Intel Arc A580 is an upcoming entry-mainstream desktop graphics card based on the Xe-HPG "Alchemist" graphics architecture, and positioned between the A380 and A750. Based on the larger 6 nm DG2-512 silicon than the one powering the A380, the A580 is endowed with 16 Xe Cores, or double the SIMD muscle of the A380, with 2,048 unified shaders. The card enjoys 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit bus, which at 16 Gbps data-rate produces 256 GB/s bandwidth.

A leaked Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database entry reveals that the A580 scores roughly 95 FPS at 1080p on average, with 110 FPS in the normal batch, around 102 FPS in the medium batch, and around 78 FPS in the heavy batch. The benchmark used the Vulkan API, and an unknown 16-thread Intel processor with 32 GB of memory. These scores put the A580 roughly at par with the GeForce RTX 3050 "Ampere" in this test, which would make it a reasonable solution for playing popular online games at 1080p with medium-high settings, or AAA games at medium settings.

The upcoming flagship Intel Core i9-13900K processor has recently appeared in a 7-Zip benchmark screenshot where the chip beat its predecessor by 20% and 60% in compression and decompression tests respectively. The i9-13900K looks set to feature an additional 8 High-Efficiency cores for a total of 24 cores along with a higher boost clock of 5.8 GHz. This increased core count and clock speed account for the majority of the performance improvements with the i9-13900K reaching a max single thread clock of 5716 MHz and 4611 MHz on 16 threads compared to 5021 MHz and 4060 MHz with the i9-12900K. The processors were both paired with a 32 GB set of DDR5-6400CL32 memory on an unspecified motherboard. These results have not been confirmed with Intel expected to officially unveil the new lineup on September 27th.

Intel late-Tuesday (16/08) announced the NUC 12 Pro "Wall Street Canyon" line of compact desktops as enclosed prebuilt mini PCs, and bare motherboards. These are based on the 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-P" (2P+8E) mobile processors paired typically with up to 16 GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory, up to 512 GB of M.2 NVMe Gen 4 SSD storage, an additional Gen 4 M.2 slot, and come with preinstalled Windows 11. Certain variants feature a slightly larger chassis with room for a 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gbps drive. Select SKUs come with Thunderbolt 4 ports, 20 Gbps USB 3.2x2 ports, 2.5 GbE, and Wi-Fi 6E networking. and certain SKUs even offer vPro management features for commercial environments.A video-presentation by SimplyNUC follows.

MSI has updated its Prestige series lineup with new members, Prestige 16 and Prestige 16 EVO. Both in Urban Silver color and equipped with Intel 12th Gen Core i7 Processor, they are powerful productivity tools that business users can really appreciate.

The MSI Prestige 16 has a decent discrete GPU performance from NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, and is the first Prestige laptop that has a 16:10 ratio mini-LED panel. With the MSI True Color Technology, it reaches the high dynamic range (HDR) with DisplayHDR 1000 standard, which significantly expands the range of two important factors—contrast ratio and color accuracy. Thanks to Dynamic Cooler Boost, MSI's patented dual-fan thermal technology, Prestige 16/Prestige 16 EVO are powerful laptops that maintain less than 35 dB background noise. For business users who hold online conferences frequently, they can expect to have smooth video conferencing experience with the quadruple microphone and Ambient Light Sensor that come along with AI noise canceling solution.

AMD has reportedly pushed market-availability date of its next-generation Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors from September 15 to September 27, 2022. This would clash with the rumored product-announcement date of the Intel 13th Generation Core "Raptor Lake" processor series. If true, this is possibly a move designed to prevent Intel from sharing performance numbers of Ryzen 7000-series processors in the product-announcement presentation of "Raptor Lake," as Intel can only compare the chips it is announcing with competing AMD products that are available in the market at the time.

A September 27 market availability could still mean a late-August product announcement along the sidelines of Gamescom, with product reviews in the following weeks. It's just that the market availability date is now pushed to late-September. Intel's launch cycle for "Raptor Lake" could see a late-September announcement, but it remains to be seen if product availability is immediate, or timed weeks later. The 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processor is built on the same LGA1700 package as current "Alder Lake," and compatible with existing Intel 600-series motherboards with a UEFI firmware update; although will be launched alongside new Intel 700-series chipset motherboards. AMD's Ryzen 7000-series product launch will be timed with those of compatible Socket AM5 motherboards based on the AMD 600-series chipset, and a new line of DDR5 memory modules featuring the AMD EXPO technology.

Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards span both gamer and creator/professional user market sector, where we witnessed Intel announce gamer and pro-vis GPU SKUs. Today, we are seeing the usage of the flagship Arc Alchemist SKU called A770 in Blender rendering with ray tracing enabled. The GPU is designed to have a DG2-512 GPU with 512 EUs, 4096 Shading Units, 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, and 32 Xe cores for ray tracing, be a powerhouse for games, and handle some professional software as well. At SIGGRAPH 2022, Bob Duffy, Intel's Director of Graphics Community Engagement, showcased a system with Arc A770 GPU running Blender Cycles with ray tracing and denoising.

While we don't have any comparable data to showcase, the system managed to produce a decent rendering in Blender 3.3 LTS release, using Intel's oneAPI. The demo scene had 4,369,466 vertices, 8,702,031 edges, 4,349,606 faces, and 8,682,950 triangles, backed by ray tracing and live denoising. We are yet to see more detailed benchmarks and how the GPU fares against the competition.

AAEON, a global leader in industrial computing, has introduced the world to the next generation of single board computer with the release of the EPIC-TGH7, which holds the distinction of being the first board of its kind to host Intel 11th Generation Xeon /Core processors. With such an advanced processor package, the EPIC-TGH7 offers 8 cores and 16 threads to increase processing speed and power for intensive, high-end computing. However, this advancement has not sacrificed power-efficiency, with the EPIC-TGH7 providing up to 45 W with Xeon -level performance.

Hosting up to 8 USB ports, dual LAN ports, and a PCIe[x8] slot; the EPIC-TGH7 enables PCIe 4.0 speeds of up to 16GT/s, despite retaining the same EPIC board form factor measuring just 4.53" x 6.50" (115 mm x 165 mm). AAEON believes this combination of I/O density and high-speed expansion will be particularly applicable to healthcare imaging and military defense applications, with the board being able to accommodate the advanced graphics required for such uses.

So you thought your Arc A380 graphics card, or the Gen12 Xe iGPU in your 12th Gen Core processors were good enough to munch through your older games from the 2000s and early 2010s? Not so fast. Intel Graphics states that the Xe-LP and Xe-HPG graphics architectures, which power the Gen12 Iris Xe iGPUs and the new Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, lack native support for the DirectX 9 graphics API. The two rely on API translation such as Microsoft D3D9On12, which attempts to translate D3D9 API commands to D3D12, which the drivers can recognize.

Older graphics architectures such as the Gen11 powering "Ice Lake," and Gen9.5 found in all "Skylake" derivatives, feature native support for DirectX 9, however when paired with Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, the drivers are designed to engage D3D9On12 to accommodate the discrete GPU, unless the dGPU is disabled. API translation can be unreliable and buggy, and Intel points you to Microsoft and the game developers for support, Intel Graphics won't be providing any.

Remember that Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt that Intel hosted last year? If you somehow missed it, Intel was maybe giving away some Arc graphics cards to 300 lucky winners. There were two different tiers of prizes, grand prize and first prize, which later ended up translating to an Arc A770 and an Arc A750 graphics card respectively. Now news via VideoCardz are suggesting that Intel is trying to get out of giving these 300 people their prize, well, at least the promised graphics card, in exchange for an Alder Lake CPU.

Intel has apparently sent out an email to the winners, asking them to accept an Intel Core i7-12700K if they were a grand prize winner or a Core i5-12600K if they were a first prize winner, instead of the promised graphics card. The winners have until Friday the 19th of August to decide if they want a CPU instead of a GPU, although Intel is apparently still allowing them to wait for a GPU, the company just doesn't say how long the wait will be. As the prize has to have a similar retail price, it's also possible to get a ballpark figure of the MSRP of Intel's supposedly upcoming Arc 700-series graphics cards. The Arc A770 should end up at around the $410 mark and the A750 around the $290 mark, as this is the ballpark MSRP for the CPU's that are being offered. It would be interesting to know how many people would be willing to do the trade, but sadly we're unlikely to ever find out.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) provides some of the most authoritative and informative market-research into the PC graphics hardware industry. The firm just published a scathing editorial on the future of Intel AXG (Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics), the business tasked with development of competitive discrete GPU and HPC compute accelerators for Intel. Founded to much fanfare in 2016 and led by Raja Koduri since 2016; AXG has been in the news for the development of the Xe graphics and compute architecture, particularly with the Xe-HP "Ponte Vecchio" HPC accelerator; and the Arc brand of consumer discrete graphics solutions. JPR reports that Intel has invested several billions of Dollars into AXG, to little avail, with none of its product lines bringing in notable revenues for the company. Xe-LP based iGPUs do not count as they're integrated with client processors, and their revenues are clubbed with CCG (Client Computing Group).

Intel started reporting revenues from the AXG business since Q1-2021, around which time it started selling its first discrete GPUs as the Intel DG1 Xe MAX, based on the same Xe-LP architecture powering its iGPUs. The company's Xe-HPG architecture, designed for high-performance gaming, was marketed as its first definitive answer to NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. Since Q1-2021, Intel has lost $2.1 billion to AXG, with not much to show for. The JPR article suggests that Intel missed the bus both with its time-to-market and scale.

Intel improves software reliability by building silicon enhancements realized through logic inside the processor. Today, the company described a new technique to complement existing software mitigations for fault injection attacks. Tunable Replica Circuit (TRC) - Fault Injection Protection uses hardware-based sensors to explicitly detect circuit-based timing failures that occur as the result of an attack. TRC is first delivered in the 12th Gen Intel Core processor family. It adds fault injection detection technology to the Intel Converged Security and Management Engine (Intel CSME), where it is designed to detect non-invasive physical glitch attacks on the pins supplying clock and voltage. TRC is also designed to detect electromagnetic fault injections.

"Software protections have hardened with virtualization, stack canaries and code authentication before execution," said Daniel Nemiroff, senior principal engineer at Intel. "This has driven malicious actors to turn their attention to physically attacking computing platforms. A favorite tool of these attackers is fault injection attacks via glitching voltage, clock pins and electromagnetic radiation that cause circuit timing faults and may allow execution of malicious instructions and potential exfiltration of secrets."

The LattePanda Team launched the world's thinnest pocket-sized hackable computer - LattePanda 3 Delta with global electronic components distributors. The collaboration will ensure that the product choice for LattePanda 3 Delta is passed on to customers through quick, easy online selection via the website of global electronic components distributors and LattePanda.

"LattePanda Team is so proud to cooperate with the global electronic components distributors for this joint launch. It delivers an exciting message to our customers that they can gain fast, easy access to our high-performance and hackable LattePanda 3 Delta anywhere in the world. Our collaboration will assure even higher levels of customer service," said Sandy Zhang, CMO of LattePanda Team.

The x86 CPU family has been vulnerable to many attacks in recent years. With the arrival of Spectre and Meltdown, we have seen side-channel attacks overtake both AMD and Intel designs. However, today we find out that researchers are capable of exploiting Intel's latest 10th, 11th, and 12th generation Core processors with a new CPU bug called ÆPIC Leak. Named after Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) that handles interrupt requests to regulate multiprocessing, the leak is claimeing to be the first "CPU bug able to architecturally disclose sensitive data." Researchers Pietro Borrello (Sapienza University of Rome), Andreas Kogler (Graz Institute of Technology), Martin Schwarzl (Graz), Moritz Lipp (Amazon Web Services), Daniel Gruss (Graz University of Technology), and Michael Schwarz (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security) discovered this flaw in Intel processors.

ÆPIC Leak is the first CPU bug able to architecturally disclose sensitive data. It leverages a vulnerability in recent Intel CPUs to leak secrets from the processor itself: on most 10th, 11th and 12th generation Intel CPUs the APIC MMIO undefined range incorrectly returns stale data from the cache hierarchy. In contrast to transient execution attacks like Meltdown and Spectre, ÆPIC Leak is an architectural bug: the sensitive data gets directly disclosed without relying on any (noisy) side channel. ÆPIC Leak is like an uninitialized memory read in the CPU itself.

A privileged attacker (Administrator or root) is required to access APIC MMIO. Thus, most systems are safe from ÆPIC Leak. However, systems relying on SGX to protect data from privileged attackers would be at risk, thus, have to be patched.

Intel's collaboration with Aible enables teams across key industries to leverage artificial intelligence and deliver rapid and measurable business impact. This deep collaboration, which includes engineering optimizations and an innovative benchmarking program, enhances Aible's ability to deliver rapid results to its enterprise customers. When paired with Intel processors, Aible's technology provides a serverless-first approach, allowing developers to build and run applications without having to manage servers, and build modern applications with increased agility and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

"Today's enterprise IT infrastructure leaders face significant challenges building a foundation that is designed to help business teams drive value from AI initiatives in the data center. We've moved past talking about the potential of AI, as business teams across key industries are experiencing measurable business impact within days, using Intel Xeon Scalable processors with built-in Intel software optimizations with Aible," said Kavitha Prasad, Intel vice president and general manager of Datacenter, AI and Cloud Execution and Strategy.

Intel has today unveiled another addition to its discrete Arc Alchemist graphics card lineup, with a slight preference to the professional consumer market. Intel has prepared three models for creators and entry pro-vis solutions, called Intel Arc Pro graphics cards. All GPUs are AV1 accelerated, have ray tracing support, and are designed to handle AI acceleration inside applications like Adobe Premiere Pro. At the start, we have a small A30M mobile GPU aimed at laptop designs. It has a 3.5 TeraFLOP FP32 capability inside a configurable 35-50 Watt TDP envelope, has eight ray tracing cores, and 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. Its display output connectors depend on OEM's laptop design.

Next, we have the Arc A40 Pro discrete single-slot GPU. Having 3.5 TeraFLOPs of FP32 single-precision performance, it has eight ray tracing cores and 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. The listed maximum TDP for this model is 50 Watts. It has four mini-DP ports for video output, and it can drive two monitors at 8K 60 Hz, one at 5K 240 Hz, two at 5K 120 Hz, or four at 4K 60 Hz refresh rate. Its bigger brother, the Arc A50 Pro, is a dual-slot design with 4.8 TeraFLOPs of single-precision FP32 computing, has eight ray tracing cores, and 6 GB of GDDR6 memory as well. It has the same video output capability as the Arc A40 Pro, with a beefier cooling setup to handle the 75 Watt TDP. All software developed using the OneAPI toolkit can be accelerated using these GPUs. Intel is working with the industry to adapt professional software for Arc Pro graphics.

The upcoming 13th Gen Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" 8P+16E core processor offers a significant multi-threaded performance increase with its power-limits relaxed, according to Cinebench R23 testing unearthed by OneRaichu. In its default settings, with stock power limits, the i9-13900K draws up to 254 W of package power, where it scores 35693 points. With the power limits unlocked in the motherboard's UEFI setup program (i.e. PL1/PL2 set at an impossible 4096 W), the processor's package power peaks at 345 W (a 36% increase in peak power-draw), but results in a multi-threaded score of 40616 points, or a 13.8% performance gain.

An Intel Core "Raptor Lake" engineering sample was de-lidded by Expreview giving us a first look at what will be Intel's last monolithic silicon client processor before the company switches over to chiplets, with its next-generation "Meteor Lake." The chip de-lidded here is the i9-13900, which maxes out the "Raptor Lake-S" die, in featuring all 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores and 16 "Gracemont" E-cores physically present on the die, along with 36 MB of shared L3 cache, and an iGPU based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture.

The "Raptor Lake-S" silicon is built on the same Intel 7 (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) silicon fabrication node as "Alder Lake-S." The "Raptor Lake-S" (8P+16E) die measures 23.8 mm x 10.8 mm, or 257 mm² in area, which is 49 mm² more than that of the "Alder Lake-S" (8P+8E) die (around 209 mm²). The larger die area comes from not just the two additional E-core clusters, but also larger L2 caches for the E-core clusters (4 MB vs. 2 MB), and larger L2 caches for the P-cores (2 MB vs. 1.25 MB); besides the larger shared L3 cache (36 MB vs. 30 MB). The "Raptor Cove" P-core itself could be slightly larger than its "Golden Cove" predecessor.

According to sources close to Igor Wallossek from Igor's lab, Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist discrete graphics card lineup is in trouble. As the anonymous sources state, certain add-in board (AIB) partners are having difficulty adopting the third GPU manufacturer into their offerings. As we learn, AIBs are sitting on a pile of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. This pile is decreasing in price daily and losing value, so it needs to be moved quickly. Secondly, Intel is reportedly suggesting AIBs ship cards to OEMs and system integrators to start the market spread of the new Arc dGPUs. This business model is inherently lower margin compared to selling GPUs directly to consumers.

Last but not least, it is reported that at least one major AIB is stopping the production of custom Arc GPUs due to quality concerns. What this means is yet to be uncovered, and we have to wait and see which AIB (or AIBs) is stepping out of the game. All of this suggests that the new GPU lineup is on the verge of extinction, even before it has launched. However, we are sure that the market will adapt and make a case for the third GPU maker. Of course, these predictions should be taken with a grain of salt, and we await more information to confirm those issues.

Although Intel threw in the towel and gave up on making routers and gateways back in 2020, the company is still the world's largest manufacturer of WiFi modules for computers. Now news out of Korea suggests that Intel's first WiFi 7 products will be launched in 2024, about a year after the expected availability of the first WiFi 7 routers and gateways. That said, based on a quote from Eric McLaughlin, vice president of Intel's wireless solutions division, who attended an unspecified press conference in the APAC region, Intel "expect it to appear in major markets in 2025." This suggests that it'll be a late 2024 launch and we might see competitors' products in notebooks and PCs way ahead of Intel this time around.

That said, the WiFi 7 standard is currently only in the late stages of development, despite Broadcom, MediaTek and Qualcomm having announced multiple products already. It's likely we'll see another round of draft spec hardware launching either later this year, or next year, with the final WiFi 7 spec not expected to be ratified until 2024. As such, Intel may be later than its competitors, but should hopefully launch a feature complete product. Intel's products should support speeds of up to 5.8 GHz, although this would be using a 320 MHz wide channel and 4K QAM, which means these speeds will be limited to a few meters from a router. WiFi devices have a history of quirky issues between brands, even if none of them have been so severe that a fallback to an older standard hasn't solved the problem, but it's still been a hassle for consumers. Hopefully WiFi 7 won't repeat history, but we wouldn't place a bet on it.

Based on a report by TrendForce, Intel has yet again had to push back its upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs and it now appears that Intel will only be launching Meteor Lake towards the end of 2023. It's unclear why there has been yet another delay, but Intel is said to have cancelled most of its orders with TSMC for the 3 nm tGPU that Intel will have made at TSMC, for 2023. The knock-on effect of this, is that TSMC is said to be slowing down its production line expansion towards 3 nm, as the company is now unsure if it'll be able to fill its order books for all of 2023. TSMC's main customer for the 3 nm node is still going to be Apple, but with the loss of what is likely to be around six months worth of production from Intel, TSMC is said to be considering cutting its CapEx for 2023.

TSMC's other customers, such as AMD, MediaTek and Qualcomm aren't planning on moving to 3 nm until 2024, so unless there's a change in plans from either of these companies, or increased demand from Apple, TSMC is said to hit the brakes when it comes to starting up new, cutting edge production lines next year. TSMC is also likely to see reduced revenues during 2023 due to Intel's change of plans, although it's too early to make any assumptions. TrendForce also suggests that Intel might still use TSMC's 3 nm node as a backup plan, if Intel would fail to execute on moving to the Intel 4 process, but considering how complex it is to move a design between different foundry processes, this seems unlikely.

The second company to launch an Intel Arc A380 graphics card is somewhat surprisingly, if already rumoured, ASRock. The card in question goes under the somewhat awkward name of Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC or A380 CLI 6GO for short. Unlike the Gunnir card, this is a rather compact, Mini-ITX friendly card that measures 190 x 124 x 39 mm and sports a single fan. Despite its diminutive size, it's still a dual slot card and ASRock outfitted it with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, just as Gunnir did with its card.

The base frequency is somewhat higher at 2250 MHz vs. 2000 MHz for the Gunnir card, although ASRock doesn't mention the boost clock on its website. As the name implies, the card comes with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory with a rated data rate of either 15 or 15.5 Gbps, as both numbers are mentioned by ASRock, still on a 96-bit bus. The card has a single HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPort 2.0 ports with DSC. The card obviously has a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface as well. ASRock has implemented a 0dB mode where the fan stops spinning during low loads. According to Videocardz, the ASRock Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is already on sale in the PRC for the equivalent of US$192.

Last week's news about Mediatek signing an agreement to use Intel's Foundry Services (IFS) led to some speculation as to what Mediatek would be manufacturing at IFS. Details have now emerged in the Taiwan press about Mediatek's plans and the first products will be using the Intel 16 process, what was previously known as its 22 nm node. As such, we're not talking about anything cutting edge or even remotely close, but that's hardly a problem for Mediatek, as the company makes a vast range of products suitable for the node.

MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai mentioned that IFS will be used for producing semiconductors for digital TVs and wireless access networks at an investor conference in Taiwan. This suggests that most of the components might not even be for Mediatek itself, but rather its subsidiaries, such as MStar or Airoha. MStar is a company that produces a wide range of lower-end smart TV chips, whereas Airoha has ended up taking over Mediatek's networking and Bluetooth business units. Admittedly, Mediatek still has some of these types of products under its own brand, but these tend to be higher-end products that would require a more advanced node than 22 nm in most cases. Mediatek's move to IFS has raised concerns in Taiwan that the smaller foundries might be losing business from Mediatek over time, which means that UMC and PSMC are going to be on the losing end of this deal.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, announce the launch of the COLORFUL X15-AT 22 gaming laptop equipped with a 12th generation Intel Core i9 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics. The COLORFUL X15-AT 22 is coming to the United States via Newegg.

The COLORFUL X15-AT 22 is equipped with the latest 12th generation Intel Core i9-12900H processor with 8 cores and 16 threads, and a maximum boost clock of 4.60 GHz. The gaming laptop is also fitted with 16 GB of DDR4-3200 memory - upgradeable to 64 GB. For storage, the X15-AT 22 packs a 512 GB PCIe Gen4 SSD. The X15-AT 22 also features a Thunderbolt 4 port with up to 40 Gbps transfer speed.

Intel is reportedly moving the general availability of its 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processor, codenamed "Sapphire Rapids," in the region of early-February to early-March, 2023. The enterprise processors were expected to debut toward the end of 2022, and some of the oldest company roadmaps referencing the processor put its launch back in Q1-2021. Igor's Lab reports that there are as many as 12 steppings of the processor, with the latest discovered being the E5 (the others being A0, A1, B0, C0, C1, C2, D0, E0, E2, E3 and E4; although these could be validation samples handed out to various large customers of Intel to try these chips with their various applications. Built on the Intel 7 node, the processor features up to 60 "Golden Cove" CPU cores, a DDR5 memory interface, PCI-Express Gen 5, and various on-die accelerators. Certain variants even feature up to 32 GB of on-package HBM.

Intel yesterday confirmed its plans to extend its Meteor Lake architecture towards shores other than general processing. According to Phoronix, Intel posted a new driver that lays the foundations for VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) support under Linux. The idea here is that Intel will integrate this VPU within its 14th Gen Meteor Lake architecture, adding AI inferencing acceleration capabilities to its silicon. A sure-fire way to achieve enormous gains in AI processing, especially in performance/watt. Interestingly, Intel is somewhat following Apple's footsteps here, as the company already includes AI-dedicated processing cores in its desktop/laptop Apple Silicon processors since the M1 days.

Intel's VPU architecture will surely be derived from Movidius' designs, which Intel acquired back in 2016 for a cool $400 million. It's unclear which parts of Movidius/Intel IP will be included in the VPU units to be paired with Meteor Lake: whether a full-blown, SoC (System on Chip)-like VPU design such as the Myriad X VPU, or if Intel will take select bits of the architecture (plus the equivalent of five additional years of research and development), sprinkling them on top of their upcoming architecture. We do know the VPU itself will include a memory management unit, a RISC-based microcontroller, a Neural Compute System (what exactly entails this compute system and its slices is the mysterious part) and network-on-chip capabilities.