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ASRock Announces AMD X300TM-ITX Motherboard: Thin ITX For Ryzen APUs

Once upon a time, the term 'bigger is better' was a marketing slogan that many companies adopted for its products, but sometimes 'bigger' isn't necessarily practical. For use cases where size (smaller) actually matters, ASRock has unveiled a dinky little motherboard designed for use with its Ryzen based APUs, the X300TM-ITX. Based on AMD's AM4 chipset and the Thin Mini-ITX form factor, it includes one M.2 slot, dual HDMI video output, and support for 64 GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory. Thin Mini-ITX in this case means a reduced overall z-height, and the rear panel IO is limited on how tall it can be.

The ASRock X300TM-ITX includes support for most of AMD's Ryzen APUs (all except the new Ryzen 5000 series APUs are listed). This includes Ryzen 2000, Ryzen 3000, Ryzen 4000, and the associated PRO APU parts. On the slender yet unassuming black PCB is a pair of memory slots capable of supporting up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory. For storage, ASRock includes a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot with support for the faster NVMe based SSDs and a single SATA port for conventional storage and optical devices. The X300TM-ITX is designed to harness the integrated Radeon graphics within the APUs it supports as it does away with any full-length PCIe slots.

Due to its smaller than usual Thin-ITX frame, the ASRock X300TM-ITX has less space for larger connectors such as 24-pin 12 V ATX which typically power motherboards. Providing power to the board is a 19 V DC power input on the rear panel and a 4-pin 19 V connector on the PCB itself. Interestingly, ASRock includes an LVDS header, a COM port, and dual HDMI 2.1 video outputs. Regarding USB connectivity, there's USB 3.2 G1 Type-A and a single USB 3.2 G1 Type-C port, with two USB 2.0 front panel headers providing support for four additional ports. The X300TM-ITX uses a single Realtek RTL8111GR Gigabit Ethernet controller. It includes a single M.2 Key-E slot for users looking to add Wi-Fi modules, while audio is handled by a Realtek ALC233 HD audio codec providing a 3.5 mm headphone and 3.5 mm microphone jack pairing.

We expect the ASRock X300TM-ITX to be available to purchase soon, but there's no available pricing at the time of writing.

Source: ASRock

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NVMe 2.0 Specification Released: Major Reorganization

Version 2.0 of the NVM Express specification has been released, keeping up the roughly two year cadence for the storage interface that is now a decade old. Like other NVMe spec updates, version 2.0 comes with a variety of new features and functionality for drives to implement (usually as optional features). But the most significant change—and the reason this is called version 2.0 instead of 1.5—is that the spec has been drastically reorganized to better fit the broad scope of features that NVMe now encompasses. From its humble beginnings as a block storage protocol operating over PCI Express, NVMe has grown to also become one of the most important networked storage protocols, and now also supports storage paradigms that are entirely different from the hard drive-like block storage abstraction originally provided by NVMe.

Instead of a base specification for typical PCIe SSDs and a separate NVMe over Fabrics spec, version 2.0 is designed to be a more modular specification and has been split into several documents. The base specification now covers both locally-attached devices and NVMeoF, but more abstractly—enough has been moved out of the base spec that it is no longer sufficient to define all of the functionality needed to implement a simple SSD. Real devices will also need to refer to at least one Transport spec and at least one Command Set spec. For typical consumer SSDs, that means using the PCIe transport spec and the block storage command set. Other transport options currently include networked NVMe over Fabrics using either TCP or RDMA. Other command set options include Zoned Namespace and Key-Value command sets. We already covered Zoned Namespaces in depth when it was approved for inclusion last year. The three standardized command sets (block, zoned, key-value) cover different points along the spectrum from simple SSDs with thin abstractions over the underlying flash, to relatively complicated, smart drives that take on some of the storage management tasks that would have traditionally been handled by software on the host system.
 
Many of the new features in NVMe 2.0 are minor extensions to existing functionality, making those features more useful and more broadly usable. For example, partitioning a device's storage into NVM Sets and Endurance Groups was introduced in NVMe 1.4, but the spec didn't say how those divisions would be created; that configuration would either need to be hard-coded by the drive's firmware, or handled with vendor-specific commands. NVMe 2.0 adds a standard capacity management mechanism for endurance groups and NVM sets to be allocated, and also adds another layer of partitioning (Domains) for the sake of massive NVMeoF storage appliances that needed more tools for slicing up their pool of available storage, or isolating the performance impacts of different users on shared drives or arrays.

The NVMe spec originally anticipated the possibility of multiple command sets beyond the base block storage command set. But the original mechanism included for supporting multiple command sets is not adequate for today's use cases: a handful of reserved bits in the controller capabilities data structure are not enough to encompass all the possibilities for what today's SSDs might implement. In particular, the new system for handling multiple command sets now makes it possible for different namespaces behind the same controller to support different command sets, rather than requiring all namespaces to support all of the command sets their parent controller supports.

Zoned and key-value command sets were already on the radar when NVMe 1.4 was completed, and now those technologies have been incorporated into 2.0 with equal status to the original block storage command set. Future command sets such as for computational storage drives are still a work in progress not ready for standardization, but the NVMe spec is now able to more easily incorporate such new developments. NVMe could in principle also add an Open Channel command set that exposes most or all of the raw details of managing NAND flash memory (pages, erase blocks, defect management, etc.), but the general industry consensus is that the zoned storage paradigm strikes a more reasonable balance, and interest in Open Channel SSDs is waning in favor of Zoned Namespaces.

For enterprise use cases, NVMe inherited Protection Information support from SCSI/SAS—associating some extra information with each logical block, which is used to verify end to end data integrity. NVMe 2.0 extends the existing Protection Information support from supporting 16-bit CRCs to also supporting 32-bit and 64-bit CRCs, allowing for more robust data protection for large-scale storage systems.

NVMe 2.0 introduces a significant new security feature: command group control, configured using a new Lockdown command. NVMe 1.4 added a namespace write protect capability that allows the host system to put namespaces into a write-protect mode until explicitly unlocked or until the drive is power cycled. NVMe 2.0's Lockdown allows similar control to disallow other commands. This can be used to put a drive in a state where both ordinary reads and writes are allowed, but various admin commands are locked out so the drive's other features cannot be reconfigured. As with the previous write protect feature, this command group control supports setting these restrictions until they are explicitly removed, or until a power cycle.

For NVMe over Fabrics use cases, NVMe 2.0 clarifies how to handle firmware updates and safe device shutdown in scenarios where the shared storage is accessible through multiple controllers. There's also now explicit support for hard drives. Even though it's unlikely that hard drives will switch anytime soon to natively use PCIe connections instead of SAS or SATA, supporting rotational media means enterprises can unify their storage networking with NVMe over Fabrics and drop older protocols like iSCSI.

Overall, NVMe 2.0 doesn't bring as much in the way of new functionality as some of the previous updates. In particular, nothing in this update stands out as being relevant to client/consumer SSDs. But the spec reorganization should make it easier to iterate and experiment with new functionality, and the next several years will hopefully see more frequent updates with smaller changes rather than bundling up two or three years of work for big spec updates.

 

Related Reading:

Computex 2021: MSI MPG Gaming Maverik Bundle with i7-11700K

At an all-digital rendition of Computex 2021, MSI has unveiled a new bundle designed for gamers looking for a comprehensive and optimized gaming system. Based on its performance gaming series, the MSI MPG Gaming Maverick bundle comes complete with an Intel Core i7 11th generation Rocket Lake processor and special edition components, including G.Skill Trident Z Maverik DDR4 memory, an MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Edge WIFI SP motherboard, and an SP edition Coreliquid 360 mm AIO. All of this comes inside of an MSI MPG Velox 100P SP special edition chassis.

The MSI MPG Gaming Maverik is a premium bundle offering gamers a semi-prebuilt system (minus storage, power, and graphics), with a set of special edition "MSI SP" componentry. MSI hasn't specified what the SP stands for, but the general theme follows black, with pink, purple, and blue accentuation throughout. The motherboard of choice for the system is the same specification as the regular MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Edge WIFI, but with the SP design. It includes plenty of premium features, including three M.2 slots (one PCIe 4.0 x4), six SATA, USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C connectivity, as well as Intel's I225-V 2.5 GbE controller, and an Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi.

The Gaming Maverik bundle also comes with 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) of special edition G.Skill Trident Z Maverik DDR4-3600 memory. The memory itself has latency timings of 18-22-22-42, with an operating voltage of 1.35 V. It operates in dual channel mode and is only available as part of the Maverik bundle itself.

At the heart of the MSI MPG Gaming Maverik bundle is Intel's Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake processor, with eight cores, sixteen threads, and a boost frequency of 4.8 GHz. Keeping it cool is an MSI MPG Coreliquid K360 SP 360 mm AIO CPU cooler, with everything preinstalled before shipping. The CPU cooler itself uses a 2.4" LCD on the pump for visual effect and comes with three 2500 RPM ARGB cooling fans. Everything within the bundle is preinstalled for users to drop storage, a power supply, and a graphics card in, with the case of choice being MSI's MPG Velox 100P Airflow SP. The bundle has matching hardware throughout and uses a gaming-inspired and futuristic design, quite similar to the look of the original ASUS ROG Strix series.

The MSI MPG Gaming Maverik bundle will be available to buy from June, with only a limited quantity available. At the time of writing, MSI hasn't given us any pricing information.

Source: MSI

Computex 2021: ASRock Unveils New X570S and B550 PG Riptide Motherboards

Back in July 2019, when AMD unveiled its X570 chipset for its Ryzen processors, it captivated enthusiasts and PC users as the first desktop chipset to feature PCIe 4.0. This brought many vendors wondering how to keep the chipset cool, and all but one (GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme) came with some form of active cooling. Fast forward to 2021 and the latest iteration of new models dubbed X570S does away with the chipset fan altogether. In lieu of this, ASRock has announced the new PG Riptide series with both an X570S and B550 model designed for gamers.

Starting with the more premium of the two, the ASRock X570S PG Riptide has dual PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 (one with SATA support) and six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. There are a total of three full-length PCIe 4.0 slots that can operate at x16/x0/+x4 and x8/x8/+4, with three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots sandwiched in between. Other connectivity includes a front panel USB 3.2 G2 Type-C header, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A headers (four ports), and two USB 2.0 headers (four ports). 


The ASRock X570S PG Riptide motherboard

Aesthetics on both models are practically identical, with the X570S featuring a larger square chipset heatsink, with the chipset heatsink on the B550 resemblant of a shield. The ASRock B550 PG Riptide has three full-length PCIe slots, with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and the other two operating at PCIe 3.0 x4/x1, with three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Regarding storage, the B550 model has one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, one PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA slot, and six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays.

The ASRock X570S PG Riptide supports DDR4-5000, while the B550 PG Riptide supports up to DDR4-4933 out of the box. Both have four memory slots with support for up to 128 GB of capacity. Both models are also advertised to feature a 10-phase power delivery with Dr. MOS power stages. Both models also come supplied with ASRock's patent-pending VGA holder.


ASRock PG Riptide X570S (top) and B550 (bottom) rear panels

The ASRock X570S PG Riptide has one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports on the rear panel. In contrast, the B550 PG Riptide includes the same but with two additional USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. Both rear panels include a Killer E3100G 2.5 GbE controller, with space through an M.2 Key-E slot for users to add a Wi-Fi module, while both also use a Realtek ALC897 HD audio codec which adds five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a S/PDIF optical output. There's one HDMI 2.1 video output and a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port on both models, while the X570S includes a small BIOS flashback button.

At the time of writing, ASRock hasn't said when the new PG Series X570S and B550 will be available or how much either board will cost.

Source: ASRock

Computex 2021: GIGABYTE Server Updates MZ72-HB0 For Dual Socket 3rd Gen EPYC

During Computex 2021 in Taipei, although the event is all-digital due to the Coronavirus pandemic, GIGABYTE Server has showcased its newly revised MZ72-HBO dual-socket motherboard with support for AMD's 3rd generation EPYC 7003 processors. The GIGABYTE Server MZ72-HBO boasts support for up to 128 cores and 256 threads (64c/128t per socket), dual 10 GbE Base-T Ethernet, up to 4 TB of DDR4-3200 memory, and five full-length PCIe 4.0 slots.

In the server workspace, the use case for high-core count processors includes data centers, cloud computing, and MPI parallel programming. This is where the GIGABYTE Server MZ72-HB0 comes in, with support for up to 280 W TDP chips. This means it can support a maximum of 128-cores and 256 threads of powerful Zen 3 EPYC 7003 goodness across both AMD SP3 sockets. Each of the SP3 sockets includes eight memory slots (sixteen in total), with support for up to 2 TB of DDR4-3200 memory per processor operating in eight-channel, with RDIMM, LRDIMM, and 3DS memory types all supported. 

The GIGABYTE Server MZ72-HB0 Revision 3.0 boasts a wide variety of features, including lots of storage, with one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, four 7-pin SATA ports, and three SlimSAS ports offering support for either twelve SATA or three PCIe 4.0 U.2 NVMe drives. Included on the board is an ASPEED AST2500 BMC controller, which allows access to GIGABYTE's Management Console (GMC), and includes a Gigabit Management LAN port for remote access. Other networking capability includes a pair of 10 GbE Base-T LAN ports powered by a Broadcom BCM57416 controller. On the lower portion of the board are five full-length PCIe 4.0 slots that can operate at x16/x16/x16/x8/x8, while I/O on the rear panel includes two USB 3.0, a COM port, and a D-sub video output for the BMC.

At the time of writing, we are unsure when the GIGABYTE Server MZ72-HB0 will be available at retail, however the company has started channel distributions and we actually have a review unit in-house on our Milan test-bench. However, the previous MZ72-HB0 (revision 1.0) model with support for EPYC 7002 processors retails between $700 and $900 depending on the retailer. Due to this, we expect the newer revision 3.0 model to fall in a similar price bracket.

Source: GIGABYTE Server

Computex 2021: ASRock Announces Mars 5000U Series Mini PC

During Computex 2021, ASRock unveiled the latest series in its Mars mini-PC range, the Mars 5000U. ASRock claims it's the thinnest AMD mini PC globally and comes equipped with AMD's latest 5000 series APU. It features support for DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory, one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, a 2.5" SATA hard drive bay, and an Intel Wi-Fi 6 interface.

The ASRock Mars 5000U series comes in a svelte and very slimline black brushed aluminum chassis, with dimensions of 194 x 150 x 26 mm (W x D x H), making it a single mm thicker than a regular chassis fan. Due to there being very little wiggle room for space inside, at just 0.7 liters, ASRock uses a proprietary fan and heatsink combination to keep the AMD Ryzen 5000U APU cool. For memory, there's a pair of memory slots that can accommodate up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory, while storage capabilities include one PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA M.2 slot and one 2.5" SATA hard drive bay.

It is powered by a 65 W/19 V adaptor akin to a laptop charger and includes a decent selection of I/O. Included are four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A (two rear, two front), one USB 3.2 G1 Type-C (front), and two USB 2.0 (front) ports. The Mars 5000G also includes a 3-in-1 card reader including SD, SDHC, and SDXC support and two video outputs consisting of an HDMI and D-Sub. Networking options include one unspecified Gigabit Ethernet port with an Intel AX200 wireless interface offering Wi-Fi and BT 5.0 connectivity. An unspecified audio solution also powers a 3.5 mm microphone and 3.5 mm headphone jack combination.

The ASRock Mars 5000U series looks very similar to the previous Mars 4000 series mini-PC series. The only difference is that the newer model supports the upcoming Ryzen 5000 APUs based on AMD's Zen 3 microarchitecture. ASRock hasn't stated which APUs it will offer. Pricing is currently unknown.

After Selling HyperX to HP, Kingston Resurrects FURY Brand for DRAM and SSDs

Last week, we reported that the highly anticipated acquisition of Kingston's HyperX gaming brand by HP was completed for the sum of $325 million. As we noted, the terms of the deal did not include any of the HyperX branded DRAM, flash, or storage products, which is Kingston's bread and butter, as the deal focused more on the gaming accessory business as well as the brand value. We have now learned that Kingston is rebranding the DRAM and storage products it retains as the FURY series.

Although Kingston is planning a formal announcement of the brand on the 19th of July 2021, it shared details with us on some of its new key ranges. The FURY series isn't new to Kingston, as it debuted back in 2014 as one of its more affordable memory ranges designed for gamers on a budget. Kingston has rebranded its own series in preparation for a new start and marketing strategy for its consumer-focused DRAM and storage products.

From the new product lines, the Kingston FURY Renegade memory series will feature speeds of up to DDR4-5333 MT/s, with both RGB and non-RGB options available. The rebranded FURY Beast series will sit as the new entry-level in its gaming-centric DRAM products, with DDR3 and DDR4 products with speeds of up to 3733 MT/s. Its FURY Impact range offers competitive options for laptops, NUCs, and other types of small form factor systems, with DDR3 and DDR4-3200 SO-DIMMs. Kingston has yet to unveil any details about its impending FURY storage products at this time.

There's no word on availability or price at present, but we expect to find out more on the 19th of July 2021, when Kingston officially unveils its new FURY products to the public.

Source: Kingston

The Apple WWDC 2021 Keynote Live Blog (Starts at 10am PT/17:00 UTC)

Par : Ryan Smith

As things slowly get back to normal, Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference is taking virtual place this week in its traditional early-June slot. As always, Apple kicks off WWDC with their big keynote event, which though aimed first and foremost at developers, is also used as a venue to announce new products and ecosystem strategies. The keynote starts at 10am Pacific (17:00 UTC) today, and AnandTech will be offering live blog coverage of Apple's event.

A rapid-fire, two-hour run through Apple's ecosystem, WWDC keynotes cover everything from macOS and iOS to individual Apple applications and more. On the hardware side of matters, last year we saw the official announcement of Apple's shift from x86 processors to Arm processors for their venerable Mac lineup of computers, and while it's unlikely Apple is going to have anything to top that for WWDC21, the company is not even half-way through its transition to Arm SoCs. So this year's WWDC gives Apple ample opportunity to reflect on the Arm transition thus far, as well as what's coming next for the company's more powerful Macs.

So join us at 10am Pacific to see just what Apple is working on for this year and beyond.

Computex 2021: TeamGroup Goes BIG, the Xtreem DDR4-3600 256 GB Memory Kit

At the all-digital Computex 2021 trade show, TeamGroup has announced a new high-capacity memory kit designed for the high-end desktop market and workstation use. The new TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 kit boasts a combined capacity of 256 GB with 8 x 32 GB modules.

Whether it's ridiculous amounts of Google Chrome tabs or a more realistic use case such as video editing, the Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 256 GB kit aims to provide a premium solution for workstation users on compatible platforms such as AMD's Threadripper 3000 series or Intel's Cascade Lake-X. The memory itself has a rectangular mirror finish on its illuminated heatsinks, designed to produce a layered effect that TeamGroup says is 'dazzling.'

Regarding the specifications, the 256 GB kit has eight 32 GB sticks that operate at 3600 MT/s (DDR4-3600) and have primary latency timings of CL 18-22-22-42. There's no information available on the specific memory chips this kit is using, nor does TeamGroup specify the operating voltage of the kit. It has the speed to satisfy gaming demands, with AMD Threadripper using its Infinity Fabric interconnect in parallel with memory frequency.

At present, we don't know when the TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB 256 GB (8 x 32 GB) kit will hit retail shelves, nor do we have the pricing. One thing is for certain; it's not going to be cheap as a similar kit in the Xtreem ARGB series with 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) retails for $420 at Newegg.

Noctua NH-P1 Passive CPU Heatsink Spotted at Newegg for $100

Back at Computex 2019, when we visited Noctua at its booth, we saw a concept CPU heatsink, a monolith, with a passive design. In many circles including fans of silent and passively cooled systems, this is a highly anticipated announcement, and although there's nothing official from Noctua yet, the new NH-P1 has been spotted on a listing at Newegg by FanlessTech.

The Noctua NH-P1 features a completely fanless design, and although there's no official word on its TDP rating yet, we saw the concept cooler at Computex 2019 keeping an Intel Core i9-9900K cooled in a test system. The 9900K for reference has a PL1 rating of 95 W, and a PL2 rating of 210 W, so we know it has some serious cooling potential for a passive cooler.


The Noctua Concept Fanless CPU Cooler at Computex 2019

As with other Noctua CPU coolers, it includes its SecuFirm2+ mounting system which is compatible with Intel's LGA1200, LGA115x, and LGA1200xx sockets, and also allows support for AMD's AM4, AM3+, AM3, AM2, and FM2 sockets. The finer specifics of the design are currently unclear, but Noctua does supply a tube of its latest NT-H2 thermal paste with it, as well as a limited six-year warranty. Noctua doesn't recommend overclocking due to the limited cooling properties of a passive design, but it can also be used with Noctua's fans, with grooves that allow users to add fans with its retention brackets.

At the time of writing, Newegg has pulled the listing from its website, which means it could have jumped the gun, but we do expect the Noctua NH-P1 to be announced imminently. The Newegg listing had the Noctua NH-P1 at $100, which means it's not going to be cheap, but it targets a niche market.

Source: FanlessTech

NZXT Announces N7 Z590 Motherboard For Rocket Lake

In July last year, we reviewed NZXT's N7 Z490 motherboard for Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake processors. Typically later to the market than other vendor's key models, NZXT has announced its latest option which aims to benefit from the PCIe 4.0 support in Rocket Lake. Enter the N7 Z590. Some of the features include a full-cover panel across the PCIe slot area, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5 GbE, dual M.2, support for DDR4-4600 memory, and is advertised with a 14-phase power delivery.

NZXT entered the motherboard market for the first time back in 2018 with the N7 Z370, which we also reviewed. Typically known more for its clean-cut chassis and cooling products, NZXT first tasked the job of providing the PCB and componentry to ECS for the Z370, and then switched to ASRock for Z490. It is unclear which vendor NZXT relies on for the N7 Z590, but we expect the relationship with ASRock is still intact, but we will confirm this when we know.

The N7 Z590 is similar to the previous model in terms of aesthetics, with models available in either matte black or white and uses a full cover PCIe slot armor and more armor covering the right-hand side of the board. Despite not including any integrated RGB LED lighting onboard, NZXT is using its CAM software to control the four RGB LED headers located on the board, with an integrated fan controller adding control of cooling with a total of seven 4-pin headers located on the board.

In terms of specification, the NZXT N7 Z590 has two full-length PCIe slots, one operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and the other at PCIe 3.0 x4, with three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. In the top right-hand corner is four memory slots, with support for DDR4-4600 and a total capacity of up to 128 GB. Storage capabilities include two M.2 slots, one featuring support for PCIe 4.0 x4 drives and the second slot supporting PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives. There are four SATA ports for conventional storage and optical devices that also support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.

The rear panel has a much better selection of input and output than the N7 Z490, with one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, three USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. A Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec controls the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, while wireless capability comes from Intel's latest AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi. Taking care of wired networking is a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 GbE controller, while also on the rear panel is an HDMI 2.0 video output and a small clear CMOS button.

The NZXT N7 Z590 is currently available on NZXT's website for $280.

Source: NZXT

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Computex 2021: TeamGroup Announces its First DDR5-4800 Memory Module

Back in December 2020, TeamGroup announced its intentions for the switch to DDR5 memory on future platforms. During Computex 2021, TeamGroup claims it has 'successfully taken the lead over competing PCB manufacturers', with the first of its announced products for DDR5, the Elite DDR5-4800 16 GB module. Back at CES 2021, ADATA claimed that it has a DDR5 module in hand, but it sent us rendered images. We ultimately disapprove of this practice - don't state you have it in hand until you are ready to provide us actaul photographs of the thing. Unfortunately, TeamGroup has done the same here, providing renders. not photographs.

The Road to DDR5

Over the last year, we've highlighted certain aspects of DDR5 memory and what users can expect, including features, memory latency, and technological advancements over the current DDR4 memory. Some of which can be seen below:

TeamGroup's announcement hasn't come as a surprise given how long DDR5 has been speculated and discussed over the last year. One of the first platforms to supposedly feature DDR5 support is Intel's Alder Lake microarchitecture, which is expected to land in Q4 2021/Q1 2022. The first series of DDR5 from TeamGroup will be based on its 'Elite' memory series, with the first kit to feature speeds of 4800 MT/s, sub-timings of CL40-40-40-77, and will feature an operating voltage of 1.1 V.

One of the primary features of DDR5 is integrated on-die ECC, which is designed to improve overall system stability (but is actually more to do with yield). This is different to module-wide ECC, which DDR5 does not support by default (you still need a module-wide ECC module to support ECC technology). The information provided by TeamGroup say the Elite DDR5-4800 has double the banks compared to DDR4, with an all-black PCB. It is unclear whether or not the Elite DDR5-4800 will feature heatsinks, or they will operate with a bare PCB. We also know that it will feature 16 GB of capacity and will likely be sold as a dual-channel kit, and perhaps individually.

At present, there's no information on latency timings or how much the Elite DDR5-4800 16 GB module will cost, but TeamGroup does state that it will be unveiling its 'new generation' of products in September 2021.

Apple Announces iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: The Highlights

Today at Apple’s 2021 WWDC event, the company unveiled the new iOS 15, iPadOS 15 operating systems. This year, Apple presented a large number of new features and improvements across both the main OS components as well as Apple’s core ecosystem apps. While we are just scratching the surface, we picked out a few highlight features that are looking forward to test later in the year once the new versions will be hitting consumers in their final versions.

Computex 2021: G.Skill Trident Z Royal Elite With DDR4-4000 CL14, Tight Latencies

During Computex 2021, G.Skill has announced a couple of new memory kits featuring its regal-looking Trident Z Royal Elite heatsinks. Available with super tight primary latencies of CL14, the new Trident Z Royal Elite kits will be available in DDR4-4000 and DDR4-3600, with various capacities available, including 16, 32, 64, and 128 GB kits.

There are many different parts of a system that can add varying levels of aesthetic glamor, including the motherboard, CPU cooler, fans, anything with RGB on it, but almost everything struggles to be as bling as G.Skills Trident Z Royal Elite memory. Launched back in April, the G.Skill Trident Z Royal Elite comes available in gold and silver. Both color variants feature eight customizable RGB LED lighting zones, with a patented crystalline patterning across for that regal touch.

Touching on the specifications, the top kit features speeds of DDR4-4000 with CL14-14-14-35, at a larger-than-expected operating voltage of 1.55 V. It will be available in two varieties, including a 16 GB (2 x 8 GB), and a 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) kit. The DDR4-3600 kits come with equally tight CL14 latencies, with a slightly lower 1.45 V operating voltage, and will be available in 16 GB (2 x 8 GB), 32 GB with the option for 2 x 16 GB or 4 x 8 GB kits. For users looking for more capacity, there are options at 64 GB with 4 x 16 GB and a large 128 GB kit with 8 x 16 GB. 

G.Skill says the new Trident Z Royal Elite DDR4-4000 and DDR4-3600 CL14 kits will be available from June but haven't provided us with pricing at the time of writing.

An AnandTech Interview with TSMC: Dr. Kevin Zhang and Dr. Maria Marced

In the past week, TSMC ran its 2021 Technology Symposium, covering its latest developments in process node technology designed to improve the performance, costs, and capabilities for its customers. In this event, TSMC discussed its increasing use of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography for manufacturing, enabling it to scale down to its 3nm process node, well beyond that of its competitors. TSMC also addressed the current issues surrounding demand for semiconductors, along with announcing that it is building new facilities for advanced packaging production. Joining CEO Dr. CC Wei as part of the keynote presentation was AMD’s CEO Dr. Lisa Su, Qualcomm’s President (and soon to be CEO) Cristiano Amon, and Ambiq’s Founder and CTO Scott Hanson.

As part of the proceedings, TSMC offered AnandTech a 30-minute interview with Dr. Kevin Zhang, SVP of Business Development, and Dr. Maria Marced, President of TSMC EU, as an opportunity to learn more about TSMC’s driving directions as well as cooperation with industry partners.

Xilinx Expands Versal AI to the Edge: Helping Solve the Silicon Shortage

Today Xilinx is announcing an expansion to its Versal family, focused specifically on low power and edge devices. Xilinx Versal is the productization of a combination of many different processor technologies: programmable logic gates (FPGAs), Arm cores, fast memory, AI engines, programmable DSPs, hardened memory controllers, and IO – the benefits of all these technologies means that Versal can scale from the high end Premium (launched in 2020), and now down to edge-class devices, all built on TSMC’s 7nm processes. Xilinx’s new Versal AI Edge processors start at 6 W, all the way up to 75 W.

Seagate Signs HAMR Deal with Showa Denko: Secures Second Source for HAMR Platters

Seagate this week signed an agreement with Showa Denko in a bid to secure a second source of platters for its hard drives based on heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. Under the terms of the deal, Seagate will evaluate SDK's existing materials for HAMR media and the two companies will jointly develop future materials. 

Seagate started to ship its Exos HDDs featuring HAMR inside its Lyve storage systems late last year. These hard drives use key components, such as recording heads with a near field transducer that heats up the media as well as glass platters with an FePt magnetic layer, developed and made entirely in-house. Being a vertically integrated company, Seagate has enough production capacities to continue building platters for HAMR drives internally, but having a second source for a crucially important component makes a lot of sense for high-volume products. 

Having spent over 10 years on HAMR pathfinding and research, Showa Denko formally began to develop its glass platters for HAMR HDDs in February, 2020. Back then, the company said that HAMR would achieve areal density of 5-6 Tb/in2 in the future, enabling 3.5-inch hard drives with eight or nine platters to store 70 TB – 80 TB of data. 

By now, Showa Denko has finished development of its first HAMR media material featuring a FePt magnetic alloy and technology to mass-produce hard drive platters. Under the terms of the agreement between SDK and Seagate, the hard drive maker will evaluate the material designed by the Japanese company. Going forward, Seagate and SDK will jointly develop new magnetic alloys for HAMR HDDs.

For now, Seagate will continue using its own FePt glass media inside its HAMR HDDs, but if it finds Showa Denko's HAMR media good enough, it might use it for future hard drives.

The contract between Seagate and Showa Denko ensures that the hard drive maker will have two sources of HAMR platters in the future, which will be important if Seagate significantly expands usage of its HAMR technology. In fact, once HAMR media hits certain areal density (i.e., significantly higher than PMR's 1.14 Tb/inch2), it will make a great sense to adopt the technology nor only for highest-capacity HDDs, but also for midrange HDDs to cut down their costs.

"[HAMR] is not only about the highest capacity point," said David Mosley, CEO of Seagate, at a conference last year. "If we can save a disk and two heads in a 16 TB drive, we will look at doing that as well. So, it is really across the whole portfolio, which is why we think that this platform play is so important. We can introduce HAMR into the same platform. The cost increases are really nominal."

Furthermore, Seagate will also ensure that SDK-made HAMR platters will be compatible with its HAMR implementation, which might become the company's competitive advantage against Toshiba and Western Digital once they adopt this technology.

"We expect this alliance will further accelerate technological development pioneered by the two companies," a statement by Showa Denko reads.

For Showa Denko, the world's largest independent maker of HDD platters, it is important to maintain close relationship with all makers of hard drives. Nowadays the bulk of SDK's shipments are platters designed for PMR and SMR HDDs, but it is also ramping up production of media for Toshiba's MAMR-based drives. The pact with Seagate ensures that Showa Denko will also be a part of upcoming HAMR HDDs.

Related Reading:

Source: Showa Denko

Sponsored Post: Keep Your App’s Memory Safe with Arm Memory Tagging Extension (MTE)

Subtle memory bugs, including buffer overruns and pointer errors, create ticking time bombs inside your applications. Malicious actors can exploit these bugs to execute unauthorized code, take over systems to add them to malware botnets, or simply cause applications and systems to crash. The notorious Morris Worm of 1988 was one of the earliest examples of a malicious application exploiting a buffer overflow. Announcements of memory safety issues creating potential exploits arrive with alarming frequency, either from security researchers or found loose in the wild.

The impact on users can be substantial. Rogue applications can take advantage of unsafe memory in order to gain access to sniff out sensitive data, such as user credentials and passwords, enabling access to higher levels of privilege in the system. This allows bad actors to gain access to confidential data or make the system part of a larger botnet. It’s not always outside forces that cause problems – sometimes unsafe memory results in unpredictable system crashes due to memory leaks and related issues, frustrating users. It’s estimated that two-thirds of all Android vulnerabilities happen due to unsafe memory practices.

Arm Memory Tagging Extension

Software-based solutions, including Address Sanitizer (Asan), help mitigate these memory issues by integrating memory corruption detection into modern compilers. However, Asan requires adding software instrumentation to application code, which can significantly slow down app runtime and increase memory usage, particularly problematic in mobile and embedded systems.

What’s needed is a solution to detect and minimize memory bugs with minimal impact on performance and memory use. Properly implementing a hardware-based method for detecting potentially unsafe memory usage results in smaller memory usage and better performance, while improving system reliability and security.

Arm introduced its memory tagging extension as a part of the Armv8.5 instruction set. MTE is now built into Armv9 compliant CPUs recently announced by Arm, such as the Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710, and Cortex-A510. Future CPUs based on Armv9 will also integrate MTE. These all include memory tagging as a basic part of the architecture.

Razer Unleashes Blade 14 Gaming Laptop: Ryzen 5000 Mobile with GeForce Graphics

During their E3 2021 gaming event this afternoon, Razer has launched the latest variant of its popular Blade 14 gaming laptop. For the first time, Razer is using an AMD processor to power its latest Blade 14 thin gaming laptop. Marking a milestone within the company, the Razer Blade includes plenty of features, including Wi-Fi 6E, dual USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, and multiple options with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics for fine-tuning the laptop's portable gaming performance.

Back in 2011, when Razer first entered the gaming laptop market, the competition between Intel and AMD in the desktop and mobile space wasn't like it is now. Since then, a lot has changed with the emergence of AMD's Ryzen architecture, and at present, it is doing very well. With Ryzen Mobile offering powerful performance and in January, it launched its Ryzen 5000 Mobile parts at CES 2021.

With Razer commanding a niche market in the laptop space with all of its models designed for gaming, the latest Razer Blade 14 comes equipped with AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, with eight cores, sixteen threads, a maximum boost clock speed of 4.6 GHz, and is unlocked allowing users to apply overclocks. While the Blade 14 isn't an 'AMD Advantage' system benefiting from both AMD processor and graphics, it marks a big step for a brand typically associated specifically with Intel chips. 

The AMD Ryzen powered Razer Blade 14 comes with two choices in regards to panel type. This includes the option of a 1080p 144 Hz 100% sRGB display, or a more premium 1440p 165 Hz 100% DCI-P3 display. Both panels are IPS-based and come with variable refresh rate support. For storage, the Razer Blade 14 includes a 1 TB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, while memory comes in the form of 16 GB of DDR4-3200. Unfortunately for buyers looking at later-life upgrades, the memory is fixed onto the motherboard, so 16 GB is all it ever will have.

Buyers can select between three NVIDIA options in terms of graphics. This includes a GeForce RTX 3060 mobile GPU with 6 GB of VRAM, an RTX 3070 with 8 GB of VRAM, or an RTX 3080 also with 8 GB of VRAM. All three models have their GPUs set to 100 W TGP (total graphics power). Keeping the components cool is a vapor chamber cooling solution, and Razer is advertising up to 12-hours battery life and comes with a compact 230 W power adapter.

Razer is also touting the Blade 14 as the world's thinnest gaming laptop, and the dimensions make it rather sleek indeed. It's 16.8 mm thick, with a 220 mm x 319.7 mm footprint. Although Razer didn't provide us with details on the weight, the frame itself is custom CNC milled from a single block of T6 grade aluminum, commonly used for aircraft parts, and comes with a matte black anodized finish. Other design aspects include per-RGB backlit keys powered by Razer Chroma and features an N-Key rollover keyboard. The keys themselves have a 1 mm actuation, and keys can be programmed via Razer Synapse 3. Also included is a large glass precision trackpad, which is Windows Precision-capable and adapts to usage and can respond to multiple finger gestures. 

I/O connectivity include two USB 3.2 G2 Type-C ports with DP alt-mode and 100 W charging capabilities, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 video output, and a single 3.5 mm combo audio port. Along the top of the bezel is a Windows Hello 720p webcam and comes with THX-certified Spatial Audio with two premium speakers. The Blade 14 also comes with a Kensington lock for security on the go.

The AMD Ryzen 5900HX powered Razer Blade 14 will start shipping from June 14th, with prices starting at $1799.

Related Reading

Razer Announces Ultra-Compact "Razer GaN" 130W USB Type-C Charger

Alongside their new AMD-powered Blade 14 laptop, Razer today also used E3 2021 to announce a new, high-powered USB-C charger. The Razer GaN USB Type-C charger is a compact charging solution that is pocket-sized and can deliver up to 130 W of combined charging power across its two USB-C and two USB-A outputs.

If you've ever owned one of the latest smartphones or Bluetooth 5.1 devices, it's likely to come with a USB Type-C charging port. The Type-C connector has become more popular as more and more powered devices come with Type-C. With the USB-IF announcing its specifications for the new USB-PD standard with support for up to 240 W, power supply engineers are increasingly using Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors for more efficient and compact designs.

GaN by name and GaN by nature, the Razer GaN is powered by using Gallium Nitride, which has allowed Razer to cut down on the size of the charger. Razer claims that their GaN charger is small enough to fit inside a pocket, measuring 62 x 32 x 76 mm (D x W x H) in size and weighing in at 349 g. Looking at the aesthetics, the GaN includes a black plastic chassis with Razer's trademark green accent color being used in the USB Type-A ports as well as the power indicator light. And in case you're still not sure who made it, there's a Razer logo embossed onto the side as well.

The Razer GaN has a foldable fork for plugging directly into a plug socket and comes supplied with global power adapters. Users can charge devices in regions such as North America, Europe, the UK, and Asia. Also included in the accessories is a 2 meter USB cable, although Razer didn't specify Type-C or Type-A.

In terms of charging ports, the Razer GaN has two Type-C outputs and two Type-A outputs. Each pair of outputs are on a shared power plane, allowing the charger to power several devices at once, though at a reduced rate if used with multiple high-powered devices. This works out to the two Type-C ports sharing 100 W of capacity, while the two Type-A ports share another 18 W. And since this is a universal power supply, the Razer GaN can charge everything from phone and tablets to Razer Blade laptops, Apple MacBooks, as well as smartwatches and Windows laptops that support Type-C charging. 

Razer GaN Charger
  Max Port Power Max Group Power Max Charger Power
USB-C #1 100W 100W 130W
USB-C #2 100W
USB-A #1 18W 18W
USB-A #2 18W

The Razer GaN USB Type-C 130 W charger can be pre-ordered at the Razer Store from the 14th of June, with shipping of stock expected within 30 days of the date. Though don't mistake the diminutive size of the charger for a diminutive price tag; the charger carries an MSRP of $180.

SPEC Updates SERT Suite for ISO-Compliant Server Energy Efficiency Benchmarking

Par : Ganesh T S

The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation's SPEC SERT Suite has evolved as the industry-standard for measuring the energy efficiency of servers over the last decade. Regulatory authorities such as the U.S EPA and Japan's METI are some of the many who have adopted the suite to determine thresholds for various energy-efficiency programs.

In August 2020, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the ISO/IEC 21836:2020 standard to specify the measurement methodology for assessment and reporting of a server's energy efficiency. Today, SPEC is announcing SERT Suite 2.0.4, an update to enable its incorporation into the ISO standard. It must be noted that the SERT suite was already compliant with ISO 21836. The new version also brings in ISO compliance report links. In addition to including latest PTDaemon software (v1.9.2) that interfaces with SPEC-approved power analyzers and temperature sensors, and GUI optimizations, the SPEC SERT Suite 2.0.4 also supports servers based on the latest ARM processors from Ampere, Fujitsu, and Marvell.

The SERT 2.0.4 suite is priced at USD 2800, and is available for immediate download. Being a minor version update, it is free for SERT 2 licensees to upgrade. Similar to all other benchmarks developed by SPEC, the SERT Suite from the SPECpower Committee has been developed in a vendor-agnostic manner with representatives from across the industry. Needless to say, this greatly increases the credibility of the benchmark. The SERT Suite allows consumers / cloud service providers to determine the energy efficiency (and, the TCO indirectly) of a particular offering for their workloads. The latest offering keeps up with the evolving industry requirements.

Sponsored Post: How COVID-19 Has Created a Hyper-Visual Future

Thanks to the coronavirus, visual media is more important than ever. Here's what that means.

Google Announces AMD Milan-based Cloud Instances - Out with SMT vCPUs?

Today Google is announcing a new Cloud instance based on AMD Milan – but beyond the new hardware, it’s really what’s behind the new performance numbers which is what should shake the cloud system – is Google abandoning SMT vCPUs?

An AnandTech Interview with Jim Keller: 'The Laziest Person at Tesla'

I've spoken about Jim Keller many times on AnandTech. In the world of semiconductor design, his name draws attention, simply by the number of large successful projects he has worked on, or led, that have created billions of dollars of revenue for those respective companies. His career spans DEC, AMD, SiByte, Broadcom, PA Semi, Apple, AMD (again), Tesla, Intel, and now he is at Tenstorrent as CTO, developing the next generation of scalable AI hardware. Jim's work ethic has often been described as 'enjoying a challenge', and over the years when I've spoken to him, he always wants to make sure that what he is doing is important in the global context. Today we're publishing a transcript of a recent chat with Jim, now five months into his role at Tenstorrent, but moreso to talk about Jim the person, rather than simply Jim the engineer.

DIY on Intel Ice Lake Xeon Just Got A Little Closer

Since the launch of Intel’s Third Generation Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors in April, it was widely expected that the initial volumes of hardware would be going towards Intel’s biggest customers through their OEM partners. Users who want retail hardware would have to wait a while, although exactly how long was a bit of a mystery. The answer to this seems to be that Ice Lake Xeon hardware is now available at retail: both motherboards and a CPU or two.

Mobile Flagship Phone Cameras 2021 H1 Review: Megapixels & Telephotos

It’s been well over a year now since our last extensive camera round-up article, and it’s also been a few months now since the release of most of 2021’s flagship device releases, and it’s time to take a snapshot of the current smartphone photography landscape.

GlobalFoundries To Build New 450K Wafer-per-Year Fab in Singapore

Par : Ryan Smith

Looking to capitalize on the ongoing chip crunch, GlobalFoundries this morning is announcing that the company is building a new chip fab in Singapore, with the groundbreaking taking place immediately. The unnamed fab will be joining the company’s existing cluster of fabs in Singapore, and once fully ramped up in late 2023, will be capable of processing 450K 300mm wafers per year. The fab is the first of a larger, three phase plan for the foundry, which with investments from customers and the Singapore government, will be spending $4 billion to construct the new fab.

Like the rest of the chip lithography industry, GlobalFoundries is currently enjoying a booming market where they can’t make chips fast enough to satisfy customer demand. Even with multiple fabs located in Singapore, Dresden, and the US, the company is running at capacity and could be selling more chips if they could make them. To that end, the company is preparing to make the first of several planned capacity expansions, starting with its fab cluster in Singapore.

Keeping in line with GlobalFoundries’ pivot towards more specialized processes for specific classes of chips, the new fab is going to be focused on larger process nodes. GloFo is principally investing in capacity for their automotive, 5G mobility and secure device customers, which means adding capacity for their 55nm BiCMOS process for RF, as well as their 40nm processes for embedded memory and RF. A small part of the fab’s capacity is also being set aside for 90nm. And, since this fab is being built with modern tools, the company is being quick to emphasize that these allocations aren’t static, and that many of their tools are fungible, allowing them to be moved between different lines as dictated by demand.

Owing to the unique processes being employed and the overall chip crunch – which even after it diminishes isn’t expected to fully abate any time soon – GloFo is fast-tracking the development of this new fab. With construction already underway (and the formal groundbreaking set for today), the company expects the fab to produce its first commercial wafers in early 2023, only around 18 months from now. And by the time the fab is fully ramped up at the end of 2023, the 250,000 square feet of clean room space will be capable of processing 450K wafers per year (~38K/month). Overall, this marks a nearly 50% increase in GloFo Singapore’s capacity, bringing the total capacity for operations there to 1.5M 300mm wafers per year.

Funding for the $4 billion fab, in turn, is coming from a few sources. According to GlobalFoundries, part of the funding for the fab is coming directly from customers, who are pre-paying for the capacity. As well, Singapore’s Economic Development Board is being listed as a partner. And finally, with GlobalFoundries easily turning a profit, the company has much easier access to loans and other forms of borrowing than it has in previous years.

Overall, this marks the next step in an important turnaround for the contract fab, which was spun-off from AMD almost 13 years ago. Though GlobalFoundries’ plans to compete as a bleeding-edge fab eventually fell to the wayside thanks to the ever-increasing costs of R&D, the company has found a new role as a large-scale provider of older and more specialized manufacturing processes. As a result, GloFo is finally a financially successful chip fab, and with that success comes the need to expand. Once finished, the new Singapore fab will be the first brand-new (and not acquired) fab to be built by the company in several years.

Meanwhile, Singapore is just the first of several planned additions for the contract chip fab. Mindful of the current political climate and every major nation’s desire to secure local chip manufacturing capacity, the company is aiming to expand capacity in all three of its fab sites, ideally splitting capacity equally between Singapore, the US, and Dresden. Singapore, in turn, has become the first major expansion on the basis of need – it’s the oldest fab complex and the first to run out of room – but it won’t be the last. GloFo is already in the middle of its previously-announced $1.4B capacity expansion across all of its sites, and the company wants to invest upwards of 6 billion dollars more over the next couple of years. So, as GlobalFoundries’ fortunes continue to rise, so will the additional fab capacity needed to support the company.

AMD Moves GCN 1, 2, & 3-based GPUs and APUs To Legacy; Also Drops Win7 Support

Par : Ryan Smith

Alongside today’s release of their new Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 driver – the first to bring support for FidelityFX Super Resolution tech – AMD is also using this opportunity to clean house on supported graphics products. As announced in a new blog post and effective immediately, AMD is moving all of its 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) based GPUs and APUs to legacy status. As a result, pre-RX 400 series video cards and pre-Ryzen APUs are no longer supported by AMD’s current drivers, and AMD’s previous 21.5.2 driver set will be the final release for those products. 21.5.2 will also be the final driver that supports Windows 7, as AMD is also using this opportunity to drop support for that already-retired OS.

This week’s change in support marks the first time since 2015 that AMD has moved any video hardware to legacy support. At the time, the company retired its pre-GCN hardware, leaving AMD’s GCN-based Radeon HD 7000 series and newer products as their support baseline. And, after nearly 10 years of support for the oldest pieces of GCN hardware – the then-revolutionary Radeon HD 7970 was launched at the very start of 2012 – AMD is finally winding down support for the first couple of waves of GCN hardware.

First introduced in 2011, GCN was a major overhaul of AMD’s graphics architecture, moving from an ILP-centric design to a more modern and compute-friendly TLP-centric design. GCN itself has since been supplanted by the RDNA family, but many of the basic design principles of GCN are still alive today in AMD’s enterprise compute-focused CDNA architecture.

As for this week’s product support changes, AMD is essentially retiring all graphics hardware – GPU and APU – that pre-dates 2016’s Polaris (GCN 4) architecture. Consequently, AMD’s lengthy legacy list includes the Radeon 7000 and 8000 series, as well as the 200, 300, and Fury series. Even a few pieces of mobile-focused M400 hardware are on there, since those low-end parts were based on older GCN chips. Overall, this marks a roughly 5-year span of hardware being retired this week, with the youngest parts just turning 5.

On the APU front, the legacy list includes several of AMD’s popular pre-Ryzen APUs, including Bristol Ridge, Carrizo, and Kaveri, which were predominantly sold under the AMD A-series moniker (e.g. A10-9700). It’s worth noting that the resulting support window for these products does end up being a bit shorter than the discrete GPUs, since AMD didn’t release their first Ryzen + Vega APUs until 2018.

The Dearly Departed
Desktop Mobile
AMD A-Series APUs with Radeon R4, R5, R6, or R7 Graphics AMD A-Series PRO processors with Radeon Graphics
AMD Pro A-Series APUs with Radeon R5 or R7 Graphics AMD FX-Series APUs with Radeon R7 Graphics
AMD Athlon Series APUs with Radeon R3 Graphics AMD E-Series APUs with Radeon R2 Graphics
AMD Sempron Series APUs with Radeon R3 Graphics AMD Radeon R7 M400 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 Fury Series, R9 Nano Series Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 300 Series Graphics AMD Radeon R7 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series Graphics AMD Radeon R5 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R7 300 Series Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R7 200 Series Graphics AMD Radeon R7 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R5 300 Series Graphics AMD Radeon R5 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R5 200 Series Graphics AMD Radeon HD 8500M - HD 8900M Series Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 8500 - HD 8900 Series Graphics AMD Radeon HD 7700M - HD 7900M Series Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7700 - HD 7900 Series Graphics  

As things stand, I’m not surprised to see AMD lump together GCN 1/2/3 from a driver support standpoint. Despite some very material architecture tweaks among those successive generations, from a product development standpoint they all represent one extended product family, as AMD introduced and replaced GPUs in a piecemeal fashion. Combined with the fact that AMD continued using early GCN parts in newer cards for years, it wasn’t until Polaris in 2016 that AMD finally executed a complete top-to-bottom refresh of its entire GPU product stack. In other words, GCN 1/2/3 are being retired in the same way they lived: together.

Otherwise, as previously mentioned, AMD is also using this opportunity to retire support for their last pre-Windows 10 OS. Like most other hardware vendors, AMD had opted to continue developing drivers for Windows 7 even after the OS itself was retired at the start of 2020, owing to the fact that it was still seeing significant use in some locales. But, after another 18 months of extended support, Windows 7 support is also being dropped. As of today’s 21.6.1 drivers, the only versions of Windows supported are 64-bit editions of Windows 10.

For their part, AMD’s blog post on the retirement notes that “This change enables AMD to dedicate valuable engineering resources to developing new features and enhancements for graphics products based on our latest graphics architectures.” It’s also worth noting that this announcement comes less than 2 weeks after NVIDIA’s own legacy announcement, where the company announced that the similarly aged Kepler architecture will be moved to legacy status later this summer.

Closing out support for all these legacy products then will be AMD’s 21.5.2 driver. The company has posted a fresh “legacy” version of the driver just for these retired products, though it doesn’t look like there’s anything new versus AMD’s existing drivers. According to the company, there are no further driver released planned, and the announcement makes no mention of a security update support period.

Overall, AMD’s early GCN architecture parts marked an important transition for AMD, and the resulting hardware, for all of its merits and weaknesses, kept AMD in the game during a very tough period for the company. So for GCN 1, 2, and 3, this is a retirement that’s well-earned.

Intel Licenses SiFive’s Portfolio for Intel Foundry Services on 7nm

Today’s announcement from SiFive comes in two parts; this part is significant as it recognizes that Intel will be enabling SiFive’s IP portfolio on its 7nm manufacturing process for upcoming foundry customers. We are expecting Intel to offer a wide variety of its own IP, such as some of the x86 cores, memory controllers, PCIe controllers, and accelerators, however the depth of its third party IP support has not been fully established at this point. SiFive’s IP is the first (we believe) official confirmation of specific IP that will be supported.

Intel to Create RISC-V Development Platform with SiFive P550 Cores on 7nm in 2022

As part of SiFive’s announcements today, along with enabling SiFive IP on Intel’s Foundry Service offerings, Intel will be creating its own RISC-V development platform using its 7nm process technology. This platform, called Horse Creek, will feature several of SiFive’s new Performance P550 cores also being announced today, and will be paired with Intel’s DDR and PCIe IP technology.

Using AI to Build Better Processors: Google Was Just the Start, Says Synopsys

In light of the rate of innovation, chip design teams have spent tens of thousands of hours honing their skills over the decades. But getting the best human-designed processor in this fashion can take six months or more, because the number of arrangements possible is equivalent to the number of atoms in the known universe… multiplied by the number of atoms in the known universe. With numbers so large, using computers to brute force the best configuration is impossible. At least, it was thought to be. 

Synopsys’ CEO Aart de Geus is set to take the keynote presentations at two upcoming technical semiconductor industry events this year and as part of these talks, Aart will discuss what was considered impossible only a few years ago – the path to finding a better and automated way into chip design through the use of machine learning solutions. Within the context of EDA tools, as Google has demonstrated recently, engineers can be assisted in building better processors using machine learning algorithms.

Seagate Announces FireCuda 530 PCIe 4.0 SSD at SG21

Par : Ganesh T S

The gaming segment continues to experience rapid growth in the PC market, and we have seen PC component vendors come  up with launch events specifically targeting gamers. Seagate's inaugural Virtual Gaming Event (SG21) is the latest in this list, and the company is announcing its latest flagship SSD - the FireCuda 530 at this event. With its PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, there is a significant jump in sequential access speeds (reads up to 7300 MBps). This has has an ideal target market in the gaming segment, with the fast load times making a visible difference in the user experience.

The drives in Seagate's FireCuda SSD series have typically been based on Phison controllers using custom firmware (with the company's preferred term being 'Seagate-validated'), and the FireCuda 530 is no different. It is based on Phison's PS5018-E18 using the latest 3D TLC NAND (Micron's B47R 176L). A number of E18-based SSDs have hit the market over the 6 months, and we also reviewed the Inland Performance Plus a few weeks back. It was held back a bit by the use of 96L 3D TLC - an aspect that should be addressed by the latest 176-layer NAND.

Similar to other flagship M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs, the FireCuda 530 also comes with a heatsink option. Unlike the ridged designs common for this application, Seagate has gone in for a minimalist option designed by EKWB - a finely-textured aluminum block weighing more than the usual finned heatsinks, while still retaining a slim profile for wide compatibility.

Seagate FireCuda 530 SSD Specifications
Capacity 500 GB 1 TB 2 TB 4 TB
Controller Phison PS5018-E18 (PCIe 4.0 x4)
NAND Flash 176L 3D TLC NAND (Micron B47R)
Form-Factor, Interface Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 Double-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4
Sequential Read 7000 MB/s 7300 MB/s
Sequential Write 3000 MB/s 6000 MB/s 6900 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 400K 800K 1M
Random Write IOPS 700K 1M
Pseudo-SLC Caching Supported
TCG Opal Encryption No
Warranty 5 years (with 3 year DRS)
Write Endurance 640 TB
0.7 DWPD
1275 TB
0.7 DWPD
2550 TB
0.7 DWPD
5100 TB
0.7 DWPD
MSRP (non-heatsink) $140 (25¢/GB) $240 (25¢/GB) $490 (21¢/GB) $950 (21¢/GB)

While the FireCuda 520 came with 1 DWPD ratings, Seagate has returned to conservative roots with the consumer-standard 0.7 DWPD for the write endurance of the FireCuda 530 SSDs. The heatsink is optional, since most new motherboards are providing their own M.2 cooling solution. It does add a $50 premium to the barebones version. In addition to the 5-year warranty, Seagate also includes a 3-year Rescue Data Recovery Service plan with the SSD.

Pricing is par for the course with other E18 SSDs, and the added DRS tends to pull up the value for money aspect in the high-end space. Seagate also appears to be one of the very few vendors with a 512GB option in this performance class (E18-based SSDs). This is understandable, as the amount of parallelism available in 512GB-class drives is not high enough to sustain the link bandwidth for sequential writes (The 512GB SKU tops out at 3GBps, while the 2TB and 4TB ones reach up to 6.9GBps). On the power consumption front, the average active power ranges from 5.8W for the 500GB SKU to 8.4W for the 4TB one.

Overall, the product appears to check all the right boxes for gamers and content creators looking to purchase a new PCIe 4.0 SSD this summer.

AMD EPYC Milan Review Part 2: Testing 8 to 64 Cores in a Production Platform

It’s been a few months since AMD first announced their new third generation EPYC Milan server CPU line-up. We had initially reviewed the first SKUS back in March, covering the core density optimised 64-core EPYC 7763, EPYC 7713 and the core-performance optimised 32-core EPYC 75F3. Since then, we’ve ben able to get our hands on several new mid and lower end SKUs in the form of the new 24-core EPYC 7443, the 16-core 7343, as well as the very curious 8-core EPYC 72F3 which we’ll be reviewing today.

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 888+ 5G Speed Bin at 3GHz

Today for the first day of Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm is announcing its usual yearly mini-refresh of its flagship Snapdragon SoC in the form of the new Snapdragon 888+. As in the previous few generations, right around the summer period, Qualcomm is taking advantage of the completed spring device cycle and shifting focus onto newer devices in the second half of the year with, and a new SoC that’s slightly boosts performance.

Marvell Announces OCTEON 10 DPU Family: First to 5nm with N2 CPUs

It’s been a little over a year since we covered Marvell’s OCTEON TX2 infrastructure processors, and since then, the ecosystem has been evolving in an extremely fast manner – both within Marvell and outside. Today, we’re covering the new generation OCTEON 10 family of DPUs, a whole new family of SoCs, built upon TSMC’s 5nm process node and also for the featuring for the first time Arm’s new Neoverse N2 processors.

NVIDIA Unveils PCIe version of 80GB A100 Accelerator: Pushing PCIe to 300 Watts

Par : Ryan Smith

As part of today’s burst of ISC 2021 trade show announcements, NVIDIA this morning is announcing that they’re bringing the 80GB version of their A100 accelerator to the PCIe form factor. First announced in NVIDIA’s custom SXM form factor last fall, the 80GB version of the A100 was introduced to not only expand the total memory capacity of an A100 accelerator – doubling it from 40GB to 80GB – but it also offered a rare mid-generation spec bump as well, cranking up the memory clockspeeds by a further 33%. Now, after a bit over 6 months, NVIDIA is releasing a PCIe version of the accelerator for customers who need discrete add-in cards.

The new 80GB version of the PCIe A100 joins the existing 40GB version, and NVIDIA will continue selling both versions of the card. On the whole, this is a pretty straightforward transfer of the 80GB A100 over to PCIe, with NVIDIA dialing down the TDP of the card and the number of exposed NVLinks to match the capabilities of the form factor. The release of the 80GB PCIe card is designed to give NVIDIA’s traditional PCIe form factor customers a second, higher-performing accelerator option, particularly for those users who need more than 40GB of GPU memory.

Intel to Launch Next-Gen Sapphire Rapids Xeon with High Bandwidth Memory

As part of today’s International Supercomputing 2021 (ISC) announcements, Intel is showcasing that it will be launching a version of its upcoming Sapphire Rapids (SPR) Xeon Scalable processor with high-bandwidth memory (HBM). This version of SPR-HBM will come later in 2022, after the main launch of Sapphire Rapids, and Intel has stated that it will be part of its general availability offering to all, rather than a vendor-specific implementation.

Netgear Launches WAX630 AX6000 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point for SMBs

Par : Ganesh T S

Netgear has been slowly building up its Wi-Fi 6 business portfolio over the last couple of years. Today, the company is launching its flagship SMB access point in its Insight-managed series - the WAX630. The consumer Wi-Fi market segment has received extra focus over the last year or so with the onset of the pandemic-induced work-from-home (WFH) trend. As businesses move towards reopening in many parts of the world, there is bound to be an investment in upgrading the networking infrastructure of many SMB / microbusinesses to gear up for the increased workloads. Netgear is hoping to ride this upgrade wave to increase the market share of its Insight-based networking equipment in the SMB market.

In 2020, Netgear released the Orbi SXK80 and the WAX610 AP to introduce Wi-Fi 6 into their SMB portfolio. The company has been far more busy this year, with the launch of the WAX214 AX1800 and WAX218 AX3600 APs under the Essentials brand, the Orbi SXK30 AX1800 mini and the WAX620 AX3600 Insight-managed AP back in March. Today's WAX630 launch rounds off its launches for the first half of 2021.

The WAX630 is the new flagship, and builds upon the 802.3at as well as 2.5GBASE-T support of the WAX610 and WAX620. A second wired LAN port (GbE) is included. It supports up to 600 active clients with 100 concurrent devices. The coverage area is also more, coming it at 3500 sq. ft. compared to 2500 for the WAX610 and 3000 for the WAX620. This tri-band solution (2x 5GHz + 1x 2.4 GHz 4x4) comes under the AX6000 class (1200 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band and 2 x 2400 Mbps in the 5GHz one), pointing to the use of a Qualcomm chipset. The lack of full 160 MHz support is not a big deal in this market segment, at least not until Wi-Fi 6E becomes more widespread.

Almost all SMB and enterprise Wi-Fi solutions are enabled with cloud-management. This greatly simplifies management on-the-go by IT administrators. However, this carries a premium for the additional firmware features and cloud servers maintenance from the vendor's perspective. Netgear's business lineup also includes an 'Essentials' product line that does away with the app and cloud-based management for a lower price point.

On the Orbi Pro front, one of the challenges for market acceptance has been the pricing due to its multi-device nature. The SXK80 was introduced last year at $770 for a router and a satellite. Last month, the SXK30 Orbi Pro Wi-Fi 6 Mini was introduced at $300 for a pair. To meet this price point, the SXK30 does away with the second 5GHz band and the 2.5GBASE-T port. The coverage area and capacity metrics are also a notch lower than the SXK80.

In SMB Wi-Fi, the focus is not on peak throughput - rather, security and reliability are primary concerns. Scalability and ease of management come in a close second. With their current portfolio of products and suggested pricing structure, Netgear is carving a niche for itself in this market segment. While not going head-to-head against the Cisco Merakis and Arubas, it does need to compete against other vendors such as Ubiquiti Networks, Linksys Business, EnGenius, and the like. However, none of these vendors seem to have a product in the market currently to go head-to-head against the WAX630's specifications. It will be interesting to track how the market evolves over the coming months. The WAX630 is priced at $330 and available for purchase today.

Update on Intel Sapphire Rapids in 2022: Q1 for Production, Q2 for Ramp, H1 Launch

In the news cycle today, Intel is announcing an update to its planned deployment of its next generation Xeon Scalable platform known as Sapphire Rapids. Sapphire Rapids is the main platform behind the upcoming Aurora supercomputer, and set to feature support for leading edge technologies such as DDR5, PCIe 5.0, CXL, and Advanced Matrix Extensions. The announcement today is Intel reaffirming its commitment to bringing Sapphire Rapids to market for wide availability in the first half of 2022, meanwhile early customers are currently operating with early silicon for testing and optimization.

Micron Sells Lehi 3D XPoint Fab to Texas Instruments for $900M

Par : Ryan Smith

Back in March of this year, Micron announced that it would be getting out of the 3D XPoint business entirely, abandoning the technology and putting its sole 3D XPoint fab up for sale. Now a short few months later, Micron has secured a buyer for the fab – and it’s not Intel. Rather it will be Texas Instruments who picks up the fab, buying it off of Micron for $900 million with plans to convert it over to analog and embedded processors.

The sale of the Lehi fab is the latest and final chapter in Micron’s years-long efforts to unwind its non-volatile memory joint venture with Intel, IM Flash. Over the last decade Micron has acquired Intel’s share of the business in multiple stages, culminating in acquiring the crown jewel of the former partnership, the Lehi, Utah 3D XPoint fab, in 2018. Since then, Micron decided that it would dissolve its 3D XPoint partnership with Intel entirely, culminating with the company abandoning the technology entirely, leaving Micron with a modern fab that it didn’t have an immediate need for.

To that end, Micron put the fab up for sale earlier this year, and has quickly found a buyer amidst the ongoing chip crunch. And while former partner (and current customer) Intel was the most likely candidate, they were not a shoe-in. As our own Billy Tallis put it at the time “Intel is not guaranteed to be the buyer of the Lehi, UT fab. They've doubtless had opportunities to do so before as Intel and Micron unwound their partnership”.

Instead, the memory fab will be going to Texas Instruments, who is buying the building – but not all of the tools. Though designed for 3D XPoint production, the Lehi fab is otherwise a modern, 2 million square foot fab that can process 300mm wafers and is readily capable of being converted to other uses; and this is the direction TI will be taking things. The company is currently planning to equip the fab for the production of analog and embedded processors on the 65nm and 45nm nodes, with the ability to take the fab “beyond those nodes as required.” For Texas Instruments this will be their fourth 300mm fab.

Meanwhile the remaining memory tools that TI isn’t buying will be further assets for Micron, who will be keeping some of them and selling the rest. According to the company’s press release, some of these tools are getting redeployed to other Micron fabs, some have been sold, and yet other tools are still up for sale. Micron doesn’t mention who the tool buyers are, but given the specialized nature of the equipment, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Intel were among them. Overall, Micron is valuing the tools at $600 million, bringing the total value of the transaction to a cool $1.5 billion.

The sale is expected to close at the end of the year, at which point TI will be putting out offers to retain all of the Lehi staff as the fab gets converted over to TI’s analog and logic processes.

Finally, for the sole company to actually use 3D XPoint memory, the sale of the Lehi fab calls into question Intel’s own 3D XPoint production plans. Having sold their share of the fab to Micron, Intel transitioned to being a customer of the world’s only 3D XPoint fab in late 2019 – an arrangement that left the fab operating in the red for Micron, as Intel’s 3D XPoint orders weren’t enough to fully utilize the fab. IM Flash jointly developed Intel’s current (second-generation) 3D XPoint memory technology as well, and it’s believed that the Lehi fab has been producing all of that memory for Intel.

So it remains to be seen just how Intel will be impacted, as the sale puts a running clock on how much longer they can buy 3D XPoint memory from the third-party fab. Eventually Intel will need to setup their own fab – likely in Rio Rancho, NM, where their 3D XPoint R&D takes place – but so far the company hasn’t announced any such plans.

Sources: Texas Instruments, Micron

ASUS Launches Zenfone 8 in US: Starting at $599

Following the phone’s initial announcement mid-May, this week ASUS has officially launched their new ZenFone 8 in the US starting at a price of $599. The ZenFone 8 is a bit unusual in the market as it is trying to fit itself in the niche of a small flagship device – at least in terms of performance.

Cristiano Amon Takes over as Qualcomm CEO: Reiterates Focus on Custom CPUs

As of June 30th, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon has taken over as the company’s CEO, replacing his predecessor Steve Mollenkopf which has now retired. In statements to Reuters, Amon had made comments regarding the company’s future CPU roadmap, which come to further contextualise the company’s completed acquisition of NUVIA last March.

Examining OnePlus' Performance Behaviour: Optimization or Misrepresentation?

We've discovered weird behaviour on the OnePlus 9 Pro flagship: Popular apps are performance limited, while benchmarks are unaffected. Is this battery optimisation, or misrepresentation of the user experience?

Intel Continues to Rehire Veterans: At Some Point They’ll Run Out

News on the wire today is that Intel has rehired 28-year veteran Shlomit Weiss into the position of Senior VP and Co-General Manager of Intel’s Design Engineering Group (DEG), a position recently vacated by Uri Frank who left to head up Google’s SoC development. As reported in Tom’s Hardware and confirmed in her own LinkedIn announcement, Weiss will be working at Intel’s Israel design center alongside Sunil Shenoy and is ‘committed to ensure that the company continues to lead in developing chips’. Weiss is the latest in an ever growing list of ‘re-hiring’ Intel veterans, which leads to the problem that at some point Intel will run out of ex-employees to rehire and instead nurture internal talent for those roles.

Intel Hybrid CPU Starts 'End of Life' Process

As I opened my inbox this morning, I was surprised. I keep track of when Intel puts products on End of Life (or starts the process through something called Product Discontinuance), and so I usually see a run of 3-5 year old CPUs or storage or servers pass through without much of a worry. When I opened up my daily brief today however, the headline read ‘Core Processor with Hybrid Technology Discontinued’, which immediately struck me as a bit crazy.

Intel announced Lakefield, its only Hybrid CPU on the market, in January 2019. It pairs one of its big cores with four smaller Atom cores in a small 12mm square package. Not only this, Lakefield is one of Intel’s first Foveros packaging processors, with a 10nm compute piece of silicon sitting on top of an IO die, all packaged together with DRAM on top. The goal of the Lakefield design was to produce a processor with a super low idle power, but also have enough performance for hand-held devices. Intel quoted 1.2 mW when in idle, meeting that goal.

Lakefield came to market in June 2020 in two products: the Samsung Galaxy Book S 13.3-inch clamshell laptop, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, a foldable display-based design. Both of these products were premium priced, particularly the Fold with its display, however reported performance was more akin to a quad-core Atom notebook than the $2000 quad-core mobile devices they were aiming for. Battery life sounded good, although we have never tested it at AnandTech due to lack of access to review samples from Samsung, Lenovo, or Intel.

The key thing was the Hybrid CPU design. By pairing one of Intel’s big cores with four of its smaller Tremont Atom cores, the goal was to run the device almost exclusively on the Atom cores for efficiency and then call on the big core when anything latency related was required, such as when the user touches the screen or the keyboard. Within 16 milliseconds (or one frame at 60 Hz), the processor would switch over to the big core for the touch screen interaction, do what it needed to do (often in under 16 ms), and then power back down.

In principle, the concept is sound and makes a lot of sense, especially if the goal is to save battery. As Intel’s first Hybrid CPU design however, there were some initial teething issues as managing threads between the different performance levels required adjustments to Windows’ scheduler. Microsoft already has experience with this when dealing with Windows on Snapdragon devices using the Arm architecture, however it was a first for x86 and the first implementations were reportedly quite rough.

In reality, because of the price of the device, it was compared to hardware that had only big cores. Even if it was compared to Atom based notebooks in the $400 range, because the processor was a low powered device, often lower than the Atom notebooks it was being compared to, it didn’t fall favorably in those benchmarks either. The goal of Lakefield for Intel wasn’t performance, but experience and form factor innovation, which benchmarks never indicate.

The note today from Intel indicates that Lakefield is now on the path to End of Life. This means the following milestones:

  • Start of Product Discontinuance: July 6th 2021
  • Last Corporate Assurance: October 8th 2021
  • Last Product Discontinuance Order: October 22nd 2021
  • Orders are Non-Cancellable from October 22nd 2021
  • Last Shipment Date: April 29th 2022

The start of the process means announcing that they will stop manufacturing processors (July 6th) and if a company wants to put in an order, they have until October 22nd. However that’s also the date where orders can’t be canceled or returned, and all orders will be shipped by April 29th. That means that products could still come out with Lakefield after April 29th, however the OEM partners will not have any means to secure additional stock.

Intel has set its sights on its future Hybrid CPU designs, with the upcoming Alder Lake platform set to launch end of this year in either desktops or notebooks. There is also talk that Windows 11 is better suited to deal with Intel’s hybrid designs from a scheduler perspective. Overall, to see its only public Hybrid CPU suddenly go on product discontinuance after only a year in the market isn’t a great commitment to the technology from OEM partners. Intel's own Product Change Notification states that 'market demand for the products listed has shifted to other Intel products'.

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ASUS Announces "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" - A Real Product, or Just A Marketing Showcase?

Today ASUS and Qualcomm are announcing the “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders” - a ASUS designed phone with extensive Snapdragon branding – a ROG Phone 5 spin-off, or just a pointless marketing exercise?

ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero Review: Everything for Rocket Lake

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Samsung: Deployment of 3nm GAE Node on Track for 2022

Samsung Foundry has made some changes to its plans concerning its 3 nm-class process technologies that use gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, or what Samsung calls its multi-bridge channel field-effect transistors (MBCFETs). Based on new information direct from Samsung, it would appear that its first version of 3nm, 3GAE (3nm gate-all-around early), is coming to high volume manufacturing a year later than expected, but also it seems to have removed this technology from its public roadmap, suggesting it may be for internal use only.

Meanwhile, 3GAE's successor 3GAP (3nm gate-all-around plus) node is still in the roadmap, it is on track for volume manufacturing in 2023.

3GAE on Track for 2022, Maybe Just Not for Everyone

At its recent 2021 IP & ASIC Design Ecosystem Conference in China, Samsung Foundry presented its updated public technology roadmap which was then republished by bloggers at Baidu and Weibo.

On its FinFET technologies, both 5LPP and 4LPP nodes are new to the roadmap, and set for high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

For GAA technology, 3GAE is absent from the roadmap, but 3GAP is there. We reached out to Samsung and a representative confirmed that the 3GAE technology is still on track for ramp in 2022. From the slide, we can see that MBCFET-based 3GAP will enter its HVM phase sometime in 2023.

"As for the 3GAE process, we've been in discussion with customers and expect to mass-produce 3GAE in 2022," the spokesperson said.

The absence of 3GAE process from the public roadmap may be explained by the fact that it will only be available to Samsung's own LSI division, just like some other (E)arly nodes. That being said, previous generation (E)arly nodes are still mentioned in the slides that the company demonstrated.

Samsung originally announced its MBCFET-based 3GAE and 3GAP nodes in May 2019. Back then, the company promised a 35% performance increase, a 50% power consumption reduction, and a 45% area reduction for 3GAE compared to 7LPP. Furthermore, the company announced the availability of v0.1 of its 3nm PDK and at the time said that volume production using 3GAE was set to start in late 2021. With that moving to 2022 based on the latest information, one might interpret this as either a delay or miscalculation based on enabling GAA designs at scale.

However on the plus side, Samsung taped out the first 3 nm test chip several weeks ago. It also announced the availability of Synopsys EDA tools compatible with the new fabrication technologies. The use of fabrication processes that rely on brand-new transistors is always a challenge - in addition to new electronic design automation (EDA) tools, chip developers need all-new IP. We look forward to hearing more disclosures on that front.

A New 4LPP Node on FinFETs

While it looks like general customers are not going to use Samsung's 3 nm nodes until 2023, the newly announced 4LPP is set to meet the requirements of the company's clients in 2022. Since 4LPP relies on familiar FinFETs, it will be much easier for Samsung's customers to use this node when compared to any 3nm GAA nodes early in their lifecycle.

It is noteworthy that Samsung now considers its 5 nm and 4 nm-class technologies as different node branches on its slides. Previously, the foundry considered its 4LPE as an evolution of its 7LPP process. Perhaps this is because 4 nm is set to offer very tangible PPAc (power, performance, area, cost) advantages over 5 nm, or because there are substantial internal changes (e.g., new materials, significantly higher usage of extreme ultraviolet lithography, etc.). 

For example, one of Samsung's slides specifically mentions density and performance improvements for 5LPE and 5LPP, but only mentions power and performance improvements for 4LPP. The overlapping technologies will also help to mitigate risks if one of the nodes does not meet certain expectations.

Surprisingly, Samsung Foundry is set to ramp production using its 4LPE and 5LPP technologies at around the same time in 2021, which could enable it to offer different PPAc advantages for different chip designs. 

Summary

While Samsung Foundry's GAAFET/MBCFET 3 nm plans appear to have changed and slipped by a year, it is unlikely a big problem for the company as its (E)arly nodes were never widely adopted. To cover that additional year, the company's new 5LPP and 4LPP FinFET-based technologies are set to enable PPA advantages for Samsung Foundry's clients and enable the company to gain more experience with EUV equipment before using it for its 3GAE/3GAP nodes.

The SP750 SFX Gold Review: Lian Li's First SFX Power Supply

In today’s review we are having a look at Lian Li’s first SFX PSU, the SP750. Against all odds, Lian Li’s first diversification attempt comes with a very powerful 750W SFX unit rated at 80 Plus Gold, mainly designed for compact high-performance gaming systems.

Intel Accelerated Webcast on July 26th: Update on Process Technology and Roadmaps

Earlier this year, new Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger outlined his new ‘IDM 2.0’ vision for Intel. This vision was a three pronged strategy based on improving its own process node technology, mixing in other foundry technology where needed, and also realigning its manufacturing for a new foundry service offering allowing other semiconductor companies to use Intel’s manufacturing expertise. As part of the journey towards Gelsinger’s IDM 2.0 vision, we were told to expect updates at a more regular cadence, and the announcement of ‘Intel Accelerated’ in a couple of weeks is the next event on the calendar.

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