Chinese tech tipster Enthusiast Citizen (ECSM) has once again posted about upcoming Intel CPU product launches—according to an inside info post (published via Bilibili), Team Blue has possibly scheduled their Raptor Lake Refresh/14th Gen Core K-series for a release window around the 42nd week of 2023 (October 17 - 23). ECSM posits that non-K models will arrive during the first week of 2024, coinciding with January's CES trade event. The Core i7-14700K model is said to feature a new configuration of 8 Performance and 12 Efficiency cores, and current LGA1700 motherboards will most likely require a firmware upgrade to run this specific SKU.

ECSM also seems to have insider information regarding motherboard chipsets for desktop Arrow Lake/15th Gen Core, although they cannot determine an accurate time frame for the (fully new) product launch. Intel Z890, B860 and H810 chipsets are named as possible upcoming candidates for proper next generation CPUs, with H870 allegedly dropped from development. ECSM claims that a competing AMD Zen 5 lineup is not arriving this year—prior insider information was perhaps fabricated. They believe that Storm Peak (Zen 4 Threadripper) is scheduled for Q4 2023, with two unnamed chipsets lined up to accompany this next-gen HEDT platform.

Intel's Xeon Sapphire Rapids CPU series has had a bumpy ride so far, with the discovery of bugs resulting in delays pushing proceedings back by more than two years. Units have been shipping out for the past couple of months, but Team Blue ran into more issues in late June—a subset of fourth Generation Intel Xeon Medium Core Count Processors (SPR-MCC) could interrupt normal system operation under certain conditions. Intel confirmed to Tom's Hardware that they were actively investigating the latest bugs, and had paused shipment of affected MCC die-based models (featuring up to 32 cores).

The publication has very recently received an update from their contact at Intel. A company spokesperson stated: "Last week, we informed you (Tom's Hardware) of an issue on a subset of 4th Generation Intel Xeon Medium Core Count Processors (SPR-MCC) that could interrupt system operation under certain conditions. Out of an abundance of caution, we temporarily paused some SPR-MCC shipments while we thoroughly evaluated a firmware mitigation. We are now confident the firmware mitigation addresses the issue. We have resumed shipping all versions of SPR-MCC and are working with customers to deploy the firmware as needed." Specifics about the latest mitigations efforts have not been divulged, but Intel is confident that these fixes will not impact processor performance.

Intel released a product change notification (PCN) earlier this week, announcing the discontinuation of its "Cascade Lake-X" and "Cascade Lake-W" HEDT processors. This effectively marks the end for the LGA2066 HEDT platform, as well as the Xeon W-2200 series workstation processors. The final iteration of the "Skylake" CPU core, "Cascade Lake" introduced features such as AVX512, VNNI, GFNI, and DLBoost, forming Intel's first attempt at providing hardware acceleration for AI neural-net building/training. The company plans a more comprehensive hardware accelerator with "Meteor Lake," called AI Boost.

The Eurasian Economic Commission or the EEC for short, has become something of a source when it comes to upcoming product leaks, at least as far as the model names goes and now a range of upcoming motherboards from Gigabyte has made an appearance on its site. What we're looking at is a range of refreshed boards, some that were on display at Computex, but most of them haven't been officially announced as yet. On the Intel side, all the new models have an X somewhere towards the end of the model names to reflect them being part of the refresh and at least some SKUs are getting WiFi 7 support, All except one model is based on the Z790 chipset, at least as far as most of us are concerned, as there's one custom SKU that's said to be for a Chinese system integrator that won't be available outside of China. As the China specific SKU is already listed on Gigabyte's Chinese website, we've included a picture of the B70M YT Pioneer WiFi below.

On the AMD side of things, Gigabyte is adding a more affordable X670E SKU with the X670E Aorus Elite AX. Here, AMD has stuck with a simple V2 to reflect the refreshed boards, but it's unclear what has changed on these models. Gigabyte has also added a few new MicroATX B650 boards, with the B650M Aorus Elite AX Arctic which will be a white and/or silver motherboard with matching design elements. This board will have limited availability and although it might be found in retail in some countries, it's largely intended for system integrators. The other two new boards are the B650M A Elite AX Arc—we were told by a source that this is a mistake in the filing—and the B650M Gaming WiFi, which should be a cheaper alternative to the B650M Gaming X models the company is currently offering. These boards should start arriving in the autumn some time, at least based on the boards Gigabyte was showing at Computex.

Intel's software engineers are working on path-traced light simulation and conducting neural graphics research, as documented in a recent company news article, with an ambition to create a more efficient solution for integrated graphics cards. The company's Graphics Research Organization is set to present their path-traced optimizations at SIGGRAPH 2023. Their papers have been showcased at recent EGSR and HPG events. The team is aiming to get iGPUs running path-tracing in real time, by reducing the number of calculations required to simulate light bounces.

The article covers three different techniques, all designed to improve GPU performance: "Across the process of path tracing, the research presented in these papers demonstrates improvements in efficiency in path tracing's main building blocks, namely ray tracing, shading, and sampling. These are important components to make photorealistic rendering with path tracing available on more affordable GPUs, such as Intel Arc GPUs, and a step toward real-time performance on integrated GPUs." Although there is an emphasis on in-house products in the article, Intel's "open source-first mindset" hints that their R&D could be shared with others—NVIDIA and AMD are likely still struggling to make ray tracing practical on their modest graphics card models.

Another next-gen Intel Xeon processor has been leaked by momomo_us via Twitter—the subject of the photograph appears to be a Granite Rapids-SP, alongside a new socket type; LGA 4710. These should not be confused with the recent appearance of a Granite Rapids-AP CPU plus LGA 7529 socket. The latest photo showcases two Intel CPUs with new integrated heat spreader (IHS) designs, both housed in carrier frames labeled "LGA 4710-2." The unit on the left seems to be similar in appearance to current-gen Sapphire Rapids-SP units, but the Xeon sitting on the right is getting most of the attention.

YuuKi_AnS (the leaker of last week's larger GNR-AP) pointed out that the smaller socket type is for a platform codenamed "Beechnut City," that is alleged to support Xeon GNR-SP CPUs. They provided a presentation slide of Intel's Beechnut City Main Validation Vehicle (MVV)—this mainboard appears to sport a dual-socket (2S) setup that can house Granite Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs (compatible with the LGA 4710-2 standard) with a maximum 350 W TDP. The spec sheet indicates that the board can support 8-channel DDR5 memory across 32 DIMM slots (DDR5-6400 1DPC / DDR5-5200 2DPC), as well as 88 PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes. The sixth generation Granite Rapids-SP & AP CPUs (based on "Intel 3" process node) are expected to launch in 2H 2024—following the Sierra Forest lineup.

In July 2022, Intel announced that the company was winding down its Optane division, effectively discontinuing the development of 3D XPoint memory that it has been marketing for a long time. Once viewed as a competitive advantage, the support for Optane has been removed from future platforms. However, Intel has announced plans to extend Optane shipments by another quarter amidst additional stock or significant demand from customers buying Optane DIMMs for their enterprises. Initially set to ship the final Optane Persistent Memory 100-series DIMMs on September 30, Intel extends this date by three months to December 29, 2023.

Intel states, "Customers are recommended to secure additional Optane units at the specified 0.44% annualized failure rate (AFR) for safety stock. Intel will make commercially reasonable efforts to support last time order quantities for Intel Optane Persistent Memory 100 Series."

ADLINK Technology Inc., a global leader in edge computing, and a Titanium member of the Intel Partner Alliance, is proud to announce the launch of its latest MVP Series fanless modular computers—the MVP-5200 Compact Modular Industrial Computers and MVP-6200 Expandable Modular Industrial Computers—powered by 12/13th Gen Intel Core i9/i7/i5/i3 and Celeron processors. Featuring Intel R680E chipset and supporting up to 65 W, the computers can also incorporate GPU cards in a rugged package suitable for AI inferencing at the Edge, and can be used for but not limited to smart manufacturing, semiconductor equipment, and warehouse applications.

The MVP-5200/MVP-6200 series though expandable remains compact with support for up to 4 PCI/PCIe slots that allow for performance acceleration through GPUs, accelerators, and other expansion cards. Comprehensive modularized options and the ease of configuration can effectively reduce lead times for customers' diverse requirements. In addition, ADLINK also offers a broad range of pre-validated expansion cards, such as GPU, motion, vision, and I/O embedded cards, all can be easily deployed for your industrial applications.

In a bid to prepare its ISV ecosystem for emerging technologies with future processor microarchitectures, Intel periodically releases instruction-set reference guides. The latest of these was leaked to the web, making their first references to the upcoming "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake" client processor microarchitectures. From the looks of it, Intel is planning a massive push into the client AI acceleration space, starting with the upcoming "Meteor Lake" architecture that debuts later this year. The processor is expected to feature hardware acceleration for AI, with the new AI Boost feature.

The company could build on AI Boost with even more capabilities in the subsequent "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake" microarchitectures. Among the instruction sets relevant to AI deep-learning neural net building and training, are AVX VNNI with INT8, AVX VNNI with INT16, AVX-IFMA, and AVX-NE Convert. There are several new security-relevant instructions, including SHA512, SM3, and SM4. "Lunar Lake" will introduce TSE-PBNDKB (total storage encryption). The ISA Reference Guide can be accessed here.

Sparkle Computer and Intel, longstanding Thunderbolt development partner since 2015, have announced a new partnership to launch the SPARKLE Intel Arc Series Graphics Cards. With a wealth of experience producing quality industrial graphics cards, ODM solutions and peripherals, Sparkle is now expanding our reach into the consumer graphics business.

"We value this collaboration and we are fully prepared," says Willie Huang, General Manager of Sparkle Computer Co., LTD. "Sparkle is dedicated to creating a creator-friendly working environment, ranging from industrial graphics, external GPU to docking stations.... As the last piece of the puzzle, Sparkle Intel Arc Graphics, featuring an advanced Xe Media engine and AV1 encoder, has fully completed our product line and fulfilled the requirement of the desktop community"

Intel's Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors have been coated with numerous delays, and today, we learn that the company is stopping shipment of certain SKUs, mostly driven by the discovery of a new bug. After plenty of delays, Sapphire Rapids has been shipping for a few months now. However, SemiAnalysis's Chief Analyst, Dylan Patel, tipped Tom's Hardware that certain SKUs haven't been shipping since June. What this translates into is the additional delays to the 4th generation Xeon Scalable line, which was already in a difficult position. Some estimates claimed that it did 12 steppings, meaning that it took 11 times to perfect the silicon for the mass production run. The impacted CPUs are models with up to 32 cores, based on MCC die. These SKUs represent a huge amount of the total Xeon volume.

Intel's spokesperson published the following statement for Tom's Hardware: "We became aware of an issue on a subset of 4th Generation Intel Xeon Medium Core Count Processors (SPR-MCC) that could interrupt system operation under certain conditions and are actively investigating. This issue was not observed when running commercially available software, and other 4th Generation Intel Xeon processor SKUs (i.e., XCC and HBM) have not exhibited the issue. Out of an abundance of caution, we did temporarily pause some SPR MCC shipments while we gained confidence in the expected firmware mitigation and expect to release remaining shipments shortly."

What's New: As part of a collaboration with Intel and Dell Technologies, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab plan to build a "digital twin" of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) prototype fusion power plant. The UKAEA will utilize the lab's supercomputer based on Intel technologies, including 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, distributed asynchronous object storage (DAOS) and oneAPI tools to streamline the development and delivery of fusion energy to the grid in the 2040s.

"Planning for the commercialization of fusion power requires organizations like UKAEA to utilize extreme amounts of computational resources and artificial intelligence for simulations. These HPC workloads may be performed using a variety of different architectures, which is why open software solutions that optimize performance needs can lend portability to code that isn't available in closed, proprietary systems. Overall, advanced hardware and software can make the journey to commercial fusion power lower risk and accelerated - a key benefit on the path to sustainable energy."—Adam Roe, Intel EMEA HPC technical director

New research from Omdia reveals that the semiconductor market declined in revenue for a fifth straight quarter in the first quarter of 2023. This is the longest recorded period of decline since Omdia began tracking the market in 2002. Revenue in 1Q23 settled at $120.5B, down 9% from 4Q22. The semiconductor market is cyclical, and this prolonged decline follows the upsurge as the market grew to record revenues in each quarter between 4Q20 through 4Q21 following increased demand from the global pandemic.

The memory and MPU market are major areas of the semiconductor market that are contributing to the decline. The MPU market in 1Q23 was $13.1B, just 65% of its size in 1Q22 when it was $20B. The memory market fared worse, with 1Q23 coming in at $19.3B, just 44% of the market in 1Q22 when it was $43.6B. The combined MPU and memory markets declined 19% in 1Q23, dragging the market down to the 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) decline.

ASRock Industrial is introducing new choices in industrial motherboards powered by 13th Gen Intel Core Processors (Raptor Lake-S) with up to 24 cores and 32 threads that boost computer-intensive edge performance. They come equipped with Intel W680, Q670, and H610 chipsets, and offer support for up to DDR5-5600 memory modules and PCIe Gen 5, allowing expanded possibilities and seamless integration within industry-specific applications.

By harnessing the power of the 13th Gen Intel Core Processors, they leap up to 1.04x/1.34x/1.25x faster in single-thread, multi-thread, and CPU image classification inference performance, respectively, compared to the preceding 12th Gen Intel Core processors. The new 13th Gen Intel CPU motherboards with DDR5 support, available in Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, and ATX form factors, have been specifically designed to cater to the unique requirements of the Edge AIoT applications in commerce, automation, robot, entertainment, and security industries.

Today, MLCommons published results of its industry AI performance benchmark, MLPerf Training 3.0, in which both the Habana Gaudi2 deep learning accelerator and the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor delivered impressive training results.

"The latest MLPerf results published by MLCommons validates the TCO value Intel Xeon processors and Intel Gaudi deep learning accelerators provide to customers in the area of AI. Xeon's built-in accelerators make it an ideal solution to run volume AI workloads on general-purpose processors, while Gaudi delivers competitive performance for large language models and generative AI. Intel's scalable systems with optimized, easy-to-program open software lowers the barrier for customers and partners to deploy a broad array of AI-based solutions in the data center from the cloud to the intelligent edge." - Sandra Rivera, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group

Intel's Birch Stream-AP socket will provide an LGA7529 socket with as many as 7529 pins to power the next generation of CPUs. Today, thanks to Yuuki_Ans on Twitter, we have another set of pictures that highlight the massive scale that these processors offer. We got similar pictures in the past; however, these are more representative of how big the next-generation Xeon processors are. In 2024, Intel plans to split its Xeon lineup into E-core and P-core powered models. However, both CPUs will utilize the same platform to reduce the overall ecosystem's complexity. Thanks to the new pictures, we can see the processor with its heatsink present, with labeling indicating an engineering sample based on little info printed on the metal surface.

Below are the pictures of the Granite Rapids-AP and the LGA7529 socket, along with the specification table. The third image shows current generation Xeon Platinum processor in the LGA7529 socket.

The Intel NUC12 Enthusiast Serpent Canyon is one of the best mini PCs people can find on the market right now. The 2.5L computer is only 1/10th the size of an average desktop PC, but packs a heavier punch than most PCs out there. The mini PC is powered by a beefy Intel Core i7-12700H processor, which employs 14 CPU cores (including 6 performance cores and 8 efficient cores), 20 threads, 24 MB Intel Smart Cache, and a max turbo frequency of 4.7 GHz.

There is also an Intel Arc A770M discrete graphics card, which has whooping 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM, and supports all mainstream media formats. The GPU is augmented by AI and accelerated by Intel Deep Link technology, making it a perfect choice for gamers and video content creators. The mini PC is also superb in terms of connectivity, boasting two Thunderbolt 4, six USB3.2 Type-A, two DisplayPort 2.0, an HDMI 2.1, two SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 MHz RAM slots and 3 interfaces for internal drives, etc.

Intel China has taken to Weibo and Bilibili in a new effort to explain how things will pan out for 14th generation CPU lineups, with emphasis on its new branding and naming conventions for 2023 and beyond. These announcements contain the company's first official acknowledgement of Raptor Lake-U, Raptor Lake-S and Raptor Lake-HX SKUs getting a refresh. Team Blue's branding scheme is set to become even more convoluted with Meteor Lake premiering with "Core Ultra" instead of the old "i" labelling system. The China office's product rundowns indicate that the Raptor Lake Refresh series will be split into Core # and Core i# families, which complicates matters further.

It seems that Raptor Lake-U & H Refresh (mobile) and the entire Meteor Lake lineup will be assuming the new Core # branding scheme, but the latter series will be more performant—hence the adding of Ultra (e.g Ultra Core 5/7/9), so customers can tell the difference between product lines lumped into the same generation! Desktop Raptor Lake-S Refresh and high-end mobile Raptor Lake-HX Refresh processors will retain the company's traditional "Core i" naming convention, this will eventually be retired with the 14th gen family.

Intel late Thursday released the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4502 WHQL. The drivers address a major issue that caused the iTunes Windows app to crash during launch. It also addresses a blank screen error noticed in some apps that use WebView2 embedded content. These aside, the the company identified new issues with GPU hardware acceleration for Premiere Pro, errors with Topaz Video AI, and crash with F1 23 on certain XeSS presets. There are no new game optimizations with this release.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Driver 101.4502 WHQL

What's New: The Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory is now fully equipped with all 10,624 compute blades, boasting 63,744 Intel Data Center GPU Max Series and 21,248 Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors. "Aurora is the first deployment of Intel's Max Series GPU, the biggest Xeon Max CPU-based system, and the largest GPU cluster in the world. We're proud to be part of this historic system and excited for the groundbreaking AI, science and engineering Aurora will enable."—Jeff McVeigh, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Super Compute Group

What Aurora Is: A collaboration of Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and the Department of Energy (DOE), the Aurora supercomputer is designed to unlock the potential of the three pillars of high performance computing (HPC): simulations, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) on an extremely large scale. The system incorporates more than 1,024 storage nodes (using DAOS, Intel's distributed asynchronous object storage), providing 220 terabytes (TB) of capacity at 31TBs of total bandwidth, and leverages the HPE Slingshot high-performance fabric. Later this year, Aurora is expected to be the world's first supercomputer to achieve a theoretical peak performance of more than 2 exaflops (an exaflop is 1018 or a billion billion operations per second) when it enters the TOP 500 list.

Intel Graphics has released Arc GPU and Iris Xe Graphics Drivers version 101.4502 WHQL. There are no gaming highlights or brand new Game On Driver support included in this release, according to the notes. An Arc-related iTunes application crash (upon launch) has been fixed, as well as blank screen and error messages encountered in Microsoft Edge's WebView2. There are plenty of "Known Issues" listed this time—Intel and EA Sports are looking into a problem where adjustments to XeSS presets cause crashes in F1 2023. Corruption in Game Capture mode for Dota 2 (via XSplit Broadcaster) has been noted. Media playback and encoding with some versions of Adobe Premiere Pro cannot utilize GPU hardware acceleration.

There are also various in-game issues - for owners of Intel Core Processors - logged for these titles: Total War: Warhammer III (DX11), Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 (DX12), Conqueror's Blade (DX12) and A Plague Tale: Requiem. The Arc Control Performance Tuning app is still in Beta, so expect to encounter some inconsistencies when using it. Intel and Cooler Master have partnered up on the continued development of Arc's RGB Controller software—it is custom designed "to allow users to harness 90 individually addressable LEDs on Intel Arc A770 Graphics Limited Edition cards."

DOWNLOAD: Intel GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4502 WHQL

Intel issued a product change notification (PCN), announcing the discontinuation of the reference-design Arc A770 16 GB Limited Edition graphics card. The product is now marked end-of-life (EOL) from Intel's end. What this means is that retailers cannot order more of it from Intel. The Arc A770 has 8 GB as its standard video memory size, and in its reference spec, uses 8 GB of 16 Gbps-rated GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus. The first-party A770 Limited Edition card comes with 16 GB of faster 17.5 Gbps memory. Memory aside, both the A770 Limited Edition, and custom-design A770 graphics cards have the same GPU core-configuration.

TrendForce reports that explosive growth in generative AI applications like chatbots has spurred significant expansion in AI server development in 2023. Major CSPs including Microsoft, Google, AWS, as well as Chinese enterprises like Baidu and ByteDance, have invested heavily in high-end AI servers to continuously train and optimize their AI models. This reliance on high-end AI servers necessitates the use of high-end AI chips, which in turn will not only drive up demand for HBM during 2023~2024, but is also expected to boost growth in advanced packaging capacity by 30~40% in 2024.

TrendForce highlights that to augment the computational efficiency of AI servers and enhance memory transmission bandwidth, leading AI chip makers such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have opted to incorporate HBM. Presently, Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips each boast up to 80 GB of HBM2e and HBM3. In its latest integrated CPU and GPU, the Grace Hopper Superchip, Nvidia expanded a single chip's HBM capacity by 20%, hitting a mark of 96 GB. AMD's MI300 also uses HBM3, with the MI300A capacity remaining at 128 GB like its predecessor, while the more advanced MI300X has ramped up to 192 GB, marking a 50% increase. Google is expected to broaden its partnership with Broadcom in late 2023 to produce the AISC AI accelerator chip TPU, which will also incorporate HBM memory, in order to extend AI infrastructure.

Intel Corporation today announced that it has agreed to sell an approximately 20% stake in its IMS Nanofabrication GmbH ("IMS") business to Bain Capital Special Situations ("Bain Capital"), in a transaction that values IMS at approximately $4.3 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2023. IMS will operate as a standalone subsidiary and will continue to be led by CEO Dr. Elmar Platzgummer.

Since inventing multi e-beam technology and introducing the first commercial multi-beam mask writer in 2015, Vienna, Austria-based IMS has been an industry leader in multi-beam mask writing for advanced technology nodes. Intel initially invested in IMS in 2009 and ultimately acquired the business in 2015. Since the acquisition, IMS has delivered a significant return on investment to Intel while growing its workforce and production capacity by four times and delivering three additional product generations.

Intel Labs, in collaboration with Blockade Labs, has introduced Latent Diffusion Model for 3D (LDM3D), a novel diffusion model that uses generative AI to create realistic 3D visual content. LDM3D is the industry's first model to generate a depth map using the diffusion process to create 3D images with 360-degree views that are vivid and immersive. LDM3D has the potential to revolutionize content creation, metaverse applications and digital experiences, transforming a wide range of industries, from entertainment and gaming to architecture and design.

"Generative AI technology aims to further augment and enhance human creativity and save time. However, most of today's generative AI models are limited to generating 2D images and only very few can generate 3D images from text prompts. Unlike existing latent stable diffusion models, LDM3D allows users to generate an image and a depth map from a given text prompt using almost the same number of parameters. It provides more accurate relative depth for each pixel in an image compared to standard post-processing methods for depth estimation and saves developers significant time to develop scenes," said Vasudev Lal, AI/ML research scientist, Intel Labs.