Microsoft is looking to reduce costs in its Azure cloud computing platforms for tasks like search, storage, machine learning and big data. And after having developed a version of Windows for servers that use ARM processors, in a joint work with Qualcomm and Cavium, Microsoft seems to also be looking forward to leave its dependency on Intel products as nothing but a memory. Microsoft's ARM server design, dubbed Project Olympus, looks to hardware innovations so as to reduce costs, boosting competitiveness and flexibility in regards to other big players in the cloud space, like Amazon and Alphabet. That the design is open source is also a boon to other businesses and Microsoft partners.


Though the design isn't "deployed into production yet (...) that is the next logical step," said Jason Zander, vice president of Microsoft's Azure cloud division. "This is a significant commitment on behalf of Microsoft. We wouldn't even bring something (...) if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our roadmap."

I should break down the bad news first: we here at TechPowerUp won't be able to provide you with a timely, straight-from-the-oven Ryzen review. Like some other publications, our Ryzen review sample failed to arrive on time. And trust us - we did will it to do so as much as we could, risking a Stranger-Things-esque nosebleed. Alas, to no avail.

The good news is that while we won't be able to offer you our own review of AMD and Jim Kellers' latest high-performance x86 brainchild, we will still strive to bring you meaningful coverage on it. This article aims to make an overall aggregation on review consensus, benchmarks and capabilities of the newest AMD CPU. Trying to add something, we'll also try and evaluate whether AMD learned - or didn't learn - something from its Bulldozer launch fiasco, in a pure marketing perspective. This will justify the editorialized nature of this article, but only after we dive straight to the numbers. Without further ado, follow on to the numbers.

Let's quietly approach the elephant in the room: Intel's pricing structure will hardly stand the onslaught of AMD's Ryzen, which, if early benchmarks are to be believed, has apparently caught Intel with its pants down. Even purely from the leaks that have been following us non-stop in the last several months, it's obvious that AMD managed to outdo itself in the best way possible, managing to develop an architecture which offers up to 52% more performance than their previous one. Intel, which was enjoying the sun-shaded comfort of carrying a virtual, high-performance x86 monopoly, grew stagnant in innovation, ensuring it would stretch its bottom-line by way of minimal R&D investment - just enough to be able to name their improvements as a "new generation" of processors each year.

This in turn has led to an interesting outlook in the high-performance x86 market: customers aren't blind, and they see when a company is stretching its fingers in their pockets. A stagnant performance increase on Intel's customer processors with almost a decade of single-digit increments and paralyzed core-counts to an (admittedly strong) architecture have taken away a lot of customers' goodwill towards Intel. That Intel still has strong brand cognition is a no-brainer, but it doesn't have as much brand credit these days, on account of the low performance gains, and tick-tock falter, than it did in the days of Athlon 64. AMD has the benefit of being the underdog, of coming up with something new, fresh and performant (with headlines claiming it is the latest revival of a sleeping giant)... and those are all points that put pressure on Intel to reignite interest on its products.

AMD did it again: building-up such a tremendous speed on its new products' hype train that the Ryzen 7 1700X, Ryzen 7 1800X, and Ryzen 7 1700 managed to jump straight to first, second, and fourth spots of Amazon's list of best-selling CPUs, respectively, dethroning even Intel's mighty i7 7700K. Granted, it isn't hard for the processors from one or the other manufacturer to quickly jump and wrangle about the spots on retailer's best seller lists - there Are only two manufacturers of consumer-grade, high-performance x86 CPUs. But keep in mind: this is a pre-order we're talking about, with nothing but leaks and marketing maneuvering for consumers to base their purchase on.

IBM and NVIDIA today announced collaboration on a new deep learning tool optimized for the latest IBM and NVIDIA technologies to help train computers to think and learn in more human-like ways at a faster pace. Deep learning is a fast growing machine learning method that extracts information by crunching through millions of pieces of data to detect and rank the most important aspects from the data. Publicly supported among leading consumer web and mobile application companies, deep learning is quickly being adopted by more traditional business enterprises.

Deep learning and other artificial intelligence capabilities are being used across a wide range of industry sectors; in banking to advance fraud detection through facial recognition; in automotive for self-driving automobiles and in retail for fully automated call centers with computers that can better understand speech and answer questions.

Intel is opening up its silicon manufacturing facilities to fabless chip-makers, beginning with the manufacture of ARM SoCs. The company entered a licensing deal with ARM that allows ARM SoC designers such as Qualcomm, Apple, and Samsung, to manufacture their SoCs at Intel fabs. Intel is among the first fabs with a working 14 nm node, and is on-track for sub-10 nm node development.

Intel had a crack at the market segments typically addressed by ARM SoCs, with its own x86 chips, which failed to see the kind of volumes ARM chipmakers were pushing. The company has now changed tactics to open its fabs up to those ARM SoC makers, letting them manufacture their designs on proven silicon-fabrication tech, in geographically important locations. Intel has its cutting-edge fabs located in Costa Rica and Malaysia.

Japanese conglomerate Softbank acquired British CPU architecture designer ARM in a USD $32 billion deal on Monday. Softbank's bid of $32 billion is a 43 percent premium over ARM's current valuation of $22.3 billion, and the Cambridge-based firm will recommend its shareholders to approve of its acquisition. Shares of ARM surged 45% on the LSE, adding £7.56 billion to its market value. The company reported revenues of $1.49 billion in 2015. ARM founder Herman Hauser, however, isn't happy with the board's decision. "This is a sad day for me and a sad day for technology in Britain," he stated.

ARM designs CPU architectures, which it then licenses to other processor and SoC manufacturers, many of which are fabless themselves, making it an intellectual property giant. None of ARM's products are "tangible" or physical. While Intel, for example, designs CPU architectures (eg: x86), implements it (eg: Core i7, Celeron), and manufactures it (at its Costa Rica and Malaysia fabs) ARM's product is not tangible. It has a CPU architecture, which clients such as Samsung, Huawei, and Qualcomm license, implement (eg: Exynos, Kylin, Snapdragon), and contract-manufacture, through fabs such as GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and ST Microelectronics.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, announces the world's first DDR4 memory overclocking record to break past the mind-blowing 5GHz barrier, achieved with G.SKILL Trident Z Series DDR4 memory engineered with Samsung ICs and the MSI Z170I GAMING PRO AC motherboard. With this achievement in the official record books, the world's top 7 memory frequency records are now dominated by G.SKILL memory.

Surpassing the 5GHz frequency speed barrier had been the ultimate aspiration of the memory overclocking community since the last year's launch of the Intel Skylake platform. This historic milestone is finally succeeded today by the renowned Taiwanese overclocking legend, Toppc, under liquid nitrogen cooling. "We are extremely excited to achieve this great milestone together with Samsung components and MSI motherboard," says Tequila Huang, Corporate Vice President and Director of R&D, G.SKILL International. "We will continually push hardware performance to the limits and provide enthusiasts with even more advanced products."

Sony's upcoming 4K Ultra HD game console, which its fans are referring to as the "PlayStation 4K," while being internally referred to by Sony as "NEO," could feature a very powerful GPU. AMD could custom-design the SoC that drives the console, to feature an 8-core 64-bit x86 CPU based on the "Jaguar" micro-architecture, running at 2.10 GHz; and a GPU component featuring 36 compute units based on "next-generation Graphics CoreNext" architecture.

36 next-gen GCN compute units sounds an awful lot like the specs of the Polaris10 "Ellesmere" chip in its Radeon R9 480 configuration, working out to a stream processor count of 2,304 - double that of the 1,152 on the current-gen PlayStation 4. The SoC is also rumored to feature a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 8 GB of memory. This memory will be used as both system and video memory, just like on the current-gen PlayStation 4. The memory bandwidth will be increased to 218 GB/s from the current 176 GB/s. Besides 4K Ultra HD gaming, this chip could also prepare Sony for VR headsets, leveraging AMD's LiquidVR tech.

NVIDIA today unveiled the NVIDIA DGX-1, the world's first deep learning supercomputer to meet the unlimited computing demands of artificial intelligence. The NVIDIA DGX-1 is the first system designed specifically for deep learning -- it comes fully integrated with hardware, deep learning software and development tools for quick, easy deployment. It is a turnkey system that contains a new generation of GPU accelerators, delivering the equivalent throughput of 250 x86 servers.

The DGX-1 deep learning system enables researchers and data scientists to easily harness the power of GPU-accelerated computing to create a new class of intelligent machines that learn, see and perceive the world as humans do. It delivers unprecedented levels of computing power to drive next-generation AI applications, allowing researchers to dramatically reduce the time to train larger, more sophisticated deep neural networks.

AMD today announced early availability of its new mobile 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors, timed to support an exciting new notebook design by HP Inc. Equipped with advanced video, graphics, performance, and security features designed to boost productivity and enhance the entertainment experience, 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors (codenamed "Bristol Ridge") also provide outstanding energy efficiency.

New OEM PC designs powered by mobile 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors -- from ultrathin notebooks and convertibles to sleek All-in-Ones -- will come to market first with HP in the new HP ENVY x360, and with other OEM announcements expected later in the year. AMD will officially introduce 7th Gen A-Series APUs and showcase a wide range of OEM designs at Computex 2016, May 31-June 4, 2016, in Taipei, Taiwan.

AMD today announced that researchers at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) will harness the AMD FirePro S9300 x2 Server GPU, the world's fastest single-precision GPU accelerator, to analyze extraordinary amounts of data to help create a new, very detailed 3D map of the largest volume of the Universe ever observed. Rather than using traditional dish-shaped telescopes, CHIME consists of four 100-metre-long cylindrical reflectors which cover an area larger than five professional hockey rinks and gathers signals for the critical computational analyses supplied by the AMD FirePro S9300 x2 GPU cluster.

The CHIME project was created to investigate the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up rather than slowing down. Using consumer technologies similar to those found in common radio receivers, the telescope collects radio waves that have travelled through space for up to 11 billion years and feeds them into a massive supercomputer powered by a series of AMD FirePro S9300 x2 GPUs. The intense number crunching required to map the Universe's expansion in this way was previously cost-prohibitive, but is now being enabled by AMD FirePro GPUs. The anticipated results will help create a highly-detailed map showing the intensity of the hydrogen radiation from billions of galaxies, which will help scientists understand the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

At Embedded World today, AMD announced its 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs and the Embedded G-Series LX SoC, providing customers a broadened portfolio of performance options. The latest offerings expand developers' ability to scale x86 platforms, starting with the entry-level AMD Embedded G-Series LX SoC, which is pin compatible to the previous generation G-Series SoC devices. Also announced today are two new, higher performing 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs, codenamed "Prairie Falcon" and "Brown Falcon," which introduce for the first time pin compatibility for G-Series processors with the higher performance AMD Embedded R-Series SoC.

The new products expand upon the low power capabilities of the award-winning AMD Embedded G-Series SoC platform, bringing scalable performance, power, and price across the CPU, GPU, multimedia, and I/O controller hardware, helping to lower development costs for AMD customers. Together, the new G-Series processors deliver immersive, graphically rich experiences across a broad range of platforms, from entry-level to mainstream gaming, digital signage, imaging, and industrial control.

AMD today launched new thermal solutions, including the flagship AMD Wraith Cooler, as well as the new AMD A10-7860K and new AMD Athlon X4 845 desktop processors. Designed for the consumer who cares about how their desktop PC runs, sounds, and looks, AMD now offers new thermal solutions that generate less than one-tenth the noise of their predecessors -- running at a near-silent 39 decibels, about as quiet as a library.

The new AMD Wraith Cooler combines near-silent operation with unique styling via a sleek fan shroud and LED illumination. Providing superb cooling, the new design delivers 34 percent more airflow and 24 percent more surface area for heat dissipation than its predecessor.

AMD's next-generation "Zen" x86-64 CPU micro-architecture will support up to 32 cores per socket, according to leaked Linux kernel patch on LKML. We know from older reports, that AMD clumps groups of four cores in subunits it calls "Zen quad-core units." Not to be confused with its current "module" design, a quad-core unit is a group of four completely independent cores, which share nothing other than an L3 cache. TechFrag used this bit to deduce that the "Zen" architecture is scalable up to eight quad-core units per socket, or 32 cores per socket.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the quad-core 2-bay TS-251+ and 4-bay TS-451+ NAS that provide an uncompromising high-performance and scalable storage solution for small offices and workgroup users with appealing affordability. The new models feature virtualization readiness, containerized applications, advanced backup solutions, real-time & offline video transcoding, QvPC Technology, HDMI video playback with an included remote control, and many more functions that are beneficial for businesses and SOHO users to build a cost-efficient and modern storage solution.

The TS-251+ and TS-451+ are powered by a 22nm 64-bit quad-core Intel Celeron 2.0GHz processor (burst up to 2.42GHz) with 2GB/8GB energy-efficient DDR3L RAM. They also include dual Gigabit LAN ports, and can deliver up to 225 MB/s throughput and up to 205 MB/s transfer speeds with AES 256-bit volume & folder encryption."The TS-251+ & TS-451+ are ideal choices for those who demand the superior performance of a quad-core x86-based NAS without breaking the budget," said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP. "Both NAS are speedy, versatile and provide future-proof scalability."

AMD today announced new AMD Embedded R-Series SOC processors that establish performance leadership across a targeted range of embedded application market requirements for digital signage, retail signage, medical imaging, electronic gaming, media storage and communications and networking. Designed for demanding embedded needs, the processors incorporate the newest AMD 64-bit x86 CPU core ("Excavator"), plus third-generation Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, and state-of-the-art power management for reduced energy consumption. Combined, these AMD innovations and technologies provide industry-leading graphics performance and key embedded features for next-generation designs.

The single-chip system-on-chip (SOC) architecture enables simplified, small form factor board and system designs from AMD customers and a number of third party development platform providers, while providing astounding graphics and multimedia performance, including capability for hardware-accelerated decode of 4K video playback. With a robust suite of peripheral support and interface options, high-end AMD Radeon graphics, designed for the industry's first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0 certification, and support for the latest DDR4 memory, the new AMD R-Series SOC addresses the needs of a wide range of markets and customers.

Jim Keller, one of the lead architects of AMD's x86 CPU architectures, has left the company. He held the post of Chief Architect of Microprocessor Cores at AMD. With his association, AMD's launched some of its most successful CPU architectures, such as the original K7 (Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron); the very first 64-bit x86 architecture, and K8 (Athlon64). Keller then left AMD to join Apple, in its development of the A4 and A5 SoCs, before rejoining AMD in 2012 to begin work on the "Zen" architecture.

Keller's departure doesn't throw "Zen" in jeopardy. "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the "Zen" core and associated system IP and SoCs," said AMD in a statement. "Zen" remains on-track for sampling in 2016, and its "first full year of revenue" in 2017, which would indicate a market launch some time in 2016. AMD CTO Mark Papermaster will take over as additional charge of Keller's position.

AMD announced availability of its newest budget socket FM2+ APU, the A8-7670K. This part, like the recently-launched A10-7870K, is based on the company's new 28 nm "Godavari" silicon. It combines a quad-core x86-64 CPU based on the "Excavator" micro-architecture, with an integrated Radeon R7 series graphics core, featuring six Graphics CoreNext 1.2 compute units amounting to 384 stream processors; a dual-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, with native support for DDR3-2133 MHz memory; and a PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex.

The CPU cores on the AMD A8-7670K are clocked at 3.60 GHz, with maximum TurboCore frequency of 3.90 GHz. The CPU features unlocked base-clock multipliers, enabling CPU overclocking. The four CPU cores are spread across two "Excavator" modules, with a total of 4 MB of cache between them. The GPU is clocked at 757 MHz, and offers native support for DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0). It offers Dual-Graphics support, letting you pair it with select discrete GPUs from AMD's lineup. With the advent of DirectX 12, it should also support asynchronous multi-GPU. The A8-7670K is available now, and is priced at US $117.99 in its retail package.

ASUS introduced the N3150-C and N3050-C, two mini-ITX motherboards based on the Intel Celeron quad-core N3150 and N3050 SoCs, respectively. The two SoCs are based on the "Braswell" silicon, embedding quad-core or dual-core CPUs based on the 64-bit x86 "Airmont" CPU micro-architecture. The dual-core N3050 features HyperThreading, enabling four logical CPUs, while the quad-core N3150 lacks it. Both chips also embed dual-channel DDR3L IMCs, supporting up to 8 GB of memory; 8th generation Intel graphics with 12 execution units, and TDPs under 6W.

The N3150-C and N3050-C from ASUS feature a common PCB design, with 24+4 pin power inputs, two full-size DDR3 DIMM slots, a single open-ended PCI-Express 2.0 x4 expansion slot, an mPCIe slot, two each of SATA 6 Gb/s, USB 3.0, and USB 2.0 ports, 6-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and D-Sub display outputs; and legacy connectivity that includes two PS/2 ports, and a serial (RS-232) port.

AMD today announced that Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. selected the AMD Embedded G-Series SoC (system on chip) for a new line of all-in-one cloud monitors featuring integrated thin client technology. The Samsung 21.5-inch TC222W and 23.6-inch TC242W are powered by AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs that couple high-performance compute and graphics capability in a highly integrated, low power design. The AMD SoC improves data transfer rates and saves space on the motherboard, which makes it a perfect fit for the compact form factors required by thin clients.

"Thin client is a key market for AMD Embedded Solutions and we're thrilled that Samsung has chosen to partner with us for their newest line of products," said Scott Aylor, vice president and general manager, Embedded Solutions, AMD. "The collaboration with Samsung builds on the number one position AMD holds in a market that continues to grow, becoming more and more prevalent in commercial installations that serve a broad range of markets."

Planned availability starting in Q3 2015, the Windows-supported Samsung cloud monitors will provide customers with expanded choice, capability and configuration flexibility. Complete with Samsung's professional-grade display panel, the cloud monitors will create a superior user experience through easy connectivity and high-quality reliability. As a superior option for effective desktop virtualization, Samsung's thin-client monitors will also enable improved productivity and optimized end-to-end performance.

AMD announced no less than five new products based on its swanky new 28 nm "Fiji" silicon, the company's most powerful GPU, packing over 8 TFLOP/s of raw compute power, and the first GPU to feature stacked HBM (high-bandwidth memory), moved to the GPU package, and communicating with the GPU die over a special silicon substrate called the interposer. The "Fiji" silicon will enable AMD to target NVIDIA's entire high-end GPU lineup.

The first product is Project Quantum. This is a console-sized SFF gaming desktop designed by AMD, which will be sold by the company's add-in board partners. Despite its diminutive size, the desktop packs two "Fiji" GPUs in AMD CrossFireX, and an AMD 64-bit x86 machine driving the rest. All main components (the CPU, the chipset, and the two GPUs), are liquid-cooled. This desktop will enable smooth 4K/5K gaming in the living room.

AMD gave us a technical preview of its next-generation "Carrizo" APU, which is perhaps the company's biggest design leap since "Trinity." Built on the 28 nm silicon fab process, this chip offers big energy-efficiency gains over the current-generation "Kaveri" silicon, thanks to some major under-the-hood changes.

The biggest of these is the "Excavator" CPU module. 23 percent smaller in area than "Steamroller," (same 28 nm process), Excavator features a new high-density library design, which reduces die-area of the module. Most components are compacted. The floating-point scheduler is 38% smaller, fused multiply-accumulate (FMAC) units compacted by 35%, and instruction-cache controller compacted by another 35%. The "Carrizo" silicon itself uses GPU-optimized high-density metal stack, which helps with the compaction. Each "Excavator" module features two x86-64 CPU cores, which are structured much in the same way as AMD's previous three CPU core generations.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today at its Future of Compute event announced the addition of its first high performance system-on-a-chip (SoC), codenamed "Carrizo", and a mainstream SoC codenamed "Carrizo-L" as part of the company's 2015 AMD Mobile APU family roadmap. In collaboration with hardware and software partners, these new 2015 AMD Mobile APUs are designed as complete solutions for gaming, productivity applications, and ultra high-definition 4K experiences. With support for Microsoft DirectX 12, OpenCL 2.0, AMD's Mantle API, AMD FreeSync and support for Microsoft's upcoming Windows 10 operating system, the 2015 AMD Mobile APU family enables the experiences consumers expect.

"We continue to innovate and build upon our existing IP to deliver great products for our customers," said John Byrne, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics business group, AMD. "AMD's commitment to graphics and compute performance, as expressed by our goal to improve APU energy efficiency 25x by 2020, combines with the latest industry standards and fresh innovation to drive the design of the 2015 AMD Mobile APU family. We are excited about the experiences these new APUs will bring and look forward to sharing more details in the first half of next year."

AMD today demonstrated the first network function virtualization (NFV) solution on AMD's 64-bit ARM-based SoC and announced that it is now sampling to AMD's embedded customers. The NFV demonstration is powered by a 64-bit ARM-based AMD Embedded R-Series SoC, codenamed "Hierofalcon," supported with technology from two key ecosystem partners -- Aricent for the networking software stack and Mentor Graphics for embedded Linux and tools. NFV is an innovative solution that simplifies deployment and management for network and telecommunications service providers with a fully virtualized communications infrastructure that helps maximize performance, while working to reduce costs.

At ARM TechCon, AMD specifically showcased the capabilities of an ARM-based NFV solution, virtualizing the functionality of a packet data network gateway, serving gateway, and a mobility management entity. In addition to virtualizing hardware components, AMD showcased a live traffic migration between the ARM-based AMD Embedded R-Series SoC and the x86-based second generation AMD R-Series APU. AMD's ARM-based NFV solution will be especially valuable for telecommunications network infrastructure providers interested in a flexible software-defined networking (SDN) implementation to manage networking services with configurable hardware to help reduce complexity and cost. NFV is the abstraction of numerous network devices such as routers and gateways, to enable relocation of network functions from dedicated hardware appliances to generic servers. With NFV, much of the intelligence currently built into proprietary, specialized hardware is accomplished with software running on general purpose hardware. The resulting solution is a fully virtualized communications infrastructure -- including virtual servers, storage and networks -- that simplifies deployment and management for network and telecommunications service providers. AMD is paving the way for both new and established service providers to design and deploy either x86 or ARM-based NFV infrastructure which meets their performance, cost and complexity requirements.