A fresh rumor straight from the rumor mill paints AMD's next APU iterations as being updated to the latest and greatest architectures the company has to offer. The rumor comes from ExecutableFix via Twitter, a leaker who has a relatively proven track record on being right regarding upcoming hardware releases. This rumor can lay some credence to others, painting AMD's Ryzen 7000 series as being the first AMD APU-only release since they began their journey with the Zen architecture - it makes sense for the company to integrate their latest architectures in the mobile-geared Rembrandt first, working out some possible interaction quirks that might arise between the two architectures when deployed in the same package.

The leaker further affirms that the Rembrandt APUs will feature up to 12 RDNA2 CUs, which would amount to 768 stream processors on-chip - a marked increase from the current-generation 8 CUs based on the Vega architecture on their Ryzen 4000 mobile series. The leaker also discloses that AMD's Warhol seems to be MIA in recent AMD documentation and planning when it comes to the deployment of Zen3+, and that Rembrandt should be the one to carry that particular architecture refinement through to the 6 nm process. It would seem that AMD's Vega would "finally" see its demise, bringing about some much-needed performance improvements to counter Intel's investments in GPU performance with Xe.

Intel announced their 11th Generation Tiger Lake-H processors for high-end gaming laptops at CES 2021. The three models announced are now shipping in slim gaming machines and target the AMD Ryzen 5000H series processors. The Intel models compete favorably in single-core performance but only feature four cores and eight threads while the Ryzen 5000H series processors include up to 8 cores and 16 threads giving them the clear advantage in multi-core performance.

Intel is planning to close this performance gap with the launch of three new 45 W 8 core 11th Generation H-series processors in Q2 2021 with a possible announcement at Computex. The three models include the unlocked Core i9-11980HK, Core i9-11900H, and the Core i7-11800H along with the Core i5-11400H with six cores. These new processors will compete directly with the Ryzen 9 5980HX, Ryzen 9 5900H, and Ryzen 7 5800H with the Core i9-11980HK likely to feature a boost clock of 5 GHz on multiple cores.

On December 31st, AMD's Radeon group has filed a patent for a chiplet architecture of the GPU, showing its vision about the future of Radeon GPUs. Currently, all of the GPUs available on the market utilize the monolithic approach, meaning that the graphics processing units are located on a single die. However, the current approach has its limitations. As the dies get bigger for high-performance GPU configurations, they are more expensive to manufacture and can not scale that well. Especially with modern semiconductor nodes, the costs of dies are rising. For example, it would be more economically viable to have two dies that are 100 mm² in size each than to have one at 200 mm². AMD realized that as well and has thus worked on a chiplet approach to the design.

AMD reports that the use of multiple GPU configuration is inefficient due to limited software support, so that is the reason why GPUs were kept monolithic for years. However, it seems like the company has found a way to go past the limitations and implement a sufficient solution. AMD believes that by using its new high bandwidth passive crosslinks, it can achieve ideal chiplet-to-chiplet communication, where each GPU in the chiplet array would be coupled to the first GPU in the array. All the communication would go through an active interposer which would contain many layers of wires that are high bandwidth passive crosslinks. The company envisions that the first GPU in the array would communicably be coupled to the CPU, meaning that it will have to use the CPU possibly as a communication bridge for the GPU arrays. Such a thing would have big latency hit so it is questionable what it means really.

Intel's upcoming 11th Generation Core i9-11900K processor boosts up to 5.30 GHz, according to rumored specs of various 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors, sourced by Harukaze5719. According to this specs-sheet, both the Core i9-11900K and the Core i7-11700K (i7-10700K successor) are 8-core/16-thread parts, and clock-speeds appear to be the only apparent product segmentation between the two. The i9-11900K has a maximum single-core boost frequency of 5.30 GHz, and 4.80 GHz all-core boost. The i7-11700K, on the other hand, has an all-core boost of 4.60 GHz, and 5.00 GHz single-core boost. This time around, even the Core i7 part gets Thermal Velocity Boost.

11th Gen Core i5 continues to be 6-core/12-thread, with Intel allegedly readying an unlocked Core i5-11600K, and a locked i5-11400. Both parts lack TVB. The i5-11600K ticks up to 4.90 GHz single-core, and 4.70 GHz all-core; while the i5-11400 does 4.20 GHz single-core, and 4.40 GHz all-core. The secret-sauce with "Rocket Lake-S" is the introduction of the new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores, which Intel claims offer a double-digit percent IPC gain over the current-gen "Comet Lake," an improved dual-channel DDR4 memory controller with native support for DDR4-3200, a PCI-Express Gen 4 root-complex, and a Gen12 Xe-LP iGPU. The "Cypress Cove" CPU cores also feature VNNI and DLBoost, which accelerate AI DNN; as well as limited AVX-512 instructions. The 11th Gen core processors will also introduce a CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, similar to AMD Ryzen. Intel is expected to launch its first "Rocket Lake-S" processors before Q2-2021.

AMD has attempted to fix their mobile processor naming situation with the launch of Ryzen 5000 desktop processors, by skipping Ryzen 4000 on desktop AMD has brought their mobile and desktop processor generations under the one naming scheme. However, it seems this naming scheme simplification hasn't gone as well as expected with leaked specifications for the upcoming Ryzen 5000 mobile series showing a mix of Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors. The leaked processors include the AMD Ryzen 3 5300U (Zen 2), Ryzen 3 5400U (Zen 3), Ryzen 5 5500U (Zen 2), Ryzen 5 5600U (Zen 3), Ryzen 7 5700U (Zen 2), and the Ryzen 7 5800U (Zen 3).

These new processors will maintain the core counts of their Ryzen 4000 predecessors while gaining a modest bump to base and boost speeds. These clock speed improvements will be accompanied by the claimed 19% IPC uplift on the Zen 3 based processors. The processors will also benefit from increased Vega iGPU cores and iGPU clock speed boosts. This combination should offer significantly improved performance over previous generation Ryzen 4000 mobile processors which already offered strong performance against Intel's offerings. AMD is expected to officially announce these processors at an event in January with prices slightly above previous generations.

AMD recently announced their first Ryzen 5000 series chips catering to the high-end market. AMD announced the Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800X, and Ryzen 9 5900X with the bold claim of gaming supremacy. These chips came with price increases across the board over their predecessors being priced at 299 USD for the Ryzen 5 5600X, 449 USD for the Ryzen 7 5800X, and 549 USD for the 5900X. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 which is expected to offer the best price to performance was not announced at the event to the disappointment of many wanting to upgrade their Ryzen systems.

According to a recent report AMD plans to release the Ryzen 5 5600 in early 2021 for 220 USD. This represents an 80 USD price cut over the Ryzen 5 5600X and a 20 USD price increase over the Ryzen 5 3600. This launch will likely coincide with BIOS updates for 400 series motherboards to support Ryzen 5000 chips. If AMD can match the performance of Intel's i5-10600K with the Ryzen 5 5600 they will likely have a very impressive value chip on their hands.

Yuri "1usmus" Bubliy, author of DRAM Calculator for Ryzen and the upcoming ClockTuner for Ryzen, revealed three pieces of juicy details on the upcoming 4th Gen AMD Ryzen "Vermeer" performance desktop processors. He predicts AMD turning up CPU core counts with this generation, including the introduction of new 10-core SKUs, possibly to one-up Intel in the multi-threaded performance front. Last we heard, AMD's upcoming "Zen 3" CCDs (chiplets) feature 8 CPU cores sharing a monolithic 32 MB slab of L3 cache. This should, in theory, allow AMD to create 10-core chips with two CCDs, each with 5 cores enabled.

Next up, are two features that should interest overclockers - which is Bubliy's main domain. The processors should support a feature called "Curve Optimizer," enabling finer-grained control over the boost algorithm, and on a per-core basis. As we understand, the "curve" in question could even be voltage/frequency. It remains to be seen of the feature is leveraged at a CBS level (UEFI setup program), or by Ryzen Master. Lastly, there's mention of new Infinity Fabric dividers that apparently helps you raise DCT (memory controller) frequencies "slightly higher" in mixed mode. AMD is expected to debut its 4th Gen Ryzen "Vermeer" desktop processors within 2020.

Nintendo is reportedly planning to release an upgraded Switch model in early 2021 according to a new report from Taiwanese news outlet Economic Daily News. The new SKU will feature internal flash memory from Macronix and is rumored to receive an upgraded screen, along with enhancements to interactivity features such as haptics, sensors, and the JoyCon controllers. It is currently unknown if this upgrade will replace the base Nintendo Switch as we saw with the battery upgrade in 2019 or if it will be the long-rumored Nintendo Switch Pro. The possibility of an upgraded model is plausible given that the Nintendo Switch was launched back in 2017 but it is unlikely to compete with next-generation consoles, as with any rumor be sure to take it with a grain of salt until Nintendo officially announces anything.

The Apple A14X Bionic is an upcoming processor from Apple which is expected to feature in the upcoming iPad Pro models and should be manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm node. Tech YouTuber Luke Miani has recently provided a performance graph for the A14X chip based on "leaked/suspected A14 info + average performance gains from previous X chips". In these graphs, the Apple A14X can be seen matching the Intel Core i9-9880H in Geekbench 5 with a score of 7480. The Intel Intel Core i9-9880H is a 45 W eight-core mobile CPU found in high-end notebooks such as the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro and requires significant cooling to keep thermals under control.

If these performance estimates are correct or even close then Apple will have a serious productivity device and will serve as a strong basis for Apple's transition to custom CPU's for it's MacBook's in 2021. Apple may use a custom version of the A14X with slightly higher clocks in their upcoming ARM MacBooks according to Luke Miani. These results are estimations at best so take them with a pinch of salt until Apple officially unveils the chip.

A user on ChipHell going by the alias Alienxzy posted a screenshot taken from an alleged insider account with information regarding plans for next-gen RTX 3090 as fabricated by NVIDIA's AIB partner Colorful. According to the original information, posted on ChipHell as a screenshot, Colorful will be releasing two high-end versions of the RTX 3090 graphics card, in the form of the Vulcan (air-cooled) and Neptune (hybrid cooling) models. According to it, and when the text is parsed through a translator, the tentative pricing for NVIDIA's next-gen is slated at CNY 13,999 (online selling) for the Vulcan X OC, and CNY 12,999 (again online selling) for the Neptune. These translate to roughly $2,000 for the high-end Vulcan X OC and (strangely, for a hybrid, water-cooled version) $1875 for the Neptune. Another pricing of CNY 12,000 is mentioned for the Vulcan ($1,730), so that might actually be the real pricing (and makes more sense compared to the Neptune).

Some more information is present on the rumor-mill-powering post, such as a 5 V RGB capability that pairs the graphics cards' lighting with that of the motherboard (and vice-versa), as well as improved in-card display for the Vulcan X; meanwhile, sales of the Neptune graphics card for the previous generation were reportedly low, which is why its pricing is reportedly being revised close to its introduction, which will be in the same ballpark of the Vulcan X OC. If true, this should set the pricing trend for NVIDIA's expected top offering in the RTX 3000 series, and it's creeping ever higher - the cost to have a generation's best performer is becoming more and more (insert descriptor here). Even considering NVIDIA's all but guaranteed Founders' Edition, we're looking at a steep pricing landscape. Do please note the rumor tag on the title of the news post, as this isn't confirmed information in any way or form. Images below for the Vulcan X and Neptune are merely representative of current generation's offerings.

Today we are in for an interesting rumor. According to industry sources of Coreteks, Samsung is rumored to be preparing investment in GlobalFoundries manufacturing facilities. In the latest ave of Asian foundries getting away from China and getting close to EU and US soils, Samsung is the latest one to join the list. First, let's explain the situation. The Trump administration has been pushing TSMC to drop all orders from Huawei, and TSMC did it. That way, Huawei Technologies has lost a major chip supplier which enabled the company a competitive edge. Now, the company must turn to Chinese manufacturers and it can't use any US-made product.

Given that GlobalFoundries is a company headquartered in the US (Santa Clara, California), the company is an American corporation, which has fabs in the US, as well as in Europe. It is truly a global foundry system. Samsung, a Korean semiconductor manufacturer, has been rumored to invest in GlobalFoundries Dresden fab, located in Germany. The company will help GlobalFoundries expand its power supply capacity from 63 MegaWatts to 100 MegaWatts. The proposed expansion of GlobalFoundries Dresden fab would be funded exclusively by Samsung. So why is Samsung doing this? The answer to this question is pretty simple - to get closer to western markets. Even if GlobalFoundries has foundries all over the world, it is a US company at its core. So Samsung hopes that from this investment, it can get closer to US soil and gain some new customers in the future. After all, Samsung plans to become the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer by 2030, the position currently held by its rival TSMC. Below you can check out the expansion plan illustrated by Coreteks:

NVIDIA is slowly preparing to launch its next-generation Ampere graphics cards for consumers after we got the A100 GPU for data-centric applications. The Ampere lineup is getting more and more leaks and speculations every day, so we can assume that the launch is near. In the most recent round of rumors, we have some new information about the GPU SKU and memory of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti. Thanks to Twitter user kopite7kimi, who had multiple confirmed speculations in the past, we have information that GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti use a GA104 GPU SKU, paired with GDDR6 memory. The cath is that the Ti version of GPU will feature a new GDDR6X memory, which has a higher speed and can reportedly go up to 21 Gbps.

The regular RTX 3070 is supposed to have 2944 CUDA cores on GA104-400 GPU die, while its bigger brother RTX 3070 Ti is designed with 3072 CUDA cores on GA104-300 die. Paired with new technologies that Ampere architecture brings, with a new GDDR6X memory, the GPUs are set to be very good performers. It is estimated that both of the cards would reach a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. So far that is all we have. NVIDIA is reportedly in Design Validation Test (DVT) phase with these cards and is preparing for mass production in August. Following those events is the official launch which should happen before the end of this year, with some speculations indicating that it is in September.

In a recent report by the Verge, Microsoft is reportedly planning a budget console to go along with the Xbox Series X known as the Xbox Series S. The Xbox Series S will be a successor to the popular Xbox One S, codenamed Lockhart it's set to feature the key next-generation improvements found in the Xbox Series X and provide them at a lower price point.

Sources say that the Xbox Series S will target 1080p 60FPS and 1440p 6̶0̶F̶P̶S̶ 30FPS gaming performance, this will be achieved with roughly 1/3rd of the GPU power at 4 TeraFLOPs, and 10 GB of GDDR6 RAM. The Xbox Series S console is rumored to share the same 7 nm AMD Zen 2 SoC a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶c̶k̶ and the same ultra-fast PCIe 4.0 SSD. The console may not feature a disc drive like the Xbox One S All Digital Edition. Microsoft is yet to publicly say anything about the console, so take these rumors with a grain of salt.

Update Jun 30th: Sources tell Eurogamer that Microsoft is planning to unveil the console at an event in August.

An unknown NVIDIA GeForce "Ampere" GPU model surfaced on 3DMark Time Spy online database. We don't know if this is the RTX 3080 (RTX 2080 successor), or the top-tier RTX 3090 (RTX 2080 Ti successor). Rumored specs of the two are covered in our older article. The 3DMark Time Spy score unearthed by _rogame (Hardware Leaks) is 18257 points, which is close to 31 percent faster than the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, 22 percent faster than the TITAN RTX, and just a tiny bit slower than KINGPIN's record-setting EVGA RTX 2080 Ti XC. Futuremark SystemInfo reads the GPU clock speeds of the "Ampere" card as 1935 MHz, and its memory clock at "6000 MHz." Normally, SystemInfo reads the memory actual clock (i.e. 1750 MHz for 14 Gbps GDDR6 effective). Perhaps SystemInfo isn't yet optimized for reading memory clocks on "Ampere."

Noctua produces some of the most well-regarded CPU coolers in the PC space, and for good reason: they usually set the benchmark in both heat dissipation efficiency and noise levels. However, one of the elements that may not make their coolers as popular as they could be (and they are immensely popular) is the color scheme the company usually favors, with its brown and beige colors being relatively hard to fit in with many system builds. The company responded by adding Chromax versions to their lineup, with a more "typical" black color scheme, which have seen great success both in the market and user opinion.

A Reddit user going by the handle hoopon, however, claims to have received a tech support answer from a Noctua representative that said that a Chromax version of the famed, high-performance Noctua NH-U12A cooler is being readied for market launch in Q3 2020. Another user, Bergh3m, echoed these claims, saying that he himself had received a Noctua answer on the same product in the beginning of the year that placed the Noctua NH-U12A Chromax as being released in Q2 or Q3 2020. However, as with everything these days, the COVID-19 situation may very well has pushed the release to a definite Q3. As always, we urge you to take these rumors with a full pint of salt.

Rumors of AMD refreshing its 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor family are growing louder. On Friday (22/05), reports of the "Matisse Refresh" processor family surfaced, with talk of "Ryzen 7 3850X" and "Ryzen 7 3750X" processors headed for a June 2020 announcement followed by July availability. Turns out AMD has a different naming scheme in mind, targeted at wooing gamers. The company is reportedly bringing its "XT" brand extension over from its Radeon graphics card family over to the Ryzen line.

There are three SKUs AMD is developing, the Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 7 3800XT, and the Ryzen 5 3600 XT. All three are likely to retain core counts of the SKUs they are displacing from current price points - with the 3900XT likely being a 12-core/24-thread part; the 3800XT an 8-core/16-thread part, and the 3600XT a 6-core/12-thread part. AMD is likely to give the three a major clock speed increase to shore up gaming performance. It won't surprise us if AMD tinkers with boost algorithms, either. GIGABYTE has already referenced "Matisse Refresh" in its motherboard product roadmaps, which adds plenty of credibilty to this rumor. With "Zen 3" based 4th gen Ryzen processors unlikely to relieve the embattled 3900X, 3800X, and 3600X in the wake of Intel's 10th gen Core "Comet Lake" launch until Q4-2020, it makes sense for AMD to plan a product stack refresh to bolster its competitiveness. AMD is reportedly planning a June 16 product announcement, followed by July 7 availability.

AMD is planning to immediately update its product stack to counter the Intel 10th gen Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processor family. Codenamed "Matisse Refresh," the processor will use existing IP, based on the 7 nm "Zen 2" microarchitecture, but could improve in areas such as clock-speeds. As it now stands, the Ryzen 9 3900X appears unfazed by the i9-10900K and i7-10700K at its new $410 price, however, competitiveness of the 3800X and 3700X could buckle under pressure from the i7-10700 series (K, KF, non-K, and F), as well as the Core i5-10600 series. To this effect, we're hearing rumors of a "Ryzen 7 3750X" and "Ryzen 7 3850X" seeing the light of the day soon, with an early-June announcement, and early-July market availability. References to the 3750X date back to October 2019.

Rumors of "Matisse Refresh" gained traction when WCCFTech editor Hassan Mujtaba tweeted a slide from a GIGABYTE AMD B550 motherboard series pre-launch presentation, which references GIGABYTE's own interpretation of AMD's roadmap. It lists out every CPU microarchitecture for the AM4 platform, and right next to "Matisse" is "& Refresh," confirming that "Matisse Refresh" is real. A microarchitecture "refresh" needn't even involve any physical changes to the processor design, core-counts, or architecture, and can sometimes even indicate something as simple as a second major wave of SKUs that replace existing SKUs in the market, leading to their phase-out (eg: Intel "Haswell Refresh" retaining the 4th gen Core model numbering). The slide also adds weight to the theory that desktop "Renoir," like its mobile counterpart, lacks PCIe gen 4.0. The slide also talks about AMD introducing the entry-level A520 desktop chipset in August, which will support PCIe gen 4 when paired with a capable processor.

SteamDB developer Pavel Djundik has uncovered evidence of a Steam loyalty scheme in some recent code strings. The developer detailed how the scheme may consist of a points system where users can redeem points for badge levels and possibly game discounts. This discovery comes just as the dates for the next Steam sale were leaked to be the 25th June - 9th July so this new loyalty scheme may launch alongside the sale and replace previous sale schemes.

Djundik has also discovered potential changes to the Steam review system with the introduction of user reactions. These reactions include deep thoughts, heartwarming, hilarious, hot take, poetry, and helpful. Djundik has an excellent track record for leaks regarding Steam just last week predicting the announcement of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, so it will be interesting to see if this new loyalty scheme gets released.

PC hardware focused YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead published a juicy tech-spec reveal of NVIDIA's next-generation "Ampere" based flagship consumer graphics card, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, citing correspondence with sources within NVIDIA. The report talks of big changes to NVIDIA's Founders Edition (reference) board design, as well as what's on the silicon. To begin with, the RTX 3080 Ti reference-design card features a triple-fan cooling solution unlike the RTX 20-series. This cooler is reportedly quieter than the RTX 2080 Ti FE cooling solution. The card pulls power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DP, and one each of HDMI and VirtualLink USB-C. The source confirms that "Ampere" will implement PCI-Express gen 4.0 x16 host interface.

With "Ampere," NVIDIA is developing three tiers of high-end GPUs, with the "GA102" leading the pack and succeeding the "TU102," the "GA104" holding the upper-performance segment and succeeding today's "TU104," but a new silicon between the two, codenamed "GA103," with no predecessor from the current-generation. The "GA102" reportedly features 5,376 "Ampere" CUDA cores (up to 10% higher IPC than "Turing"). The silicon also taps into the rumored 7 nm-class silicon fabrication node to dial up GPU clock speeds well above 2.20 GHz even for the "GA102." Smaller chips in the series can boost beyond 2.50 GHz, according to the report. Even with the "GA102" being slightly cut-down for the RTX 3080 Ti, the silicon could end up with FP32 compute performance in excess of 21 TFLOPs. The card uses faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, ending up with 863 GB/s of memory bandwidth that's 40% higher than that of the RTX 2080 Ti (if the memory bus width ends up 384-bit). Below are screengrabs from the Moore's Law is Dead video presentation, and not NVIDIA slides.

In a recent report by Bloomberg it was revealed that Apple is planning to start selling Mac computers featuring their upcoming in-house A14 ARM chip which will power the next generation iPhone & iPad in 2021. According to sources familiar with the matter Apple is developing three new processors based on the A14 to power some 2021 Mac products, these chips will be manufactured on TSMCs 5 nm process. One of these new processors is expected to be more powerful then the iPhone version.

This marks a significant move for Apple as they shift from x86 to in-house ARM designs across their entire product lineup, we have an editorial on the rise of ARM here. This development is part of Apple's plan to increase control over their products in an attempt to fully unify the Apple ecosystem and reduce reliance on Intel who has struggled to offer significant performance increases in recent years, this will come as a major blow to Intel who benefited greatly from Apple's demand. Apple will need to adapt MacOS for an ARM based design and ensure their is compatibility for third party x86 applications. The first processor is expected to feature 8 "Firestorm" cores and at least four energy-efficient "Icestorm" cores, Apple is also exploring options for up to 12 core processors based on the same design for use in future Macs.

Huawei may become the 4th player in the GPU server market if a new report by Korean news outlet The Elec is to be believed. The Elec has received reports from Industry Sources that Huawei is readying to enter the market in 2020, this will put them in direct competition with industry leader NVIDIA along with AMD and newcomer Intel. Huawei Korea will reportedly assign the project to the new Cloud and AI Business Group division, talent scouting has already begun with rumors of current and former NVIDIA staff getting poached.

Huawei is no newcomer to the server market having already launched the Ascend 910 one of the worlds most advanced AI accelerators in August 2019. The Ascend 910 outperforms the Tesla V100 by a factor of two, and is developed on a more advanced 7 nm+ technology compared to the 12 nm Tesla V100. In January 2020 Huawei launched their next server product the Kunpeng 920 a big data CPU along with a new server lineup featuring the chip. Considering Huawei's experience and resources in the server market along with Intel's entrance the GPU server landscape is set to become very competitive.

A March 23 website domain name registration update by Take-Two Interactive, publishers of the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise, sparked rumors of an imminent "Grand Theft Auto VI" announcement. The registered domain "GTAVI.com" is now a placeholder for what could be an exclusive site for the upcoming chapter in the wildly popular open-world action RPG franchise.

Much has been talked about GTA VI in recent years, such as rumors of the game having the largest open world ever in the franchise, including the ability to transport between the various fictional cities in the GTA universe via fast-travel points at airports. With GTA V, Rockstar introduced the concept of multiple playable characters, each with its unique set of missions, and some interesting joint missions where you switch between the playable characters. The introduction of cities spread across the landmass could only take this concept further.

NVIDIA will soon launch its next-generation lineup of graphics cards based on a new and improved "Ampere" architecture. With the first Tesla server cards that are a part of the Ampere lineup going inside Indiana University Big Red 200 supercomputer, we now have some potential specifications and information about its compute performance. Thanks to the Twitter user dylan552p(@dylan522p), who did some math about the potential compute performance of the Ampere GPUs based on NextPlatform's report, we discovered that Ampere is potentially going to feature up to 18 TeraFLOPs of FP64 compute performance.

With Big Red 200 supercomputer being based on Cray's Shasta supercomputer building block, it is being deployed in two phases. The first phase is the deployment of 672 dual-socket nodes powered by AMD's EPYC 7742 "Rome" processors. These CPUs provide 3.15 PetaFLOPs of combined FP64 performance. With a total of 8 PetaFLOPs planned to be achieved by the Big Red 200, that leaves just a bit under 5 PetaFLOPs to be had using GPU+CPU enabled system. Considering the configuration of a node that contains one next-generation AMD "Milan" 64 core CPU, and four of NVIDIA's "Ampere" GPUs alongside it. If we take for a fact that Milan boosts FP64 performance by 25% compared to Rome, then the math shows that the 256 GPUs that will be delivered in the second phase of Big Red 200 deployment will feature up to 18 TeraFLOPs of FP64 compute performance. Even if "Milan" doubles the FP64 compute power of "Rome", there will be around 17.6 TeraFLOPs of FP64 performance for the GPU.

NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards codenamed Ampere is set to arrive sometime this year, presumably around GTC 2020 which takes place on March 22nd. Before the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang officially reveals the specifications of these new GPUs, we have the latest round of rumors coming our way. According to VideoCardz, which cites multiple sources, the die configurations of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 have been detailed. Using the latest 7 nm manufacturing process from Samsung, this generation of NVIDIA GPU offers a big improvement from the previous generation.

For starters the two dies which have appeared have codenames like GA103 and GA104, standing for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 respectively. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) count. The smaller GA104 die has as much as 48 SMs, resulting in 3072 CUDA cores, while the bigger, oddly named, GA103 die has as much as 60 SMs that result in 3840 CUDA cores in total. These improvements in SM count should result in a notable performance increase across the board. Alongside the increase in SM count, there is also a new memory bus width. The smaller GA104 die that should end up in RTX 3070 uses a 256-bit memory bus allowing for 8/16 GB of GDDR6 memory, while its bigger brother, the GA103, has a 320-bit wide bus that allows the card to be configured with either 10 or 20 GB of GDDR6 memory. In the images below you can check out the alleged diagrams for yourself and see if this looks fake or not, however, it is recommended to take this rumor with a grain of salt.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 4000 series processors will be based on the company's Zen 3 design, which will feature a deeply revised architecture aiming to offer increased performance (surprising no-one). AMD themselves have already said that Zen 3 will offer performance increases in line with the release of new architectures - and we all remember the around 15% increase achieved with the release of Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 series, which surprised even AMD on its performance capabilities. Several sources around the web are quoting an around 17% increase in performance, taking into account increased operating frequencies of Zen 3 (100 to 200 MHz at least for the enterprise solutions, which could pave the way for even higher increases in consumer-geared products) and increased IPC of its core design. The utilization of EUV in the 7 nm process shouldn't have much to do with the increased frequencies of the CPUs, and will mostly be used to reduce the number of masks that are required for production of AMD's Zen 3 CPUs (which in turn will lead to increased yields).

Sources are claiming an increase of up to 50% in Zen 3's Floating Point Units (FPU) compared to Zen 2, while integer operations should make do with a 10-12% increase. Cores should remain stable across the board - and with that increase in performance, I'd say an upper limit of 16 physical and 32 logic cores in a consumer-geared CPU is more than enough. Increased IPCs and frequencies will definitely make AMD an even better proposition for all markets - gaming in particular, where Intel still has a (slightly virtual) hold in consumer's minds.