Back in September 2021, reports about Intel working on something called SDSi or software defined silicon, started to appear. Now, over a year later, the company has finally launched its SDSi products under the Intel On Demand branding. Back then, we speculated about what features Intel would put behind a paywall and although we were somewhat off track, Intel has put some specific "instructions" behind the paywall on the supported Xeon processors. Specifically, some CPUs will have Quick Assist, Dynamic Load Balancer and Data Streaming Accelerator available as an On Demand feature. Additionally, Intel is also putting its Software Guard Extensions and In-Memory Analytics Accelerator behind the same pay wall.

It appears that these features will be offered as-a-service offering from some of Intel's service partners, but there's also a "one-time activation of select CPU accelerators and security features" according to the Intel On Demand website. It's unclear which Xeon SKUs will get Intel On Demand, but according to The Register, it'll be the upcoming Sapphire Rapids based Xeon processors which should be the first parts affected. Intel has listed partners like HP, Lenovo and SuperMicro, among others, that are involved with the Intel On Demand program. It will still be possible to buy next gen Xeon CPUs that are fully feature enabled like today, but it's unclear if the Intel On Demand Xeon SKUs will offer some kind of cost benefits to companies that don't need the additional features that are behind the paywall.

Semiconductor manufacturing is a significant investment that requires long lead times and constant improvement. According to the latest DigiTimes report, the pricing of a 3 nm wafer is expected to reach $20,000, which is a 25% increase in price over a 5 nm wafer. For 7 nm, TSMC managed to produce it for "just" $10,000; for 5 nm, it costs the company to make it for the $16,000 mark. And finally, the latest and greatest technology will get an even higher price point at $20,000, a new record in wafer pricing. Since TSMC has a proven track record of delivering constant innovation, clients are expected to remain on the latest tech purchasing spree.

Companies like Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA are known for securing orders for the latest semiconductor manufacturing node capacities. With a 25% increase in wafer pricing, we can expect the next-generation hardware to be even more expensive. Chip manufacturing price is a significant price-determining factor for many products, so the 3 nm edition of CPUs, GPUs, etc., will get the highest difference.

Based on the latest data and research, TrendForce has further corrected down the projected YoY growth rate of whole server shipments for 2023 to 2.8%. Three factors are behind this revision. First, lead time has started to return to its usual length for most orders related to server components from 3Q23 onward. Seeing this, server OEMs and cloud service providers (CSPs) have also begun to correct the component mismatch issue by lowering demand for items that are in excess while maintaining a constant inventory level for items that are still in tight supply. This development, in turn, has reduced the flow of server orders going to ODMs. Second, the wave of demand that was generated earlier from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is dissipating. Hence, expansion activities have cooled off noticeably for services such as video streaming, e-commerce, etc. Among CSPs, Meta, Google, and ByteDance (TikTok) have lowered their server procurement quantities for next year. Lastly, the global economic outlook has remained fairly negative, so companies across most industry sectors have formulated a more conservative expenditure plan and scaled back IT-related spending for next year.

TP-Link, a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, today held an epochal WiFi 7 product launch to announce its WiFi 7 networking solution.

As the world's first vendor to release a full home and enterprise WiFi 7 product line, TP-Link launched new WiFi 7 routers, Deco products, Omada EAPs, and Aginet products for ISP markets to cover all usage scenarios. Additionally, TP-Link's new HomeShield 3.0 provides more reliable and smarter network solutions.

MediaTek today launched the Pentonic 1000, its latest flagship smart TV system-on-chip (SoC) designed for 4K 120 Hz displays. Pentonic 1000 integrates Wi-Fi 6/6E support, MEMC for smoother video, a powerful AI processor, Dolby Vision IQ with Precision Detail, and 8-screen Intelligent View so users can watch or preview multiple streams of content at once. The chipset also supports the most advanced video codecs and global TV broadcast standards in a single platform.

The MediaTek Pentonic 1000 combines a powerful multi-core CPU, dual-core GPU, dedicated AI processing unit (APU) and video decoding engines into a single chip. The chipset provides resolution support up to 4K at 120 Hz and is capable of VRR up to 4K at 144 Hz for gaming applications. In addition to supporting super-fast frame rates for smoother gaming, it provides a lag-free experience with Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM).

Today, MLCommons published results of its industry AI performance benchmark in which both the 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (code-named Sapphire Rapids) and Habana Gaudi 2 dedicated deep learning accelerator logged impressive training results.


"I'm proud of our team's continued progress since we last submitted leadership results on MLPerf in June. Intel's 4th gen Xeon Scalable processor and Gaudi 2 AI accelerator support a wide array of AI functions and deliver leadership performance for customers who require deep learning training and large-scale workloads." Sandra Rivera, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and AI Group

ASUS, a global technology leader renowned for continuously reimagining today's technologies for tomorrow, today announced ExpertBook B6 Flip (B6602F)—the first Expert-series flippable mobile workstation.

This high-performance mobile workstation with its versatile 360° hinge is designed specifically to help architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) companies running industry-leading software solutions like 3ds Max, MicroStation, and Vectorworks. With immense power packed in a slim and flippable form, ExpertBook B6 Flip handles complex workloads seamlessly across AEC disciplines. It helps users bring design concepts to life through BIM software like ArchiCAD, effortlessly transition from 2D sketches to 3D modelling and printing via tools like Creo and Solidworks, and handle data-intensive applications for deeper insights and better decision-making—delivering the edge that AEC companies need in today's competitive market.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced it is making supercomputing accessible for more enterprises to harness insights, solve problems and innovate faster by delivering its world-leading, energy-efficient supercomputers in a smaller form factor and at a lower price point.

The expanded portfolio includes new HPE Cray EX and HPE Cray XD supercomputers, which are based on HPE's exascale innovation that delivers end-to-end, purpose-built technologies in compute, accelerated compute, interconnect, storage, software, and flexible power and cooling options. The supercomputers provide significant performance and AI-at-scale capabilities to tackle demanding, data-intensive workloads, speed up AI and machine learning initiatives, and accelerate innovation to deliver products and services to market faster.

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.

According to TrendForce, global notebook shipments in 4Q22 are likely to decline to 42.9 million units, down 7.2% QoQ and 32.3% YoY, lower than the same period before the pandemic. In addition, market demand is affected by negative factors such as inventory, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and rising inflation, leading to a downward revision of notebook market shipments in 2022 to 189 million units, a 23% decline YoY, with the proportion of shipments in the first and second half of the year at 53:47, the first top-heavy scenario in the past ten years.

According to research, the structural imbalance between notebook market supply and demand remains unresolved at present, leading this year's notebook shipments to present a downward movement trend quarter by quarter. TrendForce believes, after current inventory pressure gradually returns to a healthy level, Chromebooks may be the first wave of products that will see a recovery in demand by 2Q23 and traditional cyclical growth momentum is expected to return to the market, with shipments set to rebound slightly from 14.44 million in 2022 to 16.2 million units.

Today, at Linley Fall Processor Conference 2022, Andes Technology, a leading provider of high efficiency, low power 32/64-bit RISC-V processor cores and founding premier member of RISC-V International, reveals its top-of-the-line AndesCore AX60 series of power and area efficient out-of-order 64-bit processors. The family of processors are intended to run heavy-duty OS and applications with compute intensive requirements such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), artificial intelligence (AI), augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), datacenter accelerators, 5G infrastructure, high-speed networking, and enterprise storage.

The first member of the AX60 series, the AX65, supports the latest RISC-V architecture extensions such as the scalar cryptography extension and bit manipulation extension. It is a 4-way superscalar with Out-of-Order (OoO) execution in a 13-stage pipeline. It fetches 4 to 8 instructions per cycle guided by highly accurate TAGE branch predictor with loop prediction to ensure fetch efficiency. It then decodes, renames and dispatches up to 4 instructions into 8 execution units, including 4 integer units, 2 full load/store units, and 2 floating-point units. Besides the load/store units, the AX65's aggressive memory subsystem also includes split 2-level TLBs with multiple concurrent table walkers and up to 64 outstanding load/store instructions.

AMD has dropped the price on most of its Ryzen 5000-series CPUs on its official web store and some models have been discounted by as much as US$250 over the MSRP. However, the most interesting discount here might be the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which has been discounted from US$449 to US$329, which makes it a pretty good deal for anyone considering getting what is one of the best CPUs out there for gaming.

Unfortunately, AMD's discounted deal appears to have been very popular and as such the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is currently sold out. It's unclear if AMD will add more stock at the same price point, but what is clear is that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a popular CPU, especially at what now appears to be the right price point. As mentioned, AMD has discounted its entire lineup of Ryzen 5000-series CPUs, so if you've been on the fence whether to upgrade or not, now might be a good time to do so. That said, most online retailers appear to be offering the same CPUs at the same, or at least almost the same price, making the Ryzen 7 5800X3D the only real bargain to be had, if it comes back in stock. Unfortunately, AMD hasn't discounted its CPUs in other regions, so if you're outside of the US, you're not going to see any special deals if you visit the AMD web store.

Intel's upcoming Sapphire Rapids processors have faced multiple delays over the past few years. Built on Intel 7 manufacturing process, the CPU is supposed to bring new advances for Intel's clients and significant performance uplifts. However, TrendForce reports that the mass production of Sapphire Rapids processors will be delayed from Q4 of 2022 to the first half of 2023. The reason for this (yet another) delay is that the Sapphire Rapids MCC die is facing a meager yield on Intel 7 manufacturing technology, estimated to be at only 50-60% at the time of writing. Economically, this die-yielding percentage is not profitable for Intel since many dies are turning out to be defective.

This move will stop many OEMs and cloud service providers (CSPs) from rolling out products based on the Sapphire Rapids design and will have to delay it until next year's mass production. On the contrary, AMD is likely to reap the benefits of Intel's delay, and AMD's x86 server market share will jump from 15% in 2022 to 23% in 2023. Given that AMD ships processors with the highest core counts, many companies will opt for AMD's solutions in their data centers. With more companies being concerned by their TCO measures with rising energy costs, favors fall in the hand of single-socket servers.

ASUS Turkey has jumped the gun and revealed ASUS' upcoming Zenbook 14 laptop, which in itself might not be a big deal, but the UM3402 as the specific model is known as, will apparently be available with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U CPU. As AMD has as yet to unveil such a CPU, it appears that ASUS Turkey has gotten ahead of things. A quick search for the Zenbook 14 SKU in question reveals that the current UM3402 model has a Ryzen 5825U processor.

The remaining specs appear identical to the current model, but this is clearly not a typo, as the CPU SKU is mentioned at multiple points on the product page. Based on AMD's CPU model name "decoder", the Ryzen 7 7730U is based on a Zen 3 or a Zen 3+ core that sits in the 15-28 W TDP range. According to Videocardz, it will be using an AMD Vega based GPU. Beyond that, we don't know any specifics about the CPU, but one thing that stands out and may or may not be correct, is that the Zenbook 14 is only listed as supporting two USB 3.2 10 Gbps USB-C ports, rather than USB4, which seems a bit odd. Then again, this is a lower-tier CPU, so it's possible that this is the reason for lack of USB4 support. The fact that ASUS has moved to an IPS based display, from an OLED display on the current UM3402 SKU, also suggests that this might be a cheaper model in ASUS lineup.

Over the past few weeks, the legal dispute between Arm Ltd. and Qualcomm Inc. has been warming up the eyes of the entire tech community. However, as per the latest court filing, Arm could change its licensing strategy and shift its whole business model into a new direction that would benefit the company directly. Currently, the company provides the intellectual property (IP) that chip makers can use and add to designs mixed with other IPs and custom in-house solutions. That is how the world of electronics design (EDA) works and how many companies operate. However, in the Qualcomm-Arm legal battle, Qualcomm's counterclaim has brought new light about Arm's plans for licensing its hardware designs past 2024.

According to Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, who examined court documents, Arm will reportedly change terms to use its IP where the use of other IP mixed with Arm IP is prohibited. If a chip maker plans to use Arm CPU IP, they must also use Arm's GPU/NPU/ISP/DSP IPs. This would result in devices that utilize every design the UK-based designer has to offer, and other IP makers will have to exclude their designs from the SoC. By doing this, Arm directly stands against deals like the Samsung-AMD deal, where AMD provides RDNA GPU IP and would force Samsung to use Arm's Mali GPU IP instead. This change should take effect in 2025 when every new license agreement has to comply with new rules.

Durabook, the global rugged mobile solutions brand owned by Twinhead International Corporation, announced significant updates to its R11L rugged tablet today. The updated R11L is a competitively-priced 11" fully rugged tablet featuring the latest 12th Gen Intel Pentium Gold processor and architectural innovations to elevate the user experience, making it ideal for those working across industrial sectors, such as warehousing, utilities and logistics, and transportation.

"Durabook devices are designed to meet the demanding needs of workers who rely on rugged technology to streamline workflows and improve productivity in even the harshest environments," said Twinhead CEO Fred Kao. "With its upgrade to Intel's 12th Gen CPU, this latest R11L model is 300% faster than its predecessor, offering more computing power for budget-minded professionals."

IBM Research has published information about the company's latest development of processors for accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI). The latest IBM processor, called the Artificial Intelligence Unit (AIU), embraces the problem of creating an enterprise solution for AI deployment that fits in a PCIe slot. The IBM AIU is a half-height PCIe card with a processor powered by 23 Billion transistors manufactured on a 5 nm node (assuming TSMC's). While IBM has not provided many details initially, we know that the AIU uses an AI processor found in the Telum chip, a core of the IBM Z16 mainframe. The AIU uses Telum's AI engine and scales it up to 32 cores and achieve high efficiency.

The company has highlighted two main paths for enterprise AI adoption. The first one is to embrace lower precision and use approximate computing to drop from 32-bit formats to some odd-bit structures that hold a quarter as much precision and still deliver similar result. The other one is, as IBM touts, that "AI chip should be laid out to streamline AI workflows. Because most AI calculations involve matrix and vector multiplication, our chip architecture features a simpler layout than a multi-purpose CPU. The IBM AIU has also been designed to send data directly from one compute engine to the next, creating enormous energy savings."

Meta today announced its next-generation AI platform, Grand Teton, including NVIDIA's collaboration on design. Compared to the company's previous generation Zion EX platform, the Grand Teton system packs in more memory, network bandwidth and compute capacity, said Alexis Bjorlin, vice president of Meta Infrastructure Hardware, at the 2022 OCP Global Summit, an Open Compute Project conference.

AI models are used extensively across Facebook for services such as news feed, content recommendations and hate-speech identification, among many other applications. "We're excited to showcase this newest family member here at the summit," Bjorlin said in prepared remarks for the conference, adding her thanks to NVIDIA for its deep collaboration on Grand Teton's design and continued support of OCP.

According to the latest TrendForce research, pandemic-induced materials shortages abated in the second half of this year and the supply and delivery of short-term materials has recovered significantly. However, assuming materials supply is secure and demand can be met, the annual growth rate of server shipments in 2023 is estimated to be only 3.7%, which is lower than 5.1% in 2022.

TrendForce indicates that this growth slowdown is due to three factors. First, once material mismatch issues had eased, buyers began adjusting previously placed purchase order overruns. Thus, ODM orders also decreased but this will not affect the 2022 shipment volume of whole servers for the time being. Second, due to the impact of rising inflation and weakness in the overall economy, corporate capital investment may trend more conservative and IT-related investment will emphasize flexibility, such as the replacement of certain server terminals with cloud services. Third, geopolitical changes will drive the continuing emergence of demand for small-scale data centers and previous construction of hyperscale data centers will slow. The recent ban on military/HPC servers issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on October 7 has a very low market share in terms of its application category, so the impact on the overall server market is limited at present. However, if the scope of the ban is expanded further in the future, it will herald a more significant slowdown risk for China's server shipment momentum in 2023.

Intel has been busy briefing its customers about its 13th gen Core processors and courtesy of a reader over at Videocardz, we now know a little bit more about Intel's positioning of its Core i9-13900K processor. In the slides, Intel is pitching its upcoming flagship CPU against AMD's current flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X, which is hardly surprising, since it'll be its main competitor. Intel put the two CPUs through 12 game benchmarks using an unknown graphics card and on average, the Core i9-13900K leads by around 11 percent. As always, take the numbers with a sprinkle of salt, especially as we don't know the system configuration, or even what resolution was used, but we'd hazard a guess that it's 1080p or lower. Intel only allowed for one game win for AMD, with Intel being as much as 22 percent ahead in The Riftbreaker.

Intel also claims to lead in content creation, but this doesn't appear to be quite true, as AMD either comes out on top or ties with Intel in all of the Pugetbench tests. Intel is somewhat ahead in AutoCAD Catalyst and a healthy 16 percent ahead in Autodesk Revit, but as we know, the type of scene being rendered can have a huge impact in these types of tests, as we've seen from both camps. On the plus side, here it appears that content creators shouldn't have to worry too much about which CPU is in their system, as both should be performing exceptionally well. Intel is set to launch its 13th gen Core processors tomorrow, so it won't be long until we'll have some third party benchmarks comparing the two CPUs.

Apple today announced the next generation of Apple TV 4K—more powerful, entertaining, and affordable than ever, and offering impressive cinematic quality. Driven by the A15 Bionic chip that delivers faster performance and more fluid gameplay, the new Apple TV 4K features endless entertainment options for everyone to enjoy on the biggest screen in the home. HDR10+ support joins Dolby Vision on Apple TV 4K, so users can watch their favorite movies and TV shows in the best quality possible across more TVs. Running tvOS, the powerful and intuitive OS for the living room, and featuring the popular Siri Remote, Apple TV 4K simplifies the way users discover and enjoy their favorite content. Its seamless integration with other Apple devices and services magically transforms the living room in different ways for the entire family, while also adding convenience as a smart home hub.

The new Apple TV 4K is available in two configurations: Apple TV 4K (Wi-Fi), which offers 64 GB of storage; and Apple TV 4K (Wi-Fi + Ethernet), which offers support for Gigabit Ethernet for fast networking and streaming, Thread mesh networking protocol to connect even more smart home accessories, and twice the storage for apps and games (128 GB). Customers can order the new Apple TV 4K with Siri Remote today at a new starting price of $129, with availability beginning Friday, November 4.

In December of 2021, we covered the appearance of Russia's home-grown Baikal-S processor, which has 48 cores based on Arm Cortex-A75 cores. Today, thanks to the famous chip photographer Fritzchens Fritz, we have the first die shows that show us exactly how Baikal-S SoC is structured internally and what it is made up of. Manufactured on TSMC's 16 nm process, the Baikal-S BE-S1000 design features 48 Arm Cortex-A75 cores running at a 2.0 GHz base and a 2.5 GHz boost frequency. With a TDP of 120 Watts, the design seems efficient, and the Russian company promises performance comparable to Intel Skylake Xeons or Zen1-based AMD EPYC processors. It also uses a home-grown RISC-V core for management and controlling secure boot sequences.

Below, you can see the die shots taken by Fritzchens Fritz and annotated details by Twitter user Locuza that marked the entire SoC. Besides the core clusters, we see that a slum of cache connects everything, with six 72-bit DDR4-3200 PHYs and memory controllers surrounding everything. This model features a pretty good selection of I/O for a server CPU, as there are five PCIe 4.0 x16 (4x4) interfaces, with three supporting CCIX 1.0. You can check out more pictures below and see the annotations for yourself.

Today, we shared our vision for the next era of the Windows PC, where the PC and the cloud intersect and tap into innovative AI technology that unlocks new experiences. So that each of us can participate, be seen, heard and express our creativity.

For nearly 40 years, the Windows PC has held a place at the center of our lives. It's contributed to new levels of productivity, kept us all connected, and unlocked our creativity and potential through innovations we couldn't have imagined when we first began this journey. Just think about how far we've come in how people interact with it. From the very first text-based keyboard input to the precision of point and click with the mouse, up to today, where touch, voice, pen and gestures all help people use the Windows PC more naturally and intuitively. From its inception, Surface has been a catalyst for that change.

When AMD announced that the company would deliver the world's fastest supercomputer, Frontier, the company also took a massive task to provide a machine capable of producing one ExaFLOP of total sustained ability to perform computing tasks. While the system is finally up and running, making a machine of that size run properly is challenging. In the world of High-Performance Computing, getting the hardware is only a portion of running the HPC center. In an interview with InsideHPC, Justin Whitt, program director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), provided insight into what it is like to run the world's fastest supercomputer and what kinds of issues it is facing.

The Frontier system is powered by AMD EPYC 7A53s "Trento" 64-core 2.0 GHz CPUs and Instinct MI250X GPUs. Interconnecting everything is the HPE (Cray) Slingshot 64-port switch, which is responsible for sending data in and out of compute blades. The recent interview points out a rather interesting finding: exactly AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs and Slingshot interconnect cause hardware troubles for the Frontier. "It's mostly issues of scale coupled with the breadth of applications, so the issues we're encountering mostly relate to running very, very large jobs using the entire system … and getting all the hardware to work in concert to do that," says Justin Whitt. In addition to the limits of scale "The issues span lots of different categories, the GPUs are just one. A lot of challenges are focused around those, but that's not the majority of the challenges that we're seeing," he said. "It's a pretty good spread among common culprits of parts failures that have been a big part of it. I don't think that at this point that we have a lot of concern over the AMD products. We're dealing with a lot of the early-life kind of things we've seen with other machines that we've deployed, so it's nothing too out of the ordinary."