MSI, the world's No.1 gaming brand, has just announced its latest Alpha 15 gaming laptop. Armed with the new AMD Radeon RX 5500M graphics, the Alpha 15 is the first gaming laptop to feature 7 nm technology, bringing cutting-edge hardware to the mainstream. MSI even created a dedicated category and a new logo for the unique yet innovative segment. The new logo takes form of a thunderbird with rising wings, representing strength, innovation and prosperity. Being the first and dominant of its kind, MSI has presented the new beast with the name "Alpha".

As typical MSI gaming tradition, the laptop also packs ample gaming features from powerful cooling system, per-key RGB keyboard, Giant Speaker, High-Res audio, and more. Gamers who purchase the Alpha 15 via selected channels will also be eligible for a complimentary copy of either Borderlands 3 or Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint."

AMD Tuesday expanded its 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor lineup with two new product additions, the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 3900, and the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 3500X. Both chips are particularly interesting given their naming. The 3900 is a slightly subdued twin of the company's current flagship, the 3900X, with a small amount of clock speed traded off for a huge drop in TDP. This chip ticks at 3.10 GHz with 4.30 GHz boost, compared to 3.80/4.60 GHz frequencies of the 3900X. Its TDP, however, is rated at just 65 W, compared to 105 W of the 3900X. You get 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 64 MB of L3 cache.

The Ryzen 5 3500X is another interesting part, in which the "X" makes a world of difference from the Ryzen 5 3500. Whilst the 3500 is a 6-core/6-thread part devoid of SMT, the 3500X is 6-core/12-thread (features SMT), has the same exact 3.60 GHz nominal clocks as the popular Ryzen 5 3600, but a slightly lower 4.10 GHz boost frequency, compared to 4.20 GHz of the 3600. The Ryzen 5 3500X is expected to be marginally cheaper than the 3600, at around $189, and is currently only being offered to OEMs and system integrators in China. The company hasn't finalized pricing for the 3900, yet.

The marriage of Intel and AMD IPs in the form of the Kaby Lake-G processors was met with both surprised grunts from the company and a sense of bewilderment at what could come next. Well, we now know what came next: Intel hiring several high-level AMD employees on the graphics space and putting together its own motley crew of discrete GPU developers, who should be putting out Intel's next-gen high-performance graphics accelerators sometime next year.

The Kaby Lake-G processors, however, showed promise, pairing both Intel's (at the time) IPC dominance and AMD's graphics IP performance and expertise on a single package by placing the two components in the same substrate and connecting them via a PCIe link. A new and succinct Intel notice on the Kaby Lake-G page sets a last order time (January 31, 2020, as the last date for orders, and July 31, 2020, as the date of last shipments), and explains that product market shifts have moved demand from Kaby Lake-G products "to other Intel products". Uptake was always slow on this particular collaboration - most of it, we'd guess, because of the chips' strange footprint arrangement for embedding in systems, which required custom solutions that had to be designed from scratch. And with Intel investing into their own high-performance graphics, it seems clear that there is just no need to flaunt their previous collaborations with other companies in this field. Farewell, Intel-AMD Kaby Lake-G. We barely knew you.

XFX today finally launched their thick, custom version of the AMD Navi-powered RX 5700 XT. The new RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra features a triple-slot (well, 2.7 slots, but who's counting but we?) cooling solution with three cooling fans, thus upping the ante compared to previous XFX THICC graphics cards. XFX boasts hat their THICC III Ultra features a peak Boost clock of 2025 MHz, and typical Boosts in the area of 1935 MHz (a 10.3% increase compared to AMD's reference specs).

The THICC design philosophy stands the test of time here, with the card mainly being black colored, with some silver accents. A thick aluminium fin-stack fed by a copper baseplate and copper heat pipes ensure a constant heat transfer from the GPU chip to the fin-stack array, which now sees three fans working overtime to dissipate all that framerate-produced heat - fed by a pair of 8-pin connectors.

ARCTIC, a leading manufacturer of low-noise PC coolers and components, today launches its new Liquid Freezer II series of AIO water coolers. Designed for high performance, the second generation Liquid Freezer includes four product versions: Liquid Freezer II 120, Liquid Freezer II 240, Liquid Freezer II 360, and Liquid Freezer II 280.

For the Liquid Freezer II series, ARCTIC has incorporated an in-house developed, energy-efficient PWM-controlled pump with a copper bottom plate that operates with extreme efficiency and quiet. At low loads, the pump reduces rotational speed, thereby lowering power consumption. The 40 mm fan on the pump provides consistent cooling for the motherboard voltage converter, while the sealed water circuit is maintenance-free.

The world's leading memory brand, TEAMGROUP releases T-FORCE DARK Z α DDR4 Gaming Memory and CARDEA ZERO Z440 PCI-E Gen4 x4 M.2 Solid State Drive, which are specially made for AMD RYZEN 3000 processor series and the latest X570 platform. With the release of AMD RYZEN 3000 series worldwide, T-FORCE's invincible gaming performance offers the best DDR4 memory and SSD for AMD's next generation platform. The excellent overclocking capability and platform compatibility are created to perfectly release the potential performance of the latest AMD processors.

T-FORCE DARK Z α DDR4 Gaming Memory is an AMD memory specially made for AMD's latest Ryzen 3000 series processor and X570 motherboard. In order to satisfy gamers' experience with AMD 3000 series processor and X570 platform, DARK Z α uses high quality IC chips that are selected through rigorous testing process. With excellent overclocking capability and perfect compatibility, this DDR4 memory can provide extremely superior performance on the new generation platform of AMD. The body of T-FORCE DARK Z α DDR4 Gaming Memory is designed based on the concept of an armored knight. The sacred war rope offers a more complete protection. The tasteful black color is forever classic.Electrolytic anodizing process and metal electroforming logo design are used to echo with T-FORCE logo's energetic tech armor.

As AMD launched the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors and immediately gained lots of attention recently, MSI also released a bunch of motherboards for various use. To fulfill different gamers offer diversified options, MSI is pleased to introduce our new MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard into gaming market. Belonging to the top gaming segment MEG series, MEG X570 UNIFY is our brand new premium product with modest and pure black design, emphasizing on the true value of the motherboard instead of fancy LED decoration.

By eliminating all the redundant RGB LED from the motherboard and adopting the UV black printing, the heatsink shows the gleam and the shining reflection of the dragon to symbolize a mysterious and high quality image. For MEG X570 UNIFY motherboard, MSI put great efforts on those essential parts concerned by those enthusiast gamers, enhancing not only the thermal but also power solution to run with the AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen processors. Emphasizing the ultimate performance, MEG X570 UNIFY also brings astonishing overclocking records to enthusiast gamers. With AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, it is an incredible result to push CPU frequency to 5857 MHz, which is by far the top 1 of all records.

AMD today released a newest update to its Radeon Adrenalin driver. Dubbed version 19.10.1, the new release brings many new bug fixes and improvements to the table. For starters it will enable support for the newly released Radeon RX 5500 an 5500M desktop and mobile graphics cards, so now the buyers of these cards will have a driver from day one to start their experience smoothly. Additionally, support for the upcoming game "GRID", set to release on October 11th, is also included with this driver release.

Download the Adrenalin 19.10.1 Driver here.The change-log follows.

Today, AMD announced the Radeon RX 5500 series graphics products, harnessing groundbreaking RDNA gaming architecture to deliver the ultimate in high-performance, high-fidelity 1080p gaming. The AMD Radeon RX 5500 series includes the Radeon RX 5500 graphics card that will be available in desktop PCs from leading manufacturers and graphics cards from board partners, as well as the Radeon RX 5500M GPU for notebook PCs. Top system providers worldwide are embracing the new products, with HP and Lenovo planning to offer Radeon RX 5500 graphics cards in their high performance desktop gaming PCs beginning this November, and Acer planning to offer systems with the cards beginning this December. In addition, later this month MSI is expected to launch the world's first gaming notebook powered by AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon RX 5500M GPUs.

"Based on feedback and insights from global gaming communities, gamers rank graphics as the most critical component for speed and performance," said Johnson Jia, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Business of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. "That's why the Lenovo Legion T730 and T530 gaming towers and the IdeaCentre T540 Gaming desktop pack in AMD's latest Radeon RX graphics - satisfying players' need for high-fidelity visuals and lightning-fast frame-rates to fully immerse into their gameplay." "MSI Alpha 15 is a new chapter for us, and we're excited to partner with AMD to combine the latest 7 nm technology found in the Radeon RX 5500M GPU and MSI's gaming DNA for our gamers," said Charles Chiang, CEO of MSI.

With its next-generation "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture designed for the 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication process, AMD could bid the "Zen" compute complex or CCX farewell, heralding chiplets with monolithic last-level caches (L3 caches) that are shared across all cores on the chiplet. AMD embraced a quad-core compute complex approach to building multi-core processors with "Zen." At the time, the 8-core "Zeppelin" die featured two CCX with four cores, each. With "Zen 2," AMD reduced the CPU chiplet to only containing CPU cores, L3 cache, and an Infinity Fabric interface, talking to an I/O controller die elsewhere on the processor package. This reduces the economic or technical utility in retaining the CCX topology, which limits the amount of L3 cache individual cores can access.

This and more juicy details about "Zen 3" were put out by a leaked (later deleted) technical presentation by company CTO Mark Papermaster. On the EPYC side of things, AMD's design efforts will be spearheaded by the "Milan" multi-chip module, featuring up to 64 cores spread across eight 8-core chiplets. Papermaster talked about how the individual chiplets will feature "unified" 32 MB of last-level cache, which means a deprecation of the CCX topology. He also detailed an updated SMT implementation that doubles the number of logical processors per physical core. The I/O interface of "Milan" will retain PCI-Express gen 4.0 and eight-channel DDR4 memory interface.

According to Planet 3DNow, owners of AMD's Ryzen CPUs will receive a new microcode update said to feature many performance fixes and improvements that bring additional features. Dubbed AGESA 1.0.0.4, the new microcode improvement should bring over 100 new features that don't just include bug fixes, but also additional features.

Leaked by MSI's "Insider Show" YouTube series host Eric Van Beurden, he revealed that new microcode will arrive next month after getting tested by motherboard manufacturers for stability and compatibility with existing models of motherboards. Unfortunately, Van Beurden didn't reveal anything specific about what features will be present with the new AGESA microcode update, however we can expect to see plenty of new additions, and possibly higher CPU performance that further firmware optimizations bring.

Today, AMD and Microsoft announced the first-ever 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop powered by new AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processors. A significant, multi-year co-engineering program between AMD and Microsoft at the silicon, platform, and software levels created this 15" Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 with a perfect balance of performance, battery life, and sleek and lightweight design. Combining world-class compute and graphics performance with a fully optimized, rearchitected system software stack including AMD Radeon FreeSync display technology, Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 is designed for creative professionals, students, gamers on the go, and business users who value the large screen experience alongside portability. The custom AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processors and optimized software highlight the latest example in the multi-year collaboration between AMD and Microsoft, first established more than a decade ago for the Microsoft Xbox and now spanning from Azure to Surface to xCloud and Project Scarlett.

Alphacool today unveiled the Eisblock Aurora Plexi GPX-A line of full-coverage water blocks for a range of custom-design AMD Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards. The lineup includes a model for the Sapphire RX 5700 XT Nitro+, one for the PowerColor Red Devil and Red Dragon models of RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, and one for the MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X. The common element between the three is a combination of nickel-plated copper primary material, mated with a clear acrylic top. The three weigh roughly 1.2 kg, and feature mount hole spacing aligning with PCBs from the three brands. Available now, the blocks cost 109.94€ a piece.

The Sapphire-specific model is compatible only with the RX 5700 XT Nitro+, and measures 260 mm x 141 mm x 23 mm (LxHxW). The PowerColor-specific model, which supports the common PCB PowerColor uses across its Red Devil and Red Dragon models based on the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, measures 238 mm x 143 mm x 23 mm. The MSI-specific model is the longest among the three, measuring 293 mm x 139.3 mm x 22.5 mm, supporting the RX 5700 XT Gaming X. All three support standard G 1/4" fittings.

It turns out that the Radeon RX 5500 is arriving a lot sooner than expected, with VideoCardz reporting an October 7th product launch for the card. It's also being reported that the SKU will launch as the Radeon RX 5500 XT, with board partner GIGABYTE being ready with half a dozen custom-design cards, all of which with 8 GB of memory. In a separate report, VideoCardz also confirmed that the RX 5500 series will be based on the latest "Navi" family of GPUs that use the company's latest RDNA architecture, and will be built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. What's more, the RX 5500 will reportedly use 8 GB of modern GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory bus. A WCCFTech report predicts the RX 5500 (XT) will feature 22 RDNA compute units, which works out to 1,408 stream processors.

With these specs, we can see where AMD is going with the RX 5500 (XT). The company wants a viable successor to the Radeon RX 580 or even the RX 590, which it can sell around the $200-250 price-range, competing with a spectrum of NVIDIA GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 1650 and the GTX 1660. The card would target 1080p AAA gaming with high-thru-ultra settings, and 1080p eSports gaming at high refresh-rates. NVIDIA is already preparing a response to the RX 5500 in the form of the GTX 1650 Super and the GTX 1660 Super, which come with beefed up specs.

The next big update to Windows 10, slated for some time later this year, will have awareness to "favored cores." This leverages the ability of some of the latest processors to tell the operating system which of its cores are marginally "better" than the other, so it could push more of its single-threaded workloads to that core, for the highest boost clocks. Not all cores on a multi-core processor die are created equal, due to minor variations in manufacturing. Intel processors featuring Turbo Boost Max 3.0, as well as AMD Ryzen processors, have the ability to tell the operating system which of its cores are "better" than the other, which core is the "best" on the die, which is the "best" in a particular CCX (in case of "Zen" chips), and so on.

The best cores on a silicon are called "favored cores," and proper OS-level optimization could improve performance on 1-4 threaded workloads by "up to 15 percent," according to Intel. This, however, requires the processor to support Turbo Boost Max 3.0, which currently only HEDT processors do in the Intel camp. Over in the AMD front, Microsoft introduced more awareness to the multi-CCX and multi-die design of "Zen" processors with Windows 10 1903, and schedules workloads to make the most out of Zen's multi-core topology. "Zen" processors are able to report their best cores per CCX, per die, and per package, and the Ryzen Master software already displays this information, however, Windows hasn't been able to exploit favored cores. This will change with the upcoming major Windows 10 update.

Intel is taking big strides forward with its Gen11 integrated graphics architecture. Its performance-configured variant, the Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7, featured in the Core i7-1065G7 "Ice Lake" processor, is found to beat AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 iGPU, found in the Ryzen 7 2700U processor ("Raven Ridge"), by as much as 16 percent in 3DMark 11, a staggering 23 percent in 3DMark FireStrike 1080p. Notebook Check put the two iGPUs through these, and a few game tests to derive an initial verdict that Intel's iGPU has caught up with AMD's RX Vega 10. AMD has since updated its iGPU incrementally with the "Picasso" silicon, providing it with higher clock speeds and updated display and multimedia engines.

The machines tested here are the Lenovo Ideapad S540-14API for the AMD chip, and Lenovo Yoga C940-14IIL with the i7-1065G7. The Iris Plus G7 packs 64 Gen11 execution units, while the Radeon RX Vega 10 has 640 stream processors based on the "Vega" architecture. Over in the gaming performance, and we see the Intel iGPU 2 percent faster than the RX Vega 10 at Bioshock Infinite at 1080p, 12 percent slower at Dota 2 Reborn 1080p, and 8 percent faster at XPlane 11.11.

GlobalFoundries is planning to sell a minority stake in the company through an IPO (initial public offering) in 2022, company CEO Tom Caulfield told the Wall Street Journal. In February, it was reported that with the discontinuation of the 7 nm development and sale of certain facilities, the perception was made that GloFo was looking to be acquired by another semiconductor company. The same course of actions could have also served as prelude to taking the company public, and as it turns out, GloFo is heading toward the latter.

TimesUnion comments that the decision to discontinue 7 nm development and shedding some assets slowed down development of future technologies, but returned the company to profitability, so it could be put up for an IPO. Caulfield didn't comment on what is the size of the stake sale, but the source comments it could be aimed at alleviating the strain on GloFo's original investors, the Abu Dhabi government, which has invested over $21 billion in the company over the past 10 years. GlobalFoundries was formed as AMD spun off its semiconductor business in 2009, with seed capital from the Abu Dhabi government. Over the decade, the company built fabs in New York state, and acquired fabs across Vermont, and Singapore, along with tech acquisition from IBM.

AMD today released their latest Radeon Software driver. Version 19.9.3 brings with it a much requested feature: support for Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) on graphics cards based on the Vega architecture. It has been a sore point in the community for some time now how AMD's Vega, their high-performance architecture that offered greater performance than Polaris, was left in the dust in support for AMD's RIS, with only Navi (and then Polaris) users being able to benefit from the image quality-enhancing feature. Now, AMD has finally baked in driver support for that feature with Vega, so you can go on, install the latest driver, and see what it's all about.

Additionally to adding RIS support for Vega, this driver includes specific performance and stability optimizations for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the online tactical shooter from Ubisoft whose release is slated for October 4th. You can rest assured that you will have the best gameplay experience AMD could muster for launch day with this particular set of drivers. Grab them in our downloads section.

AMD announced the 2019 edition of its "Raise the Game" game-bundle offer that goes with purchase of its Ryzen desktop processors and Radeon RX graphics cards. The bundle extends the 3-month Xbox Game Pass to a much larger part of AMD's product lineup, and not just the Radeon RX 5700-series. The bundle introduces three new AAA games to the mix - Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint," "The Outer Worlds," and "Borderlands 3," including AMD-exclusive in-game content. Depending on what AMD product you buy, you either get both games, or get to choose between the two. The 3-month Xbox Game Pass stays included.

AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 series and Ryzen 7 3800X includes both games - "The Outer Worlds" and "Borderlands 3," - and the 3-month Xbox Game Pass. The Ryzen 7 3700X, 3600X, 2700X, and 2700 include one of the two games - "The Outer Worlds" or "Borderlands 3," and the 3-month Xbox Game Pass. The Ryzen 5 3600, 3400G, and Ryzen 5 2000-series include just the 3-month Xbox Game Pass. Over in the GPU front, buyers of Radeon RX 5700-series, RX 590, RX 580, and RX 570, get to choose one of the two games - Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint" or "Borderlands 3," and also receive the 3-month Xbox Game Pass. The Radeon VII, Radeon RX Vega series, and Radeon RX 560 stocks include 3-month Xbox Game Pass. You also get to choose either of the two games when you buy a qualifying pre-built desktop or notebook powered by AMD Ryzen or Radeon products.

Today, AMD announced the global availability of its new AMD Ryzen PRO 3000 Series desktop processor lineup, along with new AMD Ryzen PRO processors with Radeon Vega Graphics and AMD Athlon PRO processors with Radeon Vega Graphics. The AMD Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO desktop processors combine powerful performance, built-in security features, and commercial-grade reliability to get the job done. Starting in Q4 2019, robust enterprise desktops from HP and Lenovo powered by AMD Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO desktop processors are slated to be available.

"The launch of the Ryzen PRO 3000 Series processors for commercial and small business users is the latest demonstration of our commitment to technology leadership in 2019," said Saied Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Client Compute. "Designed specifically to efficiently data-crunch, design, compose, and create - AMD Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO processors accelerate enhanced business productivity while offering protection safeguards with built-in security features, such as full system memory encryption and a dedicated, on-die security processor."

The third known implementation of AMD's "Navi" generation of GPUs with RDNA architecture is codenamed "Navi 14." This 7 nm chip is expected to be a cut-down, mainstream chip designed to compete with a spectrum of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 16-series SKUs, according to a 3DCenter.org report. The same report sheds more light on the larger "Navi 12" GPU that could power faster SKUs competing with the likes of the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Super. The two follow the July launch of the architecture debut with "Navi 10." There doesn't appear to be any guiding logic behind the numerical portion of the GPU codename. When launched, the pecking order of the three Navi GPUs will be "Navi 12," followed by "Navi 10," and "Navi 14."

"Navi 14" is expected to be the smallest of the three, with an estimated 170 mm² die-area, about 24 RDNA compute units (1,536 stream processors), and expected to feature a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface. It will be interesting to see how AMD carves out an SKU that can compete with the GTX 1660 Ti, which has 6 GB of 192-bit GDDR6 memory. The company would have to wait for 16 Gbit (2 GB) GDDR6 memory chips, or piggy-back eight 8 Gbit chips to achieve 8 GB, or risk falling short of recommended system requirements of several games at 1080p, if it packs just 4 GB of memory.

ASUS over the past week rolled out its flagship socket AM4 motherboard for SFF gaming PC builds, the ROG Crosshair VIII Impact. Based on the AMD X570 chipset and supporting the latest 3rd generation Ryzen processors, this board is slightly longer than the Mini-ITX specification, while retaining its mount-hole layout. The logic here is that most ITX gaming PC cases have two expansion slots to accommodate dual-slot graphics cards, and so it would make sense to extend the motherboard's PCB up until there, reclaiming precious PCB real-estate. Technically this board would qualify as mini-DTX, but ASUS believes it should fit in most ITX cases that have two expansion slots. The board's dimensions are 203 mm x 170 mm.

The ROG Crosshair VIII Impact draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning power for the AM4 SoC using a massive 8-phase VRM. The AM4 socket is wired to a pair of DDR4 DIMM slots, the board's sole expansion slot, a PCI-Express 4.0 x16, and the interestingly-named SO-DIMM.2 slot. Physically, this is an SO-DIMM slot that's been re-wired with PCIe gen 4.0 leading up to a proprietary SO-DIMM daughterboard that holds two M.2-2280 slots with PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring, each. Four SATA 6 Gbps ports make for the rest of the storage connectivity. The area of the motherboard just below the PCIe x16 slot has another proprietary slot that holds the second daughterboard, this one with the SupremeFX Impact IV onboard audio solution, which has been physically isolated from the main PCB, and has an EMI-shielded Realtek ALC1220 main CODEC, ESS Sabre ES9023P DAC for the main stereo channel, a de-pop circuit, and audio-grade capacitors.

AMD released their Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 processors in July this year, and they instantly became a smash hit with gamers, due to their solid performance, and good pricing. The company's flagship processor at this time is the Ryzen 9 3900X, priced at $500, featuring 12-cores/24-threads, with clocks reaching up to 4.6 GHz. Now BIOSTAR has posted an update to their motherboard CPU support list, which mentions a previously unannounced "Ryzen 9 3900", without the "X", running at 3.1 GHz base clock and having a TDP of 65 W (the 3900X has 105 W TDP).

It looks like the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X is a more power-efficient version of the 3900X with lower clocks. It's possible that it is made from chips that failed the clock-frequency certification for the 4.6 GHz boost clock of the 3900X, but that work fine otherwise. By dialing down the TDP of their chip, AMD could also build an interesting SKU for OEMs, that want to market the high core counts, but aren't willing to drive up the cost of their power and cooling setup.

AMD's resurgence is a well threaded story already. Missteps with their Bulldozer architecture, spinning-off of their manufacturing division off to a separate entity (Global Foundries), the investment in semi-custom solutions and the launch of Zen are well documented throughout numerous articles on this publication. As such, and considering AMD's current market position - one-upping Intel in all but the lightest-threaded tasks in both consumer and enterprise markets - the fact that Fortune named her "one of the most powerful women in business" should come as a surprise to, well, almost no-one.

The nomination is headed by comments on AMD's 23% revenue increase YoY, as well as the 66% increase in stock value after the launch of Zen 2-based products. The fact that Lisa Su is the only female leader in the semiconductor industry also doesn't go by unnoticed in the nomination.

AMD has completed design phase of its "Zen 3" architecture and rumors are already appearing about its details. This time, Hardwareluxx has reported that AMD could bake a four-way simultaneous multithreading technology in its Zen 3 core to enable more performance and boost parallel processing power of its data center CPUs. Expected to arrive sometime in 2020, Zen 3 server CPUs, codenamed "MILAN", are expected to bring many architectural improvements and make use of TSMC's 7nm+ Extreme Ultra Violet lithography that brings as much as 20% increase in transistor density.

Perhaps the biggest change we could see is the addition of four-way SMT that should allow a CPU to have four virtual threads per core that will improve parallel processing power and enable data center users to run more virtual machines than ever before. Four-way SMT will theoretically boost performance by dividing micro-ops into four smaller groups so that each thread could execute part of the operation, thus making the execution time much shorter. This being only one application of four-way SMT, we can expect AMD to leverage this feature in a way that is most practical and brings the best performance possible.