Airports are the latest battleground for AMD and Intel as the two vie to catch the attention of IT managers in the midst of an AI and big-data inflection point that promises to trigger a gold rush for enterprise processors. AMD took to San Jose International Airport with its latest AMD EPYC static ads targeted at IT managers stuck with Intel Xeon for its historic market leadership. AMD EPYC processors offer "more performance, more security, and more value" than Intel Xeon processors, the ads claim, but not before landing a mean punch in the general area of Intel's belt.

ASUS, the leading IT Company in server systems, server motherboards, workstations and workstation motherboards today announced new workstation products built upon the latest Intel Mehlow platform, including the WS C246 PRO and WS C246M PRO motherboards, and the E500 G5 and E500 G5 SFF workstations. The Intel Mehlow platform offers up to a 50% performance improvement on multi-threaded workloads, enhancing overall system performance compared to the previous platform. The Intel Mehlow platform also includes support for the latest Intel Xeon E processors (Coffee Lake-S), which are designed to provide small and medium-sized businesses high performance for professional workloads, combined with leading reliability and security. With the new Intel Mehlow platform, Intel Xeon E processors provide better support for features such as 4K UHD video rendering, suitable for content creators.

Intel announced that it started mass-production of PCI-Express SSDs for data-centers that implement the latest-generation 3D QLC NAND flash memory. The new QLC (4 bits per cell) NAND flash memory enables 33% increases in densities over TLC NAND flash, and with 3D (stacks), the density per chip is further multiplied. Built in the 15 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with U.2 interface, the drive is built for the rigors of "warm storage" (data that isn't hot, but isn't cold/archival, either). Such drives can be slower than "hot data" drives based on faster MLC or even SLC NAND flash, but almost always up; and faster than HDDs. The first 3D QLC NAND-based SSD, which probably uses the same chips as this drive, is the Micron 5210 ION, which was launched in May.

A variety of motherboards based on Intel Z370 Express chipset began receiving the first BIOS updates that add compatibility with upcoming Intel 8-core processors. The updates are flagged "beta" by the manufacturers. Given that only Z370 (and not other 300-series chipset models) have such updates, it's possible that Intel could restrict the first socket LGA1151 8-core processor SKUs (which could be unlocked "K" variants with higher TDP) to Z370 chipset, as the chipset has stronger VRM requirements than other chipset models that don't support CPU overclocking.

To support the upcoming processors, the BIOS needs to include the latest 06EC microcode revision. Various motherboard manufacturers, such as ASUS, ASRock, and MSI, have released beta BIOS updates with this microcode, as confirmed in AMI Aptio inspection tool screenshots. The 06EC microcode, detailed in this slide-deck from Intel, hardens the machine against newer variants of the "Spectre" vulnerability. Older revisions of this document also mentioned support for Intel Core "9000 series" processors, before Intel scampered to redact it.

Micron and Intel today announced an update to their 3D XPoint joint development partnership, which has resulted in the development of an entirely new class of non-volatile memory with dramatically lower latency and exponentially greater endurance than NAND memory.

The companies have agreed to complete joint development for the second generation of 3D XPoint technology, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2019. Technology development beyond the second generation of 3D XPoint technology will be pursued independently by the two companies in order to optimize the technology for their respective product and business needs.

The two companies will continue to manufacture memory based on 3D XPoint technology at the Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) facility in Lehi, Utah.

Intel is competing to win in the largest-ever addressable market for silicon, which is being driven by the explosion of data and the need to process, analyze, store and share it. This dynamic is fueling demand for computing solutions of all kinds. Of course Intel is known for world-class CPUs, but today we offer a broader range of custom computing solutions to help customers tackle all kinds of workloads - in the cloud, over the network and at the edge. In recent years, Intel has expanded its products and introduced breakthrough innovations in memory, modems, purpose-built ASICs, vision processing units and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

FPGAs are experiencing expanding adoption due to their versatility and real-time performance. These devices can be programmed anytime - even after equipment has been shipped to customers. FPGAs contain a mixture of logic, memory and digital signal processing blocks that can implement any desired function with extremely high throughput and very low latency. This makes FPGAs ideal for many critical cloud and edge applications, and Intel's Programmable Solutions Group revenue has grown double digits as customers use FPGAs to accelerate artificial intelligence, among other applications.

Intel today announced the release of the new Intel Xeon E-2100 processor. The Intel Xeon E processor, successor to the Intel Xeon E3 processor, is designed for entry-level workstations that provide creators with powerful, single-threaded application performance with a platform optimized for reliability and affordability.

"With today's workloads, aging workstations impede productivity, collaboration and creativity. The release of the Intel Xeon E processor is intended to deliver the essential performance and visuals for entry workstations, as well as optimizing the innovative form factors, designs and diverse requirements of our customers," said Jennifer Huffstetler, vice president and general manager, data center product management, Intel Corporation.

A new variant of the "Spectre" CPU vulnerability was discovered affecting Intel processors, by security researchers Vladimir Kiriansky and Carl Waldspurger, who are eligible to bag a USD $100,000 bounty by Intel, inviting researchers to sniff out vulnerabilities from its processors. This discovery, chronicled under CVE-2018-3693, is among 12 new CVEs Intel will publish later this week. The company is also expected to announce quarterly CPU microcode updates to allay fears of its enterprise customers.

The new vulnerability, like most other "Spectre" variants, targets the speculative execution engine of the processor, in a bounds-check bypass store attack. A malicious program already running on the affected machine can alter function pointers and return addresses in the speculative execution engine, thereby redirecting the flow of data out of protected memory address-spaces, making it visible to malware. This data could be anything, including cryptographic keys, passwords, and other sensitive information, according to "The Register." Intel chronicled this vulnerability in section 2.2.1 of its revised speculative execution side-channel attacks whitepaper. You can also catch a more detailed whitepaper from the researchers themselves.

Intel, via a Game Dev Developer Zone blog post, took it into its hands to urge game developers towards usage of the industry-prevalent Vulkan API. Some unapologetic puns are thrown in, such as "(...) You might say that Vulkan lets apps live long and prosper", but these are only meant to entertain. And it's well known that Intel has supported the Khronos Group and Vulkan's inception from the beginning, alongside Google. The reasons for this blog post to make it into a front page, however, are twofold.

Vulkan APIs are positioned to become one of the next dominant graphics rendering platforms.

Intel is allegedly killing off the "Extreme Edition" brand extension it has been using to denote its flagship client-segment products, such as processors and NUCs. This, according to industry observer François Piednoël. This could also mean the retirement of related elements such as the iconic Intel Skull, and the black and silver packaging. What Intel is replacing this moniker with, remains a mystery.

Intel currently assigns the "Extreme" extension to only one client-segment product, the Core i9-7980XE. With the advent of the 28-core client-segment processor on a new motherboard platform, Intel could find itself tough to justify the extension on the "Basin Falls" (LGA2066) platform. The company is planning to launch new 20-core and 22-core LGA2066 processors, besides its 28-core processor on the new platform. The Extreme extension is also used on the company's "Skull Canyon" NUC.

Late May 2018, TechPowerUp started a front-page poll asking people which processor they use. 37 days and 16,140 responses later, we have a general idea of where the desktop processor market stands among our readers (predominantly PC gamers and enthusiasts). The top-two responses to our survey were 4th generation Core "Haswell," followed by the preceding two generations ("Ivy Bridge" and "Sandy Bridge"). This speaks volumes as to the hole Intel dug itself into, due to lack of competition from AMD. Processors that are 4-7 years old still run today's gaming PCs, and don't bottleneck today's games, as long as graphics cards keep getting faster (where there has been relatively more competition than the CPU market).

Despite being newer, fewer respondents use 6th generation "Skylake" and 7th generation "Kaby Lake" processors than older generations, because those on something like 4th generation "Haswell" or even "Ivy Bridge," don't see the value in upgrading. But then something changed in 2017 - AMD became competitive again, and forced an increase in CPU core counts across the segment. AMD's Ryzen processor family, including both its 1st and 2nd generations, are better received in the market than Intel's competing 8th generation "Coffee Lake" and 7th generation "Kaby Lake." The data stands to validate the "Ryzen effect," the idea that the introduction of Ryzen disrupted Intel's near-monopoly, increased core-counts, and brought innovation back to the segment.

Following all of the unofficial, tentative tidbits of information following Intel's on-again, off-again 9000 series CPU lineup (which still belongs to the 8th Generation), we now have official confirmation - as is usual, through Intel's documentation. In this instance, the "culprit" is Intel's Microcode Revision Guidance. The Coffee Lake S series featuring 6+2 configurations are now listed with Core i5-9600(K), Core i5-9500(T) and the Core i5-9400, while the Core i3-9100 and Core i3-9000 SKUs are listed with a 4+2 configuration.

Update: Intel's 8th Gen Specification Update now lists clocks and core count for the aforementioned CPUs. Overall, there's an increased 100 or 200 MHz Max Turbo frequency across the board within the same TDP package, and some instances of 100 MHz base frequency increases over Intel's 8000 series CPUs (can't just call them 8th gen anymore now can we?). The 9600K, for example, increases base clocks from the 8600K by 100 MHz (up to 3.7 GHz base), but pole-vaults its predecessor in maximum Turbo (up to 4.5 GHz).

Intel's 10 nanometer FinFET silicon fabrication is coming together at a slower than expected rate, however when it does, it could vastly enlarge the canvas for the company's chip designers, according to a technical report by Tech Insights. The researchers removed the die of an Intel "Cannon Lake" Core i3-8121U processor inside a Lenovo Ideapad330, and put it under their electron microscope.

Its summary mentions quite a few juicy details of the 10 nm process. The biggest of these is the achievement of a 2.7-times increase in transistor density over the current 14 nm node, enabling Intel to cram up to 100.8 million transistors per square millimeter. A 127 mm² die with nothing but a sea of transistors, could have 12.8 billion transistors. Intel 10 nm node also utilizes third-generation FinFET technology, with a reduction in minimum gate pitch from 70 nm to 54 nm; and minimum metal pitch from 52 nm to 36 nm. 10 nm also sees Intel introduce metallization of cobalt in the bulk and anchor layers of the silicon substrate. Cobalt emerged as a good alternative to tungsten and copper as a contact material between layers, due to its lower resistance at smaller sizes,

According to a report from WCCFTech, Intel is prepping the release of the Z390 chipset and is gearing up to bring their Core i9 branding series to the mainstream desktop platforms. Apparently, Intel's renaming scheme serves as a way to add the required "branding impact" to the fact that the i9 series of processors is finally hitting the mainstream - but don't be deluded. As we've previously covered, Intel's Z390 chipset may well become a rebrand of sorts from the current Z370 chipset, after Intel found insufficient capacity at its 14 nm node (which has to cope with the vast majority of Intel silicon production, following the smattering of delays hitting its 10 nm process). Basically, Intel's Z390 chipset will bring forward features that weren't built on the Z370 chipset at its inception, but have since become part of Intel's lineup (read, for example, its H370 chipset): Intel Wireless-AC 802.11 AC and Bluetooth 5.0; Intel Wireless-AC Adapter; and up to 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Ports.

According to WCCFTech, there's only confirmation of an 8-core, 16-thread CPU (Intel Core i9-9900K); a 6-core, 12-thread one (Intel Core i7-9700K) and a six-core, six-thread part (Intel Core i5-9600K ). No confirmation on an i3 part has been had yet, but it's very unlikely Intel has shelved that part of their lineup. A 4-core CPU is simply too important - from a yield perspective, mainly - for Intel to shelve it - and there's still enough demand for these, even with AMD's many-core democratization push.

Shuttle's product family of 1.3-liter PCs has a powerful new addition. As the first model in this format, the DH02U no longer relies solely on the graphics performance which is determined by the soldered-on processor. For the first time, the latter is supported by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics chip with 4 GB of memory. This means that the DH02U is fast enough for fluent 3D visualization and to operate, via HDMI 2.0b, four high-resolution monitors in 4K at 60 Hz.

• Suitable for ambient temperatures of up to 50 °C
• Support for up to four 4K monitors
• Available in two versions: with Intel Celeron or Intel Core i5 processor

Intel is rumored to have shelved the iteration of its upcoming Z390 Express chipset as earlier publicized, the one which had certain new hardware features. It could now re-brand the existing Z370 Express as Z390 Express and probably bolster its reference design with heftier CPU VRM specifications, to cope better with its upcoming 8-core LGA1151 processors. The Z370 Express is similar in feature-set to the brink of being identical to its predecessor, the Z270 Express. This move could impact certain new hardware features that were on the anvil, such as significantly more USB 3.1 gen 2/gen1 ports directly from the PCH, integrated WiFi MAC, and Intel SmartSound technology, which borrowed certain concepts from edge-computing to implement native speech-to-text conversion directly on the chipset, for improved voice control latency and reduced CPU overhead.

The reasons behind this move could be a combination of last-minute cost-benefit analyses by Intel's bean-counters, and having to mass-produce Z390 Express on the busier-than-expected 14 nm silicon fabrication node, as opposed to current 300-series chipsets being built on the 22 nm node that's nearing the end of its life-cycle. Intel probably needed the switch to 14 nm for the significant increases in transistor-counts arising from the additional USB controllers, the WiFi MAC, and the SmartSound logic. Intel probably doesn't have the vacant 14 nm node capacity needed to mass-produce the Z390 yet, as its transition to future processes such as 10 nm and 7 nm are still saddled with setbacks and delays; and redesigning the Z390 (as we knew it) on 22 nm may have emerged unfeasible (i.e. the chip may have ended up too big and/or too hot). The Z390 Express chipset block-diagram, which we published in our older article has been quietly removed from Intel's website. It's also rumored that this move could force AMD to rethink its plans to launch its Z490 socket AM4 chipset.

Back in 2011, a team of engineers with the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, proposed an audacious new chip air-cooling concept called simply the Sandia CPU cooler. Its design involved a chunky metallic fan not just ventilating the cooler, but also dissipating heat by itself, conveyed through a thin layer of conductive lubricant between the fan and the static heatsink below it. The concept itself never made it to commercial production, but Thermaltake brought something closely resembling it to the market in 2016, with the Engine 27. The company is giving this cooler an even smaller sibling, with the new Engine 17. The number in the model name refers to its Z-height of just 17 mm, making it comfortable for 1U builds.

Besides its reduced Z-height, the design is practically unchanged from the Engine 27 - a round, nickel-plated copper base-plate draws heat from the CPU, which is mated with a 60 mm diameter metallic fan that not just dissipates heat by itself, but also passes air through a ring of aluminium fin channels projecting radially. The reduced height means that this cooler can only handle thermal loads of up to 35W TDP. It only supports Intel LGA115x sockets. Despite its weight, the fan spins between 1,500 to 2,500 RPM, pushing about 9 CFM of air, with a noise output ranging between 11 to 23 dBA. Measuring 91.5 mm x 91.5 mm x 17 mm, it weighs 205 g. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Intel Corporation today announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich as CEO and a member of the board of directors. The board has named Chief Financial Officer Robert Swan interim chief executive officer, effective immediately.

Intel was recently informed that Mr. Krzanich had a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee. An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel's non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers. Given the expectation that all employees will respect Intel's values and adhere to the company's code of conduct, the board has accepted Mr. Krzanich's resignation.

Lead developer for OpenBSD Mark Kettenis has announced that OpenBSD will no longer enable Hyper-Threading on Intel processors by default. This move is intended to mitigate security exploits from the Spectre ecosystem as well as TLB and cache timing attacks, because important processor resources are no longer shared between threads. Their suspicion is that some of the unreleased (or yet unknown) attacks can be stopped using this approach.

This move is supported by the fact that most newer motherboards no longer provide an option to disable Hyper-Threading via BIOS. OpenBSD users who still want to use Hyper-Threading can manually enable support for it using the sysctl hw.smt. The developers are also looking into expanding this feature to other CPUs from other vendors, should they be affected, too.

A few months ago we reported that Raja Koduri has left AMD to work at Intel on their new discrete GPU project. Looks like he's building a strong team, with the most recent addition being Tom Forsyth who is the father of Larrabee, which was Intel's first attempt at making an x86-based graphics processor. While Larrabee did not achieve its goal and is considered a failure by many, it brought some interesting improvements to the world, for example AVX512, and is now sold under the Xeon Phi brand.

Tom, who has previously worked at Oculus, Valve, and 3DLabs posted on Twitter that he's joining Intel in Raja's group, but he's "Not entirely sure what he'll be working on just yet." At Oculus and Valve he worked on Virtual Reality projects, for example he wrote big chunks of the Team Fortress 2 VR support for the Oculus Rift. Taking a look at Tom's papers suggests that he might join the Intel team as lead for VR-related projects, as that's without a doubt one of Raja's favorite topics to talk about.

Oh well, this almost makes us think of this industry as going hand in hand merrily, tongue-in-cheeking each other towards fulfilling, eternal happiness. It's a shame that this not usually the shape of our industry, but really, life isn't either, so let's keep our expectations in check. All in all, Intel's Twitter response to the viral, beautifully-crafted AMD initiative of exchanging one of Intel's commemorative 8086K CPUs for one of its Threadripper 1950X processors is equally satisfying - there's an unavoidable smile to be found while considering these two exchanges.

Kudos, Intel. Kudos for both companies for keeping it in a good spirit. If only we didn't have strange things such as Optane memory shenanigans going on concurrently...

Intel's Optane products, based on the joint venture with Micron, have been hailed as the next step in memory technology - delivering, according to Intel's own pre-launch slides, a mid-tier, al-dente point between DRAM's performance and NAND's density and pricing. Intel even demoed their most avant-garde product in recent times (arguably, of course) - the 3D XPoint DIMM SSD. Essentially, a new storage contraption that would occupy vacant DIMM channels, delivering yet another tier of storage up for grabs for speed and space-hungry applications - accelerating workloads that would otherwise become constrained by the SATA or even NVMe protocol towards NAND drives.

Of course, that product was a way off; and that product still hasn't come to light. The marriage of Optane's density and speed with a users' DRAM subsystem is just wishful thinking at best, and the dreams of pairing DRAM and 3D Xpoint in the same memory subsystem and extracting the best of both worlds remains, well... A figment of the imagination. But not according to some retailers' websites, though. Apparently, the usage of Intel's Optane products as DRAM memory has already surfaced for some vendors - Dell and HP included. How strange, then, that this didn't come out with adequate pomp and circumstance.

AMD acknowledges Intel's contribution to the x86 architecture over the last 40 years. However, AMD is convinced that they are the leading company for future high-performance computing, and will "take it from here". That's why AMD will hold its own online sweepstakes to give the first 40 U.S.-based winners of the Intel sweepstakes the opportunity to swap their 6-core prize for a 16-core monster. To put things into perspective, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X has 16 cores, 32 threads, 40 MB of cache, and 64 PCIe Gen3 lanes. Now that's something hard to pass up on! AMD's sweepstakes will go live on June 25 at 1:00:00 PM EDT. If you were one of the lucky Core i7-8086K winners and want to take up on AMD's offer, check this page for further details.Update: Intel's response didn't take long. The company posted the following message to their Intel Gaming Twitter account: "if you wanted an Intel Core i7-8086K processor too, you could have just asked us. :)"

Lenovo recently announced its latest ThinkPad P52 mobile workstation designed for 3D rendering, content creation, and AI simulations. The laptop can be equipped with a 8th generation Intel Core or Xeon hexa-core processor. What's amazing with the Lenovo ThinkPad P52 is its ability to house up to 128 GB of DDR4 memory and 6 TB of storage. The P52 flaunts a 15.6-inch 4K display with a 10-bit color depth, 100% Adobe color gamut, and 400 nits of brightness. The laptop's graphics duties are delegated to a mobile high-end NVIDIA Quadro P3200 GPU with 6 GB of GDDR5 memory.

The ThinkPad P52 comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports alongside three USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a HDMI 2.0 port, and a mini DisplayPort 1.4. It also comes with a Smart Card and an integrated 4-in-1 card reader. Internet connectivity includes a conventional RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port, Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac adapter with integrated Bluetooth 5.0, and a Fibocomm 4G LTE (Cat 9) modem. The ThinkPad P52 isn't only fast, but it's probably one of the most secure mobile workstations to date. Lenovo implemented various security measures into the P52 such as TPM 2.0, IR camera, fingerprint reader, and ThinkShutter. The manufacturer didn't disclose the pricing of the ThinkPad P52. However, we'll find out soon as the laptop should be available by late June.

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability affecting all modern Intel Core and Xeon processors, which is an exploit of a performance optimization feature called "lazy FP state restore," which can be exploited to sniff out sensitive information, including cryptographic keys used to protect sensitive data. The flaw affects all x86 micro-architectures by Intel, "Sandy Bridge" and later.

The "lazy FP state restore" feature is a set of commands used to temporarily store or restore the FPU states of applications running "lazily" (as opposed to "eagerly"). Red Hat put out an advisory stating that numbers held in FPU registers could be used to access sensitive information about the activities of other applications, including encryption keys. Intel began working with popular OS vendors to quickly roll out software patches against the vulnerability.