So... Do you want Intel's own HCC CPU in an overclocker-friendly package? But you want in a Xeon branding and envelope, surely, because that's the only place where you can get one of these right now. Well, Intel has you covered - for $4000. Retailers in Europe, hunted by Tom's Hardware, have begun to take stock of these CPUs, and in doing so, current pricing overs around that magic $4,000 mark - at the least. Prices still haven't stabilized due to the low number of outlets offering the CPU right now, and it's likely that when it does, it will stabilize to this lowest common denominator.

The Xeon W-3175X is built on Intel's 14 nm ++ manufacturing lines, features 28 physical cores with HyperThreading, features base/boost clocks of 3.1 / 4.3 GHz respectively, support hexa-channel DDR4 memory, and offers 44 PCIe lanes. It also has a 255 W TDP. Compare these specs to AMD's Threadripper 2990WX with its 32 physical, 64 logical cores, quad-channel DDR4 support, 64 PCIe lanes, 250 W TDP (non-comparable) and $1,799 (very comparable) pricing... Well. Add in the platform cost for one of these Intel babies, with a 3,647-pin LGA3647 motherboard (some feature the most ridiculous power delivery systems you could ever think of, btw, at 32 phases).. with the requirement for 4x eight-pin EPS power connectors and 2x 24-pin connectors. Have fun.

During the next year and a half, the Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC) will be purchasing a new supercomputer in two phases. The first phase consists of Atos' air-cooled BullSequana X400 cluster which makes use of Intel's Cascade Lake Xeon processors along with Mellanox HDR InfiniBand for a theoretical performance of 2 petaflops. Meanwhile, system memory per node will range from 96 GB up to 1.5 TB with the entire system receiving a 4.9 PB Lustre parallel file system as well from DDN. Furthermore, a separate partition of phase one will be used for AI research and will feature 320 NVIDIA V100 NVLinked GPUs configured in 4-GPU nodes. It is expected that peak performance will reach 2.5 petaflops. Phase one will be brought online at some point in the summer of 2019.

Where things get interesting is in phase two, which is set for completion during the spring of 2020. Atos' will be building CSC a liquid-cooled HDR-connected BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer that will be configured with 200,000 AMD EPYC "Rome" CPU cores which for the mathematicians out there works out to 3,125 64 core AMD EPYC processors. Of course, all that x86 muscle will require a great deal of system memory, as such, each node will be equipped with 256 GB for good measure. Storage will consist of an 8 PB Lustre parallel file system that is to be provided by DDN. Overall phase two will increase computing capacity by 6.4 petaflops (peak). With deals like this already being signed it would appear AMD's next-generation EPYC processors are shaping up nicely considering Intel had this market cornered for nearly a decade.

The successful XPC cubes model series gets a boost: With the new SH310R4, the 8th and 9th generation of the Intel Core processors is now also available in Shuttle's entry-level range making it a good-value, but yet powerful model based on "Coffee Lake".

Based on the Intel chipset H310, the XPC cube Barebone SH310R4 supports the latest Intel Core processors of the "Coffee Lake" series with socket LGA1151v2 and up to 95 Watt TDP. Therefore, even the particularly fast ones such as the i9-9900K with up to 8 cores and 16 threads can be used. Two slots on the mainboard allow a total of 32 GB of DDR4 memory to be installed.

Intel at its architecture day revealed one of the more exquisite in-house designs for the company in recent years: a hybrid x86 chip that seems to imbibe from ARM's own big.Little design mantra. The new Hybrid x86 CPU that was announced takes this design choice in pairing a single, high-performance Sunny Cove core with four smaller Atom cores. This chip is built using Intel's Foveros manufacturing technology, which means a 22FFL IO chip serves as an active interposer, connected via TSVs to a 10nm die that contains both types of cores. The tiny chips measures just 12 x 12 x 1 mm (144 mm²), and looks to reduce footprint even further by including a POP (package on package) memory design.

The new Intel design is aimed at low-power environments, with the chip having been designed to work on a 2 mW standby power ratio, with less than a 7 W of power - for a big.Little five-core design and a 64 EU design with Gen11 graphics core. Intel's Jim Keller said that the company is testing the intricacies and advantages of this design internally, so more products based on this manufacturing and packaging mantra could pop up sometime in the future.

Intel's discrete graphics card for PC enthusiasts is real. Intel won't just address the pro-graphics and accelerated-compute markets, but also consumer graphics, challenging the duopoly of NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. Scheduled for 2020, the new Intel Xᵉ is a family of discrete GPUs targeting client-segment (consumer graphics) as well as enterprise (pro-graphics and compute).

As for performance, we speculate that the first Xᵉ products could span a vast lineup of ASICs starting single-digit TFLOP/s range for the client-segment GPU, looking purely at a nondescript performance-time graph presented by Intel. This graph depicts performance double linearly over time up to Gen9, and increase to Intel's own state 1 TFLOP/s for the Gen11 iGPU core in 2019 (a full four years following Gen9). There are a spectrum of GPUs going from the entry-level client-segment all the way up to mid-range and enthusiast segment (Intel finally used the E-word).

Intel's upcoming "Ice Lake" die could be the company's biggest processor innovation in a decade, combining new clean-slate design "Sunny Cove" CPU cores, and a new integrated graphics solution based on the company's Gen11 architecture. "Sunny Cove" introduces significant IPC (single-thread performance) gains over "Coffee Lake," introduces new ISA instruction sets, including AVX-512; and a brand new uncore component; while the Gen11 graphics core is Intel's first iGPU to reach the 1 TFLOP/s mark. Intel demonstrated the ultra-low power "Ice Lake-U" SoC platform in its 2018 Architecture Day briefing.

This "Ice Lake-U" chip, with its TDP in the ballpark of 15 W, was shown ripping through 7-zip and "Tekken 7." With 7-zip, Intel was trying to demonstrate vector-AES and SHA-NI improving archive encryption performance by 75 percent over "Skylake." The Gen11 iGPU was shown providing a smoother gameplay than Skylake with Gen9, although the company neither mentioned resolution, nor frame-rates. Anandtech wagers it's above 30 fps.

Intel today unveiled its first clean-slate CPU core micro-architecture since "Nehalem," codenamed "Sunny Cove." Over the past decade, the 9-odd generations of Core processors were based on incrementally refined descendants of "Nehalem," running all the way down to "Coffee Lake." Intel now wants a clean-slate core design, much like AMD "Zen" is a clean-slate compared to "Stars" or to a large extent even "Bulldozer." This allows Intel to introduce significant gains in IPC (single-thread performance) over the current generation. Intel's IPC growth curve over the past three micro-architectures has remained flat, and only grew single-digit percentages over the generations prior.

It's important to note here, that "Sunny Cove" is the codename for the core design. Intel's earlier codenaming was all-encompassing, covering not just cores, but also uncore, and entire dies. It's up to Intel's future chip-designers to design dies with many of these cores, a future-generation iGPU such as Gen11, and a next-generation uncore that probably integrates PCIe gen 4.0 and DDR5 memory. Intel details "Sunny Cove" as far as mentioning IPC gains, a new ISA (new instruction sets and hardware capabilities, including AVX-512), and improved scalability (ability to increase core-counts without running into latency problems).

Today, Intel is revealing major details about its upcoming CPU and graphics architectures to select audience. A big scoop VideoCardz landed is the company's next-generation Gen11 integrated graphics core, the first major upgrade to the company's 4-year old Gen9 architecture. According to them, a Gen11 (default GT2 trim we assume) graphics core should offer a compute throughput of 1 TFLOP/s, which is in the league of the Radeon Vega 8, with its 1.12 TFLOP/s throughput. The Vega 8 is part of AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G processor.

Raw compute power only paints half the picture, the iGPU reportedly also supports tile-based rendering. This is a highly publicized method of rendering that made its consumer debut with NVIDIA "Pascal." Also mentioned are redesigned FPU interfaces, support for half-precision FP16, 2x pixel/clock pipelines, display stream compression that lets it support 5K and 8K displays, and adaptive sync. Intel will debut its Gen11 iGPU with its upcoming Core "Ice Lake" processors that debut on the company's 10 nm silicon fabrication process.

Intel is inching closer to its December 12 "2018 Architecture Day" event targeted at assuring investors and channel partners that its short-term and intermediate-term CPU architecture roadmap looks competitive, by even demonstrating early prototypes of future architectures. One such exhibit revealed a processor demo platform codenamed "Sunnycove." It's not clear if this is a derivative of an upcoming CPU architecture (such as "Ice Lake,") or if it's the first fundamentally new CPU core design since "Nehalem."

The numbers put out by Intel scream "up to 75% more 7-zip performance," without elaborating whether they mean compression, decompression, or encryption. Speaking of the latter, this chip has some serious encryption chops, including support for new encryption instruction-sets that include SHA-NI (secure hash algorithm new instructions), and vector-AES. Much of the chip is designed to accelerate encryption, and its applications could be focused on the enterprise.

Oh hey remember this news post from July last year? Damien Triolet's work history off-late has been one of many such recent stories. These tend to begin with AMD, and RTG in particular, getting a cash infusion and growing in 2016 and 2017 to where they hired some of the best engineers and marketing personnel from the industry- media or otherwise. This follows a more stagnant GPU division in 2017-2018, Intel deciding to dip their toes back into the discrete GPU market, and in turn.. persuading many to cross over to the blue side.

According to Damien's LinkedIn and FaceBook profiles, he has started working for Intel from November 26, 2018 in a technical marketing position in their Gaming and Graphics division, a role analogous to his from his days at AMD. Presumably, he joins Raja Koduri and the many others who have followed this exact path of late, and everyone remains curious as to what the finished retail product will be. In the meantime, we here at TechPowerUp wish him the best again for his new venture. We had the pleasure of interacting with Damien on multiple occasions in the past, some as colleagues in the media giving hardware manufacturers a hard time, and others when he was hosting us as an AMD employee. His tenure at Hardware.fr has been inspiring to us, with excellent reviews that no doubt were what caught the eyes of AMD in the first place, and Intel will definitely gain from his presence.

Intel plans to put an 8-core "Coffee Lake" CPU into a chassis with no more than 5 liters volume. Detailed earlier this month, the "Ghost Canyon" is a high-end NUC (next unit of computing) desktop which features the company's premium "Coffee Lake-HR" SoC. This chip features an 8-core/16-thread CPU and Intel UHD 620 graphics, and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot.

Since "Ghost Canyon" is positioned above the "Hades Canyon" NUC in Intel's product stack, Intel isn't bothering to build another MCM with an 8-core CPU and an AMD discrete GPU. It could instead let the NUC feature a faster discrete GPU over an MXM slot. FanlessTech caught the first glimpse of "Ghost Canyon," a matte black box with clear Intel Extreme branding. Apart from its star attraction, "Ghost Canyon" offers up to three HDMI 2.0 ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, M.2-2280 NVMe storage, and either PCI-Expresss 3.0 x16 interface for graphics. FanlessTech mentions this product won't be out before early-2020.

There could be light at the end of the tunnel for Intel's silicon fabrication business after all, as the company reported that its 7 nanometer silicon fabrication node, which incorporates EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography, is on track. The company stressed in its Nasdaq Investors' Conference presentation that its 7 nm EUV process is de-linked from its 10 nm DUV (deep ultraviolet) node, and that there are separate teams working on their development. The 10 nm DUV node is qualitatively online, and is manufacturing small batches of low-power mobile "Cannon Lake" Core processors.

Cannon Lake is an optical shrink of the "Skylake" architecture to the 10 nm node. Currently there's only one SKU based on it, the Core i3-8121U. Intel utilized the electrical gains from the optical shrink to redesign the client-segment architecture's FPU to support the AVX-512 instruction-set (although not as feature-rich as the company's enterprise-segment "Skylake" derivatives). The jump from 10 nm DUV to 7 nm EUV will present a leap in transistor densities, with Intel expecting nothing short of a doubling. 10 nm DUV uses a combination of 193 nm wavelength ultraviolet lasers and multi-patterning to achieve its transistor density gains over 14 nm++. The 7 nm EUV node uses an extremely advanced 135 nm indirect laser, reducing the need for multi-patterning. The same laser coupled with multi-patterning could be Intel's ticket to 5 nm.

ENERMAX, a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance PC hardware products, announces the launch of a new all-in-one liquid cooler series, LIQTECH II. Responding the market demand of cooling solution for high-end CPUs, LIQTECH II can deliver enthusiast-grade cooling capacity of 500+ watts (TDP) and is compatible with both Intel and AMD sockets (except AMD sTR4).

Furthermore, certified by main motherboard makers (ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI), LIQTECH II can support the latest addressable RGB lighting synchronization with advanced motherboards featuring addressable RGB headers (pin assignment: 5V/D/-/G) to create dynamic visual effects. LIQTECH II is perfect for overclocked systems, image editing workstations, and high-end gaming machines.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) systems have always offered a great deal of performance in a tiny form factor. Their current lineup which consists of Hades Canyon features Intel's 8th generation of processors and depending on model can also feature an AMD Radeon RX VEGA M graphics processor, that said, the vast majority of units utilize Intel's integrated graphics. The most potent these configuration is Intel's 100W 4c/8t i7-8809G with Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics. It delivers exceptional performance for the size, allowing users to play AAA games at high settings with stable frame rates.

Thanks to a member of the PC EVA forums we now have access to what appears to be a leaked Intel roadmap showcasing their Ghost Canyon X NUC systems. Set to debut in 2019/2020 Intel will be pushing multiple new CPUs for these systems including a 45W 8c/16t i9-9xxxH, 45W 6c/12t i7-9xxxH, and 45W 4c/8t i5-9xxxH. All three feature UHD graphics by Intel, however, what is most interesting there provisions for a single PCIe X16 slot. Now, in reality, the inclusion of a proper PCIe slot is unlikely, I would speculate due to the size that it is, in fact, an MXM slot which limits options to discrete mobile graphics processors which tend to be far more expensive for consumers. Still, more information is required before making any serious judgments one way or the other at this time.

The upcoming EVGA Z390 DARK is designed from the ground up to be the world's best overclocking motherboard. Need proof? The EVGA Z390 DARK was recently used by Finland Overclocker, Juhani Luumi AKA LUUMI to set a brand new CINEBENCH 8-Core CPU World Record. Armed with an Intel Core i9-9900K, and EVGA Z390 DARK Motherboard and Liquid Nitrogen Cooling, LUUMI was able to clock his CPU to nearly 7GHz and achieve a score of 3142 cb. A new CINEBENCH 8-Core CPU World Record!

Razer, the leading lifestyle brand for gamers, announced today the release of their redesigned 13-inch ultraportable laptop line consisting of three new configurations. The new Razer Blade Stealth is now available with individually calibrated micro edge thin-bezel displays with up to 4K resolution, increased battery life of up to 13 hours, and available NVIDIA GeForce dedicated graphics.

Today, "Nature" published a research paper on the next generation of logic devices authored by researchers from Intel, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The paper describes a magneto-electric spin-orbit (MESO) logic device, invented by Intel. MESO devices have the potential to lower voltage by 5 times and energy by 10-30 times when combined with ultralow sleep state power, as compared to today's complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS). While Intel is pursuing CMOS scaling, the company has been working on computing logic options that will emerge in the next decade for the beyond-CMOS era, driving computing energy-efficiency and allowing performance to grow across diverse computing architectures.

"We are looking for revolutionary, not evolutionary, approaches for computing in the beyond-CMOS era. MESO is built around low-voltage interconnects and low-voltage magneto-electrics. It brings together quantum materials innovation with computing. We are excited about the progress we have made and are looking forward to future demonstrations of reducing the switching voltage even further toward its potential," said Ian Young, Intel Senior Fellow and director of the Exploratory Integrated Circuits group in the Technology and Manufacturing Group.

AMD seems to be picking up steam over Intel's previous sky-high dominance of the desktop CPU market (Intel still dominates aplenty, really; but AMD has been clawing back market percentage monthly). The latest figures from the German retailer show shoppers taking advantage of AMD's newfound competitiveness in the CPU space, with increasing sales momentum starting on June 2018 up to a staggering 69% total AMD units sold against Intel's 31% during the month of November.

Intel's 9th generation re-branding of its "Skylake-X Refresh" HEDT processors could have a rather short lifespan in the company's product-stack of just three quarters. Intel is planning to launch its next HEDT platform, codenamed "Glacier Falls," which succeeds the current "Basin Falls Refresh." "Glacier Falls" could launch around late-Q2/early-Q3, with unveils slated for Computex 2019 (June). These details are part of a slide leak from an internal presentation from motherboard manufacturer GIGABYTE.

The slide revealing "Glacier Falls" also mentions two new mainstream-desktop platform chipsets, the B365 Express and the H310C Express. There is no information on what sets these apart from the current B360 and H310, respectively. We predict their entry is necessitated by stronger CPU VRM requirements to support 9th generation Core 6-core and 8-core processor SKUs that are known to pull up to 140 Watts of power (unrelated to TDP, which is calculated on the basis of nominal clock speed and not Turbo Boost). There's also a faint possibility of Intel giving the B365 CPU overclocking support to compete with the value proposition of AMD's B450.

Intel is readying a curious-looking "KF" brand extension for key SKUs of its 9th generation Core "Coffee Lake Refresh" family. These SKUs include the Core i9-9900KF, the Core i7-9700KF, Core i5-9600KF, and the Core i3-9350KF. The source revealing slides from a GIGABYTE internal presentation mentioning these doesn't explain what "KF" means, but we've heard rumors on what "KF" could mean. The "K" in KF denotes that the processor features an unlocked base-clock multiplier. No points for guessing that one. The "F," however, could indicate a disabled or physically absent iGPU.

This won't be the first time that Intel has launched variants of its mainstream desktop premium SKUs with disabled iGPUs. Intel's reasons for doing so with "Coffee Lake Refresh" could be many, including harvesting dies with defective iGPU components. Physically absent iGPUs could only make sense from the perspective of increasing yields per wafer, as the dies could be around 15% smaller for the 8-core silicon, and 25% smaller for the 6-core silicon. It doesn't make sense from a purely TDP-optimization perspective, because Intel processors are capable of power-gating (and not just clock-gating) user-disabled iGPUs.

PATRIOT , a global leader in performance memory, SSDs, gaming peripherals, and flash storage solutions, has announced the release of their fastest kit ever of DDR4 memory today, VIPER STEEL SERIES DDR4 16GB (2x 8 GB) 4400 MHz. Built for the latest Intel and AMD platforms, the VIPER STEEL SERIES provides extreme performance and stability for the most demanding computer environments. The VIPER STEEL SERIES DDR4 memory kit brings Intel XMP 2.0 performance to new heights and is able to achieve up to 4400 MHz with a simple setting on supporting Intel's latest processors and motherboards.

The VIPER STEEL SERIES utilizes a custom designed high-performance aluminum heatshield for providing optimal heat dissipation when overclocking and foregoing high-performance tasks. These hand-tested memory modules feature the highest quality memory chips and are running performance timings of CL19-19-19-39 at 1.45 V. VIPER STEEL SERIES DDR4 4400 MHz is optimized for PC enthusiasts, overclockers, or those who want to push their system's performance to the limit through the use of extremely fast components.

Microsoft is changing the way that hardware drivers work on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), Windows 10 (and later), and Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (and later). Hardware running on these operating systems can use Windows Modern Drivers (also known as Universal Windows Drivers - UWDs). Note that Microsoft requires the use of Windows Modern Drivers for Windows 10 1809 (RS5) and later. Intel will begin distributing Windows Modern Drivers for its products beginning in November 2018.

As of November 2018, any driver updates for Intel products on these operating systems will be the Windows Modern Drivers. After a driver has been updated to a Windows Modern Driver, it's possible to roll back to a legacy driver. However, rolling back isn't recommended as it involves a complex process that could result in system instability. This system instability is especially pertinent to graphics drivers. You can find more information on this subject.

DOWNLOAD: Intel UWD-compliant Graphics Driver for Windows 10 v25.20.100.6444

According to Jon Peddie Research, overall desktop GPU shipments have fallen by 16% YoY - a not unexpected turn of events considering the state of the crypto mining boom then and now (where it's virtually absent). The YoY change means that production volumes planned during the mining boom are now above and beyond the channel's capability to move them through user demand, hence the diminishing prices in graphics cards (aided by the dump of mining-bought graphics cards in the second-hand markets).

Overall, GPU shipments still increased by 10.64% compared to last quarter in the overall market, fueled mostly by Intel - AMD shipments increased 6.5% Nvidia increased 4.3% and Intel increased 13.1% compared to their own previous shipment quotas. Still, AMD's market share from last quarter decreased -0.6%, Intel's increased 1.5%, and Nvidia's market share decreased -0.97%. JPR also cites the US's additional tax on China imported goods, as well as descending stock market values as reasons for consumers (both singular and business) to be holding off on purchases.

According to DigiTimes, Intel's top graphics executive Raja Koduri and other senior Intel partners will be hosting a discrete GPU-focused conference this December. The conference aims to instill confidence in shareholders and customers alike in that Intel is pursuing its high-performance discrete entry into the graphics card market at a fast pace. The GPU architecture, codenamed Arctic Sound, is expected to debut by 2020, aiming for the gaming, AI, and machine learning sectors - much like any GPU solution these days. It remains to be seen which details - if any - can be gleaned from this conference, but we'll keep you up to date when those surface.

For years Intel was able to maintain their endless tick-tock cycle however with the switch from 14nm to 10nm Intel realized all too late that they had bitten off more than they could chew. According to Robert Swan, Intel's Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, "we set out in the transition to 10 nm to attempt to scale much faster than we ever had at a time when I think most would argue the technology and the science and the challenges are more challenging they've ever been. So, we took a fairly aggressive scaling factor, roughly 2x of what the competitors do. So, we went for the analogy that a grand slam, I think, when the competition was hitting really solid singles."

Essentially Intel had hedged their bets that they could take a revolutionary step instead of the more typical evolutionary one thereby leaving their competition behind. Instead, it's resulted in the current situation that we are all very much aware of, that Intel is far behind their original predicted schedule. While that timeline has since been revised and they are now on course to release 10nm products in 2019, and 2020 Intel has also made it known that they plan to regain their leadership position as that transition begins.