With the 15.6 and 17.3 inch XMG APEX gaming laptops, XMG is positioning a new model series below its own high-end range consisting of the NEO and PRO series. These new laptops combine mobile AMD eight-core processors up to the Ryzen 9 5900HX with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards up to the RTX 3070. The company is simultaneously introducing the XMG FOCUS, a new product series in the entry-level segment. Intel's Core i7-11800H and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti offer decent gaming performance, while good connectivity and memory round off the overall package. All four new models feature an IPS display with 144 Hz.

Until now, the XMG APEX 15 in the older E20 generation represented uncompromising desktop CPU performance, with processors up to the Ryzen 9 3950X in a laptop. Although XMG is already working on a direct successor under a slightly different name, it is unleashing the XMG APEX 15 and APEX 17 of the M21 generation for the time being with the currently fastest eight-core mobile processors from AMD. The laptops are available with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H as well as with the slightly faster Ryzen 9 5900HX from the 54 watt TDP class, as well as with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or RTX 3060 in the respective maximum TGP configuration (RTX 3070: 125 watts plus 15 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0; RTX 3060: 115 watts plus 15 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0).

It's happening, Intel is taking a very pointy stab at the AAA gaming graphics market, taking the fight to NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. The Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPU implements the Xe HPG (high performance gaming) graphics architecture, and offers full DirectX 12 Ultimate compatibility. It also offers contemporary features gamers want, such as XeSS, an AI-supersampling feature rivaling DLSS and FSR. There's a lot more to the Xe HPG architecture than being a simple a scale-up from the Xe LP-based iGPUs found in today's "Tiger Lake" processors.

Just like Compute Units on AMD GPUs, and Streaming Multiprocessors on NVIDIA, Intel designed a scalable hierarchical compute hardware structure for Xe HPG. It begins with the Xe-core, an indivisible compute building block that contains 16 each of 256-bit vector engines and 1024-bit matrix engines. combined with basic load/store hardware and an L1 cache. The vector unit here is interchangeable with the execution unit, and the Xe-core contains 16 of these. The Render Slice is a collective of four Xe-cores, four Raytracing Units; and other common fixed-function hardware that include the geometry pipeline, rasterization pipeline, samplers, and pixel-backends. The Raytracing Units contain fixed-function hardware for bounding-box intersection, ray traversal, and triangle intersection.

Intel today launched its newest generation Intel Xeon W-3300 processors, available today from its system integrator partners. Built for advanced workstation professionals, Intel Xeon W-3300 processors offer uncompromised performance, expanded platform capabilities, and enterprise-grade security and reliability in a single-socket solution.

Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are intelligently engineered to push the boundaries of performance, with a new processor core architecture that transforms for what expert workstation users can accomplish on a workstation.

The Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are designed for next-gen professional applications with heavily threaded, input/output-intensive workloads. Use cases stretch across artificial intelligence (AI), architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), and media and entertainment (M&E). With a new processor core architecture to transform efficiency and advanced technologies to support data integrity, Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are equipped to deliver uncompromising workstation performance.

Intel's Lisa Spelman, corporate vice president and general manager of the Xeon and Memory Group at Intel Corporation, has yesterday published a blog post talking about Intel's next-generation server platform codenamed Sapphire Rapids. The SPR platform is Intel's biggest step-up in the server processor space, and it is the exact CPU that will power the Aurora exascale supercomputer. Besides improvements to the CPU microarchitecture, the platform itself is bringing many benefits with it as well. It will use the latest industry protocols like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. This is making a strong combination designed even for exascale supercomputers to be powered by this processor. However, the availability of this CPU was a bit of a mystery until yesterday. Below, you can see the quote from Ms. Lisa Spelman about the availability of said processors.

Lisa SpelmanDemand for Sapphire Rapids continues to grow as customers learn more about the benefits of the platform. Given the breadth of enhancements in Sapphire Rapids, we are incorporating additional validation time prior to the production release, which will streamline the deployment process for our customers and partners. Based on this, we now expect Sapphire Rapids to be in production in the first quarter of 2022, with ramp beginning in the second quarter of 2022.

At the 2021 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) Intel is showcasing how the company is extending its lead in high performance computing (HPC) with a range of technology disclosures, partnerships and customer adoptions. Intel processors are the most widely deployed compute architecture in the world's supercomputers, enabling global medical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. Intel is announcing advances in its Xeon processor for HPC and AI as well as innovations in memory, software, exascale-class storage, and networking technologies for a range of HPC use cases.

"To maximize HPC performance we must leverage all the computer resources and technology advancements available to us," said Trish Damkroger, vice president and general manager of High Performance Computing at Intel. "Intel is the driving force behind the industry's move toward exascale computing, and the advancements we're delivering with our CPUs, XPUs, oneAPI Toolkits, exascale-class DAOS storage, and high-speed networking are pushing us closer toward that realization."

Today as part of its MWC 2021 virtual event, Intel showcased multiple groundbreaking network deployments powered by its technology and unveiled the Intel Network Platform. It also announced new additions to its leading product portfolio for 5G and edge, reaffirming its position as the leading network silicon provider. The company confirmed its leadership in virtual radio access network (vRAN), noting nearly all commercial vRAN deployments are running on Intel technology. In the years ahead, it sees global vRAN base station deployments scale, from hundreds to "hundreds of thousands," and eventually millions.

"Network transformation is critical to unleash the possibilities of 5G and maximize the rise of the edge to create new and better business outcomes for our customers across the globe. As the leading network silicon provider, we have been driving this shift to virtualizing the core to access to edge, and implementing edge computing capabilities with our decade of experience, to power our society's digital revolution," said Dan Rodriguez, Intel corporate vice president, Network Platforms Group.

Intel has been extensively teasing its Xe HP scalable compute architecture for some time now, and Igor's Lab has an exclusive look at GPU compute cards based on the Xe HP silicon. We know from older reports that Intel's Xe HP compute accelerator packages come in three essential variants—1 tile, 2 tiles, and 4 tiles. A "tile" here is an independent GPU accelerator die. Each of these tiles has 512 execution units, which convert to 4,096 programmable shaders. The single-tile card is a compact, half-height card capable of 1U and 2U chassis. According to Igor's Lab, it comes with 16 GB of HBM2E memory with 716 GB/s memory bandwidth, and the single tile has 384 out of 512 EUs enabled (3,072 shaders). The card also has a typical board power of just 150 W.

The Arctic Sound 2T card is an interesting contraption. A much larger 2-slot card of length easily above 28 cm, and a workstation spacer, the 2T card uses a 2-tile variant of the Xe HP package, but each of the two tiles only has 480 out of 512 EUs enabled. This works out to 7,680 shaders. The dual-chiplet MCM uses 32 GB of HBM2E memory (16 GB per tile), and a typical board power of 300 W. A single 4+4 pin EPS connector, capable of up to 225 W, is used to power the card.

Yesterday, we got information that Intel's upcoming DG2 discrete graphics card is "right around the corner". That means that we are inching closer to the launch of Intel's discrete GPU offerings, and we are going to get another major player in the current GPU market duopoly. Today, however, we are in luck because Igor from Igor's LAB has managed to get ahold of the specifications of Intel's Xe-HPG DG2 graphics card. For starters, it is important to note that DG2 GPU will first come to laptops later this year. More precisely, laptops powered by Alder Lake-P processors will get paired with DG2 discrete GPU in the second half of 2021. The CPU and GPU will connect using the PCIe 4.0 x12 link as shown in the diagram below, where the GPU is paired with the Tiger Lake-H processor. The GPU has its subsystem that handles the IO as well.

A senior game developer relations engineer at Intel, Pete Brubaker, Tweeted late Wednesday that the company's DG2 discrete graphics card is "right around the corner," and that "it's about to get exciting." Brubaker's Tweet comes as the company is looking to recruit more engineers to work with its developer relations, the team that interfaces with game devs to optimize their engines and games for Intel's graphics architectures.

While the DG1, which was productized as the Iris Xe MAX graphics card, was essentially an iGPU-on-a-stick, the DG2 should spark a lot more interest. Based on a third-party foundry process, the DG2 is the first client graphics product based on the Xe HPG (high performance gaming) graphics architecture, and allegedly crams up to 512 execution units or 4,096 unified shaders—a 4.3x gain over the Iris Xe MAX. It's also rumored to ship with up to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus. Whether it features DirectX 12 Ultimate features or not, remains to be seen, but it's becoming clear that Intel wants a crack at the high-volume e-sports market, with a product that's fast enough for competitive e-sports gaming, and capable of AAA.

We have recently received pictures of any early engineering sample of Intel's upcoming DG2 GPU from YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead. The card features 512 Execution Units and will be the flagship model for Intel's upcoming Xe-HPG lineup reportedly targeting performance between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. The final product is rumored to feature a base clock of 2.2 GHz along with 16 GB GDDR6 memory and a 256-bit bus. The sample has a TDP of 275 W with 8 + 6 pin power connectors up from original targets of 225 W - 250 W.

The report also notes that Intel is still deciding between three cooler designs with the finished card potentially featuring a white shroud. Intel also appears to be working on a NVIDIA DLSS/AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution competitor codenamed XeSS which confirms support for hardware-accelerated raytracing and resolution upscaling tech. The card is unlikely to launch until Q4 2021 with wider availability in 2022, lower end 128 EU, and 256 EU cards will follow shortly afterward. The full report can be viewed below.

Rapid evolution in AI technology is infusing IoT devices with new capabilities, leading to the new trend of AIoT. Simply speaking, IoT devices acquire data then transmit that data through the network to an integrated backend system. Typical applications include automation, remote control, and connection with other IoT devices. AIoT brings the power of AI to these IoT devices, so that machine equipment and factories can play a more active role in the process and learn intelligently. Accumulation of data, continuous learning, and data analysis can achieve failure prevention or autonomous operation to implement a fully-fledged "smart factory." The GP-3000 is Cincoze's highly-acclaimed flagship model for AI and machine vision applications, combining high-end computing performance, rich high-speed I/O, and harsh environment resilience to enable edge computing in the AIoT framework. It is the first choice for effectively implementing multiple applications on the field side, such as smart manufacturing and transportation.

The key to rapid smart manufacturing upgrades is introducing high-efficiency GPU computers as the on-site data processing center. To that end, the GP-3000 supports an Intel Xeon /Core (Coffee Lake-R & Coffee Lake) processor and sports the Intel C246 chipset, with up to two sets of DDR4-2666 ECC/non-ECC SO-DIMMs for a maximum of 64 GB of total memory. This setup provides the coveted combination of efficient processing and parallel processing. The GPU Expansion Box (GEB) supports up to two 250 W high-end full-length (≤328 mm) GPU cards to further enhance its processing capabilities. The high-speed I/O ports, with the simple addition of a camera, become the machine equipment's eyes, allowing for the quick and accurate inspection and categorization of high-definition image inputs.

The 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors (code-named "Rocket Lake-S") launched worldwide today, led by the flagship Intel Core i9-11900K. Reaching speeds of up to 5.3 GHz with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost, the Intel Core i9-11900K delivers even more performance to gamers and PC enthusiasts.

Engineered on the new Cypress Cove architecture, 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors are designed to transform hardware and software efficiency and increase raw gaming performance. The new architecture brings up to 19% gen-over-gen instructions per cycle (IPC) improvement for the highest frequency cores and adds Intel UHD graphics featuring the Intel Xe graphics architecture for rich media and intelligent graphics capabilities. That matters because games and most applications continue to depend on high-frequency cores to drive high frame rates and low latency. Designed to Game: With its new 11th Gen desktop processors, Intel continues to push desktop gaming performance to the limits and deliver the most amazing immersive experiences for players everywhere.Read the TechPowerUp Reviews of the Core i9-11900K and Core i5-11600K.

Raja Koduri of Intel has today posted an interesting video on his Twitter account. Showing one of the greatest engineering marvels Intel has ever created, Mr. Koduri has teased what is to come when the company launches the Xe-HPC Ponte Vecchio graphics card designed for high-performance computing workloads. Showcased today was the "petaflops in your palm" chip, designed to run AI workloads with a petaflop of computing power. Having over 100 billion transistors, the chip uses as much as 47 tiles combined in the most advanced packaging technology ever created by Intel. They call them "magical tiles", and they bring logic, memory, and I/O controllers, all built using different semiconductor nodes.

Mr. Koduri also pointed out that the chip was born after only two years after the concept, which is an awesome achievement, given that the research of the new silicon takes years. The chip will be the heart of many systems that require massive computational power, especially the ones like AI. Claiming to have the capability to perform quadrillion floating-point operations per second (one petaflop), the chip will be a true monster. So far we don't know other details like the floating-point precision it runs at with one petaflop or the total power consumption of those 47 tiles, so we have to wait for more details.More pictures follow.

Intel today revealed that it will launch its 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable processor series at an online event titled "How Wonderful Gets Done 2021," on April 6, 2021. This will be one of the first major media events headed by Intel's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger. Besides the processor launch, Intel is expected to detail many of its advances in the enterprise space, particularly in the areas of 5G infrastructure rollout, edge computing, and AI/HPC. The 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors are based on the new 10 nm "Ice Lake-SP" silicon, heralding the company's first CPU core IPC gain in the server space since 2015. The processors also introduce new I/O capabilities, such as PCI-Express 4.0.

The 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors (code-named "Rocket Lake-S") launched worldwide today, led by the flagship Intel Core i9-11900K. Reaching speeds of up to 5.30 GHz with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost, the Intel Core i9-11900K delivers even more performance to gamers and PC enthusiasts.

Engineered on the new Cypress Cove architecture, 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors are designed to transform hardware and software efficiency and increase raw gaming performance​. The new architecture brings up to 19% gen-over-gen instructions per cycle (IPC) improvement for the highest frequency cores and adds Intel UHD graphics featuring the Intel Xe graphics architecture for rich media and intelligent graphics capabilities. That matters because games and most applications continue to depend on high-frequency cores to drive high frame rates and low latency.

Intel started shipping their first Xe DG1 graphics card to OEMs earlier this year which features 4 GB of LPDDR4X and 80 execution units. While these initial cards aren't high performance and only compete with entry-level products like the NVIDIA MX350 they demonstrated Intel's ability to produce a discrete GPU. We have recently received some more potential performance information about Intel's next card the DG2 from chief GPU architect, Raja Koduri. Koduri posted an image of him with the team at Intel's Folsom lab working on the Intel Iris Pro 5200 iGPU back in 2012 and noted that now 9 years later their new GPU is over 20 times faster. The Intel Iris Pro 5200 scores 1015 on Videocard Benchmarks and ~1,400 points on 3DMark Fire Strike, if we assume these scores will be 20x more we get values of ~20,300 in Videocard Benchmarks and 28,000 points in Fire Strike. While these values don't extrapolate perfectly they provide a good indication of potential performance placing the GPU in the same realm of the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6800.

Cincoze, a professional manufacturer of embedded systems, has announced its new flagship GPU edge computing system, the GP-3000. Its crowning feature is an exclusive GPU Expansion Box that provides expansion for up to two high-end GPU graphics cards and creating a high-performance industrial-grade GPU computer. Brandon Chien, General Manager of Cincoze, stated that "We already know AI will drive innovation and expansion for industrial applications. The GP-3000 is Cincoze's answer for intensive image processing and complex calculations, such as deep machine learning, autonomous driving, automated visual inspection, and mobile monitoring. As our latest flagship model, the GP-3000 multiplies edge computing efficiency, amplifies productivity and reliability, and accelerates AIoT automation."

The GP-3000's extreme computing power starts with an 8th or 9th generation Intel Xeon or Core i3/i5/i7 (Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake-R) CPU, Intel C246 chipset, and supports two sets of DDR4-2666 ECC/non-ECC SO-DIMM up to 64 GB and can support up to two 250 W high-end GPU graphics cards. With a total system power consumption of 720 W, it's easy to meet and exceed high-efficiency application requirements. A precision heat dissipation and cooling design quickly wick away heat, keeping the focus squarely on the breathtaking performance of the GP-3000.

Here are some of the first pictures of the Intel Xe DG1 SDV, taken apart to reveal its rather desolate PCB. The Xe DG1 SDV isn't commercially available, but rather distributed by Intel to ISVs, so they can begin optimizing or developing for the Gen12 Xe graphics architecture. The board features a GPU ASIC that's nearly identical to the Iris Xe MAX mobile discrete GPUs, and four LPDDR4 memory chips making up 8 GB of video memory.

The Xe DG1 GPU is based on the Xe LP graphics architecture, and the silicon is built on the 10 nm SuperFin silicon fabrication node. The chip features 96 execution units (768 unified shaders); and apparently makes do with the 75 W power supplied by the PCI-Express slot. A frugal 2-phase VRM powers the GPU. The GPU uses conventional 4-pin PWM to control the fan, which ventilates a simple aluminium mono-block heatsink. Three DisplayPorts and one HDMI 2.1 make up the output configuration. While you won't be able to buy a Xe DG1 SDV in the market (unless an ISV decides to break their NDA and put one up on eBay), Intel has allowed a small number of board partners to develop custom-design cards. ASUS is ready with one. Igor's Lab has more pictures, a list of benchmark fails, and other interesting commentary in the source link below.

Intel SVP for architecture, graphics, and software, Raja Koduri, tweeted the first picture of the Xe HPC scalar compute processor multi-chip module, with its large IHS off. It reveals two large main logic dies built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process from a third-party foundry. The Xe HPC processor will be targeted at supercomputing and AI-ML applications, so the main logic dies are expected to be large arrays of execution units, spread across what appear to be eight clusters, surrounded by ancillary components such as memory controllers and interconnect PHYs.

There appear to be two kinds of on-package memory on the Xe HPC. The first kind is HBM stacks (from either the HBM2E or HBM3 generation), serving as the main high-speed memory; while the other is a mystery for now. This could either be another class of DRAM, serving a serial processing component on the main logic die; or a non-volatile memory, such as 3D XPoint or NAND flash (likely the former), providing fast persistent storage close to the main logic dies. There appear to be four HBM-class stacks per logic die (so 4096-bit per die and 8192-bit per package), and one die of this secondary memory per logic die.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 financial results. The company also announced that its board of directors approved a cash dividend increase of five percent to $1.39 per share on an annual basis. The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.3475 per share on the company's common stock, which will be payable on March 1 to shareholders of record on February 7.

"We significantly exceeded our expectations for the quarter, capping off our fifth consecutive record year," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO. "Demand for the computing performance Intel delivers remains very strong and our focus on growth opportunities is paying off. It has been an honor to lead this wonderful company, and I am proud of what we have achieved as a team. Intel is in a strong strategic and financial position as we make this leadership transition and take Intel to the next level."

Intel has just launched its Rocket Lake-S desktop lineup of processors during this year's CES 2021 virtual event. However, the company is under constant pressure from the competition and it seems like it will not stop with that launch for this year. Today, thanks to the popular leaker @momomo_us on Twitter, we have the first SiSoftware entries made from the anonymous Alder Lake-S system. Dubbed a heterogeneous architecture, Alder Lake is supposed to be Intel's first desktop attempt at making big.LITTLE style of processors for general consumers. It is supposed to feature Intel 10 nm Golden Cove CPU "big" cores & Gracemont "small" CPU cores.

The SiSoftware database entry showcases a prototype system that has 16 cores and 32 threads running at the base frequency of 1.8 GHz and a boost speed of 4 GHz. There is 12.5 MB of L2 cache (split into 10 pairs of 1.25 MB) and 30 MB of level-three (L3) cache present on the processor. There is also an Alder Lake-S mobile graphics controller that runs at 1.5 GHz. Intel Xe gen 12.2 graphics is responsible for the video output. When it comes to memory, Alder Lake-S is finally bringing the newest DDR5 standard with a new motherboard chipset and socket called LGA 1700.

Intel has apparently taken the CES opportunity to showcase its upcoming Rocket Lake-S CPU in gaming against one of AMD's best mainstream CPUs, packing 12 cores - although the specific model remains undisclosed. Geeknetics shared screen-grabs from the demo, done inside Metro Exodus, where the undisclosed Intel 8-core Rocket Lake-S is shown achieving higher average frame-rates compared to the AMD solution (an average of 156.54 FPS for Intel, against 147.43 FPS for AMD). The CPUs were paired with an NVIDIA RTX 3080 graphics card - and in case you're wondering whether NVIDIA's Resizable BAR capabilities have been activated for this Rocket Lake-S system, no information on that was available at time of writing (the question is raised since Intel has already announced support for the feature with NVIDIA GPUs on Tiger Lake-H).

Intel is still in the work of testing and certification for their more complex graphics products based on their Xe microarchitectures, and that means that some tests are being done in well-known benchmarking platforms. Case in point, an Intel Xe GPU with a reported 128 EUs (1024 shading units), 3 GB of memory, and a clockspeed of 1.4 GHz ran through Geekbench, where it scored an... interesting 9,311 points in the OpenCL test.

This is more likely than not an engineering sample, considering that Intel's Iris Xe MAX wrapped in its Tiger Lake package can score up to 23,000 points. It is currently unclear if this particular Xe manifestation is running on Intel's Xe-LP or Xe-HPG architecture. This might be Intel's DG-2 product, which offers higher performance than their DG-1 discrete graphics card that is only available for system integrators.

Today, at Intel's Memory and Storage 2020 event, the company highlighted six new memory and storage products to help customers meet the challenges of digital transformation. Key to advancing innovation across memory and storage, Intel announced two new additions to its Intel Optane Solid State Drive (SSD) Series: the Intel Optane SSD P5800X, the world's fastest data center SSD, and the Intel Optane Memory H20 for client, which features performance and mainstream productivity for gaming and content creation. Optane helps meet the needs of modern computing by bringing the memory closer to the CPU. The company also revealed its intent to deliver its 3rd generation of Intel Optane persistent memory (code-named "Crow Pass") for cloud and enterprise customers.

"Today is a key moment for our memory and storage journey. With the release of these new Optane products, we continue our innovation, strengthen our memory and storage portfolio, and enable our customers to better navigate the complexity of digital transformation. Optane products and technologies are becoming a mainstream element of business compute. And as a part of Intel, these leadership products are advancing our long-term growth priorities, including AI, 5G networking and the intelligent, autonomous edge." -Alper Ilkbahar, Intel vice president in the Data Platforms Group and general manager of the Intel Optane Group.

Raja Koduri senior vice president, chief architect, and general manager of Architecture, Graphics, and Software at Intel Corporation has recently teased Intel's upcoming Xe-HP accelerator alongside its in production HC3 XG310 server card. The HC3 solution was Intel's first Xe-based product utilizing the Xe-LP architecture. The Intel Xe-LP products are Intel's lowest power efficiency optimized Xe processors while the Xe-HP products should offer improved performance and scaling. The upcoming Xe-HP accelerator appears to be a single-slot passively card with a single 8-pin power connector. Raja Koduri expects developers will begin receiving Xe-HP, Xe-HPG, and Xe-HPC products in 2021. He also declared that we are in the GPU golden age with new launches from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Apple.