Developing supercomputers isn't for the faint of heart. Much less it is for those that are looking for fast development and deployment time-frames. And as such, even as the world's supercomputers are getting increasingly faster and exorbitantly expensive to develop and deploy, players who want to stay ahead have to think ahead as well. To this end, the US Department of Energy has awarded a total of $258M in research contracts to six of the US's foremost tech companies to accelerate the development of Exascale Supercomputer technologies (AMD, Cray, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, and NVIDIA.) These companies will be working over a three year contract period, and will have to support at least 40% of the project cost - to help develop the technologies needed to build an exascale computer for 2021. It isn't strange that the companies accepted the grant and jumped at the opportunity: 60% savings in research and development they'd have to do for themselves is nothing to scoff at.

Supercomputers birthed from the project are expected to be in the exaFLOPS scale of computing performance, which is around 50 times more processing power than the generation of supercomputers being installed now. Since traditional supercomputing knowledge and materials are known to falter at the objective level of exaFLOPS performance, the PathForward program - which looks to ensure achievement of such systems in a timely fashion to ensure US leadership in the field of supercomputing - will need to see spurred research and development, which the $258M grant is looking out to do.

AMD Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition goes on sale later this month (26 June). It is designed to provide a "gateway" to the "Vega" GPU architecture for graphics professionals and game developers alike, with the consumer graphics product, the Radeon RX Vega, is bound for late-July/early-August. Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition, being a somewhat "enterprise-segment" product, was expected to have slightly lower TDP than its consumer-graphics sibling, since enterprise-segment implementations of popular GPUs tend to have slightly restrained clock speeds. Apparently, AMD either didn't clock the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition low, or the chip has extremely high TDP.

According to specifications put out by EXXACT, a retailer which deals with enterprise hardware, the air-cooled variant of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition has a TDP rated at 300W, while its liquid-cooled variant has its TDP rated as high as 375W. To put this in perspective, the consumer-segment TITAN Xp by NVIDIA has its TDP rated at 275W. EXXACT is claiming big performance advantages in certain enterprise benchmarks such as SPECVIEWPERF and Cinebench. In other news, the air-cooled Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition is reportedly priced at USD $1,199; while the liquid-cooled variant is priced at $1,799. Based on the 14 nm "Vega 10" silicon, the Pro Vega Frontier Edition features 4,096 stream processors and 16 GB of HBM2 memory across a 2048-bit memory interface.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced the availability of its 7nm Leading-Performance (7LP) FinFET semiconductor technology, delivering a 40 percent generational performance boost to meet the needs of applications such as premium mobile processors, cloud servers and networking infrastructure. Design kits are available now, and the first customer products based on 7LP are expected to launch in the first half of 2018, with volume production ramping in the second half of 2018.

In September 2016, GF announced plans to develop its own 7nm FinFET technology leveraging the company's unmatched heritage of manufacturing high-performance chips. Thanks to additional improvements at both the transistor and process levels, the 7LP technology is exceeding initial performance targets and expected to deliver greater than 40 percent more processing power and twice the area scaling than the previous 14nm FinFET technology. The technology is now ready for customer designs at the company's leading-edge Fab 8 facility in Saratoga County, N.Y.

"Our 7nm FinFET technology development is on track and we are seeing strong customer traction, with multiple product tapeouts planned in 2018," said Gregg Bartlett, senior vice president of the CMOS Business Unit at GF. "And, while driving to commercialize 7nm, we are actively developing next-generation technologies at 5nm and beyond to ensure our customers have access to a world-class roadmap at the leading edge."

AMD late Wednesday released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimso ReLive Edition. Version 17.6.2 beta is the second release for this month, and comes with a quick-fix for the performance loss noticed in DiRT 4 after its latest game-patch, when the MSAA is cranked up to 8x. The rest of its feature-set appears unchanged from the previous 17.6.1 drivers. AMD has added to the list of known issues, listed after the break.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.6.2The change-log follows.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced its upgraded 13.3-inch version of the award-winning 12.5-inch Razer Blade Stealth. The new Razer Blade Stealth is one of the most portable laptops for professionals in the world, measuring 0.52 inches thin, weighing 2.93 pounds and with up to nine hours of battery life.

Razer's latest chassis is CNC-milled out of aircraft grade aluminum, and it is now available in a black or gunmetal gray finish. The gunmetal gray variant features a tone-on-tone Razer logo and white backlit keyboard, offering a sleek, solid and professional design. Gunmetal gray will be available in the United States and Canada.

Apparently, AMD's nomenclature of its flagship Ryzen Threadripper won't look like years-of-birth of today's gamers after all. The flagship 16-core part will bear the model name Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (and not the previously-reported 1998X). This chip was put through GeekBench 4.1.0, on an ASRock X399 Professional Gaming, paired with 16 GB of DDR4-2133 MHz memory. Whether it's dual-channel or quad-channel, is not known at this point. What is known, however, is that 2133 MHz isn't the best memory frequency for Ryzen; and paired with quad-channel DDR4-3200, one could expect the best possible performance. The 1950X was clocked at 3.40 GHz for this test, which probably is its final nominal clock speed, after all.

The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X sample scored 4,167 single-thread performance, and 24,539 points in multi-threaded performance. To put these numbers into perspective, an Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4 16-core/32-thread processor based on the "Broadwell" architecture scores 30,450 points in multi-threaded performance, even if single-thread performance is as low as 3,651 points. Perhaps the memory setup or SMT isn't optimally set for the Threadripper chip. Among the other Threadripper SKUs AMD plans to launch on July 27 are the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen Threadripper 1920X and 1920 (non-X).

AMD could launch some of its enthusiast-segment Ryzen Threadripper high-end desktop (HEDT) processors on July 27, 2017. On this day, you will be able to purchase PIB (retail) packages of certain models of Threadripper. You will also be able to purchase gaming desktops and workstations featuring Threadripper on this day. It is expected that AMD will launch about four SKUs, two 12-core, and two 16-core. The company could end 2017 with up to nine models. Accompanying these Ryzen Threadripper chips will be new socket TR4 (SP3r2) motherboards based on AMD X399 chipset. Some of these were showcased at AMD's Computex 2017 show.

Alienware and Dell head into this year's E3 with a triad of new PC gaming systems and components - high-end Alienware gaming desktops with new multi-core processor options, a full range of performance gaming monitors and peripherals with Alienware's signature design and a new Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop bringing VR to all. Alienware and Dell continue to demonstrate why, together, they have become a leading PC gaming brand worldwide with gaming solutions for players of all levels and budgets.

Driven by a fierce commitment to deliver what PC gamers want in gaming products and community, Alienware and Dell continues to make solid investments in PC gaming, virtual reality and esports through ever-expanding offerings and partnership innovation. This has stoked an incredible 17 consecutive quarters of PC growth*, continuously innovating with PC performance and designs, both in the realm of gaming, VR and beyond.

AMD has recently added two new offerings to their WX series of professional, workstation-oriented graphics cards. The WX 2100 and WX 3100 are entry-level offerings for the professional market, with 512 stream processors running at 1,219 MHz on a 14 nm graphics processor based on the Polaris architecture. The RX 2100 features 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 64-bit interface; the RX 3100 doubles those figures to 4GB of memory on a 128-bit interface.

On performance, AMD said that the soon to be released WX 2100 and WX 3100 deliver up to 2x the performance of previous entry-level professional AMD graphics, and up to 28% faster performance than competing NVIDIA offerings. The WX 2100 is expected to cost $149, while the WX 3100 is expected to go for $199. AMD said the Radeon Pro WX 2100 and WX 3100 are both expected to launch in June; an exact date wasn't provided. The company also said both cards are covered by 24/7 customer support and a three-year limited warranty that can be extended up to seven years.

Microsoft Sunday dropped its mic with the most powerful game console on paper, the Xbox One X, formerly codenamed "Project Scorpio." The bottom-line of this console is that it enables 4K Ultra HD gaming at 60 Hz. Something like this requires you to spend at least $1,200 on a gaming desktop right now. Unlike a Windows 10 PC that's been put together by various pieces of hardware, the Xbox One X is built on a closed ecosystem that's tightly controlled by Microsoft, with heavily optimized software, and a lot of secret sauce the company won't talk about. The console still puts up some mighty impressive hardware specs on paper.

To begin with, at the heart of the Xbox One X is a semi-custom SoC Microsoft co-developed with AMD, built on TSMC's 16 nm FinFET node (the same one NVIDIA builds its "Pascal" GPUs on). This chip features a GPU with almost quadruple the single-precision floating point compute power as the one which drives the Xbox One. It features 40 Graphics CoreNext (GCN) compute units (2,560 stream processors) based on one of the later versions of GCN (likely "Polaris"). The GPU is clocked at 1172 MHz. The other big component of the SoC is an eight-core CPU based on an unnamed micro-architecture evolved from "Jaguar" rather than "Bulldozer" or even "Zen." The eight cores are arranged in two quad-core units of four cores, each; with 4 MB of L2 cache. The CPU is clocked at 2.30 GHz.

Remember that post on Samsung's investment on 32:9 aspect ratio monitors? The company has just materialized them, with the announcement of their 2017 flagship FreeSync 2 supporting monitors, which come in two different models and three different sizes. Samsung announced a world's first, the CHG90 QLED monitor, which leverages its alien 49" towards displaying a 32:9 presentation. That's what Samsung is calling a DFHD (Dual Full HD) screen, with a 3840x1080 resolution. This panel supports FreeSync 2, HDR, wide 178-degree viewing angles, and the now usual 1800R curvature, with blazingly-fast 144 Hz refresh rates and 1 ms response times.

At the same time, Samsung also announced the somewhat more mundane CHG70 QLED monitor, which comes in at either 27" or 31,5". Whatever your choice of panel size, these are essentially the same specs-wise, and differ little from the CHG90: they offer WQHD resolution (2560x1440), HDR, FreeSync 2, wide 178-degree viewing angles, and the now usual 1800R curvature, along with blazing-fast 144 Hz refresh rates and 1 ms response times.

NVIDIA has been on a roll lately with their market capitalization and share valuation, which could very well send the company soaring past the $100 billion dollar mark today. Whether or not that happens (and if it does, it will be a historical milestone for the company), NVIDIA's growth of almost $25 billion dollars since May 13th is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

The "sudden" market valuation on NVIDIA comes on the heels of the company's strong graphics execution and increasingly entrenched position in the high performance GPU computing market for machine learning. The company's Volta architecture, which was showcased by Jensen Huang at their GTC keynote on May 10th, boosted confidence in the company significantly. Since then, the company's market cap has increased from the $75 billion dollar it was at shortly after GTC, towards its $96.31 billion rated market cap today. More recently, with the recent rise of the crypto wave craze, NVIDIA's GPUs have been talked about as real alternatives to AMD's previously (and perhaps hurtful for the company) grasp on this kind of workloads.

Intel rigorously defends its hold over its core intellectual property, the x86 CPU machine-architecture. AMD is the only active licencee of x86, and has a competitive line of processors across market segments. It has been a long-cherished dream of chipmakers without an x86 license to have Microsoft, the world's leading PC operating system manufacturer, somehow emulate their Win32 API, which is inherently designed for the x86 architecture, on the more widely licensed ARM architecture. As one of the largest ARM chipmakers, Qualcomm pushed for 2-in-1 (notebook-to-tablet) convertible PCs driven by its Snapdragon processors, which run Windows 10, complete with support for Win32 software, besides Microsoft's UWP apps.

This Snapdragon + Windows 10 reference convertible is so impressive with its battery life and performance, that major PC OEMs such as Lenovo, HP, and ASUS have lined up to license the design and make their own designs. This would have been a licensable form-factor governed by Microsoft, much like how Intel governed the Ultrabook form-factor. This would hit hard at Intel's bottomline, because SoC makers with big R&D budgets like Qualcomm, Samsung, and NVIDIA, who each hold ARM licenses, could go on to power bigger and faster PCs which emulate x86, driving Intel out of the ecosystem. The company dropped the hammer earlier this week, in a passive-aggressive note without taking names, warning Microsoft and Qualcomm to cease from their efforts to build such a device.

AMD released the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.6.1 beta drivers. The drivers come with optimization for "DiRT 4," including an AMD CrossFire profile, and up to 30 percent improvement in frame-rates with 8x MSAA cranked up. The drivers also improve performance of "Prey" (2017) by up to 4 percent, as tested on a machine with a Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card.

The drivers also fixed a number of issues, including virtual super-resolution (VSR) not correctly enabling on certain Radeon RX 400 and RX 500-series GPUs; HDR not correctly enabling on certain WQHD or higher-resolution displays; flickering noticed on some WQHD or higher-resolution displays connected via HDMI; fast mouse movements causing a frame-rate drop in "Prey" (2017); "Mass Effect: Andromeda" noticing a stutter with multi-GPU systems; and a system hang noticed on Radeon R9 390 series GPUs with the memory overclocked using a third-party application. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.6.1

The change-log follows.

AMD co-founder Jerry Sanders, in 2009 was famously quoted as stating that "real men have fabs," a jibe probably targeted at the budding fab-less CPU designers of the time. Years later, AMD spun-off its silicon fabrication business, which with a substantial investment of the Abu Dhabi government through its state-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), became GlobalFoundries (or GloFo in some vernacular). This company built strategic partnerships with the right players in the industry, acquisitions such as IBM's fabs, and is now at the forefront of sub-10 nm fab development. It remained one of AMD's biggest foundry partners besides TSMC and Samsung, and is manufacturing its AMD processors at a brand new facility in Upstate New York, USA.

AMD, on the other hand, doesn't regret spinning off GloFo. Speaking at Merrill Lynch Global Technology and Investment Conference, CTO Mark Papermaster said, that going fab-less has helped AMD focus on chip-design without worrying about manufacturing. Production is no longer a bottleneck for AMD, as it can now put out manufacturing contracts to a wider variety of foundry partners. Its chip-designers aren't limited by the constraints of an in-house fab, and can instead ask external fabs to optimize their nodes for their chip-designs, Papermaster said. 14 nm FinFET has added a level of standardization to the foundry industry.

ASUS is looking to have two distinct monitor product lines catering to either AMD or NVIDIA enthusiasts. Adding to their Swift line-up of NVIDIA G-Sync monitors, ASUS seems to be building up a Strix line as well, which features AMD's FreeSync technology to deliver the same fundamental variable refresh rate technology at a lower price-point (or so we hope.)

Starting with the flagship Strix monitor, the ASUS Strix XG32V has a 31.5" IPS panel with a WQHD resolution of 2560 x 1440. It's curved, so it envelops your FOV better, with the usual 1800R curve. This model can handle refresh rates of up to 144Hz, though readers looking to jump at this panel as we speak should wait for both Freesync range and pricing announcements. Connectivity-wise, we're looking at 2x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 2.0, and an os yet unknown amount of USB 3.0 ports. ASUS has also added the inevitable Aura Sync lighting to the XG32V, materialized on both a ROG logo that shines down onto the desk, as well as an RGB LED suite on the back of the unit that can be synchronized with other Aura Sync-enabled PC components and peripherals.

AMD Radeon graphics cards have always been too good at GPGPU for their own good. The new Ethereum block-chain compute network, with the Ethereum crypto-currency, works really really good with AMD Radeon Graphics CoreNext architecture-based GPUs (that's every AMD GPU since Radeon HD 7000 series). As a result, not only have Ethereum prospectors bought out nearly all inventory of AMD Radeon graphics cards from the market, but also forced an inflation of used AMD Radeon graphics cards on online tech-forums, and used-goods stores on eBay and Amazon. Some of these used cards are priced higher than even launch-prices.

Every $1,000 spent on AMD Radeon hardware towards Ethereum mining is recovered within 2 months, and then as long as your hardware lasts and you're paying your power bills, you're swimming in crypto-currency that can be converted to Bitcoin and even US Dollars. One Ethereum (ETH) exchanges to USD $265 at the time of this writing. There's already $330 million worth Ethereum being traded, and that number is only going to grow as people sell USD or BTC to buy ETH and pay for entry into the Ethereum network, and use ETH as a crypto-currency.

AMD has recently announced that at least nine models are in preparation for their new HEDT line-up, which will, for now, feature processors with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. The entry-level 16-core chip, the Threadripper 1998, will come in at 3.20 GHz with 3.60 GHz boost, 155 W TDP, and is absent of XFR.

If recent reports hold true, this entry-level Threadripper 1998 will come in at $849. Now, let's be honest - this seems like an immensely optimistic value, undercutting even Intel's 10-core 7900X, which has been announced at $999 (in tray quantities.) That's over 6 more cores and 12 more threads for $150 less. And let's just say that AMD's IPC isn't that much lower than Intel's to justify such an aggressive undercutting, a high-volume approach to the market.

You must've heard the news of increasingly tighter supply on AMD's video cards. This is kind of a "hello darkness my old friend" kind of moment, since we've seen this happening before. However, these days, the problem looks to be exacerbated with the increase in digital currencies - it's not just Bitcoin now. Ethereum and Zcash have come in to fill customer's desire for a lower entry, ASIC-resistant mineable cryptocurrency. And with the currencies' exploding pricing, people are once again looking to enter the mining craze - to ride the crypto wave, so to speak. All higher-performance graphics cards since the R200 series are flying off the shelves and second hand markets, and as we speak, virtually all RX 580 models are out of stock on Newegg. And while AMD graphics cards have historically been leagues better than their NVIDIA counterparts in mining environments, recently some specialized miners have surfaced, tailored for the Pascal architecture (more oriented to Zcash, though.)

AMD unveiled the high-performance, power-efficient Radeon Pro 500 series graphics, fueling beyond-UHD creativity in All-In-One computing. Available in the updated 21.5- and 27-inch iMac, Radeon Pro 500 series graphics enable extraordinary computing experiences, including stunning gaming, immersive VR on select models, and fluid content creation with exceptional performance and support for GPU acceleration across a range of creative applications on the Mac platform, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop and the Foundry Nuke, Mari and Modo. Moreover, Radeon Pro 500 series provides accelerated performance for the Radeon ProRender photorealistic ray-tracing rendering technology which is enabled for Autodesk Maya, and Maxon's Cinema 4D.

Radeon Pro 500 series graphics harness up to 5.5 TFLOPS of performance, unleashing the creativity of artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, visualizers and engineers, and aspiring creative types across high-resolution canvases in the most popular creative applications, powering through the most demanding games, and bringing fantastic worlds to life in VR. The Radeon Pro 500 series makes use of the critically-acclaimed "Polaris" GPU architecture, delivering the perfect balance of performance and operating efficiency that makes them ideal for All-In-Ones.

G.Skill Memory and TechPowerUp brought you a chance to win a kit of arguably the best memory for AMD Ryzen processors, with our Game Faster with Flare X Giveaway. Three lucky winners chosen at random stand a chance to win a G.Skill Flare X DDR4-3200 16 GB (2x 8 GB) dual-channel memory kit, each. We're thrilled to announce the winners:

• Jason from The Philippines
• Kevin from Halen, Belgium
• Amanda from Bloomington, United States

A huge congrats to you, Jason, Kevin, and Amanda! TechPowerUp and G.Skill will return with more such interesting giveaways!

AMD released the die-shot of its "Vega 10" ASIC. The multi-chip module (MCM) of the GPU die and two HBM2 memory stacks, sitting on a silicon interposer, is slightly smaller than the "Fiji" ASIC, as it features just two memory stacks. AMD didn't label the components of the GPU die, but we can make out 8 shader engines, holding 8 GCN compute units (CUs), each. This is unlike "Fiji," where the GPU holds four engines with 16 CUs, each. This would mean that each group of 8 CUs has its own dedicated geometry processor and rasterizer.

Since each CU holds 64 FP32 stream processors, we arrive at the total stream processor count of 4,096. Unlike "Hawaii," these stream-processors are FP16-capable, so simple compute tasks are handled at double the throughput. We also make out 32 render back-ends, double that of "Fiji" and "Hawaii," which could indicate 128 ROPs. The "Vega 10" ASIC features a 2048-bit HBM2 memory interface.Update: AMD stated that the die-shot appeared in one of its marketing slides, but may not be real.

It turns out that the EVO X AMD Edition isn't GeIL's only AMD Ryzen-optimized DDR4 memory, with the company unveiling AMD Edition variants of pretty much all its DDR4 memory brands. This includes the EVO Potenza, EVO Spear, EVO Forza, Super Luce, Pristine, and DragonRAM series. Each of these "AMD Edition" branded memory kits has been stability-tested with AMD Ryzen processors, at their advertised clock speeds and timings. They come in a variety of speeds, including DDR4-2400, DDR4-2666, DDR4-2933, DDR4-3200, and DDR4-3466; in densities of 8 GB and 16 GB, making up 16 GB and 32 GB dual-channel kits, respectively.

It's not known if all of these are based on Samsung b-die DRAM chips. AMD spokespersons have publicly stated that Samsung b-die isn't the only DRAM chip needed for high memory clocks on Ryzen processors, and that even with older versions of AGESA, certain memory kits with SK Hynix and Micron DRAM chips are having some success in achieving high memory clocks. AMD is working to improve support for faster DDR4 memory kits through updates to AGESA, which will be dispensed through motherboard vendors to end-users, as motherboard BIOS updates.

At Computex 2017, ASUS showcased the first Ryzen-powered laptop, which the company had already teased a while back. The STRIX brings to an end a period of lacking competition in the laptop space; before this, if you wanted a high-performance gaming (or even professional-grade) laptop, you went with one with an Intel processor inside, or not at all. AMD is back in the fold, and Ryzen was the one who rose to the challenge.

The ROG STRIX GL702ZC packs a Ryzen 7 1700 8-core, 16-thread CPU; the absence of an X there isn't a typo, considering AMD themselves say the company's XFR (eXtended Frequency Range) is meant to accelerate CPU speeds under the right thermal conditions (and headroom), which a laptop almost surely wouldn't have.) This is a full desktop CPU (and I stress, an 8-core, 16-thread one) running inside a laptop. And this laptop dresses itself fully in red, with the graphics workhorse being an RX 580. The RX 580 is a great 1080p card, so it will feel right at home on the ROG STRIX GL702ZC's 17.3", 1080p IPS panel with FreeSync support. Let's just hope this is the first in a wave of AMD-powered laptops. We'll be here to see what happens with Ryzen-based APUs closer to the end of the year.

GeIL showed off its AMD Ryzen-optimized EVO-X AMD Edition DDR4 memory, with integrated RGB LED lighting. The modules feature Ryzen-friendly DRAM chips (although we're not sure if they're Samsung b-die), coupled with an SPD profile that's readable by prominent third-party one-click optimization standards such as ASUS DOCP, MSI A-XMP, and XMP-translation. The modules have been tested for stability in sustaining their advertised clocks and timings on motherboards of various brands.

The RGB LED lighting on the EVO-X series supports various RGB LED control software such as ASUS/ASRock Aura Sync, MSI Mystic Light RGB, BIOSTAR Vivid LED DJ, and GIGABYTE RGB Fusion. You can also manually set the color and brightness physically on the module itself, using a slider button-set called "Sliding Hot Switch." The EVO-X AMD Edition runs at DDR4-3466 MHz, with timings of 16-18-18-38. They are available in module densities of 8 GB, and in dual-channel kits of 16 GB. The modules are available in white and black heatspreader colors. The company could launch quad-channel kits in the wake of the Ryzen Threadripper TR4 platform.