Pictures and details of Intel's next NUC, that goes under the codename Wall Street Canyon has made its way onto the internet and besides the expected upgrade to Intel's 12th generation of Core processors, there aren't any huge changes, but there are at least a few interesting differences. The most obvious one being that Wall Street Canyon has two USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports around the front, instead of one USB-A and one Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port around the front of the current model. It's not clear if this is due to a technical limitation of Thunderbolt 4, or if Intel decided it was more useful to keep the two Thunderbolt ports around the back for most of its potential customers. Regardless, this is where the two Thunderbolt 4 ports now reside, alongside two HDMI 2.0b ports, with the mini-DP port having been dropped altogether.

Other connectivity options include 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, a USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps) and a USB 2.0 port around the back, as well as a 3.5 mm audio jack around the front. The Wall Street Canyon NUC is also said to have models with Qi charging for mobile devices. As far as CPU choices go, the base model should be an Intel Core i3-1220P, ranging to the top model with a Core i7-1270P, or in other words, most of the 28 W TDP Alder Lake-P processors. Wall Street Canyon has space for one internal 2.5-inch drive, as well as a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, a shorter M.2 2260 slot for a SATA based drive and an Intel AX211 WiFi and Bluetooth module. The two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots support memory speeds of up to 3200 MHz. No word on pricing as yet, but we'd expect the pricing to be similar, if not slightly higher than the current models

Intel today announced details for its new Intel Blockscale ASIC. Building on years of Intel research and development (R&D), this application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) will provide customers with energy-efficient hashing for proof-of-work consensus networks. Compute requirement for blockchains utilizing proof-of-work consensus mechanisms is growing at a rapid rate due to their resiliency and ability to scale without sacrificing decentralization. This growing pool of computing power requires an enormous amount of energy, necessitating new computing technologies that can provide the requisite power in a more energy-efficient manner while also being durable enough to mitigate long-term e-waste concerns.

"Momentum around blockchain continues to build. It is the enabler of decentralized and distributed computing, making way for innovative business models. To power this new era of computing, Intel is delivering solutions that can offer an optimal balance of hashing throughput and energy efficiency regardless of a customer's operating environment. Intel's decades of R&D in cryptography, hashing techniques and ultra-low voltage circuits make it possible for blockchain applications to scale their computing power without compromising on sustainability," said Balaji Kanigicherla, Intel vice president and general manager of Custom Compute in the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group.

Gamers across the world seem to have settled on the price-performance ratio of hexa-core CPUs as their weapon of choice to process virtual worlds. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, 34.22% of machines running steam feature a CPU design with six physical cores, surpassing the 33.74% of users that employ a quad-core processor.

The first mainstream quad-core CPUs were launched circa 2009, having had thirteen years in the market already, while mainstream, true hexa-core designs saw the light of day just a year later, with AMD's Phenom II X6 CPUs. CPU designs featuring more than six physical cores have been increasing in numbers consistently throughout the years, while most under-six-core designs have been slowly bleeding users as gamers upgrade their systems. Our own reviews have shown that the best price-performance ratios for gaming are found in the hexa-core arena, but the latest architectures should help accelerate the number of available cores for mainstream users - whether for gaming purposes or not.

Although it hasn't been verified, it would appear that Intel might have let slip some details of its upcoming Arc A780 desktop GPU in a video where the company was showing off its Arc Control graphics card control and monitoring software. For a brief second or two, the Live Performance Monitoring part of Arc Control was shown in the video, displaying GPU and VRAM clocks for one of its upcoming GPUs, alongside the GPU power of the same card. As to the exact product, that is now being discussed on the internet, but the current consensus based on all the specs, is that it could be the Arc A780.

The reasoning behind this, is that the Arc A350M, which could in theory boost to 2,250 MHz, doesn't meet the listed GPU power of 175 W, nor does the much slower clocked Arc A770M mobile part. The VRAM clock at 1093 MHz also suggests an effective memory throughput of 17.5 Gbps, which is faster than the fastest mobile GPU according to the specs available so far. It also means that Intel is going for high-performance memory on its high-end parts, as this GPU has higher memory bandwidth than a GeForce RTX 3070, which sits at 14 Gbps. It's also possible that we're looking at a development card here and that these specs won't make it into a final product, so we'll just have to wait until this summer to see what Intel has in store for us.

The VAIO FE Series is now available exclusively at Walmart.com in the U.S. VAIO, the premier Japanese computer brand known for exceptional quality notebooks equipped with the latest technology, launches laptops starting at an affordable $699. The FE Series offers the high-performance and superior quality consumers have come to expect from the VAIO brand for a fraction of the cost of comparable devices. The VAIO FE Series has an impressive, ultra-sleek design, and is built with state-of-the-art technology including 11th Gen Intel Core Processors, Microsoft Windows 11, and THX Spatial Audio to provide unsurpassed performance and entertainment experiences.

"We are very excited to introduce VAIO to more customers in the United States through the new distribution at Walmart. I hope our ingenious laptops will give exceptional performance and experience to our new customers," said Masaki Yamano, President & CEO of VAIO Corporation. "Bringing the VAIO FE Series to the US market makes premium notebooks more accessible to help meet the demand for high-performance laptops."

Intel Corporation today announced an agreement to acquire Granulate Cloud Solutions Ltd, an Israel-based developer of real-time continuous optimization software. The acquisition of Granulate will help cloud and data center customers maximize compute workload performance and reduce infrastructure and cloud costs. Deal terms are not being disclosed.

"Today's cloud and data center customers demand scalable, high-performance software to make the most of their hardware deployments," said Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and AI Group at Intel. "Granulate's cutting-edge autonomous optimization software can be applied to production workloads without requiring the customer to make changes to its code, driving optimized hardware and software value for every cloud and data center customer."

Some interesting technical specifications of the elusive two GPUs behind the Intel Arc "Alchemist" series surfaced. The larger DG2-512 silicon in particular, which forms the base for the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series, is interesting, in that it is larger in every way than the performance-segment ASICs from both NVIDIA and AMD. The table below compares the physical specs of the DG2-512, with the NVIDIA GA104, and the AMD Navi 22. This segment of GPUs has fairly powerful use-cases, including native 1440p gameplay, or playing at 4K with a performance enhancement—something Intel has, in the form of the XeSS.

The DG2-512 is built on the 6 nm TSMC N6 foundry node, the most advanced node among the three GPUs in this class. It has the highest transistor density of 53.4 mTr/mm², and the largest die-area of 406 mm², and the highest transistor-count of 21.7 billion. The Xe-HPG graphics architecture is designed for full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature support, and the DG2-512 dedicated hardware for ray tracing, as well as AI acceleration. The Arc A770M is the fastest product based on this silicon, however, it is a mobile GPU with aggressive power-management characteristic to the form-factor it serves. Here, the DG2-512 has an FP32 throughput of 13.5 TFLOPs, compared to 13.2 TFLOPs of the Navi 22 on the Radeon RX 6700 XT desktop graphics card, and the 21.7 TFLOPs of the GA104 that's maxed out on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti desktop graphics card.

After today's mobile Arc GPU reveal, Intel has also teased its first desktop Arc graphics card in a YouTube video that gives us a first sneak peek of its first desktop graphics card since the late 1990's. Although it's not clear which card Intel is showing off in the video, as the card simply says Intel ARC Limited Edition on the back, it's clear that Intel has gone with a simpler design than those early concepts the company was showing off a couple of years ago. Based on the animated render, we'd hazard a guess that this is a higher-end model, as it appears to have eight memory ICs, as well as a somewhat elaborate cooling system with four heatpipes.

Two fans can also be seen in the video, although the mounting appears somewhat unusual compared to most graphics cards. The back of the card is covered, but it's not obvious if this is a functional rear cover or just for looks. The card also has three DisplayPort and one HDMI outputs. However, what can't be seen in the video, is any kind of power connectors on the card, although it's unlikely that Intel has managed to make a graphics card that doesn't require an external power-input, at least not based on what is known about Intel's upcoming Arc GPUs. The video ends with a message of the new cards coming in the summer of 2022. Based on the video, it seems like we should expect Intel branded retail cards, albeit in a limited production run and most likely only in select markets. You can watch the video after the break.

For decades, Intel has been a champion for PC platform innovation. We have delivered generations of CPUs that provide the computing horsepower for billions of people. We advanced connectivity through features like USB, Thunderbolt and Wi-Fi. And in partnership with the PC ecosystem, we developed the ground-breaking PCI architecture and the Intel Evo platform, pushing the boundary for what mobile products can do. Intel is uniquely positioned to deliver PC platform innovations that meet the ever-increasing computing demands of professionals, consumers, gamers and creators around the world. Now, we take the next big step.

Today, we are officially launching our Intel Arc graphics family for laptops, completing the Intel platform. These are the first discrete GPUs from our Intel Arc A-Series graphics portfolio for laptops, with our desktop and workstation products coming later this year. You can visit our Newsroom for our launch video, product details and technical demos, but I will summarize the highlights of how our Intel Arc platform and A-Series mobile GPU family will deliver hardware, software, services and - ultimately - high-performance graphics experiences.

Intel is preparing to debut the Arc "Alchemist" line of graphics processors with a mobile-first approach, where the company leverages its bulletproof relations with notebook manufacturers to use its discrete mobile GPUs to go with their 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors. These will be launch in two tranches, with the first round expected as early as today (March 30), according to a VideoCardz report citing a leaked company slide. The series will debut with the Arc 3 series of entry-level discrete GPUs, before moving onto the mid-range Arc 5 and premium Arc 7 series "early summer" (we read that as May-June, 2022).

The entire lineup of Arc "Alchemist" is based on two ASICs, the smaller one is the ACM-G11, or DG2-128; while the larger one is the ACM-G10, or DG2-512. The former comes with 128 execution units (EU), while the larger one has 512 EU. The Arc 3 series, consisting of the A350M and A370M, come with 96 and 128 EU (768 and 1,024 unified shaders), respectively, The mid-range Arc A550M is based on the lowest trim of the DG2-512, with half its EU count disabled (256 EU, or 2,048 shaders). The Arc A730M has three-fourths of the EU count enabled, while the A770M maxes it out.

Intel made great efforts to prove its abilities as a market leader by releasing the latest Intel Core i9-12900KS Processor for Alpha DIY gamers and extreme enthusiasts who seek the best gaming performance. This special edition processor is based on the robust Intel Core i9-12900K architecture, a halo processor with even more performance with increased clock speeds and power limit.

The current MSI 600-series motherboards natively support Intel Core i9-12900KS Processor, but if you want to unleash even more performance, MSI provides the dedicated BIOS for this power-hungry monster. Currently, you can find the dedicated BIOS for selected Z690 motherboards, MSI will release more 600-series motherboards continuously.

Intel started selling its new flagship desktop processor, the special edition Core i9-12900KS, on Newegg for USD $799. Based on the highest bins of the "Alder Lake-S" C0 silicon, the chip has the same configuration as the i9-12900K, with 8 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 30 MB of L3 cache; but higher clock speeds. The chip offers maximum Turbo Boost frequencies of 5.50 GHz on the P-cores, compared to 5.20 GHz for the regular i9-12900K. The Newegg listing mentions the i9-12900KS to have the same power limits as the i9-12900K, with 125 W processor base power (PBP) and 241 W maximum turbo power (MTP), and not the previously reported 150 W PBP with 260 W MTP.

Update 20:50 UTC: And the listing on Newegg has vanished, which probably has to do with Intel's embargo ending only next week. Sales are supposedly starting not before April.

The Intel Arc A370M was put through the "Ashes of the Singularity" benchmark. In two separate runs, the GPU ended up with a score of 3500 and 3600 points in the "Min_1080p" configuration, with an average framerate of 67 FPS in the normal batch. The notebook test-platform this chip ran on consisted of a Core i7-12700H processor, and 32 GB of memory.

3500 points is a rather vague score for this benchmark, given that GPUs from a wide range of market segments attained the similar scores (albeit on very different CPU and memory configurations). The A370M is expected to be SKU that maxes out the smaller DG2 ASIC that physically features 128 execution units (1,024 unified shaders), and a 64-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus holding 4 GB of memory. This A370M should offer roughly twice the performance as the Iris Xe iGPU with 96 EUs found in quad-core "Tiger Lake" mobile processors.

MSI, a world leader in gaming hardware and innovative business solutions, announces today new Business and Productivity laptops for the Summit, Prestige, and Modern Series with 12th Gen Intel Core Processor. MSI revamps the whole business and productivity product line to maximized anyone who needs productivity

The Intel Evo platform certification was awarded to the Summit and Prestige series for their lightweight design, rapid response, and long-lasting battery life. Discrete graphics, powered by NVIDIA, fuel the Summit and Prestige series to help people express their passion and help business professionals reach their goals. The Summit Flip models also feature a seamless 360° 2-in-1 design utilizing the touch screen capability to swap into a tablet mode. And for the Modern series, popular French illustrator Lorraine Sorlet collaborated on four visual designs revitalizing the series with a more "modern" look. The robust lineup has a Business or Productivity laptop for everyone.

Yesterday, NVIDIA announced its next-generation Hopper architecture designed for data center applications and workloads. There is always a question of availability, as the previous period showed everyone that the supply chain is overbooked and semiconductors are in very high demand. During the Q&A press session today, NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, tried to answer as many questions as possible. However, an exciting topic arose regarding the potential collaboration with Intel. As a part of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy, the company plans to offer its chip manufacturing capabilities to the third-party companies willing to make efforts and port their designs to Intel's semiconductor nodes. NVIDIA, one of the largest TSMC customers, could be a new Intel customer. Below, we compiled a few quotes that highlight Jensen Huang's opinions, taking the quotes from Tom's Hardware.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen HuangOur strategy is to expand our supply base with diversity and redundancy at every single layer. At the chip layer, at the substrate layer, the system layer, at every single layer. We've diversified the number of nodes, we've diversified the number of foundries, and Intel is an excellent partner of ours[…]. They're interested in us using their foundries, and we're very interested in exploring it. [...] I am encouraged by the work that is done at Intel, I think this is a direction they have to go, and we're interested in looking at their process technology. Our relationship with Intel is quite long; we work with them across a whole lot of different areas, every single PC, every single laptop, every single PC, supercomputer, we collaborate. [...] We have been working closely with Intel, sharing with them our roadmap long before we share it with the public, for years. Intel has known our secrets for years. AMD has known our secrets for years. We are sophisticated and mature enough to realize that we have to collaborate.[...] We share roadmaps, of course, under confidentiality and a very selective channel of communications. The industry has just learned how to work in that way.

Intel has published the most significant update to industry power supply specifications since the initial ATX 2.0 specs were introduced in 2003. Updated ATX 3.0 specifications unlock the full power and potential of next-generation hardware and upcoming components built for technologies like PCIe Gen 5.0. Intel has also revised its ATX12VO spec to provide the PC industry with an updated blueprint for designing power supply units (PSUs) and motherboards that reduce power draw at idle, helping customers lower electrical demand.

"Power supplies based on ATX 3.0 and ATX12VO 2.0 will ensure anyone looking to get the most stable and cost optimized performance possible with highest power efficiency out of their desktop PCs will be able to do so - both now and in the future, " said Stephen Eastman, Intel platform power specialist.

MSI, a world leader in computer hardware and solutions, has launched a new generation of revamped mobile workstations. In 2022, MSI rebranded its Workstation lineup to the CreatorPro series. The new series not only meets the needs of professional industries, but also makes the overall design more elegant with clean lines, accelerating business and individual studios with a variety of choices.

Driven by the latest NVIDIA RTX professional graphics, and the 12th gen Intel Core processors, the workstations are now capable of delivering up to 45% performance compared to previous models. The CreatorPro Series speeds up the rendering to guarantee greater visual accuracy and computing power. Whether users are working with large-scale complex modeling, processing big data analytics, rendering architectural blueprints or even experiencing high-fidelity VR content that demands stable frame-rates, MSI's mobile workstations ensure peak performance. Certified by ISV and tested at the highest level to pass MIL-spec standards, MSI Workstations allow users to take their productivity and portability to the next level.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, introduces the T12-423 12-bay professional compact NAS. Designed for small-sized and medium-sized businesses, the T12-423 comes equipped with a more powerful and efficient Intel Celeron quad-core processor for high-speed transmission and virtualization applications.

The TerraMaster T12-423 has 12 bays that support 3.5" HDDs and 2.5" SSD/HDDs, up to 240 TB of internal raw storage capacity. It has two M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs for SSD caching. This TNAS comes with 8 GB DDR4 SODIMM memory, upgradeable up to 32 GB (2x 16 GB) with its two SODIMM slots. It is also equipped with two 2.5GbE NICs with Link Aggregation support.

Dynabook Americas, Inc., formerly Toshiba PC Company, today announced that it has refreshed its performance-rich 14-inch Tecra A40-K and 15-inch Tecra A50-K laptops to benefit from new hybrid-architecture 12th Gen Intel Core P-Series 28 W processor options and Windows 11 Pro. "With more than 35 years of experience creating powerful, feature rich laptops for businesses, our engineers take the time to truly understand the computing pain points faced by professionals, as well as what they need and want in their laptops," said James Robbins, general manager, Dynabook Americas, Inc. "While productivity and portability remain top priorities, we've paid extra attention to making our Tecra laptops feel premium while maximizing their performance, durability and available features without compromising price competitiveness."

From the corner office to the local café, the 14-inch Tecra A40-K is a performance-rich laptop for today's work-from-anywhere professionals. Measuring just 18.9 mm thin, this laptop delivers a productivity-maximizing workspace with a vibrant 14-inch narrow-bezel display, webcam with privacy shutter, backlit keyboard, and large ClickPad with optional fingerprint reader. Offering next-level productivity with matching speed, and style, the 15-inch Tecra A50-K from Dynabook makes any place a productive workspace. Designed for the modern hybrid workplace, this laptop features a 19.9 mm thin chassis that houses an expansive 15.6-inch thin-bezel display, full-size backlit keyboard with 10-key, large ClickPad with optional fingerprint reader and webcam with privacy shutter.

We recently reported on the unnamed discrete Intel Arc Alchemist GPU found in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro. That listing has now been removed but Finnish retailer Proshop has posted two models of the upcoming Acer Swift X laptop featuring Intel Arc A370M graphics cards. The listings include a Core i5-1240P and Core i7-1260P model each featuring 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and an Intel Arc A370M GPU available to pre-order for 1299 EUR and 1549 EUR respectively.

The Intel Arc A370M is based on the DG2-128EU GPU and is expected to feature 4 GB of VRAM on a 64-bit memory bus. The Intel Arc Alchemist discrete mobile graphics cards will be officially unveiled by Intel on March 30th with claims of a 2x performance improvement from the integrated 96EU Iris-XE GPU found in the Core i7-12700H. The Acer Swift X laptops are listed by Proshop as not being available until May 25th almost 2 months after the official announcement.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, networking solutions, and green computing technology, has announced a revolutionary technology that simplifies large scale GPU deployments and is a future proof design that supports yet to be announced technologies. The Universal GPU server provides the ultimate flexibility in a resource-saving server.

The Universal GPU system architecture combines the latest technologies supporting multiple GPU form factors, CPU choices, storage, and networking options optimized together to deliver uniquely-configured and highly scalable systems. Systems can be optimized for each customer's specific Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications. Organizations worldwide are demanding new options for their next generation of computing environments, which have the thermal headroom for the next generation of CPUs and GPUs.

Intel's Arc discrete lineup of graphics card are set to hit the notebook/laptop segment first, and today's discovery is no different. BHPhotoVideo, one of the largest US tech retailers, has posted a listing of Samsung's Galaxy Book2 Pro laptop, spotting Intel's Arc discrete graphics solution. According to the listing, this model was spotting an undisclosed Intel Arc Graphics, 2.1 GHz 12-core CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory, 512 GB of NVMe PCIe Gen4 storage, 15.6-inch 1080p AMOLED display, WiFi-6E, and came in just 1.13 KG body weight. All of this is packed at 1349.99 USD, which is an early sign of the structure of laptop prices carrying Intel's Arc GPUs.

BHPhotoVideo has now taken down the website listing; however, we still have evidence thanks to the leaker, which you can see below. For more information regarding the exact SKU and more Arc Alchemist data, we have to wait for the March 30th launch.

According to Igor's Lab, Intel has listed a new product on its non-public ARK site that lists what appears to be a motherboard product with an Intel Arc GPU. The product listing is very peculiar, as it's listed as a graphics card, but the "family name" is DG2MB. It's also said to have a clock speed of 4 GHz, 16 MB of cache and a TDP of 200 W. None of this seems to add up in any sensible way and additional information provided by Igor, doesn't improve things, as the chip is using an FC-BGA16E packaging with a pin-count of 2660.

For those not familiar with Intel ARK, it's Intel's product specification website and there's a public version, as well as a version that only select Intel customers have access to and it's from the latter this information has been sourced. As to what this product could be, is anyone's guess at this point, but the MB in the model name suggests it might be some kind of embedded motherboard with an Intel CPU and GPU, possibly for some kind of NUC product.

SiFive, Inc., the founder and leader of RISC-V computing, today announced it has raised $175 million in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over $2.5 billion. The Series F round was led by Coatue Management, a global technology investment firm that invests in companies at all stages - from venture to growth through public markets. SiFive is substantially accelerating the development of the company's RISC-V products, future roadmap, and ecosystem to achieve the unlimited potential that RISC-V has for SiFive's customers and partners.

Founded six years ago by the inventors of RISC-V, SiFive introduced the world to the open standard ISA and transformed the future of compute. Today, RISC-V is firmly established as one of the major global compute platforms, with adoption all around the world, as evidenced by recent industry announcements including the Intel $1B innovation fund, featuring a goal of catalyzing the RISC-V ecosystem. SiFive has design wins with more than 100 customers including several of the world's largest hyperscale companies and 8 of the top 10 semiconductor companies, in applications ranging from automotive, AR/VR, client computing, data center, and intelligent edge.

Intel's ambitious new flagship desktop processor, the Core i9-12900KS, started shipping to early customers before retail embargo. By this we don't mean enthusiasts with privileged ties to the company, but retailers. PC enthusiast DAGINATSUKO was able to purchase one online for roughly USD $790, before the store they purchased from took down the listing.

Pictures of the retail i9-12900KS reveal a darker-themed box than that of the i9-12900K, with "Special Edition" written on the front-face. The chip features an S-Spec code "SRLDD." We also learn a few interesting tidbits about the i9-12900KS from this source. Apparently, its processor base power (PBP) is set at 150 W, and its maximum turbo power (MTP) at 260 W. The standard i9-12900K comes with 125 W PBP and 241 W MTP. The increased power limits support a more aggressive boosting algorithm, with the maximum Turbo Boost clocks on the P-cores set at 5.50 GHz, compared to 5.20 GHz on the i9-12900K. The P-core base frequency is increased by 200 MHz, too, now at 3.40 GHz.