RockitCool is a new entrant towards the deliding and IHS replacement game, and the company is offering new delid kits that allow users to replace the Integrated Heatspreader (IHS) on their CPUs in an attempt to achieve better operating temperatures - and potentially improve performance. Considered by some to be one of the most daring quests towards extracting the most performance possible from a given chip, the deliding process is, however, not without its dangers, and will void CPU warranties irrespective of the tool - or care - employed in the operation.

RockItCool's website sprung up earlier this year, and the website doesn't count with many user reviews - but those that are there seem to be glowing. The company specializes in providing complete delid and pure-copper IHS replacement kits, taking advantage of copper's higher thermal conductivity as a way to increase the amount of heat that can be pulled away from the CPU - improving its operating temperatures and power profiles. The copper IHS themselves have guidance markings to ease concerns regarding the application of liquid metal itself, which is a particularly risky substance to misapply around electrical circuitry.

GIGABYTE over the last week posted UEFI firmware updates for its Socket AM4 motherboards that add support for the upcoming AMD Ryzen 5800X3D processor. Released for motherboards across its AMD 400-series and 500-series lineups; the updates pack AGESA ComboPI V2 1.2.0.6 Patch-b microcode. Another key feature of these updates are that they re-introduce the "Max CPU Boost Clock Override" toggle, which appears when a Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processor is installed.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is an 8-core/16-thread processor based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, and packs the AMD 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache) technology, featuring 100 MB of Total Cache (AMD jargon for the sum of all L2 + L3 cache). The company claims gaming performance on par with the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" processor. The re-introduction of the Boost Frequency overrides signal that the company wants enthusiasts to go to town with overclocking, making this a possible response to the i9-12900KS gaming performance, at a lower price-point.

AMD has today released version 22.2.3 of their Adrenalin Radeon drivers adding support for Elden Ring and improving performance for Shadow Warrior 3 and GRID Legends. The drivers are reported to increase performance 5% - 6% in Shadow Warrior 3 when running at 4K High settings compared to Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.2 while in GRID legends at 4K Ultra High settings this ranged from 7% - 15%. The known issues remain identical to those from version 22.2.2 with the complete change-log listed below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.3

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that its board of directors approved a new $8 billion share repurchase program. The new authorization is in addition to the $4 billion share repurchase program announced in May 2021, under which the company has repurchased approximately $3 billion of shares of AMD common stock.

"We are pleased to expand our share repurchase program based on the strength of our balance sheet and expectations for future free cash flow generation," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "With our strong financial performance, we are able to increase investments to drive long-term growth while returning additional value to our shareholders."

Intel is designing a "Halo" SKU of a future generation of mobile processors with a goal to match Apple's in-house silicon of the time. Slated for tape-out some time in 2023, with mass-production expected in 2024, the 15th Generation Core "Arrow Lake-P Halo" processor is being designed specifically to compete with Apple's "premium 14-inch laptop" (presumably the MacBook Pro) that the company could have around 2024, based on an in-house Apple silicon. This is to essentially tell its notebook partners that they will have an SoC capable of making their devices in the class truly competitive. Apple relies on a highly scaled out Arm-based SoC based on in-house IP blocks, with a software that's closely optimized for it. Intel's effort appears to chase down its performance and efficiency.

The Core "Arrow Lake" microarchitecture succeeds the 14th Gen "Meteor Lake." It is a multi-chip module (MCM) of three distinct dies built on different fabrication nodes, in line with the company's IDM 2.0 strategy. These nodes are Intel 4 (comparable to TSMC N7 or N6), Intel 20A (comparable to TSMC N5), and an "external" 3 nm-class node that's just the TSMC N3. The compute tile, or the die which houses the CPU cores, combines a hybrid CPU setup of 6 P-cores, and 8 E-cores. The performance cores are likely successors of the "Redwood Cove" P-cores powering the "Meteor Lake" compute tiles. Intel appears to be using one kind of E-cores across two generations (eg: Gracemont across Alder Lake and Raptor Lake). If this is any indication, Arrow Lake could continue to use "Crestmont" E-cores. Things get interesting with the Graphics tile.

Since the launch of AMD's Ryzen processors, the CPU market share has been reshaped in AMD's favor. Intel's offerings were matched by team red, and AMD quickly broke into the consumer market. However, according to the latest round of reports, it seems like that is no longer the case. As per the Japanese DIY market analysis from BCNR, sales of Intel processors started rising in mid-2021, and the company is managing to grab some market share from AMD. After nearly two years of dominance in the Japanese market, AMD is now behind Intel in sales, and team blue is getting back to its older setting.

Another source that is generally a pretty good indicator of the market share of Intel and AMD processor is PassMark. As users submit their benchmark runs, the PassMark software developer has updated the CPU market share statistics chart, mainly showing the desktop segment. It also concludes the same thing as BCRN: Intel is again gaining share in the CPU market. As it always goes hand-in-hand, AMD is losing the CPU marker share naturally. This is due to many reasons, and it seems like Intel's marketing and supply tactics are paying off. Intel now sits at 60% share, while AMD is set at 40%.

This week, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference is taking place online and during one of the sessions, AMD shared some more details of its 3D V-Cache design. The interesting part here is the overall design of AMD's 3D V-Cache, as well as how it interfaces with its CPU dies. The cache chip itself is said to measure 36 mm² and interfaces directly with the L3 cache using a Through Silicon Via or TSV interface. For all the CPU cores to be able to communicate with the 3D V-Cache, AMD has implemented a shared ring bus design at the L3 level. The entire L3 cache is said to be available to each of the cores, which should further help improve performance.

The 3D V-Cache is made up of multiple 8 MB "slices" which has a 1,024 contact interface with a single CPU core, for a total of 8,192 connections in total between the CCX and the 3D V-Cache. This allows for a bandwidth in excess of two terabyte per second, per slice, in full duplex mode. This should allow for full L3 speeds for the 3D V-Cache, despite the fact that it's not an integrated part of the CCX. AMD is also said to have improved the design of its CCX for the upcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D in several ways to try and reduce the power draw, while improving clock speeds. AMD has yet to reveal a launch date for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, but it'll be interesting to see if the 3D V-Cache and the various minor optimizations can make it competitive with Intel's Alder Lake CPUs until Zen 4 arrives.

The recently announced AMD Ryzen 6000 series mobile Zen 3+ processors feature a significant graphics improvement with up to 12 RDNA2 Compute Units available. These new graphics solutions have recently been tested and compared by an engineer working for Lenovo in China. The Radeon 680M and Radeon 660M feature 12 and 6 RDNA2 Compute Units respectively and have been tested against the NVIDIA MX450 and the Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7. The Radeon 680M represents an 85% performance improvement over the Radeon RX Vega 8 and is 24% faster than the discrete NVIDIA MX450 mobile GPU in 3DMark. This lead narrows in real-world tests where the 680M is only 1.1% faster than the MX450 and the 660M is 37% slower.

The mid-range Radeon 660M is still significantly faster than the Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96EU) found in the i7-12700H beating it by 9% in 1080P gaming. The review also looks at power efficiency for the Radeon 660M & 680M showing that in their highest power configurations performance increases by 10% for the 660M and 42% for the 680M. The Radeon 680M remains behind the NVIDIA GTX 1650 Max-Q which holds a 25% lead. The Ryzen 6000 mobile series will be available in laptops starting from next month.

AMD on Thursday unveiled its Ryzen 6000 series "Rembrandt" mobile processors. The company claims these chips offer generational increases in CPU performance, along with big leaps in energy-efficiency and integrated graphics performance. At the heart of these processors is the new 6 nm "Rembrandt" silicon that the company is building on the TSMC N6 silicon fabrication node that leverages EUV lithography.

The "Rembrandt" silicon broadly combines an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on the new Zen 3+ microarchitecture, a large new iGPU based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture, complete with real-time ray tracing support; a DDR5 + LPDDR5 memory controller, and a full PCI-Express Gen4 root-complex. The iGPU, memory interface, and PCIe interface are generational updates over the previous-gen "Cezanne," and it may seem like the CPU is largely unchanged, but AMD claims there are several optimizations that have gone into the CPU to earn the "+" tag.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin. Bearing the fancy number 22.2.2, these drivers add optimization for "Total War: Warhammer III." The drivers also add major optimization for AMD Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) when you pair AMD "Cezanne" based processors with compatible Radeon RX 6000 and RX 5000 series GPUs, with game-specific performance improving by as much as 23%. Details of individual use-cases in the change-log below. With this release, the company didn't fix any new bugs, but identified several of them. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.2 beta

AMD announced the expansion of Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) AMD EPYC processor-based offerings with the general availability of compute optimized Amazon EC2 C6a instances. According to AWS, the C6a instances offer up to 15% better compute price performance over previous generation C5a instances for a variety of compute focused workloads.

The C6a instances support compute-intensive workloads such as batch processing, distributed analytics, ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding. This is the second AWS EC2 instance type powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, following the release of the M6a instances. These instances continue the collaboration between AWS and AMD providing AWS EC2 customers access to the performance and price performance capabilities of the latest generation of AMD EPYC processors.

AMD today announced that the AMD board has elected President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su as the chair of the board and John E. Caldwell as lead independent director. Caldwell joined the AMD board in 2006 and has served as chair since May 2016. AMD also announced that former Xilinx board members Jon Olson and Elizabeth Vanderslice have joined the AMD board in conjunction with the close of AMD's acquisition of Xilinx.

"Under Lisa's leadership, AMD has successfully executed a multi-year strategy that has significantly re-shaped the company's product portfolio and customer set and delivered industry-leading growth," said Caldwell. "As CEO and chair, Lisa will now have an ability to drive an even sharper focus for AMD and create greater shareholder value. I am also excited to welcome Jon and Elizabeth to the board as a part of the successful completion of the Xilinx acquisition. Their depth of industry knowledge and expertise are valuable additions to the board that will help AMD continue its strong growth."

Following its acquisition of FPGA and network hardware giant Xilinx, AMD is a larger company in terms of market capitalization. At closing bell on Tuesday (15/02), this figure stands at $199.58 billion, which for the very first time in AMD's history, beats rival Intel, which closed at $197.20 billion. Chiakokhua, aka Retired Engineer, provided the calculation that arrives at the $199.58 billion market cap. Before close, AMD had a share-count of 1.216 billion. 427 million shares were issued to Xilinx shareholders, resulting in a share-count (after close) of 1.643 billion, which at a share price of $121.47 works out to $199.58 billion. At $121.47, AMD is still trading around 26% lower than its all-time high price of $165.46.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the completion of its acquisition of Xilinx in an all-stock transaction. The acquisition, originally announced on October 27, 2020, creates the industry's high-performance and adaptive computing leader with significantly expanded scale and the strongest portfolio of leadership computing, graphics and adaptive SoC products. AMD expects the acquisition to be accretive to non-GAAP margins, non-GAAP EPS and free cash flow generation in the first year.

"The acquisition of Xilinx brings together a highly complementary set of products, customers and markets combined with differentiated IP and world-class talent to create the industry's high-performance and adaptive computing leader," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "Xilinx offers industry-leading FPGAs, adaptive SoCs, AI engines and software expertise that enable AMD to offer the strongest portfolio of high-performance and adaptive computing solutions in the industry and capture a larger share of the approximately $135 billion market opportunity we see across cloud, edge and intelligent devices."

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that AMD EPYC processors will power the new C2D virtual machine offering from Google Cloud, bringing customers strong performance and compute power for high-performance (HPC) memory-bound workloads in areas like electronic design automation (EDA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This announcement continues the momentum for AMD EPYC processors, marking the third family of instances powered by 3rd Gen EPYC processors at Google Cloud, joining the T2D and N2D instances.

With the help of AMD EPYC processors and its high core density, the C2D VMs will provide the largest VM sizes within compute optimized family at Google Cloud. As well, because of the EPYC processor's performance for compute focused workloads, Google Cloud showcased the C2D VMs can provide up to 30 percent better performance for targeted workloads compared to previous generation EPYC based VMs at a comparable size.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that it has received approval from all necessary authorities to proceed with the acquisition of Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX). With the exception of the remaining customary closing conditions, all conditions to the transaction closing have been satisfied and the company expects the transaction to close on or about February 14, 2022.

AMD announced its intention to acquire Xilinx in an all-stock transaction on October 27, 2020. The transaction brings together two industry leaders with complementary product portfolios and customers, combining CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and deep software expertise to enable leadership computing platforms for cloud, edge and intelligent end devices.

The AMD Milan-X EPYC 7773X 3D V-Cache is a 64-core, 128-thread server processor with 804 MB of cache that is currently shipping to global data centers. These processors are not yet officially available in retail channels but Chinese content creator kenaide has managed to acquire and test two qualification sample chips on a SuperMicro dual-socket motherboard. The AMD EPYC 7773X is detected as 100-000000504-04 CPU by CPU-Z confirming that it's an engineering sample with clock speeds 100 MHz below the 2.2 GHz and 3.5 GHz base and boost speeds of the official processor.

The processors each feature 32 MB L2, 256 MB L3, and 512 MB of 3D V-Cache for a total of 1608 MB cache in the configuration that was benchmarked with Cinebench R23 and 3DMark. The processors were also "overclocked" to 4.8 GHz using the EPYC Milan/Rome ES/QS Overclocking tool by increasing their power limit to 1500 W from 280 W and boosting the voltage to 1.55 V. This 4.8 GHz clock speed is only a target with the actual speed reached not reported and no benchmarks for the overclocked processors shared.

Akasa, manufacturer of cooling solutions and computer cases, today updated two of its fanless compact cases designed to replace actively-cooled systems of mini-PCs. For starters, the new Akasa Turing ABX is a next-generation compact fanless case for GIGABYTE AMD Ryzen BRIX 4000U-Series Mini-PC with Radeon GPU. The Turing ABX case is compatible with the following GIGABYTE Ryzen BRIX models: GB-BRR3-4300, GB-BRR5-4500, GB-BRR7-4700, and GB-BRR7-480. It brings out all of the I/O ports that come standard with these BRIX models; however, the cooling system is replaced with Akasa's fanless design integrated within the case.

And last but not least, Akasa also launched Newton A50 fanless case for ASUS PN51 and PN50 mini-PCs. Coming in with a 1.3-liter design, this case represents a very compact solution capable of carrying 5000 and 4000 Series AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon Vega 7 Graphics. As far as I/O options, the case brings everything that ASUS PN51 and PN50 PCs have to offer; however, the cooling system is also replaced by Akasa's fanless design. You can learn more about Turing ABX here and Newton A50 here. For availability, you can expect these cases to become available in the next three weeks from Scan.co.uk, Amazon, Caseking, Jimms PC, Performance-PCs. Pricing is unknown.

AMD on Thursday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 22.2.1 beta comes with optimization for "Dying Light 2: Stay Human," and "Lost Ark." It also adds support for the Vulkan 1.3 graphics API, and feature-support for Vulkan Roadmap 2022. A bug which caused "Fortnite" players on Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards to observe flashing or colored lights in DirectX 12 mode, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.1

Mesh shader is a relatively new concept of a programmable geometric shading pipeline, which promises to simplify the whole graphics rendering pipeline organization. NVIDIA introduced this concept with Turing back in 2018, and AMD joined with RDNA2. Today, thanks to the finds of Phoronix, we have gathered information that Intel's DG2 GPU will carry support for mesh shaders and bring it under Vulkan API. For starters, the difference between mesh/task and traditional graphics rendering pipeline is that the mesh edition is much simpler and offers higher scalability, bandwidth reduction, and greater flexibility in the design of mesh topology and graphics work. In Vulkan, the current mesh shader state is NVIDIA's contribution called the VK_NV_mesh_shader extension. The below docs explain it in greater detail:

Vulkan API documentationThis extension provides a new mechanism allowing applications to generate collections of geometric primitives via programmable mesh shading. It is an alternative to the existing programmable primitive shading pipeline, which relied on generating input primitives by a fixed function assembler as well as fixed function vertex fetch.

There are new programmable shader types—the task and mesh shader—to generate these collections to be processed by fixed-function primitive assembly and rasterization logic. When task and mesh shaders are dispatched, they replace the core pre-rasterization stages, including vertex array attribute fetching, vertex shader processing, tessellation, and geometry shader processing.

AMD's final refresh of the RDNA2 graphics architecture, the Radeon RX 6x50 series, could debut in June or July 2022, according to Greymon55, a reliable source with GPU leaks. The final refresh of RDNA2 could see AMD use faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory across the board, and eke out higher engine clocks on existing silicon IP. At this point it's not known if these new chips will be built on the same 7 nm process, or are an optical shrink to 6 nm (TSMC N6). Such a shrink to a node that offers 18% higher transistor density, would have significant payoffs with clock-speed headroom. AMD's RDNA3-based 5 nm GPUs could debut only toward the end of the year.

In related news, AMD is preparing to launch another entry-level SKU within the RX 6000 series; the Radeon RX 6500 (non-XT). Based on the same 6 nm Navi 24 silicon as the RX 6500 XT, this SKU could have a core-configuration that's in-between the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400, in featuring 768 stream processors across 12 compute units; and 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, which is similar to the RX 6400, but with higher engine clocks. The RX 6500 is targeting a $150 (MSRP) price-point.

Kyle Bennett, head of HardOCP, and part of this Industry for several decades has posted an interesting editorial yesterday. While I don't agree with everything, he's making great points that are worth considering. The editorial begins with how and why GPU vendors will abolish the MSRP, because it's bringing nothing but bad press to them. No MSRP would also mean additional flexibility in pricing things—just set the price dynamically—no doubt that also helps to maximize profits.

I am sure both AMD and NVIDIA have marketing managers sitting around watching reviewer after reviewer slamming its company for "fake MSRP" and are now thinking about a solution to that.

MSI, a world leader in high-performance and innovative computing solutions, has announced the PRO AP241Z 5M All-in-One PC. Featuring powerful processors and eye care technology with an IPS panel for a wide viewing angle and enhanced viewing experience, PRO AP241Z Series is designed with efficiency and productivity in mind. While most All-in-One PCs in the market utilize mobile-grade processors, the PRO AP241Z 5M features the Desktop-grade AMD Ryzen 5000 Series APU for unparalleled performance. Giving users a better working experience with greater hardware and software support.

PRO AP241Z 5M can help improve workflow and efficiency. With an HDMI-out port, you are able to connect another monitor and easily multitask with navigating multiple windows or documents at the same time. Anti-flicker and low blue light technology for the display help to keep your eyes healthy and reduce fatigue throughout long work hours. Featuring up to AMD Ryzen 7 5700G Processor, PRO AP241Z stays responsive with low load times when multi-tasking while remaining cool thanks to its Server-grade cooling system to reduce CPU thermal throttling. Information security is always one of the most important things for businesses; the PRO AP241Z supports FW TPM technology which can protect device data from attacks by malicious software and unauthorized access.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 of $4.8 billion, operating income of $1.2 billion, net income of $974 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.80. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $1.3 billion, net income was $1.1 billion and diluted earnings per share was $0.92. For full year 2021, the company reported revenue of $16.4 billion, operating income of $3.6 billion, net income of $3.2 billion and diluted earnings per share of $2.57. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $4.1 billion, net income was $3.4 billion and diluted earnings per share was $2.79.

"2021 was an outstanding year for AMD with record annual revenue and profitability," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "Each of our businesses performed extremely well, with data center revenue doubling year-over-year driven by growing adoption of AMD EPYC processors across cloud and enterprise customers. We expect another year of significant growth in 2022 as we ramp our current portfolio and launch our next generation of PC, gaming and data center products."

Chinese regulators have conditionally approved AMD's $35 billion acquisition of specialty programmable logic device company Xilinx. The purchase had already been approved in every other market so this final approval should allow the deal to quickly progress provided both parties agree to the conditions set out by the Chinese market regulator. These requirements include a commitment to ensuring that Xilinx FPGAs remain compatible with ARM-based processors and products used in the Chinese market. This deal will help make AMD more competitive with Intel which has previously purchased a similar FPGA company with Altera for $16.7 billion in 2015.