BIOSTAR has started teasing a new motherboard lineup to accompany the launch of Intel's Z500 series chipsets, which will offer support for the company's upcoming 11th gen Rocket Lake-S CPUs. So far, BIOSTAR has confirmed that two motherboards are being built around this new series, in the form of the Z590 Valkyrie (ATX) and Z590I Valkyrie (Mini-ITX). The tease showcases the motherboard series' logo, based of Valkyries' wings in what appears to be a black and white color philosophy, which might extend to the motherboards themselves. This could mean that BIOSTAR is now offering a slightly more toned-down design compared to their usual RACING motherboard series.

Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel and version-control system called git, has posted another one of his famous rants, addressing his views about the lack of ECC memory in consumer devices. Mr. Torvalds has posted his views on the Linux kernel mailing list, where he usually comments about the development of the kernel. The ECC or Error Correcting Code memory is a special kind of DRAM that fixes the problems that occur inside the memory itself, where a bit can get corrupted and change the data stored, thus offering false results. ECC aims to fix those mistakes by implementing a system that fixes these small errors and avoids bigger problems. According to Mr. Torvalds, it is a technology that we need to be implemented everywhere, not just server space like Intel imagines.

Linus TorvaldsIntel has been instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with it's horribly bad market segmentation... Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously...The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage... Now even the memory manufacturers are starting do do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to. And the memory manufacturers claim it's because of economics and lower power. And they are lying bastards - let me once again point to row-hammer about how those problems have existed for several generations already, but these f***** happily sold broken hardware to consumers and claimed it was an "attack", when it always was "we're cutting corners".

Hot on the heels of its Geekbench score leak, we have PassMark numbers for the upcoming Core i7-11700K "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor, leaked to the web. The PassMark online score database lists performance obtained from a single i7-11700K sample, where it's shown to be trading blows with the Ryzen 7 5800X (score averaged from over 600 samples). The Intel chip scores 3548 points single-thread rating, compared to 3509 (average) of the 5800X, while its multi-threaded score of 54255 points falls short of the 54458 points of the 5800X (average). Both these chips are 8-core/16-thread.

The Core i7-11700K has the same core configuration as the top i9-11900K part, but with lower rumored clock speeds. The Core i7 ticks at 3.60 GHz base, with up to 5.00 GHz boost, and the same 125 W TDP rating as its 10th Gen predecessor. The "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor family sees Intel's first IPC uplift to the client-desktop platform in 5 years, on the backs of new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores. While we haven't seen evidence of core-counts above 8 for these processors, Intel's play will be to restore gaming performance leadership that it lost to AMD's Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" processors. Plagued by scalping and limited availability to genuine customers, AMD stares at its performance leadership not translating into brand equity before Intel's next-gen parts flood the market.

In the run-up to its mid-January unveil of its 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors and companion Intel 500-series chipsets, we get our first look at the three 500-series chipset models from Intel's stable for the DIY client market. This includes the top-tier Intel Z590, the mid-range B560, and the entry-level H510. Intel even made logos for the three chipsets, which could appear on the retail packaging and marketing materials of motherboards. While 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" processors are expected to be backwards-compatible with existing 400-series chipset Socket LGA1200 motherboards; there are major advantages to choosing a 500-series motherboard.

To begin with, motherboards based on the Z590 chipset feature a fatter 8-lane DMI 3.0 chipset bus between the processor and the PCH, which doubles the chipset bus bandwidth to 64 Gbps per direction. 500-series chipset motherboards also feature one CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, which works with "Rocket Lake-S," as the processor puts out 28 PCIe lanes. 16 of these go toward the PEG interface, 8 toward the chipset bus, and four toward this dedicated NVMe slot. In related news, Chinese tech publication MyDrivers reports that Intel is staring at a motherboard chipset shortage going into Q1-2021, with availability of the entry-mid 400-series chipsets such as the H410 and B460 being scarce. This could impact motherboard pricing.

Intel has just released its "Architecture Instruction Set Extensions and Future Features Programming Reference" manual, which serves the purpose of providing the developers' information about Intel's upcoming hardware additions which developers can utilize later on. Today, thanks to the @InstLatX64 on Twitter we have information that Intel is bringing on-package High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) solution to its next-generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. Specifically, there are two instructions mentioned: 0220H - HBM command/address parity error and 0221H - HBM data parity error. Both instructions are there to address data errors in HBM so the CPU operates with correct data.

The addition of HBM is just one of the many new technologies Sapphire Rapids brings. The platform is supposedly going to bring many new technologies like an eight-channel DDR5 memory controller enriched with Intel's Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA). To connect to all of the external accelerators, the platform uses PCIe 5.0 protocol paired with CXL 1.1 standard to enable cache coherency in the system. And as a reminder, this would not be the first time we see a server CPU use HBM. Fujitsu has developed an A64FX processor with 48 cores and HBM memory, and it is powering today's most powerful supercomputer - Fugaku. That is showing how much can a processor get improved by adding a faster memory on-board. We are waiting to see how Intel manages to play it out and what we end up seeing on the market when Sapphire Rapids is delivered.

Intel is familiar with chip manufacturing problems since the company started the development of a 10 nm silicon semiconductor node. The latest node is coming years late with many IPs getting held back thanks to the inability of the company to produce it. All of Intel's chip production was historically happening at Intel's facilities, however, given the fact that the demand for 14 nm products is exceeding production capability, the company was forced to turn to external foundries like TSMC to compensate for its lack of capacity. TSMC has a contract with Intel to produce silicon for things like chipsets, which is offloading a lot of capacity for the company. Today, thanks to the exclusive information obtained by Reuters, we have information that a certain New York hedge fund, Third Point LLC, is advising the company about the future of its manufacturing.

The hedge fund is reportedly accounting for about one billion USD worth of assets in Intel, thus making it a huge and one influencing shareholder. The Third Point Chief Executive Daniel Loeb wrote a letter to Intel Chairman Omar Ishrak to take immediate action to boost the company's state as a major provider of processors for PCs and data centers. The company has noted that Intel needs to outsource more of its chip production to satisfy the market needs, so it can stay competitive with the industry. The poor performance of Intel has reflected on the company shares, which have declined about 21% this year. This has awoken the shareholders and now we see that they are demanding more aggressiveness from the company and a plan to outsource more of the chip production to partner foundries like TSMC and Samsung. It remains to be seen how Intel responds and what changes are to take place.

Intel's Rocket Lake-S platform is scheduled to arrive at the beginning of the following year, which is just a few days away. The Rocket Lake lineup of processors is going to be Intel's 11th generation of Core desktop CPUs and the platform is expected to make a debut with Intel's newest Cypress Cove core design. Thanks to the Geekbench 5 submission, we have the latest information about the performance of the upcoming Intel Core i7-11700K 8C/16T processor. Based on the Cypress Cove core, the CPU is allegedly bringing a double-digit IPC increase, according to Intel.

In the single-core result, the CPU has managed to score 1807 points, while the multi-core score is 10673 points. The CPU ran at the base clock of 3.6 GHz, while the boost frequency is fixed at 5.0 GHz. Compared to the previous, 10th generation, Intel Core i7-10700K which scores 1349 single-core score and 8973 points multi-core score, the Rocket Lake CPU has managed to put out 34% higher single-core and 19% higher multi-core score. When it comes to the comparison to AMD offerings, the highest-end Ryzen 9 5950X is about 7.5% slower in single-core result, and of course much faster in multi-core result thanks to double the number of cores.

In response to incredible customer demand, Intel has doubled its combined 14 nm and 10 nm manufacturing capacity over the past few years. To do this, the company found innovative ways to deliver more output within existing capacity through yield improvement projects and significant investments in capacity expansion. This video recounts that journey, which even included re-purposing existing lab and office space for manufacturing.

"Over the last three years, we have doubled our wafer volume capacity, and that was a significant investment. Moving forward, we're not stopping… We are continuing to invest into factory capacity to ensure we can keep up with the growing needs of our customers," says Keyvan Esfarjani, senior vice president and general manager of Manufacturing and Operations at Intel. The company also ramped its new 10 nm process this year. Intel currently manufactures 10 nm products in high volumes at its Oregon and Arizona sites in the U.S. and its site in Israel.

Intel's 11th generation Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors could feature similar Power Level values to their 10th Gen counterparts, according to a recent Core i9-11900 engineering sample benchmark leak posted to Chinese social media platform Bilibili. The i9-11900 (non-K) is a locked SKU that succeeds the i9-10900, and has a rated TDP of 65 W (which is also its PL1), but the PL2 value is reportedly 224 W, identical to that of the i9-10900. A recent report also predicted that individual 11th Gen SKUs have the same TDP (PL1) ratings as their 10th Gen counterparts, with locked SKUs rated at 65 W, and unlocked "K" and "KF" SKUs featuring 125 W.

The "QV1J" engineering sample for the i9-11900, which has been doing rounds with most leaks, has a nominal clock speed of just 1.80 GHz, an all-core Turbo Boost frequency of 3.80 GHz, and maximum (single-core) boost frequency of 4.40 GHz. The 8-core/16-thread processor ends up performing slightly better than the i9-9900K at Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R20, although not nearly enough to qualify as a generational performance uplift. The i9-11900 ES was tested on a motherboard based on the next-gen mid-range Intel B560 chipset.

The dankest of memes has come out of the digital underworld to spread fear through all chickens out there in the world. KFC has announced the KFConsole, a development made in partnership with Intel, ASUS, Cooler Master, and Seagate, do deliver a console that "runs better than any other console" - which means bugs relating to chicken movement have been ironed out before release. The chassis is a KFC chicken bucket-shaped one, and is based on Intel's NUC 9 Extreme compute element paired with an unspecified ASUS graphics card - that supports ray tracing.

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces the XPG SPECTRIX S20G PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The SPECTRIX S20G is an SSD built with form and performance in mind with its distinct x-shaped RBG lighting and excellent read/write speeds.

The XPG SPECTRIX S20G is a gaming SSD through and through and its styling reflects this. It sports a distinctive and prominent x-shaped RGB design that outshines the competition. The RGB light effects can be customized via software. What's more, a hairline-brushed finish gives the SSD a formidable yet elegant look that will intimidate and impress.

Intel's 11th Generation Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor family could be formally unveiled in just a few weeks from now, with HotHardware reporting a 2021 International CES unveiling (virtual event), for both the processors and their companion Intel 500-series chipset motherboards. This would put the unveiling around mid-January for the virtual launch event.

Availability is a different story, with the report predicting that while the Intel 500-series chipset motherboards will be available from mid-January, the processors won't arrive until March. Older reports predicted a market availability of these processors to almost miss Q1, and spill over into Q2 (April-June). Since "Rocket Lake-S" is based on the current LGA1200 package, the Intel 500-series chipset motherboards are expected to support existing 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake-S" processors, along with out-of-the-box support for the 11th Gen.

Designing a custom processor can be a rewarding thing. You can control your ecosystem surrounding it and get massive rewards in terms of application-specific performance uplift, or lower total cost of ownership. It seems like cloud providers have figured out that at their scale, designing a custom processor can get all of the above with the right amount of effort put into it. If you remember, in 2018, Amazon has announced its Graviton processor based on Arm instruction set architecture. Today, the company has almost 10% of its AWS instances based on the Graviton 1 or 2 processors, which is a massive win for a custom design.

Following Amazon's example, the next company to join the custom server processor race is going to be Microsoft. The Redmond based giant is looking to build a custom lineup of processors that are meant to satisfy Microsoft's most demanding sector - server space. The company's Azure arm is an important part where it has big and increasing revenue. By building a custom processor, it could satisfy the market needs better while delivering higher value. The sources of Bloomberg say that Microsoft is planning to use Arm ISA, and start building independence from the x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Just like we saw with AWS, the industry cloud giants are starting to get silicon-independent and with their scale, they can drive the ecosystem surrounding the new processors forward rapidly. The sources are also speculating that the company is building custom processors for Surface PCs, and with Windows-on-Arm (WoA) project, Microsoft has laid the groundwork in that field as well.

Benchmark numbers of an upcoming Intel Core i9-11900 (non-K) and i9-11900K processor engineering samples allegedly obtained on CPU-Z Bench reveal that the chip will deliver on the company's "double-digit IPC gain" promise for the "Rocket Lake" microarchitecture. The i9-11900 (non-K) sample posted a single-threaded performance score of 582 points, while the i9-11900K ES posted 597 points, which are roughly 12% higher than typical CPU-Z Bench single-thread numbers for the current-gen i9-10900 (non-K) and i9-10900K "Comet Lake-S" processors. The multi-threaded score of the i9-11900 (non-K) ES, at 5262 points, ends up just around 5-10% lower than that of the i9-10900, despite a deficit of two cores. Intel's 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" story is hence shaping up to be that of increased gaming performance from the IPC gain, while roughly the same multi-threaded performance as the 10th Gen "Comet Lake-S."

Intel's 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors could feature similar TDP values to their 10th Gen "Comet Lake-S" predecessors, according to Momomo_us. Intel is preparing to give the Unlocked "K" and "KF" SKUs a TDP rating of 125 W, while the locked non-K models feature 65 W rating. The lineup is led by the 8-core/16-thread Core i9-11900K, followed by the locked i9-11900 and iGPU-devoid i9-11900F; the slightly slower 8-core/16-thread Core i7-11700K, followed by the i7-11700KF, i7-11700, and i7-11700F; and the 6-core/12-thread i5-10600K and its derivatives.

The 11th Gen Core desktop processor series arrives in Q1 2021, and is based on the 14 nm "Rocket Lake-S" silicon, and built into the Socket LGA1200 package, with backwards compatibility with Intel's 400-series chipset motherboards, and native support for the Intel 500-series. The "Rocket Lake-S" die is rumored to feature up to 8 "Cypress Cove" CPU cores, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller, a 24-lane PCI-Express 4.0 root complex, and an updated Gen12 iGPU based on the Xe LP graphics architecture. The "Cypress Cove" CPU cores are reportedly 14 nm back-ports of the "Willow Cove" cores, and feature a double-digit percent IPC increase over the "Skylake" cores.

Intel today commenced the process of discontinuation of the "Avengers Edition" SKUs of its 10th Generation Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processors, through a product change notification (PCN). The said PCN #117894-00 mentions December 16, 2020 as a common date for all four key discontinuation milestones in the product's lifecycle, namely Product Discontinuation Support commencement, Last Product Discontinuance Order (the last opportunity for distributors to place orders from Intel for), the date for these orders to become non-cancelable and non-returnable; and the date for the last order to ship. Normally, the latter two milestones are spaced 6 months and 12 months apart from the date of the product discontinuation PCN. To put this in simpler terms—and unless the PCN doesn't have a typo with its dates—Intel is expeditiously discontinuing its 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processors, marking them EOL (end of life).

Intel is preparing to update the PC platform (unclear if mobile or desktop although likely mobile); with the ability for a PC to adapt to its surroundings. This would mean adjusting the brightness on-the-fly based on ambient light (a feature that's existed on mobile phones for 20 years now); but also to detect the presence of a user in its vicinity. The company didn't detail how it goes about this, but technologies already exist to combine visual input from the PC's cameras; radio from the PC's antennas, audio from its mic array; to form a picture of its surroundings.

Intel's next-gen PC platforms could introduce hardware called the Visual Sensing Controller (codenamed "Clover Falls,") a device that serves as a "companion module" to the processor, giving it additional AI capabilities. The chip will serve a dual purpose as a security module, using visual inputs to detect user-presence. This possibly builds on Windows Hello, but now has certain additional capabilities (you probably won't need to sit still and put on your poker face).

Intel is still in the work of testing and certification for their more complex graphics products based on their Xe microarchitectures, and that means that some tests are being done in well-known benchmarking platforms. Case in point, an Intel Xe GPU with a reported 128 EUs (1024 shading units), 3 GB of memory, and a clockspeed of 1.4 GHz ran through Geekbench, where it scored an... interesting 9,311 points in the OpenCL test.

This is more likely than not an engineering sample, considering that Intel's Iris Xe MAX wrapped in its Tiger Lake package can score up to 23,000 points. It is currently unclear if this particular Xe manifestation is running on Intel's Xe-LP or Xe-HPG architecture. This might be Intel's DG-2 product, which offers higher performance than their DG-1 discrete graphics card that is only available for system integrators.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking and storage solution innovator, today announced the desktop smart edge PoE Switch - QGD-3014-16PT. With sixteen 30-watt Gigabit PoE ports, two 2.5GbE host management ports, Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor, and four 3.5-inch SATA drive bays, the QGD-3014-16PT supports QVR Pro, HBS 3 and QuWAN SD-WAN to integrate surveillance deployment, video storage computing, and multi-site remote management to offer SMBs innovative intelligent IP surveillance infrastructure and remote backup solutions.
"Expanding multi-site surveillance networks can be costly and involve large amounts of equipment with low transmission efficiency between multiple remote devices - not to mention the complexities involved in deployment and management. " said Daniel Hsieh, QNAP Product Manager, adding, "the QGD-3014-16PT desktop Smart Edge PoE Switch integrates PoE, surveillance capabilities, and data backup management to simplify these requirements and increase the transmission and backup efficiency of surveillance videos."

The percentage distribution of 2021 NAND Flash bit demand by application currently shows that client SSD accounts for 31%, enterprise SSD 20%, eMMC/UFS 41%, and NAND wafer 8%, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. TrendForce expects NAND Flash ASP to undergo QoQ declines throughout 2021, since the number of NAND suppliers far exceeds DRAM suppliers, and the bit supply remains high. As Samsung, YMTC, SK Hynix, and Intel actively expand their NAND Flash bit output in 1Q21, the oversupply situation in the industry will become more severe, with a forecasted 6% QoQ increase in NAND Flash bit output and a 10-15% QoQ decline in NAND Flash ASP in 1Q21.

Susquehanna is a global trading firm which has various interests in silicon manufacturing - and part of that interest is naturally materialized in Intel. In a recent group call from the firm, some details on Intel's manufacturing and product design woes came to light, which point towards even more execution slips than we've already seen. During the call, a number of points were broached, including dismal yields for Intel's 10 nm manufacturing process as of its introduction in late 2018 (which is why it never saw mainstream adoption from the company). News that Intel is looking for a new CEO also don't instill confidence on current CEO Bob Swan's capacity to steer the Intel behemoth.

Improved yields on 10 nm are being reported due to deployment of Intel's SuperFin technology, which improved yields to upwards of 50%, but still keeps them under the ones achieved in Intel's 14 nm process; an eye-opening tidbit in that Cannon Lake on 10 nm originally saw yields of only 25% usable chips per wafer; and that backporting Rocket Lake meant Intel had to deal with unfathomably large chips and high power consumption characteristics. And to add insult to injury, there is still not a definite timetable for 7 nm deployment, with delays being expected to be worse than the previously reported 6-12 months. This all paints a somewhat grim picture for Intel's capacity to compete with TSMC-powered AMD in many of its most important markets; the blue giant won't topple, of course, but it's expected that five years from now, we'll be looking at a very different outlook in the market between AMD and Intel. You can check the talked-about points in the call via the transcript after the break. You should still take the transcript with a grain of salt.

Intel needs a platform refresh to battle the competition, mainly speaking to battle AMD and its Ryzen 5000 series processors. That is why the company is developing 500 series of chipsets covering the low-end (H510), mid-range (B560), and high-end markets (Z590) that pair with the upcoming Rocket Lake-S processor generation. Dubbed 11th generation of Core processors, the 11th generation of Intel Core CPUs are going to be built on Intel's refined 14 nm process. The CPUs are supposed to feature a Cypress Cove core, which is a backport of Golden Cove found in Ice Lake. The 500 series motherboards are the last in the DDR4 generation, launching in the timeframe when DDR5 is supposed to take over in the coming years.

Today, thanks to Weixin, a Chinese media outlet that posted a short story on the WeChat platform, we have information about the launch date of these new chipsets. According to the source, we are allegedly going to see these new chipsets on January 11th, the day that Intel CES 2021 event is supposed to happen. The platform will include a range of motherboards from Intel's partners and is supposed to bring support for the much-needed PCIe 4.0 protocol. The launch date should be taken with a grain of salt, of course, before taking it as a fact.

Today, at Intel's Memory and Storage 2020 event, the company highlighted six new memory and storage products to help customers meet the challenges of digital transformation. Key to advancing innovation across memory and storage, Intel announced two new additions to its Intel Optane Solid State Drive (SSD) Series: the Intel Optane SSD P5800X, the world's fastest data center SSD, and the Intel Optane Memory H20 for client, which features performance and mainstream productivity for gaming and content creation. Optane helps meet the needs of modern computing by bringing the memory closer to the CPU. The company also revealed its intent to deliver its 3rd generation of Intel Optane persistent memory (code-named "Crow Pass") for cloud and enterprise customers.

"Today is a key moment for our memory and storage journey. With the release of these new Optane products, we continue our innovation, strengthen our memory and storage portfolio, and enable our customers to better navigate the complexity of digital transformation. Optane products and technologies are becoming a mainstream element of business compute. And as a part of Intel, these leadership products are advancing our long-term growth priorities, including AI, 5G networking and the intelligent, autonomous edge." -Alper Ilkbahar, Intel vice president in the Data Platforms Group and general manager of the Intel Optane Group.

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation of EPYC processors codenamed Millan. Being based on the company's latest Zen 3 cores, the new EPYC generation is going to deliver a massive IPC boost, spread across many cores. Models are supposed to range anywhere from 16 to 64 cores, to satisfy all of the demanding server workloads. Today, thanks to the leak from ExecutableFix on Twitter, we have the first benchmark of a system containing two of the 64 core, 128 thread Zen 3 based EPYC Milan processors. Running in the 2P configuration the processors achieved a maximum boost clock of 3.7 GHz, which is very high for a server CPU with that many cores.

The system was able to produce a Cinebench R23 score of insane 87878 points. With that many cores, it is no wonder how it is done, however, we need to look at how does it fare against the competition. For comparison, the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L processor with its 28 cores and 56 threads that boost to 4.0 GHz can score up to 49,876 points. Of course, the scaling to that many cores may not work very well in this example application, so we have to wait and see how it performs in other workloads before jumping to any conclusions. The launch date is unknown for these processors, so we have to wait and report as more information appears.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market grew 2.2% year over year to $22.6 billion during the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20). Worldwide server shipments declined 0.2% year over year to nearly 3.1 million units in 3Q20. Volume server revenue was up 5.8% to $19.0 billion, while midrange server revenue declined 13.9% to $2.6 billion, and high-end servers declined by 12.6% to $937 million.

"Global demand for enterprise servers was a bit muted during the third quarter of 2020 although we did see areas of strong demand," said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "From a regional perspective, server revenue within China grew 14.2% year over year. And worldwide revenues for servers running AMD CPUs were up 112.4% year over year while ARM-based servers grew revenues 430.5% year over year, albeit on a very small base of revenue."