TSMC is working hard to bring a new 5 nm (N5 and N5+) despite all the hiccups the company may have had due to the COVID-19 pandemic happening. However, it seems like nothing can stop TSMC, and plenty of companies have already reserved some capacity for their chips. With mass production supposed to start in Q3 of this year, 5 nm node should become one of the major nodes over time for TSMC, with predictions that it will account for 10% of all capacity for 2020. Thanks to the report of ChinaTimes, we have a list of new clients for the TSMC 5 nm node, with some very interesting names like Intel appearing on the list.

Apple and Huawei/HiSilicon will be the biggest customers for the node this year with A14 and Kirin 1000 chips being made for N5 node, with Apple ordering the A15 chips and Huawei readying the Kirin 1100 5G chip for the next generation N5+. From there, AMD will join the 5 nm party for Zen 4 processors and RDNA 3 graphics cards. NVIDIA has also reserved some capacity for its Hopper architecture, which is expected to be a consumer-oriented option, unlike Ampere. And perhaps the most interesting entry to the list is Intel Xe graphics cards. The list shows that Intel might use the N5 process form TSMC so it can ensure the best possible performance for its future cards, in case it has some issues manufacturing its own nodes, just like it did with 10 nm.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 768G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the Snapdragon 765G. Snapdragon 768G is designed to bring next-level performance that enables smart, immersive gaming experiences with the integration of truly global 5G, sophisticated on-device AI and select Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.

"We are uniquely positioned to accelerate 5G commercialization at scale and Snapdragon 768G is an example of how we're continuing to deliver solutions to address the needs of our OEM customers," said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Our expanding portfolio has the potential to make 5G accessible to billions of smartphone users around the world."

It seems that today Intel lifted an embargo on the preview of its reviewer kit, and thanks to a few websites we have pictures of what the packaging looks like. And it is one fancy packaging for sure with lots of plastic this time around. Intel has decided to switch up its packaging game and now it is very different. Now Intel seems to target aesthetics very similar to AMD Threadripper packaging, with a plastic window that reveals the CPU box that has big words distinguishing whatever the model in question is a Core i5 or Core i9.

The reviewers have gotten two CPU models - Core i9-10900K and Core i5-10600K which are pictured below. Just as a reminder, reviews of these CPUs should go live on May 20th. If you want to get a Z490 motherboard for one of these CPUs, you can pre-order motherboard from your favorite vendor starting from today.More pictures follow.

Historically, Intel has separated its processors and chipsets that accompany them to overclockable and non-overclockable ones. That means that only the "K" CPUs can be overclocked. With the latest generation, only some parts of the lineup are K CPUs, like the Core i9-10900K, i7-10700K, i5-10600K, etc. Those processors could only be overclocked one put in motherboards based on "Z" chipset, like Z390 and Z490. However, it seems like ASRock has developed a new technology that will overclock non-K CPUs on non-Z motherboards, which is quite impressive.

Called the Base Frequency Boost (BFB) technology, it will allow for overclocking the non-K processors on chipsets like B460 and H470. How will that work you might wonder? Well, ASRock will take the TDP of the CPUs and make it run in the PL1 mode, which increases the processor TDP form 65 W and turns it into a 125 W TDP beast. This will, of course, be user selective and case dependent, meaning that if your cooling system can not handle that much heat coming out from the overclocked processors, it is unlikely that they will reach the peak clocks ASRock can target. You can check out the slide below:

Microsoft's flight simulator, an upcoming game designed to bring real-life scenarios of flying an airplane, just got a list of system requirements needed to run a game. To play with Flight Simulator, you would at least need to have a quad-core CPU like AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-4460 equipped system, along with 8 GB of RAM. For graphics, you would need a GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM, where the requirement is either AMD Radeon RX 570 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 GPU. Another interesting observation is the requirement of 150 GB of drive space, meaning that this game will be pretty big. Internet connection needs to be 5 Mbps at minimum, and as you up the resolution and graphics, you would need a faster connection. You can check out the entire table below.

The need for incrementally faster connection comes out of one reason - adaptive streaming. The game looks stunning, and if you wish to play at the highest quality, parts of the game will be rendered in the cloud. Microsoft is using its Azure infrastructure to help and render parts of the game and stream it down to your PC. This ensures that your PC is capable of playing the game and Microsoft is showing how they can tap the power of cloud for uses like this.

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its newest Z by HP mobile workstation and HP ENVY portfolio - designed for creators who push the envelope of what's possible. The HP ZBook Studio, HP ZBook Create, and the HP ENVY 15 are the latest additions to the HP Create Ecosystem, which launched at Adobe MAX in 2019.

The powerful line-up enables all levels of creators, including consumers, prosumers and professionals, to capture, create, and bring to life digital concepts and ideas that can be shared, enjoyed, and experienced. In the past, creators had to choose between heavy workstations or bulky gaming devices to get the power they require for work and play. Today, HP is pushing the boundaries of engineering and creative productivity by allowing photographers, vloggers, graphic designers, architects, film makers, and everyone in between, to achieve what was never thought possible.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 4000 series "Vermeer" lineup of CPUs based on the new Zen 3 core is slated to launch sometime in late 2020, and we have information about the chipset support of 4th generation of Ryzen CPUs. The laptop manufacturer XMG, known for its crazy Apex 15 laptop with 16 core AMD Ryzen 3950X CPU inside, has posted a Reddit thread about its new laptop. In the thread, XMG has listed specifications of the laptop, and in one point it mentions support for Ryzen 4000 series of CPUs. XMG has written that the B450 motherboards will be supporting the next generation CPUs simply by microcode updates AMD will push to OEMs. XMG uses the B450 chipset in its laptops, so they are presumably going to offer some configurations with Ryzen 4000 CPUs in the future. This information is good news for everybody who has a motherboard with a B450 chipset as they can get a bit more mileage out of it.

With an introduction of new iPad Pro tablets, Apple has brought another new silicon to its offerings in the form of A12Z SoC. Following the previous king in tablet space, the A12X SoC, Apple has decided to update its silicon and now there is another, more advanced stepping in form of an A12Z SoC. Thanks to the report from TechInsights, their analysis has shown that the new SoC used in Apple's devices is pretty much the same compared to the A12X SoC of last year, except the GPU used. Namely, the configuration of A12X is translated into the A12Z - there are four Apple Vortex and four Apple Tempest cores for the CPU. There is a 128-bit memory bus designed for LPDDR4X memory, the same as the A12X.

What is different, however, is the GPU cluster configuration. In A12X there was a cluster filled with 7 working and one disabled A12-gen GPU core. In A12Z SoC all of the 8 GPUs present are enabled and working, and they are also of the same A12 generation. The new SoC is even built using the same N7 7 nm manufacturing process from TSMC. While we don't know the silicon stepping revision of the A12Z, there aren't any new features besides the additional GPU core.

Steam has just released its hardware survey for March 2020, and it paints an interesting picture on the overall Steam user market. First of all, a disclaimer: Steam's survey's don't refer to the entirety of the systems that are running its digital distribution platform; it hails from only a part of the connected machines which are randomly selected - ideally, in such as way so as for its hardware data to be representative of the overall Steam ecosystem.

The March 2020 hardware survey shows Intel CPUs gaining traction over AMD's, albeit in a very limited fashion (a 0.24% increase in total number of machines running with GenuineIntel CPUs). Cross referencing this increase with the average clockspeeds of Intel CPUs, though, paints an interesting picture: the higher clockspeeds in the 3.3 to 3.8 GHz range (which can relatively cleanly be associated with the company's higher-performance products), saw a decline in usage (contrary to AMD, which saw the reverse happening).

AMD today updated its Product Change Advisory with notes that its StoreMI software won't be available for download anymore. "AMD has decided to end-of-life the current version of the StoreMI technology, and effective March 31, 2020, AMD will no longer make this technology available for download on AMD.com. End users who download the current version of the StoreMI technology prior to March 31, 2020 may continue to use it thereafter (i.e. it will not be deactivated) but AMD will no longer provide any technical or end user support. Instead, AMD will focus its internal development resources on a replacement solution with a rearchitected feature set and a planned release window of 2Q20." - says the AMD Product Change Advisory website.

AMD's StoreMI technology offered users an option to combine up to 256 GB of SSD memory with a slower HDD, to provide "SSD like speeds with HDD like capacity", and it was supported from the second generation Ryzen processors until the current third generation, Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. Given that AMD is working on a replacement solution that is coming out in Q2, we expect that the new solution will be a better and more usable one, so we will report on it as soon as there is more information.

MSI has comprehensively evolved! On top of the award-winning GE66 Raider and GS66 Stealth, MSI grandly revealed the complete line-up of six series of gamer-oriented laptops. Only the strong one can survive and evolve! MSI is the only laptop manufacturer that provides a stable supply under the global disruption of the supply chain. Now be the vanguard and evolve to next-generation by choosing the latest MSI gaming laptops equipped with 10th Gen Intel Core i9 processor (Comet Lake H-series) and latest GeForce RTX Super series graphics, newly designed for gamers in style!

The next-gen performance can entertain and satisfy the gamers in all aspects. The revamped MSI laptops can reveal the true computing power of the 10th Gen Intel Core i9 Processor. Featuring up to i9-10980HK processor, the latest Intel chip has a noticeable impact on FPS in demanding games and multitasking. With the latest Intel chip's 50% boot in computing and the Single-Core Turbo boost reaching 5.3 GHz, now gamers can enjoy an unparalleled gaming experience. Furthermore, see real-time Ray Tracing in games with up to the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, AI-enhanced graphics, which can also provide a faster efficiency than its erstwhile generation.

Have you ever wondered how a laptop with a desktop CPU that has 16 cores and 32 threads would look like on a laptop? Well, today is your lucky day as XMG, a German laptop maker, has decided to launch a laptop that has AMD's latest and greatest desktop CPU - the Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T monster. The 3950X CPU, while featuring a regular TDP of 105 W, has been configured to 65 W in Eco Mode, and it runs anywhere from 2.6 to 4.2 GHz. The CPU also isn't soldered to the motherboard and there is a full AM4 socket, that is capable of housing any 3000 series desktop CPU.

Besides a powerful CPU, there are options for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or RTX 2070 graphics cards, which drive a 15.6-inch Full HD 144 Hz IPS panel equipped with anti-glare technology. The GPUs are a "Max-P incarnation" as XMG calls it, which presumably means that they are designed for maximum performance i.e. possibly higher boost speeds. Additionally, you can configure the laptop with up to 64 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz RAM. This configuration, containing Ryzen 9 3950X, RTX 2070, 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB NVM, costs around 2631 EUR. For more configuration options, you can check out this website. Availability is supposed to be in 6-8 weeks.

Apple has been working on replacing Intel CPUs in its lineup of products for a while now, and the first batch of products to feature the new Arm-based CPUs should be coming soon. Having a completely custom CPU inside it's MacBook or an iMac device will allow Apple to overtake control of the performance and security of those devices, just like they did with their iPhone models. Apple has proved that its custom-built CPUs based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) can be very powerful and match Intel's best offerings, all while being much more efficient with a TDP of only a few Watts.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has started an "aggressive processor replacement strategy", which should give some results by the end of 2020, around Q4, or the beginning of 2021 when the first quarter arrives. According to Kuo, the approach of doing in-house design will result in not only tighter control of the system, but rather a financial benefit, as the custom processor will be 40% to 60% cheaper compared to current Intel CPU prices.

Zalman has now achieved global availability of their CNPS20X twin tower cooler, an air-cooling solution designed to dissipate up to 300 W of heat from your CPU of choice. The Zalman CNPS20X features loads of heat transfer technologies, including RDTH (Reverse Direct Touch Heatpipe), an evolution of the now ubiquitous DTH (Direct Touch Heatpipe) technology applied to its six heatpipes, alongside IHD (Interactive Heatpipe transfer Design) for increased thermal performance (Zalman claims this last technology brings improvements in heat dissipation in the order of 20x).

Not only the heatpipe design has been touched upon, though; the company also employed what it calls a 4D corrugated fin design, which means the fins themselves have contours (imagine a honeycomb shape and you're close) that improve heat dissipation and airflow. There's a stack of fins built out of copper, which are located close to the center of the airflow to improve heat dissipation further.

Intel and NVIDIA are preparing to refresh their hardware offering meant for laptop devices, and they are planning to do it on April 2nd. According to the Chinese website ITHome, Intel is going to launch its 10th generation Comet Lake-H CPUs for mobile devices, on April 2nd. The new models are going to bring improved frequency and core count, with top-end models reaching up to 8 cores with 16 threads. NVIDIA, on the other hand, will also update its mobile offerings with the arrival of Turing SUPER mobile cards. So far, we only had a choice of regular Turing series, however, there is soon going to be a SUPER variant of the existing cards.

Being that these cards are also expected to arrive on April 2nd, laptop manufacturers will integrate new products and showcase their solutions on that date. The availability of these devices, based on new Intel Comet Lake-H CPUs and NVIDIA Turing SUPER GPUs, is expected to follow soon after, precisely on April 15th. Additionally, it is notable that laptop manufacturer Mechrevo will hold an online press conference where they will showcase their "Z3" gaming laptop based on new technologies.

This one here is another shot in the arm when it comes to faith in humanity. Folding@Home, the distributed computing project where users can donate their spare CPU and GPU cycles for a given cause, has hit an absolute bonkers milestone. According to Greg Bowman, Director of Folding@home, the network has reached a peak compute power amounting to some 470 petaFLOPS - more than double that of the world's current supercomputing record holder, the Summit supercomputer, which dishes out 200 peak petaFLOPS. Folding@Home's 470 Petaflops means users donating their spare cycles are delivering more computing power than that which is available in the world's top 7 supercomputers combined.

After some slight service outages where users weren't getting any work units due to the increased number of donors over the last few days, the computing service now seems to be running at full steam ahead. Remember that you can select the causes for which you are donating your computing power: whether cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington, or Parkinson's disease, as well as some other non-selectable projects.

Intel has been experimenting with a concept of mixing various types of cores in a single package with a design called Lakefield. With this processor, you would get a package of relatively small dimensions that are 12-by-12-by-1 millimeters withing very low TDP. Thanks to the Twitter user InstLatX64 (@InstLatX64) we have some GeekBench 5 results of the new Lakefield chip. The CPU in question is the Core i5-L15G7, a 5 core CPU without HyperThreading. The 5C/5T would be a weird configuration if only Lakefield wasn't meant for such configs. There are one "big" Sunny Cove core and four "small" Tremont cores built on the 10 nm manufacturing process. This is the so-called compute die, where only the CPU cores are present. The base dies containing other stuff like I/O controllers and PHYs, memory etc. is made on a low-cost node like 22 nm, where performance isn't the primary target. The whole chip is targeting the 5-7 W TDP range.

In the GeekBench 5 result we got, the Core i5-L15G7 is a processor that has a base frequency of 1.4 GHz, while in the test it reached as high as 2.95 GHz speeds. This is presumably for the big Sunny Cove cores, as Tremont cores are supposed to be slower. The cache configuration reportedly puts 1.5 MB of L2$ and 4 MB of L3$ for the CPUs. If we take a look at performance numbers, the chip scores 725 points in single-core tests, while the multi-core result is 1566 points. We don't know what is the targeted market and what it competes with, however, if compared to some offerings from Snapdragon, like the Snapdragon 835, it offers double the single-threaded performance with a similar multi-core score. If this is meant to compete with the more powerful Snapdragon offerings like the 8cx model, comparing the two results in Intel's fail. While the two have similar single-core performance, the Snapdragon 8cx leads by as much as 76.9% in a multi-core scenario, giving this chip a heavy blow.

A Dutch website has listed what seems to be the entirety of Intel's upcoming 10th gen CPU lineup, with prices to boot. Of course, we have to take these listings with various grains of salt: e-tailers are known to sometimes display higher pricing than the manufacturer's MSRP when products still haven't been listed on other websites.

The listing below showcases model number and pricing for each Intel processor. Should this pricing actually come to pass in a generalized way, we're looking at Intel's Core i9-10900KF processor (which is currently listed for €567.73 including 21% VAT) competing with AMD's closest-priced CPU Ryzen 9 3800X, which is already street-priced at €449. The Core i5 10400F, on the other hand, is listed at €196.99, which means it currently competes with AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X at €199.99. It remains to be seen which of these CPUs will win in a direct shootout. Remember that for US pricing you typically just swap out the € currency for $, and you've got your price estimate pretty close to final.

Ampere Computing, a startup focusing on making HPC and processors from cloud applications based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture, today announced the release of a first 80 core "cloud-native" processor based on the Arm ISA. The new Ampere Altra CPU is the company's first 80 core CPU meant for hyper scalers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Being built on TSMC's 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing process, the Altra is a CPU that is utilizing a monolithic die to achieve maximum performance. Using Arm's v8.2+ instruction set, the CPU is using the Neoverse N1 platform as its core, to be ready for any data center workload needed. It also borrows a few security features from v8.3 and v8.5, namely the hardware mitigations of speculative attacks.

When it comes to the core itself, the CPU is running at 3.0 GHz frequency and has some very interesting specifications. The design of the core is such that it is 4-wide superscalar Out of Order Execution (OoOE), which Ampere refers to as "aggressive" meaning that there is a lot of data throughput going on. The cache levels are structured in a way that there is 64 KB of L1D and L1I cache per core, along with 1 MB of L2 cache per core as well. For system-level cache, there is 32 MB of L3 available to the SoC. All of the caches have Error-correcting code (ECC) built-in, giving the CPU a much-needed feature. There are two 128-bit wide Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) units, which are there to do parallel processing if needed. There is no mention if they implement Arm's Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) or not.

Chiplet design of processors is getting more popular due to many improvements and opportunities it offers. Some of the benefits include lower costs as the dies are smaller compared to one monolithic design, while you are theoretically able to stitch as much of the chiplets together as possible. During the ISSCC 2020 conference, CEA-Leti, a French research institute, created a 96 core CPU made from six 3D stacked 16 core chiplets. The chip is created as a demonstration of what this modular approach offers and what are the capabilities of the chiplet-based CPU design.

The chiplets are manufactured on the 28 nm FD-SOI manufacturing process from STMicroelectronics, while the active interposer die below them that is connecting everything is made using the 65 nm process. Each one of the six dies is housing 16 cores based on MIPS Instruction Set Architecture core. Each chiplet is split into four 4-core clusters that make up for a total of 16 cores per chiplet. When it comes to the core itself, it is a scalar MIPS32v1 core equipped with 16 KiB of L1 instruction and an L1 data cache. For L2 cache, there is 256 KiB per cluster, while the L3 cache is split into four 1 MiB tiles for the whole cluster. The chiplets are stacked on top of an active interposer which connects the chiplets and provides external I/O support.

Apple is currently designing a custom series of CPUs, for its Macbook laptop lineup, based on the Arm Instruction Set Architecture. Having designed some of the most powerful mobile processors that are inside the iPhone series of devices, Apple is preparing to make a jump to an even more powerful device lineup by bringing custom CPUs for MacBook. Tired of the speed by which Intel replaces and upgrades its Core lineup of CPUs, Apple decided to take the matter in its own hands and rumors about the switch to a custom solution have been going on for a while. However, we now have some information about when to expect the first wave of Arm-powered Macs.

According to the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is a well-known insider in the Apple industry, we can expect the first wave of the Arm-powered Macbook in the next 18 months, precisely in the first half of 2021. Supposedly, the first chips for these new Macs are going to be manufactured on a 5 nm manufacturing process, possibly over at TSMC since Apple had a long-lasting history of manufacturing its chips at TSMC foundries. In the meantime, we can expect to see Apple providing developers with tools to transition their x86-64 software to the new Arm ISA. Without a software ecosystem, the hardware platform is essentially worthless. And Apple knows this. We will see how they plan to play it and will report as soon as there is more information.

GIGABYTE has updated its Brix lineup of Mini-PCs with Intel's latest and greatest 10th generation Comet Lake mobile CPUs. Measuring 46.8 x 119.5 x 119.5 mm, the Brix mini PC is a small form factor machine with its 0,6-liter size. If anyone thinks that power is proportional to the size of a PC, the GIGABYTE Brix is here to prove them wrong. Available in four variants that differ only in CPU that is soldered inside, you can get anything from a dual-core Intel Core i3-10110U, all the way up to six-core Core i7-10710U CPU powerhouse. These CPUs are 15 W TDP models, so even though the Brix is small, its cooling solution should be able to handle the heat.

The Brix Mini-PC comes with a mounting bracket for 75 x 75 mm and 100 x 100 mm VESA mounts, meaning that you can place it behind a monitor. Storage options are limited to one 2.5-inch drive that can be up to 9.5 mm thick. For RAM, the Brix is using two SO-DIMM slots that can support up to 64 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz RAM. When it comes to connectivity options, GIGABYTE has equipped the Brix with Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168 wireless adapter providing Bluetooth 4.2 and WiFi 802.11ac connectivity. The IO options are somewhat decent as Brix has three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports at the front, along with a USB Gen 2 Type-C connector and 3.5 mm headphone jack. On the back, there are two HDMI 2.0a ports for video output, two additional USC 3.2 Gen 2 ports, power input, and of course an RJ45 Ethernet connector.

The UK government has set aside a budget of 1.2 billion GBP, which is roughly around 1.56 billion US Dollars. With this budget, the UK government plans to install the world's most powerful supercomputer used for weather forecasting in the year 2022. Previously, the UK government used three Cray XC40 supercomputers that are capable of achieving a maximum of 14 PetaFLOPs at its peak performance. The future system plans to take that number and make it look tiny. With plans to make it 20 times more powerful than the current machine, we can estimate that the future supercomputer will have above 200 PetaFLOPs of computing performance.

The supercomputer deployment will follow a series of cycles, where one is happening in 2022 and that supercomputer will be six times more powerful than the current solution. To get to that 20 times improvement, the supercomputer will get an upgrade over the next five years' time. While we do not know what will power the new machine, it will almost definitely be a CPU plus multi-GPU node configuration, as GPUs have gained a lot of traction in weather prediction models lately.

AMD has just recently launched its 3rd generation of Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs, and it is already achieving some impressive stuff. In the world of PC gaming, there used to be a question whenever a new GPU arrives - "But can it run Crysis?". This question became meme over the years as GPU outgrew requirements for the Crysis game, and any GPU nowadays is capable of running the game. However, have you ever wondered if your CPU can run Crysis, alone without a GPU? Me neither, but Linus from LinusTechTips taught of that.

The CPU, of course, can not run any game, as it lacks the hardware for graphics output, but being that AMD's ThreadRipper 3990X, a 64 core/128 thread monster has raw compute power capable of running Crysis, it can process the game. Running in software mode, Linus got the CPU to process the game and run it without any help from a GPU. This alone is a massive achievement for AMD ThreadRipper, as it shows that CPUs reached a point where their raw computing power is on pair with some older GPU and that we can achieve a lot of interesting things. You can watch the video down below.

Intel's desktop Comet Lake-S lineup is close to being released and we are getting more leaks about the CPU models contained inside it. Perhaps one of the most interesting points for Comet Lake-S series is that it brings a boost in frequency and boost in core count, with the highest-end Core i9 processors going up to 10 cores. Thanks to Xfastest, a Hong Kong-based media outlet, we have first pictures of what appears to be an engineering sample of the upcoming Core i9-10900 processor.

Being a non-K version, this CPU is not capable of overclocking and has a fixed TDP rating of 65 Watts. Compared to 125 W of the K models like the upcoming Core i9-10900K, this CPU will output almost half the heat, thus requiring a less capable cooling solution. The CPU is installed in LGA1200 socket, which is a new home for Comet Lake-S CPUs and provides backward compatibility for coolers supporting LGA1151. In the sample processor pictured below, we can see a marking on the CPU that implies 2.5 GHz base clock. Previously rumors were suggesting that this CPU version has 2.8 GHz base clock, however, it can be an early engineering sample given that no official imprints are found on the CPU heat spreader.