Intel could very soon fork its high-end desktop platform into two, with the introduction of the new Z399 socket LGA2066 chipset later this quarter; and the fabled X599 chipset powering LGA3647 processors. The move is probably triggered by AMD's introduction of new 24-core and 32-core Ryzen Threadripper processors that wipe out competitiveness of its existing "Basin Falls" X299 platform. The X599 could essentially be a C629 with the addition of some client-segment features (and the subtraction of some enterprise-segment ones), whereas the Z399 is a whole different beast.

With the introduction X599 and LGA3647, Intel could restore competitiveness at the >$1,500 market segment with new 24-core, 26-core, and 28-core "Skylake-X" XCC (extended/extreme core count) processors; whereas the introduction of Z399 could be necessitated with a that of a new 22-core chip for the LGA2066 socket, from which Intel can carve out new 20-core and 22-core SKUs. Existing Skylake-X LCC and HCC chips could be forwards-compatible with Z399, and X299 motherboards could still be eligible for supporting new 20-core and 22-core processors via BIOS updates. The Z399 could introduce a handful of new client-segment features Intel is introducing with the Z390.

Growing anger among PC manufacturers, retailers, and consumers in general, over supply issues with Intel processors, compounded with rising prices, and prompted Bob Swan, CFO and Interim-CEO of Intel, to write an open-letter, addressed to customers and partners, which counts you, since we received it in our main news channel from Intel. The language in the e-mail is straightforward and we wouldn't want to interpret it further than Intel grappling with a combination of massive demand from both its cloud-computing customers, and PC manufacturers hit by a surge of customers upgrading their machines (probably because it took Intel 10 years to increase CPU core counts, giving people a reason to upgrade).

To mitigate this, Intel is firing up all its manufacturing assets, across Oregon, Arizona, Ireland and Israel, in addition to its main foundries, by pumping in an additional $1 billion in capital expenditure (which is now at $15 billion). The letter doesn't miss out mentioning 10 nm, that the company is making progress with yields, and that volume production should roll out in 2019 (without offering guidance as to when). Intel also reassured PC OEMs that their supply teams will be in closer contact with them over the coming weeks. Without further ado, the open-letter follows verbatim.The letter follows.

In a statement that could refute speculation that Intel processors are in short-supply because the company is allocating its fabs for 9th generation processor launch, Compal President Martin Wong stated that supply issues with Intel processors could go on till the second half of 2019 (at least 9 more months). The issues threaten to undermine worldwide notebook shipments, he added. Compal is a major Taiwan-based notebook ODM and whitebox electronics manufacturer that supplies to major notebook brands.

Wong is miffed that Intel hasn't provided any clear schedule for restoration of supply normalcy. Intel responded that it is "cooperating closely" with its partners to manage the extra orders, and that supply priority will be given to Xeon and Core processors, including Core brand extensions "U-series" (ultraportable) and "Y-series" (ultra low-power).

Intel's in-house sub-10 nanometer silicon fabrication dreams seem more distant by the day. Raymond James analyst Chris Caso, in an interview with CNBC stated that Intel's 10 nm process development could set the company back by at least 5 years behind TSMC. In its most recent financial results call, Intel revised its 10 nm outlook to reflect that the first 10 nm processors could only come out by the end of 2019. "Intel's biggest strategic problem is their delay on 10nm production - we don't expect a 10nm server chip from Intel for two years," analyst Chris Caso said in a note to clients Tuesday. "10nm delays create a window for competitors, and the window may never again close."

By that time, Intel will have missed several competitive milestones behind TSMC, which is in final stages of quantitatively rolling out its 7 nm process. Caso predicts that by the time Intel goes sub-10 nm (7 nm or something in that nanoscopic ballpark), TSMC and Samsung could each be readying their 5 nm or 3 nm process roll-outs. A Rosenblatt Securities report that came out late-August was even more gloomy about the situation at Intel foundry. It predicted that foundry delays could set the company back "5, 6, or even 7" years behind rivals. Intel is already beginning offload some of its 14 nm manufacturing to TSMC. Meanwhile, AMD is reportedly planning to entirely rely on TSMC to make its future generations of "Zen" processors.

Intel today introduced 1.5 TB variants of the Optane 905p SSD that implements 3D XPoint memory. The drive comes in half-height PCI-Express 3.0 x4 add-on card, and 15 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with U.2 interface. Both variants offer sequential transfer rates of up to 2,600 MB/s reads, with up to 2,200 MB/s writes. Random access speeds are rated at up to 575,000 IOPS reads, with up to 550,000 IOPS writes. A function of its sheer capacity and 3D XPoint, endurance for these drives is rated at 27.37 PB (bytes written). The drives retain the feature set of their less capacious siblings, including 256-bit AES native encryption. The company didn't release pricing.

In a continued effort to support the PC platform, BANDAI NAMCO previously announced they would be releasing Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on PC. At the time, there was no mention of what the game's system requirements would be. However, thanks to an NVIDIA blog post, we now know not only the game's system requirements but an estimate on system performance as well- at least with their own graphics solutions.

Overall, the minimum and recommended requirements appear to be quite reasonable. BANDAI NAMCO even went so far as to make note that the recommended requirements are representative of what is needed to run the game at the 1920x1080 resolution with max settings. NVIDIA's own testing backs up those claims with the GeForce GTX 1060 offering a comfortable 100 FPS at 1920x1080, and 60 FPS at 2560x1440 resolutions. Meanwhile, those wanting to push the game at 4K will need a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or better which should offer a steady 60+ FPS.

Silicon Lottery is an online retailer that sells computer hardware its employees personally bin to pick out the best performing parts, at higher-than-MSRP prices. It listed its pricing for the upcoming Intel Core i9-9900K 8-core/16-thread processor, and the Core i7-9700K 8-core/8-thread part. The site currently reports both parts as "sold out" either because they've actually sold out all their pre-order inventory, or because they have't built inventories yet. Regardless, the i9-9900K is listed at USD $479.99, and the i7-9700K at $369.99.

We've been actively tracking down possible list prices of Intel's 9th generation Core processors. Our most recent article on the topic predicts the i9-9900K to be priced around $450, the i7-9700K at $350, and the i5-9600K at $250. Either Silicon Lottery's listings don't include any premiums, or Intel could surprise us with prices lower than our predictions.

A report coming out of Digitimes earlier today forecasts AMD to continue their momentum in the desktop CPU market thus far in 2018, with as much as a 30% market share globally by the final quarter as per their correspondents. Their unnamed industry sources say, and we quote, "AMD has drastically changed its foundry strategy, loosening ties with Globalfoundries and contracting TSMC to fabricate its GPUs, server and PC processors on 7nm process. The policy change has sent AMD share prices rallying all the way since mid-2018 amid market expectations for better chip yield rates and performances as well as normal shipments to customers."

Intel's woes with the 14 nm process node has been reported before, let alone the troubled transition to the 10 nm process, which further helps AMD's case. The report further claims that board partners including ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte "have ramped up production and shipments of devices fitted with AMD processors, driving up the chipmaker's share of the desktop processor market to over 20% in the third quarter. The company is very likely to see the figure further rebound to the level of 30% again." This, in addition to the recently announced AMD EPYC implementation contracts with Ciscoand HPE, can make that 30% number more plausible as well. It remains to be seen what the following months hold for Intel and AMD in the desktop processor market, but there is no denying that things are competitive in multiple segments at the same time, and that is always a good thing for the consumer.

Intel today extended its field programmable gate array (FPGA) acceleration platform portfolio with the addition of the new Intel Programmable Acceleration Card (PAC) with Intel Stratix 10 SX FPGA, Intel's most powerful FPGA. This high-bandwidth card leverages the Acceleration Stack for Intel Xeon CPU with FPGAs, providing data center developers a robust platform to deploy FPGA-based accelerated workloads. Hewlett Packard Enterprise* will be the first OEM to incorporate the Intel PAC with Stratix 10 SX FPGA along with the Intel Acceleration Stack for Intel Xeon Scalable processor with FPGAs into its server offering.

"We're seeing a growing market for FPGA-based accelerators, and with Intel's new FPGA solution, more developers - no matter their expertise - can adopt the tool and benefit from workload acceleration. We plan to use the Intel Stratix 10 PAC and acceleration stack in our offerings to enable customers to easily manage complex, emerging workloads," said Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPC and AI Group, HPE.

Intel is hit by crippling inventory shortages for many of its fast-selling 8th generation Core desktop processor SKUs. A number of factors are contributing to these shortages, as we discussed in this article. A key short-term consequence of shortages in Intel's inventories is more uninitiated buyers discovering AMD processors, now that they've achieved the highest levels of competitiveness against Intel in over a decade. Stock market analyst firm Jefferies has raised AMD's outlook for Q4-2018, and projects that its $30 stock price could hit $36, by raising its target price.

OEMs are not happy with Intel. Haphazard roadmap and platform changes have forced them to revise their product designs way too frequently, and now they're faced with the prospect of a short-supply. A report from research firm Fubon predicts that by next year, 1 in every 3 personal computers sold by HP (Hewlett Packard) will run an AMD processor. "Fubon's report that Intel will undersupply the PC market between 4Q18 and 2Q19 leaves us with higher conviction that AMD will report improving revenue, pricing and margins near term, and that is positioned to take share in the high end PC MPU and server market long term," said stock market analyst Mark Lipacis. He predicts that AMD's CPU market-share climbing to 30% through next year (a very huge feat for AMD).

Intel today announced details on the expansion of its portfolio of 100G silicon photonics transceivers beyond the data center and into the network edge. At the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) in Rome, Intel unveiled specifics on new silicon photonics products that are optimized to accelerate the movement of massive amounts of data being generated by new 5G use cases and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The latest 100G silicon photonics transceivers are optimized to meet the bandwidth requirements of next-generation communications infrastructure while withstanding harsh environmental conditions.

"Our hyperscale cloud customers are currently using Intel's 100G silicon photonics transceivers to deliver high-performance data center infrastructure at scale. By extending this technology outside the data center and into 5G infrastructure at the edge of the network, we can provide the same benefits to communications service providers while supporting 5G fronthaul bandwidth needs," said Dr. Hong Hou, vice president and general manager of Intel's Silicon Photonics Product Division.

Things seem to be taking turns to the worse at Intel in accordance to Murphy's law. Not only was the company hit with a multitude of security flaws embedded in their CPUs, which puts their michroarchitecture design chops in jeopardy, but now they also have to contend with silicon fabrication snags. That Intel's 14 nm fabs are being hit with overwhelming demand for their output capacity is already a known quantity, with rising prices of Intel mainstream CPUs and reports of the company outsourcing 14 nm chip production to TSMC in a bid to increase availability - a first since the company became vertically integrated with both design and manufacturing of their own chips.

BIOSTAR, a leader in crypto mining motherboards, introduces two new BTC series professional crypto mining motherboards - TB360-BTC Expert and TB360-BTC PRO. Fully optimized for professional crypto mining, the TB360-BTC Expert and TB360-BTC PRO support 17 x PCI-E 3.0 and 12 x PCI-E 3.0 expansion slots respectively. Packed with features for scaling up professional mining operations of any size, the TB360-BTC Expert and TB360-BTC PRO ensure a rock-solid mining system with improved mining performance. The BIOSTAR TB360-BTC series is also the first crypto mining motherboards based on the B360 and H370 chipset, which can support 8th generation Intel Core processors.

Jim Cramer of CNBC Mad Money interviewed AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su on the floor of the NYSE remarking her company as the year's biggest tech turnaround stories. The two spoke a variety of topics, including how the company went from a single-digit stock and a loss-making entity to one of the hottest tech-stocks, which threatens both Intel and NVIDIA. Dr. Su placed emphasis on taking long term strategic decisions that bear fruit years down the line.

"We decided to make the right investments. Technology is all about making the right choices, where we're going to invest, and where we're not going to invest...three or four years ago, it was mobile phones, tablets, and IoT that were the sexy things, and we were like 'hey we know that those are good markets, but those are not AMD.' We focused on what we thought the future would hold for us," said Dr. Su. "We are making decisions now that you won't see the outcome of for the next 3-5 years. We're making some good decisions," she added.

Intel is debuting its first wave of 9th generation Core desktop processors with three models later this year - the 6-core/6-thread Core i5-9600K, the 8-core/8-thread Core i7-9700K, and the 8-core/16-thread Core i9-9900K. We've been very curious about how the entry of the Core i9 extension to the mainstream-desktop LGA1151 platform would affect pricing of the Core i5 and Core i7 K-series SKUs, especially given that the i7-9700K is the first Core i7 SKU in a decade to lack HyperThreading. An updated catalog by a major Singapore-based PC components distributor adds more clarity.

Singapore-based PC component distributor BizGram, in its latest catalog, disclosed the all-inclusive retail prices of the three new processors. As Redditor Dylan522p suggests, if you do the SGD-USD conversion and subtract all taxes, you get ominous-looking SEP prices for the three. Intel could price the Core i5-9600K at USD $249.99. The Core i7-9700K could be priced at $349.99. The flagship Core i9-9900K could go for $449.99. These seem like highly plausible pre-tax launch prices for the three chips, and fit into the competitive landscape.

Intel today announced the acquisition of NetSpeed Systems, a San Jose, California-based provider of system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP). Deal terms were not disclosed. NetSpeed's highly configurable and synthesizable offerings will help Intel more quickly and cost-effectively design, develop and test new SoCs with an ever-increasing set of IP. The NetSpeed team is joining Intel's Silicon Engineering Group (SEG) led by Jim Keller. NetSpeed co-founder and CEO, Sundari Mitra, will continue to lead her team as an Intel vice president reporting to Keller.

Intel is designing more products with more specialized features than ever before, which is incredibly exciting for Intel architects and for our customers. The challenge is synthesizing a broader set of IP blocks for optimal performance while reining in design time and cost. NetSpeed's proven network-on-chip technology addresses this challenge, and we're excited to now have their IP and expertise in-house.

Jim Keller, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group at Intel

Spanish language tech publication El Chapuzas Informático published the first almost-complete review of Intel Core i7-9700K processor. Without Intel disclosing the pricing of this chip, the review doesn't include price/performance numbers or a conclusion that explores the competitive landscape. You still get a sumptuous serving of 14 tests, from which 9 are some of the latest AAA games.

The bottom-line is that the i7-9700K locks horns with the Ryzen 7 2700X in most multi-threaded tests except Cinebench nT; and owing to its high clock speeds, it will end up as the fastest gaming processor around the $350-400 mark. Interestingly, the i7-9700K isn't 33% faster than the i7-8700K despite 33% more cores, because HyperThreading is sorely missed. The distinction could be reserved for the Core i9-9900K, although samples of that chip are far too rare.More graphs follow.

Try to wrap your head around Intel contracting TSMC to build some of its processors! With its own 14 nanometer silicon fabrication nodes under stress from manufacturing several generations of Core and Xeon processors simultaneously, leading to market shortages, Intel is looking to contract TSMC to manufacture some of its 14 nm products. Among these are certain models of its desktop processors, and several 300-series chipsets, including the H310, which are currently fabbed on Intel's last 22 nm node, that's probably being converted to 14 nm.

The TSMC contract appears to be moving faster than expected, with the Taiwanese fab eager to demonstrate its competence to Intel and secure future orders as the company is closer than ever in going fully or partly fabless. According to industry observers, Intel is staring at a 1:2 supply-demand ratio, for the countless chip it's building on 14 nm; which may have forced it to contract some of these chip designs to TSMC. Motherboard vendors expect Intel to sort out its supply issues by the end of 2018, with big help from TSMC.

With the swanky Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9700K eight-core chips getting all the attention, the less glamorous Core i5-9600K is taking shape, which could bring a little more performance to the $250 price-point. This 6-core/6-thread chip succeeds the current-gen i5-8600K, and has the same 9 MB of L3 cache. With not much in the way of micro-architectural IPC improvements, barring silicon-level hardening against certain vulnerabilities, which could improve speculative execution performance (versus processors with software patches that inflict performance penalties); Intel has dialed up clock speeds. The chip is clocked at 3.70 GHz, with a maximum Turbo Boost frequency of 4.60 GHz, compared to the 3.60 GHz nominal and 4.30 GHz Turbo Boost frequencies of its predecessor.

The higher clocks seem to bring the i5-9600K a touch higher than the i5-8600K in terms of GeekBench scores, although still nowhere close to the i7-8700 (non-K). The i5-8600K, if you'll recall, beat some of its pricier previous-generation siblings such as the i7-7700, in multi-threaded tests. Someone with access to an i5-9600K put it through GeekBench 4. The chip scores 6,015 points in the single-core test or about 3.7 percent faster than its predecessor (the i5-8600K typically scores 5,800 points), coming from the 300 MHz higher single-core boost. The multi-core score is 23,393 points, which is a meager 2 percent faster (the i5-8600K typically scores around 23,000 points). The generational jump in performance for the mid-range hence seems to have stagnated. At best the i5-9600K will repair the uncertain price/performance equation the i5-8600K has against the AMD Ryzen 5 2600X.

Intel's 8th generation Core desktop processors based on the company's 14 nm node are facing shortages in the market, according to a Tom's Hardware report. Tracking prices and availability of popular 8th generation Core SKUs such as the i5-8400, i5-8600K, and i7-8700K, the report notes that retailers are heavily marking up these SKUs above their SEP, and many of whom are running out of stock often. This may not be attributed to heavy demand.

A possible explanation for these shortages could be Intel allocating volumes from the same 14 nm++ node for its upcoming 9th generation Core processors, which debut with three SKUs - i5-9600K, i7-9700K, and i9-9900K. Intel probably wants to launch the three chips not just at competitive prices, but also good enough volumes to win the 2018 Holiday season, and repair its competitiveness damaged by AMD 2nd generation Ryzen over the past couple of quarters.

Intel was once the shining star in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, with a perfectly integrated, vertical product design and manufacturing scheme. Intel was one of the few companies in the world to be able to both develop its architectures and gear their manufacturing facilities to their design characteristics, ensuring a perfect marriage of design and manufacturing. However, not all is rosy on that field, as we've seen; AMD itself also was a fully integrated company, but decided to spin-off its manufacturing arm so as to survive - thus creating GLOBALFOUNDRIES.But Intel was seen as many as the leader in semiconductor manufacturing, always at the cutting edge of - well - Moore's Law, named after Intel's founding father Gordon Moore. Now, Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Susquehanna, has gone on to say that the blue giant has effectively lost its semiconductor leadership. And it has, in a way, even if its 10 nm (which is in development hell, so to speak) is technically more advanced than some 7 nm implementations waiting to be delivered to market by its competitors. However, there's one area where Intel will stop being able to claim leadership: manufacturing techniques involving EUV (Extreme UltraViolet).

Even as we achieve consumerism in scales hitherto unseen, tech companies always want to sell more - there's "always" increased production, there must always be increased, projected demand from customers. However, when demand isn't there, and growth slows down or even stagnates, production takes its time to adjust - and already manufactured products have few opportunities other than going on towards a swelling inventory.

This is what is happening with a myriad of tech companies, such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Intel, Hon Hai (Foxconn), among others. We could even take a page from our own PC industry and look at NVIDIA's Pascal inventory that is in need of clearing up - and which has resulted in bottoming prices of previous-gen cards as we look towards the new RTX 20-series. Which, coincidentally, have been launched with increased pricing over the previous generation. Perhaps another way of moving old inventory?

The Core i7-9700K will be Intel's second fastest 9th generation Core LGA1151 processor. The 8-core/8-thread chip is equipped with 12 MB of shared L3 cache, and clocked at 3.60 GHz, with 4.90 GHz maximum Turbo Boost. It's no secret that these chips will be supported on just about any Intel 300-series chipset motherboard provided you have a BIOS update; although Intel prefers you use one of its upcoming Z390 chipset boards for overclocking its 8-core chips. That said, there are plenty of Z370 chipset boards with fairly strong CPU VRM setups. Someone with access to the i7-9700K paired it with an Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming 2.0 motherboard, and put it through Geekbench.

The Core i7-9700K yielded a single-core score of 6,297 points, which is marginally higher than that of a stock Core i7-8700K (3.70 GHz to 4.70 GHz), owing to a higher boost frequency. The i7-8700K averages 6,000 ±100 points in this test. Multi-threaded performance is where the i7-9700K comes alive, scoring 30,152 points, which is about 12 percent higher than the 27,000 ±500 points the i7-8700K scores; and about 4-5% higher than the 28,000 ±1,000 points the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X manages in this test. The lack of HyperThreading seems to be more than compensated by the two extra cores the i7-9700K has over its predecessor. The i9-9900K maxes out the silicon with HyperThreading and 16 MB L3 cache, which could enable Intel to target a higher price-point.

Intel's Chris Hook (there's something strange there) said in a conversation with r/Hardware's moderator dylan522p that the company is still planning on adding support for VESA's Adaptive Sync (also known as AMD's own FreeSync branding) in Intel GPUs. To put this in perspective, Intel is the single largest player in the overall graphics market; their integrated solutions mean they have the highest graphics accelerator share in the market, even against AMD and NVIDIA - and Intel hasn't even entered the discrete graphics market - yet.

It makes sense that the blue giant would be pursuing this option - royalty-free frame syncing beats developing a proprietary alternative. A quick thought-exercise could point towards NVIDIA's G-Sync being rendered irrelevant with such strong support from the industry.

Intel "Whiskey Lake" CPU microarchitecture recently made its debut with "Whiskey Lake-U," an SoC designed for Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 laptops. Since it's the 4th refinement of Intel's 2015 "Skylake" architecture, we wondered what set a "Whiskey Lake" core apart from "Coffee Lake." Silicon fabrication node seemed like the first place to start, with rumors of a "14 nm+++" node for this architecture, which should help it feed up to 8 cores better in a compact LGA115x MSDT environment. Turns out, the process hasn't changed, and that "Whiskey Lake" is being built on the same 14 nm++ node as "Coffee Lake."

In a statement to AnandTech, Intel explained that the key difference between "Whiskey Lake" and "Coffee Lake" is silicon-level hardening against "Meltdown" variants 3 and 5. This isn't just a software-level mitigation part of the microcode, but a hardware fix that reduces the performance impact of the mitigation, compared to a software fix implemented via patched microcode. "Cascade Lake" will pack the most important hardware-level fixes, including "Spectre" variant 2 (aka branch target injection). Software-level fixes reduce performance by 3-10 percent, but a hardware-level fix is expected to impact performance "a lot less."