Connexion
Closing out the last of the major PC-focused keynotes at Computex 2024 this evening, we have Intel. The long-reigning leader of the PC CPU market, Intel is in the middle of executing its plans to get back on track on both the manufacturing and chip design aspects of the business. Tonight’s keynote, being helmed by the highly-animated Pat Gelsinger, is titled “Bringing AI Everywhere.” And, like so many other Computex presentations and announcements this week, AI hardware is going to play a big part, as Intel outlines a full stack of products for client and server computing.
Of the four great PC chip vendors at the show, Intel has been the most up-front about what to expect from their hour-long presentation. The company’s Computex 2024 page already outlines their four major topics: AI PCs, Xeon 6 Processors, Gaudi AI accelerators, and Intel’s OpenVINO software ecosystem.
On the consumer hardware front, the company set the table with a significant teaser earlier this month about their forthcoming mobile PC SoC, Lunar Lake. The next generation of Core Ultra processors, Intel is touting significant energy efficiency gains for the mobile-focused chip, with new architectures driving their Performance and Efficiency CPU cores, Xe2 GPU, and a much faster 45+ TOPS (INT8) NPU. While the Lunar Lake announcement is coming relatively soon after the Meteor Lake launch, Intel has made it clear that it’s not going to hold back on shipping future products; they are looking to make up for lost time. Still, Lunar Lake devices are not expected to hit retail shelves until Q4 of this year, so this announcement is coming months in advance of the hardware itself.
On the server front, Intel has been publicly prepping for the launch of a new generation of Xeons with the Xeon 6 platform. The most notable part of this being the release of the company’s first Efficiency-core Xeon, Sierra Forest. Sierra Forest is set to be the first Xeon 6 chip out the door this year, and will offer up to 288 E cores on a single chip, allowing Intel to tap into the many (many) core CPU markets that AMD and Arm-based rivals have been unopposed at thus far.
Finally, the company has fully pivoted its server AI accelerator strategy to its Gaudi accelerators. Gaudi 3 was introduced back in April, and while it isn’t expected to go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA’s top accelerators in every workload, Intel is betting that they can beat NVIDIA on critical workloads, all while undercutting them significantly in pricing. The first Gaudi 3 parts are set to be released in the second half of this year, so hopefully we’ll be hearing a bit more about Intel’s plans as part of their keynote.
As always, the AnandTech crew is live and in person to catch this final Computex keynote. So please come join us at 8:00pm PT / 11:00pm ET / 03:00 UTC to get all the details.
For our second keynote of the day for Computex, we have the 4th Musketeer of the great PC powers, Qualcomm. Slated to be the most PC-focused of the four keynotes, company CEO Cristiano Amon will be presenting a keynote entitled “The PC Reborn.” And while Amon is no stranger to giving keynotes, this is slated to be his most PC-centric keynote yet, giving Computex attendees a clearer idea of how focused Qualcomm will be on the PC market with their new Windows-on-Arm SoCs.
The big focus for today's keynote is expected to be the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus SoCs, which Qualcomm announced over half a year ago, and has been touting ever since. Now, the first consumer devices based on these chips are just a couple of weeks away from shipping, so Qualcomm is in their final promotional push for their new Windows-on-Arm platform. As a result, Qualcomm should have a lot more hardware to show off, with final silicon and shipping SKUs already defined.
While Snapdragon X is not Qualcomm’s first effort to ship an Arm-based SoC for Windows devices – there are 3 generations of 8cx Gen 3 platforms that everyone is happy never to mention again – the Snapdragon X is Qualcomm’s most serious effort yet. At its core is the new, high-performance/high-efficiency Oryon CPU core, which combined with the rest of Qualcomm’s tried-and-true mobile hardware experience, the company is hoping to mold into a revolutionary Arm-based SoC for Windows laptops. The company is also counting on a decade of software development on Microsoft’s part to make the Windows-on-Arm ecosystem whole, not to mention as frictionless as possible.
Besides energy efficiency, Qualcomm’s other big push is on the burgeoning field of NPUs. The Snapdragon X NPU is rated to deliver 45 TOPS of INT8 performance, which makes it the first PC NPU to meet Microsoft’s hardware requirement for Windows 11 Copilot+ AI functionality. So Qualcomm is looking to leverage this time-limited opportunity to be the first to offer new functionality in the Windows space – a privilege normally reserved for Intel or AMD.
Come join us at 10:30pm PT / 01:30am ET / 05:30 UTC to get all the details.
Computex keynote season is kicking into high gear this morning with the show's leading keynote, which is being delivered by AMD. Company CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be presenting a keynote entitled “The future of high-performance computing in the AI era,” and with a run time of 90 minutes, we're expecting AMD to have a whole host of product announcements covering their full spectrum of product categories.
The big expectation here is fresh news around AMD’s Zen 5 CPU core architecture, and the chips built around it. AMD’s most recent Zen 5 roadmap has it slated to deliver all three flavors of Zen 5 by the end of this year, and we’re coming up on the two-year anniversary of the Zen 4 architecture launch.
Along with client chips, AMD has been pushing their server CPUs hard, and they’ve previously told investors that the next-gen EPYC Turin CPU is “looking great”. So we’ll likely hear about both client and server Zen 5 product plans during this keynote.
On the GPU/accelerator side of matters, AMD is mid-cycle (at best) with their Instinct MI300 series accelerators. With the company’s sales repeatedly beating their own expectations, AMD doesn’t seem to need much help moving this premium silicon right now. But with AI being the operative buzzword of this year’s Computex (and indeed, the computing industry as a whole), it would be weird for AMD to not have something to say about their rapidly growing AI accelerator product line.
Come join us at 6:30pm PT / 9:30pm ET / 01:30 UTC to get all the details.
We're here in sunny San Jose California for the return of an event that's been a long-time coming: NVIDIA's in-person GTC. The Spring 2024 event, NVIDIA's marquee event for the year, promises to be a big one for NVIDIA, as the company is due to deliver updates on its all-important datacenter accelerator products – the successor to the GH100 GPU and its Hopper architecture – along with NVIDIA's other professional/enterprise hardware, networking gear, and, of course, a slew of software stack updates.
In the 5 years since NVIDIA was last able to hold a Spring GTC in person, a great deal has changed for the company. They're now the third biggest company in the world, thanks to explosive sales growth (and even further growth expectations) due in large part to the combination of GPT-3/4 and other transformer models, and NVIDIA's transformer-optimized H100 accelerator. As a result, NVIDIA is riding high in Silicon Valley, but to keep doing so they also will need to deliver the next big thing to push the envelope on performance, and keep a number of hungry competitors off their turf.
Headlining today's keynote is, of course, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, whose kick-off address has finally outgrown the San Jose Convention Center. As a result, Huang is filling up the local SAP Center arena instead. Suffice it to say, it's a bigger venue for a bigger audience for a [i]much[/i] bigger company.
So come join the AnandTech crew for our live blog coverage of NVIDIA's biggest enterprise keynote in years. The presentation kicks off at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern, 20:00 UTC.
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.
With CES's media day nearing its completion, Intel is hosting the first live, on-site PC-related keynote of the day. Intel Client Computing Group head Michelle Johnston Holthaus is hosting what Intel is calling their "Intel Client Open House Keynote", which will be covering the many Intel CPU announcements of the day, as well as showcasing the equally numerous laptops and other devices that partners will be releasing over the coming days and weeks.
So come join us at 3:30pm for a look at the latest in client computing from Intel!
It's that time of the year again - Apple's fall iPhone event, where the Cupertino company to unveil its newest generation family of iPhones. This year's theme is "Wonderlust," and will be the backdrop for the launch of iOS 17 as well as what should be the iPhone 15 series.
This year is widely expected to see Apple switch from their proprietary Lightning connector to the newer USB-C connector, in large part to comply with EU phone charger regulations. Besides the compatibility benefits that entails, the Lightning connector itself is coming up on 11 years old – fulfilling Apple's promise for 10 years of support and then-some. And while Lightning is the progenitor to the modern reversible connector, its lower overall pin count is limiting its functionality in some ways that the denser USB-C should help with.
Internally, it's all but assured that Apple will introduce a new generation processor in the form of the A17. Fab partner TSMC's production schedule has their first-generation 3nm node, N3B, well in to volume production at this point, so we're expecting to see our first shipping 3nm smartphone SoC. TSMC has never published generalized performance figures comparing N3B to N4 (used on the A16 SoC), so there's little basis for making specific performance estimates in advance. But as a full node improvement from the N5/N4 family, N3B should provide a perky punch, especially if Apple invests their gains in power consumption instead of performance.
Interestingly, Apple may be the only game in town for a while due to other chipmakers opting for the forthcoming N3E node due to costs – but that's a story for another time. Regardless, Apple's SoC silicon has a strong history of delivering industry leading performance and some unexpected innovations, and we expect the new chip to once again push the envelope in performance and efficiency, as Apple is wont to do.
The live blog will start along with the event at 10am PT / 17:00 UTC / 19:00 CEST.
Please join us at 8:00am PT (15:00 UTC) for our live blog coverage of NVIDIA’s Spring GTC keynote address. The traditional kick-off to the show – be it physical or virtual – NVIDIA’s annual spring keynote is showcase for NVIDIA’s vision for the next 12 to 24 months across all of their segments, from graphics to AI to automotive. Along with a slew of product announcements, the presentation, delivered by CEO Jensen Huang always contains a few surprises.
Looking at NVIDIA's sizable product stack, NVIDIA is coming off of the launch of their new Hopper and Ada Lovelace GPU architectures for servers and clients respectively. But there are plenty of spots for individual products that remain to be filled. Meanwhile, NVIDIA expects to release their long-awaited Grace CPU this year, and while many of the technical details of that Armv9-based core have since been released, we should hopefully get some launch details for that. As well as its combined CPU+GPU counterpart, Grace Hopper, which places the Grace CPU and Hopper GPU on the same package.
Meanwhile, we're expecting NVIDIA to take a small victory lap at this year's GTC for having the uncanny timing in launching Hopper and its large language model-friendly Transformer Engines right as the market for GPT and other LLMs has exploded. Now it will be interesting to see how NVIDIA intends to further grow (and profit from) those businesses. The company has all but promissed investors that a cloud service play of some kind will be announced at this GTC.
Kicking off CES 2023, the first presentation of the week comes from NVIDIA. The prolific GPU vendor is at the show to talk about new consumer hardware for desktops and laptops, as well as software updates for its Studio ecosystem, robotics, and Drive platforms.
Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi)