Finding itself embattled with AMD's EPYC "Genoa" processors, Intel is giving its 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processor a rather quick succession in the form of the Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids," bound for Q4-2023 (about 8-10 months in). The new processor shares the same LGA4677 platform and infrastructure, and much of the same I/O, but brings about two key design changes that should help Intel shore up per-core performance, making it competitive to EPYC "Zen 4" processors with higher core-counts. SemiAnalysis compiled a nice overview of the changes, the two broadest points of it being—1. Intel is peddling back on the chiplet approach to high core-count CPUs, and 2., that it wants to give the memory sub-system and inter-core performance a massive performance boost using larger on-die caches.

The "Emerald Rapids" processor has just two large dies in its extreme core-count (XCC) avatar, compared to "Sapphire Rapids," which can have up to four of these. There are just three EMIB dies interconnecting these two, compared to "Sapphire Rapids," which needs as many as 10 of these to ensure direct paths among the four dies. The CPU core count itself doesn't see a notable increase. Each of the two dies on "Emerald Rapids" physically features 33 CPU cores, so a total of 66 are physically present, although one core per die is left unused for harvesting, the SemiAnalysis article notes. So the maximum core-count possible commercially is 32 cores per die, or 64 cores per socket. "Emerald Rapids" continues to be based on the Intel 7 process (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin), probably with a few architectural improvements for higher clock-speeds.

In a blog post, NVIDIA claims that its AV1 video encoder is vastly superior in terms of quality, compared to both AMD and Intel's alternatives. The still shot provided by NVIDIA to show its superior quality over its competitors, was encoded at 4K60p, obviously using the AV1 codec. Nvidia used its own GeForce RTX 4080 card and compared it to an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and an Intel Arc A770, with all three cards encoding the video at 12 Mbps using the latest release of OBS Studio.

It just so happens that OBS Studio 29.1 added support for AV1 over the Enhanced Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and now allows for live streaming using AV1 to YouTube. This is also the main reason for the NVIDIA blog post, as prior to this release, it wasn't possible to stream using AV1 in OBS Studio. NVIDIA has been known for the quality of its video encoder for quite some time, but we'd like to see some independent testing before we give NVIDIA the win here, especially as the company has only provided a single screenshot as proof of its superiority.

Intel Graphics employees inadvertently revealed that the company's Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture is being designed for the 4 nm silicon fabrication node, which would give Intel's GPU designers a leap in transistor density and power headroom, given that TSMC 4 nm is an EUV node compared to the current 6 nm DUV node the company builds its Arc "Alchemist" GPUs on. The leak also seems to confirm that its succeeding "Celestial" graphics architecture is being designed for 3 nm. An enthusiast named gamma0burst sifted through public profiles of several Intel employees, and scored these details in their professional profile pages.

We are almost certain that Xe2 "Battlemage" is going to be built on the TSMC 4 nm node, and to a slightly lesser degree, about Xe3 "Celestial" being designed for TSMC's 3 nm N3X node. Intel roadmaps pin the debut of "Battlemage" to a 2023-2024 timeline, although this could also be a reference to the iGPU of the upcoming Core "Meteor Lake" processors that debut in the second half of 2023. Intel is highly likely to deliver "Meteor Lake" within its 2H-2023 timeline, which would mean that the mention of "2024" in the graphics technology roadmap could mean that discrete GPUs based on "Battlemage" only arrive next year.

Intel has posted two product change notifications regarding the Gemini Lake Refresh, which is now reaching the end of its life. Launched in 2019 as a refresh to the original Gemini Lake, these low-end products had a longer lifespan than the original Gemini Lake (2017-2020). Most commonly found on low-end PCs, AIOs, and Mini PCs, these Gemini Lake Refresh CPUs were based on the 14 nm Goldmont Plus microarchitecture. Coming with up to four cores without HyperThreading, these CPUs were ideal for lower-power applications as their TDP was rated between 6-10 Watts.

Intel has separated the product change into two categories, with the first consisting of Celeron N4120, Celeron 4020, and Pentium Silver N5030, while the other features Celeron J4025, Pentium Silver J5040, Celeron N4020C, and Celeron J4125. Intel will ship the first group of CPUs by May 24, 2024, and the second by February 23, 2024. The last round of orders will go out by November 24, 2023, and August 25, 2023, respectively.

Akasa introduced what is essentially the 2nd generation of its compact Turing fanless NUC case. The new Turing AC Pro, as its name suggests, is designed for the Intel NUC 13 Pro "Arena Canyon," and retains its distinctive cuboidal shape, and a volume of 2.8 liters. What's new is that the block that draws heat from the SoC now features a pair of 6 mm-thick copper heatpipes that spread heat across the extruded aluminium panels that make up the body of the case, and which double up as a heatsink. The introduction of these heatpipes increase the cooling capacity of the case to 40 W (up from 35 W). The case also includes a custom M.2 SSD heatsink.

The Akasa Turing AC Pro measures 95 mm x 260 mm x 113.5 mm (WxDxH), and supports NUC motherboards in the 4x4 inch UCFF form-factor. The front-panel I/O holes includes openings for two USB 3.x type-A ports, and a 4-pole headset jack. The rear I/O cutouts include DC-in, two HDMI, two USB type-A, two USB type-C, and an Ethernet. Akasa includes optional power bricks. For the Core i5 and Core i7 models of NUC 13 Pro, it offers a 120 W brick, and for the Core i3 models, there's a 90 W one, both operate at 19 V DC. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability information yet.

Intel has made it official that its upcoming Meteor Lake CPU lineup will proudly sport a new branding scheme - as reported on TPU much earlier today, rumors indicated that Intel would be rolling out "Core Ultra" brand extensions across a range of SKUs. The "i" in some model identifiers such as i3, i5, i7, and i9 are now confirmed to be (in part) replaced with "Ultra" - an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark leak identified a CPU called "Core Ultra 5 1003H" early on last week, and that information soon spread across many online hardware news outlets and communities.

Bernard Fernandes, director of global communications at Intel Corp. today addressed the rumors and leaks via Twitter and confirms that a new branding scheme is incoming: "Yes, we are making brand changes as we're at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors. We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks!" He makes sure to not directly mention the "Ultra Core" branding in his tweet, but it is heavily implied that he's referring to the discardation and eventual replacement of Intel's classic "i" labelling system.

Acer's Arc A770 Predator has once again been discounted down to $339, making it the least expensive graphics card with 16 GB of VRAM. While AMD marketing is advertising its 16 GB graphics cards with price starting at $499, comparing it to NVIDIA, Intel Arc lineup was not on their list.

Acer Arc A770 Predator BiFrost is one of the rare custom Arc A770 graphics cards on the market with fully enabled ACM-G10 GPU and 16 GB of VRAM. It has been previously discounted down to $339 in March, but quickly got back up to $399.99. Now, Acer has once again launched the sale over at Newegg.com and Amazon.com, pulling it back down to $339.99. It has a hybrid dual-fan cooler, combining blower-type and standard fans. It needs two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and has a slightly factory overclock of 100 MHz, with GPU base clock of 2.2 GHz.

Intel is planning a major change in its client processor brand extensions with its next-generation mobile processors codenamed "Meteor Lake." The company is working to introduce the new Core Ultra brand extensions, where "Ultra" replaces the "i" in extensions such as i3, i5, i7, and i9 in some processor models. An example of such a brand extension would be the "Core Ultra 5 1003H." Ashes of the Singularity benchmark leaks of the processors surfaced on social media.

The benchmark also detects 128 EU (1,024 unified shaders) for the iGPU powering "Meteor Lake." If true, this iGPU could offer performance that's in the league of an Arc A380 discrete GPU, with some performance lost to the shared memory setup compared to the A380 with its dedicated graphics memory. The iGPU clock speed is detected to be 2.10 GHz, and having 4 MB of L2 cache, the last-level cache local to the Graphics Tile. The detection string for the iGPU as reported by its OpenCL ICD reads "Intel(R) Graphics i gfx-driver-ci-master-13736 DCH RI (1024S 128C SM3.0 2.1GHz, 4MB L2, 12.7GB)."

Video technology innovator Matrox Video today announced the launch of its new Matrox LUMA series of graphics cards with Intel Arc GPUs. The series consists of three single-slot cards: the LUMA A310, a low-profile fanless card; the LUMA A310F, a low-profile fanned card; and the LUMA A380, a full-sized fanned card.

Matrox Video developed the LUMA range to satisfy significant demand in the mainstream graphics market for driving multiple screens, with a balance between size, reliability, and performance for different applications. The new LUMA series is aimed at high-reliability and embedded PC applications in the medical, digital signage, control room, video wall, and industrial markets.

After the launch of AORUS 17X / 15X, AORUS 17 / 15, and AERO 16 / 14 OLED in 2023 Q1, in Q2 GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY is releasing the AORUS 16 Gaming Laptop with a 16-inch 240 Hz eye-protection display, presenting gamers with a brand-new option while marking the company's official arrival in the 16-inch gaming laptop market.

Coming with the latest 13th Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPU, the laptop has inherited the iconic AORUS slimness. Equipped with a large 16:10 screen certified with TÜV Rheinland low blue light, flicker-free certification, as well as a unique quad-fan Windforce Infinity cooling system exclusively for flagship models, AORUS 16 offers both efficiency and immersive entertainment experiences. Gaming enthusiasts will be amazed by its formidable computing abilities, while gamers who are also creators can enjoy the broad vision for entertainment media and production capability.

Intel's next-generation Core "Meteor Lake" processor is now ramping for mass-production, with product launches expected in the second half of 2023, the company announced in its Q1-2023 Financial Results release. "Meteor Lake" will see Intel debut its next-generation foundry node, the Intel 4. The company is expected to use this node for the Compute Tile of the "Meteor Lake" processor, the piece of silicon that has the CPU cores. Intel 4 is said to offer transistor-density and performance/Watt comparable to TSMC's N5-series and N4-series foundry nodes. In the same release, Intel stated that development of its future foundry nodes, Intel 3, Intel 20A, and Intel 18A, are on track. In its top configuration, "Meteor Lake" is expected to feature a CPU core configuration of 6P+16E, and we are hearing that it will see a more limited release in the desktop segment, in that the processor will only come in Core i3 and Core i5 brand extensions, not Core i7 or Core i9 (which would be taken up by "Arrow Lake," with its higher P-core count). "Meteor Lake" will span a variety of mobile segments from 7 W ultraportables, to 45 W mainstream notebooks, and possibly even 55 W gaming notebooks.

Intel Corporation today reported first-quarter 2023 financial results. "We delivered solid first-quarter results, representing steady progress with our transformation," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "We hit key execution milestones in our data center roadmap and demonstrated the health of the process technology underpinning it. While we remain cautious on the macroeconomic outlook, we are focused on what we can control as we deliver on IDM 2.0: driving consistent execution across process and product roadmaps and advancing our foundry business to best position us to capitalize on the $1 trillion market opportunity ahead."

David Zinsner, Intel CFO, said, "We exceeded our first-quarter expectations on the top and bottom line, and continued to be disciplined on expense management as part of our commitment to drive efficiencies and cost savings. At the same time, we are prioritizing the investments needed to advance our strategy and establish an internal foundry model, one of the most consequential steps we are taking to deliver on IDM 2.0."

Intel has appointed Deepak Patil as the new corporate vice president and general manager of its Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Patil is set to succeed Raja Koduri in this leadership role - company CEO Pat Gelsinger was the first person to announce news (last month) of Koduri's departure from Intel. At the time of his leaving Team Blue, Koduri's official job title was "Executive Vice President and Chief Architect" so the wording of his successor's executive ranking is slightly different. Patil is the current chief technology and strategy officer at the Intel Data Center and AI Group, and was previously senior vice president at Dell APEX USA. He will be taking over directly from interim AXG division leader Jeff McVeigh.

The official Intel statement regarding its new leadership appointment states: "Intel will deliver competitive accelerated computing products and build scalable systems with easy-to-program software on a predictable cadence. Deepak Patil will serve as the CVP and General Manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Deepak recently held the position of DCAI Chief Technology and Strategy Officer. Having held senior engineering leadership positions across the high-tech industry, including being a founding member of Microsoft Azure and leading Dell's APEX as-a-service business, he understands the important role that software and open ecosystems play in enabling application developers and service providers to bring innovative solutions to market, at scale."

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4335 Beta comes with optimization for "Star Wars: Jedi Survivor," "The Swordsmen X: Survival," and "Redfall." There are no new issues fixed with this release of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers, but the company identified a number of issues spanning its Arc discrete GPUs, Iris Xe MAX discrete GPUs, and the iGPUs powering Intel Core processors (11th Gen onward). Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4335 beta

LG Electronics USA launched the latest addition to its new 2023 LG gram laptop lineup - the LG gram SuperSlim. Designed with ultra-portability in mind, LG's gram SuperSlim laptops measure at just .43-inches thick, making it the thinnest LG gram ever. Exclusively available now at LG.com, customers who purchase an LG gram SuperSlim laptop through May 14 will receive a free LG gram +view portable monitor ($349.99 ARV). The LG gram SuperSlim will also be available at LG-authorized retailers by mid-May.

The LG gram SuperSlim is equipped with Intel's Evo 13th Gen Processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics as well as a brilliant 15.6-inch anti-glare OLED display with a 100 percent DCI-P33 color gamut and VESA DisplayHDR True Black, delivering exceptional image resolution with true-to-life detail and stunning, deep black levels.

Today, award-winning systems integrator MAINGEAR introduced a new line of PC gaming desktops equipped with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs, opening up advanced high-performance gaming experiences at an affordable price point. With AI-enhanced Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) upscaling, and the latest breakthroughs in graphics technologies, MAINGEAR PCs with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs offer the perfect entry point for those looking to take their game to the next level. Experience high-refresh gaming from the latest AAA games, high-octane esports titles, and then some. Pre-configured options, including the flagship MG-1, can be purchased through MAINGEAR starting at $999 USD.

"Intel is on a mission to bring balance back to the market by offering great performance per dollar with GPUs featuring modern technologies such as XeSS AI-based upscaling, powerful ray tracing hardware, and AV1 encoding," said Qi Lin, Intel Sr. Director Client Graphics Group. "MAINGEAR has a reputation of using the best quality parts and including the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs in the MG-1 and VYBE systems validates the tremendous progress we've made with consistent driver updates to increase performance and support new games on day of release. We look forward to more gamers enjoying what Arc graphics has to offer."

Sparkle, a Taiwanese computer electronics maker, is again entering the GPU market after almost ten years of inactivity in the space. A while back, Sparkle was one of NVIDIA's original Add-In Board (AIB) partners and helped them launch the GeForce 7900 PCI GPU. The company continued to make NVIDIA-based GPUs until GTX 700 series in 2013. After a decade, Sparkle is back again with ambitions to be Intel's AIB partner and announced not one but three graphics cards to start. Called A750 Titan, A750 Orc, and A380 Elf, these cards feature triple-fan, dual-fan, and single-fan coolers, respectively.

The first in line is the Sparkle A750 Titan, a triple-fan, 2.5-slot design based on Intel Arc A750 GPU. Featuring 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, this top-end A750 SKU is clocked at 2300 MHz, up from the factory's 2050 MHz frequency. Titan's smaller brother is Sparkle A750 Orc, a dual-fan, "2.2"-slot (we assume smaller than two and a half and bigger than two slots) GPU with the same A750 GPU; however, it clocked slightly lower at 2200 MHz. Both models feature single HDMI 2.0 and 3x DisplayPort 2.0 output ports and require two 8-pin PCI power connectors. Lastly, we have the Sparkle A380 Elf, a half-length, ITX-sized GPU that fits in two slots and has a single-fan cooler. It is based on Intel Arc A380 and has identical specifications without factory overclocks applied. Pricing and availability are currently unknown.

LattePanda launched the powerful and hackable single board server, the LattePanda Sigma. With its super computing power, this device opens up endless possibilities for tech enthusiasts, developers, small businesses & enterprises. With its innovative design and unique features, the LattePanda Sigma is poised to redefine the world of single board servers and drive innovation to new heights.

The LattePanda Sigma is powered by the 13th-generation Intel Core i5-1340P Rapter Lake (12-Core, 16-Thread) processor and features Intel Iris Xe Graphics, providing optimal graphics performance. Its optimized power consumption minimizes power usage by almost 50%, making it an eco-friendly choice. With 16 GB of high-speed Dual-Channel LPDDR5-6400 MHz RAM, the LattePanda Sigma can handle even the most demanding tasks with ease, making it perfect for graphic design, gaming, and video editing.

Following on from yesterday's news of Meteor Lake's "Adamantine" L4 cache another leaky bit of information has popped up. A tipster on Twitter, Bionic_squash, has uploaded a slide from a supposedly official Intel presentation document, and it shows a small selection of Meteor Lake-S and Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs, as well as the refreshed Raptor Lake-S series. The majority of recent leaks have pointed to laptop variants of Intel's fourteenth generation Core lineup, and not much has emerged about a desktop-dedicated range in a while - prompting further murmurs about Team Blue canning that side of things. The Meteor Lake-S family is still in the works according to the leaked chart and industry experts reckon that a product launch is due later in the year.

By looking closely at the chart, it shows that the Meteor Lake-S desktop processors are limited to 35 and 65 W TDPs, meaning that Core i3 and i5 lines are the only offerings within the 14th generation desktop lineup. Performance enthusiasts will need to look at the 15th gen Arrow Lake-S lineup - where the big i7 and i9 CPUs (up to 125 W) sit, or the refreshed Raptor Lake lineup which also offers a wide range of options - from i3 up to i9. Industry experts are a bit puzzled about Meteor Lake's prospects in the desktop processor sector - when considering a (speculated) skew to more entry-level and mid-range minded customers. Will Intel lose out by not offering more powerful variants, or are they working on a refreshed 14th generation product lineup for 2025?

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an industry analyst known for making accurate predictions about Apple, we have some new information regarding Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. As Kuo notes, Intel's major Cloud Service Provider (CSP) client, Microsoft, has notified the supply chain that the company is cutting orders of Sapphire Rapids Xeons by 50-70% in the second half of 2023. Interestingly, Intel's supply chain has notified the company to cut chip orders by around 50% amidst weak server demand. This comes straight after Intel's plans to start shipping Sapphire Rapids processors in the second quarter of 2023 and deliver the highly anticipated lineup to customers.

Additionally, Kuo has stated that Intel isn't only competing for clients with AMD but also with Arm-based CPUs. Microsoft also plans to start buying Arm-based server processors made by Ampere Computing in the first half of 2024. This will reduce Microsoft's dependence on x86 architecture and induce higher competition in the market, especially if other CSPs follow.

TrendForce reports that mass production of new server platforms—such as Intel Sapphire Rapids and AMD Genoa—is imminent. However, recent market reports have indicated a PMIC compatibility issue for server DDR5 RDIMMs; DRAM suppliers and PMIC vendors are working to address the problem. TrendForce believes this will have two effects: First, DRAM suppliers will temporarily procure more PMICs from Monolithic Power Systems (MPS), which supplies PMICs without any issues. Second, supply will inevitably be affected in the short term as current DDR5 server DRAM production still uses older processes, which will lead to a convergence in the price decline of DDR5 server DRAM in 2Q23—from the previously estimated 15~20% to 13~18%.

As previously mentioned, PMIC issues and the production process relying on older processes are all having a short-term impact on the supply of DDR5 server DRAM. SK hynix has gradually ramped up production and sales of 1α-nm, which, unlike 1y-nm, has yet to be fully verified by consumers. Current production processes are still being dominated by Samsung and SK hynix's 1y-nm and Micron's 1z-nm; 1α and 1β-nm production is projected to increase in 2H23.

Converting the ingenuity of the UP Squared Pro 7000 board to its edge system range, AAEON's UP Squared Pro 7000 Edge is the first mini PC to harness the power of Intel Core i3 Processor N-series, Atom Processor X Series, and Intel Processor N-series processors in a fanless chassis.

The first fanless mini PC to utilize the processor platforms, the UP Squared Pro 7000 Edge provides developers with the same performance boost as its board counterpart, but with a more convenient route to market. The device's heatsink offers effective heat dissipation without the obvious drawbacks of a fan-based cooling system, opening the door to deployment in more settings, such as smart manufacturing and healthcare.

ASUSTOR Inc. today launched two of its fastest NAS devices ever, the all-NVMe Flashstor 6 and Flashstor 12 Pro. The biggest feature of the Flashstor series NAS is that this is ASUSTOR's first dedicated PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD NAS, which brings unmatched performance in a NAS device. The Flashstor 6 has six M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs and dual 2.5GbE for amazing performance while the Flashstor 12 Pro comes with twelve M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs combined with 10GbE for unmatched speed. Both Flashstor models are equipped with Intel's newest generation of 10 nm Quad-Core Intel Celeron N5105 that boosts up to 2.9 GHz. With 4 GB of energy-efficient DDR4 -2933 RAM that provides 40% more efficiency and dual USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, the Flashstor ensures that bottlenecks are a thing of the past.

The advantages of the Flashstor include, but are not limited to, are its low weight to be used as portable storage while efficiently cooled and quiet. The Flashstor series is specifically designed M.2 SSDs and the chassis makes it easy to add or remove SSDs by removing the chassis screws. The design of the Flashstor not only makes it look great in any environment, but also contains efficient hardware that ensures it can chew through virtually any storage or editing workload thrown at it while keeping hardware and SSDs cool. For extra cooling, the Flashstor comes with heatsinks to help more powerful SSDs to receive the cooling they need for optimal performance while remaining quiet at as low as 18.7 decibels. This ensures that content creation and consumption is enjoyed without interference.

We've known from a recent report that "Meteor Lake" introduces an L4 cache, and now we are learning that it is codenamed "Adamantine," and serves functions resembling that of a passive interposer. Intel's upcoming "Meteor Lake" microarchitecture will power the company's first disaggregated processor for the client segment.

A disaggregated processor is different from an MCM (such as "Clarkdale"), since finer components that make up the processor that otherwise can't exist on their own packages without extreme latency, are made to share a single package via a high-speed interconnect. This disaggregation is purely for economic reasons, so the company needn't use the latest (and most expensive) foundry node for the entire processor, but ration it to the specific components that benefit the most from it. Unlike AMD client processors that disaggregate the CPU cores and the remaining processor I/O into two kinds of chiplets, Intel "Meteor Lake" will see the breaking up of not just CPU cores (compute tile), but also the iGPU on its own tile, besides the platform I/O on separate tiles still.

CD Projekt RED, the developer of Cyberpunk 2077, has advertised including various super sampling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and now Intel XeSS supersampling. With the inclusion of XeSS version 1.1, Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics cards can record a significant performance uplift. Thanks to the Intel game blog, we compare XeSS enabled versus XeSS disabled, measuring the ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra settings with medium ray tracing enabled. The FPS comparison was conducted with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU, which was paired with Intel Core i9-13900K and 32 GB of RAM.

With XeSS off, the A750 GPU struggled and only reached 39 FPS. However, with XeSS set to performance, the number jumped to 67 FPS, making for a smooth user experience and gameplay. This is a 71% performance uplift, enabled by a new update in the game. Interestingly, Intel XeSS is computed on Arc's XMX Units, while NVIDIA and AMD compute their super sampling on shader units.