During its "Xiamen HighFun" event in China, Minisforum announced the latest addition to its compact series of gaming PCs, this time with no official name. The 6-liter system, code-named "Project RPFXI" for Intel and "Project DRFXI" for AMD, will support up to 100 W TDP and utilize the most powerful Ryzen CPU, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. This hybrid mobile/desktop processor combines the desktop-level performance of 16 Zen 4 cores with 144 MB of 3D V-cache, all within a 55 W power limit. Minisforum confirmed the 7945HX3D would be available in the AMD platform version, positioned as a premium model compared to the existing 7945HX system.

Interestingly, the GPU support is literally external, as the potential GPU needs to be attached to the outside part of the case, which is then secured using screws. The case could accommodate the fastest GPUs like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with a powerful enough power supply. The 6-liter mini PC is expected to launch in late 2023, either in 24-core Intel (HX line) configuration, of 16-core AMD configuration.

With Intel about to launch its 14th generation of Core processors, the motherboard makers are refreshing their LGA-1700 motherboards, as Intel won't be releasing a new chipset for the 14th gen CPUs. ASUS has now revealed three new boards that will come ready out of the box for Intel's 14th gen Core CPUs. This kind of meagre lineup is likely what we'll be seeing from all of the major board makers, since it doesn't make sense to overhaul all of their boards for the new CPUs, since only a BIOS/UEFI update is needed for the new CPUs to function in just about any 600- or 700-series motherboard. ASUS' lineup of new boards consist of the ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero, the ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi II, and the TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFi.

Apart from a design overhaul of all three models with some minor changes to slot placements, which includes new, improved M.2 heatsinks with a much more refined look, ASUS has added WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support to two of the three new models. On the ROG Hero board, ASUS has dropped the Hyper M.2 Card in favour of an onboard M.2 slot with a taller heatsink, looking much like what we've seen on some AMD X670E boards. ASUS has also added support for USB PD 3.0 and Quick Charge 4+ to the front USB Type-C ports and even made an app that shows how much power is being delivered by the port in question. Furthermore, ASUS has added support for AEMP II which the company claims makes it easier to optimise memory performance on the boards. ASUS did not reveal when the new boards will be available or what they'll cost. Specs of all three boards after the break.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced a new VMware vSAN solution optimized to run enterprise class hyperconverged virtualized workloads. As virtualized workloads become more advanced, processing power and storage performance requirements increase, requiring greater capacity to meet application SLAs and maximize virtual machine density. This solution also utilizes the latest Intel AMX accelerator for AI workloads.

When compared to the Supermicro X11 BigTwin, benchmark testing conducted by Supermicro showed up to 4.7X higher IO throughput and 8.2X lower latency on the HCIBench benchmark, up to 4.9X faster image classification inference throughput on the ResNet50 model and up to 4X faster natural language processing throughput on BERT-Large model. In addition, the superior power and efficiency of the Supermicro X13 BigTwin architecture can deliver up to 3X cost and performance improvement within the same node footprint compared to a similar deployment based on older generation Supermicro systems, creating a compelling case for organizations to upgrade their aging infrastructure.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading computer brand, is excited to announce its gaming sub-brand AORUS' presence at Gamescom 2023 in Cologne, Germany. Under the exciting theme of AORUSVERSE, AORUS is set to showcase its latest cutting-edge technology, including state-of-the-art motherboards, powerful gaming and creator laptops, PC systems, and stunning 4K gaming monitors. Attendees can expect an immersive journey into the vast gaming world of AORUSVERSE.

As a true gaming heaven, the AORUS booth will be brimming with the latest gaming hardware for enthusiasts to explore. The centerpiece of the exhibit will be the highly-anticipated Z790 X series motherboards, with the enthusiast-grade Z790 MASTER X leading the way to power Intel's next-generation processor. Additionally, AORUS will proudly unveil the Red Dot Design Award 2023 award-winning M6 wireless gaming mouse, allowing attendees to get a hands-on experience with this exceptional peripheral.

Intel Graphics figured out a unique way to step up performance of its entry-level Arc A380 graphics cards. While other companies prevent BIOS updates and generally discourage overclocking; Intel has given the A380 a free vendor overclock. With the latest Arc GPU Graphics drivers 101.4644 WHQL, Intel has increased the base frequency of the GPU. The driver installer includes a firmware update besides the driver. The A380 has a reference base clock of 2000 MHz, which boosts up to 2050 MHz. With the latest 101.4644 drivers (the new firmware), the base frequency has been increased to 2150 MHz. It's not much, but hey, who doesn't want a free 7.5% overclock to go with their recent 19% performance increase in DirectX 11 games, and over 40% increase in DirectX 9 ones?

Recently, Chinese customs at Gongbei Port, which connects Macau and Zhuhai, made a significant interception: 780 Intel processors that smugglers were attempting to sneak in. Smugglers in China are known for their innovative tactics to bypass customs. There are many ways that these smugglers try to avoid paying customs, and that is strapping these goods on themselves. In this latest incident, the smugglers chose a seemingly clever approach by stashing the processors within a cross-border bus's engine. But passing through metal detectors with such a hefty amount of metal is risky, and even creative disguises can't shield processors from keen-eyed detectors.

After examining its digital imagery, the Gongbei Port customs officials grew suspicious of the bus. A detailed engine inspection unveiled the smuggled goods: 780 Intel processors, cleverly hidden. The estimated value of the seized items is over one million yuan, approximately $137,341. Although the exact models of the confiscated chips are not entirely clear, they appear to be from the 12th Generation Alder Lake or 13th Generation Raptor Lake series. China's vast grey market for computer components is both a boon and a bane. While CPUs, GPUs, and SSDs are available at tempting prices, these deals often lack the manufacturer's warranty. So, while the initial savings might seem appealing, the absence of warranty poses risks that could offset those initial benefits in the long run.

Intel's upcoming desktop platform based on Socket LGA1851 will retire support for the DDR4 memory standard. The socket will only support DDR5. With this, Intel would have gracefully transitioned the market from DDR4 to DDR5, with its current Socket LGA1700 that enables both memory stardards, having supported three generations of Core processors (12th thru 14th). Leaf Hobby, a reliable source with Intel leaks, says that LGA1851 will remain Intel's desktop platform till 2026.

LGA1851 is expected to debut with the company's Core desktop processor generation that succeeds 14th Gen "Raptor Lake Refresh." The socket itself has the same dimensions as LGA1700, and is expected to be cooler-compatible with the older socket. The socket will feature pins for up to 32 PCIe lanes—16 toward PEG, 8 toward DMI chipset bus, and two sets of 4 lanes toward CPU-attached NVMe storage. From these, the 16 PEG lanes, and one set of 4 lanes are expected to be Gen 5, while the chipset bus is expected to remain DMI Gen 4 x8, and the second CPU-attached NVMe slot is expected to be Gen 4. The socket could also feature wiring for updated display I/O, as Intel's next-gen processors are expected to introduce updates to the iGPU.

Intel Graphics today announced the Q3-2023 major update of its Arc GPU Graphics drivers, which will be released shortly. The latest driver promises to be a transformative update recommended for all Intel GPU users. The company says that it has re-architected several under-the-hood components of the drivers to make A-series GPUs significantly faster. The company also put in engineering effort to reduce frame-times, and introduce a new way of measuring the GPU's contribution to it; so users can figure out whether they are in a CPU-limited scenario, or a GPU-limited one. Lastly, the company updated its PresentMonitor utility with a new front-end interface.

Intel Arc "Alchemist" is a ground up discrete GPU graphics architecture that was designed mainly for DirectX 12 and Vulkan, but over time, relied on API translation for DirectX 9 games. With its Spring driver updates, the company had released a major update that uplifted DirectX 9 game performance by 43% on average. This was because even though API translation was being used for DirectX 9 games, there was broad scope for per-game optimization, and DirectX 9 remains a relevant API for several current e-sports titles. With today's release, Intel promises a similar round of performance updates, with as much as 19% performance uplifts to be had in DirectX 11 titles at 1080p, measured with an A750 on a Core i5-13400F based machine. These gains are averaged to +12% on the fastest i9-13900K processor. The logic being that the slower processor benefits greater from the changes Intel made to its DirectX 11 driver.

PresentMon is a popular utility that lets you analyze system latencies at a software level, helping you determine how the interplay between various hardware devices and their software contribute to various performance metrices, such as frame-rates, and frame-times. Developed by Intel engineer Jefferson Montgomery and first introduced to the public in 2017, PresentMon has been an SDK that other performance tools have leveraged, such as CapFrameX, NVIDIA FrameView, and GPUOpen OCAT. Intel decided to release PresentMon as an application with its own front-end that has Intel branding. The company will continue to enable PresentMon SDK for third-party applications.

The new Intel PresentMon beta application comes with a configurable overlay that has real-time graphing. It leverages the new GPU_busy performance counter that is the time between two presents (i.e. the time taken for the GPU to execute API commands issues by the CPU for the generation of a particular frame. The PresentMon application retains multi-vendor support—NVIDIA and AMD GPUs remain supported—as do AMD CPUs. It also retains support for all prevalent 3D graphics APIs, including DirectX, Vulkan, and OpenGL. For power-users, the PresentMon SDK and Overlay application will continue to be open-source and available on GitHub, and the company has only increased its usability by adding more commandline options. Everyone else can grab the ready-to-use Intel PresentMon Beta application from the Intel website.

DOWNLOAD: Intel PresentMon Beta

ASUS, a global technology leader, today announced an epic collaboration with A BATHING APE (BAPE), the renowned Japanese street-style fashion brand. The collaboration showcases the iconic streetwear brand's trademark design style etched directly into the high-performance laptop's rugged, street-savvy metallic lid, palm rest and touchpad. The unique BAPE camo design also adorns an exclusive bundle of matching accessories.

ASUS has teamed up with A BATHING APE to bring users the first-ever BAPE laptop bundle: the Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition. Vivobook's energetic and vibrant style vibes perfectly with the ostentatious BAPE aesthetic. With a shared passion for creativity, diversity and unwavering authenticity, this collaboration is a seamless combination of bold street fashion and pioneering tech.

With sequential IC sales declines beginning to moderate, the global semiconductor industry appears to be nearing the end of a downcycle and is expected to begin to recover in 2024, SEMI, in partnership with TechInsights, reported in the Semiconductor Manufacturing Monitor. In Q3 2023, electronics sales are projected to post healthy quarter-on-quarter growth of 10%, while memory IC sales are expected to log double-digit growth for the first time since the downturn started in Q3 2022. Logic IC sales are predicted to remain stable and improve as demand gradually recovers.

Headwinds will continue for the semiconductor manufacturing sector in the second half of the year, SEMI and TechInsights reported. Drawdowns of high inventory at integrated device manufacturer (IDM) and fabless companies will continue to suppress fab utilization rates to much lower levels than those in the first half of 2023. The weakness is projected to extend declines in capital equipment billings and silicon shipments for the rest of the year despite stable results in the first half of 2023.

Intel recently updated its website to highlight interposers used for testing upcoming chips before their actual product integration. A specific webpage now showcases components used by various tools, notably the "Gen5 VR," which stands for CPU Voltage Regulator in this context. The highlight of the update reveals at least four yet-to-be-announced products: Battlemage (BMG), Arrow Lake (ARL), and Lunar Lake (LNL), slated for launch in 2024. Particularly interesting are the two Battlemage interposers: BGA2362-BMG-X2 and BGA2727-BMG-X3. This hints that a Battlemage GPU could have more pins than Intel's current top-tier GPU from the Alchemist series, known as DG2, which features 2660 pins (BGA2660-DG2-512EU).

This unveiling could indicate Intel's plans to introduce two GPUs in its new series or potentially two different package sizes. Manufacturers often use consistent package sizes for multiple GPUs, granting flexibility to interchange processors with similar specifications and presenting a feasible production strategy. Another notable mention is the Arrow Lake-HX, intended for premium desktop/laptop hybrids.. While there was some buzz about the ARL-HX series before, this update provides clear confirmation from Intel. Lastly, the reveal includes an interposer for the Lunar Lake-M series (LNL-M), which is expected to be Intel's most energy-efficient line. Drawing parallels from the Alder Lake series, such chips were designed for tablets with power consumption between 5 to 7 watts.

Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) today announced that it has mutually agreed with Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM) to terminate its previously disclosed agreement to acquire Tower due to the inability to obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement, dated Feb. 15, 2022. In accordance with the terms of the merger agreement and in connection with its termination, Intel will pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower.

"Our foundry efforts are critical to unlocking the full potential of IDM 2.0, and we continue to drive forward on all facets of our strategy," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. "We are executing well on our roadmap to regain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025, building momentum with customers and the broader ecosystem and investing to deliver the geographically diverse and resilient manufacturing footprint the world needs. Our respect for Tower has only grown through this process, and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future."

ZOTAC TECHNOLOGY today announces its latest lineup of its ZBOX E series and C Series, consisting of 5 Mini PC models. The announced Mini PCs boast a diverse range of size and functionality tailored for a wide variety of applications to deliver incredible performance and user experience, from office work and creative workflows, to livestreaming and gaming. The ZBOX E Series have always been ZOTAC's most exciting range of Mini PCs, since it is designed to deliver the best performance per inch of space taken to those who need it. The all-new MAGNUS ONE and MAGNUS EN continue to pack the best consumer PC hardware components in compact designs that offer both versatility and power.

As compact as ever with its award-winning 8.3L chassis, the MAGNUS ONE gets a generational leap in power and performance. With a 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13700 Processor and a ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card inside, the MAGNUS ONE offers impressive speed and power to play all your games with full-bore graphics and gameplay at 1440p resolution. When the MAGNUS ONE White Edition debuted at COMPUTEX 2023, it has garnered great interest from visitors. From the intense feedback we received, the all-new MAGNUS ONE will also be offered in a pure white colorway, which will surely make any desk set up feel clean and elegant.

The global server market, grappling with the impact of worldwide inflation, saw significant shifts in 2023. Server OEMs and CSPs revamped their investment strategies, resulting in cutbacks in both annual shipments and ODM production plans. TrendForce observes that as the server market continues to decline, demand for AI surges. These combined factors have had a domino effect, compressing the rollout of new server platforms across the board.

Forecasts predict that this year's shipments of server motherboards are expected to decline by a market of 6~7%. Concurrently, shipments of whole servers aren't faring much better, with a projected decrease of 5~6%.

Intel today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4644 WHQL comes with Game On (day-zero) optimization for "Madden NFL 24," and "Wayfinder." Among the issues fixed with this release include an application crash noticed with "Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection" when launching the game; a system hang noticed when waking up your desktop from sleep, needing you to cycle power; and an application crash observed with Blender 3.6 during render operations, when hardware ray tracing is enabled. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4644 WHQL

IBASE Technology Inc. (TPEx: 8050), a global leader in network appliances and embedded solutions, proudly announces the release of the INA8505 enterprise 1U edge server. Powered by the Intel Xeon D-2700 processor and offering versatile connectivity options, this state-of-the-art appliance is specifically designed to excel in demanding 5G Open vRAN & MEC applications such as real-time data analytics, autonomous vehicles, and smart city deployments. It enables full control over resource allocation in the RAN and MEC, and has the potential to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities to dynamically optimize network performance in real time at the edge of the 5G network infrastructure.

The INA8505 delivers unmatched performance, scalability, and efficiency with flexible storage, offering two SATA/NVMe 2.5" HDD/SSD slots, 2x M.2 (M-key) SATA/PCI-E storage slots, and one 16 GB/32 GB/64 GB eMMC. With an FHFL PCI-E (x16) Gen 4 (supports 75 W) and an FHFL PCI-E (x8) Gen 4 (supports 75 W) configurable as PCI-E (x16) Gen 4 double FHFL (supports 120 W), the INA8505 adapts effortlessly into different network environments and meet future demands for increased scalability. It boasts a rich array of I/O connectivity options, including a VGA port from BMC (Aspeed 2600, IPMI 2.0 support), two USB2.0 Type-A ports, an RJ45 console port, and four 25 GbE SFP28 ports, ensuring enhanced adaptability to various connectivity needs.

During the Aspen Security Forums 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke on the topic of semiconductors and national security. During his speech, Gelsinger mentioned that Intel should get the lion's share of the US$52 billion US CHIPS Act money, simply because Intel is a US company. In Gelsinger's opinion, it appears that TSMC and Samsung don't deserve as much, despite both companies manufacturing semiconductors for US companies, with Samsung already having a foundry in Texas, while TSMC is still struggling with the construction of its Arizona foundry.

Admittedly, Intel has far more foundries in the US, but it also seems like Gelsinger forgot about other foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, but also companies such as Micron, Texas Instruments, Qorvo, NXP, On Semi, Analog Devices and so forth that all own foundries that produce their own chips on US soil. We'd expect all these companies to be eyeing the CHIPS Act cash and without many of those companies, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any of its chips, as many of them produce much needed components that are used to build motherboards, laptops and what not. Gelsinger was obviously pointing fingers at the current US China trade war and how the export controls are causing concerns with regards to the global semiconductor business. As such, Gelsinger wants Intel to have fewer restrictions from the currently imposed trade regulations, largely due to China being some 25 to 30 percent of Intel's market, with Intel being busy expanding in the country. Make what you want of this, but it's clear that Gelsinger is expecting to eat the cake and have it at the same time. Video after the break.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the global leading motherboard, mini PC, notebook, mobile device, and smart solution provider, will attend Europe's largest and the most iconic consumer electronics trade show, IFA Berlin 2023, to exhibit a series of new laptops for education and business.

Optimize Cloud-Based Learning & Teaching: A New Series of Education Chromebooks Can Fulfill Teachers' and Students' Different Needs
After the world enters the post-pandemic era, there are enormous changes in both teaching and learning modes. Meanwhile, digital trend is arising. To meet various requirements from education fields, ECS launches the brand new SG20, SE40, and EP20 education PC series. These thin and ultraportable laptops feature rugged chassis certified by MIL-STD-810H tests. Equipped with Chrome OS, their battery life can last up to 10 hours. Besides, they support 4G LTE and Wi-Fi 6, which is ideal for remote learning.

Intel and Synopsys announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to expand the companies' long-standing IP (intellectual property) and EDA (electronic design automation) strategic partnership with the development of a portfolio of IP on Intel 3 and Intel 18A for Intel's foundry customers. The availability of key IP on Intel advanced process nodes will create a more robust offering for new and existing Intel Foundry Services (IFS) customers.

"Marking another important step in our IDM 2.0 strategy, this transaction will foster a vibrant foundry ecosystem by allowing designers to fully realize the advantages of Intel 3 and Intel 18A process technologies and quickly bring differentiated products to market," said Stuart Pann, senior vice president and general manager of IFS. "Synopsys brings a strong track record of delivering high-quality IP to a broad customer base, and this agreement will help accelerate the availability of IP on advanced IFS nodes for mutual customers."

Intel's next-generation designs are nearing launch, and we are already getting information about the upcoming generations. Today, we have the information that Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop/client implementations of the Arrow Lake family will feature as much as 3 MB of level two (L2) cache for each performance core. Currently, Intel's latest 13th-generation Raptor Lake and 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh feature 2 MB of L2 cache per performance core. However, the 15th generation Arrow Lake, scheduled for launch in 2024, will bump that up by 50% and reach 3 MB. Given that P-cores are getting a boost in capacity, we expect E-cores to do so as well, but at a smaller size.

Arrow Lake will utilize Lion Cove P-core microarchitecture, while the E-core design will be based on Skymont. Intel plans to use a 20A node for this CPU, and more details will be presented next year.

Intel has recently revealed a security vulnerability named Downfall (CVE-2022-40982) that impacts multiple generations of Intel processors. The vulnerability is linked to Intel's memory optimization feature, exploiting the Gather instruction, a function that accelerates data fetching from scattered memory locations. It inadvertently exposes internal hardware registers, allowing malicious software access to data held by other programs. The flaw affects Intel mainstream and server processors ranging from the Skylake to Rocket Lake microarchitecture. The entire list of affected CPUs is here. Intel has responded by releasing updated software-level microcode to fix the flaw. However, there's concern over the performance impact of the fix, potentially affecting AVX2 and AVX-512 workloads involving the Gather instruction by up to 50%.

Phoronix tested the Downfall mitigations and reported varying performance decreases on different processors. For instance, two Xeon Platinum 8380 processors were around 6% slower in certain tests, while the Core i7-1165G7 faced performance degradation ranging from 11% to 39% in specific benchmarks. While these reductions were less than Intel's forecasted 50% overhead, they remain significant, especially in High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads. The ramifications of Downfall are not restricted to specialized tasks like AI or HPC but may extend to more common applications such as video encoding. Though the microcode update is not mandatory and Intel provides an opt-out mechanism, users are left with a challenging decision between security and performance. Executing a Downfall attack might seem complex, but the final choice between implementing the mitigation or retaining performance will likely vary depending on individual needs and risk assessments.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC client-based CPU units market reached 53.6 million units in Q2'23, up 17%, and iGPU shipments increased by 14% to 49 million units. Year over year, iGPUs declined -29%.

Integrated GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 2.5% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 4.8 billion units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of iGPUs in the PC will grow to reach a level of 98%.

Graphics cards are the most dynamic hardware components of the modern PC, in need of constant driver updates to keep them optimized for the latest games. Intel may be the newest on the block with discrete gaming GPUs, with its Arc A-series competing in the mid-range, but the company has a vast software engineering muscle that ensures a constant stream of driver updates for these GPUs regardless of their smaller market share compared to entrenched players NVIDIA and AMD. A part of keeping the drivers up-to-date and understanding the user-base to improve future generations of GPUs, involves data-collection from the existing users.

The updated installer of Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers lets users decide if they want the company to collect anonymous usage data from them. For those with the data-collection already opted in, the installer leaves the data-collection component untouched in the "typical" installation option, and presents it as an optional action item in the "Customize" installation option. For those that did not opt for data-collection, the "typical" installation option doesn't sneak the component in, but presents it as an unchecked optional item in the "Customize" screen. An older version of this article stated that the data-collection component, dubbed Computing Improvement Program (CIP), would install onto unsuspecting users' machines in the "typical" installation, disregarding their prior choices with the component. We have since significantly changed our article as Intel clarified many of our questions and demystified CIF, what its scope of data-collection is, and how it makes its way to your machine with Intel's driver software.