At Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and Intel's business leaders outlined key elements of the company's strategy and path for long-term growth. Intel's long-term plans will capitalize on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors. Among the presentations, Intel announced product roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including: Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics, Intel Foundry Services, Software and Advanced Technology, Network and Edge, Technology Development, More: For more from Intel's Investor Meeting 2022, including the presentations and news, please visit the Intel Newsroom and Intel.com's Investor Meeting site.

Things are apparently anything but smooth for TSMC when it comes to its US expansion in Arizona, as reports claim that the construction of its new fab in Arizona is going to be late. This is largely due to labour shortages caused by the pandemic, which in turn is set to delay the entire project. As such, it's being suggested that the installation of manufacturing equipment will be delayed from late Q3 this year until Q1 next year. The knock on effect of this is that production is unlikely to start in Q1 2024 and will most likely be delayed to sometime in the second half of 2024. As a comparison, TSMC normally spends two years to build and configure their fabs in Asia, whereas their first expansion outside of Asia is set to take at least two and a half years.

Another issue is said to be related to finding the right staff, since not only TSMC, but also Intel is looking for competent staff in Arizona. Intel might be the winner here, as TSMC is said to already have complaints from some of its employees, especially from western countries. The main complaint is about excessively long meetings that can add several hours to their workdays. Other complaints revolve around long working hours, as the company employs 12 hour shifts for its engineers and they are often on call over weekends. The company has apparently become increasingly demanding when it comes to its workforce, although TSMC has apparently improved in some ways, based on changes to the Taiwanese labour laws.

Following its acquisition of FPGA and network hardware giant Xilinx, AMD is a larger company in terms of market capitalization. At closing bell on Tuesday (15/02), this figure stands at $199.58 billion, which for the very first time in AMD's history, beats rival Intel, which closed at $197.20 billion. Chiakokhua, aka Retired Engineer, provided the calculation that arrives at the $199.58 billion market cap. Before close, AMD had a share-count of 1.216 billion. 427 million shares were issued to Xilinx shareholders, resulting in a share-count (after close) of 1.643 billion, which at a share price of $121.47 works out to $199.58 billion. At $121.47, AMD is still trading around 26% lower than its all-time high price of $165.46.

Update: The Intel acquisition of Tower Semiconductor has gone through for a value of $5.4 billion, at a price of $53 per share. Through the deal, Intel adds Tower Semiconductor's infrastructure, IP, technicians, logistics and clients to its portfolio. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that "Tower's specialty technology portfolio, geographic reach, deep customer relationships and services-first operations will help scale Intel's foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a major provider of foundry capacity globally." He then added that "This deal will enable Intel to offer a compelling breadth of leading-edge nodes and differentiated specialty technologies on mature nodes - unlocking new opportunities for existing and future customers in an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors." The original story follows.

Intel is reportedly looking to increase its manufacturing capability - and its cadre of wafer-purchasing clients - by acquiring Israeli semiconductor manufacturer Tower Semiconductor. If true, the deal will bring seven additional foundries to Intel's existing infrastructure, capable of 2 million wafer starts per year. The foundries are located across three continents: Tower Semiconductor owns and operates a 150 mm and a 200 mm fab in Migdal Haemek, Israel; two 200 mm fabs in the United States (Newport Beach, California and San Antonio, Texas); two 200 mm fabs in Japan; and one additional 300 mm fab in Japan. The deal could be finalized as soon as this week.

Intel's Alder Lake CPUs started the wave of hybrid designs spanning the consumer sector with high-performance P-cores and high-efficiency E-cores combined to make a mixed design work. And it seems like the replacement for it is already in progress, as the next-generation Intel "Raptor Lake" processors are continuing enablement in the Linux kernel. This next-generation Raptor Lake design will arrive towards the end of this year, and the software ecosystem is already preparing for its arrival. According to the report from Phoronix, audio support for Intel Raptor Lake processors has been added to the Linux kernel 5.18.

As the report points out, the enablement work is no different since days of Skylake, where adding new IDs to the driver gets the job done. However, what is interesting is that Raptor Lake is slowly getting the entire software ecosystem support functional. This shows with Linux kernel 5.17, where Raptor Lake-S Gen 12-based graphics card received initial software support. As the software matures, full support for Raptor Lake will come, especially as we enter the later months of 2022, when the next generation is supposed to arrive.

Intel recently announced the Core i9-12900KS, its new flagship desktop processor that comes as a deterrent to the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which the red-team claimed to be matching the current i9-12900K in gaming performance. The new i9-12900KS is built from the highest bins of the "Alder Lake-S" C0 silicon, which are needed to support the chip's 5.50 GHz maximum Turbo Boost frequency on the P-cores, and 3.90 GHz max Turbo on the E-cores. While the E-core max Turbo isn't any different from the i9-12900K, the P-core sees it go up from 5.20 GHz on the older model.

The Core i9-12900KS processor is now beginning to show up on retailers, with Shop BLT listing it at USD $791 for the boxed retail processor, and $780 for the chip-only OEM part. Even at these prices, the premium over the i9-12900K is barely $150. The listing also sheds light on increased power limits. The processor base power value for the i9-12900KS is set at 150 W, compared to 125 W on the i9-12900K. This isn't the same as PL1, as Intel changed the definition of its power definitions with the 12th Gen. The maximum turbo power value (PL2) remains unknown. For the i9-12900K, this is set at 241 W. This isn't the first "KS" SKU by Intel, with the last one, the i9-9900KS, shipping as the first processor with a 5.00 GHz all-core Turbo frequency. It remains to be seen if all Socket LGA1700 motherboards support the i9-12900KS with a firmware update, because not all 300-series chipset motherboards supported the i9-9900KS due to its steep electrical requirements.

Intel's Alder Lake family is apparently still growing and the latest leaks suggest that a new addition is on its way in the shape of the Alder Lake-N. This should be the most basic SKU of Alder Lake CPUs, as it'll only have "small" Gracemont cores and no Golden Cove cores at all, unlike all of its other siblings. The oddities don't stop here though, as these new CPUs won't even have any PCIe lanes from the CPU itself, beyond the chipset interconnect.

It's possible that these will be some kind of embedded parts, as Alder Lake-N is said to come with up to eight cores. The limitation of PCIe lines, of which apparently only a total of nine will be offered, is something that might make it less appealing for embedded systems, especially if it requires a separate chipset. It's possible that Intel has designed these new SKUs for Chromebooks or other budget notebooks, but they'd have to be priced extremely affordably to be appealing, considering how cheap Chromebooks already are. The chips are also said to feature a full GT1 Gen 12.2 GPU with up to 32 EUs, so graphics performance should at least be comparable to Alder Lake-S desktop parts. We'd hazard a guess that the GPU clocks will be a lot lower though.

Intel's next-generation Xeon processors code-named Sapphire Rapids are on track to hit the market this year. These new processors are supposed to bring a wide array of new and improved features and a chance for Intel to show off its 10 nm SuperFin manufacturing process in the server market. Thanks to the Twitter user YuuKi_AnS, we have some of the first tests run in AIDA64 and Cinebench R15 benchmark suites. Yuuki managed to get ahold of DDR5-enabled Sapphire Rapids Xeon with 48 cores and 96 threads, equipped with a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and boost speeds of 3.3 GHz. The processor tested was an engineering sample with a Q-SPEC designation of "QYFQ" and made for Intel Socket E (LGA-4677). This CPU sample was locked at 270 Watt TDP.

Below, you can see the performance results of this processor, tested in the AIDA64 cache and memory benchmark and Cinebench R15 bench test. There is a comparison between AMD's Milan-X and Xeon Platinum 8380, so the numbers are more in check of what you can expect from the final product.

Digital computing continues to enrich our lives in more ways than we can imagine. We acquire, consume, and create content and services with a few clicks or taps of our fingertips. Exponential increases in compute performance, enabled by Moore's Law, play a significant role in making these experiences seamless. Moore's Law is also enabling us to democratize access to this enormous pool of processing power. Amazing things happen when a lot of compute is available to a lot of people without much friction.

Blockchain is a technology that has the potential to enable everyone to own much of the digital content and services they create. Some even call it an inflection point in computing, fundamentally disrupting the way we store, process and transact our digital assets as we usher in the era of metaverse and Web 3.0. No matter how the future evolves, it is certain the availability of a lot more compute to everyone will play a central role.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today, unveils the brand new TZ590-BTC motherboard. Designed based on the Intel Z590 chipset that runs Intel 10th and 11th gen processors, BIOSTAR's new TZ590-BTC motherboard targets the mid-range audience of casual gamers, content creators, and users looking to build an HTPC for casual-content consumption. The TZ590-BTC also specializes in crypto mining with native inbuilt functionality to support this claim.

Available in a full-ATX form factor, the new TZ590-BTC motherboard provides a strong feature-rich base for users, with functionality such as PCIe 4.0, PCIe M.2 4.0. An 11 Phase power design controlled by BIOSTAR's signature DIGITAL PWM technology keeps everything running smooth and safe. 4x DDR4 RAM slots that support up to 3600 (OC) with a maximum capacity of 128 GB come in handy for all purposes. The TZ590-BTC has 8x PCIe 3.0x1 Slots, ideal for BITCOIN and ETHEREUM mining, as well as a single PCIe 4.0 x16 Slot targeting exceptional performance.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, introduces the all-new T9-423 9-bay high-performance NAS designed for small- and medium-sized businesses. The TerraMaster T9-423 is ideal for enterprise applications such as file storage servers, mail servers, web servers, FTP servers, virtual machine hosts, and other enterprise-level applications.

The TerraMaster T9-423 is powered by a quad-core 2.00 GHz (2.90 GHz boost) Intel Core processor and comes with two 2.5 GbE ports with support for Link Aggregation, delivering speeds of up to 283 MB/s. It supports multi-user and high-concurrent file access. Its compact chassis can be mounted vertically and horizontally to provide builders flexibility of use.

Cincoze's latest DI-1100 series of compact, high-performance, and power-saving rugged embedded industrial computers with rich interface options is receiving a warm welcome in the smart factory industry. The DI-1100 series is ideal for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), ensuring on-time delivery of components to the production line or goods to warehouse racks, and suitable for 24/7 operation in outdoor remote monitoring systems. These diverse applications are crucial to all smart factories looking to reduce personnel, control costs, increase shipments, and implement outdoor monitoring.

Structurally, there are three major parts to an AMR: the hardware, the software, and the user interface. The robot's hardware consists of the mechanical design, sensors, motion control, and the computer. The computer is the most critical part for integration because it must serve as the robot's center and interface with various devices and software interfaces. For this application, it is essential to choose a high-performance, power-saving, and compact rugged industrial embedded computer with diverse I/O. Cincoze's latest DI-1100 series uses a high-performance 8th Gen quad-core Intel Core i7/i5/i3 (Whiskey Lake-U) CPU and supports one DDR4 2400 MHz SO-DIMM up to 64 GB to meet the high-efficiency computing requirements for real-time dynamic detection, obstacle detection, and multitasking.

Adobe's Premiere Pro, one of the most common video editing tools in the industry, has received a February update today with version 22.2. The new version brings a wide array of features like Adobe Remix, an advanced audio retiming tool. Alongside that, the latest update accelerates offline text-to-speech capabilities by as much as three times. However, this is not the most significant feature, as we are about to see. Adobe also enabled 10-bit 420 HDR HEVC H/W encoding on Window with Intel and NVIDIA graphics. This feature allows the software to use advanced hardware built-in the NVIDIA Quadro RTX and Intel Iris Xe graphics cards.

The company managed to run some preliminary tests, and you can see the charts below. They significantly improve export times with the latest 22.2 software version that enables HEVC 10-Bit hardware encoding. For Intel GPUs, no special drivers need to be installed. However, for NVIDIA GPUs, Adobe is advising official Studio drivers in combination with Quadro RTX GPUs.

Despite its technical advantages over NAND flash, Intel's Optane memory technology never really took off in the consumer space, largely due to its much higher costs. Based on details from Intel's SEC filings, it would appear that its corporate customers haven't been overly impressed either, as Intel filed a US$576 million loss in 2020 with regards to its Optane business.

As to if this trend continued in 2021, we're going to have to wait and see, but it looks like the losses are set to continue based on its revenue figures, according to Blocks and Files. With this in mind, it seems like Micron's exit from 3D XPoint memory isn't so hard to understand, as the technology is clearly too costly to make up for the benefits on offer, for most of its potential customer base. Transitions to higher-density 3D XPoint memory has also been slow, which might be yet another reason customers have shied away from using it, even as a caching solution in storage servers. It wouldn't surprise us if Intel moves on from Optane/3D XPoint memory in the near future, as the company seems to have shifted its focus firmly away from storage solutions.

Ansys today announced its inaugural partnership to IFS Accelerator - EDA Alliance to provide best-in-class EDA tools and simulation solutions that will support customer innovation, including bespoke silicon for customizable three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D-IC) designs. By leveraging Ansys' market-leading multiphysics solutions, IFS Accelerator will make silicon technology available to customers to design uniquely innovative chips. Ansys' cutting-edge EDA and simulation tools will enable mutual customers to reduce design barriers, minimize design risk and cost, and accelerate time-to-market.

The IFS Accelerator will foster collaborative innovation with world-leading EDA, design services and IP partners to provide a comprehensive design ecosystem with premium process technologies, advanced packaging technologies, and manufacturing capabilities. "We are excited to announce the IFS Accelerator - EDA Alliance as a major step forward for Intel's foundry ambitions," said Rahul Goyal, VP and GM of Intel Product & Design Ecosystem Enablement. "Together with Ansys and other partners, this alliance will create advanced flows and methodologies, and accelerate productivity by combining our knowledge, resources, and shared passion to drive electronic design."

The world's leading computer brand, GIGABYTE's new generation AERO creator series laptops featuring Intel's latest 12 generation processors and RTX 30 series graphics cards have hit shelves. The dual chip approach improved processing performance by 28% vastly improving the time efficiency for creators. The newly released AERO 16 utilizes a 16:10 golden ratio 4K OLED screen and a 4 side super narrow bezel design revolutionizing the field of vision for creators. In addition to boasting a film industry standard of 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut, each laptop has undergone correction and certification by color authorities, X-Rite and Pantone, before leaving the factory ensuring the most accurate color display.

The AERO 16, designed specifically for creators, also captures the essence of creators with an aesthetic, chassis carefully integrated with CNC aluminium alloy, every detail skillfully crafted by GIGABYTE designers. Coming along with the AERO 16 and AERO 17, the AERO HUB is a must-have mobile workstation for content creators.

Intel put out a clear, close-up picture of its Arc "Alchemist" gaming graphics card engineering sample. This matches with a picture of the PCB rear shot that surfaced in a report by "Moore's Law is Dead." The picture reveals a PCB that's about 3/4th the length of the cooling solution, with the remainder of the cooler's length being used to directly vent airflow from the back.

The PCB reveals a rectangular pad for the GPU, which corresponds with that of the larger "Alchemist" GPU. This is surrounded by what look like eight GDDR6 memory pads for a 256-bit wide memory interface; at least 10 VRM phases of an unknown configuration; and a power input configuration that's made up of one each of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors (capable of delivering 300 W including slot power). The PCB shows traces that connect the GPU to all 16 PCI-Express lanes of the PCIe finger. Display outputs include three full-size DisplayPorts and an HDMI. This particular variant of "Alchemist" is rumored to feature 512 execution units (4,096 unified shaders), and at least in SiSoft SANDRA, it allegedly outperforms the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti "Ampere."

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has launched 3 new research and innovation projects. The projects aim to bring the EU and its partners in the EuroHPC JU closer to developing independent microprocessor and HPC technology and advance a sovereign European HPC ecosystem. The European Processor Initiative (EPI SGA2), The European PILOT and the European Pilot for Exascale (EUPEX) are interlinked projects and an important milestone towards a more autonomous European supply chain for digital technologies and specifically HPC.

With joint investments of €140 million from the European Union (EU) and the EuroHPC JU Participating States, the three projects will carry out research and innovation activities to contribute to the overarching goal of securing European autonomy and sovereignty in HPC components and technologies, especially in anticipation of the European exascale supercomputers.

Mesh shader is a relatively new concept of a programmable geometric shading pipeline, which promises to simplify the whole graphics rendering pipeline organization. NVIDIA introduced this concept with Turing back in 2018, and AMD joined with RDNA2. Today, thanks to the finds of Phoronix, we have gathered information that Intel's DG2 GPU will carry support for mesh shaders and bring it under Vulkan API. For starters, the difference between mesh/task and traditional graphics rendering pipeline is that the mesh edition is much simpler and offers higher scalability, bandwidth reduction, and greater flexibility in the design of mesh topology and graphics work. In Vulkan, the current mesh shader state is NVIDIA's contribution called the VK_NV_mesh_shader extension. The below docs explain it in greater detail:

Vulkan API documentationThis extension provides a new mechanism allowing applications to generate collections of geometric primitives via programmable mesh shading. It is an alternative to the existing programmable primitive shading pipeline, which relied on generating input primitives by a fixed function assembler as well as fixed function vertex fetch.

There are new programmable shader types—the task and mesh shader—to generate these collections to be processed by fixed-function primitive assembly and rasterization logic. When task and mesh shaders are dispatched, they replace the core pre-rasterization stages, including vertex array attribute fetching, vertex shader processing, tessellation, and geometry shader processing.

Intel is expanding its Bug Bounty program with Project Circuit Breaker, bringing together a community of elite hackers to hunt bugs in firmware, hypervisors, GPUs, chipsets and more. Project Circuit Breaker broadens and deepens Intel's existing open Bug Bounty program by hosting targeted time-boxed events on specific new platforms and technologies, providing training and creating opportunities for more hands-on collaboration with Intel engineers. Project Circuit Breaker's first event, Camping with Tigers, is already underway with a group of 20 researchers who received systems with Intel Core i7 processors (formerly "Tiger Lake").

Project Circuit Breaker is possible thanks to our cutting-edge research community. This program is part of our effort to meet security researchers where they are and create more meaningful engagement. We invest in and host bug bounty programs because they attract new perspectives on how to challenge emerging security threats - and Project Circuit Breaker is the next step in collaborating with researchers to strengthen the industry's security assurance practices, especially when it comes to hardware. We look forward to seeing how the program will evolve and to introducing new voices to the meaningful work that we do."
-Katie Noble, director, Intel Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) and Bug Bounty

Intel's Alder Lake processors have two types of cores present, with two distinct sets of features and capabilities enabled. For example, smaller E-cores don't support the execution of AVX-512 instructions, while the bigger P-cores have support for AVX-512 instructions. So Intel has decided to remove support for it altogether not to create software errors and run into issues with executing AVX-512 code on Alder Lake processors. This happened just months before the launch of Alder Lake, making us see some initial motherboard BIOSes come with AVX-512 enabled from the box. Later on, all motherboard makers pulled the plug on it, and it is a rare sight to see support for it.

However, it seems like MSI is unhappy with the lack of AVX-512, and the company is reenabling partial support for it. According to Xaver Amberger, editor at Igor's Lab, MSI reintroduces selecting microcode version with its MEG Z690 Unify-X motherboard. There is an option for AVX-512 enablement in the menu, and it is indeed a functional one. With BIOS A22, MSI enabled AVX-512 instruction execution, and there are benchmarks to prove it works. This shows an advantage of 512-bit wide execution units of AVX-512 over something like AVX2, which offers only 256-bit wide execution units. In applications such as Y-Cruncher, AVX-512 enabled the CPU to reach higher performance targets while consuming less power.

The world's leading computer brand, GIGABYTE, launched its new generation of AORUS professional gaming laptops featuring Intel's 12th generation processors and Nvidia's RTX 30Ti series graphics cards. The upgraded dual-chip approach has resulted in a great leap in performance and smoother gaming experience, with a 11% increase in gaming performance. In addition to an upgraded performance, AORUS has pushed the limits of size dimensions of notebooks in order to improve visual enjoyment for gamers.

The AORUS 17, GIGABYTE's flagship model laptop debuted at CES 2022, changed the rules of the game by introducing a 17-inch screen panel inside a 15-inch tall laptop chassis. By adopting an extremely narrow four-sided frame design, AORUS increased the screen-to-body ratio to 90%, so you see more while carrying less. Without compromising any performance, the screen still boasts a 360 Hz refresh rate, allowing players to see more frames and win more games.

Global semiconductor sales revenue grew by a more than comfortable 25% in 2021, hitting a new record above $500 Billion for the first time. The data, part of Gartner's preliminary report on the state of the industry in 2021, bookends yet another year plagued with shortages and too little supply for the thirst of the consumer and business sectors. Naturally, supply constraints have led to higher ASP (Average Selling Prices) for the hardware that does get manufactured and distributed, as we've seen all too well in the graphics card market.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame is where overclockers submit their best hardware benchmark trials and try to beat the very best. For years, one record managed to hold, and today it just got defeated. According to an extreme overclocker called "biso biso" from South Korea and a part of the EVGA OC team, the top spot now belongs to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. The previous 3DMark Fire Strike world record was set on April 22nd in 2020, when Vince Lucido, also known as K|NGP|N, set a record with four-way SLI of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. However, that record is old news since January 27th, when biso biso set the history with AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU.

The overclocker scored 62389 points, just 1,183 more from the previous record. He pushed the Navi 21 XTX silicon that powers the Radeon RX 6900 XT card to an impressive 3,147 MHz. Paired with a GPU memory clock of 2370 MHz, the GPU was probably LN2 cooled to achieve these results. The overclocker used EVGA's Z690 DARK KINGPIN motherboard with Intel Core i9-12900K processor as a platform of choice to achieve this record. You can check it out on the 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame website to see yourself.

Raja Koduri, Intel's Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, has responded via Twitter to an open letter from PC Gamer that addressed the nightmare-like state for GPU pricing and availability, classifying it as "a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large". Intel says they are looking to put millions of Arc GPUs into PC Gamer's hands as the company fast approaches the end of the reaffirmed Q1 launch window for its new high-performance discrete graphics products. The reading on this is that Intel plans to add to the available mass of GPUs that consumers can buy, thus alleviating the strain from overwhelming consumer demand, and bringing about a much healthier market - with real and acceptable pricing for graphics products.

That Intel plans to ship millions of Arc GPUs to consumers is no surprise; the company definitely wants to recoup its investment in developing consumer-oriented, high-performance graphics architectures. However, any claims or expectations of improved GPU supply in the market should be taken with a grain of salt, as the bottleneck for graphics products stands not at the GPU design level, but at the semiconductor manufacturing one: namely, there are only so many GPU wafers that graphics chips designers can secure from foundry company TSMC, which also serves customers like Apple, Qualcomm, and other technology industry giants.