Intel's next-generation Xeon processors code-named Sapphire Rapids are on track to hit the market this year. These new processors are supposed to bring a wide array of new and improved features and a chance for Intel to show off its 10 nm SuperFin manufacturing process in the server market. Thanks to the Twitter user YuuKi_AnS, we have some of the first tests run in AIDA64 and Cinebench R15 benchmark suites. Yuuki managed to get ahold of DDR5-enabled Sapphire Rapids Xeon with 48 cores and 96 threads, equipped with a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and boost speeds of 3.3 GHz. The processor tested was an engineering sample with a Q-SPEC designation of "QYFQ" and made for Intel Socket E (LGA-4677). This CPU sample was locked at 270 Watt TDP.

Below, you can see the performance results of this processor, tested in the AIDA64 cache and memory benchmark and Cinebench R15 bench test. There is a comparison between AMD's Milan-X and Xeon Platinum 8380, so the numbers are more in check of what you can expect from the final product.

Intel's Alder Lake processors have two types of cores present, with two distinct sets of features and capabilities enabled. For example, smaller E-cores don't support the execution of AVX-512 instructions, while the bigger P-cores have support for AVX-512 instructions. So Intel has decided to remove support for it altogether not to create software errors and run into issues with executing AVX-512 code on Alder Lake processors. This happened just months before the launch of Alder Lake, making us see some initial motherboard BIOSes come with AVX-512 enabled from the box. Later on, all motherboard makers pulled the plug on it, and it is a rare sight to see support for it.

However, it seems like MSI is unhappy with the lack of AVX-512, and the company is reenabling partial support for it. According to Xaver Amberger, editor at Igor's Lab, MSI reintroduces selecting microcode version with its MEG Z690 Unify-X motherboard. There is an option for AVX-512 enablement in the menu, and it is indeed a functional one. With BIOS A22, MSI enabled AVX-512 instruction execution, and there are benchmarks to prove it works. This shows an advantage of 512-bit wide execution units of AVX-512 over something like AVX2, which offers only 256-bit wide execution units. In applications such as Y-Cruncher, AVX-512 enabled the CPU to reach higher performance targets while consuming less power.

Remember that €1.06 billion antitrust lawsuit that Intel was slapped with by the European Commission back in 2009? It's ok if you don't, but it involved Intel being accused of "market malpractice, by influencing computer hardware manufacturers to postpone and/or cancel launches of their products that use CPUs made by its rival AMD" based on our own reporting from 2009. As these thing goes, Intel appealed to a higher court and that higher court handed back the case to the lower court who has now withdrawn the fine and the judges went as far as to say "The (European) Commission's analysis is incomplete and does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having, or likely to have, anticompetitive effects,".

The European Commission has said it will study the new judgement and will consider its next steps, but it seems unlikely that they'll be able to bring this case to court again, without some additional proof of wrongdoing. The end result of this is also likely to make it tougher to bring cases like to court in the future for the European Commission, as they will have to provide more detailed cases where they prove that things like MDF and rebates to their customers cause real, anti-competitive damages to other companies in the same line of business, in this case AMD. The case can still be appealed to the CJEU, so this 13 year saga might still not be over.

Tachyum today announced that it was selected by the Slovak Republic to participate in the latest submission for the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI), to develop Prodigy 2 for HPC/AI. Prodigy 2 for HPC/AI will enable 1 AI Zettaflop and more than 10 DP Exaflops computers to support superhuman brain-scale computing by 2024 for under €1B. As part of this selection, Tachyum could receive a 49 million Euro grant to accelerate a second-generation of its Tachyum Prodigy processor for HPC/AI in a 3-nanometer process.

The IPCEI program can make a very important contribution to sustainable economic growth, jobs, competitiveness and resilience for industry and the economy in the European Union. IPCEI will strengthen the EU's open strategic autonomy by enabling breakthrough innovation and infrastructure projects through cross-border cooperation and with positive spill-over effects on the internal market and society as a whole.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce the achievement of a new overclocking world record for fastest memory frequency at DDR5-8888 CL88-88-88-88, in cooperation with ASUS. This amazing frequency speed was achieved by the extreme overclocker "lupin_no_musume" with G.SKILL Trident Z5 DDR5 memory, ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX motherboard, and Intel Core i9-12900K processor. To see the moment this amazing overclocking world record was set, please click the following video link: https://youtu.be/OgQFbUOs6i8

DDR5-8888 CL88-88-88-88 - Pushing the Speed to the Limit
At the dawn of the DDR5 era, G.SKILL and ASUS have been constantly exploring the memory speed limitations of the latest Intel Z690 platform. Surpassing the previous DDR5-8704 world record in November 2021, a new memory frequency world record is achieved at DDR5-8888 under liquid nitrogen extreme cooling. The memory speed has been validated by CPU-Z. Please refer to the screenshot and validation link below: https://valid.x86.fr/qgvylc

You may, or may not have noticed that in certain parts of the interweb, groups of people that are generally referred to as "Overclockers" have managed to get their cheap Celeron G6900's and Core i3-12100's to run at much higher clock speeds than Intel intended and now the company is unhappy about it, as they're anticipating that they're going to lose sales of more expensive CPUs. As such, Intel has issued a warning via Tom's Hardware
"Intel's 12th Gen non-K processors were not designed for overclocking. Intel does not warranty the operation of processors beyond their specifications. Altering clock frequency or voltage may damage or reduce the useful life of the processor and other system components, and may reduce system stability and performance."

Jokes aside, the lower end SKU's of Intel's 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs seem to be phenomenal overclockers, if you have the right motherboards. If the motherboard doesn't have an external clock gen, plus support for adjusting the BCLK on non-K CPUs, then you're not going to have much luck. This means, at least at the moment, that you're looking at fairly pricey Z690 motherboard, although there are rumors that we can expect the odd B660 motherboard that will get an external clock gen, with at least three models already reported to have BCLK adjustment support via beta UEFI updates. Pro Overclockers have already managed to hit speeds in excess of 5.3 GHz with the Celeron G6900 and that is only by adjusting the BCLK and the Voltage, which is no mean feat, as the CPU has fixed clock speed of 3.4 GHz, which makes this a 57 percent boost in clock speed. Intel is said to be looking into this unintended ability to overclock these CPU SKUs and is apparently looking at locking down this ability with a new microcode update in a future UEFI release.

Update: Added a screenshot from TPU's upcoming Core i3-12100F review, showing 5.2 GHz at 130 MHz BCLK.

In 2016, NVIDIA announced that the company is working on replacing its Fast Logic Controller processor codenamed Falcon with a new GPU System Processor (GSP) solution based on RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This novel RISC-V processor is codenamed NV-RISCV and has been used as GPU's controller core, coordinating everything in the massive pool of GPU cores. Today, NVIDIA has decided to open this NV-RISCV CPU to a broader spectrum of applications starting with 510.39 drivers. According to the NVIDIA documents, this is only available in the select GPUs for now, mainly data-centric Tesla accelerators.

NVIDIA DocumentsSome GPUs include a GPU System Processor (GSP) which can be used to offload GPU initialization and management tasks. This processor is driven by the firmware file /lib/firmware/nvidia/510.39.01/gsp.bin. A few select products currently use GSP by default, and more products will take advantage of GSP in future driver releases.
Offloading tasks which were traditionally performed by the driver on the CPU can improve performance due to lower latency access to GPU hardware internals.

This might not come as a real surprise, but in the latest Steam hardware survey, we're seeing clear declines of quad core CPUs, the category that some people have been claiming for the longest of times, is all you need for a gaming PC. Among the Windows systems, the decline is over a percent, with six core CPU gaining well over a percent, although the numbers vary quite a bit over the past five months, which is all the history Valve provides. The decline is also clear on OSX, although it's not quite as big percentage wise, but here the biggest growth is in the eight and 10 core segments, most likely due to Apple's introduction of its own M1 variants of CPUs. Only in the Linux segment are the dual and quad core CPU segments increasing, which suggest that some of these systems might be repurposed Windows machines.

The six core and higher CPU segment now holds over 50 percent share in the Steam survey and eight core CPUs are also up somewhat for Windows machines. Of these CPUs, Intel is holding a 69.27 percent share, up 0.82 percent compared to November, although still down over 3.5 percent since August versus AMD. Intel also gained 0.33 percent of Linux users and is back over 60 percent for the first time since August. On the OSX side of things, Apple seems to have gained a 27.97 percent share of Steam users surveyed, up from 6.05 percent just a month earlier. There has also been a 1.2 percent increase in Steam users surveyed that have 16 GB of RAM, suggesting that the low RAM prices in 2021 has made people upgrade their systems. Over 47 percent of all Steam users that were surveyed appear to have at least 16 GB of RAM in their systems.

Here are some of the first real-world pictures of the next-generation AMD EPYC "Genoa" enterprise processors in the Socket SP5 package. The coaster-sized 6,080-pin SP5 package gives AMD's chip-designers fiberglass substrate real-estate to dial up CCD counts up to 12, resulting in up to 96 "Zen 4" CPU cores for "Genoa." Pictured below is a 16-core prototype with just two CCDs in place, as revealed by an X-ray shot. Socket SP5 gives "Genoa" some stellar I/O capabilities, including 24x 40-bit DDR5 channels (12-channel in the classical definition), and 128x PCI-Express Gen 5.0 lanes. AMD is expected to time its EPYC "Genoa" processor launch within 2022, to best compete with Intel's Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" processor launch. It will also launch a variant codenamed "Bergamo," based on "Zen 4c" CPU cores, with up to 128 cores to go around.

AMD's Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors based on the novel Zen 4 core architecture are scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2022. While we are not sure just how big the architectural differences will be going from Zen 3 (with or without 3D V-cache) to the new Zen 4 core, we have some leaked information that confirms the existence of two SKUs that reveal additional details about the processor configuration. In the MilkyWay@Home project, aiming to create a model of the Milky Way galaxy by utilizing countless PCs across the globe, we found two next-generation Ryzen 7000 SKUs. The MilkyWay@Home project isn't a benchmark. However, it is a valuable reference where the next generation processors appeared.

First in line is the 100-000000666-21_N CPU, a codename for an eight-core, sixteen-threaded design. This model should correspond to the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X CPU, a successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X model. Next in line is the 100-000000665-21_N CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, a successor to the Ryzen 9 5950X named Ryzen 9 7950X. One important thing to note is that these new CPUs feature different level two (L2) cache configurations. With the previous generation 5000 series "Vermeer" processors, the L2 cache was locked at 512 KB per core. However, according to today's leak, the upgraded Zen 4 IP will bring 1024 KB of L2 cache per core, doubling the cache size at one of the fastest levels.

congatec - a leading vendor of embedded and edge computing technology - introduces the 12th Generation Intel Core mobile and desktop processors (formerly code named Alder Lake) on 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules. Featuring the latest high performance cores from Intel, the new modules in COM-HPC Size A and C as well as COM Express Type 6 form factors offer major performance gains and improvements for the world of embedded and edge computing systems. Most impressive is the fact that engineers can now leverage Intel's innovative performance hybrid architecture. Offering of up to 14 cores/20 threads on BGA and 16 cores/24 threads on desktop variants (LGA mounted), 12th Gen Intel Core processors provide a quantum leap [1] in multitasking and scalability levels. Next-gen IoT and edge applications benefit from up to 6 or 8 (BGA/LGA) optimized Performance-cores (P-cores) plus up to 8 low power Efficient-cores (E-cores) and DDR5 memory support to accelerate multithreaded applications and execute background tasks more efficiently.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers (Hong Kong Stock Code: 1337), is kicking off 2022 with new Razer Blade gaming laptop models including the Razer Blade 14, Razer Blade 15, and Razer Blade 17. The world's fastest laptops for gamers and creators are equipped with the recently announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs, up to an RTX 3080 Ti, making the new Blades better than ever, now shipping with Windows 11. All new Razer Blade gaming laptops now also include groundbreaking DDR5 memory, providing blistering clock speeds up to 4800 MHz, an increase in frequency by up to 50% compared to the previous generation.

"The Razer Blade series continues to be the best gaming laptop by providing desktop-class performance on-the-go," says Travis Furst, Senior Director of Razer's Systems business unit. "Additionally, we've enabled creators to work anywhere with gorgeous displays, available NVIDIA Studio drivers, and up to 14-Core CPUs. Users will have the ability to choose any model or configuration that best fits their gaming or creating needs, while getting the latest and greatest in graphics, memory and processing technology."

For a significant period, Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) series has featured soldered processors on the PC's motherboard. However, according to the latest leaks from Twitter hardware leaker @9550pro, we have a potential Alder Lake-based NUC featuring desktop processor versions and a dedicated LGA1700 socket. As the leaked image shows, it looks like Intel's NUC 12 Extreme edition will feature an LGA1700 socket that features support for desktop-class of Alder Lake processors. If this leak is correct, we could see a compelling NUC solution filled with Intel-only processors, meaning an Alder Lake CPU and Arc Alchemist discrete graphics card.

There is room for PCIe expansion, which means that theoretically, you could connect any GPU to the mainboard. However, it is natural to assume that Intel could force their own GPU SKUs to launch this mini PC. We have to wait and see what Intel presents at tomorrow's CES 2022 event for more information.

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.

SilentiumPC, is thrilled to announce its newest addition to the air-cooler segment, which is bound to stir up the market with its phenomenal performance and low noise levels. The Fortis 5 comes in three versions, each tweaked to satisfy the demands of different users. The regular Fortis 5 aims for the mainstream, whereas the Fortis 5 Dual has been designed to appeal to performance-oriented and noise-conscious enthusiasts. Also available is the Fortis 5 ARGB, designed to shine vividly thanks to its gorgeous ARGB fan, which is sure to stun those that are also heavily invested into the aesthetics of their setup.

All Fortis 5 models are based on a brand-new heatsink design composed of an optimized base and a total of six 6 mm copper-heat-pipes. Depending on the model, either one or two Fluctus fans are included. The Fluctus series of fans are fine-tuned for high static pressure, resulting in high levels of airflow and quiet operation. In regards to performance, the Fortis 5 is easily able to compete with large twin-tower CPU coolers, while even surpassing the best single-towers in cooling efficiency and lower noise metrics, thanks to its finely tuned psychoacoustic properties. SilentiumPC further underlines the High-End standpoint of the Fortis 5 series by offering an extended 6-year manufacturer's warranty.

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.

Imagination Technologies announces Catapult, a RISC-V CPU product line designed from the ground-up for next-generation heterogeneous compute needs. Based on RISC-V, the open-source CPU architecture, which is transforming processor design, Imagination's Catapult CPUs can be configured for performance, efficiency, or balanced profiles, making them suitable for a wide range of markets.

Leveraging Imagination's 20 years of experience in delivering complex IP solutions, the new CPUs are supported by the rapidly expanding open-standard RISC-V ecosystem, which continues to shake up the embedded CPU industry by offering greater choice. Imagination's entry will enable the rapidly expanding RISC-V ecosystem to add a greater range of product offerings, especially for heterogeneous systems. Now customers have an even wider choice of solutions built on the open RISC-V ISA, avoiding lock-in with proprietary architectures.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued to block U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp.'s $40 billion acquisition of U.K. chip design provider Arm Ltd. Semiconductor chips power the computers and technologies that are essential to our modern economy and society. The proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. The FTC's complaint alleges that the combined firm would have the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-assistance systems in cars.

"The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies," said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova. "Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals. The FTC's lawsuit should send a strong signal that we will act aggressively to protect our critical infrastructure markets from illegal vertical mergers that have far-reaching and damaging effects on future innovations."

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has selected Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build its third-generation, high performance computing (HPC) system, called Kestrel. Named for a falcon with keen eyesight and intelligence, Kestrel's moniker is apropos for its mission—to rapidly advance the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) energy research and development (R&D) efforts to deliver transformative energy solutions to the entire United States.

Installation of the new system will begin in the fall of 2022 in NREL's Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) data center. Kestrel will complement the laboratory's current supercomputer, Eagle, during the transition. When completed—in early 2023—Kestrel will accelerate energy efficiency and renewable energy research at a pace and scale more than five times greater than Eagle, with approximately 44 petaflops of computing power.

As Amazon is continuing to grow its AWS business, both with new instances powered by AMD's third generation of EPYC processors and it's new EC2 C5g instances powered by its current Graviton2 processors and Nvidia's T4G tensor core GPUs. However, the company is also opening up its first EC2 C7g preview instances using its brand new Graviton3 processors, which the company claims offer vastly improved performance over the Graviton2 on specific workloads.

EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud and judging by the fact that the Graviton3 is said to have up to twice as past FPU performance for scientific workloads and being twice as fast for cryptographic workloads and up to three times faster for machine learning workloads, you can guess who these new EC2 instances are intended for. Amazon didn't reveal much in terms of technical details about the Graviton3, but it'll utilize DDR5 memory, which makes it one of the first, if not the first server CPU to use DDR5. It's also said to use up to 60 percent less energy than the Graviton2, while delivering up to 25 percent more compute performance. It's implied that it uses the Arm v9 architecture and the Neoverse N2 Arm cores, although this hasn't been officially announced.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) has expanded its AMD EPYC processor-based offerings with the general availability of general-purpose Amazon EC2 M6a instances. The M6a instances are powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors delivering, according to AWS, up to 35% better price-performance compared to the previous M5a instances and a 10% lower cost than comparable x86-based EC2 instances.

"Our 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors provide Amazon EC2 users excellent scalability and impressive price-performance compared to previous generation Amazon EC2 M5a instances. This announcement shows our strong collaboration as well as highlights our overall momentum in cloud infrastructure," said Lynn Comp, corporate vice president, Cloud Business, AMD. "Our work with AWS exemplifies our commitment to giving end users innovation and performance for their cloud environments and workloads."

The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

Intel's upcoming lineup of mobile processors with the novel hybrid core technology are codenamed Alder Lake-P. Contrary to the desktop Alder Lake-S, the P variant was envisioned with a lower power budget in mind to fit various form factors. Today, we get to see some of the first benchmarks of the Alder Lake-P processors and get to compare them to AMD's competing products. In the Geekbench 5 listing discovered by BechLeaks, Intel's Core i7-12800H processor with six performance and eight efficiency cores appear. The CPU ran at a base frequency of 2.8 GHz, while Geekbench didn't show boosting clocks in the submission.

The CPU managed to score 1654 points in single-core results and 9618 points in multi-core runs. If we compare this to AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, a direct competitor, the CPU is faster by 25% and 35% in single-core and multi-core results, respectively. If the previous Tiger Lake-H generation is a reference, the Alder Lake-P chip manages 12% and 20% higher single-core and multi-core scores. This specific processor is part of the GIGABYTE AORUS 15 YE4 laptop used for the Geekbench 5 benchmark test run.

A couple of days ago, GIGABYTE boasted with an overclocking record made using one of the company's motherboards. Allegedly, the company has achieved a world record of Alder Lake overclocking, causing the CPU to go up to 8 GHz frequency. However, such a claim was rather sketchy, according to the CPU-Z developer "Doc TB." In the later investigation, he concluded that the submission took advantage of a false reporting algorithm that gave HiCookie and GIGABYTE a chance to submit a world record as validated by the CPU-Z validator program. Further investigation concluded that the program reported incorrect numbers, and GIGABYTE's world record of 8 GHz on Alder Lake had been made invalid as of now.

The CPU-Z validation team is working hard to update the validation algorithm and make it more challenging for false submissions to appear valid. One interesting thing to point out is that HiCookie and GIGABYTE have already attempted to post false records with the launch of AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of processors, where they claimed that the CPU managed to reach 6,362.16 MHz, where in reality it was running at 5,683.94 MHz. This overclocker submitted those faulty results to HWBot as fake at the time and has now done it again.

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA Quantum-2, the next generation of its InfiniBand networking platform, which offers the extreme performance, broad accessibility and strong security needed by cloud computing providers and supercomputing centers.

The most advanced end-to-end networking platform ever built, NVIDIA Quantum-2 is a 400 Gbps InfiniBand networking platform that consists of the NVIDIA Quantum-2 switch, the ConnectX-7 network adapter, the BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU) and all the software that supports the new architecture.