As we approach the next generation of AMD's Ryzen processors, accompanying chipsets will follow the launch of their main co-host device. Enabling different levels of features across the new processor generation, chipset versions are limiting the number of options a platform offers to the end-user. AMD is designing its motherboard chipsets in collaboration with a Taiwanese design firm ASMedia. They usually develop a few chipset types covering low-end, middle-end, and high-end motherboards segments. However, it seems like the high-end motherboard segment could be populated with the same silicon as the middle-end section of the chipset stack; note a few Chinese forum members on BiliBili.

As they note, the high-end AMD X670 chipset could be a multi-chip module (MCM) design incorporating two middle-end B650 chipsets. A combination of two B650 dies is allegedly forming an X670 chipset, and that is what AMD could force motherboard makers to use. By doing so, the Mini-ITX motherboard form factor could be challenging to design and manufacture, meaning that the package of the X670 chipset could be rather extensive. This rumor should, of course, be taken with a massive grain of salt as we don't know how this would function. However, it financially makes sense as AMD wouldn't need to design and request manufacturing for an additional chipset variant.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a new AMD AM4 socket-based monoblock belonging to the Quantum Line of products, the EK-Quantum Momentum² ROG Strix X570-I Gaming D-RGB. This monoblock is engineered specifically for the ROG Strix X570-I Gaming ITX motherboard from ASUS. The addressable D-RGB LED in the monoblock is compatible with ASUS Aura Sync RGB control and offers a full lighting customization experience for every single diode at any given time. This monoblock is EK-Matrix7 compatible.

This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for Ryzen AMD processors and the monoblock is compatible with the AM4 socketed ROG Strix X570-I Gaming motherboard. This monoblock uses the latest generation of EK Velocity² cooling engine to ensure the best possible CPU cooling while not reducing flow to other components. This water block directly cools the AM4 Ryzen CPU, VRM section, and importantly the X570 Chipset which tends to run quite hot. This eliminates the need for any fans on the motherboard.

In recent years, government institutions have been funding the development of home-grown hardware that will power the government infrastructure. This trend was born out of a desire to design chips with no back doors implemented so that no foreign body could monitor the government's processes. Today, Russian company Baikal Electronics managed to boot up the Baikal-S processor with 48 cores based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). The processor codenamed BE-S1000 manages to operate 48 cores at a 2.0 GHz base frequency, with a maximum boost of 2.5 GHz clock speed. All of that is achieved at the TDP of 120 Watts, making this design very efficient.

When it comes to some server configurations, the Baikal-S processor run in up to four sockets in a server board. It offers a home-grown RISC-V processor for safe boot and management, so the entire SoC is controlled by a custom design. Baikal Electronics provided some benchmark numbers, which you can see in the slides below. They cover SPEC2006 CPU Integer, Coremark, Whetstone, 7Zip, and HPLinkpack performance. Additionally, the company claims that Baikal-S is in line with Intel Xeon Gold 6148 Skylake design and AMD EPYC 7351 CPU based on Zen1 core. Compared to Huawei's Kunpeng 920, the Baikal-S design provides 0.86x performance.

AMD is preparing to update its Ryzen Threadripper PRO line of workstation processors, with product announcements slated for January 2022, along the sidelines of CES, with availability slated for March 8, 2022, according to a VideoCardz report. The new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series processors are likely to combine "Zen 3+" CCDs (6 nm, featuring 3D Vertical Cache memory), with full sWRX8 I/O that includes 128 PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes, and 8-channel DDR4 memory. There are no sTRX4 options on the horizon.

What's interesting with the lineup is that CPU core-counts range all the way from 12-core/24-thread to 64-core/128-thread. Past generations of Threadripper WX stuck with higher core-counts (32 and up). The series begins with the Threadripper PRO 5945WX (12-core/24-thread), followed by the PRO 5955WX (16-core/32-thread), the PRO 5965WX (24-core/48-thread), PRO 5975WX (32-core/64-thread), and the 64-core/128-thread PRO 5995WX. There's no 48-core part in the stack. The TDP of all these chips is rated at 280 W.

AMD's next generation Radeon "Navi 3x" line of GPUs could see a 50% increase in shaders and a doubling Infinity Cache memory size, according to some educated-guesswork and intelligence by Greymon55, a reliable source with GPU leaks. The Navi 31, Navi 32, and Navi 33 chips are expected to debut the new RDNA3 graphics architecture, and succeed the 6 nm optical-shrinks of existing Navi 2x chips that AMD is rumored to be working on.

The top Navi 31 part allegedly features 60 workgroup processors (WGPs), or 120 compute units. Assuming an RDNA3 CU still holds 64 stream processors, you're looking at 7,680 stream processors, a 50% increase over Navi 21. The Navi 32 silicon features 40 WGPs, and exactly the same number of shaders as the current Navi 21, at 5,120. The smallest of the three, the Navi 33, packs 16 WGPs, or 2,048 shaders. There is a generational doubling in cache memory, with 256 MB on the Navi 31, 192 MB on the Navi 32, and 64 MB on the Navi 33. Interestingly, the memory sizes and bus widths are unchanged, but AMD could leverage faster GDDR6 memory types. 2022 will see the likes of Samsung ship GDDR6 chips with data-rates as high as 24 Gbps.

The semicondustor market in 3Q21 is red hot with total revenue of the global top 10 IC design (fabless) companies reaching US$33.7 billion or 45% growth YoY, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In addition to the Taiwanese companies MediaTek, Novatek, and Realtek already on the list, Himax comes in at number ten, bringing the total number of Taiwanese companies on the top 10 list to 4.

Qualcomm has been buoyed by continuing robust demand for 5G mobile phones form major mobile phone manufacturers with further revenue growth from its processor and radio frequency front end (RFFE) departments. Qualcomm's IoT department benefited from strong demand in the consumer electronics, edge networking, and industrial sectors, posting revenue growth of 66% YoY, highest among Qualcomm departments. In turn, this drove Qualcomm's total 3Q21 revenue to US$7.7 billion, 56% growth YoY, and ranking first in the world.

According to the latest round of rumors coming from tech media VideoCardz, Intel could be preparing an answer to AMD's 3D V-cache in the form of... pre-binned Core i9-12900KS? As per the report, Intel could be making a pre-binned, pre-overclocked Core i9-12900KS processor with an all-core turbo boost frequency of 5.2 GHz. This alleged clock speed will push the processor to some fantastic heights and increase the overall performance of the regular Core i9-12900K processor. With AMD's Ryzen processors with 3D V-cache incoming, Intel has prepared this solution to keep up with the increasing pressure from AMD.

So far, we don't know the specific requirements for Core i9-12900KS to reach 5.2 GHz. However, we assume that Voltage needs a big boost, making cooling and power supply requirements increase. This special edition Alder Lake design should launch around the same time frame that AMD reveals its 3D V-cache enabled Ryzen processors, so Intel doesn't let AMD steal the performance crown.

After a very long reign of the most popular water block on the market, the EK-Quantum Velocity, it's time to make the Quantum leap yet again. The next generation EK Quantum Line water block - the EK-Quantum Velocity² enters the stage in full D-RGB glory. The water block features EK-Matrix7 compatibility, a standard where increments of 7 mm manage the height of products and the distance between ports. This product uses a socket-specific cooling engine to ensure the best performance and optimal flow with low restrictions on every platform. Three years after the original Velocity water block launch, EK is officially launching the Velocity² AM4, which is engineered for the popular AMD AM4 socket and Ryzen series desktop processors. Other Velocity² CPU water blocks will also follow shortly, tuned specifically for each CPU socket and IHS geometry on the market.

This new water block kept the name "Velocity" because it retained the ability to be responsive and agile in the world of liquid cooling. Embedded in the Velocity² is a next-generation EK CPU water block cooling engine that is socket-specific. A combination of mounting pressure and cold plate geometry, tailored for the IHS and die layout of AMD AM4 socket processors, is used to achieve low hydraulic flow restriction and high performance. Thе lathe-turned cold plate is made with precision to cover the IHS effectively and put optimal pressure on the die area. Flow is also being directed into areas that need it most.

Quite possibly the first sighting of a next-generation AMD processor with DDR5 memory surfaced on the web. A BAPCo CrossMark Database entry references a prototype processor with the name-string "AMD Eng Sample: 100-000000560-40_Y," running on a platform titled "ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M3402RA." The chip has 16 GB of memory across 2 memory channels, and a memory frequency of 4800 MHz DDR. The platform here could be either a desktop motherboard, or a notebook. 4800 MHz is an unusual memory speed for a mobile platform, unless it's a single stick of DDR5-4800 SO-DIMM, with two 40-bit channels.

The first notebooks with DDR5 memory make landfall early next year, when Intel launches mobile variants of its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors. This would mean that DDR5 SO-DIMMs are already in circulation with OEMs. If the theory of this being a mobile chip holds true, it could very well be the "Rembrandt" APU that combines "Zen 3+" CPU cores with an iGPU based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture. If however the platform is a prototype Socket AM5 motherboard, it could be one of the first sightings of a next-generation "Raphael" desktop processor with "Zen 4" CPU cores, and a combination of DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5.

Managing massive datasets is excessively complex and costly. Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, announced the new Exos Application Platform (AP) with a new controller featuring 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. The efficient, scalable, affordable end-to-end compute and storage platform delivers integrated compute and storage in a single enclosure optimizing rack space utilization, power efficiency, heat dissipation, and storage density.

The need for advanced storage solutions continues to rise to unprecedented levels with the ever-increasing growth in data generation. According to a report commissioned by Seagate and conducted by the research firm IDC, Rethink Data, enterprise data is expected to grow at an average rate of 42.2% over the next two years. The survey, which was conducted by IDC, also found that only 32% of data available to enterprises is put to work. The remaining 68% is unleveraged.

NVIDIA has reportedly pushed midlife refreshes to its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics card family to beyond January, according to a report by Igor's Lab. The company was supposed to launch as many as three high-end graphics card SKUs in early-Q1, which include a 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070 Ti, which maxes out the GA104 silicon, a refreshed RTX 3080 12 GB variant, which keeps the CUDA core count of the original RTX 3080, but maxes out the 384-bit memory bus width of the GA102; and the RTX 3090 Ti, which maxes out both memory and CUDA cores on the GA102.

It's being reported that while the RTX 3090 Ti launch is on schedule, with announcements slated for NVIDIA's 2022 International CES presentation; the RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB and RTX 3080 12 GB could be launched only after the Chinese New Year (at least mid-February). The three SKUs, we predict, are designed to calibrate NVIDIA's lineup against a possible refresh of AMD's RDNA2 graphics architecture on the TSMC N6 (6 nm) node, which could allow the company to dial up engine clocks across the board, along with faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, to better compete against the RTX 30-series. AMD is expected to announce these 6 nm GPUs in its CES presentation.

AMD today announced that AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su will host its 2022 Product Premiere on January 4, 2022. Dr. Su will highlight innovations and solutions featuring upcoming AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon graphics. The AMD Product Premiere livestream will be accessible to the public beginning at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, January 4 at AMD.com; replays will be available after the conclusion of the livestream event. The link to the AMD 2022 Product Premiere event page can be found below.

XFX started selling the AMD BC-160 cryptocurrency mining card based on the AMD "Navi 12" silicon. The card is available on AliExpress for $2,000. The "Navi 12," if you recall, is an MCM mobile GPU that AMD developed exclusively for the 2019 MacBook Pro. It combined an RDNA-based GPU die with up to 16 GB of HBM2 across a 2048-bit wide interface. Built on the 7 nm node, the GPU die of "Navi 12" on the BC-160 is configured with 36 compute units (2,304 stream processors), and 8 GB of HBM2 across the full 2048-bit memory bus.

The card uses a blower-type cooling solution, and is rated with 150 W of typical board power, with a claimed 69.5 Mh/s (ETH). Drivers are provided for Linux, and mining software supported include Team Red Miner and Phoenix Miner. The card features a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 interface, its driver supports systems with up to 12 of these installed. A marketing slide sheds light on the nomenclature AMD is using for its mining cards. The "BC" in BC-160 represents "blockchain compute," the "1" stands for generation, in this case, first generation; and "60" represents hashrate-class with ETH.

Just yesterday, thanks to the Linux driver update, we found information stating that AMD's upcoming EPYC Genoa processor generation based on Zen 4 core IP will have a 12-channel memory controller. However, we didn't know how AMD engineered the memory controller of this processor generation and some of its maximum capabilities. However, there is an exciting discovery. According to the report from ComputerBase, with information exclusive to them, AMD will enable up to 12 TB of DDR5 memory spread across 12 memory channels. The processor supports DDR5-5200 memory, but when all 24 memory slots (two per channel) are populated, the DDR5 maximum speed drops to 4000 MT/s.

It is unclear why this is the case, and if any difficulties were designing the controller, so the maximum speed drops when every slot is used. One reassuring thing is that the bandwidth created by 12 memory channels should be sufficient to make up for the lost speed of DDR5 memory reduction.

Since the introduction of the NUC by Intel some years ago, the mini PC space has taken off and one of the more popular NUC alternatives has been the BRIX series from Gigabyte and the company has just announced the BRIX Extreme. This is Gigabyte's first BRIX series based on the AMD Ryzen 5000U series of APUs and three different options will be available, in the shape of the R3-5300U, R5-5500U and the R7-5700U. This translates to four, six and eight core CPUs with a 15 W TDP, although these are all Zen 2 based, rather than Zen 3, which is slightly disappointing.

This is also one of the first device we've seen that uses the new AMD RZ608 WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module which was announced a little while back. Other features include 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, an M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe slot for an SSD, two HDMI 2.0a ports, a mini DP port port and a USB-C port with DP Alt mode, both supporting DP 1.4 and all display outputs can be used concurrently with four 4K displays. Gigabyte will offer the BRIX Extreme in a low profile chassis as well as a slightly bigger chassis that can either house a 2.5-inch SATA drive, or an optional expansion module.

AMD is allegedly preparing to announce the Radeon RX 6000S mobile graphics card based on a refreshed RDNA 2 architecture. The new card will be manufactured on TSMC's N6 process which offers an 18% logic density improvement over the N7 process currently used for RDNA 2 products resulting in increased efficiency or performance. The switch to the IP compatible N6 node should also improve yields and shorten production cycles allowing AMD to remain competitive with new cards from NVIDIA and Intel. We have limited information on this alleged card except that it will likely be announced in early 2022 at CES and that AMD may also release discrete RX 6000S series desktop graphics cards.

Microsoft today announced the release of H264 and H265 encoding through its DX12 API. The move brings GPU acceleration support for several video applications such as Video Decoding, Video Processing and Motion estimation. Theoretically, this should ease the burden on developers, who instead of having to implement video encoding acceleration according to the graphics vendor (be it AMD, Intel or NVIDIA), can now work through the DX12 API to achieve the same effect throughout all providers, simplifying programming and efficiency efforts - though Microsoft was coy about potential advantages and disadvantages of the new feature.

While the implementation will eventually reach all platforms, the DX12 API encoding integration is currently only available for both Intel and NVIDIA. Work still has to be done on AMD's implementation, which generally uses fixed-hardware function blocks to allow for higher performance whilst encoding and transcoding - at the loss of some flexibility. There are graphics cards driver requirements that have to be fulfilled to enable the full encoding capabilities (and these can also be only partially supported, though performance will undoubtedly suffer).

Thanks to a Linux driver update, we now know that AMD's upcoming Zen 4 based EPYC CPUs will support up to 12 channels of DDR5 memory, an upgrade over the current eight. The EDAC driver, or Error Detection and Correction driver update from AMD contained details of the memory types supported by AMD's upcoming server and workstation CPUs and although this doesn't tell us much about what we'll see from the desktop platform, some of this might spill over to a future Ryzen Threadripper CPU.

The driver also reveals that there will be support for both RDDR5 and LRDDR5, which translates to Registered DDR5 and Load-Reduced DDR5 respectively. LRDDR5 is the replacement for LRDIMMs, which are used in current servers with very high memory densities. Although we don't know when AMD is planning to announce Zen 4, even less so the new EPYC processors, it's expected that it will be some time in the second half next year.

Historically, AMD was working with two semiconductor manufacturing companies: TSMC and GlobalFoundries. According to the latest report coming from Gokul Hariharan, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, AMD could soon tap another semiconductor manufacturer to produce the company's growing list of processors. As the report indicates, AMD could start working with the South Korean giant Samsung and utilize the firm's 4LPP process that represents a second generation of the low-power 4 nm silicon node. This specific node is allegedly the choice for AMD APUs designed to fit inside Google's Chromebook devices, which require low-power designs to achieve excellent battery life.

AMD could realize this move in late 2022, as Samsung's 4LPP node goes into mass production at that point. It means that we could see the first Samsung-made AMD APUs in late 2022 or the beginning of 2023. And apparently, the two company's collaboration could be much more significant as AMD is evaluating Samsung's 3 nm nodes for other products spanning more segments in 2023/2024. There are no official, definitive agreements between the two, so we have to wait for more information and official responses from these parties. Anyways, if AMD decides to produce a part of its lineup at Samsung, the remaining TSMC capacity would ensure that the supply of every incoming chip remains sufficient.

The AMD 4800S desktop kit appears to be a successor to the 4700S which featured a repurposed Ariel SoC from the PlayStation 5 with the integrated RDNA2 graphics disabled. The 4700S Mini-ITX kit featured a single PCIe x4 Gen 2.0 slot which limited compatibility to lower-end graphics cards and restricted the availability of high-speed storage or connectivity. The upcoming 4800S Micro-ATX kit appears to remedy these issues by upgrading to a different Zen 2 chip possibly the one used by Microsoft in the Xbox Series X/S consoles with a PCIe Gen 4.0 link. The desktop system will support AM4 coolers and includes an M.2 slot for SSD storage or WiFi connectivity. AMD is planning to release the 4800S desktop kit in Q1 2022 with the board being manufactured by MSI and bundled with a TUL (PowerColor) Radeon RX 6600 graphics card.

Valve has recently completed the final Design Validation (DV) prototype for the Steam Deck incorporating improvements from the previous EV2 builds. This latest design revision also sees the confirmation of retail packaging for the device which consists of a simple cardboard box with a region-specific power supply, Steam Deck, carry case, and setup instructions. The portable carrying case for the 64 GB and 256 GB models was also shown with the 512 GB version set to receive a unique version. The Valve Steam Deck features an AMD Zen 2 processor with integrated RDNA 2 graphics and is available to pre-order at 399 USD for the 64 GB base model with new orders not expected to ship until Q2 2022. Valve will begin shipping these DV kits to game developers shortly allowing them to optimize their titles for the device before it begins shipping in February 2022.

January 4, 2022 could be a date of major product announcements by both AMD and Intel as part of their International CES 2022 plans. Both companies will host virtual press-meets on that day, and are expected to unveil several product lines. AMD could shed more like on its Ryzen "Vermeer-S" Socket AM4 desktop processors, possible updates to its Ryzen 5000 mobile product stack; as well as put out some juicy nuggets of info on its future "Zen 4" processors; while Intel will significantly expand its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" family across both its desktop and mobile segments, along with more info on its Arc "Alchemist" gaming GPU. The AMD event is slated for 8 AM Pacific, while the Intel one goes up two hours later, at 10 AM Pacific. We will be live-blogging both.

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.12.1. These drivers add optimization for "Halo Infinite," with up to 17% increase in frame-rates measured on the RX 6900 XT, at 4K Ultra settings over the previous driver version; up to 19% increase measured with the RX 6800 XT, and up to 16% measured with the RX 6700 XT. Optimization is also added for "Icarus" and Blender 3.0 on RX 6000 series graphics cards. Among the fixes include a SteamVR Home noticed on the Radeon VII; driver time-outs noticed with the RX 5500 XT in "Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy;" Radeon Software becoming unresponsive with PUBG on multi-display mode with extended display; and artifacting noticed in "Forza Horizon 5" with the car models on cards such as the RX 500 series.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.12.1

According to a new research report from the analyst firm Jon Peddie Research, unit shipments of add-in boards increased in Q3'21 from last year. AMD saw a one-percent increase in market share while Nvidia remained the dominant market share leader with 78.2%. Year over year, total AIB shipments increased by 25.7% this quarter compared to last year at 12.7 million units, and up quarter-to-quarter from 11.47 million units in Q2'21.

Add-in boards (AIBs) use discrete GPUs (dGPU) with dedicated memory. Desktop PCs, workstations, servers, rendering and mining farms, and scientific instruments use AIBs. Consumers and enterprises buy AIBs from resellers or OEMs. They can be part of a new system or installed as an upgrade to an existing system. Systems with AIBs represent the higher end of the graphics industry. Entry-level systems use integrated GPUs (iGPU) in CPUs that share slower system memory.

AMD apparently finds itself with quite a bit of undigested 7 nm "Renoir" silicon, which it plans to repackage as Socket AM4 processors, reports VideoCardz, citing sources on ChipHell forums. The most interesting aspect of this leak is that the silicon variant, codenamed "Renoir X," comes with a disabled iGPU. This is hence a case of AMD harvesting enough "Renoir" dies with faulty iGPU components, to sell them off as desktop processors. It is also learned that these chips don't feature all of the 8 "Zen 2" CPU cores present on the silicon, but rather AMD is looking to carve out entry-level SKUs, such as the Ryzen 3 or Athlon. The company lacks Athlon desktop SKUs based on "Zen 2" or later, although traditionally the company sought to include some basic iGPU solution with its Athlon SKUs.

In related news, the source reports that AMD will refresh its Ryzen desktop processor family with the new "Vermeer S" Ryzen processors. Built on the existing Socket AM4 package, these use AMD's "Zen 3" CCDs that feature 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache), much like the recently announced EPYC "Milan X" server processors. AMD claimed that the 3DV Cache technology has a significant performance uplift on performance akin to a generational update. These could be the company's first response to Intel Core "Alder Lake," although since they're based on the older AM4 platform, could only feature DDR4 and PCIe Gen 4. Much like the Ryzen 3000XT series, these appear to be a stopgap product lineup, with AMD targeting late-Q2/early-Q3 for next-generation "Raphael" Socket AM5 processors based on the "Zen 4" architecture, with DDR5 and PCIe Gen 5.