Intel has today reported its Q4 2020 earnings disclosing full-year revenue with the current CEO Bob Swan, upcoming new CEO Pat Gelsinger, and Omar Ishrak, Chairman of Intel's board. During the call, company officials have talked about Intel's earnings and most importantly, addressing the current problems about the company's manufacturing part - semiconductor foundries. Incoming Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has talked about the state of the 7 nm node, giving shareholders reassurance and a will to remain in such a position. He has made an argument that he has personally reviewed the progress of the "health and recovery of the 7 nm program."

The 7 nm node has been originally delayed by a full year amid the expectations, and as with the 10 nm node, we have believed that it is going to experience similar issues. However, the incoming CEO has reassured everyone that it is very much improving. The new 7 nm node is on track for 2023 delivery, when Intel is expected to compete with the 3 nm node of TSMC. Firstly, Intel will make a debut of the 7 nm node with client processors scheduled for 1H 2023 arrival, with data center models following that. The company leads have confirmed that Intel will stay true to its internal manufacturing, but have stressed that there will still be a need for some outsourcing to happen.

Intel in its FY 2020 + Q4 2020 earnings release revealed two important development milestones from its two core businesses. As part of its Q4 2020 business highlights disclosures, the company revealed that it has commenced mass-production of its next-generation Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake-SP" enterprise processors. These chips implement the "Ice Lake" microarchitecture, with "Sunny Cove" CPU cores that offer higher IPC over "Cascade Lake," and are built on the company's 10 nm silicon fabrication node. Our older article details the 10 nm "Ice Lake-SP" silicon, where each die offers up to 28 cores, and enables Intel to build processors with up to 56 cores using two such dies on multi-chip modules.

Next up, the company states that it has "started shipping" its 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors. "Shipping" in this context could even mean commencement of mass-production, and transfer of inventory down the supply chain, in the build up to a market availability date. At its digital keynote address on the sidelines of the 2021 International CES, Intel revealed many more details of "Rocket Lake-S," including its flagship Core i9-11900K 8-core processor, which it claims retakes the gaming performance lead that the company recently lost to AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. Multiple sources confirmed that these processors should be available only after mid-March, 2021.

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."

Research and development spending by semiconductor companies worldwide is forecast to grow 4% in 2021 to $71.4 billion after rising 5% in 2020 to a record high of $68.4 billion, according to IC Insights' new 2021 edition of The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry. Total R&D spending by semiconductor companies is expected to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% between 2021 and 2025 to $89.3 billion.

When the world was hit by the Covid-19 virus health crisis in 2020, wary semiconductor suppliers kept a lid on R&D spending increases, even though total semiconductor industry revenue grew by a surprising 8% in the year despite the economic fallout from the deadly pandemic. Semiconductor R&D expenditures as a percentage of worldwide industry sales slipped to 14.2% in 2020 compared to 14.6% in 2019, when research and development spending declined 1% and total semiconductor revenue fell 12%. Figure 1 plots semiconductor R&D spending levels and the spending-to-sales ratios over the past two decades and IC Insights' forecast through 2025.

The original "Nehalem" CPU microarchitecture from 2008 was pivotal to Intel, as it laid the foundation for Intel's mainline server and client x86 processors for the following 12-odd years. Glenn Hinton, the lead architect behind "Nehalem," announced that he is rejoining Intel after 3 years of retirement, to work on a new high-performance CPU project. Hinton states that his decision to rejoin Intel out of his retirement was influenced by Pat Gelsinger joining the company as its new CEO. Jim Keller, a CPU architecture lead behind several commercially-successful architectures, recently left Intel after a brief stint leading an undisclosed CPU core project. Keller later took up the mantle of CEO at hardware start-up Tenstorrent.

Pat Gelsinger leading Intel is expected to have a big impact on its return to technological leadership in its core businesses, as highlighted in Gelsinger's recent comments on the need for Intel to be better than Apple (which he referred to as "that lifestyle company") at making CPUs, in reference to Apple's new M1 chip taking the ultraportable notebook industry by storm. The other front Intel faces stiff competition from, is AMD, which has achieved IPC parity with Intel, and is beating it on energy-efficiency, taking advantage of the 7 nm silicon fabrication process.

HP Inc. announced five new Chromebooks to help teachers and students stay connected, productive, focused, and secure whether at home, in the classroom, or a blend of both. The PC has never been more essential in education. There has been a 46% increase in device shipments for teachers and students over the past year and 66% of teachers expect blended learning to continue after the pandemic. With nearly 70% of teachers and students feeling less connected to each other during the pandemic,4 HP's technology solutions foster collaboration and community during this time of unprecedented change, ensuring teachers can find new ways to connect with students, and students can be seen and heard regardless of their location.

"HP is committed to enabling better learning outcomes for 100 million people by 2025. With education no longer confined to the four walls of the classroom, HP is creating technology that helps teachers, students, as well as parents, thrive in blended learning environments," said Bill Avey, General Manager and Global Head of Education, Personal Systems, HP Inc. "HP's innovative Chromebook lineup gives educators and students access to flexible, engaging, and personalized devices that are critical to ensuring a quality education."

Acer today announced the new TravelMate Spin B3 (TMB311R-32) convertible laptop with military-grade durability, a device specially designed for classrooms. The touchscreen device features a Full HD webcam and blazing-fast Intel Wi-Fi 6, providing students with everything they need to succeed in interactive or virtual classrooms that make heavy use of media-based teaching materials.

Ultimately, the Acer TravelMate Spin B3 is a reliable device that strives to provide protection against common accidents, allowing parents and teachers to focus on what matters most: learning.

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.

Pricing for Intel's upcoming Rocket Lake-S series of desktop processors has recently been leaked by a Dutch computer store. The 11th Generation Intel Core i5, i7, and i9 processors will feature the new Comet Lake CPU architecture while the lower-end Intel Core i3, and Intel Pentium processors will retain the older Cypress Cove CPU architecture. The new Intel Core i9 processors have returned to an 8 core 16 thread design down from the 10 core 20 thread design found in 10th generation processors.

The Intel 11th Generation Core i9 series will be approximately 6.6% cheaper than their predecessors but with 2 fewer cores and 4 fewer threads. The other new processors all see price increases from their 10th generation versions with an average increase of 6.5%. The new Comet Lake CPU architecture is expected to bring significant IPC improvements which may allow them to regain the title of best gaming CPU.

Intel has quietly announced the discontinuation of all Optane Memory SSDs for the consumer market. The company also confirmed that going forward they had no plans to release any new consumer Optane-Only SDDs. The Intel Optane Memory M10, 800P, 900P, and 905P series SSDs have now all been discontinued with final shipments going out next month. Intel has directed users to look at their Optane Memory H20 with Solid State Storage as a potential replacement, the H20 is a QLC M.2 SSD with 32 GB of Optane memory offered in 1 TB and 2 TB configurations. If you are looking to purchase an Intel Optane-Only SSD you will have to act quickly as once stocks run out they won't be returning.

Intel's future CEO Pat Gelsinger, who supersedes current CEO Bob Swan come February 15th, has reportedly compared Intel with Apple's efforts, in wake of that company's decision to leave the Intel ecosystem in favor of in-house designed ARM CPUs. As Apple M1-powered devices hit reviewers' tables, the opinions mostly went one-sided in favor of Apple's decision, clamoring for that particular CPU design to be only lightly short of a computing miracle, considering the amount of computing power provided at that chip's TDP, and running circles around Apple's previous Intel implementations.

According to The Oregonian, a local newspaper from (you guessed it) Oregon where Intel has a strong branch presence, Intel held an all-hands meeting of its Oregon workforce, attended by future Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who is quoted as having remarked that "We [Intel] have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes. We have to be that good, in the future." Considering how Apple's M1 has raised the world's attention to the ARM architecture as a competitor with strong enough arguments to face the x86 ecosystem (as if ARM powering the world's current fastest supercomputer wasn't a strong enough argument), that seems like a strong yet adequate statement. We'll see how Intel fares with its Alder lake CPUs, which essentially bring ARM's design philosophy of an heterogeneous CPU with both high-performance and high-efficiency cores to the x86 table.

The midnight bell seems to have struck for Intel CEO Bob Swan, with Intel announcing his departure from the CEO position effective February 15th. The news comes after a two-year tenure as Intel's CEO, in addition to seven additional months in which Bob Swan served as interim Intel CEO before officially assuming the position. VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger will take over the CEO chair, and following this announcement, Intel's stock surged by more than 10%, while VMWare's stock dipped by 5% on the prospect of losing its CEO.

Patrick Gelsinger formerly served under Intel, where he climbed the ranks until reaching the coveted CTO position - and also served as Senior Vice-president and General Manager of the Digital Enterprise Group. He is also credited as being one of the driving forces behind the creation of standards such as USB and Wi-Fi, architected the 80486, and played key roles in 14 generations of Intel Core and Xeon processors. Investors expect Gelsinger's technical background to help steer Intel into less troubled waters when it comes to strategy and execution. in wake of Bob Swan's departure, Intel also announced that it expects fourth quarter 2020 revenue and earnings to exceed prior guidance, and that it will take to its January 21st earnings report to discuss the "strong progress" achieved by the company in the in-development 7 nm node.

According to a market analysis from TrendForce, Intel's manufacturing efforts with TSMC will go way beyond a potential TSMC technology licensing for that company's manufacturing technology to be employed in Intel's own fabs. The market research firm says that Intel will instead procure wafers directly from TSMC, starting on 2H2021, in the order of 20-25% of total production for some of its non-CPU products. But the manufacturing deal is said to go beyond that, with TSMC picking up orders for Intel's Core i3 CPUs in the company's 5 nm manufacturing node - one that Intel will take years to scale down to on its own manufacturing capabilities.

According to TrendForce, that effort will scale upwards with TSMC manufacturing certain allotments of Intel's midrange and high-end CPUs using the semiconductor manufacturer's 3 nm technology in 2022. TrendForce believes that increased outsourcing of Intel's product lines will allow the company to not only continue its existence as a major IDM, but also maintain and prioritize in-house production lines for chips with high margins, while more effectively spending CAPEX on advanced R&D due to savings on fabrication technology scaling - fewer in-house chips means lower needs for investment in capacity increases, which would allow the company to sink the savings into further R&D. The move would also allow Intel to close the gap with rival AMD's manufacturing advantages in a more critical, timely manner.

Intel is betting big on an 8-core processor to revive its gaming performance leadership, and that chip is the 11th Generation Core "Rocket Lake-S," coming this March. In its 2021 International CES online event, Intel disclosed more details about "Rocket Lake-S," including the first true-color die-shot. PC enthusiast @Locuza_ on Twitter annotated the die for your viewing pressure. For starters, nearly half the die-area of the "Rocket Lake-S" is taken up by the uncore and iGPU, with the rest going to the eight "Cypress Cove" CPU cores.

The "Cypress Cove" CPU core is reportedly a back-port of "Willow Cove" to the 14 nm silicon fabrication node, although there are some changes, beginning with its cache hierarchy. A "Cypress Cove" core is configured with the same L1I and L1D cache sizes as "Willow Cove," but differ with L2 and L3 cache sizes. Each "Cypress Cove" core is endowed with 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache (which is a 100% increase from the 256 KB on "Skylake" cores); but this pales in comparison to the 1.25 MB L2 caches of "Willow Cove" cores on the "Tiger Lake-U" silicon. Also, the L3 cache for the 8-core "Rocket Lake-S" die is 16 MB, spread across eight 2 MB slices; while the 4-core "Tiger Lake-U" features 12 MB of L3, spread across four 3 MB slices. Each core can address the whole L3 cache, across all slices.

Intel at its recent 2021 International CES call confirmed the existence of an 8-core version of its 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" processor, and held the chip for the camera. The visibly bigger chip will be slated in Intel's H-segment (35 W to 45 W TDP), meaning it will only power gaming notebooks and mobile workstations; while the mainstream mobility segment will still be in the hands of its 4-core "Tiger Lake-H35" silicon. The 8-core "Tiger Lake-H" processor will also receive reasonably high clock-speeds, boosting up to 5.00 GHz.

Assuming the cache hierarchy and uncore/iGPU setup is unchanged between the 8-core and 4-core dies, we're looking at 24 MB of shared L3 cache, and 1.25 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core. These alone take up a big slice of the die-area. Add to this, the uncore features a PCI-Express Gen 4 root-complex and memory controllers that support dual-channel DDR4 and LPDDR4x memory types. The iGPU is expected to be based on the same Gen12 Xe-LP architecture as the 4-core die; although its execution unit count remains to be seen. In all likelihood, the 8-core "Tiger Lake-H" silicon is based on the same 10 nm SuperFin node.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) unveiled new products and software that reimagine work so anyone can perform at their best. With a new portfolio of intelligent, collaborative and sustainable devices, Dell is transforming work experiences to give people greater flexibility to work from anywhere.

"People's expectations of their technology continue to evolve. It's why we push beyond barriers to create devices that offer better experiences and are more integrated into our lives," said Ed Ward, senior vice president, Client Product Group, Dell Technologies. "Our new intelligent PCs make it possible for us to work smarter and collaborate easier, so we can give our best selves in all that we do. Secure, sustainable and smart: that's the way forward for PCs."

Intel's first discrete gaming graphics card based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, will be built on a TSMC 7 nanometer silicon fabrication node, according to a Reuters report citing sources "familiar with the matter." The first such discrete GPU is being referred to internally by Intel as the DG2. Recent reports suggest that Intel will give the DG2 formidable specs, such as 4,096 unified shaders across 512 execution units, and 8 GB of GDDR6 video memory. Back in 2020, the company launched the DG1 under the Intel Iris Xe MAX marketing name, targeting only the mobile discrete GPU market. The DG1 has entry-level specs, with which Intel is eyeing the same pie as NVIDIA's fast-moving GeForce MX series mobile GPUs. Interestingly, the other major client of TSMC-N7 following Apple's transition to N5, is Intel's rival AMD.

Intel highlighted the company's focus on execution of core products and showcased the company's broader portfolio, in addition to sharing more on what's coming in the year ahead. As part of its disclosures, Intel announced the recent production of its 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named "Ice Lake") with volume ramp taking place during the first quarter of 2021. Intel's 10 nm Xeon Scalable processors feature architectural and platform innovations that boost performance, security and operational efficiency within data centers.

"Today marks a significant milestone for Intel as we continue to accelerate the delivery of our 10 nm products and maintain an intense focus on delivering a predictable cadence of leadership products for our customers," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel. "Our 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable platform represents a strategic part of our data center strategy and one that we've created alongside some of our biggest customers to enable the data center of tomorrow."

Semiconductor manufacturing is not an easy feat to achieve. Especially if you are constantly chasing the smaller and smaller node. Intel knows this the best. The company has had a smooth transition from other nodes to the smaller ones until the 10 nm node came up. It has brought Intel years of additional delay and tons of cost improving the yields of a node that was seeming broken. Yesterday the company announced the new Tiger Lake-H processors for laptops that are built using the 10 nm process, however, we are questioning whatever Intel can keep up with the semiconductor industry and deliver the newest nodes on time, and with ease. During an interview with Intel's CEO Bob Swan, we can get a glimpse of Intel's plans for the future of semiconductors at the company.

In the interview, Mr. Swan has spoken about the technical side of Intel and how the company plans to utilize its Fabs. The first question everyone was wondering was about the state of 10 nm. The node is doing well as three Fabs are ramping up capacity every day, and more products are expected to arrive on that node. Mr. Swan has also talked about outsourcing chip production, to which he responded by outlining the advantage Intel has with its Fabs. He said that outsourcing is what is giving us shortages like AMD and NVIDIA experience, and Intel had much less problems. Additionally, Mr. Swan was asked about the feasibility of new node development. To that, he responded that there is a possibility that Intel could license its competitor's node and produce it in their Fabs.

Intel at a January 11, 2021 online media event (which we live-blogged here) revealed more information about its 11th Generation Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor family. These chips succeed the 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake-S," and are built on the same Socket LGA1200 package, retaining backwards compatibility with Intel 400-series chipset motherboards with firmware updates; and native support with the upcoming Intel 500-series chipset motherboards. Intel in its media event confirmed that the top Core i9-11900K is an 8-core/16-thread processor, which will deliver the highest PC gaming performance possible when it comes out.

In its media event, Intel revealed a side-by-side comparison of the i9-11900K with a machine powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core processor, where it's shown offering a mostly mid-single-digit-percentage performance lead over the AMD chip. In the "Metro Exodus" benchmark prominently highlighted in the Intel event, the i9-11900K is shown offering an average frame-rate of 156.54 FPS compared to 147.43 FPS of the 5900X (a 6.17% gain). VideoCardz tweeted a leaked Intel presentation slide with many more game test results where Intel compared the two chips. Intel's play with marketing "Rocket Lake-S" to gamers and PC enthusiasts will hence ride on the back of gaming performance leadership, and future-proofing against the new wave of productivity apps that leverage AI deep-learning, as "Rocket Lake-S" features DLBoost VNNI extensions that accelerate deep-learning neural-net building, training, and AI inference performance.

Hey, we're live from Intel's Event at CES. We expect to hear about Rocket Lake, and possibly get a glimpse into the future beyond that.

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).

More and more people continue to turn to gaming for entertainment, escape, and socializing with friends & family. This has lead to unprecedented demand for enthusiast level gaming laptops. This growing demographic demands a design language that addresses their need for a sleek lifestyle device for work, school, everyday tasks AND gaming. The 11th Gen Intel Core H Series Processors for Ultraportable Gaming builds on the best of what our 11th Gen Intel Core U-series processors have already delivered, adds more performance to enable this new class of Ultraportable Gaming systems.

As the launch of Intel's 500 series chipsets is getting near, we are starting to see more motherboards appear and get leaked. Today, thanks to the folks over VideoCardz, we have the first pictures of MSI's upcoming Z590 motherboards, with the latest designs and ideas from the company. Pictured below are MSI's trio of motherboards including MSI MEG Z590 GODLIKE, MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon WiFi, and MAG Z590 Tomahawk WiFi boards. The first in line is the MEG Z590 GODLIKE motherboard, a top tier, flagship design made with E-ATX standard in mind. It is supposed to bring all of the platform features to the table while being the best for overclocking due to its 20 (18+1+1) VRM phases.

Next up are the MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon WiFi and MAG Z590 Tomahawk WiFi designs, which should represent a bit cut-down GODLIKE variants. We don't have the exact specifications, so we need to wait for the official announcement.