Sonnet Technologies today announced the launch of the eGPU Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 5500 XT and eGPU Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 5700, the newest members of the company's popular family of portable all-in-one Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processing (eGPU) systems. Replacing the now discontinued eGFX Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 560 and Radeon RX 570 eGPUs, the new models retain the same form factor but in many cases deliver more than 300% performance improvement over the previous-generation models. The new models now include two USB ports for connecting peripheral devices and a second Thunderbolt port for fully supporting a Thunderbolt/USB-C display, including the 6K Apple Pro Display XDR.

eGPU systems boost a computer's graphics performance by connecting a more powerful graphics processor via a Thunderbolt 3 connection and bypassing the computer's onboard GPU to deliver graphics performance not otherwise possible. Sonnet's eGPU Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 5500 XT and Radeon RX 5700 systems are designed for professionals who need to run graphics-intensive applications on their Intel -based MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, or iMac with Thunderbolt 3 ports, with the focus on high performance, portability, and flexible external display connectivity plus quiet, reliable operation. eGPU Breakaway Pucks accelerate a computer's graphics performance on its built-in display (if equipped) and on up to four externally connected displays.

PC benchmarking software company PassMark has recorded the market share of AMD and Intel processors based on their testing data. This data dates back to Q1 2014 and shows Intel dominating the desktop market. AMD has been gradually making ground on Intel since they launched their Ryzen processors in 2017 which have quickly become some of the best processors available. Thanks to the success of Ryzen the market share of AMD desktop processors recently overtook Intel reaching 50.8%, this number has now fallen to 49.8% as the data continues to be updated with new tests but the trend is clear. While AMD has made tremendous gains in the desktop market they still fall far behind in the laptop and server segments with 17% and 1.1% market shares respectively. This puts AMD's total market share across all segments at 38.2% according to PassMark data.

AMD just revealed the top four changes with its new AGESA 1.1.9.0 microcode update, which motherboard manufacturers and OEMs will release via UEFI firmware updates in January and February, 2021. Beta firmware updates with 1.1.9.0 have already been floating around for the past couple of weeks. To begin with, the new AGESA enables support for the S0i3 power state of Windows 10, more commonly known as Modern Standby. Next up, AMD claims that firmware updates with 1.1.9.0 should improve system stability in the FCLK 1800 MHz to 2000 MHz range.

Next up, AMD mentions support for "fanless X570 motherboards." We're not entirely sure whether this means a fan-down mode on existing X570 motherboards, or whether a new wave of motherboards based on the chipset is incoming, which lacks active cooling for the chipset (and makes do with passive heatsinks). One such board is the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. Perhaps the firmware assists in helping the X570 chipset maintain a lower TDP. Wrapping things up, AMD mentions "general stability improvements," which are always welcome. Keep probing the "support" section of your motherboard's product page on its company website for the latest firmware updates.

AMD may be finding itself riding a new wave of success caused by its accomplishments with the Zen architecture, which in turn bolstered its available R&D for its graphics division and thus turned the entire AMD business on its head. However, success comes at a cost, particularly when you don't own your own fabs and have to vie for capacity with TSMC against its cadre of other clients. I imagine that currently, AMD's HQ has a direct system of levers and pulleys that manage its chip allocation with TSMC: pull this lever and increase number of 7 nm SOC for the next-generation consoles; another controls Ryzen 5000 series; and so on and so on. As we know, production capacity on TSMC's 7 nm is through the roof, and AMD is finding it hard to ship enough of its Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA2 graphics cards. The reported delay for the AMD RX 6700 series may well be a result of AMD overextending its product portfolio on the 7 nm process with foundry partner TSMC.

A report coming from Cowcotland now points towards a 1Q2021 release for AMD's high-performance RX 6700 series, which was initially poised to see the light of day in the current month of January. The RX 6700 series will ship with AMD's Navi 22 chip, which is estimated to be half of the full Navi 21 chip (which puts it at a top configuration of 2560 Stream Processors over 40 CUs). These cards are expected to ship with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory over a 192-bit memory bus. However, it seems that AMD may have delayed the launch for these graphics cards. One can imagine that this move from AMD happens so as to not further dilute the TSMC wafers coming out of the factory, limited as they are, between yet another chip. One which will undoubtedly have lower margins than the company's Zen 3 CPUs, EPYC CPUs, RX 6800 and RX 6900, and that doesn't have the same level of impact on its business relations as console-bound SoCs. Besides, it likely serves AMD best to put out enough of its currently-launched products' to sate demand (RX 6000 series, Ryzen 5000, cof cof) than to launch yet another product with likely too limited availability in relation to the existing demand.

AMD has applied for a United States Patent that describes a CPU design with FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) elements integrated into its core design. Titled "Method and Apparatus for Efficient Programmable Instructions in Computer Systems", the patent application describes a CPU with FPGA elements inscribed into its very core design, where the FPGA elements actually share CPU resources such as registers for floating-point and integer execution units. This patent undoubtedly comes in the wake of AMD's announced Xilinx acquisition plans, and brings FPGA and CPU marriages to a whole other level. FPGA,as the name implies, are hardware constructions which can reconfigure themselves according to predetermined tables (which can also be updated) to execute desired and specific functions.

Intel have themselves already shipped a CPU + FPGA combo in the same package; the company's Xeon 6138P, for example, includes an Arria 10 GX 1150 FPGA on-package, offering 1,150,000 logic elements. However, this is simply a CPU + FPGA combo on the same substrate; not a native, core-integrated FPGA design. Intel's product has severe performance and latency penalties due to the fact that complex operations performed in the FPGA have to be brought out of the CPU, processed in the FPGA, and then its results have to be returned to the CPU. AMD's design effectively ditches that particular roundabout, and should thus allow for much higher performance.

Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel and version-control system called git, has posted another one of his famous rants, addressing his views about the lack of ECC memory in consumer devices. Mr. Torvalds has posted his views on the Linux kernel mailing list, where he usually comments about the development of the kernel. The ECC or Error Correcting Code memory is a special kind of DRAM that fixes the problems that occur inside the memory itself, where a bit can get corrupted and change the data stored, thus offering false results. ECC aims to fix those mistakes by implementing a system that fixes these small errors and avoids bigger problems. According to Mr. Torvalds, it is a technology that we need to be implemented everywhere, not just server space like Intel imagines.

Linus TorvaldsIntel has been instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with it's horribly bad market segmentation... Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously...The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage... Now even the memory manufacturers are starting do do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to. And the memory manufacturers claim it's because of economics and lower power. And they are lying bastards - let me once again point to row-hammer about how those problems have existed for several generations already, but these f***** happily sold broken hardware to consumers and claimed it was an "attack", when it always was "we're cutting corners".

Hot on the heels of its Geekbench score leak, we have PassMark numbers for the upcoming Core i7-11700K "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor, leaked to the web. The PassMark online score database lists performance obtained from a single i7-11700K sample, where it's shown to be trading blows with the Ryzen 7 5800X (score averaged from over 600 samples). The Intel chip scores 3548 points single-thread rating, compared to 3509 (average) of the 5800X, while its multi-threaded score of 54255 points falls short of the 54458 points of the 5800X (average). Both these chips are 8-core/16-thread.

The Core i7-11700K has the same core configuration as the top i9-11900K part, but with lower rumored clock speeds. The Core i7 ticks at 3.60 GHz base, with up to 5.00 GHz boost, and the same 125 W TDP rating as its 10th Gen predecessor. The "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor family sees Intel's first IPC uplift to the client-desktop platform in 5 years, on the backs of new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores. While we haven't seen evidence of core-counts above 8 for these processors, Intel's play will be to restore gaming performance leadership that it lost to AMD's Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" processors. Plagued by scalping and limited availability to genuine customers, AMD stares at its performance leadership not translating into brand equity before Intel's next-gen parts flood the market.

AMD has recently launched its Radeon "Big Navi" 6000 series of graphics cards, making entry to the high-end market and positioning itself well against the competition. The "Big Navi" graphics cards are based on Navi 21 XL (Radeon RX 6800), Navi 21 XT (Radeon RX 6800 XT), and Navi 21 XTX (Radeon RX 6900 XT) GPU revision, each of which features a different number of Shaders/TMUs/ROPs. The highest-end Navi 21 XTX is the highest performance revision featuring 80 Compute Units with 5120 cores. However, it seems like AMD is preparing another similar silicon called Navi 21 XTXH. Currently, it is unknown what the additional "H" means. It could indicate an upgraded version with more CUs, or perhaps a bit cut down configuration. It is unclear where such a GPU would fit in the lineup or is it just an engineering sample that is never making it to the market. It could represent a potential response from AMD to NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, however, that is just speculation. Other options suggest that such a GPU would be a part of mainstream notebook lineup, just like Renoir comes in the "H" variant. We have to wait and see what AMD does to find out more.

On December 31st, AMD's Radeon group has filed a patent for a chiplet architecture of the GPU, showing its vision about the future of Radeon GPUs. Currently, all of the GPUs available on the market utilize the monolithic approach, meaning that the graphics processing units are located on a single die. However, the current approach has its limitations. As the dies get bigger for high-performance GPU configurations, they are more expensive to manufacture and can not scale that well. Especially with modern semiconductor nodes, the costs of dies are rising. For example, it would be more economically viable to have two dies that are 100 mm² in size each than to have one at 200 mm². AMD realized that as well and has thus worked on a chiplet approach to the design.

AMD reports that the use of multiple GPU configuration is inefficient due to limited software support, so that is the reason why GPUs were kept monolithic for years. However, it seems like the company has found a way to go past the limitations and implement a sufficient solution. AMD believes that by using its new high bandwidth passive crosslinks, it can achieve ideal chiplet-to-chiplet communication, where each GPU in the chiplet array would be coupled to the first GPU in the array. All the communication would go through an active interposer which would contain many layers of wires that are high bandwidth passive crosslinks. The company envisions that the first GPU in the array would communicably be coupled to the CPU, meaning that it will have to use the CPU possibly as a communication bridge for the GPU arrays. Such a thing would have big latency hit so it is questionable what it means really.

AMD is set to introduce its next-generation of Ryzen Threadripper processors in the coming weeks, and rumors are suggesting that it may happen at this year's CES. The new Ryzen Threadripper platform is codenamed Genesis Peak. If we take a look at the current 3000 series "Castle Peak" Threadripper processors, they were launched on CES 2020, with availability in February. So we are assuming that the upcoming 5000 "Genesis Peak" series is going to launch at the virtual CES event, during AMD's show. Thanks to the information from Yuri "1usmus" Bubliy, we found out that AMD is going to start the next-generation Threadripper lineup with a 16 core processor. "1usmus" posted a riddle on Twitter, that is actually a hex code that translates to "GENESIS 16 CORES".

The current generation of Threadripper Castle Peak processors is starting at 24 cores, and going up to 64-core models, so it would be interesting to see where AMD sees the 16-core model in the stack and why it chose to do it. The exact specifications of this processor are unknown, so we have to wait for the announcement event. It is also unknown if the existing TRX40 motherboard will offer support for Zen 3 based Genesis Peak 5000 series Threadripper processors or will AMD introduce a new platform for it.

GIGABYTE Monday released its first custom-design AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, the Gaming OC (model: GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD). As of this writing, the company hasn't yet announced RX 6900 XT based cards under its coveted AORUS Gaming series. The RX 6900 XT Gaming OC features a mostly similar board design to the RX 6800 XT Gaming OC, with a large triple-slot cooling solution, and a custom-design PCB. The cooler features three aluminium fin-stacks skewered by six 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes that make contact with the GPU and memory through a copper base-plate, while secondary base-plates pull heat from the VRM.

What sets the RX 6900 XT Gaming OC board design apart from its RX 6800 XT-based sibling, is a slightly bolstered VRM setup that pulls power from three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, as opposed to two on the RX 6800 XT Gaming OC. As a factory-overclocked card, the RX 6900 XT Gaming OC offers Boost frequencies of up to 2285 MHz (compared to 2250 MHz reference), and an increased power-limit. The card features dual-BIOS, and the default "OC" BIOS features these clock-speeds, while the "Silent" BIOS possibly trades off some power-limit for an aggressive fan-curve. Display outputs include two each of HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a connectors, there's no USB-C. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Intel's Rocket Lake-S platform is scheduled to arrive at the beginning of the following year, which is just a few days away. The Rocket Lake lineup of processors is going to be Intel's 11th generation of Core desktop CPUs and the platform is expected to make a debut with Intel's newest Cypress Cove core design. Thanks to the Geekbench 5 submission, we have the latest information about the performance of the upcoming Intel Core i7-11700K 8C/16T processor. Based on the Cypress Cove core, the CPU is allegedly bringing a double-digit IPC increase, according to Intel.

In the single-core result, the CPU has managed to score 1807 points, while the multi-core score is 10673 points. The CPU ran at the base clock of 3.6 GHz, while the boost frequency is fixed at 5.0 GHz. Compared to the previous, 10th generation, Intel Core i7-10700K which scores 1349 single-core score and 8973 points multi-core score, the Rocket Lake CPU has managed to put out 34% higher single-core and 19% higher multi-core score. When it comes to the comparison to AMD offerings, the highest-end Ryzen 9 5950X is about 7.5% slower in single-core result, and of course much faster in multi-core result thanks to double the number of cores.

Akasa ended the year with the release of the Turing A50, a fanless all-aluminium case with which you can replace the case that comes with the ASUS PN50 mini-PC. The ASUS PN50, if you recall, is a NUC-sized mini-PC that uses 15-Watt AMD Ryzen 4000-series "Renoir" mobile processors. The Akasa Turing A50 is a variation of the original Turing NUC case the company released back in February 2019, but with its innards re-designed for the ASUS PN50 mainboard. On the front side, you get mounts for the board's headset jack, two USB 3.2 ports (from which one is type-C and has DisplayPort passthrough), and the IR receiver. The rear has mounts for the three other display outputs, and a couple more USB ports, and the DC power input. Internally, the case features an SoC cooler base designed to mount onto the "Renoir" SoC, from which a few copper heat-pipes convey heat to the case's aluminium body, which doubles up as a heatsink. Fanless Tech reports that the case should be available from February 2021.

With the launch of AMD's next-generation mobile processors just around the corner, with an expected launch date in the beginning of 2021 at the CES virtual event. The Cezanne lineup, as it is called, is based on AMD's latest Zen 3 core, which brings many IPC improvements, along with better frequency scaling thanks to the refined architecture design. Today, we get to see just how much the new Cezanne generation brings to the table thanks to the GeekBench 5 submission. In the test system, a Ryzen 5 5600H mobile processor was used, found inside of a Xiaomi Mi Notebook, paired with 16 GB of RAM.

As a reminder, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H is a six-core, twelve threaded processor. So you are wondering how the performance looks like. Well, in the single-core test, the Zen 3 enabled core has scored 1372 points, while the multi-threaded performance result equaled 5713 points. If we compare that to the last generation Zen 2 based "Renoir" design, the equivalent Ryzen 5 4600H processor, the new design is about 37% faster in single-threaded, and about 14% faster in multi-threaded workloads. We are waiting for the announcement to see the complete AMD Cezanne lineup and see the designs it will bring.

A German retailer has listed what seems to be the long-coming AMD onslaught on the premium 17.3" laptop market - this one particularly geared for gaming. Retailer ep.de listed an Acer Nitro variant which features AMD's yet-unannounced Zen 3-based Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, a 45 W high-performance part featuring 8 physical and 16 logical cores alongside Vega-class integrated graphics. Besides the high-performance AMD APU, this laptop is one of the first to be configured with a top-of-the-line NVIDIA RTX-30 series graphics card - namely, the RTX 3080, which is very likely to be a Max-Q version for heat and power consumption considerations.

The laptop further features 32 GB of 3,200 MHz DDR4 RAM, and up to 1 TB NVMe SSD disks. There are other variants with lower configurations that seem to offer only 512 GB NVMe and an NVIDIA GTX 1650 graphics card. It seems that for now, the maximum panel resolution is set at 1080p ticking at 144 Hz. The top configuration has been listed for a cool, if not calm and collected, €1950 - a high pricing for premium hardware. Of course, variations with lower-specced hardware will be priced lower. The laptop ships with a 180 W power supply, so expect this one to be a wall hugger - and understandably so. We could be looking at an onslaught of AMD-powered premium laptops for 2021, meaning that at least in that department, it will handily beat 2020. Now if only there were significant stock of these laptops...

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces the XPG SPECTRIX S20G PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The SPECTRIX S20G is an SSD built with form and performance in mind with its distinct x-shaped RBG lighting and excellent read/write speeds.

The XPG SPECTRIX S20G is a gaming SSD through and through and its styling reflects this. It sports a distinctive and prominent x-shaped RGB design that outshines the competition. The RGB light effects can be customized via software. What's more, a hairline-brushed finish gives the SSD a formidable yet elegant look that will intimidate and impress.

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 has brought a rather large controversy around it, with many gamers being disappointed with their purchases. The game has generated massive hype before it was released, and when it dropped, gamers from all around the world found themselves disappointed in the quality of the game itself. Most notably, the game developer, CD Project RED, has made a massive game and discovered many bugs along the way. That buggy release was shipped to customers. However, the game developer is not going to watch it remain like that and has issued a hotfix release 1.05 that is supposed to iron out a few major bugs and bring many improvements.

On PC, the game was underperforming on AMD Ryzen CPUs, and now the patch is applied: "[AMD SMT] Optimized default core/thread utilization for 4-core and 6-core AMD Ryzen (tm) processors. 8-core, 12-core and 16-core processors remain unchanged and behaving as intended. This change was implemented in cooperation with AMD and based on tests on both sides indicating that performance improvement occurs only on CPUs with 6 cores and less." For a full list of gameplay, UI, visual, and quest updates, please check out this hotfix list here. Update is now available on all platforms and you should download it.

Designing a custom processor can be a rewarding thing. You can control your ecosystem surrounding it and get massive rewards in terms of application-specific performance uplift, or lower total cost of ownership. It seems like cloud providers have figured out that at their scale, designing a custom processor can get all of the above with the right amount of effort put into it. If you remember, in 2018, Amazon has announced its Graviton processor based on Arm instruction set architecture. Today, the company has almost 10% of its AWS instances based on the Graviton 1 or 2 processors, which is a massive win for a custom design.

Following Amazon's example, the next company to join the custom server processor race is going to be Microsoft. The Redmond based giant is looking to build a custom lineup of processors that are meant to satisfy Microsoft's most demanding sector - server space. The company's Azure arm is an important part where it has big and increasing revenue. By building a custom processor, it could satisfy the market needs better while delivering higher value. The sources of Bloomberg say that Microsoft is planning to use Arm ISA, and start building independence from the x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Just like we saw with AWS, the industry cloud giants are starting to get silicon-independent and with their scale, they can drive the ecosystem surrounding the new processors forward rapidly. The sources are also speculating that the company is building custom processors for Surface PCs, and with Windows-on-Arm (WoA) project, Microsoft has laid the groundwork in that field as well.

With the launch of the Ryzen 5000 series of processors, AMD has set a goal to put its Zen 3 cores everywhere. Starting from desktop, mobile, and soon server space, AMD is delivering its best products. However, AMD is also preparing to satisfy another segment. The OEMs are in need of processors that are specifically designed for their purposes and their clients, that don't require as many features as the desktop segment does. Usually, that means some overclocking capability is cut off. Today, thanks to the two hardware leakers Patrick Schur and Momomo_US we get to see the first sightings of AMD's upcoming Zen 3 offerings for OEMs.

The first in the lineup is the Ryzen 9 5900 processor. It features 12 cores with 24 threads, running at unknown frequencies for now. All we know is that the CPU is a bit lower-clocked than its 105 W "X" Ryzen 9 5900X variant. Unlike the "X" variant, this CPU is supposed to bring TDP down to 65 Watts. Another differentiator is the cache configuration. The Ryzen 9 5900 features 64 MB of L3 cache and 2 MB of L2 cache. The "X" version for desktops features 64 MB of L3, however, there is 6 MB of L2 cache present there. Next up comes the smaller eight-core variant - Ryzen 7 5800. Featuring 8 cores and 16 threads running at an also unknown frequency. The chip features a TDP of 65 Watts and cache configuration with 32 MB of L3 cache and 4 MB of L2, with the only difference from the Ryzen 7 5800X being the lower frequency.

When AMD introduced its Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology, it was used as one of the key advertising points for its 5000 series of Ryzen processors based on Zen 3 architecture. At the time of launch, it was believed that only the latest generation of Ryzen processors can support it and only AMD GPUs can see a benefit in performance. However, later on, many of the motherboard makers have been playing with BIOS updates and have found a way to enable resizable BAR, the technology used for SAM, on non-AMD platforms. Today, thanks to the Reddit user Merich98 we have found out that ASUS has enabled resizable BAR support via BIOS update.

The user has used BIOS version 2409, released just a few days ago, on ASUS B450-PLUS motherboard. The feat is no extraordinary because it works on a B450 motherboard, it has been supported for a long time, but rather the feat is impressive because it works with the first generation AMD Ryzen 7 1700 processor. This contradicts the theory that SAM only needs 5000 series AMD Ryzen processors to run. However, the gains were not that great. On average, the average frame rate number has increased by a small +0.839%. This could be attributed to some margin of error, so it seems like SAM is not giving much performance uplift in this case.

Alphacool presents the Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N block for the PowerColor Red Devil graphics cards. The blocks offer outstanding cooling performance thanks to the full cover design. The new backplate, which is included with the coolers, also contributes to this. This stabilizes the graphics card and ensures an even contact pressure of the cooler. The cold plates are made of solid nickel-plated copper. The coolers cover all relevant components such as voltage converters and the graphics memory.

AMD's Zen 3 core has seen some major performance uplift, with the first products based on it being the 5000 series desktop processors codenamed "Vermeer". With the efficiency that this new core brings and IPC increase, it is only a matter of time before it scales down to mobile processors. Today, thanks to the findings of TUM APISAK, we get to see some performance results of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 5800H "Cezanne" processors. Benchmarked in the Geekbench 5 test suite, the CPU was spotted running at the base frequency of 3.20 GHz, and boost frequency of 4.44 GHz. This is only an engineering sample so the real product may have different clock speeds.

The CPU managed to score 1475 points in single-threaded results while having 7630 points in a multi-threaded scenario. If you wonder how does it fare to the last generation that it replaces, the Ryzen 7 4800H scored 1194 points for ST, and 7852 points for MT. That means that the new Ryzen 7 5800H CPU has a 23% performance boost for ST workloads, showing the Zen 3 capability. The MT score is not representative as we do not have the final product yet, so we have to wait and see how it performs when reviews arrive.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, is reportedly ending its volume discounts. The company is the maker of the currently smallest manufacturing nodes, like 7 nm and 5 nm. For its biggest customers, TSMC used to offer a discount - when you purchase 10s or 100s of thousands of 300 mm (12-inch) wafers per month, the company will give you a deal of a 3% price decrease per wafer, meaning that the customer is taking a higher margin off a product it sells. Many of the customers, like Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD, were a part of this deal.

Today, thanks to a report from the Taiwanese Central News Agency, TSMC is terminating this type of discount. Now, every customer will pay full price for the wafer, without any exceptions. For now, it is unclear what drove that decision at TSMC's headquarters, but the only thing that we could think is that the demand is too high to keep up with the discounts and the margins are possibly lower. What this means for consumers is a possible price increase in products that are manufactured at TSMC's facilities. The consumer market is already at a drought of new PC components like CPUs and GPUs due to high demand and scalping. This could contribute a bit to the issue, however, we do not expect it to be of any major significance.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces that LunarG has released the Vulkan Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.2.162.0, with full support for the new Vulkan raytracing extensions, including Validation Layers and integration of upgraded GLSL, HLSL and SPIR-V shader tool chains. The Khronos open source Vulkan Samples and Vulkan Guide have been upgraded to illustrate raytracing techniques. Finally, with production drivers shipping from both AMD and NVIDIA, developers are now enabled to easily integrate Vulkan raytracing into their applications.

Khronos released final Vulkan raytracing extensions in November 2020 to seamlessly integrate raytracing functionality alongside Vulkan's rasterization framework, making Vulkan the industry's first open, cross-vendor, cross-platform standard for raytracing acceleration. Vulkan raytracing can be deployed using existing GPU compute or dedicated raytracing cores. The Vulkan SDK now integrates all the components necessary for developers to easily use the new raytracing extensions, such as new shader tool chains, without needing them to be built from multiple repositories, and supports raytracing validation within the SDK validation layers.

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation of EPYC processors codenamed Millan. Being based on the company's latest Zen 3 cores, the new EPYC generation is going to deliver a massive IPC boost, spread across many cores. Models are supposed to range anywhere from 16 to 64 cores, to satisfy all of the demanding server workloads. Today, thanks to the leak from ExecutableFix on Twitter, we have the first benchmark of a system containing two of the 64 core, 128 thread Zen 3 based EPYC Milan processors. Running in the 2P configuration the processors achieved a maximum boost clock of 3.7 GHz, which is very high for a server CPU with that many cores.

The system was able to produce a Cinebench R23 score of insane 87878 points. With that many cores, it is no wonder how it is done, however, we need to look at how does it fare against the competition. For comparison, the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L processor with its 28 cores and 56 threads that boost to 4.0 GHz can score up to 49,876 points. Of course, the scaling to that many cores may not work very well in this example application, so we have to wait and see how it performs in other workloads before jumping to any conclusions. The launch date is unknown for these processors, so we have to wait and report as more information appears.