Samsung Electronics is delaying construction at its planned new chip factory in Taylor, Texas. The company is considering upgrading the factory to produce more advanced 2 nm chips instead of the originally planned 4 nm chips. Samsung will make a final decision on this in Q3 2024. In April, the US government provided $6.4 billion to support Samsung's $40 billion investment in Texas chip facilities, including the Taylor factory. However, reports now suggest Samsung may skip 4 nm production at Taylor altogether.

The Taylor factory was expected to open by 2026, but equipment orders have been delayed while Samsung re-evaluates the plans. This upgrade consideration comes after Samsung recently appointed a new CEO for its semiconductor business (Device Solutions Division) to focus on new growth opportunities. While Samsung's memory chip profits surged in 2024, its previous 3 nm chip was not very successful. By going straight to 2 nm in Taylor, Samsung likely aims to leapfrog competitors in advanced chip manufacturing (TSMC, and Intel plan to produce 2 nm-class chips in the US by the end of this decade).

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today unveiled its latest foundry innovations and outlined its vision for the AI era during Samsung Foundry Forum (SFF) U.S., an annual event held at the company's Device Solutions America headquarters in San Jose, California. Under the theme "Empowering the AI Revolution," Samsung announced its reinforced process technology roadmap, including two new cutting-edge nodes—SF2Z and SF4U—as well as its integrated Samsung AI Solutions platform harnessing the unique strengths of its Foundry, Memory and Advanced Package (AVP) businesses.

"At a time when numerous technologies are evolving around AI, the key to its implementation lies in high-performance, low-power semiconductors," said Dr. Siyoung Choi, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. "Alongside our proven GAA process optimized for AI chips, we plan to introduce integrated, co-packaged optics (CPO) technology for high-speed, low-power data processing, providing our customers with the one-stop AI solutions they need to thrive in this transformative era."

At its Computex 2024 booth, AMD showed us their latest flagship desktop processor, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X. This 16-core/32-thread beast is powered by the latest "Zen 5" microarchitecture, which promises a 16% IPC uplift over "Zen 4." AMD is also building the CCD (CPU complex dies) on the slightly upgraded 4 nm foundry node. The 9950X boosts up to 5.70 GHz, and AMD claims that it beats the Intel Core i9-14900K by near double-digit percentages in gaming, and significantly in multithreaded productivity. The chip is drop-in compatible with any AMD 600-series chipset motherboard with the latest BIOS. AMD plans to launch this processor in July. Given that Intel today announced that "Arrow Lake" will come out in Q4, the Ryzen 9000 series could enjoy free rein in the market for at 4 months.

AMD on Monday launched its Ryzen AI 300 line of mobile processors based on the 4 nm "Strix Point" monolithic silicon. This chip was described by AMD as having a maximum CPU core configuration of 12-core/24-thread, which would be a neat 50% increase in core-counts over the previous generation; but there's more to it. Although "Strix Point" implements "Zen 5," not all 12 CPU cores on the silicon are the regular variant of "Zen 5." The chip physically has four "Zen 5" cores, and eight "Zen 5c" compact cores. Nemez (GPUsAreMagic) attempted to annotate the "Strix Point" die based a high-resolution photo by System360Cheese from AMD's Computex keynote; and there are some interesting findings.

The annotation reveals that the four regular "Zen 5" cores, each with a 1 MB dedicated L2 cache, share a 16 MB L3 cache. The eight "Zen 5c" cores, on the other hand, appear to share a smaller 8 MB L3 cache, in what could be a separate CCX. They each have a 1 MB L2 cache, too. The "Zen 5c" cores have the same IPC as the "Zen 5" cores when measured with common INT and FP benchmarks that don't move a lot of data; however, it could lag behind in workloads with a lot of streaming data. What's more, the previous generation "Zen 4c" cores were traditionally limited to lower frequencies than regular "Zen 4" cores, as the physically compacted cores couldn't hold onto higher core voltages. If that's the case with "Zen 5c," then what we're really looking at with "Strix Point" is an interesting hybrid core setup with eight high-IPC efficiency cores.

AMD today launched its Ryzen AI 300 series mobile processors, codenamed "Strix Point." These chips implement a combination of the AMD "Zen 5" microarchitecture for the CPU cores, the XDNA 2 architecture for its powerful new NPU, and the RDNA 3+ graphics architecture for its 33% faster iGPU. The new "Zen 5" microarchitecture provides a 16% generational IPC uplift over "Zen 4" on the backs of several front-end enhancements, wider execution pipelines, more intra core bandwidth, and a revamped FPU that doubles performance of AI and AVX-512 workloads. AMD didn't go in-depth with the microarchitecture, but the broad points of "Zen 5" are detailed in our article for the Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors. Not only is AMD using these faster "Zen 5" CPU cores, but also increased the CPU core count by 50%, for a maximum of 12-core/24-thread.

The "Strix Point" monolithic silicon is built on the 4 nm foundry node, and packs a CPU core complex (CCX) with 12 CPU cores, four of these are "Zen 5," which can achieve the highest possible boost frequencies, the other eight are "Zen 5c" cores that feature an identical IPC and the full ISA, including support for SMT; but don't boost as high as the "Zen 5" cores. AMD is claiming a productivity performance increase ranging between 4% and 73% for its top model based in the series, when compared to Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" processor. The iGPU sees its compute unit (CU) count go all the way up to 16 from 12 in the previous generation, and this yields a claimed 33% increase in iGPU gaming performance compared to the integrated Arc graphics of the Core Ultra 9 185H. Lastly, the XDNA 2 NPU sees more that triple the AI inference performance to 50 AI TOPS, compared to the 16 TOPS of the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" processor, and 12 TOPS of Core Ultra "Meteor Lake." This makes the processor meet Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC requirements.

An alleged company slide by motherboard maker GIGABYTE leaked a few interesting tidbits about the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" Socket AM5 desktop processor powered by the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. To begin with, we're getting our first confirmation that the "Zen 5" common CCD used on "Granite Ridge" desktop processors and future EPYC "Turin" server processors, is built on the 4 nm EUV foundry node by TSMC, an upgrade from the 5 nm EUV node that the "Zen 4" CCD is built on. This could be the same version of the TSMC N4 node that AMD had been using for its "Phoenix" and "Hawk Point" mobile processors.

AMD is likely carrying over the client I/O die (cIOD) from the "Raphael" processor. This is built on the TSMC 6 nm DUV node. It packs a basic iGPU based on RDNA 2 with 2 compute units; a dual-channel DDR5 memory controller, and a 28-lane PCIe Gen 5 root complex, besides some SoC connectivity. AMD is rumored to be increasing the native DDR5 speeds for "Granite Ridge," up from the DDR5-5200 JEDEC-standard native speed, and DDR5-6000 "sweetspot" speed of "Raphael," so the cIOD isn't entirely the same.

NVIDIA's GeForce "Blackwell" generation of gaming GPUs will stick to being traditional monolithic die chips. The company will not build its next generation of chips as either disaggregated devices, or multi-chip modules. Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, says that the largest GPU in the generation, the "GB202," is based on a physically monolithic design. The GB202 is expected to power the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 (or RTX 4090 successor), and if NVIDIA sticking to traditional chip design for this, then it's unlikely that smaller GPUs will be any different.

In contrast, AMD started building disaggregated devices with its current RDNA 3 generation, with its top two chips, the "Navi 31" and "Navi 32," being disaggregated chips. An interesting rumor suggests that team red's RDNA 4 generation will see a transition from disaggregated chips to multi-chip modules—packages that contain multiple fully-integrated GPU dies. Back to the green camp, and NVIDIA is expected to use an advanced 4 nm-class node for its GeForce "Blackwell" GPUs.

Acer today launched its first Copilot+ PC with the Swift 14 AI laptop, in collaboration with Microsoft and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., ushering in a new AI era with brand new user experiences and AI capabilities on Windows 11. The Swift 14 AI has multiple device models, powered by Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus platforms, and both feature one of the world's fastest NPUs for laptops to enable on-device AI processing. Users can streamline everyday tasks with smarter PC functions and tackle complex workloads more effectively.

"Engineered for AI from the inside out, the Swift 14 AI is the first among many Acer Copilot+ PCs to come," said Jerry Kao, COO, Acer Inc. "These next-generation AI PCs see significant leaps in AI processing power, unlocking brand new experiences that we know users will love."

AMD is indeed bringing the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F desktop processors to the retail PIB channel. Both these processors are based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" or "Phoenix 2" silicon, but with their iGPU disabled, hence the "F" in the model name. Company slides related to the two were leaked to the web. The processors feature CPU cores based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, and are built in the Socket AM5 package.

The Ryzen 7 8700F features the 8-core/16-thread "Zen 4" CPU that the 8700G, but with lower CPU clock speeds of up to 5.00 GHz boost (compared to up to 5.10 GHz for the 8700G). Although its iGPU is disabled, its NPU isn't. The Ryzen AI NPU offers 16 AI TOPS performance. The processor retains the 65 W TDP of the 8700G. Moving on to the 8400G, and here we see the processor being based on the "Phoenix 2" silicon, with 6 CPU cores. Two of these are "Zen 4," and can reach the processor's 4.70 GHz maximum boost frequency; while the other four are "Zen 4c," and operate at lower clock speeds. The chip physically lacks an NPU, and its iGPU is disabled. It still has 65 W TDP to feed its CPU cores. In their retail packages, both processors include a Wraith Stealth cooling solution that's meant for 65 W TDP processors.

Recently, MINISFORUM officially starts showing the AtomMan X7 Ti on its website, which is the world's first Intel Ultra 9 AI Mini PC equipped with a dynamic screen. The X7 Ti pre-sale will begin at 19:00 PST on May 20th in the MINISFORUM official store. AtomMan is MINISFORUM's new high-end brand dedicated to developing cutting-edge and high-performance tech products. Currently, the AtomMan brand consists of two sub-series: X Series (Exploration/AI) and G Series (Gaming).

The AtomMan X7 Ti features an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, built on Intel's 4 nm process technology. It boasts 22 threads, 16 cores, a maximum frequency of 5.1 GHz, 24 MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 65 W. The integrated Arc Iris Xe graphics come with 8 Xe cores and 8 additional ray tracing units, supporting AV1 encoding and decoding. With 128 execution units (FP32 cores), it also supports XeSS sampling technology, significantly enhancing 3D rendering, video editing, and live streaming workflows, making it ideal for playing AAA games.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024. The Company posted KRW 71.92 trillion in consolidated revenue on the back of strong sales of flagship Galaxy S24 smartphones and higher prices for memory semiconductors. Operating profit increased to KRW 6.61 trillion as the Memory Business returned to profit by addressing demand for high value-added products. The Mobile eXperience (MX) Business posted higher earnings and the Visual Display and Digital Appliances businesses also recorded increased profitability.

The weakness of the Korean won against major currencies resulted in a positive impact on company-wide operating profit of about KRW 0.3 trillion compared to the previous quarter. The Company's total capital expenditures in the first quarter stood at KRW 11.3 trillion, including KRW 9.7 trillion for the Device Solutions (DS) Division and KRW 1.1 trillion on Samsung Display Corporation (SDC). Spending on memory was focused on facilities and packaging technologies to address demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), DDR5 and other advanced products, while foundry investments were concentrated on establishing infrastructure to meet medium- to long-term demand. Display investments were mainly made in IT OLED products and flexible display technologies.

AMD is reportedly planning to launch the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F Socket AM5 desktop processors for a global launch, in the retail channel, as boxed processors. The two chips had launched earlier this month in the Chinese retail market. The 8700F reportedly comes with an OPN of 100-100001590BOX, while the 8400F is marked 100-100001591BOX. The "F" in both SKUs denotes a lack of integrated graphics. The Ryzen 7 8700F is an 8-core/16-thread processor based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" silicon, while the 8400F is a 6-core/12-thread processor based on "Phoenix 2," which offers two "Zen 4" cores that run at higher clock speeds, and four "Zen 4c" cores that run at lower speeds.

The lack of an iGPU isn't the only thing differentiating the 8700F from the 8700G, the new chip even comes with slightly lower CPU clock speeds—100 MHz lower base and maximum boost frequencies. The 8700F CPU runs at a base frequency of 4.10 GHz, with 5.00 GHz maximum boost, when compared to the 4.20/5.10 GHz speeds of the 8700G. The 8400F, on the other hand, runs at 4.20 GHz base frequency, and a 4.70 GHz maximum boost frequency that applies to at least its two "Zen 4" cores; its four "Zen 4c" cores run at lower frequencies. There is no word on pricing. One reason you could want an 8700F over something like a 7700 would be its appetite for memory overclocking, if you can overlook the lack of integrated graphics, a smaller L3 cache, and most importantly, the lack of PCIe Gen 5, and four fewer PCIe lanes.

Korean media reports that Samsung Electronics has signed a 4.134 trillion Won ($3 billion) agreement with AMD to supply 12-high HBM3E stacks. AMD uses HBM stacks in its AI and HPC accelerators based on its CDNA architecture. This deal is significant, as it gives analysts some idea of the kind of volumes of AI GPUs AMD is preparing to push into the market, if they know what percent of an AI GPU's bill of materials is made up by memory stacks. AMD has probably negotiated a good price for Samsung's HBM3E 12H stacks, given that rival NVIDIA almost exclusively uses HBM3E made by SK Hynix.

The AI GPU market is expected to heat up with the ramp of NVIDIA's "Hopper" H200 series, the advent of "Blackwell," AMD's MI350X CDNA3, and Intel's Gaudi 3 generative AI accelerator. Samsung debuted its HBM3E 12H memory in February 2024. Each stack features 12 layers, a 50% increase over the first generation of HBM3E, and offers a density of 36 GB per stack. An AMD CDNA3 chip with 8 such stacks would have 288 GB of memory on package. AMD is expected to launch the MI350X in the second half of 2024. The star attraction with this chip is its refreshed GPU tiles built on the TSMC 4 nm EUV foundry node. This seems like the ideal product for AMD to debut HBM3E 12H on.

Today, AMD announced new products that will expand its commercial mobile and desktop AI PC portfolio, delivering exceptional productivity and premium AI and connectivity experiences to business users. The new AMD Ryzen PRO 8040 Series are the most advanced x86 processors built for business laptops and mobile workstations. In addition, AMD also announced the AMD Ryzen PRO 8000 Series desktop processor, the first AI enabled desktop processor for business users, engineered to deliver cutting-edge performance with low power consumption.

With AMD Ryzen AI built into select models, AMD is further extending its AI PC leadership. By leveraging the CPU, GPU, and dedicated on-chip neural processing unit (NPU), new Ryzen AI-powered processors provide more dedicated AI processing power than previous generations, with up to 16 dedicated NPU TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) and up to 39 total system TOPS. Commercial PCs equipped with new Ryzen AI-enabled processors will help transform user experience, offering next-gen performance for AI-enabled collaboration, content creation, and data and analytics workloads. With the addition of AMD PRO technologies, IT managers can unlock enterprise-grade manageability features to simplify IT operations and complete PC deployment faster across the organization, built-in security features for chip-to-cloud defense from sophisticated attacks, as well as unprecedented stability, reliability and platform longevity for enterprise software.

According to the latest report from Bloomberg, the US government under Joe Biden's administration has announced plans to provide Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) with a substantial financial support package worth $11.6 billion. The package is composed of $6.6 billion in grants and up to $5 billion in loans. This represents the most significant financial assistance approved under the CHIPS and Science Act, a key initiative to resurrect the US chip industry. The funding will aid TSMC in establishing three cutting-edge semiconductor production facilities in Arizona, with the company's total investment in the state expected to exceed an impressive $65 billion. TSMC's multi-phase Arizona project will commence with the construction of a fab module near its existing Fab 21 facility. Production using 4 nm and 5 nm process nodes is slated to begin by early 2025. The second phase, scheduled for 2028, will focus on even more advanced 2 nm and 3 nm technologies.

TSMC has kept details about the third facility's production timeline and process node under wraps. The company's massive investment in Arizona is expected to profoundly impact the local economy, creating 6,000 high-tech manufacturing jobs and over 20,000 construction positions. Moreover, $50 million has been earmarked for training local workers, which aligns with President Joe Biden's goal of bolstering domestic manufacturing and technological independence. However, TSMC's Arizona projects have encountered obstacles, including labor disputes and uncertainties regarding government support, resulting in delays for the second facility's production timeline. Additionally, reports suggest that at least one TSMC supplier has abandoned plans to set up operations in Arizona due to workforce-related challenges.

AMD has introduced the Ryzen Embedded 8000 Series processors, the first AMD embedded devices to combine NPUs based on the AMD XDNA architecture with traditional CPU and GPU elements, optimized for workload versatility and adaptability targeting industrial AI applications. Embedded solution engineers and developers can harness the processing power and leadership features for a variety of industrial AI applications including machine vision, robotics, and industrial automation. AI is widely used in machine vision applications today to enhance quality control and inspection processes.

AI can also help robots make real-time, route-planning decisions and adapt to dynamic environments. In industrial automation, AI processing helps intelligent edge devices perform complex analysis and decision-making without relying on cloud connectivity. This allows for real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and autonomous control of industrial processes, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing downtime.

One key takeaway from the ongoing GTC is that Nvidia's AI empire has taken shape with strong partnerships from TSMC and other Taiwanese makers, such as those major server ODMs.

According to the news report from the technology-focused media DIGITIMES Asia, during his keynote at GTC on March 18, Huang underscored his company's partnerships with TSMC, as well as the supply chain in Taiwan. Speaking to the press later, Huang said Nvidia will have a very strong demand for CoWoS, the advanced packaging services TSMC offers.

Lenovo has announced today that the Lenovo Legion Tab, an 8.8-inch Android tablet for the modern mobile gamer, is soon going to be expanding availability from China to select markets in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and Asia. The Lenovo Legion Tab bridges the gap between PC and mobile gaming, offering a solution for gamers seeking a high-performance gaming experience that is both accessible and convenient.

The Lenovo Legion Tab transcends the typical expectations of a tablet, delivering outstanding gaming performance thanks to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 4 nm processor and 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory all in a 76 mm thin Storm Grey tablet weighing in at just 350 grams. The Lenovo Legion Tab allows for even more gaming on the go owing to its 256 GB onboard storage—expandable with the microSD slot that supports up to 1 TB cards. The 144 Hz 8.8-inch QHD+ Lenovo PureSight gaming display brings visuals to vibrant life, allowing any Android compatible game to shine crisp and colorful. The tablet's integrated haptic system gives gamers a further level of immersion and feedback so they can truly get in the game.

A mysterious Qualcomm Snapdragon "SM8635" model emerged earlier this month—courtesy of ever reliable smartphone tech tipster Digital Chat Station. They claimed that the unnamed mobile chipset had posted an AnTuTu score of roughly 1.7 million, with specifications including one Cortex-X4 core clocked at 2.9 GHz and an integrated Adreno 735 GPU. TSMC's 4 nm process node was also mentioned—not a particularly big revelation since the latest Snapdragon flagship is a 4 nm part. Early guess work pointed to possible Snapdragon 8s Gen 2 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Lite guises, but a Geekbench Browser leak indicates that SM8635 is destined to become "Snapdragon 8s Gen 3," in Digital Chat Station's opinion.

A Realme "RMX3851" android device was tested in Geekbench 6.2.2—stated specifications include a 3.01 GHz "Big" Core clock, Adreno 735 GPU, and a 1+3+4 cluster configuration. Many believe that the SM8635 is positioned as a cut-down alternative to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (SM8650-AB), given that Realme specializes in producing value-oriented "near flagship" specced smartphones. Wccftech has spent hands-on time with various Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered devices: "You can see in (Realme's Geekbench entry) that the alleged Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 does not perform on the same level as its elder brother, which scores higher in both single and multi-core. For the sake of reference, I have seen the elder sibling going as high as 2,329 in single-core tests and 7,501 in multi-core tests. So, this chipset is performing at half the speed, but of course, this seems like a device that is not completely ready, so the final scores might improve." Further (insider) leaks or an official Qualcomm announcement will confirm whether the posited "Snapdragon 8s Gen 3" moniker is a good guess, although another leaked chip suggests another path. Roland Quandt reckons that a similarly configured "SM7675" SoC will be joining the Snapdragon 7 Gen family.

AMD is reportedly building its upcoming "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" CPU Core Dies (CCDs) on two different foundry nodes, a report by Chinese publication UDN, claims. The Zen 5 CCD powering the upcoming Ryzen "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, "Fire Range" mobile processors, and EPYC "Turin" server processors, will be reportedly built on the 4 nm EUV foundry node, a slightly more advanced node than the current 5 nm EUV the company is building "Zen 4" CCDs on. The "Zen 5c" CCD, or the chiplet with purely "Zen 5c" cores in a high density configuration; on the other hand, will be built on an even more advanced 3 nm EUV foundry node, the report says. Both CCDs will go into mass production in Q2-2024, with product launches expected across the second half of the year.

The "Zen 5c" chiplet has a mammoth 32 cores spread across two CCXs of 16 cores, each. Each CCX has 16 cores sharing a 32 MB L3 cache. It is to cram these 32 cores, each with 1 MB of L2 cache; and a total of 64 MB of L3 cache, that AMD could be turning to the 3 nm foundry node. Another reason could be voltages. If "Zen 4c" is anything to go by, the "Zen 5c" core is a highly compacted variant of "Zen 5," which operates at a lower voltage band than its larger sibling, without any change in IPC or instruction sets. The decision to go with 3 nm could be a move aimed at increasing clock speeds at those lower voltages, in a bid to generationally improve performance using clock speeds, besides IPC and core count. The EPYC processor with "Zen 5c" chiplets will feature no more than six such large CCDs, for a maximum core count of 192. The regular "Zen 5" CCD has just 8 cores in a single CCX, with 32 MB of L3 cache shared among the cores; and TSV provision for 3D Vertical Cache, to increase the L3 cache in special variants.

AMD's small but fledgling Ryzen 8000 line of Socket AM5 desktop APUs is about to grow, with the addition of four new low-power SKUs, under the Ryzen 8000GE line. These chips come with a TDP of 35 W compared to the 65 W of the regular 8000G APUs, and a lowered PPT (package power tracking) value, making them energy-efficient variants. To be clear, these are not AMD's 8000-series APUs meant for the commercial desktop market, for that the company has the Ryzen PRO 8000 series and Ryzen PRO 7000 series.

The Ryzen 8000GE series are meant to square off against Intel's 14th Gen Core T-series SKUs that have processor base power values of 35 W, and significantly lower maximum turbo power values than the regular processor models. To carve out these chips, AMD has lowered the clock speeds and TDP compared to the regular 8000G series. Since the underlying 4 nm "Hawk Point" silicon achieves fairly good clocks in its 35 W HS-segment notebook processors, one can expect reasonably good boost residency with the 8000GE desktop chips.

Recently, MINISFORUM updated the CPU of V3 to AMD's latest Ryzen7 8840U on its official website. Previously, the preview page for V3 went live on January 3rd. It is understood that MINISFORUM is expected to hold the V3 and Spring New Product Launch Event at the end of March 2024. MINISFORUM V3 is the world's first high-performance AMD AI 3-in-1 tablet, featuring AMD's latest Ryzen7 8840U, built on a 4 nm process, with Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 GPU architecture, 8 cores 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.30 GHz, and a maximum boost frequency of 5.10 GHz, with a TDP of 15-30 W, and a 16 MB L3 cache. It integrates Radeon 780M graphics. V3 also boasts a dual-fan and four-copper-pipe cooling system, achieving 28 W sustained performance release, providing sustained power for AI model training, graphic rendering, video editing, and gaming entertainment.

The AMD 8840U is also paired with a proprietary XDNA AI processor, with NPU computing power up to 16TOPS and processor computing power up to 38TOPS. Based on this, V3 is equipped with a new AMD Ryzen AI, creating an AI Windows triple-in-one tablet PC with the highest security level from Microsoft, supporting Microsoft Real-time Communication, and hardware design supporting Microsoft Copilot, which can be called upon with a single click, providing real-time intelligent suggestions and assistance, helping users easily complete tasks in various scenarios for efficient office work.

AMD is readying the new 800-series motherboard chipset to launch alongside its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors that implement the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. The chipset family will be led by the AMD X870E, a successor to the current X670E. Since AMD isn't changing the CPU socket, and this is very much the same Socket AM5, the 800-series chipset will support not just "Granite Ridge" at launch, but also the Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael," and Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point." Moore's Law is Dead goes into the details of what sets the X870E apart from the current X670E, and it all has to do with USB4.

Apparently, motherboard manufacturers will be mandated to include 40 Gbps USB4 connectivity with AMD X870E, which essentially makes the chipset a 3-chip solution—two Promontory 21 bridge chips, and a discrete ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 host controller; although it's possible that AMD's QVL will allow other brands of USB4 controllers as they become available. The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" are chiplet based processors just like the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael," and while the 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs are new, the 6 nm client I/O die (cIOD) is largely carried over from "Raphael," with a few updates to its memory controller. DDR5-6400 will be the new AMD-recommended "sweetspot" speed; although AMD might get its motherboard vendors to support DDR5-8000 EXPO profiles with an FCLK of 2400 MHz, and a divider.

Entry level discrete GPUs are in trouble, as the first reviews of the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G desktop APU show that its iGPU is capable of beating the discrete GeForce GTX 1650, which means it should also beat the Radeon RX 6500 XT that offers comparable performance. Based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" monolithic silicon, the 8700G packs the powerful Radeon 780M iGPU based on the latest RDNA3 graphics architecture, with as many as 12 compute units, worth 768 stream processors, 48 TMUs, and an impressive 32 ROPs; and full support for the DirectX 12 Ultimate API requirements, including ray tracing. A review by a Chinese tech publication on BiliBili showed that it's possible for an overclocked 8700G to beat a discrete GTX 1650 in 3DMark TimeSpy.

It's important to note here that both the iGPU engine clock and the APU's memory frequency are increased. The reviewer set the iGPU engine clock to 3400 MHz, up from its 2900 MHz reference speed. It turns out that much like its predecessor, the 5700G "Cezanne," the new 8700G "Hawk Point" features a more advanced memory controller than its chiplet-based counterpart (in this case the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael"). The reviewer succeeded in a DDR5-8400 memory overclock. A combination of the two resulted in a 17% increase in the Time Spy score over stock speeds; which is how the chip manages to beat the discrete GTX 1650 (comparable performance to the RX 6500 XT at 1080p).

We've known since way back in August 2023, that AMD is rumored to be retreating from the enthusiast graphics segment with its next-generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture, which means that we likely won't see successors to the RX 7900 series squaring off against the upper end of NVIDIA's fastest GeForce RTX "Blackwell" series. What we'll get instead is a product stack closely resembling that of the RX 5000 series RDNA, with its top part providing a highly competitive price-performance mix around the $400-mark. A more recent report by Moore's Law is Dead sheds more light on this part.

Apparently, the top Radeon RX SKU based on the next-gen RDNA4 graphics architecture will offer performance comparable to that of the current RX 7900 XTX, but at less than half its price (around the $400 mark). It is also expected to achieve this performance target using a smaller, simpler silicon, with significantly lower board cost, leading up to its price. What's more, there could be energy efficiency gains made from the switch to a newer 4 nm-class foundry node and the RDNA4 architecture itself; which could achieve its performance target using fewer numbers of compute units than the RX 7900 XTX with its 96.