According to the latest report from Nikkei Asia, Intel will raise its CPU pricing structure starting this fall. Citing concerns of increased electricity, raw materials, and labor costs, Intel has informed its clients that the company will add additional overhead to its existing pricing structure to make up for that difference. The report indicates that most of its microprocessors and peripheral chip products will be affected. However, the main target of the inflating costs is the company's Core and Xeon processor families. If you are wondering just how much will this price hike be, the current speculations point to anywhere from a 10 to 20 percent increase.

Of course, this information should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it is quite possible to see this price hike in the upcoming fall season, and we have to wait and see if it plays out.

The creator of RivaTuner/MSI Afterburner has recently posted a picture of a pre-production Intel Arc graphics card which could potentially be the entry-level A310. The low-profile single-slot card is pictured alongside the 34 cm long MSI RTX 3090 Ti SUPRIM where it is easily half the length at approximately 16 cm which is in the same range as some GeForce GTX 1630 and Radeon RX 6400 cards.

The Intel Arc card is designed for developers featuring a small dual-fan cooling solution with a shroud that might have been 3D printed. This is the first Intel Arc device to feature such a low-profile design with other ACM-G11 based cards from Intel and board partners often featuring dual-slot designs with larger single or dual fan setups.

In what could be evidence of Intel pulling off a major generational IPC increase, Chinese PC enthusiast Extreme Player, with access to a Core i9-13900K engineering sample (ES), tested the chip on a handful synthetic tests, with the processor yielding significant performance gains over its predecessor, the i9-12900K. The most striking performance number has to be the CPU-Z Bench single-core test, which shows an impressive 9.41 percent increase over that of the i9-12900K.

The i9-13900K packs "Raptor Cove" performance cores, which Intel claims come with a generational IPC increase over the "Golden Cove" P-cores. The 9.4% performance increase could be a result of not just increased IPC, but also higher clock speeds (set at 5.50 GHz, the assumed maximum boost frequency of the retail processor). The multi-threaded CPU-Z Bench sees an incredible 46.34% performance increase. This stems from not just increased performance on the eight P-cores, but also the doubling in E-cores from 8 to 16. The E-core clusters also see a doubling in L2 cache sizes. The story repeats with Cinebench R23, with an incredible 13.53% single-thread performance increase, and a 40.25% multi-threaded performance increase.

Remember that Limited Edition card that Intel was teasing at the end of March? Well, it turns out that it could very well be the Arc A750 card, at least based on a quick appearance of a card in Gamer Nexus' review of the Gunnir Arc A380 card. For a few seconds in the review video, Gamers Nexus was showing off a card that looked nigh on identical to the renders Intel showed back in March. There was no mention of any specs or anything else related, except that Gamer Nexus has tested the card and that it will presumably be getting its own video in the near future based on what was said in the video.

Based on leaked information, the Arc A750 GPU should feature 24 Xe cores, 3072 FP32 cores and it's expected to be paired with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus. For reference, the Arc A380 features eight Xe cores, 1024 FP32 cores and the cards ship with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 96-bit bus. In related news, Intel is said to be touring some gaming events in the US promoting its yet unavailable Arc graphics cards. LANFest Colorado is said to be the first stop, so if you're planning on attending, this could be your first chance to get some hands-on time with an Arc graphics card.

The Mini-PC pioneer Shuttle is venturing to achieve the delicate balance between compactness and flexibility with the 4.7-litre design. It has produced a 9.5 cm flat Mini-PC Barebone for lots of Intel Core processors of the 10th & 11th generation which features two PCI Express slots. This means it can confidently compete directly with workstations from major manufacturers with a similar format.

As its base area is only 25 × 20 cm, smaller than a sheet of A4 paper, it fits almost anywhere. Even the overall height of 9.5 cm is regarded as flat and provides plenty of space, for example for Intel Core i9 processors, dual-slot graphics cards, 64 GB of RAM and three drives. "Probably the biggest advantage over other products in the market is the flexibility. Buyers can decide the details of which components they want to use and the choice of operating system," explains Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. "From the entry-level version with scope for an upgrade, through to the maximum configuration level, with the XH510G2 you have almost free rein to decide on a surprisingly large number of features."

The recent semiconductor shortage has put an unprecedented amount of focus on the industry. Both commercial and government entities have come to recognize the lack of advanced node semiconductor manufacturing capabilities onshore in the United States. Intel Foundry Services (IFS) entry into the commercial foundry space is poised to change all that. As part of IFS Accelerator program, Intel recently announced their new IFS Cloud Alliance program, with Microsoft Azure as one of the inaugural members.

This is the latest chapter in a partnership between Intel and Microsoft that stretches back decades all the way back to the early days of the personal computer. In the last few years, Intel and Microsoft have collaborated on advancing semiconductor design on the cloud by working together to bring out EDA centric cloud compute such as the FX series on Azure, working with EDA vendors to enhance their software to better take advantage of the elasticity of the Azure cloud, as well as collaborating on a secure cloud-based semiconductor development platform for the US Department of Defense RAMP and RAMP-C programs.

Intel has released the first set of open source AI reference kits specifically designed to make AI more accessible to organizations in on-prem, cloud and edge environments. First introduced at Intel Vision, the reference kits include AI model code, end-to-end machine learning pipeline instructions, libraries and Intel oneAPI components for cross-architecture performance. These kits enable data scientists and developers to learn how to deploy AI faster and more easily across healthcare, manufacturing, retail and other industries with higher accuracy, better performance and lower total cost of implementation.

"Innovation thrives in an open, democratized environment. The Intel accelerated open AI software ecosystem including optimized popular frameworks and Intel's AI tools are built on the foundation of an open, standards-based, unified oneAPI programming model. These reference kits, built with components of Intel's end-to-end AI software portfolio, will enable millions of developers and data scientists to introduce AI quickly and easily into their applications or boost their existing intelligent solutions."

Intel is readying its next-generation NUC Extreme desktop, codenamed "Raptor Canyon," based on the company's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. Leaked roadmap slides point to the "Raptor Canyon" kit being significantly larger than its predecessor, "Dragon Canyon," with a volume of 13.9 liters, as opposed to 8 liters. This could indicate that "Raptor Canyon" is being designed as a workstation or performance gaming machine, and could pack the company's in-house Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs going all the way up to the A770. The company is also developing professional variants of Arc with certifications of content creator software, so the possibility of pro-vis GPUs is also there. At 13.9 L volume, "Raptor Canyon" could be as big as some Micro-ATX cube cases.

The slide mentions that "Raptor Canyon" will come with "next-gen" (read: 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake") processors across all brand extensions, including Core i9, and also pack overclocking capabilities, as they feature "K" SKUs. The NUC will feature a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot. Launching alongside "Raptor Canyon" is the "Shrike Bay" Compute Element. For the past several generations of NUC Extreme, Intel has been adopting a variation of the ISA Backplane for PCIe, where the processor, chipset, and memory sit on an add-on card (now referred to as the "Compute Element." The "Shrike Bay" Compute Elements will come with a variety of 13th Gen Core processor options. Intel plans a Q4-2022 launch for "Raptor Canyon" and "Shrike Bay."

Peratech, a leading innovator in tactile-based user interfaces for high-performance electronics, has announced that its full-range, force-sensing technology will be in the latest Lenovo Legion 7i and 7 (16", 7) gaming laptops' W-A-S-D keys. Integrated into Lenovo Legion's high-performance premium gaming laptops, Peratech's Force Keyboard and Hydra user interface software deliver a more immersive, engaging gaming experience.

Unlike other gaming laptops that have added force function to the W, A, S, D keys, Peratech's full-analog response enables players to engage with games on a much more intuitive, physical level by extending the simple on/off switch of a standard key to unleash the full range of force in real-world interaction. Jim Thomas, Peratech CCO shared, "Imagine driving down your local highway and your accelerator is restricted to just 2 options, 'off' or 'full speed.' Reality-based physics calls for acceleration dependent on how hard you press on the gas pedal, or how hard you turn the steering wheel. This is the difference Peratech intelligent tactile sensing makes."

At the end of last month, ASRock revealed its UEFI/BIOS updates for its 600-series motherboards for the next generation of CPUs from Intel and now ASUS has announced that it will offer updates for its Z690 motherboards. We're not sure why ASUS has limited itself to only Z690, but we'd expect updates for all of its 600-series chipset motherboards to arrive in due time. ASUS has been just as short on details as ASRock, although in the case of ASUS, all the Z690 boards will start on the same UEFI version—160x—when it comes to Raptor Lake support.

ASUS will offer updates for its ROG, ROG Strix, ProArt, Prime and TUF Gaming boards at this first stage. ASUS recommends using the BIOS Flashback functionality on the motherboards, or its EZ Flash 3 program in Windows. To get the latest UEFI update for your motherboard, you need to head over to ASUS' support site and download it manually according to the press release.

Intel's upcoming family of Arc Alchemist mobile graphics cards is just around the corner, and we are already starting to spot the company's reference systems utilizing the latest dedicated graphics. Thanks to the findings of @momomo_us, we have information that Intel is readying the NUC X15 laptop reference system codenamed "Alder Country." There are two SKUs, LAPAC71G and LAPAC71H, each with similar CPU and GPU configurations. Carrying an Intel Core i7-12700H processor with 14 cores and 20 threads, the CPU is paired with either Arc A550M on the LAPAC71G SKU or Arc A730M on LAPAC71H SKU.

As a reminder, Intel already made such NUC X15 reference laptop designs with Tiger Lake processors. However, they came with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 graphics instead of Intel Arc Alchemist. Implementations of NUC X15 appeared with partners such as ADATA XPG Xenia laptop. We could expect to see more OEMs adapt Alder Country if the performance of Arc Alchemist graphics proves good.

Intel and Google are working together to drive high performance computing (HPC) forward on Google Cloud with the release of the Cloud HPC Toolkit. This new resource provides access to tools from the Intel oneAPI Base and HPC Toolkits to optimize performance through Intel Select Solutions for Simulations & Modeling. These new tools improve compile times, speed of results and offer multi-vendor acceleration in SYCL.

"Using Cloud HPC Toolkit with an Intel Select Solutions for Simulations & Modeling blueprint brings the added benefit of automatically spinning up a hardware-software configuration that has been rigorously tested and optimized for real-world performance, eliminating guesswork," said Ilias Katsardis, HPC solution lead, Google.

Intel's next-generation Core "Meteor Lake" processors will debut the new Xe-LPG graphics architecture for its iGPU. A successor to the Xe-LP architecture powering iGPUs since 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake," the Xe-LPG graphics architecture is tailored for small-scale GPU designs such as iGPUs. It sheds much of the bulk that the Xe-HPG has, which is optimized for discrete GPU designs. A leaked block diagram of "Meteor Lake" describes Xe-LPG as featuring a new "extended gaming mode," new Adaptix power sharing, which is probably a power-management optimization that prioritizes power share to the iGPU; and even more media encode acceleration capabilities.

The Core "Meteor Lake" compute tile will also feature the latest Gaussian Network Accelerator, GNA 3.5, which speeds up AI deep-learning neural net building and training. The chip features a purpose-build VPU (visual processing unit), similar to the ones in mobile SoCs, which improves the device's ability to recognize faces, or even augmented-reality applications. Lastly, with "Meteor Lake," Intel is debuting the new "Crestmont" E-core clusters that introduce an IPC improvement over the "Gracemont" E-cores powering "Alder Lake" and "Raptor Lake."

Inspur Information, a leading IT infrastructure solutions provider, is rolling out full-stack liquid-cooled products, with cold plate liquid-cooling technology being available in all of its products including general-purpose servers, high-density servers, rack servers, and AI servers. This is another major step in Inspur Information's march towards being carbon neutral following its unveiling of Asia's largest development and manufacturing facility for liquid-cooled data centers.

As Green, low-carbon and sustainable development has become the international consensus, nearly 130 countries and regions around the world have set the goal of being carbon neutral. In 2022, with "All in Liquid-Cooling" incorporated into its strategy, Inspur Information has incorporated cold plate liquid-cooling technology into all of its products (general-purpose servers, high-density servers, rack servers, and AI servers), which can be fully customized for a diverse array of scenarios.

MSI, a world leader in high-performance and innovative computing solutions, announced the Modern AM272 Series All-in-One PC featuring the latest software that can improve your productivity and security. Eye care and ergonomic design with an IPS panel which brings a wide viewing angle and enhanced viewing experience, Modern AM272 series are designed with efficiency and productivity in mind.

With a glorious design, Modern AM272 Series is designed to fit your lifestyle. The two colorways can fit in any corner well no matter in the office or at home. Not only the attractive appearance but the powerful efficacy also support your efficiency. Featuring up to 12th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and Iris Xe Graphics, you can edit your video, graphics, and multi-tasking with various programs smoother and faster. In addition, the instant display function which allows you to add another monitor, and the MSI Center app with customizable A.I. functions enhance the flexibility of work.

Mobileye, an Intel company, has launched the EyeQ Kit - its first software development kit (SDK) for the EyeQ system-on-chip that powers driver-assistance and future autonomous technologies for automakers worldwide. Built to leverage the powerful and highly power-efficient architecture of the upcoming EyeQ 6 High and EyeQ Ultra processors, EyeQ Kit allows automakers to utilize Mobileye's proven core technology, while deploying their own differentiated code and human-machine interface tools on the EyeQ platform.

"EyeQ Kit allows our customers to benefit from the best of both worlds — Mobileye's proven and validated core technologies, along with their own expertise in delivering unique driver experiences and interfaces. As more core functions of vehicles are defined in software, we know our customers will want the flexibility and capacity they need to differentiate and define their brands through code."
- Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye president and chief executive officer

Intel is preparing to launch its next-generation desktop platform codenamed Rocket Lake-S. According to the presentation held by Intel today in Shenzen, China, we have official information regarding some of the platform features that Raptor Lake is bringing. Starting with memory support, Raptor Lake is still carrying the transitional DDR4 and DDR5 support, as the full swing towards DDR5 is still in progress. Unlike the previous generation Alder Lake, which brought DDR5-4800 support, Raptor Lake's integrated memory controller can drive DDR5 modules with a 5600 MT/s configuration. As DDR4 support remains, it is limited to 3200 MT/s speed.

Interesting information from the leaked slide points out that support for CPU-attached NVMe storage remains PCIe Gen4. While AMD will provide an AM5 socket with CPU-attached NMVe storage on PCIe Gen5 protocol, Intel is taking a step back and holding on to Gen4. The CPU is outputting 16 PCIe Gen5 lanes on its own. Motherboard vendors for the upcoming 700-series boards for Raptor Lake can still provide a PCIe Gen5 NVMe slot; however, it will have to subtract eight Gen5 lanes from the PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slot and route them to NVMe storage. As our testing shows, this will affect GPU's performance by a few percent. AMD's upcoming AM5 platform has no such issues, as the CPU provides both the PEG and CPU-attached NVMe storage with sufficient PCIe Gen5 bandwidth.

With the new VIA 15 Pro, SCHENKER has put together a unique overall package: The 1.45 kg ultrabook integrates AMD's efficient eight-core Ryzen 7 5700U, a 15.6 inch WQHD IPS display and two freely accessible and upgradeable M.2 SSD and RAM slots - a combination that is usually only found in significantly heavier gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards. Unlike these, however, the VIA 15 Pro features AMD's energy-efficient, integrated Radeon graphics unit. With this outfit, the ultrabook is aimed at developers, programmers, and creative professionals, among others. The all-round office laptops SCHENKER WORK 15 and WORK 17 are also being updated with Intel's Alder Lake-P processors.

One of the most striking features of the SCHENKER VIA 15 Pro is a performance-enhanced AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with eight cores and 16 threads: instead of running the CPU with a TDP of 15 watts, which is common in the ultrabook sector, it can operate permanently at 35 watts in the highest performance profile ("enthusiast") - this way, it outperforms the majority of ULV processors and achieves a multi-score of 3937 points in Cinebench R20. The laptop's dual-fan cooling system was adopted from the 2020 predecessor model of the VIA 15 Pro, so it is designed for less efficient CPUs from the 54 watt TDP class and therefore guarantees superior and quiet cooling. Those who require somewhat less performance may select the medium performance profile ("balanced") for particularly quiet operation. Switching is possible in real time at the touch of a button via a keyboard shortcut.

For those wondering what happened to the Intel 12VO standard for motherboards, well, it's not dead, but it seems like the motherboard makers have chosen to largely ignore it. However, MSI has just launched a new 12VO motherboard, the PRO H610M 12VO, which is as the model name implies, a H610 based mATX motherboard. MSI is targeting the PRO H610M 12VO towards business computers and it's not hard to see why once you take a closer look at the specs. This is a bare minimum board in every aspect possible, with the chipset covered by the smallest of heatsinks and the VRMs getting none at all.

The board has a mere two DDR5 memory slots, one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot for an NVMe drive, a single x16 PCIe 4.0 slot and a x1 PCIe 3.0 slot, as well as a second M.2 slot for an optional CNVi or PCIe based Wi-Fi module. There's also four SATA ports, an Intel based Gigabit Ethernet port, two rear USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 port and three audio jacks via an ageing Realtek ALC897 audio chip. Rather unusually for a budget board, MSI went with a DisplayPort 1.4 and an HDMI 2.1 port, although both are limited to 4K 60p output and there's also a VGA port, just in case. MSI only appears to provide one power adapter for SATA drives, which seems to be limited to two SATA power connectors, although there's a second connector on the board, for a second SATA power cable. Overall, not a particularly impressive product, but it does at least keep Intel's 12VO platform alive for another day.

ASRock has released UEFI/BIOS updates for at least 47 of its 600-series chipset based motherboards, which will add support for the next generation of CPUs from Intel. The new CPUs are of course Intel's 13th gen Core CPU's, codenamed Raptor Lake, even though ASRock doesn't specifically mention this anywhere in the text on its portal site. We're expecting to see similar announcements from the other motherboard makers in due time. ASRock doesn't go into any kind of details as to which CPUs are supported and the company doesn't appear to have updated its CPU support lists yet, which is a shame, but not entirely unexpected, since the Raptor Lake CPUs aren't expected to launch until later this year.

However, ASRock has implemented what the company calls Auto Driver Installer or ADI in this UEFI/BIOS update for the boards and this is likely to be an unpopular addition, as it means drivers will be automatically be downloaded and installed if the system is connected to the internet. Presumably there will be an option to disable this feature, but it appears to be enabled by default, which has proven to be an unpopular option when other companies have done it. Admittedly it could be a handy feature during a new build or OS reinstall, but it's also a potential attack vector for malware.

Intel Labs announces a significant advancement in its integrated photonics research - the next frontier in increasing communication bandwidth between compute silicon in data centers and across networks. The latest research features industry-leading advancements in multiwavelength integrated optics, including the demonstration of an eight-wavelength distributed feedback (DFB) laser array that is fully integrated on a silicon wafer and delivers excellent output power uniformity of +/- 0.25 decibel (dB) and wavelength spacing uniformity of ±6.5% that exceed industry specifications.

"This new research demonstrates that it's possible to achieve well-matched output power with uniform and densely spaced wavelengths. Most importantly, this can be done using existing manufacturing and process controls in Intel's fabs, thereby ensuring a clear path to volume production of the next-generation co-packaged optics and optical compute interconnect at scale." -Haisheng Rong, senior principal engineer at Intel Labs

Iceotope, the global leader in Precision Immersion Cooling, has announced that its chassis-level cooling system is being demonstrated in the Intel Booth at HPE Discover 2022, the prestigious "Edge-to-cloud Conference". Ku:l Data Center is the product of a close collaboration between Iceotope, Intel and HPE and promises a faster path to net zero operations by reducing edge and data center energy use by nearly a third. Once the sole preserve of arcane, high performance computing applications, liquid cooling is increasingly seen as essential technology for reliable and efficient operations of any IT load in any location. There is a pressing concern about sustainability impacts as distributed edge computing environments proliferate to meet the demand for data processing nearer the point of use, as well as growing facility power and cooling consumption driven by AI augmentation and hotter chips.

Working together with Intel and HPE, Iceotope benchmarked the power consumption of a sample IT installation being cooled respectively using air and precision immersion liquid cooling. The results show a substantial advantage in favour of liquid cooling, reducing overall power use across IT and cooling infrastructure.

Intel is set to launch its 13th generation Raptor Lake processor lineup for desktop users sometime in September or October. However, the market is already supplied with early-stage engineering samples of Raptor Lake-S SKUs used for testing and software optimization. Today, we have the first listing of the upcoming flagship Intel Core i9-13900K processor with eight P-cores and 16 E-Cores on the CPU. The anonymous seller claims that the CPU is working with ASUS Z690 ROG Apex motherboards, boots up, and can be overclocked, which means that this is one of the newer engineering sample revisions. The sample was listed for 2850 Chinese Yuan, translating to about 426 USD. This price should be close to the final MSRP, and the CPU is already sold.

What is interesting is the appearance of this CPU on the black market way ahead of the launch. We can expect to see more details emerge as we get closer to the launch time later this year.

Hsinchu, Taiwan-based global semiconductor silicon wafer company, GlobalWafers, announced today that it plans to build a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter silicon wafer factory in Sherman, Texas, which is the first of its kind in the USA over twenty (20) years. Construction is expected to commence later this year. This 300-millimeter greenfield investment is consistent with the Company's announcement on February 6th of this year of brownfield and greenfield expansions totaling NTD 100 bn. This new Texas investment could also support as many as 1,500 jobs with production volumes ultimately reaching 1.2 mn wafers per month after multiple stages of equipment installation, in alignment with market demand.

300-millimeter silicon wafers are the starting material for all advanced semiconductor fabrication sites (or fabs), including recently announced United States (US) expansions by GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and TSMC. Most of these wafers are currently manufactured in Asia, forcing the US semiconductor industry to highly rely on imported silicon wafers. This investment will represent the first new silicon wafer facility in the US in over two decades and close a critical semiconductor supply chain gap.

Intel is preparing to enter the professional visualization graphics card market with its upcoming Arc Pro series. This would put it in competition with graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD, such as the Radeon Pro W-series, and RTX A-series. At least two SKUs have been confirmed in SiSoft SANDRA screenshots, the Arc Pro A40, and Arc Pro A50. Both appear to be based on the smaller 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon that physically features 1,024 unified shaders across 128 execution units (EU), or 8 Xe Cores, and up to 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit wide bus.

Intel could take a swing at entry-level pro-vis solutions from AMD and NVIDIA, such as the Radeon Pro W6400, Pro W6500M, NVIDIA RTX A2000, etc. There could be a design focus on multiple display connectivity options, as the cards could be targeted at commercial environments where workstations feature multiple high-resolution displays. The company could also develop mobile variants of these SKUs for mobile workstations. Intel could extensively advertise the media-acceleration and AI capabilities of the Xe-HPG architecture, including hardware-accelerated AV1 encode, and AI neural-net building, training, and inference acceleration. Another key differentiator for these cards could be validation by leading content-creation software vendors; and an elevated support level by Intel.