its ability to interface with multiple cameras simultaneously. It is undoubtedly suitable for high bandwidth vision-based systems, integral to sectors such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and automated surveillance systems. These systems often require the integration of numerous image inputs for real-time processing and analysis, and the Octo GMSL board is engineered to meet this demand specifically.

Additionally, a dual Ethernet I/O board is available, capable of supporting 10/100/1000 Mb connections, catering to environments that demand high-speed network communications. The Dual 10 Gb SFP+ board has 16 GPIOs for even higher bandwidth requirements, providing ample data transfer rates for tasks like real-time video streaming and large-scale sensor data aggregation. These expansion options broaden the scope of what the Embedded+ architecture is capable of in an edge and industrial scenario.

The Sapphire VPR-4616-MB is available for customers to purchase now and in a complete system configuration, including storage, memory, power supply, and chassis.

Gallery: AMD Embedded+ Architecture Slide Deck

Global client PC CPU shipments hit 66 million units in the fourth quarter of 2024, up both sequentially and year-over-year, a notable upturn in the PC processor market, according to the latest report from Jon Peddie Research. The data indicates that PC makers have depleted their CPU stocks and returned to purchases of processors from Intel during the quarter. This might also highlight that PC makers now have an optimistic business outlook.

AMD, Intel, and other suppliers shipped 66 million processors for client PCs during the fourth quarter of 2023, a 7% increase from the previous quarter (62 million) and a 22% rise from the year before (54 million). Despite a challenging global environment, the CPU market is showing signs of robust health.

70% of client PC CPUs sold in Q4 2023 were aimed at notebooks, which is up significantly from 63% represented by laptop CPUs in Q4 2022. Indeed, notebook PCs have been outselling desktop computers for years, so, unsurprisingly, the industry shipped more laptop-bound processors than desktop-bound CPUs. What is perhaps surprising is that the share of desktop CPUs in Q4 2022 shipments was 37%.

"Q4's increase in client CPU shipments from last quarter is positive news in what has been depressing news in general," said Jon Peddie, president of JPR. "The increase in upsetting news in the Middle East, combined with the ongoing war in Ukraine, the trade war with China, and the layoffs at many organizations, has been a torrent of bad news despite decreased inflation and increased GDP in the U.S. CPU shipments are showing continued gains and are a leading indicator."

Meanwhile, integrated graphics processors (iGPUs) also grew, with shipments reaching 60 million units, up by 7% quarter-to-quarter and 18% year-over-year. Because the majority of client CPUs now feature a built-in GPU in one form or another, it is reasonable to expect shipments of iGPUs to grow along with shipments of client CPUs. 

Jon Peddie Research predicts that iGPUs will dominate the PC segment, with their penetration expected to skyrocket to 98% within the next five years. This forecast may point to a future where integrated graphics become ubiquitous, though we would not expect discrete graphics cards to be extinct. 

Meanwhile, the server CPU segment painted a different picture in Q4 2023, with a modest 2.8% growth from the previous quarter but a significant 26% decline year-over-year, according to JPR. 

Despite these challenges, the overall positive momentum in the CPU market, as reported by Jon Peddie Research, suggests a sector that is adapting and thriving even amidst economic and geopolitical uncertainties.

NVIDIA today is quietly launching a new entry-level graphics card for the retail market, the GeForce RTX 3050 6GB. Based on a cut-down version of their budget Ampere-architecture GA107 GPU, the new card brings what was previously an OEM-only product to the retail market. Besides adding another part to NVIDIA's deep product stack, the launch of the RTX 3050 6GB also comes with another perk: lower power consumption thanks to this part targeting system installs where an external PCIe power connector would not be needed. NVIDIA's partners, in turn, have not wasted any time in taking advantage of this, and today Palit is releasing its first fanless KalmX board in years: the GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB.

The GeForce RTX 3050 6GB is based on the GA107 graphics processor with 2304 CUDA cores, which is paired with 6GB of GDDR6 attached to a petite 96-bit memory bus (versus 128-bit for the full RTX 3050 8GB). Coupled with a boost clock rating of just 1470 MHz, the RTX 3050 6GB delivers tangibly lower compute performance than the fully-fledged RTX 3050 — 6.77 FP32 TFLOPS vs 9.1 FP32 TFLOPS — but these compromises offer an indisputable advantage: a 70W power target.

Palit is the first company that takes advantage of this reduced power consumption of the GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB, as the company has launched a passively cooled graphics card based on this part, the first in four years. The Palit GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB (NE63050018JE-1170H) uses a custom printed circuit board (PCB) that not only offers modern DisplayPort 1.4a and HDMI 2.1 outputs, but, as we still see in some entry-level cards, a dual-link DVI-D connector (a first for an Ampere-based graphics card).

The dual-slot passive cooling system with two heat pipes is certainly the main selling point of Palit's GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB. The product is pretty large though — it measures 166.3×137×38.3 mm — and will not fit into tiny desktops. Still, given the fact that fanless systems are usually not the most compact ones, this may not be a significant limitation of the new KalmX device.

Another advantage of Palit's GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB in particular and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3050 6GB in general is that it can be powered entirely via a PCIe slot, which eliminates the need for an auxiliary PCIe power connectors (which are sometimes not present in cheap systems from big OEMs).

Wccftech reports that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3050 6GB graphics cards will carry a recommended price tag of $169 and indeed these cards are available for $170 - $180. This looks to be a quite competitive price point as the product offers higher compute performance than that of AMD's Radeon RX 6400 ($125) and Radeon RX 6500 XT ($140). Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how much will Palit charge for its uniquely positioned GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB.

Earlier this week, we published our review of AMD's latest Zen 4 based APUs, the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G. While we saw much better gaming performance using the integrated graphics compared to the previous Ryzen 5000G series of APUs, including the Ryzen 7 5700G, the team over at Gamers Nexus has since highlighted an issue with Skin Temperature-Aware Power Management, or STAPM, for short. This particular issue is something we have investigated ourselves, and we can confirm that there is a throttling issue within the current firmware (at the time of writing) with AMD's Ryzen 8000G APUs.

First, it's essential to understand what the Skin Temperature-Aware Power Management (STAPM) feature is and what it does. Introduced by AMD in back 2014, STAPM is a key feature within their mobile processors. STAPM extends the on-die power management by considering the processor's internal temperatures taken by on-chip thermal diodes and the laptop's surface temperature (i.e. the skin temperature). The primary goal of STAPM is to prevent laptops from becoming uncomfortably warm for users, allowing the processor to actively throttle back its heat generation based on the thermal parameters between the chassis and the processor itself.

This is where things relate directly to AMD's Ryzen 8000G series APUs. The Ryzen 8000G series of APUs is based on AMD's Phoenix silicon, which is already in use in their Ryzen Mobile 7040/8040 chips. Which means all of AMD's initial engineering for the platform was for mobile devices, and then extended to the Ryzen 8000G desktop platform. Besides the obvious physical differences, the Ryzen 8000G APUs feature a much higher 65 W TDP (88W PPT) to reflect their desktop-focused operation, making these chips the least power constrained version of Phoenix to date.

The issue is that AMD has essentially 'forgotten' to disable these STAPM features within their firmware, causing both the Ryzen 8000G APUs' Zen 4 cores and RDNA3 integrated graphics to throttle after prolonged periods of sustained load. As we can see from our investigation of the issue, in F1 2023 at 720p High settings, within 3 minutes of playing, we saw a drop in power by around 22%, which will undoubtedly impact both CPU and the integrated graphics performance during prolonged periods.

This directly affects the data in our review of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G APUs, as the STAPM issues inherently mean that in very prolonged cases, the results may vary. Unfortunately, this issue apparently affects all AM5 motherboards and BIOSes currently available, so there's no way to properly run a Ryzen 8000G chip without STAPM throttling for the time being.

For the moment, we're putting a disclaimer on our Ryzen 8000G review, noting the issue. Once a fix is available from AMD, we'll be going back and re-testing the two chips we have to collect proper results, as well as to better quantify the performance impact of this unnecessary throttling.

Meanwhile, we reached out to AMD to confirm the issue officially, and a few minutes ago the company got back to us with a response.

"It has come to our attention that STAPM limits are being incorrectly applied to 8000 Series processors. This is causing them to drop their PPT limits under sustained load. We are working on a BIOS update to correct this behavior."

The fix that AMD will seemingly apply is through updated AGESA firmware, which, from their standpoint, should be simple in practice. Perhaps the biggest outstanding question is when this fix is coming, though we can't imagine AMD taking too long with this matter.

We must also thank Gamers Nexus for highlighting and providing additional context to the STAPM-related problems from which the Ryzen 8000G APUs suffer from. The video review from Gamers Nexus of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600 APU can be found above. Once a firmware fix has been provided, we will update our data set within our review of the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G.

As part of their quarterly earnings call this week, AMD re-emphasized that its Zen 5-architecture processors for both client and datacenter applications will be available this year. While the company is not making any new disclosured on products or providing a timeline beyond "later this year", the latest statement from AMD serves as a reiteration of AMD's plans, and confirmation that those plans are still on schedule.

So far, we have heard about three Zen 5-based products from AMD: the Strix Point accelerated processing units (APUs) for laptops (and perhaps eventually desktops), the Granite Ridge processors for enthusiast-grade desktops, and Turin CPUs for datacenters. During the conference call with analysts and investors, AMD's Lisa Su confirmed plans to launch Turin and Strix this year.

"Looking ahead, customer excitement for our upcoming Turin family of EPYC processors is very strong," said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, at the company's earnings call this week (via SeekingAlpha). "Turin is a drop-in replacement for existing 4th Generation EPYC platforms that extends our performance, efficiency and TCO leadership with the addition of our next-gen Zen 5 core, new memory expansion capabilities, and higher core counts."

The head of AMD also confirmed that Turin will be drop-in compatible with existing SP5 platforms (i.e., will come in an LGA 6096 package), feature more than 96 cores, and more memory expansion capabilities (i.e., enhanced support for CXL and perhaps support for innovative DIMMs). Meanwhile, the new CPUs will also offer higher per-core performance and higher performance efficiency.

AMD High Performance CPU Core Roadmap. From AMD Financial Analyst Day 2022

As far as Strix Point is concerned, Lisa Su confirmed that this is a Zen 5 part featuring an 'enhanced RDNA 3' graphics core (also known as Navi 3.5), and an updated neural processing unit.

"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," Su said. "Customer momentum for Strix is strong with the first notebooks on track to launch later this year."

It's notable that the head of AMD did not mention Granite Ridge CPUs foe enthusiast-grade desktops during the conference call. Though as desktop CPUs tend to have smaller margins than mobile or server parts, they are often AMD's least interesting products to investors. Despite that omission, AMD has always launched their consumer desktop chips ahead of their server chips – in part due to the longer validation times required on the latter – so Turin being confirmed for 2024 is still a positive sign for Granite Ridge.

As the first quarter of 2024 is already well underway, there's not been much in the way of launches since last year. Of particular note is AMD's launch of their Ryzen 8000G series APUs, which are based on their mobile silicon using the Zen 4 architecture. This release adds a different dynamic to the CPU market, with AMD building on their still popular Ryzen 5000G series of APUs, which still regularly feature as some of the best-selling CPUs on the market despite their age. With the Ryzen 7 8700G (8C/16T) and Ryzen 5 8600G (6C/12T), which we reviewed, AMD combines their Phoenix silicon with the latest Radeon RDNA3 integrated graphics into a desktop package designed for their AM5 platform.

Last year (October), we also saw Intel introduce their 14th Gen Core family, headlined by the Core i9-14900K with its impressive 6.0 GHz speed. AMD's Ryzen 7000 series continues to fiercely compete at the high end of the market, offering CPU enthusiasts and gamers on all budgets a wide range of processors to select from. The availability of processors, motherboards, and DDR5 memory remains strong at key retailers, ensuring that the current market is well-prepared to meet the high demand. As we go into 2024, the CPU market shows a somewhat strong and diverse outlook, with various options for consumers of all ilks.

While enthusiasts are now focused mostly on SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface, there are many people who will be just fine with drives featuring a PCIe 4.0 interface to upgrade their PlayStation 5 or PCs bought a few years ago. To address these customers, SSD makers need to offer something that offers the right balance between price and performance. This is exactly what Corsair does with its MP600 Elite devices.

Corsair this week has released a new line of SSDs aimed at the mainstream market, the MP600 Elite. The drives are based on Phison's low-power highly-integrated PS5027-E27T platform, which is geared towards building mainstream, DRAM-less drives. The controller supports both 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash via a four channel, Toggle 5.0/ONFi 5.0 interface, with data transfer rates up to 3600 MT/s. Meanwhile host connectivity is provided via a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

With its MP600 Elite SSDs, Corsair is not trying to offer the fastest PCIe Gen4 drives on the market, but rather attempts to offer the maximum value for 3D TLC-powered 1 TB, 2 TB as well as 4 TB configurations. The drives will offer sequential read performance of up to 7,000 MB/s and write performance of up to 6,500 MB/s, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K and 1,200K IOPS respectively, which is not bad for a PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

To maximize compatibility of its MP600 Elite drives (and make it compatible with Sony's PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Slim), Corsair offers them both with a tiny aluminum heatspreader and an even thinner graphene heatspreader.

The main idea behind the Corsair MP600 Elite is its affordability: it does not require DRAM or a sophisticated cooling system, which optimizes the manufacturer's costs. Meanwhile, Corsair offers 1 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $89.99 and 2 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $164.99 (whereas versions with an aluminum heatsink are $5 cheaper), which is not particularly cheap. For example, a faster Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2 TB costs $169.99.

Every drive is comes with a five-year warranty and can endure up to 1,200 terabytes written (TBW).

One of the most desired desktop chips designed for low-cost systems has been AMD's APUs or Accelerated Processing Units. The last time we saw AMD launch a series of APUs for desktops was back in 2021, with the release of their Cezanne-based Ryzen 5000G series, which combined Zen 3 cores with Radeon Vega-based integrated graphics. During CES 2024, AMD announced the successor to Cezanne, with new Phoenix-based APUs, aptly named the Ryzen 8000G series.

The latest Ryzen 8000G series is based on their mobile Phoenix architecture and has been refitted for AMD's AM5 desktop platform. Designed to give users and gamers on a budget a pathway to build a capable yet cheaper system without the requirement of a costly discrete graphics card hanging over their head, the Ryzen 8000G series consists of three SKUs, ranging from an entry-level Phoenix 2 based Zen 4 and Zen 4c hybrid chip, all the way to a full Zen 4 8C/16T model with AMD's latest mobile RDNA3 integrated graphics. 

The Ryzen 7 8700G with 8C/16T, 16 MB of L3 cache, and AMD's Radeon 780M graphics are sitting at the top of the pile. The other chip we're taking a look at today is the middle-of-the-road AMD Ryzen 5 8600G, which has a 6C/12T configuration with fully-fledged mobile Zen 4 cores, with a third option limited to just OEMs currently, with four cores, including one full Zen 4 core and three smaller and more efficient Zen 4c cores.

The other notable inclusion of AMD's Ryzen 8000G series is it brings their Ryzen AI NPU into the desktop market for the first time. It is purposely built for AI inferencing workloads such as Generative AI and is optimized and designed to be more efficient and improve AI performance.

Much of the onus on the capability of AMD's Ryzen 8000G series will be how much of an impact the switch to Zen 4 and RDNA3 integrated graphics commands over the Ryzen 5000G series with Zen 3 and Vega, which is already three years old at this point. The other element is how the mobile-based Phoenix Zen 4 cores compare to the full-fat Raphael Zen 4 cores. In our review and analysis of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G APUs, we aim to find out.

Virtually all client SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface released to date use Phison's PS5026-E26 controller. Apparently, TeamGroup decided to try something different and introduced a drive powered by a completely different platform, the Innogrit IG5666. The T-Force Ge Pro SSD not only uses an all-new platform, but it also boasts with fast 3D NAND to enable a sequential read speed of up to 14 GB/s, which almost saturates the PCIe 5.0 x4 bus.

TeamGroup's T-Force Ge Pro PCIe 5.0 SSDs will be among the first drives to use the Innogrit IG5666 controller, which packs multiple cores that can handle an LDPC ECC algorithm with a 4096-bit code length, features low power consumption, has eight NAND channels, is made on a 12 nm-class process technology, and has a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface. The drives will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations as well as will rely on high-performance 3D TLC NAND memory with a 2400 MT/s interface speed to guarantee maximum performance.

Indeed, 2 TB and 4TB T-Force Ge Pro drives are rated for an up to 14,000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as an up to 11,800 MB/s sequential write speed, which is in line with the highest-end SSDs based on the Phison E26 controller. Meanwhile, TeamGroup does not disclose random performance offered by these SSDs.

What is noteworthy is that to T-Force Ge Pro drives are equipped with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which is said to be enough to sustain such high-performance levels under loads. Usage of such a cooler makes it easy to fit a T-Force Ge Pro into almost any system, a major difference with many of Phison E26-based drives. Of course, only reviews will reveal whether such a cooling system is indeed enough to properly cool the SSDs, but the fact that TeamGroup decided to go with a thin cooler is notable.

TeamGroup is set to offer its T-Force Ge Pro SSDs with a five-year warranty. Amazon, Newegg, and Amazon Japan will start taking pre-orders on these drives on February 9, 2024. Prices are currently unknown.

Intel and UMC on Thursday said they had entered into an agreement to jointly to develop a 12 nm photolithography process for high-growth markets such as mobile, communication infrastructure, and networking. Under the terms of the deal, the two companies will co-design a 12 nm-class foundry node that Intel Foundry Services (IFS) will use at its fabs in Arizona to produce a variety of chips.

The new 12 nm manufacturing process will be developed in Arizona and used in Fabs 12, 22, and 32 at Intel's Ocotillo Technology Fabrication site in Arizona. The two companies will jointly work on the fabrication technology itself, process design kit (PDK), electronic design automation (EDA) tools, and intellectual properties (IP) solutions from ecosystem partners to enable quick deployment of the node by customers once the tech is production ready in 2027.

Intel's Fabs 12, 22, and 32 in Arizona are currently capable of making chips on Intel's 7nm-class, 10 nm, 14 nm, and 22 nm manufacturing processes. So as Intel rolls out its Intel 4, Intel 3, and Intel 20A/18A production at other sites and winds down production of Intel 7-based products, these Arizona fabs will be freed to produce chips on a variety of legacy and low-cost nodes, including the 12 nm fabrication process co-developed by UMC and Intel.

While Intel itself has a variety of highly-customized process technologies for internal use to produce its own CPUs and similar products, its IFS division essentially has only three: Intel 16 for cost-conscientious customers designing inexpensive low-power products (including those with RF support), Intel 3 for those who develop high-performance solutions yet want to stick to familiar FinFET transistors, and Intel 18A aimed at developers seeking for no-compromise performance and transistor density enabled by gate-all-around RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery. To be a major foundry player, three process technologies are not enough; IFS needs to address as many customers as possible, and this is where collaboration with UMC comes into play.

UMC already has hundreds of customers who develop a variety of products for automotive, consumer electronics, Internet-of-Things, smartphone, storage, and similar verticals. Those customers are quite used to working with UMC, but the best technology that the foundry has is its 14 nm-class 14FFC node. By co-designing a 12 nm-class process technology with Intel, UMC will be able to address customers who need something more advanced than its own 14 nm node, but without having to develop an all-new manufacturing process itself and procuring advanced fabs tools. Meanwhile, Intel gains customers for its fully depreciated (and presumably underutilized) fabs.

The collaboration on a 12 nm node extends the process technology offerings for both companies. What remains to be seen is whether Intel's own 16 nm-class process technology will compete and/or overlap with the jointly developed 12 nm node. To avoid this, we would expect UMC to add some of its know-how to the new tech and make it easier for customers to migrate to this process from its 28 nm-class and 14FFC offerings, which guarantees that the 12 nm node will be used for years to come.

Intel's partnership with UMC comes on the heels of the company's plan to build 65nm chips for Tower Semiconductor at its Fab 11X. Essentially, both collaborations allow Intel's IFS to use its fully depreciated fabs, gain relationship with fabless chip designers, and earn money. Meanwhile, its partners expand their capacity and reach without making heavy capital investments.

"Our collaboration with Intel on a U.S.-manufactured 12 nm process with FinFET capabilities is a step forward in advancing our strategy of pursuing cost-efficient capacity expansion and technology node advancement in continuing our commitment to customers," said Jason Wang, UMC co-president. "This effort will enable our customers to smoothly migrate to this critical new node, and also benefit from the resiliency of an added Western footprint. We are excited for this strategic collaboration with Intel, which broadens our addressable market and significantly accelerates our development roadmap leveraging the complementary strengths of both companies."

Intel this week has started production at Fab 9, the company's latest and most advanced chip packaging plant. Joining Intel's growing collection of facilities in New Mexico, Fab 9 is tasked with packaging chips using Intel's Foveros technology, which is currently used to build the company's latest client Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) processors and Data Center Max GPU (Ponte Vecchio) for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

The fab near Rio Rancho, New Mexico, cost Intel $3.5 billion to build and equip. The high price tag of the fab – believed to be the single most expensive advanced packaging facility ever built – underscores just how serious Intel is regarding its advanced packaging technologies and production capacity. Intel's product roadmaps call for making significant use of multi-die/chiplet designs going forward, and coupled with Intel Foundry Services customers' needs, the company is preparing for a significant jump in production volumes for Foveros, EMIB, and other advanced packaging techniques.

Intel's Foveros is a die-to-die stacking technology that uses a base die produced using the company's low-power 22FFL fabrication process and chiplet dies stacked on top of it. The base die can act like an interconnection between the dies it hosts, or can integrate certain I/O or logic. The current generation Foveros supports bumps that are as small as 36 microns and can enable up to 770 connections per square millimeter, but as the bumps become 25 and 18 microns eventually, the technology will increase connection density and performance (both in terms of bandwidth and in terms of supported power delivery).

A Foveros base die can be as big as 600 mm², but for applications that require base dies larger than 600 mm² (such as those used for datacenter products), Intel can stitch multiple base dies together using co-EMIB packaging technology.

Finally coming into full production, the new Fab 9 (which has inherited its name from what was once a 6-inch wafer lithography fab) is slated to be Intel's crown jewel for Foveros chip packaging for at least the next couple of years. While the company has "advanced packaging" capabilities in Malaysia (PGAT) as well, those facilities are currently only tooled for EMIB production, meaning that all of Intel's Foveros packaging is taking place on its New Mexico campus. As Intel's first high-volume Foveros packaging facility, the additional capacity should greatly expand Intel's total Foveros packaging throughput, though the company isn't providing specific volume figures.

With Intel's Fab 11x directly next door, the pair of facilities are also Intel's first co-located packaging advanced packaging site, allowing Intel to cut down on how many dies they have to import from other Intel fabs. Though as Fab 11x is not an Intel 4 facility, in the case of Meteor Lake it is only suitable for producing the 22FFL base die. Intel is still importing the Intel 4-built CPU die (Oregon & Ireland), as well as the TSMC-manufactured graphics, SoC, and I/O dies (Taiwan).

"Today, we celebrate the opening of Intel's first high-volume semiconductor operations and the only U.S. factory producing the world's most advanced packaging solutions at scale," said Keyvan Esfarjani, Intel executive vice president and chief global operations officer. "This cutting-edge technology sets Intel apart and gives our customers real advantages in performance, form factor and flexibility in design applications, all within a resilient supply chain. Congratulations to the New Mexico team, the entire Intel family, our suppliers, and contractor partners who collaborate and relentlessly push the boundaries of packaging innovation."

MLCommons, the consortium behind the MLPerf family of machine learning benchmarks, is announcing this morning that the organization will be developing a new desktop AI benchmarking suite under the MLPerf banner. Helmed by the body’s newly-formed MLPerf Client working group, the task force will be developing a client AI benchmark suit aimed at traditional desktop PCs, workstations, and laptops. According to the consortium, the first iteration of the MLPerf Client benchmark suite will be based on Meta’s Llama 2 LLM, with an initial focus on assembling a benchmark suite for Windows.

The de facto industry standard benchmark for AI inference and training on servers and HPC systems, MLCommons has slowly been extending the MLPerf family of benchmarks to additional devices over the past several years. This has included assembling benchmarks for mobile devices, and even low-power edge devices. Now, the consortium is setting about covering the “missing middle” of their family of benchmarks with an MLPerf suite designed for PCs and workstations. And while this is far from the group’s first benchmark, it is in some respects their most ambitious effort to date.

The aim of the new MLPerf Client working group will be to develop a benchmark suitable for client PCs – which is to say, a benchmark that is not only sized appropriately for the devices, but is a real-world client AI workload in order to provide useful and meaningful results. Given the cooperative, consensus-based nature of the consortium’s development structure, today’s announcement comes fairly early in the process, as the group is just now getting started on developing the MLPerf Client benchmark. As a result, there are still a number of technical details about the final benchmark suite that need to be hammered out over the coming months, but to kick things off the group has already narrowed down some of the technical aspects of their upcoming benchmark suite.

Perhaps most critically, the working group has already settled on basing the initial version of the MLPerf Client benchmark around Meta's Llama 2 large language model, which is already used in other versions of the MLPerf suite. Specifically, the group is eyeing 7 billion parameter version of that model (Llama-2-7B), as that’s believed to be the most appropriate size and complexity for client PCs (at INT8 precision, the 7B model would require roughly 7GB of RAM). Past that however, the group still needs to determine the specifics of the benchmark, most importantly the tasks which the LLM will be benchmarked executing on.

With the aim of getting it on PCs of all shapes and sizes, from laptops to workstations, the MLPerf Client working group is going straight for mass market adoption by targeting Windows first – a far cry from the *nix-focused benchmarks they’re best known for. To be sure, the group does plan to bring MLPerf Client to additional platforms over time, but their first target is to hit the bulk of the PC market where Windows reigns supreme.

In fact, the focus on client computing is arguably the most ambitious part of the project for a group that already has ample experience with machine learning workloads. Thus far, the other versions of MLPerf have been aimed at device manufacturers, data scientists, and the like – which is to say they’ve been barebones benchmarks. Even the mobile very of the MLPerf benchmark isn’t very accessible to end-users, as it’s distributed as a source-code release intended to be compiled on the target system. The MLPerf Client benchmark for PCs, on the other hand, will be a true client benchmark, distributed as a compiled application with a user-friendly front-end. Which means the MLPerf Client working group is tasked with not only figuring out what the most representative ML workloads will be for a client, but then how to tie that together into a useful graphical benchmark.

Meanwhile, although many of the finer technical points of the MLPerf Client benchmark suite remain to be sorted out, talking to MLCommons representatives, it sounds like the group has a clear direction in mind on the APIs and runtimes that they want the benchmark to run on: all of them. With Windows offering its own machine learning APIs (WinML and DirectML), and then most hardware vendors offering their own optimized platforms on top of that (CUDA, OpenVino, etc), there are numerous possible execution backends for MLPerf Client to target. And, keeping in line with the laissez faire nature of the other MLPerf benchmarks, the expectation is that MLPerf Client will support a full gamut of common and vendor-proprietary backends.

In practice, then, this would be very similar to how other desktop client AI benchmarks work today, such as UL’s Procyon AI benchmark suite, which allows for plugging in to multiple execution backends. The use of different backends does take away a bit from true apples-to-apples testing (though it would always be possible to force fallback to a common API like DirectML), but it gives the hardware vendors room to optimize the execution of the model to their hardware. MLPerf takes the same approach to their other benchmarks right now, essentially giving hardware vendors free reign to come up with new optimizations – including reduced precision and quantization – so long as they don’t lose inference accuracy and fail meet the benchmark’s overall accuracy requirements.

Even the type of hardware used to execute the benchmark is open to change: while the benchmark is clearly aimed at leveraging the new field of NPUs, vendors are also free to run it on GPUs and CPUs as they see fit. So MLPerf Client will not exclusively be an NPU or GPU benchmark.

Otherwise, keeping everyone on equal footing, the working group itself is a who’s who of hardware and software vendors. The list includes not only Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA, but Arm, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Dell, and others. So there is buy-in from all of the major industry players (at least in the Windows space), which has been critical for driving the acceptance of MLPerf for servers, and will similarly be needed to drive acceptance of MLPerf client.

The MLPerf Client benchmark itself is still quite some time from release, but once it’s out, it will be joining the current front-runners of UL’s Procyon AI benchmark and Primate Labs’ Geekbench ML, both of which already offer Windows client AI benchmarks. And while benchmark development is not necessarily a competitive field, MLCommons is hoping that their open, collaborative approach will be something that sets them apart from existing benchmarks. The nature of the consortium means that every member gets a say (and a vote) on matters, which isn’t the case for proprietary benchmarks. But it also means the group needs a complete consensus in order to move forward.

Ultimately, the initial version of the MLPerf Client benchmark is being devised as more of a beginning than an end product in and of itself. Besides expanding the benchmark to additional platforms beyond Windows, the working group will also eventually be looking at additional workloads to add to the suite – and, presumably, adding more models beyond Llama 2. So while the group has a good deal of work ahead of them just to get the initial benchmark out, the plan is for MLPerf Client to be long-lived, long-supported benchmark as the other MLPerf benchmarks are today.

Asus has introduced a USB4 PCIe add-in-card for the company's desktop motherboards, allowing users to add two USB4 ports to their systems. The card can be used to connect up to four devices and a display to each of its ports, and can even be used to charge laptops that support USB charging.

The Asus USB4 PCIe Gen4 Card is based on ASMedia's ASM4242 controller and supports two USB4 ports at 40 Gbps data rates, with up to 60W USB Power Delivery. The board also has two DisplayPort inputs to in order to route graphics through the card as well in order to make full use of the versatility offered by USB4 and the Type-C cable. Alternatively, one can connect the card to the motherboard TB3/TB4 header and use integrated GPU to handle displays connected using USB-C cables.

One of the main advantages that the ports of Asus USB4 PCIe Gen4 card have over USB4 ports found on some motherboards is that it supports 60W Quick Charge 4+ to devices, which enables to charge laptops or connect devices that demand more than 15W of power (but less than 60W).

There is a catch about the Asus USB4 PCIe Gen4 card though: it is only compatible with Asus motherboards and needs a motherboard with a Thunderbolt or USB4 header (which is mostly designed to use integrated GPU). The company says that many of its AM5 and Intel 700-based motherboards have an appropriate header, so the device can be used on most of its current-generation boards.

The card operates on a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, providing 7.877 GB/s of bandwidth to the ASMedia controller.  The card also features a six-pin auxiliary PCIe connector to supply the additional power needed for the card's high-powered ports.

Asus has yet to reveal recommended price and availability date of its USB4 expansion card. Given that this is not the industry's first card of this kind, expect it to be competitively priced in comparison to existing Thunderbolt 3/4 expansion cards, which have been on the market for a while.