Intel released a product change notification (PCN) earlier this week, announcing the discontinuation of its "Cascade Lake-X" and "Cascade Lake-W" HEDT processors. This effectively marks the end for the LGA2066 HEDT platform, as well as the Xeon W-2200 series workstation processors. The final iteration of the "Skylake" CPU core, "Cascade Lake" introduced features such as AVX512, VNNI, GFNI, and DLBoost, forming Intel's first attempt at providing hardware acceleration for AI neural-net building/training. The company plans a more comprehensive hardware accelerator with "Meteor Lake," called AI Boost.

Intel 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" desktop processors in the Socket LGA1200 package, the first Intel desktop processor generation in five years to offer an IPC increase, has been marked EOL (end of life) and is formally discontinued from the company's product stack. This comes in the latest product-change notification (PCN), dated February 6, 2023, and is consistent with a normal product lifecycle for Intel. A product marked EOL and discontinued can no longer be ordered from Intel, although there are still plenty of 11th Gen Core processors in the market, which Intel will fully honor product warranties for; so those on entry-level 11th Gen processors such as the i5-11400 still have a certain amount of upgrade headroom to the 8-core i7-11700/K or the faster i9-11900/K. The PCN covers pretty much the entire 11th Gen Core desktop product stack.

Intel's Xeon processors feature a wide range of embedded functionalities that the company has developed over the years. One such is the Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC) that enabled the functionality of an NVMe RAID card on the CPU, simplifying the installation, cost, and maintenance of high-performance storage arrays. Debuting in 2017, it is present in some consumer-facing Core models and Xeon Scalable platforms where it sees the highest usage. However, on January 6, Intel posted a product change notice that notified the users that the VROC function would be discontinued, with the last orders being placed on January 23 and the last shipping with VROC being made on March 31. This caused confusion, especially in the enterprise sector, which utilizes Intel Xeon processors for their workloads and storage arrays.

Tom's Hardware has reached out to Intel for clarification and got the following statement:

Intel SpokespersonThe PCN [Product Change Notice] was prematurely posted while the decision was under evaluation. After discussing with the ecosystem and customers we realize there is significant demand for this product and intend to continue to support it.

Intel is discontinuing the special dodecahedron LDPE retail packaging for its previous-generation flagship desktop processor, the Core i9-9900K. The processor itself is still an active SKU, but its retail packaging will likely now revert to a more conventional-looking paperboard cuboid package, resembling that of the Core i9-9900KF. There is no mention of any change to the "limited edition" Core i9-9900KS. The product change notification (PCN) may have been triggered by the i9-9900K getting succeeded by the 10-core i9-10900K processor that ships in a simpler (though still premium-looking) hard paperboard package with a large front-face window; and the fact that the dodecahedron LDPE package presented logistics problems for distributors, as crates of these processors could pack fewer units than with smaller cuboid boxes, and needed additional styrofoam cushioning to prevent transit damage.

Intel has decided to restart operations in its previously winded-down Costa Rica facilities. An Intel Product Change Notification (PCN) for their Cascade Lake Xeon Scalable processors shows that the company has added Costa Rica to its three other "Test and Finish" sites - the other three are located in Penang (Malaysia), Kulim (Malaysia) and Vietnam. Intel's aim is to guarantee a "continuous supply" of the affected processors - namely, Cascade Lake second-generation Xeon Scalable processors in the Silver, Gold and Platinum lines (in both boxed and tray SKUs).

This move, which will be done in phases. The first implementation of the Costa Rica operations will be effective on April 19th, with the remaining operations to come online on August 3rd. Intel expects to reduce dependency on their other three Test and Finish sites, while being able to bolster final production capacity by some 25% with this move.

Intel has unceremoniously, through a product change notification (PCN), discontinued the Itanium family of microprocessors. The Itanium 9700 "Kittson," which was released in 2017, is the final generation of Itanium, and its sales to new customers have stopped according to the PCN. The series has been marked "end of life" (EOL). Existing customers of Itanium who already have their IT infrastructure built around Itanium 9700 series, have an opportunity to determine their remaining demand of these processors, and place their "Last Product Discontinuance" order with Intel. The final LPD shipments would go out mid-2021.

With this move, Intel has cast uncertainty over the future of the IA-64 microarchitecture. IA-64 was originally conceived by Intel to replace 32-bit x86 at the turn of the century, as an industry-standard 64-bit processor architecture. AMD laid the foundation for its rival standard AMD64, which could go on to become x86-64. AMD64 won the battle for popularity over IA-64, as it maintained complete backwards-compatibility with x86, and could seamlessly run 32-bit software, saving enterprises and clients billions in transition costs. Intel cross-licensed it as EM64T (extended memory 64-bit technology), before standardizing the name x86-64. Itanium dragged on for close to two decades serving certain enterprise and HPC customers.

Intel late last week released a PCN (product change notification), which stated that it has assigned its manufacturing facilities in Vietnam as an "additional site for test and finish." This would entail final quality assurance testing of its nearly-ready products and "finishing," which involves final retail packaging. The Intel facility in Vietnam will work in concert with its largest Asian manufacturing facility, located in Malaysia. "While Assembly, Test and Finish will continue to be done in PGAT (Malaysia), Intel will also have assembled material sent to VNAT (Vietnam) to perform the Test/Finish portions of the manufacturing process. Please note that Vietnam has been certified equivalent (form, fit, function, and reliability) for the affected products and technologies of this change," the PCN reads.

The products named in the PCN are the company's new flagship MSDT processor, the 8-core/16-thread Core i9-9900K, the second-best 8-core/8-thread Core i7-9700K, and the 6-core/-6-thread Core i5-9600K. "Fab, Sort and Assembly Test Manufacturing follow a philosophy, enables delivery of product from multiple production sites, which operate as a virtual factory that performs consistently and independent of the manufacturing source site. Additional benefits include faster production ramps that improve product availability and improved consistency to quality performance," it concludes. Intel had, earlier this year, raised its capital expenditure by an additional $1 billion YoY to around $16 billion, in a bid to increase its volumes as the industry faces supply shortages from Intel, which the company claims is due to "increased demand," rather than a short-supply. Intel has also roped in its small foundry located in Leixlip, Ireland.

Intel seems to be looking to further expand its lineup of the 900P SSD, according to an official Intel document the folks at myce.com got access to. The file, a Product Change Notification (PCN), is usually used by Intel to denote revisions or new products for their manufacturing facilities. And the PCN 115990 - 00 lists increased capacities of 960 GB and 1,5 TB for their 900P SSD.

The newly listed products aren't the only things of note here, though. There have also been some label changes, and reduced voltages across the board. The retail box label will now also include the firmware version the unit ships with, which will definitely come in handy in case there is a known bad batch in these SSDs (as unlikely as that is to be).