According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an industry analyst known for making accurate predictions about Apple, we have some new information regarding Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. As Kuo notes, Intel's major Cloud Service Provider (CSP) client, Microsoft, has notified the supply chain that the company is cutting orders of Sapphire Rapids Xeons by 50-70% in the second half of 2023. Interestingly, Intel's supply chain has notified the company to cut chip orders by around 50% amidst weak server demand. This comes straight after Intel's plans to start shipping Sapphire Rapids processors in the second quarter of 2023 and deliver the highly anticipated lineup to customers.

Additionally, Kuo has stated that Intel isn't only competing for clients with AMD but also with Arm-based CPUs. Microsoft also plans to start buying Arm-based server processors made by Ampere Computing in the first half of 2024. This will reduce Microsoft's dependence on x86 architecture and induce higher competition in the market, especially if other CSPs follow.

The Financial Times this weekend has published details about an interesting development project that is currently in-the-works at British semiconductor specialist firm Arm Ltd. The article states that several executives in the industry have divulged (anonymously) that Arm's engineering team is designing a proprietary chip - these insider sources opine that this new creation could be one of the company's most advanced undertakings. The SoftBank-owned chipmaker is having a bumper year in terms of financial success and has invested in its future - it is speculated that their own semiconductor design will be showcased as a prototype product to potential new clients - with the main goal being to drum up more business and growth. Parent group SoftBank is likely pushing for maximum profit margins as it prepares Arm for an initial public offering (IPO) this year.

Arm's modus operandi involves partnering up with other chip manufacturers in order to license out its semiconductor intellectual properties. In turn these partners are expected to deal with the overall design and manufacturing processes of chips (plus sales of). Arm has teamed up with foundries TSMC and Samsung in the past to create prototypes for software testing purposes, but not much has been heard about those proofing projects in the following years. In an unusual turn (from certain industry perspectives) from its traditional working methodologies, it seems that Arm is embracing a different approach by producing its own compelling designs, with the hope of demonstrating greater potential to customers. FT's sources have provided evidence that Arm has expanded its operations and that a newly formed "solutions engineering" team is focused on prototyping new silicon for usage in mobile hardware and related devices.

Early details of MediaTek's next generation mobile chipset have emerged this week, courtesy of renowned leaker Digital Chat Station via their blog on Weibo. The successor to MediaTek's current flagship Dimensity 9200 mobile chipset will likely be called "Dimensity 9300" - a very imaginative bump up in numbering - with smartphone brand Vivo involved as a collaborator. The tipster thinks that the fabless semiconductor company has contracted with TSMC for fabrication of the Dimensity 9300 chipset - and the foundry's N4P process has been selected by MediaTek, which could provide a bump in generational performance when compared to the older 4 nm and 5 nm standards used for past Dimensity SoC ranges. It should be noted that the current generation Dimensity 9200 chipset is presently manufactured via TSMC's N4P process.

MediaTek is seeking to turnaround its fortunes in the area of flagship mobile chipsets - industry watchdogs have cited a limited uptake of the Taiwanese company's Dimensity 9200 SoC as a motivating factor in the creation of a very powerful successor. Digital Chat Station suggests that the upcoming 9300 model will pack enough of a hardware punch to rival Qualcomm's forthcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC - both chipsets are touted to release within the same time period of late 2023. According to previous speculation, Qualcomm has also contracted with TSMC's factory to pump out the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 via the N4P (4 nm) process.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the all-new ROG Phone 7 series of gaming smartphones at its For Those Who Dare virtual launch event. The ROG Phone 7 series includes the ROG Phone 7 and ROG Phone 7 Ultimate models and is the latest step in the high-performance evolution of the world's greatest gaming phone. This futuristically-styled phone—which sports a new two-tone design—combines the game-winning power of the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform with the advanced GameCool 7 thermal system and special ROG tuning to deliver a truly breathtaking mobile gaming experience—and impressively low power consumption. The key to this power efficiency is the revolutionary new rapid-cycle vapor chamber design, which increases heat dissipation efficiency by up to 168%, allowing the ROG Phone 7 series to run games at full speed while maintaining low temperatures.

To make ROG Phone 7 a powerful and portable theater, we've increased the effective volume of the ROG Phone 7 series' speakers by 50% and tuned the system in cooperation with audio specialists Dirac. ROG Phone 7 series now delivers amazing 2.1-channel sound when the new AeroActive Cooler 7 accessory—which houses a powerful subwoofer—is attached.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Arm today announced a multigeneration agreement to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chips (SoCs) on the Intel 18A process. The collaboration will focus on mobile SoC designs first, but allow for potential design expansion into automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), data center, aerospace and government applications. Arm customers designing their next-generation mobile SoCs will benefit from leading-edge Intel 18A process technology, which delivers new breakthrough transistor technologies for improved power and performance, and from IFS's robust manufacturing footprint that includes U.S.- and EU-based capacity.

"There is growing demand for computing power driven by the digitization of everything, but until now fabless customers have had limited options for designing around the most advanced mobile technology," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation. "Intel's collaboration with Arm will expand the market opportunity for IFS and open up new options and approaches for any fabless company that wants to access best-in-class CPU IP and the power of an open system foundry with leading-edge process technology."

Personal computers (PCs) based on Arm architecture will grow in popularity and their market share will almost double from 14% now to 25% by 2027, according to Counterpoint Research's latest projections. The ability of Arm-based hardware to run Mac OS has allowed Apple to capture 90% of the Arm-based notebook computer market. However, the full support of Windows and Office365 and the speed of native Arm-based app adoption are also critical factors in determining the Arm SoC penetration rate in PCs. Once these factors are addressed, Arm-based PCs will become a viable option for both daily users and businesses.

As more existing PC OEMs/ODMs and smartphone manufacturers enter the market, they will bring their expertise in Arm-based hardware and software, which will further boost the popularity of Arm-based PCs. The availability of more native Arm-based apps will also increase user comfort and familiarity with the platform. Overall, the trend towards Arm-based PCs is expected to continue and their market share will likely increase significantly in the coming years.

Amid the push for technology independence, Chinese companies are pushing out more products to satisfy the need for the rapidly soaring demand for domestic data processing silicon. Today, we have information that Chinese Loongson has launched a 3D5000 CPU with as many as 32 cores. Utilizing chiplet technology, the 3D5000 represents a combination of two 16-core 3C5000 processors based on LA464 cores, based on LoongArch ISA that follows the combination of RISC and MIPS ISA design principles. The new chip features 64 MB of L3 cache, supports eight-channel DDR4-3200 ECC memory achieving 50 GB/s, and has five HyperTransport (HT) 3.0 interfaces. The TDP configuration of the chip is officially 300 Watts; however, normal operation is usually at around 150 Watts, with LA464 cores running at 2 GHz.

Scaling of the new chip goes beyond the chiplet, and pours over into system, as 3D5000 supports 2P and 4P configurations, where a single motherboard can become a system of up to 128 cores. To connect them, Loongson uses a 7A2000 bridge chip that is reportedly 400% faster than the previous solution, although we have no information about the last chip bridge. Based on the LGA-4129 package, the chip size is 75.4x58.5×6.5 mm. Regarding performance, Loongson compares it to the average Arm chip that goes into smartphones and claims that its designs are up to four times faster. In SPEC2006, performance reaches 425 points, while maintaining a single TeraFLOP at dual-precision 64-bit format. On the other hand, the processor was built for security, as the chip has a custom hardware-baked security to prevent Spectre and Meltdown, has an on-package Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and has a secret China-made security algorithm with an embedded custom security module that does encryption and decryption at 5 Gbps.

Softbank, the owner of Arm Ltd., is preparing everything it can to ensure a successful initial public offering (IPO) of Arm. However, ahead of the IPO, we have more information about Arm's plans to change its licensing and pricing structures to collect more royalties and ensure higher cash flow for future investors. Currently, Arm licenses technology in the form of intellectual property (IP), usually in different flavors of Cortex-A CPU cores that go inside processors for phones and laptops. Chipmakers that use the IP have additional expenses such as Arm ISA license fee and per-chip royalty, which is based on the chip's average selling price.

However, according to Financial Times, we have a new pricing structure that changes how Arm bills its partners and customers. From now on, Arm will grant licenses to chipmakers and ask them to only ship to device makers with an agreement with Arm. Additionally, these device makers now pay per-device royalty based on the device's average selling price (ASP). This ensures that Arm's fee applies to the higher margin product, which means that ultimately Arm will collect more cash flow from its customers and partners. Currently, the old model charges around 1-2 percents per chip in each smartphone, considering the ASP of smartphone chips to be $40 for Qualcomm, $17 for MediaTek, and $6 for Unisoc. However, taking the ASP of a mobile phone at $335, as recorded in 2022, the fee would be much higher. People familiar with the matter noted that Arm will apply this pricing structure as early as 2024. Apple and Samsung are not impacted by this change, as both companies enjoy their own agreements with Arm.

Kernel information for a chipset code-named 'Quadra' has been leaked by Home IT. It appears that this SoC is under development at Samsung Electronics, and could be featured in the company's next generation flagship smartphone range. The recently released Galaxy S23 smartphone series is powered by Qualcomm's cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, which ended up being a fine choice for the end user. This was not an ideal partnership for the semiconductor giant, considering its constant push to promote internally developed hardware.

Industry experts have praised Samsung for not integrating an Exynos processor into this generation of devices, including regional model variations, but that has not stopped the company's persistent development cycle of proprietary mobile CPUs. Rumors point to a collaboration with Google, and the Exynos 2300 SoC looks to form the basis of the latter's next generation Tensor G3 chipset. The leak reveals that the standard 2300 has been designed as a 1+4+4 core configuration, comprised of four performance cores, four efficiency cores, and one super core.

MediaTek, a fabless semiconductor company powering two billion devices a year, and Kontron, a leading global provider of IoT and Embedded Computer Technology (ECT), today announced that Kontron is integrating MediaTek's Genio 1200 and Genio 700 chipsets into its new modules for IoT applications.

MediaTek Genio is a complete platform stack for IoT, offering brands powerful and efficient chipsets, open platform software development kits (SDK), and a developer portal with comprehensive resources and tools. Genio chipsets are ideal for a wide variety of commercial, industrial, and retail applications that require highly responsive processing, advanced multimedia support, and multi-tasking.

NETGEAR, Inc., the leading provider of award-winning connected products designed to simplify and improve people's lives, today launched the first WiFi 7 router with its new addition to the award-winning Nighthawk line. Built by an experienced team with 25+ years of pioneering WiFi expertise, the NETGEAR Nighthawk RS700 Router is spearheading the WiFi 7 revolution. Packed with unprecedented power, the all-new RS700 delivers up to 19 Gbps of blazing-fast WiFi, more than doubling the speed of previous generations.

The WiFi requirements of modern, hyper-connected homes continue to push the boundaries of today's WiFi standards. With the rise of faster multi-gig internet speeds now available to more and more households, the growing number of connected devices per family and the ever-increasing growth of bandwidth hungry 4K/8K video streaming, HD Zoom calls, hybrid collaborative graphics-intensive work, highly interactive real-time gaming and AR/VR applications and experiences, WiFi continues to evolve to support faster speeds, lower latency and increased capacity. While WiFi 6E opened the 6 GHz band as a superhighway for the latest, fastest devices, WiFi 7 makes good on that promise by unleashing unprecedented speeds and performance. Maximizing that power, NETGEAR's RS700 router, powered by Broadcom's BCM6726/3 WiFi 7 system on a chip (SOC), achieves speeds up to 19 Gbps. The tri-band WiFi 7 router, from the creators of tri-band technology, enables a dramatic decrease in latency for real-time responsiveness for next-generation AR/VR gaming or smooth UHD Zoom calls and 8K streaming for multiple simultaneous users.

Arm Holdings, the Cambridge, UK-based chip designer, is seeking public listing solely in the USA. This major decision has struck a blow to the UK Government's efforts to encourage a dual public listing. Multiple Prime Ministers and high level staff have been in regular meetings with the Arm Executive Team. The current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met with Arm's CEO Rene Haas and SoftBank's founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son back in January of this year. It was reported that the meeting was a last ditch attempt to secure an application for UK listing from both companies. Arm Senior Team members have also been in talks with representatives from the London Stock Exchange.

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced that it will present the first live demonstrations of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) implementations on an MCU based on the Arm Cortex -M85 processor. The demos will show the performance uplift in AI/ML applications made possible by the new Cortex-M85 core and Arm's Helium technology. They will take place in the Renesas stand - Hall 1, Stand 234 (1-234) at the embedded world 2023 Exhibition and Conference in Nuremburg, Germany from March 14-16.

At embedded world in 2022, Renesas became the first company to demonstrate working silicon based on the Arm Cortex-M85 processor. This year, Renesas is extending its leadership by showcasing the features of the new processor in demanding AI use cases. The first demonstration showcases a people detection application developed in collaboration with Plumerai, a leader in Vision AI, that identifies and tracks persons in the camera frame in varying lighting and environmental conditions. The compact and efficient TinyML models used in this application lead to low-cost and lower power AI solutions for a wide range of IoT implementations. The second demo showcases a motor control predictive maintenance use case with an AI-based unbalanced load detection application using Tensorflow Lite for Microcontrollers with CMSIS-NN.

Once upon a time, the data center market represented a duopoly of x86-64 makers AMD and Intel. However, in recent years companies started developing custom Arm-based processors to handle workloads as complex within smaller power envelopes and doing it more efficiently. According to Counterpoint Research firm, we have the latest data highlighting a significant new player called Ampere Computing in the data center world. With the latest data center revenue share report, we get to see Intel/AMD x86-64 and AWS/Ampere Arm CPU revenue. For the first time, we see that a 3rd party company, Ampere Computing, managed to capture as much as 1.54% market revenue share of the entire data center market in 2022. Thanks to having CPUs in off-the-shelf servers from OEMs, enterprises and cloud providers are able to easily integrate Ampere Altra processors.

Intel, still the most significant player, saw a 70.77% share of the overall revenue; however, that comes as a drop from 2021 data which stated an 80.71% revenue share in the data center market. This represents a 16% year-over-year decline. This reduction is not due to the low demand for server processors, as the global data center CPU market's revenue registered only a 4.4% YoY decline in 2022, but due to the high demand for AMD EPYC solutions, where team red managed to grab 19.84% of the revenue from 2022. This is a 62% YoY growth from last year's 11.74% revenue share. Slowly but surely, AMD is eating Intel's lunch. Another revenue source comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which the company filled with its Graviton CPU offerings based on Arm ISA. AWS Graviton CPUs accounted for 3.16% of the market revenue, up 74% from 1.82% in 2021.

AMD and Arm have been gaining up on Intel in the server CPU market in the past few years, and the margins of the share that AMD had won over were especially large in 2022 as datacenter operators and server brands began finding that solutions from the number-2 maker growing superior to those of the long-time leader, according to Frank Kung, DIGITIMES Research analyst focusing primarily on the server industry, who anticipates that AMD's share will well stand above 20% in 2023, while Arm will get 8%.

Prices are one of the three major drivers that resulted in datacenter operators and server brands switching to AMD. Comparing server CPUs from AMD and Intel with similar numbers of cores, clockspeed, and hardware specifications, the price tags of most of the former's products are at least 30% cheaper than the latter's, and the differences could go as high as over 40%, Kung said.

Geekbench 6, the latest version of the best cross-platform benchmark, has arrived and is loaded with new and improved workloads to measure the performance of your CPUs and GPUs. Geekbench 6 is available for download today for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

A lot has changed in the tech world in the past three years. Smartphone cameras take bigger and better pictures. Artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, has become ubiquitous in general and mobile applications. The number of cores in computers and mobile devices continues to rise. And how we interact with our computers and mobile devices has changed dramatically - who would have guessed that video conferencing would suddenly surge in 2020?

The global PC market has been experiencing a demand downtrend after the cooling down of COVID-19 in 2022. The market saw its shipments decline 15% YoY in 2022 and is expected to see another high single-digit decline in 2023, according to Counterpoint Research's data. However, among all the PC sub-sectors, Arm-based laptops are expected to show a comparatively resilient demand throughout the coming quarters thanks to Apple's success with the MacBook series, increasing ecosystem support and vanishing performance gap with x86 offerings.

Ahead of CES 2023, MediaTek today announced the latest chipset in the Genio platform for IoT devices, the octa-core Genio 700 designed for smart home, smart retail, and industrial IoT products. The new chipset will be featured as part of a demo at MediaTek's booth at CES 2023. With a focus on power efficiency, the MediaTek Genio 700 is a N6 (6 nm) IoT chipset that boasts two ARM A78 cores running at 2.2 GHz and six ARM A55 cores at 2.0 GHz while providing 4.0 TOPs AI accelerator. It comes with support for FHD 60p + 4K 60p display, as well as an ISP for better images.

"When we launched the Genio family of IoT products last year, we designed the platform with the scalability and development support that brands need, paving the way for opportunities to continue expanding," said Richard Lu, Vice President of MediaTek IoT Business Unit. "With a focus on industrial and smart home products, the Genio 700 is a perfect natural addition to the lineup to ensure we can provide the widest range of support possible to our customers."

The United States has recently imposed several sanctions on technology exports to China. These sanctions are designed to restrict the transfer of specific technologies and sensitive information to Chinese entities, particularly those with ties to the Chinese military or government. The primary motivation behind these sanctions is to protect American national security interests, as well as to protect American companies from unfair competition. According to Financial Times, we have information that Chinese tech Giant, Alibaba, can not access Arm licenses for Neoverse V1 technology. Generally, the technology group where Neoverse V-series falls in is called Wassenaar -- multilateral export control regime (MECR) with 42 participating states. This agreement prohibits the sale of technology that could be used for military purposes.

The US argues that Arm's Neoverse V1 IP is not only a product from UK's Arm but a design made in the US as well, meaning that it is a US technology. Since Alibaba's T-Head group responsible for designing processors that go into Alibaba's cloud services can not use Neoverse V1, it has to look for alternative solutions. The Neoverse V1 and V2 can not be sold in China, while Neoverse N1 and N2 can. Alibaba's T-Head engineer argued, "We feel that the western world sees us as second-class people. They won't sell good products to us even if we have money."

MediaTek today announced the Dimensity 8200, the company's newest chipset for premium 5G smartphones. Smartphones powered by the Dimensity 8200 will offer flagship level experiences - including connectivity, gaming, multimedia, displays and imaging - at a more accessible price point. Built on the 4 nm-class process, the new chipset delivers unparalleled power efficiency. It also integrates an octa-core CPU with four Arm Cortex-A78 cores operating at up to 3.1 GHz, along with a powerful Mali-G610 graphics engine, for better performance across applications.

To enhance gaming performance, the chipset takes advantage of MediaTek's HyperEngine 6.0 gaming technologies so users can enjoy smooth high framerate gameplay without suffering connection drops, FPS jitter, or gameplay hiccups. MediaTek's Intelligent Display Sync 2.0 technology intelligently adjusts the display refresh rate according to the game frame rate detected, which helps provide smoother viewing experiences.

Arm today announced the appointment of new Board members Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of XCOM Labs and former CEO and executive chairman of Qualcomm Inc., and Rosemary Schooler, former corporate vice president and general manager of Data Center and AI Sales for Intel. Both bring significant public company experience spanning technology development, business strategy and corporate governance to Arm as it continues to prepare for a public listing.

"The unique insights and depth of experience that Paul and Rosemary bring will help us expand and diversify our Board while providing enormous value to Arm at such a pivotal moment in our journey," said Rene Haas, CEO, Arm.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division is extensively developing custom Arm-based CPU solutions to suit its enterprise clients and is releasing new iterations of the Graviton series. Today, during the company re:Invent week, we are getting a new CPU custom-tailored to high-performance computing (HPC) workloads called Graviton3E. Given that HPC workloads require higher bandwidth, wider datapaths, and data types span in multiple dimensions, AWS redesigned the Graviton3 processor and enhanced it with new vector processing capabilities with a new name—Graviton3E. This CPU is promised to offer up to 35% higher performance in workloads that depend on heavy vector processing.

With the rising popularity of HPC in the cloud, AWS sees a significant market opportunity and is trying to capture it. Available in the AWS EC2 instance types, this chip will be available with up to 64 vCPU cores and 128 GiB of memory. The supported EC2 tiers that will offer this enhanced chip are C7gn and Hpc7g instances that provide 200 Gbps of dedicated network bandwidth that is optimized for traffic between instances in the same VPC. In addition, Intel-based R7iz instances are available for HPC users in the cloud, now powered by 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors codenamed Sapphire Rapids.

MediaTek today announced its new Kompanio chipsets for Chromebooks: the Kompanio 520 and Kompanio 528. With upgraded computing performance and battery life for entry level Chromebooks, the newest Kompanio chipsets provide a seamless experience so consumers can browse, cloud game, stream and use Google Play apps while enjoying all-day battery life.

"Enhanced power efficiency, speedy performance and reliable connectivity are at the core of a great user experience, and that's exactly what MediaTek's new Kompanio chipsets deliver," said Adam King, Vice President and General Manager, Client Computing Business Unit at MediaTek. "As the No. 1 provider of Arm-based Chromebooks, MediaTek makes the latest AI, connectivity, display and imaging features accessible at every price point."

MediaTek today launched the Dimensity 9200, its latest 5G chipset powering the next era of flagship smartphones. Boasting extreme performance and intelligent power efficiency, the new SoC brings immersive all-day gaming experiences, ultra-sharp image capturing and support for both mmWave 5G and sub-6 GHz connectivity to consumers around the globe.

"MediaTek's Dimensity 9200 combines ultimate performance with significant power savings, extending battery life and keeping smartphones cool," said JC Hsu, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of MediaTek's wireless communications business unit at MediaTek. "With notably brighter image capturing and improved gaming speeds, along with the latest display enhancements, the Dimensity 9200 will bring new possibilities for next-gen smartphones that come in a variety of stylish and foldable form factors."

When Alibaba announced the development of an Armv9-based processor, it claimed to be some of the most performant designs that the company has laid its hand on, claiming to win the SPEC 2017 CPU benchmark and place itself in the top spot for the world record. Reportedly, the Yitian 710 CPU was able to score an integer score of 440 points in SPECint2017, which is comparable to a dual-socket Xeon Platinum 8362 system. The SPEC 2017 benchmark represents an industry-standard suite of tests that have a combination of 43 different test scenarios that measure the performance of a specific processor. Alibaba's Yitian 710 was claiming to possess the performance target where it is the fastest CPU on the leaderboard, with one major flaw. The Chinese company hasn't mentioned this processor's lack of general availability, making its scoreboard efforts invalid.

As Alibaba plans to use its design almost exclusively in-house and maybe offer it to a few partners, the processor is not sold commercially. This is apparently a requirement for the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark to be completed, so the SPEC committee has overruled the result to make it invalid, stating the following:

SPEC CommitteeSPEC has determined that this result does not comply with the SPEC OSG Guidelines for General Availability and the SPEC CPU 2017 run and reporting rules. Specifically, the submitter has notified SPEC that General Availability requirements were not met.