Cybersecurity researcher Moritz Lipp and his colleagues from the Graz University of Technology and the University of Rennes uncovered two new security vulnerabilities affecting all AMD CPU microarchitectures going back to 2011, detailed in a research paper titled "Take A Way." These include "Bulldozer" and its derivatives ("Piledriver," "Excavator," etc.,) and the newer "Zen," "Zen+," and "Zen 2" microarchitectures. The vulnerabilities are specific to AMD's proprietary L1D cache way predictor component. It is described in the security paper's abstract as a means for the processor to "predict in which cache way a certain address is located, so that consequently only that way is accessed, reducing the processor's power consumption."

By reverse engineering the L1D cache way predictor in AMD microarchitectures dating from 2011 to 2019, Lipp, et al, discovered two new attack vectors with which an attacker can monitor the victim's memory accesses. These vectors are named "Collide+Probe," and "Load+Reload." The paper describes the first vector as follows: "With Collide+Probe, an attacker can monitor a victim's memory accesses without knowledge of physical addresses or shared memory when time-sharing a logical core." The second vector is described as "With Load+Reload, we exploit the way predictor to obtain highly-accurate memory-access traces of victims on the same physical core." The two vulnerabilities have not been assigned CVE entries at the time of this writing. The research paper, however, describes the L1D cache way predictor in AMD processors as being vulnerable to attacks that can reveal contents of memory or even keys to a vulnerable AES implementation. For now there is no mitigation to these attacks, but the company is reportedly working on firmware and driver updates. Access the research paper here.

AMD reached a settlement in the Class Action Lawsuit filed against it, over alleged false-marketing of the core-counts of its eight-core FX-series processors based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. Each member of the Class receives a one-time payout of USD $35 per chip, while the company takes a hit of $12.1 million. The lawsuit dates back to 2015, when Tony Dickey, representing himself in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accused AMD of false-marketing of its FX-series "Bulldozer" processor of having 8 CPU cores. Over the following four years, the case gained traction as a Class Action was built against AMD this January.

In the months that followed the January set-up of a 12-member Jury to examine the case, lawyers representing the Class and AMD argued over the underlying technology that makes "Bulldozer" a multi-core processor, and eventually discussed what a fair settlement would be for the Class. They eventually agreed on a number - $12.1 million, or roughly $35 per chip AMD sold, which they agreed was "fair," and yet significantly less than the "$60 million in premiums" consumers contended they paid for these processors. Sifting through these numbers, it's important to understand what the Class consists of. It consists of U.S. consumers who became interested to be part of the Class Action, and who bought an 8-core processor based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. It excludes consumers of every other "Bulldozer" derivative (4-core, 6-core parts, APUs; and follow-ups to "Bulldozer" such as "Piledriver," "Excavator," etc.).Image Credit: Taylor Alger

Red Hat Systemd (system and service manager) lead developer Lennart Poettering discovered that AMD A6-6310 "Beema" SoC that's popular among low-cost notebooks, has a faulty implementation of the RdRand random-number generation instruction. The processor's hardware random number generator (RNG) loses "randomness" after the machine resumes from a suspended state (i.e. waking up the notebook from sleep by opening its lid while it's powered on). Modern computers rely on RNGs for "entropy," critical to generation of unpredictable keys on the fly for SSL. However, the entropy source needn't be hardware, and isn't so by default. Software RNGs exist, and by default the Linux kernel does not use RdRand to generate entropy. Windows is not known to use RdRand for basic ACPI functions such as suspend/resume; however a faulty hardware RNG is not without implications for the platform, and applications that run on it.

Users on GitHub and Bugzilla report that with this bug, you cannot make a machine suspend a second time after waking it up from a suspended state, if your kernel uses RdRand. Commit cc83d51 to Systemd introduced optional randomness generation based on RdRand instruction. So, if RdRand instruction is present, it is used to generate UUIDs for invocation IDs. Michael Larabel of Phoronix comments that the RdRand bug is only found on older generations of AMD processors, "Excavator" and older; and does not affect the latest "Zen" processors. This bug report chronicles what's wrong with RdRand on the affected processors, as does this Linux kernel bugzilla thread. By avoiding RdRand usage on the system as part of generating a UUID, the reported systemd issue no longer happens. Red Hat is working on a solution to this bug.

TechPowerUp partners with BIOSTAR to bring you the Gaming Ready Motherboard Giveaway! Up for grabs are two gaming-grade motherboards from the AMD platform by BIOSTAR, with which you can build an e-Sports capable gaming PC build without breaking the bank. One lucky winner brings home a BIOSTAR Racing B450GT3 motherboard, and another lucky winner gets a BIOSTAR A10N-8800E motherboard with an embedded CPU.

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One of our readers tipped us off with a very plausible looking image that drops a motherlode of information about what AMD's 2nd generation Ryzen (aka Ryzen 3000 series) processor lineup could look like. This includes a vast selection of SKUs, their CPU and iGPU core configurations, clock-speeds, and OEM channel pricing. The list speaks of a reentry for 7th generation A-series "Excavator" as Duron X4 series, followed by Duron 300GE-series based on a highly cut down "Raven Ridge," Athlon 300GE 2-core/4-thread based on an implausible "Zen+ 12 nm" APU die, followed by quad-core Ryzen 3 3000 series processors with and without iGPUs, making up the company's entry-level product lineup.

The core counts seem to jump from 4-core straight to 8-core, with no 6-core in between, for the Ryzen 5 series. This is also where AMD's new IP, the 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture, begins. There appears to be a large APU die (or a 3-chip MCM) with an 8-core CPU and 20-CU iGPU, which makes up certain Ryzen 5 SKUs. These chips are either 8-core/8-thread or 8-core/16-thread. The Ryzen 7 series is made up of 12-core/24-thread processors that are devoid of iGPU. The new Ryzen 9 series extension caps off the lineup with 16-core/32-thread SKUs. And these are just socket AM4.

AMD reportedly put out its IPC (instructions per clock) performance guidance for its upcoming "Zen 2" micro-architecture in a version of its Next Horizon investor meeting, and the numbers are staggering. The next-generation CPU architecture provides a massive 29 percent IPC uplift over the original "Zen" architecture. While not developed for the enterprise segment, the stopgap "Zen+" architecture brought about 3-5 percent IPC uplifts over "Zen" on the backs of faster on-die caches and improved Precision Boost algorithms. "Zen 2" is being developed for the 7 nm silicon fabrication process, and on the "Rome" MCM, is part of the 8-core chiplets that aren't subdivided into CCX (8 cores per CCX).

According to Expreview, AMD conducted DKERN + RSA test for integer and floating point units, to arrive at a performance index of 4.53, compared to 3.5 of first-generation Zen, which is a 29.4 percent IPC uplift (loosely interchangeable with single-core performance). "Zen 2" goes a step beyond "Zen+," with its designers turning their attention to critical components that contribute significantly toward IPC - the core's front-end, and the number-crunching machinery, FPU. The front-end of "Zen" and "Zen+" cores are believed to be refinements of previous-generation architectures such as "Excavator." Zen 2 gets a brand-new front-end that's better optimized to distribute and collect workloads between the various on-die components of the core. The number-crunching machinery gets bolstered by 256-bit FPUs, and generally wider execution pipelines and windows. These come together yielding the IPC uplift. "Zen 2" will get its first commercial outing with AMD's 2nd generation EPYC "Rome" 64-core enterprise processors.Update Nov 14: AMD has issued the following statement regarding these claims.

As we demonstrated at our Next Horizon event last week, our next-generation AMD EPYC server processor based on the new 'Zen 2' core delivers significant performance improvements as a result of both architectural advances and 7nm process technology. Some news media interpreted a 'Zen 2' comment in the press release footnotes to be a specific IPC uplift claim. The data in the footnote represented the performance improvement in a microbenchmark for a specific financial services workload which benefits from both integer and floating point performance improvements and is not intended to quantify the IPC increase a user should expect to see across a wide range of applications. We will provide additional details on 'Zen 2' IPC improvements, and more importantly how the combination of our next-generation architecture and advanced 7nm process technology deliver more performance per socket, when the products launch.

AMD's AM4 socket really is shaping up to be one of the company's most versatile to date. From true quad-core CPUS (just now available through Ryzen 3's launch through to veritable svelte behemoths 8-core, 16-thread CPUs, AM4 has something for every consumer. AMD is now taking that show further with the release of the Bristol Ridge family of APUs, which includes eight APUs and three CPUs. While pricing wasn't announced at time of writing, the top-priced part should fall below the $110 mark and bottom out at $50, so as not to collide with AMD's Ryzen 3 1200 (although these products aren't specifically overlapping anyway.)

AMD's new entry-level processors will hit a maximum of 65 W TDP, with the top spot being taken by the 2-module, 4-threads A12-9800, running at 3.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz Turbo. This part holds a Radeon R7 GPU with 512 Stream Processors (GCN 1.3, the same as in the Fury GPUs) running at 800 MHz Base and 1108 MHz Turbo. There are three 35 W parts (denoted by a capital E after the model name.) One thing users should take into account is that the Bristol Ridge APUs deliver a maximum of 8x PCIe 3.0 lanes - thus rendering a multi-GPU solution unfeasible.

AMD, at its post-Ryzen 7 launch Reddit AMA, disclosed some juicy details about its other upcoming socket AM4 chips, beginning with the rest of the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 "Summit Ridge" processor roll-out, and a little bit about its 8th generation socket AM4 APU, codenamed "Raven Ridge." To begin with, AMD CEO Lisa Su stated that "Raven Ridge" will also be sold under the Ryzen brand. This would mark a departure from the less-than-stellar A-series branding for its performance APUs. "Raven Ridge" likely combines a "Zen" quad-core CPU complex (CCX) with an integrated GPU based on one of AMD's newer GPU architectures (either "Polaris" or "Vega").

The range-topping Ryzen 7 series will lead the company's lineup throughout Q1, with six-core and quad-core Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 series launches being scheduled for later this year. Our older reports pinned Ryzen 5 series rollout for Q2, and Ryzen 3 series for the second half of 2017. This is likely also when the company rolls out "Raven Ridge" initially as mobile Ryzen products (BGA packages, which will likely also be used in AIOs), and later as desktop socket AM4 parts.

After spending almost 4 years developing and perfecting (as much as can be perfected in such an amount of time) it's ZEN CPU architecture, AMD is looking to extract some mileage out of it. Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer, confirmed the four-year lifespan in a conversation with PC World at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, though he declined to discuss specifics. When asked how long ZEN would last (especially comparing to Intel's now-failing two-year tick-tock cadence, Papermaster confirmed the four-year lifespan: "We're not going tick-tock," he said. "ZEN is going to be tock, tock, tock."

German PC enthusiast "Crashtest" clinched a sweet combo of an AMD A12-9800 "Bristol Ridge" socket AM4 APU with an ASUS A320M-C entry-level micro-ATX motherboard, for 200€. Pairing it with 8 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2133 memory, the platform was put through the AIDA64 test-suite. In the memory front, the platform performs on-par with older platforms at comparable DDR3 bandwidth. The K15.6 integrated memory controller isn't producing the kind of memory bandwidth as the Core i7-6700K with dual-channel DDR4-2133 memory from AIDA64's internal reference bench table.

In the CPU-related tests, the APU has about the same performance as its predecessors, such as the A10-7850K. The chip features two "Excavator" x86-64 CPU modules, making up four cores, and is clocked at 4.20 GHz. There are performance upticks seen in tests such as Hash and VP8, where the chip likely benefits from new instruction sets.More results follow.

AMD today unveiled its 7th generation A-series desktop APUs. Unlike its predecessors, the new chips are full-fledged SoCs, built in the new socket AM4 package, on which the company plans to launch its "Zen" processors. The 7th gen A-series APUs are based on the "Bristol Ridge" silicon, and are the first fully-integrated SoCs (systems-on-chip) from the company in the performance-desktop segment, in that the APU completely integrates the functionality of a motherboard chipset, including its FCH or southbridge.

This level of integration includes PCI-Express root-complex, USB 3.0, and storage interfaces such as SATA 6 Gb/s emerging directly from the AM4 socket. Some AM4 motherboards could still include a sort of "chipset," which expands connectivity options, such as USB 3.1 ports, additional SATA ports, and a few more downstream PCI-Express lanes. The amount of downstream connectivity and features decide the grade of the chipset. AMD is initially launching two chipsets, the A320 for the entry-level segment, and the B350 for mainstream desktops. The company plans to launch an even more feature-rich chipset at a later date (probably alongside ZEN "Summit Ridge" CPUs).

AMD Tuesday hosted a ZEN microarchitecture deep-dive presentation in the backdrop of Hot Chips, outlining its road to a massive 40 percent gain in IPC (translated roughly as per-core performance gains), over the current "Excavator" microarchitecture. The company credits the gains to three major changes with ZEN: better core engine, better cache system, and lower power. With ZEN, AMD pulled back from its "Bulldozer" approach to cores, in which two cores share certain number-crunching components to form "modules," and back to a self-sufficient core design.

Beyond cores, the next-level subunit of the ZEN architecture is the CPU-Complex (CCX), in which four cores share an 8 MB L3 cache. This isn't different from current Intel architectures, the cores share nothing beyond L3 cache, making them truly independent. What makes ZEN a better core, besides its independence from other cores, and additional integer pipelines; subtle upscaling in key ancillaries such as micro-Op dispatch, instruction schedulers; retire, load, and store queues; and a larger quad-issue FPU.

AMD CEO Lisa Su, speaking at the company's Computex reveal held up the most important CPU product for the company, the new eight-core "Summit Ridge" processor. A posterboy of the company's new "Zen" micro-architecture, "Summit Ridge" is an eight-core processor with SMT enabling 16 threads for the OS to deal with, a massive 40% IPC increase over the current "Excavator" architecture, and a new platform based around the AM4 socket.

The AM4 socket sees AMD completely relocate the core-logic (chipset) to the processor's die. Socket AM4 motherboards won't have any chipset on them. This also means that the processor has an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, besides the DDR4 integrated memory controller. With the chipset being completely integrated, connectivity such as USB and SATA will be routed out of the processor. The AM4 socket is shared with another kind of products, the "Bristol Ridge" APU, which features "Excavator" CPU cores and a 512-SP GCN 1.2 iGPU.

AMD today announced early availability of its new mobile 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors, timed to support an exciting new notebook design by HP Inc. Equipped with advanced video, graphics, performance, and security features designed to boost productivity and enhance the entertainment experience, 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors (codenamed "Bristol Ridge") also provide outstanding energy efficiency.

New OEM PC designs powered by mobile 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors -- from ultrathin notebooks and convertibles to sleek All-in-Ones -- will come to market first with HP in the new HP ENVY x360, and with other OEM announcements expected later in the year. AMD will officially introduce 7th Gen A-Series APUs and showcase a wide range of OEM designs at Computex 2016, May 31-June 4, 2016, in Taipei, Taiwan.

At Embedded World today, AMD announced its 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs and the Embedded G-Series LX SoC, providing customers a broadened portfolio of performance options. The latest offerings expand developers' ability to scale x86 platforms, starting with the entry-level AMD Embedded G-Series LX SoC, which is pin compatible to the previous generation G-Series SoC devices. Also announced today are two new, higher performing 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs, codenamed "Prairie Falcon" and "Brown Falcon," which introduce for the first time pin compatibility for G-Series processors with the higher performance AMD Embedded R-Series SoC.

The new products expand upon the low power capabilities of the award-winning AMD Embedded G-Series SoC platform, bringing scalable performance, power, and price across the CPU, GPU, multimedia, and I/O controller hardware, helping to lower development costs for AMD customers. Together, the new G-Series processors deliver immersive, graphically rich experiences across a broad range of platforms, from entry-level to mainstream gaming, digital signage, imaging, and industrial control.

AMD today launched new thermal solutions, including the flagship AMD Wraith Cooler, as well as the new AMD A10-7860K and new AMD Athlon X4 845 desktop processors. Designed for the consumer who cares about how their desktop PC runs, sounds, and looks, AMD now offers new thermal solutions that generate less than one-tenth the noise of their predecessors -- running at a near-silent 39 decibels, about as quiet as a library.

The new AMD Wraith Cooler combines near-silent operation with unique styling via a sleek fan shroud and LED illumination. Providing superb cooling, the new design delivers 34 percent more airflow and 24 percent more surface area for heat dissipation than its predecessor.

AMD today announced new AMD Embedded R-Series SOC processors that establish performance leadership across a targeted range of embedded application market requirements for digital signage, retail signage, medical imaging, electronic gaming, media storage and communications and networking. Designed for demanding embedded needs, the processors incorporate the newest AMD 64-bit x86 CPU core ("Excavator"), plus third-generation Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, and state-of-the-art power management for reduced energy consumption. Combined, these AMD innovations and technologies provide industry-leading graphics performance and key embedded features for next-generation designs.

The single-chip system-on-chip (SOC) architecture enables simplified, small form factor board and system designs from AMD customers and a number of third party development platform providers, while providing astounding graphics and multimedia performance, including capability for hardware-accelerated decode of 4K video playback. With a robust suite of peripheral support and interface options, high-end AMD Radeon graphics, designed for the industry's first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0 certification, and support for the latest DDR4 memory, the new AMD R-Series SOC addresses the needs of a wide range of markets and customers.

AMD's "Excavator" module could fetch big power dividends for the company, with the top of the line Pro A12 "Carrizo" APU for mobile platforms offering TDP as low as 12W (normal usage), going up to 35W (maximum stress). AMD allows users to set the TDP for their processors. Built on the existing 28 nm process, these chips offer TDPs as low as the ones offered by Intel, built on 22 nm and even 14 nm nodes.

This is made possible because "Excavator" features heavily compacted registers and decode engines, and AMD spent a lot of R&D kicking out redundant or useless components from the silicon. The recently launched A-Series Pro "Carrizo" APUs feature two "Excavator" modules (four CPU cores), a GPU with eight GCN 1.2 compute units (512 stream processors), 2 MB of total cache, dual-channel DDR3-2133 integrated memory controllers.

AMD "Zen" CPU micro-architecture has a design focus on significantly increasing per-core performance, particularly per-core number-crunching performance, according to a 3DCenter.org report. It sees a near doubling of the number of decoder, ALU, and floating-point units per-core, compared to its predecessor. In essence, the a Zen core is AMD's idea of "what if a Steamroller module of two cores was just one big core, and supported SMT instead."

In the micro-architectures following "Bulldozer," which debuted with the company's first FX-series socket AM3+ processors, and running up to "Excavator," which will debut with the company's "Carrizo" APUs, AMD's approach to CPU cores involved modules, which packed two physical cores, with a combination of dedicated and shared resources between them. It was intended to take Intel's Core 2 idea of combining two cores into an indivisible unit further.

AMD is planning to expand its socket FM2+ chip lineup with three new parts, the A10-7890K and A8-7690K APUs, and the Athlon X4 880K CPU. The three parts surfaced on the compatibility list of socket FM2+ motherboards by BIOSTAR. The architecture mentioned is "Kaveri," but the silicon could very well be "Godavari," (Kaveri refresh).

The refreshed lineup will be led by the A10-7890K, which features CPU clock speeds of 4.10 GHz out of the box, with an unknown TurboCore frequency (the current series leader A10-7870K offers 3.90 GHz with 4.10 GHz TurboCore). The A8-7690K offers CPU clocks of 3.70 GHz, and an unknown TurboCore frequency. There's no word on the iGPU clock speeds of the two chips. The third and most intriguing part is the Athlon X4 880K, with 4.00 GHz CPU clocks. The Athlon X4 FM2+ series lack integrated graphics, and make for good buys for people planning to build machines with discrete GPUs, on the FM2+ platform. All three chips offer unlocked base-clock multipliers, enabling CPU overclocking.

AMD announced availability of its newest budget socket FM2+ APU, the A8-7670K. This part, like the recently-launched A10-7870K, is based on the company's new 28 nm "Godavari" silicon. It combines a quad-core x86-64 CPU based on the "Excavator" micro-architecture, with an integrated Radeon R7 series graphics core, featuring six Graphics CoreNext 1.2 compute units amounting to 384 stream processors; a dual-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, with native support for DDR3-2133 MHz memory; and a PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex.

The CPU cores on the AMD A8-7670K are clocked at 3.60 GHz, with maximum TurboCore frequency of 3.90 GHz. The CPU features unlocked base-clock multipliers, enabling CPU overclocking. The four CPU cores are spread across two "Excavator" modules, with a total of 4 MB of cache between them. The GPU is clocked at 757 MHz, and offers native support for DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0). It offers Dual-Graphics support, letting you pair it with select discrete GPUs from AMD's lineup. With the advent of DirectX 12, it should also support asynchronous multi-GPU. The A8-7670K is available now, and is priced at US $117.99 in its retail package.

AMD today announced its 6th Generation A-Series Processor, the world's first high-performance Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) in a System-on-Chip (SoC) design. Previously codenamed "Carrizo," the 6th Generation AMD A-Series Processor takes advantage of extensive AMD processor and graphics IP enabling exceptional computing experiences not possible before. The 6th Generation AMD A-Series Processor is the most versatile notebook processor ever produced, built to excel at today's and tomorrow's consumer and business applications, delivering premium streaming entertainment, unmatched smooth online gaming, and innovative computing experiences, with all day unplugged performance.

The world's first high-performance Accelerated Processing Unit in a SoC design marks a number of technology firsts: the world's first High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) hardware decode support for notebooks, the first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0-compliant design, and the first ARM TrustZone-capable high-performance APU. The new processor harnesses up to 12 Compute Cores -- 4 CPU + 8 GPU -- leveraging AMD "Excavator" cores and the third generation of AMD's award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The result is a groundbreaking processor that boasts more than twice the battery life of its predecessor, up to 2x faster gaming performance than competitive processors, innovative computing experiences enabled through HSA, and a premium Microsoft Windows 10 experience with support for DirectX 12, adding up to an extraordinary experience for consumers.