Intel has demonstrated an early prototype of next-generation Thunderbolt in action, aligned to the USB Implementers Forum's (USB-IF) release of the USB4 v2 specification this week. Next-generation Thunderbolt will deliver 80 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bi-directional bandwidth and enable up to 120 Gbps for the best display experience, providing up to three times the capability of today's technologies to meet the growing needs of content creators and gamers, all while maintaining compatibility with previous versions of Thunderbolt and USB.

"Intel has always been the industry pioneer and leader for wired connectivity solutions, and Thunderbolt is now the mainstream port on mobile PCs and integrated into three generations of Intel mobile CPUs. We're very excited to lead the industry forward with the next generation of Thunderbolt built on the USB4 v2 specification, advanced to this next generation by Intel and other USB Promoter Group members," said Jason Ziller, general manager of the Client Connectivity Division at Intel.

According to the latest TrendForce research, pandemic-induced materials shortages abated in the second half of this year and the supply and delivery of short-term materials has recovered significantly. However, assuming materials supply is secure and demand can be met, the annual growth rate of server shipments in 2023 is estimated to be only 3.7%, which is lower than 5.1% in 2022.

TrendForce indicates that this growth slowdown is due to three factors. First, once material mismatch issues had eased, buyers began adjusting previously placed purchase order overruns. Thus, ODM orders also decreased but this will not affect the 2022 shipment volume of whole servers for the time being. Second, due to the impact of rising inflation and weakness in the overall economy, corporate capital investment may trend more conservative and IT-related investment will emphasize flexibility, such as the replacement of certain server terminals with cloud services. Third, geopolitical changes will drive the continuing emergence of demand for small-scale data centers and previous construction of hyperscale data centers will slow. The recent ban on military/HPC servers issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on October 7 has a very low market share in terms of its application category, so the impact on the overall server market is limited at present. However, if the scope of the ban is expanded further in the future, it will herald a more significant slowdown risk for China's server shipment momentum in 2023.

Intel has been busy briefing its customers about its 13th gen Core processors and courtesy of a reader over at Videocardz, we now know a little bit more about Intel's positioning of its Core i9-13900K processor. In the slides, Intel is pitching its upcoming flagship CPU against AMD's current flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X, which is hardly surprising, since it'll be its main competitor. Intel put the two CPUs through 12 game benchmarks using an unknown graphics card and on average, the Core i9-13900K leads by around 11 percent. As always, take the numbers with a sprinkle of salt, especially as we don't know the system configuration, or even what resolution was used, but we'd hazard a guess that it's 1080p or lower. Intel only allowed for one game win for AMD, with Intel being as much as 22 percent ahead in The Riftbreaker.

Intel also claims to lead in content creation, but this doesn't appear to be quite true, as AMD either comes out on top or ties with Intel in all of the Pugetbench tests. Intel is somewhat ahead in AutoCAD Catalyst and a healthy 16 percent ahead in Autodesk Revit, but as we know, the type of scene being rendered can have a huge impact in these types of tests, as we've seen from both camps. On the plus side, here it appears that content creators shouldn't have to worry too much about which CPU is in their system, as both should be performing exceptionally well. Intel is set to launch its 13th gen Core processors tomorrow, so it won't be long until we'll have some third party benchmarks comparing the two CPUs.

Intel Arc A770 "Alchemist" graphics card has an idle power-draw problem. It pulls 44 W (card-only) power when idling. This used to be acceptable some 15 years ago, but GPU idle power-draw has come a long way since. The reigning Goliath GeForce RTX 4090 pulls just 21 W when idling, and the RTX 3070, the card the A770 was extensively compared against, only pulls 9 W—that's 7 LED downlights worth power-difference between the A770 and RTX 3070. Intel has a workaround to this problem: enable the PCI-Express active state power management (ASPM) setting to L1 mode in your motherboard's UEFI BIOS setup program.

The Intel Xe-HPG "Alchemist" graphics architecture reportedly uses PCIe Gen 2-era L0 and L1 ASPM, which needs to be forced via software settings. To do this, find the PCIe ASPM settings in your BIOS setup, and enable them with the "L1" setting. You then make your way to Power Options in the Windows Control Panel, edit your active power scheme, and manually set the PCI-Express "Link state power-management" to "Maximum." This affects the power-management behavior and performance of all PCIe devices in your system, including NVMe SSDs, not just the graphics card. Intel did not put out its power-draw numbers for this workaround, but we intend to test it as soon as we can.

he U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Intel for Phase 1 of the Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space-BACN) program, which aims to create a low-cost, reconfigurable optical communications terminal that will translate information between diverse satellite constellations. A Space-BACN satellite terminal will enable communications between satellite constellations, enabling data to be sent anywhere around the planet at the speed of light.

DARPA is planning for a future where tens of thousands of satellites from multiple private sector organizations deliver broadband services from low earth orbit (LEO). The goal of Space-BACN is to create an "internet" of satellites, enabling seamless communication between military/government and commercial/civil satellite constellations. The program will facilitate collaboration among partners to ensure that the terminal being designed is reconfigurable to provide interoperability among the participating constellation providers.

AMD reportedly scaled down production of its Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors in response to bleak demand across the PC hardware industry. Wccftech claims to have read an internal company document calling for reduced supply to the channel as market response to the Ryzen 7000-series is weak. This comes hot on the heels of AMD revising its Q3-2022 forecast, trimming its guidance by a $1 billion drop in revenue, citing weak demand in the PC market. However, we are seeing no deviation from the launch pricing for Ryzen 7000-series SKUs or compatible Socket AM5 motherboards. The platform went on sale from late September, on the same day that Intel announced its competing 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. The new Intel chips are expected to start selling from a little later this month.

Unlike 13th Gen Core processors, Ryzen 7000 series processors appear to be a victim of the platform—notwithstanding the high pricing of the processors, which start at $299 for the 6-core 7600X, buyers lack access to affordable motherboards, and have to contend with expensive DDR5 memory. Pricing of cheaper LGA1700 motherboards based on entry-level H610 and B660 chipsets with cost-effective DDR4 memory support have added depth to consumer choice, besides Intel's 12th Gen range starting from under $150.

Acer has launched its Predator BiFrost Arc A770 graphics card in Taiwan and the official pricing appears to be NT$12,900 or US$404, local shops are already selling the card for far less. The BiFrost comes with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and an overclocking option that boosts the GPU speed from 2,200 MHz to 2,400 MHz. The latter also increases the TDP from 250 to 280 Watts. As seen in the launch announcement pictures, the card has a rather unusual fan design and Acer has even come up with some marketing names for the setup. The blower fan is referred to as Aeroblade 3D and the regular 92 mm fan as Frostblade 2.0. We're not sure how there's a version 2.0 when this is Acer's first retail graphics card.

The card measures 267 x 117.75 mm and has as we've also seen, a pair of 8-pin power connectors. The port configuration consists of three DP 2.0 ports and one HDMI 2.1 port. Local shops are offering the card on sale for US$372 to as little as US$313 (NT$9990), which is only US$13 more than Intel's own Arc A750 cards retail for in Taiwan. This price point makes it a fair bit more attractive, even taking potential driver related issues and hardware limitations into account.

In December of 2021, we covered the appearance of Russia's home-grown Baikal-S processor, which has 48 cores based on Arm Cortex-A75 cores. Today, thanks to the famous chip photographer Fritzchens Fritz, we have the first die shows that show us exactly how Baikal-S SoC is structured internally and what it is made up of. Manufactured on TSMC's 16 nm process, the Baikal-S BE-S1000 design features 48 Arm Cortex-A75 cores running at a 2.0 GHz base and a 2.5 GHz boost frequency. With a TDP of 120 Watts, the design seems efficient, and the Russian company promises performance comparable to Intel Skylake Xeons or Zen1-based AMD EPYC processors. It also uses a home-grown RISC-V core for management and controlling secure boot sequences.

Below, you can see the die shots taken by Fritzchens Fritz and annotated details by Twitter user Locuza that marked the entire SoC. Besides the core clusters, we see that a slum of cache connects everything, with six 72-bit DDR4-3200 PHYs and memory controllers surrounding everything. This model features a pretty good selection of I/O for a server CPU, as there are five PCIe 4.0 x16 (4x4) interfaces, with three supporting CCIX 1.0. You can check out more pictures below and see the annotations for yourself.

Intel's upcoming 13th generation of Core processors, codenamed "Raptor Lake," is supposed to arrive in the coming days. Apparently, one user pre-ordered the CPU and got it delivered to their home. Pictured below is the box of Intel Core i9-13900KF CPU. This SKU comes without integrated graphics and boasts eight P-cores with 16 E-cores on board. This is supposed to boost performance, along with the higher frequencies Raptor Lake is advertised to bring. The user even showed screenshots of proof that the software recognizes this upcoming model, so the information seems legit. In the screenshots below, we see that the P-cores of this SKU is reaching 5.5 GHz clock speeds. We are yet to see how much this silicon is capable of; however, the frequency alone looks promising.

Intel announced the general availability of the Arc A770 and A750 performance-segment desktop graphics cards. This includes Intel's reference-design Limited Edition cards, and custom-design ones by the likes of ASRock, Gunnir, and Acer, among other OEMs. The A750 has a baseline price of USD $289, the A770 8 GB at $329, and the A770 16 GB at $349.

Based on the Xe-HPG "Alchemist" graphics architecture, the A750 and A770 are carved out of the same 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon. The A750 is configured with 28 Xe Cores, 448 EU, or 3,584 unified shaders; whereas the A770 maxes it out with 32 Xe Cores, 512 EU, or 4,096 unified shaders. Both cards get 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interfaces, and while the A750 uses 16 Gbps memory (512 GB/s bandwidth); the A770 has 17.5 Gbps (560 GB/s).

Today, we shared our vision for the next era of the Windows PC, where the PC and the cloud intersect and tap into innovative AI technology that unlocks new experiences. So that each of us can participate, be seen, heard and express our creativity.

For nearly 40 years, the Windows PC has held a place at the center of our lives. It's contributed to new levels of productivity, kept us all connected, and unlocked our creativity and potential through innovations we couldn't have imagined when we first began this journey. Just think about how far we've come in how people interact with it. From the very first text-based keyboard input to the precision of point and click with the mouse, up to today, where touch, voice, pen and gestures all help people use the Windows PC more naturally and intuitively. From its inception, Surface has been a catalyst for that change.

The world is without a doubt entering a recession and now the first rumours of mass layoffs in the tech industry are starting. According to Bloomberg, Intel is considering laying off thousands of employees as a measure to cut costs, as its businesses are slowing down. Bloomberg is mainly citing the PC market, which the publication calls Intel's main business, although Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) does a lot more than just selling PC chips, but the group was Intel's largest source of revenue in Q2 this year by quite some margin. That said, despite a revenue of US$7.7 billion in Q2, this was down 25 percent compared to 2021, which in all fairness was a record year for most companies in the PC industry.

According to Bloomberg, Intel had 113,700 employees as of July this year and the publication said Intel is considering cutting as much as 20 percent of its sales and marketing staff. Bloomberg is expecting Intel to be looking at reducing fixed costs by 10 to 15 percent, although this is unlikely to affect key parts of Intel's business units. Last quarter, most of Intel's business units made a healthy profit, but only the Network and Edge Group had a significant revenue increase over the same quarter in 2021, with most other groups being down significantly. The third quarter results aren't expected to improve upon things, something that appears to be reflected in Intel's share price, which is down over 50 percent in 2022. That said, all of Intel's competitors are in the same boat and it's likely that we'll see more news about companies that are considering trimming back on their expenses and staff numbers in the near future. Intel is scheduled to report its third quarter earnings on the 27th of October.

Today, Lenovo unveiled the newest addition to its gaming portfolio that comes with a novel twist. Designed for a wide audience of gaming enthusiasts across varying skill levels, the 16-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is the company's first ever cloud gaming laptop. Delivering more power, faster speeds, and stunning visuals, this device also comes with new ChromeOS software features, including the ability to easily find and access the latest games while enjoying an elevated gaming experience.

Much like the rest of the tech industry, gaming has surged in popularity over the last few years with the number of online gamers increasing by more than 32%, currently making up over one-third of the more than 3 billion total gamers worldwide. The droves of people who flocked to gaming as an outlet during the pandemic have diversified the space, as well, with people of all ages taking up the hobby. The IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is built for a broad spectrum of players across generations and skillsets, offering an enhanced yet simple gameplay experience, as well as the device features that support productivity - all at an accessible price point.

ASUS today announced ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip, engineered with a striking aesthetic and powerful components for nonstop cloud gaming—with an immersive 144 Hz FHD display, accurate anti-ghosting keyboard and ultra-fast WiFi 6 technology. According to Gartner, "The rise of cloud gaming, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% from 2019 to 2025, will motivate many gamers to offload hardware to the cloud and rely on CSPs to provide the infrastructure to deliver these games." When emergent cloud-gaming services are factored in, it is clear that a vast and significant market is just waiting to be tapped—and that's where ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip makes its bold entrance.

The fresh, vibrant design features a dynamic, distinctive and daring look that's both stylish and durable, with exclusive color-blocked WASD keycaps to bring flair to online play. Coupled with access to leading cloud-gaming services, including NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) and Amazon Luna, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip is set to energize this underserved audience—ready for all-new gaming adventures. Powering all the entertainment is up to an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of memory and immersive Harman Kardon audio.

ASRock is shaping up to be the first major custom-design Intel Arc "Alchemist" board partner with a footprint in the EU and North America. The company is ready with a pair of custom-design Arc A770 products based on its key gamer-focused brands. The first of these is the ASRock A770 Phantom Gaming OC. This card features a meaty triple-slot Phantom Gaming cooling solution, complete with RGB LED illumination. It should also feature the company's highest state of tuning for the A770. The next of the custom-design cards is the Arc A750 Challenger. This card features clean 2-slot, dual-fan design, and a factory-overclock. It's also likely that ASRock is extending the Challenger OC treatment to the A770.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sent the following statement announcing creation of an internal foundry model for external customers and Intel product lines and the creation of the IDM 2.0 Acceleration Office, under the leadership of Stuart Pann, to all company employees on Oct. 11: When I returned to Intel in 2021, I introduced our IDM 2.0 strategy: a multiyear journey to regain unquestioned technology leadership, manufacturing scale and long-term growth. Today, we begin the next phase of our IDM 2.0 journey.

In the first phase of our transformation, we made significant progress on our process roadmaps and capacity. We remain on track to deliver five process nodes in four years, and we've invested in the capacity required to meet the industry's demand for semiconductors, bringing much-needed balance to the global supply chain.
The next phase of our IDM 2.0 journey requires a fundamental shift in mindset. We must embrace an internal foundry model, not only for our external customer commitments but also for our Intel product lines. This is a significant evolution in how we think and operate as a company, but the systems and infrastructure that served us well in the IDM 1.0 world will not enable us to achieve the full potential of IDM 2.0.

We've been aware of Intel's upcoming NUC 13 Extreme—codenamed Raptor Canyon—since July this year, with the compute element module having leaked back in August. Now Intel has previewed the NUC 13 Extreme at TwitchCon and we have a better idea what the biggest NUC to date will look like. The chassis has a volume of no less than 13.9 litres, which is bigger than many Mini-ITX cases. The main reason for this is that the NUC 13 Extreme has enough space for a triple slot GPU, although if you're hoping to put a GeForce RTX 4090 inside, then you're out of luck, as it seems to be limited to the length of an RTX 3080 or thereabout. The compute modul appears to have changed somewhat from the early leak, or it's possible it just wasn't a very good render.

As we've known, Intel will be kitting out the NUC 13 Extreme with a range of CPU options and it was confirmed during the stream that it'll handle a "full" Core i9K without specifying which model. The Intel rep mentioned a highly optimised heatsink, which appears to be something along the lines of a modified GPU cooler with a blower cooler. This is because the compute module is largely the same shape and size as a graphics card. The chassis itself looks like a bit of a nightmare to deal with, as it has a lot of removable parts to allow access to the innards of the NUC 13 Extreme. The compute module has to be installed at an angle, or it won't fit inside the chassis, whereas the graphics card looks relatively easy to install. You can find the full video in the link below and it starts just past the four hour mark.

Supermicro, a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing that NEC Corporation has selected over 116 Supermicro GPU servers that contain dual socket 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and each with eight NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPUs. As a result, the Supermicro GPU server line can include the latest and most powerful Intel Xeon scalable processors and the most advanced AI GPUs from NVIDIA.

"Supermicro is thrilled to deliver an additional 580 PFLOPS of AI training power to its worldwide AI installations," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO, Supermicro. "Supermicro GPU servers have been installed at NEC Corporation and are used to conduct state-of-the-art AI research. Our servers are designed for the most demanding AI workloads using the highest-performing CPUs and GPUs. We continue to work with leading customers worldwide to achieve their business objectives faster and more efficiently with our advanced rack-scale server solutions."

Intel Alder Lake source code for BIOS/UEFI building and optimization has been leaked in a massive 6 GB leak that appeared on 4chan and GitHub. While this number may seem small, it is a colossal codebase, given that the regular code files take up small space. We assume that the documentation is bundled there as well, however, we can not check ourselves as the repository has been taken down. Tom's Hardware has contacted an Intel representative to talk about the code leak and the rep issued a statement for the website.

Intel SpokespersonOur proprietary UEFI code appears to have been leaked by a third party. We do not believe this exposes any new security vulnerabilities as we do not rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure. This code is covered under our bug bounty program within the Project Circuit Breaker campaign, and we encourage any researchers who may identify potential vulnerabilities to bring them our attention through this program. We are reaching out to both customers and the security research community to keep them informed of this situation.

Amazon US has kindly revealed the pricing for a pair of upcoming Intel Z790 chipset based motherboards from ASUS. For those hoping for better motherboard pricing versus AMD's X670 based boards, we have to be the bringer of bad news, as the two fall in the same ballpark, although Intel seems to have a slight edge here. The cheaper of the two models is the ASUS Prime Z790-P WiFi, which is the Intel equivalent to the Prime X670-P board for AMD's AM5 socket. The Prime Z790-P offers slightly weaker connectivity around the back, but has more PCIe slots compared to its AMD sibling. Unfortunately, it seems like Amazon doesn't stock the Prime X670-P, so we had to look elsewhere for pricing and Newegg charges US$289.99 for it, whereas Amazon charges US$249.99 for the Prime Z790-P, making it a more attractive option. However, that's still US$30 more than its predecessor, the Prime Z690-P, making this a pretty steep jump in price considering the two are very similar in terms of what you get for your money.

The second board is the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, which is a premium product, something that's reflected in the pricing as well. Features like Thunderbolt 4 and an ROG Hyper M.2 card for PCIe 5.0 SSDs are included here, as well as an extended bundle. There's no direct AMD equivalent here, as ASUS only has a model in the US$400 range and one in the US$1000 range on the AMD side. However, it appears that ASUS has decided to keep the same price point as the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero. This isn't entirely surprising, as the boards appear to be almost identical, bar some change to the layout to the rear I/O. At US$629.99, this isn't a cheap board, but it wasn't expected either, as ASUS does charge a premium price for its ROG products. Both boards are said to be shipping from the 20th of October.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today revealed the breakthrough DDR5 performance of XMP DDR5-7600 and O.C. performance to DDR5-7950 under fan cooling on Z790 AORUS XTREME and MASTER motherboards with Team Group gaming modules T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR5 7200 memory. Featuring Shielded Memory Routing of SMD memory DIMM, exclusive DDR5 overclocking BIOS setting, top-quality components, and enhanced design from hardware to firmware on motherboards, this performance proves GIGABYTE's strong leading role in product quality and performance.

To unleash the ultimate DDR5 performance, GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS XTREME and MASTER implement new generation Shielded Memory Routing design. By optimizing memory trace width, length, and style from HPC simulation to actual implementation, overall impedance is lowered between CPU memory controller and memory modules. Further with low signal-loss PCB, signal loss inside PCB and external interference are greatly reduced which can maintain high-speed DDR5 signal transmission to achieve higher DDR5 speed. In addition, the abundant BIOS setting of DDR5 Memory Upgrade and XMP 3.0 User Profile lead to the breakthrough performance of XMP DDR5-7600 and DDR5-7950 O.C. under fan cooling with T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR5 7200 memory. The detailed memory information is listed in the memory support list of the motherboard.

At the forefront of precision robotics engineering, AAEON has announced the UP Element i12 EDGE, in what the company believes will be a key step in innovating the autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and industrial automation markets.

Combining the agile architecture of 12th Generation Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processor platforms with industrial-grade engineering, the UP Element i12 EDGE harnesses up to 10 cores and 12 threads, Intel Iris Xe graphics, and a selection of peripheral technologies in a rugged, flexible, and easily deployed edge system.
AAEON believes the UP Element i12 EDGE will have a significant role to play in the AMR market. With three USB 3.2 and two USB 2.0 ports for multiple 3D cameras and sensors, along with a dual COM port pin header for RS-232/422/485 connectivity, the device is equipped with enhanced object detection capabilities and more accurate positional data via LiDAR and IMU connections.

The Intel Labs and Components Research organizations have demonstrated the industry's highest reported yield and uniformity to date of silicon spin qubit devices developed at Intel's transistor research and development facility, Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres in Hillsboro, Oregon. This achievement represents a major milestone for scaling and working towards fabricating quantum chips on Intel's transistor manufacturing processes.

The research was conducted using Intel's second-generation silicon spin test chip. Through testing the devices using the Intel cryoprober, a quantum dot testing device that operates at cryogenic temperatures (1.7 Kelvin or -271.45 degrees Celsius), the team isolated 12 quantum dots and four sensors. This result represents the industry's largest silicon electron spin device with a single electron in each location across an entire 300 millimeter silicon wafer.

We're excited to release a new 3DMark feature test for Intel's new XeSS AI-enhanced upscaling technology. This new feature test is available in 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions. 3DMark feature tests are special tests designed to highlight specific techniques, functions, or capabilities. The Intel XeSS feature test shows you how XeSS affects performance.

The 3DMark Intel XeSS frame inspector tool helps you compare image quality with an interactive side-by-side comparison of XeSS and native-resolution rendering. Check out the images below to see an example comparison of native resolution rendering and XeSS in the new 3DMark feature test.

ASUS, a global technology leader renowned for continuously reimagining today's technologies for tomorrow, today announced a new Expert series desktop model, the ExpertCenter D7 SFF (D700SD).

The ExpertCenter D7 SFF is designed for long-term use, giving business users in financial, retail, manufacturing, creative fields, and other industries a durable solution. It's designed to suit growing business needs with tool-free expansion, making this model an investment that can evolve with a business. The case is rotatable and can be fully opened for convenient maintenance and upgrades, with side panels on the chassis that are easily removed without a screwdriver, and a 3.5-inch HDD tool-free tray that enables users to quickly replace or upgrade hard drives.