XPS is one of the most coveted brands in the PC industry, lauded for its seamless convergence of elegant design and cutting-edge technology - but there's always more to an XPS device than meets the eye. Nearly 42% larger than its predecessor (27L vs 19L), the new XPS desktop ushers in an expansive suite of next-gen performance technologies and a more robust cooling architecture, making this the most powerful XPS desktop ever made.

With heavy hitter performance cloaked by an understated minimalist design, creators, gamers and virtually anyone who wants to amplify their passions can now own a sophisticated PC with workhorse performance.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini computer integration company, recently announced Cypress Porcoolpine, a new Simply NUC branded Rugged Long-Life Mini PC. As the fanless version of the newly released Cypress family, Cypress Porcoolpine delivers performance and innovation for embedded solutions without the use of a cooling fan.

Cypress Porcoolpine is the first rugged Mini PC featuring V2000 Embedded AMD processors and is guaranteed to be sold in the same form, fit, and function for seven years from launch. Simply NUC is currently taking orders on Cypress Porcoolpine with units now shipping.
"Whether its industrial computing, digital signage, or gathering edge data analytics, we saw an opportunity to create a fanless mini PC using the latest AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processors," said Charles Abdouch, Simply NUC CTO, "With the addition of Cypress Porcoolpine, we can now offer customers a long life mini PC to meet any of their embedded application needs."

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry, today announced publication of the JESD79-5A DDR5 SDRAM standard. This update to the JEDEC DDR5 SDRAM standard includes features designed to enhance reliability and performance in a wide range of applications involving client systems and high-performance servers. JESD79-5A is now available for download from the JEDEC website.

Added features designed to meet industry demand for improved system reliability include bounded fault error-correction support, Soft Post-Package Repair (sPPR) undo and lock, Memory Built-In Self-Test Post Package Repair (MBIST and mPPR), Adaptive RFM, and an MR4 extension. JESD79-5A expands the timing definition and transfer speed of DDR5 up to 6400 MT/s for DRAM core timings and 5600 MT/s for IO AC timings to enable the industry to build an ecosystem up to 5600 MT/s. The nomenclature for core timing parameters and their respective definitions has been revamped to closely align with the upcoming JEDEC JESD400-5 DDR5 Serial Presence Detect (SPD) Contents V1.0 standard. The document can be accessed here.

AMD today announced revenue for the third quarter of 2021 of $4.3 billion, operating income of $948 million, net income of $923 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.75. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $1.1 billion, net income was $893 million and diluted earnings per share were $0.73. "AMD had another record quarter as revenue grew 54% and operating income doubled year-over-year," said AMD president and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "3rd Gen EPYC processor shipments ramped significantly in the quarter as our data center sales more than doubled year-over-year. Our business significantly accelerated in 2021, growing faster than the market based on our leadership products and consistent execution."

AMD will host its Accelerated Data Center Premiere on November 8, 2021 at 11 a.m. ET, showcasing the company's upcoming innovations with AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators. The virtual event is slated to feature presentations from AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Data Center and Embedded Solutions Business Group Forrest Norrod, and Senior Vice President and General Manager, Server Business Unit Dan McNamara. The event will be accessible to the public at this page starting at 11 a.m. ET. A replay will be available and can be accessed after the conclusion of the livestream event.

Editor's Note: We expect AMD to announce several SKUs in its MI200-series "Aldebaran" compute accelerator family, along with a new line of EPYC "Milan-X" enterprise processors that leverage the new "Zen 3+" chiplet that comes with 64 MB 3D Vertical Cache memory on top of the 32 MB L3 cache.

AMD will debut TSMC's ambitious System-on-Integrated-Chips (SoIC) technology with its upcoming HPC chips, according to a DigiTimes report. A step toward rivaling Intel's Foveros 3-D chip stacking technology, SoIC will enable AMD to stack logic, memory, and I/O as separate chips within a single package. The article references a next-generation "HPC" chip, although it didn't delve into what this could be. Logically, AMD would want to integrate its EPYC and MI accelerator lines into a single package that can be used in HPCs. Such a product would combine its Zen-series x86-64 serial processing, with CDNA-series scalar processing, expertise in memory, leveraging large on-die victim-caches, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM); along with next-gen I/O.

The gaming scene changed dramatically last year with the implementation of HDMI 2.1, a new enhancement in connectivity supporting a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates including 4K @ 120 Hz, a new level for console gamers. A few months ago, console enthusiasts welcomed the first model in the all-new range of Philips Momentum Designed for Xbox monitors, the 559M1RYV (55"/139.7 cm).

Philips Momentum Designed for Xbox console gaming monitors are built to provide the ultimate experience for next-gen console gamers by including the new HDMI 2.1 input, which enables next-gen console gaming with 4K resolution and a fast 120 Hz refresh rate for an ultra-clear and ultra-smooth gaming performance. Now, the Philips monitors portfolio has expanded to include the new 329M1RV (31.5"/80 cm) and 279M1RV (27"/68.5 cm) displays.

AMD is preparing an update to its compute accelerator lineup with the new MI250X. Based on the CDNA2 architecture, and built on existing 7 nm node, the MI250X will be accompanied by a more affordable variant, the MI250. According to leaks put out by ExecutableFix, the MI250X packs a whopping 110 compute units (7,040 stream processors), running at 1.70 GHz. The package features 128 GB of HBM2E memory, and a package TDP of 500 W. As for speculative performance numbers, it is expected to offer double-precision (FP64) throughput of 47.9 TFLOP/s, ditto full-precision (FP32), and 383 TFLOP/s half-precision (FP16 and BFLOAT16). AMD's MI200 "Aldebaran" family of compute accelerators are expected to square off against Intel's "Ponte Vecchio" Xe-HPC, and NVIDIA Hopper H100 accelerators in 2022.

The first trace of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 6000 mobile series has recently appeared with a processor of OPN code 100-000000518-41_N surfacing in the UserBenchmark database with the socket listed as FP7 which is the rumored platform for AMD's 6 nm Rembrandt family. The engineering sample features 8-cores and 16-threads with a base clock of 3.9 GHz and a boost of 4.1 GHz along with an integrated RDNA2 iGPU.

This marks the move from Vega to Navi 2 for the integrated GPU which should result in significant graphics performance and efficiency improvements. The processor was paired with a single 16 GB DDR5 memory module from Corsair running at 4800 MHz CL40, the computer is also listed as Corsair Xenomorph which is interesting as we are not aware of any plans for Corsair to release laptops. AMD is expected to announce Rembrandt at CES 2022 and the processors have allegedly already entered production.

Microsoft and AMD on Thursday released software updates that fix the two performance issues affecting AMD Ryzen processors with Windows 11. The two issues were abnormally high L3 cache latency, and a broken "Preferred Cores" system. The companies had assessed that the issues impact performance of Ryzen processors on Windows 11 by as much as 15%.

The two issues are fixed in separate methods. The L3 cache latency bug is improved through a Windows Update patch, which has been released now as an Update Preview (an Update Preview is not a "beta," but a software update released ahead of its designated "patch Tuesday"). The Update Preview is chronicled under KB5006746, and Windows 11 systems updated with this, get their OS build version set as "build 22000.282." The next update restores the Preferred Cores mechanism that leverages UEFI-CPPC2. This update comes in the form of an AMD Chipset Software update. You'll need to download and install both of the following:

DOWNLOAD: Windows 11 October 21, 2021 Update Preview KB5006746 | AMD Chipset Driver Software 3.10.08.506

Here it is: Microsoft and AMD have collaborated in a special, limited-edition Halo-themed graphics card. Putting the Halo in a halo product, the new release features a collaborative design between AMD and Microsoft, and deepens the link between both companies. The design takes its cues specifically from Halo's most recognizable character, The Master Chief - Spartan John-117. The custom card features a triple-fan cooling solution, customized with the military green and faceplate gold from the iconic Halo character. The backplate too screams the connections to Halo, with a 117 embossing and a LED-illuminated blue AI logo.

Microsoft also used the limited edition RX 6900 XT graphics card announcement to indicate that it is working closely with AMD to bring ray tracing to Halo infinite, saying that "Ray tracing is one our top development priorities post-launch and look forward to sharing more soon." Smartly, and perhaps learning from what happened with the retail release of the Halo infinite custom Xbox Series X console (which fell to scalpers in a matter of minutes), the new, limited edition graphics card won't be available for sale; instead, " AMD, Halo, and other partners will be offering players multiple opportunities over the coming weeks to get their hands on one." Look after the break for the teaser video of the product.

GIGABYTE Technology, an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced a new server, GIGABYTE R282-Z9G, that gets around hardware and software RAID limitations that bottleneck RAID when used with NVMe SSDs. Continuing in the success of the R282 series, the new SKU was designed to house an all-in-one server solution that specifically targets high performance NVMe (Gen4) SSDs for RAID by incorporating the GRAID SupremeRAID solution into the R282-Z9G. This is the first GIGABYTE server to incorporate a GRAID Technology solution and has proven to be highly successful with Kioxia CM6-R SSDs.

More and more companies are using flash storage and doing so on a larger scale; however, there may be pitfalls when using RAID, such as limitations in computing performance or consuming a large amount of CPU resources. To solve these problems and to do so with a large amount of drives, the GRAID SupremeRAID works by installing a virtual NVMe controller on the OS while integrating a PCIe device for high performance. With this GIGABYTE solution over 100 GB/s of throughput is possible for workloads in HPC, 4K/8K video editing, high-frequency trading, online transaction processing, or database processing.

Although we can't confirm it, the screenshot below is said to be of a retail version of the Intel Alder Lake Core i9-12900K that has been overclocked to 5.2 GHz on all P-cores, with the E-cores at stock clocks. It is said to be drawing a massive 330 Watts at these clock speeds, which is rather a lot for a consumer level CPU.

Sadly details such as the motherboard used and RAM clocks are absent. The E-cores are said to be locked at a maximum clock of 3.7 GHz, so there appears to be no overclocking potential in them. Yes, Intel does manage to edge out AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X at these clock speeds in the multithreaded test, which is no mean feat considering we're looking at eight threads less here, but Intel does so at over twice the power draw.Update: Updated due to a slight misunderstanding, the E-cores were apparently enabled, but running at stock clock.

ASRock, the leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, today launched new Challenger series products based on AMD Radeon RX 6600 GPUs. Built on the 7 nm manufacturing process, the new ASRock graphics cards offer support for the DirectX 12 Ultimate API, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, HDMI 2.1, PCI Express 4.0, and the Microsoft Windows 11 operating system. With a wealth of exclusive features, the new graphics cards are designed to provide visually stunning, high-refresh rate 1080p gaming experiences to the midrange market.

The new graphics cards are built on the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver the optimal balance of performance and power efficiency. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory and other advanced features, the new graphics cards are designed to bring next-generation desktop gaming experiences to the midrange market. They also support the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution open-source spatial upscaling solution, which is designed to increase framerates while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

As we await the update of AMD's highly anticipated 6000 series Rembrandt APUs based on Zen 3 cores and RDNA2 graphics, we are in for a surprise with information about the next generation, more than a year away, of Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors based on Zen 4 architecture. Codenamed Raphael-H, it co-exists with the upcoming lineup of Phoenix APUs, which come after the 6000 series Rembrandt APU lineup. This mobile variant of the forthcoming desktop Raphael processors features as many as 16 cores based on Zen 4 architecture. What is so special about the Raphael-H is that it represents a mobile adaptation of desktop processors, and we are not sure how it will be different from the Phoenix APUs. However, we assume that Phoenix is going to feature a more powerful graphics solution.

The confusing thing is the timeline of these processors. First comes the Rembrandt APUs (6000 series) and then both the Raphael-H and Phoenix mobile processors. AMD could disable iGPU on mobile Raphael-H designs. However, that is just a guess. We have to wait to find out more in the upcoming months.

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today announced a new AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card - the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G. The Eagle graphics card is the best choice for those who desire a unique design optimized for power efficiency and durability, and the ability to experience incredible high-framerate 1080p gaming.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics cards are based on the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver the optimal balance of performance and power efficiency. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory technology and other advanced features, the new graphics cards are designed to bring next-generation desktop gaming experiences to the midrange market. They also support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, an open-source spatial upscaling solution designed to increase framerates in select titles while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

VideoCardz has recently published pictures of a rumored AMD BC-160 (Blockchain Compute) mining card designed by XFX China and featuring a Navi 12 GPU. The card supposedly features 8 GB of HBM2 memory along with 2304 Stream Processors however a memory speed of 4 Gbps is also listed which is not currently available casting doubt on the legitimacy of this rumor. We did report on rumors in March that pointed to AMD releasing Navi 10/12 headless cryptocurrency mining cards so this could still be true.

The only existing product featuring the Navi 12 GPU is the Apple-exclusive AMD Radeon Pro 5600M which features 256 more Stream Processors at 2560. The BC-160 card was pictured in a mining cluster where it reached performance levels of 72 Mh/s in Etash with a TGP of 150 W. The card features two 8-pin power connectors and should offer performance around 25% faster than the Navi 10 Radeon RX 5700 XT. We are unsure if this is a real product or how much it might cost so take these rumors with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini computer integration company, recently announced Cypress, a new Simply NUC branded Long-Life Mini PC. As a follow-on to the Post Oak family, Cypress is intended for embedded and edge applications. Cypress is the first 4x4 Mini PC featuring V2000 Embedded AMD processors and will be sold in the same form, fit, and function for seven years from launch. Simply NUC is currently taking orders on Cypress across their global sites.

"We saw an opportunity to grow our Long-Life Mini product line based on our customers' needs for embedded applications," said Aaron Rowsell, Simply NUC CEO, "By creating Cypress, we're excited to offer the latest powerful long-term solution for a wide range of usages such as digital signage displays, kiosks, and vending machines."

ASUS today announced the Dual Radeon RX 6600 graphics card, combining the latest ASUS technology with the new AMD GPU to deliver 1080p gaming experiences to the midrange market.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics cards bring the power of AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture to the market. With support for cutting-edge DirectX 12 Ultimate technology including accelerated ray tracing, 32 MB of high-performance, AMD Infinity Cache, AMD Smart Access Memory technology and other advanced features, AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics cards includes the latest technology in image quality and performance. The AMD Radeon RX 6600 supports the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution open-source spatial upscaling solution, designed to increase framerates in select titles while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, today announced the launch of the PowerColor Radeon RX 6600 HELLHOUND and FIGHTER graphics cards. The latest AMD Radeon RX 6600 series graphics cards are designed to deliver butter smooth high-fidelity, high-refresh rate 1080p gaming experiences.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics cards are based on the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver optimal balance of performance and power efficiency. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory 1 and other advanced features, the new graphics cards are designed to bring next-generation desktop gaming experiences to the midrange market. They also support the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution open-source spatial upscaling solution, which is designed to increase framerates while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

As a leading brand in True Gaming hardware, MSI is proud to announce the MSI Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X graphics card, designed to deliver incredible 1080p gaming experiences for a wide range of enthusiast gamers. The new graphics cards are built on the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver the optimal balance of performance and power efficiency. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory 1 and other advanced features, the new graphics cards are designed to bring next-generation desktop gaming experiences to the midrange market. They also support the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution open-source spatial upscaling solution, which is designed to increase framerates while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

AMD today launched the AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card, designed to provide visually stunning, high-refresh rate 1080p gaming experiences to the midrange market. The AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card leverages breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 architecture, the only gaming architecture that spans from desktop PCs, laptops and consoles to mobile devices and automotive infotainment systems. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory technology and support for the Microsoft Windows 11 operating system, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card is designed to bring next-generation desktop-level experiences to PC gamers. It also supports the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution open-source spatial upscaling solution, which is designed to increase framerates in select titles while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card is designed with the needs of future-ready, high-performance 1080p gamers in mind. Capable of driving 100+ FPS in top AAA titles, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card also offers up to 1.3X better performance-per-watt than the competition in select titles in 1080p at max settings.

Microsoft on October 12 put out the first Cumulative Updates for the new Windows 11 operating system, since its October 5 release. The company's monthly update packages for Windows are unofficially dubbed "patch Tuesday" updates, as they're scheduled to come out on the second Tuesday of each month. Shortly after Windows 11 launch, AMD and Microsoft jointly discovered that Windows 11 is poorly optimized for AMD Ryzen processors, which see significantly increased L3 cache latency, and the UEFI-CPPC2 (preferred cores mechanism) rendered not working. In our own testing, a Ryzen 7 2700X "Pinnacle Ridge" processor, which typically posts an L3 cache latency of 10 ns, was tested to show a latency of 17 ns. This was made much worse with the October 12 "patch Tuesday" update, driving up the latency to 31.9 ns.

AMD put out a statement on social media, which surfaced on Reddit. The company stated that patches for the two issues have been developed, and specified dates on which they'll be released. The patch for the Preferred Cores (UEFI-CPPC2) bug will be released on October 21. Customers can request the patch even earlier. By "customers," AMD is probably referring to big enterprise customers running mission-critical applications on Threadripper or EPYC-powered workstations. The L3 cache latency bug will be fixed through the Windows Update channel, its release is scheduled for October 19.

Intel is apparently taking its GPU business seriously, at the expense of AMD, as according to an article from CRN, Intel has hired Vineet Goel, former Corporate Vice President GPU architecture, graphics, machine learning and mobile platform at AMD. His new title at Intel is almost as longwinding, as he joined Intel as Vice President and General Manager, GPU architecture and IP engineering.

Goel spent his past five years at AMD and prior to that he was the Director of GPU compute solution and Adreno architecture at Qualcomm, although his first job listed on LinkedIn was as a fellow at AMD. His new position at Intel will have him lead the Xe GPU IP roadmap, or in other words, he'll be the person that decides what kind of tech Intel will be putting in its future GPUs.

AMD disrupted a decade of $350 quad-core from Intel with its path-breaking Ryzen processor and the "Zen" microarchitecture, which enters 5th year in the market (5 years since tapeout). AMD went into the Ryzen processor launch as a company that had been written off in the CPU space by PC enthusiasts, and "Zen" was at best expected to give AMD another round of processors to sell around $250. Boy was everyone wrong. The Ryzen 7 1800X eight-core processor brought HEDT-levels of performance to the mainstream desktop form-factor, and its HEDT counterpart, the Threadripper, dominated Intel's Core X series ever since.

Intel's first response to the 1800X was a 50% increase in CPU core counts calculating that AMD would only see marginal IPC increases going forward, and the superior IPC of "Skylake" cores, along with a 6-core/12-thread setup in the Core i7-8700K would see things through. This is roughly when Intel faced severe supply shortages that spiraled prices out of control, giving AMD space to come out with the Ryzen 7 2700X with a 4% IPC increase, and improved multi-threaded performance, but more importantly, predictable pricing at around $330. Months later, Intel refreshed its lineup with the 9th Gen, and finally attained parity with AMD in core counts, with the Core i9-9900K.