With the transition to multi-core processors, and multi-core processors with integrated core-logic (chipset), the need arose for a low-level SoC embedded into the processor with just enough compute power to make sure all the components you pay for start-up and function as advertised. Enter the Intel ME (management engine). This is a full-fledged computer within your Intel processor, which isn't exposed to you. It runs on its very own tiny x86 CPU core that isn't exposed, and its software is driven on an infinitesimally small ROM and RAM. Since you can't have software without some sort of operating-system, Intel chose MINIX for the job.

MINIX is a Unix-like OS with an extremely small memory footprint. The OS was designed by Andrew Tanenbaum, originally as an educational tool to demonstrate that machines can still be built with extremely tiny code. If you're familiar with the "ring-level" system of hardware-access privilege by software, ring 0 would designate the "highest" level of access. A software with ring 0 access can erase your disk, flash your system BIOS, and even make your CPU run at any C-state. The OS kernel needs these privileges, and hence is a ring 0 software. Most user software, like the web-browser you're reading this on, runs at ring 3 (with the browser's own sandbox, the user-level, and API level forming inner levels). Intel ME runs at ring -3 (negative 3), and your OS has no power over it. Most system BIOS updates for Intel motherboards include a ROM update for ME. ME governs the functioning of the rest of the processor, its start-up, and booting. It also governs silicon-level security and management features that can't be compromised by malware.

Tech leaders HP Inc. and Intel today joined forces with Blizzard Entertainment in major Overwatch League sponsorship deals that represent an extended investment in the groundbreaking professional league. As part of the multiyear agreements, Intel will sponsor future Overwatch competitive events in addition to the Overwatch League. Players taking part in these events will be equipped with cutting-edge gaming hardware from both HP and Intel. HP, and more specifically, its OMEN by HP gaming PCs and displays will be used exclusively for Overwatch League games, with PCs powered by Intel Core i7 processors.

"We're thrilled to be joining forces with HP and Intel to ensure that the teams competing professionally in Overwatch are equipped with top-end technology," said Pete Vlastelica, president & CEO of Blizzard Entertainment's Major League Gaming division. "Multiyear collaborations such as this illustrate the momentum behind the Overwatch League as well as a long-term commitment by us and our partners in what we see as the future of esports."

UPDATE: Some slides have surfaced today on Reddit that actually place Intel's updated 10 nm roadmap as starting initial risk production in 2Q 2018. The same leaks also point towards a yearly advancement in process technology (akin to Intel's current 14 nm+ and 14 nm++ production processes), with 10 nm+ risk production on 1Q 2019 and 10 nm++ on 1Q 2020. This roadmap, however, is relative to Intel's Custom Foundry partners; as such, this doesn't go directly against Intel CEO's Brian Kzarnich remarks on the latest investor call, since he was likely talking about the 10 nm ramp-up on Intel's own products.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has come out to say that the company's first 10 nm CPUs based on the "Cannon Lake" micro-architecture will see the light of day before this year's end. Intel has been having a slew of ramp-up delays with its 10 nm products, which prompted a slippage from an expected 2016, full-scale launch (whose ship has sailed, clearly) towards a timed, product-tier based strategy. Intel opted to first introduce 10 nm technology to FPGA accelerators, which due to their redundancy, would suffer less from yield issues.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, has released the new GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI motherboard based on the Intel Z370 chipset. The new motherboard incorporates powerful performance capabilities within a compact design to provide users with a versatile motherboard for building their ideal PCs.

The GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI motherboard is optimized to support 8th Gen. Intel Core Processors. For a mini-ITX form factor, this motherboard can truly maximize the power of the Intel Core i7-8700K processors by easily reaching overclocked frequencies of 5GHz and higher. The motherboard uses an Intersil Hybrid Digital VRM design to ensure that power is distributed effectively, enabling the GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI to perform at its highest standards. Additionally, over 1000 memory modules have been validated by GIGABYTE to ensure proper compability with support for XMP profiles up to a frequency of 4600MHz when overclocked.

Intel today announced the launch of the Intel Optane SSD 900P Series, the first SSD for desktop PC and workstation users built on Intel Optane technology. Intel, in collaboration with Roberts Space Industries, announced the new SSD at CitizenCon, a Star Citizen community gathering in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Intel Optane SSD 900P Series delivers incredibly low latency and best-in-class random read and write performance at low queue depths - up to four times faster than competitive NAND-based SSDs - opening incredible new possibilities. With the new SSDs, users will unlock more potential from their platform. The Intel Optane SSD 900P Series is ideal for the most demanding storage workloads, including 3D rendering, complex simulations, fast game load times and more. Up to 22 times more endurance than other drives also gives the heaviest users peace of mind.

Intel Corporation today reported third-quarter 2017 financial results. "We executed well in the third quarter with strong results across the business, and we're on track to a record year," said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. "I'm excited about our progress and our future. Intel's product line-up is the strongest it has ever been with more innovation on the way for artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and more." "In the third quarter, we delivered record earnings, exceeded our EPS expectations, and increased our profit expectations for the full year," said Bob Swan, Intel CFO. "We feel great about Intel's transformation and where we are nine months into our three year plan." In the third quarter, the company generated approximately $6.3 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.3 billion, and used $1.1 billion to repurchase 31 million shares of stock.

In the third quarter, Intel saw strength across the business. The data center, Internet of Things and memory businesses all achieved record quarterly revenue, and Intel extended its performance leadership with the launches of 8th Gen Intel Core and Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Intel's FPGA business, the Programmable Solutions Group, is experiencing strong momentum, winning designs with automotive and cloud service provider customers that advance Intel's position in artificial intelligence. The company also furthered its autonomous driving efforts with exciting customer wins and the completion of the Mobileye tender offer, four months earlier than expected.

Intel today announced it has begun shipping its Intel Stratix 10 SX FPGA - the only high-end FPGA family with an integrated quad-core ARM* Cortex*-A53 processor. With densities greater than 1 million logic elements (MLE), Intel Stratix 10 SX FPGAs provide the flexibility and low latency benefit of integrating an ARM processor with a high-performance, high-density FPGA needed to tackle the design challenges of next-generation, high-performance systems.

By integrating the FPGA and the ARM processor, Intel Stratix 10 SX FPGAs provide an ideal solution for 5G wireless communication, software defined radios, secure computing for military applications, network function virtualization (NFV) and data center acceleration.

Intel's next-generation "Cannon Lake" CPU micro-architecture could see the introduction of the AVX-512 instruction-set to the mainstream segments (MSDT or mainstream-desktop, and mobile). It is currently available on the company's Core X "Skylake-X" HEDT processors, and on the company's Xeon "Skylake-W," Xeon Scalable "Skylake-SP," and in a limited form on the Xeon Phi Knights Landing and Knights Mill scalar compute chips.

The upcoming "Cannon Lake" mainstream silicon will feature AVX512F, AVX512CD, AVX512DQ, AVX512BW, and AVX512VL instructions, and will support AVX512_IFMA and AVX512_VBMI commands, making it a slightly broader implementation of AVX-512 than the "Skylake-SP" silicon. The new AVX-512 will vastly improve performance of compute-intensive applications that take advantage of it. It will also be a key component of future security standards.

In an interview with Bit-tech, ASUS ROG motherboard product manager Andrew Wu has let the proverbial cat out of the bag: apparently, compatibility of Z270 boards with Coffee Lake processors wouldn't have been impossible after all. When asked why the new Coffee Lake CPUs aren't compatible with the previously released Z270 platform, Andrew Wu explained that it" (...) depends on Intel's decision." Andrew Wu also went on to mention that Intel's stated power delivery reasons don't "make much difference", and that ASUS themselves could make their Z270 motherboards compatible with Coffee Lake. For that, however, they'd need "(...) an upgrade from the ME [Management Engine] and a BIOS update", for which "Intel somehow has locked the compatibility."

It seems all of that extra "pin-count" doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of the current Coffee Lake lineup with up to six core processors - the CPU socket and platform as designed with Z270 would have been able to handle the increased core counts and power loads. The question gets murkier with Intel's ability to release an 8-core CPU to the Z370 platform though - that particular amount of cores might indeed prove to be too much for Z270's power delivery. Making an educated guess, it would seem that Intel could have allowed for Coffee Lake compatibility on Z270 motherboards on CPUs up to 6 cores, but would need the new revisions on the Z370 platform to allow for operation of 8-core Coffee Lake chips.

BIOSTAR introduces its flagship Intel Z370 motherboard under the third generation RACING series, the BIOSTAR RACING Z370GT7. This motherboard supports the latest 8th generation Intel Core processors also known as Coffee Lake. The RACING Z370GT7 sports premium features that gamers, overclockers, professional content creators, and modders demand. It has a luxurious golden black color theme and advanced RBG lighting customizations with Advanced VIVID LED DJ. New and improved features: the smart A.I FAN and reinforced PCI-E slots to handle heavier graphics cards make the new-gen RACING Series much more robust. Push performance and harness the power of the new Intel Core i7-8700K 6-core, 12-thread processor along with dual Intel Optane-ready M.2 slots for the fastest PCIe NVMe drives available today.

BIOSTAR's 3rd Gen RACING Design
BIOSTAR revamps the RACING series motherboards with a much more flashy and high-end design with a golden black color theme.

• Gold I/O Armor - Gold I/O Armor strongly protects I/O interfaces and components from static electricity. The RGB LED lights on top of the armor
• are controllable with the Advanced VIVID LED DJ for more lighting control.
• Gold Tattoo RACING R - The classic "R" sign on the heatsink shows the spirit of RACING Series.
• RGB Rainbow Lighting Effect - 10 flashing modes for RGB lighting effect bring you more customization fun via Advanced VIVIVD LED DJ utility.
• Gold PCB Treatment - The 3rd Gen RACING Z370 motherboards ascend to a higher level of luxury and fashion for your gaming world!

With the rather fast introduction of the Intel Core i7-8700K (just 9 months following the January 3rd launch of the i7-7700K), retailers are finding themselves with quite a bit of unsold i7-7700K (and even i7-6700K) inventory. Consumers are drawn to either the i7-8700K, or the competing AMD Ryzen processors. To help the market digest these unsold chips, Intel started a new game-bundle dubbed "Game Without Compromise."

Buyers of brand-new Core i7-7700K and i7-6700K processors will receive game keys to "Total War: Warhammer II" and "Assassins Creed: Origins," which is effectively a $100 value-addition to these $330 quad-core chips. It provides an upgrade path to users of the older 100-series/200-series chipset platform. As with most such game bundles, the "Game Without Compromise" bundle will be limited to select retailers.

Intel is no longer going to disclose all-core Turbo Boost speeds, starting with their 8th Gen Coffee Lake processors that have just been released. The information comes straight from the blue giant. Answering a query from ExtremeTech on the matter, the company said that "[W]e're no longer disclosing this level of detail as its proprietary to Intel. Intel only specifies processor frequencies for base and single-core Turbo in our processor marketing and technical collateral, such as ARK, and not the multi-core Turbo frequencies. We're aligning communications to be consistent. All Turbo frequencies are opportunistic given their dependency on system configuration and workloads."

This decision is a rollback that does little more than rob users of another data point that has really always been there. The practical effect of this change isn't anything to write home about: Intel's Turbo Boost capabilities were never guaranteed performance levels (the fact that the advertised Turbo speeds were called "Max Turbo" implied Turbo levels could be lower.) However, there's also not much that can be said to explain this change in stance from the blue giant. If anything, this decision only opens up debate and speculation regarding the reasons why Intel is making this change: and the skeptics among us will always default to foul play or dark linings.To our Forum dwellers: this piece is marked as an Editorial

Today, Intel announced the delivery of a 17-qubit superconducting test chip for quantum computing to QuTech, Intel's quantum research partner in the Netherlands. The new chip was fabricated by Intel and features a unique design to achieve improved yield and performance. The delivery of this chip demonstrates the fast progress Intel and QuTech are making in researching and developing a working quantum computing system. It also underscores the importance of material science and semiconductor manufacturing in realizing the promise of quantum computing.

Quantum computing, in essence, is the ultimate in parallel computing, with the potential to tackle problems conventional computers can't handle. For example, quantum computers may simulate nature to advance research in chemistry, materials science and molecular modeling - like helping to create a new catalyst to sequester carbon dioxide, or create a room temperature superconductor or discover new drugs. However, despite much experimental progress and speculation, there are inherent challenges to building viable, large-scale quantum systems that produce accurate outputs. Making qubits (the building blocks of quantum computing) uniform and stable is one such obstacle.

Intel's Coffee Lake launch has shown the telltale signs of a product that wasn't originally planned to launch as early as it did. Intel's decision to pull the release date of Coffee Lake based CPUs - and its accompanying platform - have translated into an overall lack of availability for the latest Intel core processors, and a staggered launch for their platform chipsets, with only the higher-tier Z370 being available for motherboard designs as of writing.

It's expected that Intel's lower tier chipsets, such as the B360 chipset, will only be released during the first quarter of 2018. However, a recent leak that has surfaced in Sisoftware's Official Live Ranker has revealed a SuperMicro C7B360-CB-M board. following SuperMicro's known naming scheme, it's a somewhat "in your face" statement that this is a B360 chipset test board, in the Micro-ATX form-factor. The fact that this board has surfaced already (and especially considering SuperMicro's Z370 board, SuperMicro's C7Z370-CG-L, surfaced just 85 days before the platform launch) could point towards an earlier than expected release time-frame for B360 boards. It's arguable that this Intel generation is the one that offers itself the most to budget chipset offerings, considering Intel's Core i5 8400's placement as one of the best bang-for-buck CPUs from the Intel field in a long while.

"Industry contacts" have told TweakTown that a successor to Intel's well received 750 series NVMe drives will launch within weeks. The second generation Optane 900P SSDs will be available in both the U.2 and AIC (PCI-E 3.0) form factors, with capacities of 280, 480, 960 and 1500 GBs. Like the Intel 750 series, the Optane 900P has enterprise roots, namely Intel's ridiculously expensive 375GB P4800X; which we covered earlier. As the 900P is aimed at consumers, maybe more accurately prosumers, prices should be "affordable".Slide courtesy of TweakTown

A user from [H]ardOCP has posted on the website's forums an exchange he had with the customer service over at Newegg. If availability of Intel's latest 8th Gen CPUs was rumored to be limited before, this seems to bring some more credence to those reports. Case in point: over at Newegg, orders for the Core i5 8600K processor are currently being put on back-order, with estimated shipping dates of 15 to 20 days. Pore over the i7 8700K processor, though, and you'll find it currently out of stock.

Newegg has apparently ordered over 3000 units of the Core i7 8700K CPU alone, in order to keep pace with demand (these have been well-received chips as you can see on TPU's own reviews). Newegg expects these to come in at around a "3 to 5 weeks" time-frame. What separates this particular availability problem from being simply an issue of overly high demand is that Intel's Coffee Lake processors were already expected to be limited in availability even before they were launched. Remember that while Intel probably had such six-core processors as these taped out well in advance already, they did pull up their launch window so as to better compete with current AMD Ryzen offerings.

For those users who thought they'd like some silver with their Intel, german webshop Caseking has a product for you. The company has taken the binning concept that we've already seen with other webshops, which pass the onus of the silicon lottery towards themselves, and taken it to the next level. Caseking will offer Core i7 8700K products that have not only been binned towards achieving guaranteed speeds of 5 GHz, 5.1 GHz and 5.2 GHz, but they're also retrofitting these binned 8700K processors with a 99.9% purity silver heatspreader to improve operating temperatures for these guaranteed-overclocking processors.

After giving users the chance to have an M4-powered M.2 drive in the form of the PT920 Commando PCIe NVMe SSD, Apacer is looking to allow users to put even more figurative firepower inside their rigs. The new COMMANDO DDR4 memory sticks seemingly take a page from the G36c rifle's looks, which Apacer says "brings a real body blow to your opponents." The design "features a distinctive tactical rail which comes with effective heat dissipation. With COMMANDO DDR4 at your disposal, you will enjoy the exciting game play."

Apart from marketing talk, specs are pretty par of the course for DDR memory, with XMP 2.0 support, as well as AMD and Intel platform support. There are a number of configurations available, scaling in both clockspeeds and memory capacity, which you can check in the below table. Speeds for the Apacer COMMANDO DDR4 top out at 3466 MHz at 1.35 V, with timings of 18-18-18-42.

MSI, the world leading gaming motherboard manufacturer, together with the launch of Intel's 8th Gen processors, has prepared new motherboards, inviting PC Enthusiasts and Gamers to enter into a new world. Based on the new Z370 platform, MSI introduces a complete lineup in 4 segments with all models fully supporting Intel 6-core CPUs.

The next generation MSI motherboards are found in the well-known three GAMING segments: Enthusiast GAMING, Performance GAMING and Arsenal GAMING to serve perfectly to any type of gamer around the world. For designers, content creators and workstation users, MSI has prepared new PRO Series models. MSI motherboards are packed with unique features to cater to any PC Enthusiast, Gamer or Professional user. To top things off, making sure anyone can squeeze maximum performance out of the new 6-core processors, Z370 GODLIKE GAMING has been created as the most extreme Z370 motherboard available.

EVGA has announced three new enthusiast motherboards based on Intel's Z370 Express chipset. These boards support Intel's brand new eighth generation processors, including the powerful i7 8700K. All three boards feature metal-reinforced PCI Express and memory slots, NVIDIA SLI support, and M.2 slots. Also included are Gigabit NICs from either Intel or Killer, multiple headers for RGB lighting, and unique cutouts in the boards to make cable routing easier.

The Z370 Series comes in three models: the full ATX Z370 Classified K and Z370 FTW, and the Z370 Micro in the micro ATX form factor. All three are clad in a black and gray color scheme, leaving color accents and lighting styles up to the user. VRM and southbridge heat sinks will keep overclocked systems cool, with the two larger boards sporting gray heat sink and I/O covers with RGB lighting that can be synced with the onboard headers. All three boards have 100% solid state capacitors, and DUAL switchable onboard BIOS chips, which should make for hassle-free overclocking.

Hot from the semiconductor presses, but even hotter from our very own reviews of Intel's latest-generation Coffee Lake CPUs, Intel's 8700K, unlocked six-core, 12-threaded processor has already been overclocked up to 7.45 GHz under extreme cooling. The feat, achieved by HWBOT user Kovan Yang, currently stands in first place of 8700 K processors, and is in sixth-place in overall CPU frequency ranking - which marks the first time in a while an Intel Core branded processor has achieved such a feat.

The overclock was achieved in a system that was configured with MSI's Z370 Godlike Gaming motherboard, unspecified DDR4 memory, an NVIDIA 8400 GS graphics card. The INtel 8700K was configured with a multiplier of 73x, and the base BUS speed was increased to 101 MHz. Expect more daring overclocks with Intel's latest family of Core processors in the future - der8auer has achieved a speed of 7.3 GHz on the same processor already, but more users and big overclock players are sure to make their overclocking feats known. In our own review, our very own W1zzard found that Intel's latest 8700K was the fastest, more future-proof consumer-level, non-HEDT Intel processor, and that it can be easily overclocked on air to 5 GHz.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce new Trident Z and Trident Z RGB specifications for latest 8th Gen Intel Core processors built on the Coffee Lake microarchitecture and Z370 chipset motherboards, manufactured with ultra-high performance Samsung B-die DDR4 ICs.

Fastest 32 GB (4x 8GB) RGB Memory on the Market
With every new platform launch, G.SKILL aims to maximize performance with higher memory specifications. This time paired with the new 8th Gen Intel Core processors and Z370 chipset, the Trident Z RGB memory is pushed to a blistering DDR4-4000 MHz CL18-19-19-39 32 GB (4x 8 GB) at 1.35 V. The image below shows the new RGB kit stress tested on the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO (WI-FI AC) motherboard and an Intel Core i5-8600K processor.

Intel this Tuesday, issued a curious-looking product-change notification (PCN) directed at retail-channel distributors, which points to the re-branding of 7th generation Pentium "Kaby Lake" desktop processors under the new Pentium Gold brand (PCN #115827-00). The re-brand affects retail SKUs of the Pentium G4560, G4620, and G4600. Intel is borrowing the precious-metal nomenclature from its Xeon product-line over to the Pentium brand, which will help consumers tell the MSDT (mainstream-desktop) Pentium processors from the ULP (ultra low-power) chips branded Pentium.

When this product-change comes into effect from the 2nd of November, 2017, MSDT Pentium dual-core chips will be branded Pentium Gold, while low-power "Gemini Lake" SoCs will bear the Pentium Silver brand, besides Celeron. Re-branded names apart, the Pentium Gold SKUs will be identical to the parts they are replacing. The Pentium G4560, for example, will be re-branded Pentium Gold G4560 (or simply "4560") and will carry an identical feature-set. You probably won't even need to update your motherboard BIOS (of your 100-series and 200-series chipset motherboards) to use these chips. It's not likely that these chips will work on 300-series chipset motherboards since they feature a different pin-map, and the retail box design will reflect that with clear markings. The name change also comes with a refreshed case-badge and a slightly modified box design.

A member of the HKEPC tech community, with access to an upcoming Core i7-8700K six-core mainstream-desktop processor, wasted no time in de-lidding it (removing its integrated heatspreader or IHS). It was revealed that Intel is still using thermal-paste between the IHS and the CPU die. The "Coffee Lake" die itself is as wide as the "Kaby Lake," but is visibly longer. It has a die area of approximately 151 mm², compared to the 126 mm² of "Kaby Lake." This is due to its increased CPU core count to 6, and a proportionate increase in last-level cache (L3 cache) to 12 MB. The die is marginally northwest of center, so you can get away placing your TIM blob dead-center of the IHS.

Intel Corporation today announced that the company's former CEO Paul Otellini passed away in his sleep Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, at the age of 66. Paul Otellini became Intel's fifth chief executive officer in 2005. Under his leadership the company made important strategic, technological and financial gains. These included transforming operations and cost structure for long-term growth; assuming a leadership position in the server market segment; and maintaining profitability during the global recession.

Other accomplishments included signing on notable new customer engagements, such as winning the Apple PC business, and business partnerships and strategic acquisitions that expanded Intel's presence in security, software and mobile communications. On the financial front, Intel generated more revenue during his eight-year tenure as CEO than it did during the company's previous 45 years. In the last full year before he was named CEO, Intel had $34 billion in sales; by 2012, the number had grown to $53 billion.