GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced the G262-ZR0 for HPC, AI, and data analytics. Designed to support the highest-level of performance in GPU computing, the G262-ZR0 incorporates fast PCIe 4.0 throughput in addition to NVIDIA HGX technologies and NVIDIA NVLink to provide industry leading bandwidth performance.

Here are some of the first pictures of the humongous Intel Xeon "Sapphire Rapids-SP" processor, in the flesh. Pictured by YuuKi-AnS on Chinese micro-blogging site bilibili, the engineering sample looks visibly larger than an AMD EPYC. Bound for 2021, this processor will leverage the latest generation of Intel's 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin silicon fabrication node, the latest I/O that include 8-channel DDR5 memory, a large number of PCI-Express gen 5.0 lanes, and ComputeXpress Link (CXL) interconnect. Perhaps the most interesting bit of information from the YuuKi-AnS has to be the mention of an on-package high-bandwidth memory solution. The processors will introduce an IPC uplift over "Ice Lake-SP" processors, as they use the newer "Willow Cove" CPU cores.

AMD today announced that the Ryzen Threadripper PRO workstation processors will be directly available for purchase from March 2021. Until now, the processors were exclusively available as options for the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation. The processors are being released alongside a small selection of compatible motherboards by ASUS and GIGABYTE. The Threadripper PRO processors are built in the sWRX8 package, and compatible with the AMD WRX80 chipset. From what we can tell, these processors are not compatible with sTRX4 motherboards.

What sets the Ryzen Threadripper PRO apart from the regular Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series is that it's a fully unlocked "Rome" multi-chip module re-configured for the workstation, with up to 64 CPU cores, 8-channel DDR4 memory, and 128 PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes. In comparison, the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 chips only feature 4-channel memory, and fewer 72 PCIe Gen 4 lanes from the SoC. The PIB (processor in box) retail package of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO looks rather plain compared to the PC enthusiast-focused Threadripper 3000, with a simple paperboard box that packs the processor, an Asetek AIO CLC adapter, and a spring-loaded screwdriver that's tuned for the sWRX80 socket.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 PRO line of ultra high-end processors with 8-channel DDR4 memory and 128-lane PCI-Express were a bit of a nothingburger for the DIY PC community as AMD made it exclusive to Lenovo for its ThinkStation P620 pre-built workstations. The hope for Threadripper PRO hitting the DIY scene increased in December 2020, with GIGABYTE unveiling a the WRX80 SU8, a motherboard sold in the open market, albeit designed mainly for servers and not workstations that are loaded with I/O. ASUS is about to change this.

Here's the first picture of the ASUS WS WRX80 SAGE, a no-holes-barred workstation motherboard based on the AMD WRX80 chipset, supporting Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3000 series processors. This board wires out each of the processor's eight memory channels to its own DIMM slot (1 DIMM per channel), and spreads the processor's lavish PCIe 4.0 lane budget among seven PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, three onboard (and possibly four by AIC) M.2 NVMe slots, a pair of U.2 NVMe slots, and I/O that very likely includes a pair of 10 GbE connections. Getting the board is the easy part. You'll need to hunt down a Ryzen Threadripper PRO sWRX80 processor, and a PSU that can feed the board's three 8-pin EPS, and two 6-pin PCIe, besides the 24-pin ATX.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro line of HEDT/Workstation processors were a nothingburger for the DIY PC crowd as it was launched exclusively through Lenovo for its ThinkStation P620 line of workstations. These processors are a step-up from the retail Threadripper 3000 series, as they feature the full 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, and 128 PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes of the "Zen 2" based "Rome" MCM. The retail Threadripper 3000 chips only feature a quad-channel (4-channel) memory interface.

GIGABYTE has developed a custom server motherboard based on the AMD WRX80 chipset that drives the Lenovo ThinkStation P620. The new WRX80 SU8 motherboard by GIGABYTE features a single sWRX8 CPU socket, supporting Threadripper Pro processors up to the Threadripper Pro 3995WX. It features seven PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, three 64 Gbps U.2 ports, two M.2-22110 slots, and eight DDR4 DIMM slots, each with its own dedicated memory channel. GIGABYTE also used the lavish PCIe budget of this platform to give the board dual 10 GbE interfaces. The board also comes with an ASPEED IPMI remote management chip. GIGABYTE is a server vendor, and this board's unveiling could hint at the likelihood of AMD opening up availability of the Threadripper Pro to other OEM vendors, ending Lenovo's exclusivity.

Intel in the opening presentation of the Hot Chips 32 virtual conference detailed its next-generation Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake-SP" enterprise processor. Built on the company's 10 nm silicon fabrication process, "Ice Lake-SP" sees the first non-client and non-mobile deployment of the company's new "Sunny Cove" CPU core that introduces higher IPC than the "Skylake" core that's been powering Intel microarchitectures since 2015. While the "Sunny Cove" core itself is largely unchanged from its implementation in 10th Gen Core "Ice Lake-U" mobile processors, it conforms to the cache hierarchy and tile silicon topology of Intel's enterprise chips.

The "Ice Lake-SP" die Intel talked about in its Hot Chips 32 presentation had 28 cores. The "Sunny Cove" CPU core is configured with the same 48 KB L1D cache as its client-segment implementation, but a much larger 1280 KB (1.25 MB) dedicated L2 cache. The core also receives a second fused multiply/add (FMA-512) unit, which the client-segment implementation lacks. It also receives a handful new instruction sets exclusive to the enterprise segment, including AVX-512 VPMADD52, Vector-AES, Vector Carry-less Multiply, GFNI, SHA-NI, Vector POPCNT, Bit Shuffle, and Vector BMI. In one of the slides, Intel also detailed the performance uplifts from the new instructions compared to "Cascade Lake-SP".

Videocardz seems to have snagged some official AMD slides detailing their upcoming Threadripper PRO lineup. AMD is tiering its Threadripper CPU offerings between the Threadripper and Threadripper PRO via added functionality that AMD considers is better suited to the prospective buyers of a PRO-branded Threadripper: professional studios, designers, engineers and data scientists. AMD's positioning for these creatives or scientists is to offer a much improved platform throughput compared to Threadripper: the PRO version supports up to 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes (64 in non-PRO); up to 2 TB of ECC memory support (either in UDIMM (Unbuffered DIMM), RDIMM (Registered DIMM), LRDIMM (Load-Reduced DIMM) and 3DS (three-dimensional stacking) RDIMM vi an 8-channel configuration (4-channel in non-PRO); as well as professional-oriented tools and features such as Pro Security, Pro manageability, and PRO business ready support.

Four different CPUs will reportedly be offered in the Threadripper PRO lineup: the 64-core 3995WX is a relatively known quantity by now; likewise, the 3975WX will mirror consumer parts core counts (32 cores), both with reduced clocks by 100-200 MHz compared to their non-PRO counterparts. AMD seems to also be launching 12 and 16-core PRO Threadrippers in the form of the 3955WX (16-core) and 3945WX (12-core), both with boost clocks being set to 4.3 GHz.

AMD's 64-core HEDT processor with an 8-channel memory interface, the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX, could debut in a Lenovo-branded workstation. Lenovo's Workstations division recently tweeted a big workstation announcement for 14th July, 2020, the same day AMD is expected to announce the 3995WX. "A new Lenovo workstation is coming soon, and we aren't going to just change the game. We plan to change the rules," the tweet reads. This is also a major hint as to the availability of the 3995WX. It won't surprise us if the processor will be an OEM-exclusive (if not a Lenovo-exclusive). The Threadripper PRO 3995WX, in addition to the Ryzen PRO feature-set, reportedly features an 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, doubling the memory bandwidth over that of the current retail-channel flagship 3990X.

Here is the first picture of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX processor, designed to be part of AMD's HEDT/workstation processor launch for this year. The picture surfaced briefly on the ChipHell forums, before being picked up by HXL (@9550pro) This processor is designed to compete with Intel Xeon W series processors, such as the W-3175X, and is hence located a segment above even the "normal" Threadripper series led by the 64-core/128-thread Threadripper 3990X. Besides certain features exclusive to Ryzen PRO series processors, the killer feature with the 3995WX is a menacing 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, that can handle up to 2 TB of memory with ECC.

The Threadripper PRO 3995X is expected to have a mostly identical I/O to the most expensive EPYC 7662 processor. As a Ryzen-branded chip, it could feature higher clock speeds than its EPYC counterpart. To enable its 8-channel memory, the processor could come with a new socket, likely the sWRX8, and AMD WRX80 chipset, although it wouldn't surprise us if these processors have some form of inter-compatibility with sTRX4 and TRX40 (at limited memory bandwidth and PCIe capabilities, of course). Sources tell VideoCardz that AMD could announce the Ryzen Threadripper PRO series as early as July 14, 2020.

Ampere Computing, a startup focusing on making HPC and processors from cloud applications based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture, today announced the release of a first 80 core "cloud-native" processor based on the Arm ISA. The new Ampere Altra CPU is the company's first 80 core CPU meant for hyper scalers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Being built on TSMC's 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing process, the Altra is a CPU that is utilizing a monolithic die to achieve maximum performance. Using Arm's v8.2+ instruction set, the CPU is using the Neoverse N1 platform as its core, to be ready for any data center workload needed. It also borrows a few security features from v8.3 and v8.5, namely the hardware mitigations of speculative attacks.

When it comes to the core itself, the CPU is running at 3.0 GHz frequency and has some very interesting specifications. The design of the core is such that it is 4-wide superscalar Out of Order Execution (OoOE), which Ampere refers to as "aggressive" meaning that there is a lot of data throughput going on. The cache levels are structured in a way that there is 64 KB of L1D and L1I cache per core, along with 1 MB of L2 cache per core as well. For system-level cache, there is 32 MB of L3 available to the SoC. All of the caches have Error-correcting code (ECC) built-in, giving the CPU a much-needed feature. There are two 128-bit wide Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) units, which are there to do parallel processing if needed. There is no mention if they implement Arm's Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) or not.

Shortly before Christmas, the German company Aqua Computer introduces a new 8-channel controller for PWM fans. The control with the name OCTO impresses with an enormous range of functions and this on a surface smaller than a credit card.

In addition to the core function of a fan controller, the device also offers two channels for digitally controllable LEDs and can control up to 180 LEDs with many effects. In addition to Aqua Computer's own RGBpx LED products, the OCTO can also be connected to LEDs from many third party manufacturers via optionally available adapters.

AMD is preparing to surprise Intel with its 3rd generation Ryzen Threadripper processors derived from the "Rome" MCM (codenamed "Castle Peak" for the client-platform), that features up to 64 CPU cores, a monolithic 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, and 128 PCIe gen 4.0 lanes. For the HEDT platform, AMD could reconfigure the I/O controller die for two distinct sub-platforms within HEDT - one targeting gamers/enthusiasts, and another targeting the demographic that buys Xeon W processors, including the W-3175X. The gamer/enthusiast-targeted processor line could feature a monolithic 4-channel DDR4 memory interface, and 64 PCI-Express gen 4.0 lanes from the processor socket, and additional lanes from the chipset; while the workstation-targeted processor line could essentially be EPYCs, with a wider memory bus width and more platform PCIe lanes; while retaining drop-in backwards-compatibility with AMD X399 (at the cost of physically narrower memory and PCIe I/O).

To support this diverse line of processors, AMD is coming up with not one, but three new chipsets: TRX40, TRX80, and WRX80. The TRX40 could have a lighter I/O feature-set (similar to the X570), and probably 4-channel memory on the motherboards. The TRX80 and WRX80 could leverage the full I/O of the "Rome" MCM, with 8-channel memory and more than 64 PCIe lanes. We're not sure what differentiates the TRX80 and WRX80, but we believe motherboards based on the latter will resemble proper workstation boards in form-factors such as SSI, and be made by enterprise motherboard manufacturers such as TYAN. The chipsets made their way to the USB-IF for certification, and were sniffed out by momomo_us. ASUS is ready with its first motherboards based on the TRX40, the Prime TRX40-Pro, and the ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming.

As if the mother of all ironies, prior to its effective death-sentence dealt by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Huawei's server business developed an ambitious product roadmap for its Fusion Server family, aligning with Intel's enterprise processor roadmap. It describes in great detail the key features of these processors, such as core-counts, platform, and I/O. The "Sapphire Rapids" processor will introduce the biggest I/O advancements in close to a decade, when it releases sometime in 2021.

With an unannounced CPU core-count, the "Sapphire Rapids-SP" processor will introduce DDR5 memory support to the data-center, which aims to double bandwidth and memory capacity over the DDR4 generation. The processor features an 8-channel (512-bit wide) DDR5 memory interface. The second major I/O introduction is PCI-Express gen 5.0, which not only doubles bandwidth over gen 4.0 to 32 Gbps per lane, but also comes with a constellation of data-center-relevant features that Intel is pushing out in advance as part of the CXL Interconnect. CXL and PCIe gen 5 are practically identical.

One of our readers tipped us off with a very plausible looking image that drops a motherlode of information about what AMD's 2nd generation Ryzen (aka Ryzen 3000 series) processor lineup could look like. This includes a vast selection of SKUs, their CPU and iGPU core configurations, clock-speeds, and OEM channel pricing. The list speaks of a reentry for 7th generation A-series "Excavator" as Duron X4 series, followed by Duron 300GE-series based on a highly cut down "Raven Ridge," Athlon 300GE 2-core/4-thread based on an implausible "Zen+ 12 nm" APU die, followed by quad-core Ryzen 3 3000 series processors with and without iGPUs, making up the company's entry-level product lineup.

The core counts seem to jump from 4-core straight to 8-core, with no 6-core in between, for the Ryzen 5 series. This is also where AMD's new IP, the 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture, begins. There appears to be a large APU die (or a 3-chip MCM) with an 8-core CPU and 20-CU iGPU, which makes up certain Ryzen 5 SKUs. These chips are either 8-core/8-thread or 8-core/16-thread. The Ryzen 7 series is made up of 12-core/24-thread processors that are devoid of iGPU. The new Ryzen 9 series extension caps off the lineup with 16-core/32-thread SKUs. And these are just socket AM4.

Here is the clearest picture of AMD "Rome," codename for the company's next-generation EPYC socket SP3r2 processor, which is a multi-chip module of 9 chiplets (up from four). While first-generation EPYC MCMs (and Ryzen Threadripper) were essentially "4P-on-a-stick," the new "Rome" MCM takes the concept further, by introducing a new centralized uncore component called the I/O die. Up to eight 7 nm "Zen 2" CPU dies surround this large 14 nm die, and connect to it via substrate, using InfinityFabric, without needing a silicon interposer. Each CPU chiplet features 8 cores, and hence we have 64 cores in total.

The CPU dies themselves are significantly smaller than current-generation "Zeppelin" dies, although looking at their size, we're not sure if they're packing disabled integrated memory controllers or PCIe roots anymore. While the transition to 7 nm can be expected to significantly reduce die size, groups of two dies appear to be making up the die-area of a single "Zeppelin." It's possible that the CPU chiplets in "Rome" physically lack an integrated northbridge and southbridge, and only feature a broad InfinityFabric interface. The I/O die handles memory, PCIe, and southbridge functions, featuring an 8-channel DDR4 memory interface that's as monolithic as Intel's implementations, a PCI-Express gen 4.0 root-complex, and other I/O.

The Power Stamp Alliance (PSA) has posted some details on Intel's upcoming high-performance, 10 nm architecture. Code-named Ice Lake, the Xeon parts of this design will apparently usher in yet another new socket (socket LGA 4189, compared to the socket LGA 3647 solution for Kaby lake and upcoming Cascade Lake designs). TDP is being shown as increased with Intel's Ice Lake designs, with an "up to" 230 W TDp - more than the Skylake or Cascade Lake-based platforms, which just screams at higher core counts (and other features such as OmniPath or on-package FPGAs).

Digging a little deeper into the documentation released by the PSA shows Intel's Ice Lake natively supporting 8-channel memory as well, which makes sense, considering the growing needs in both available memory capacity, and actual throughput, that just keeps rising. More than an interesting, unexpected development, it's a sign of the times.