On March 29th, the United States announced another round of updates to its export controls, targeting advanced computing, supercomputers, semiconductor end-uses, and semiconductor manufacturing products. These new regulations, which took effect on April 4th, are designed to prevent certain countries and businesses from circumventing U.S. restrictions to access sensitive chip technologies and equipment. Despite these tighter controls, TrendForce believes the practical impact on the industry will be minimal.

The latest updates aim to refine the language and parameters of previous regulations, tightening the criteria for exports to Macau and D:5 countries (China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, etc.). They require a detailed examination of all technology products' Total Processing Performance (TPP) and Performance Density (PD). If a product exceeds certain computing power thresholds, it must undergo a case-by-case review. Nevertheless, a new provision, Advanced Computing Authorized (ACA), allows for specific exports and re-exports among selected countries, including the transshipment of particular products between Macau and D:5 countries.

Greetings, Flameborn! Our first update for Enshrouded is finally here! Just a few weeks ago we were releasing our first roadmap, and now we're already ticking a bunch of these boxes… As a team, it feels good! Our goal for each update is to include new content, new features, improvements to existing features, as well as the usual fixes and polish.

The biggest part of the update is undoubtedly the Hollow Halls. You can read more on them below, but a word of advice before you proceed: the encounters will test your mettle and we strongly recommend preparing well and bringing your best food items, as well as campfires to rest during your exploration. It is possible to run these as a solo player, but it might be a very challenging experience, and we recommend bringing some friends along. If you team up with strangers, remember that you can create a backup of your save files. Of course since we're in Early Access, we are very eager to hear your thoughts on the Hollow Halls. Do let us know what you think once you've given them a try! And without further ado…

Cervoz brings its new storage solution to industrial applications with the launch of its new T425 Series M.2 NVMe SSDs-M.2 2230 (B+M) and M.2 2242 (B+M). Available in the compact 2230 and 2242 form factors, these PCIe Gen3x2 SSDs pack impressive performance into small footprints. Engineered for reliability and efficiency, the T425 Series provides industrial-grade solutions for embedded systems and space-constrained applications.

Space-Saving Form Factors for Seamless Integration
The tiny size of the T425 Series SSDs enables easy integration into small, fanless devices where internal space is limited. From in-vehicle systems and handheld scanners to medical equipment and industrial PCs, these SSDs allow seamless upgrades without compromising capacity or performance.

Today (on March 26), wanderers can conquer the horrors of Hell with a suite of new graphical enhancements available to them with patch 1.3.5. Arriving alongside our next content update, Sanctuary will be further imbued with the luscious shadows and enhanced reflections of ray tracing, plus other visual enhancements.

BASK IN THE GLOW OF NVIDIA GeForce
Players using GeForce RTX 40 Series can max out their ray tracing settings and frame rates with NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation, while other GeForce RTX users can accelerate performance with DLSS 2's Super Resolution technology. With a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU, you can multiply performance by up to 3X thanks to DLSS 3. NVIDIA Reflex is a game-changer, reducing system latency on GeForce graphics cards and laptops. Pinpoint accuracy and timing are key to overcoming Diablo IV's most difficult fights; NVIDIA Reflex reduces system latency, making gameplay smooth and more responsive, delivering the reaction time needed in critical moments. The newest GeForce Game Ready Driver delivers the optimum experience with ray tracing, available now for download.

To all Dragon's Dogma 2 players. We would like to update you on the status of the following items, about which we have received numerous comments from the community. To all those looking forward to this game, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

Regarding Frame Rate
A large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and calculating the impact of their physical presence in various areas. In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, the CPU usage can be very high and may affect the frame rate. We are aware that in such situations, settings that reduce GPU load may currently have a limited effect; however, we are looking into ways to improve performance in the future.

With Mods (short for modifications), you can tailor your gaming experience to your unique preferences. Uploaded by creators all over the world, you can pick between anything to create the city of your dreams. Along with Beach Properties, the first wave of Cities: Skylines II Modding will be available. The Beta release of Modding will initially support Map and Code mods. With the Map Editor, you can make maps with the Terraforming Tools you're used to, import hightmaps to create highly accurate depictions of your hometown, and upload your creations to Paradox Mods.

With the Code Tools, you can show off your coding skills and create Code Mods to meet your heart's desire! Future updates will improve on these tools and come to include support for Asset Mods. As we've talked about before, there will be updates to these tools that we are currently working on, and we will see some updates before the 1.0 release. We will be taking your opinion into consideration when we continue to work on the editor and are looking forward to seeing the feedback that you might have. If you're curious on what the process of Modding will look like you can already check it out on the Cities: Skylines II Wiki here.

A new patch for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora deployed on March 1, bringing more than 150 fixes and adjustments to the game. Title Update 3 includes technical, UI, balancing, main quest, and side quest improvements, plus additional bug fixes. To provide players with an improved experience, the development team, led by Massive Entertainment, listened to feedback from the community while working on Title Update 3.

An additional patch, Title Update 3.1, was deployed on March 7, adding additional fixes to the game. Check out the full list of improvements included in Title Update 3 & 3.1 here, and read on for the most notable improvements now available in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Update Mar 14th: TPU has received alerts regarding player feedback—Massive Entertainment's "Title Update 3" has reportedly broken their implementation of FSR 3 in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. We will keep an eye on official Ubisoft channels—so far they have not addressed these FSR-related problems.

Thanks to Phoronix, we have discovered that AMD has recently released initial patches for performance monitoring and events related to their upcoming Zen 5 processors in the Linux kernel. These patches, sent out for review on the kernel mailing list, provide the necessary JSON files for PMU (Performance Monitoring Unit) events and metrics that will be exposed through the Linux perf tooling. As the patches consist of JSON additions and do not risk regressing existing hardware support, there is a possibility that they could be included in the upcoming Linux v6.9 kernel cycle. This would allow developers and enthusiasts to access detailed performance data for Zen 5 CPUs once they become available, helping with optimization and analysis of the next-generation processors.

The release of these patches follows AMD's publication of performance monitor counter documentation for AMD Family 1Ah Model 00h to 0Fh processors last week, confirming that these models represent the upcoming Zen 5 lineup. While Linux kernel 6.8 already includes some elements of Zen 5 CPU support, the upstream Linux enablement for these next-generation AMD processors is an ongoing process. Upon Phoronix examining the Zen 5 core and uncore events, as well as the metrics and mappings, it appears that they are mainly similar to those found in the current Zen 4 processors. This suggests that AMD has focused on refining and optimizing the performance monitoring capabilities of its new architecture rather than introducing significant changes. As the launch of Zen 5 CPUs draws closer, we await to see the performance and capabilities of these next-generation processors. With performance monitoring also getting a push, this could be a sign that Zen 5 launch is nearing.

As the IT sector continues to seek answers for scaling data processing performance while simultaneously improving efficiency - in terms of performance and density per watt, per system, per rack, and per dollar of CapEx and OpEx - ScaleFlux is answering the call with innovative design choices in its SSD controllers. The SFX 5016 promises to set new standards both for performance and for power efficiency.

In addition to carrying forward the transparent compression feature that ScaleFlux first released in 2020 in upgraded in 2022 with the SFX 3016 computational storage drive controller, the new SFX 5016 SOC processor includes a number of design advances.

Apple introduced its new generation of MacBook Air subcompact laptops last week—their press material focused mostly on the "powerful M3 chip" and its more efficient Neural Engine. Storage options were not discussed deeply—you had to dive into the Air M3's configuration page or specification sheet to find out more. Media outlets have highlighted a pleasing upgrade for entry-level models, in the area of internal SSD transfer speeds. Apple has seemingly taken onboard feedback regarding the disappointing performance of its basic MacBook Air M2 model—its 256 GB storage solution houses a lone 3D NAND package. Max Tech's Vadim Yuryev was one of the first media personalities to discover the presence of two NAND flash chips within entry-level MacBook Air M3 systems—his channel's video teardown can be watched below.

The upgrade from a single chip to a twin configuration has granted higher read and write speeds—Yuryev shared Blackmagic SSD speed test results; screengrabs from his video coverage are attached to this article. M3 MacBook Air's 256 GB solution achieved write speeds of 2,108 MB/s, posting 33% faster performance when compared to an equivalent M2 MacBook Air configuration. The M3 model recorded read speeds of 2,880 MB/s—Wccftech was suitably impressed by this achievement: "making it a whopping 82 percent than its direct predecessor, making it quite an impressive result. The commendable part is that Apple does not require customers to upgrade to the 512 GB storage variants of the M3 MacBook Air to witness higher read and write speeds." Performance is still no match when lined up against "off-the-shelf" PCIe 3.0 x4 drives, and tech enthusiasts find the entry price point of $1099 laughable. Apple's lowest rung option nets a 13-inch model that packs non-upgradable 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Early impressions have also put a spotlight on worrying thermal issues—Apple's fan-less cooling solution is reportedly struggling to temper their newly launched M3 mobile chipset.

Phoronix has spotted intriguing new Linux kernel patches for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors—the Monday morning notes reveal in-house software engineers are implementing default power profile adjustments. Meteor Lake CPUs have been operating on a default "balanced_performance" mode since their December 2023 launch—Linux adjustments will affect the processor's Energy Performance Preference (EPP) under Linux (similar to Windows Power Plans). Michael Larabel (Phoronix head honcho) laid out some history: "We've seen EPP overrides/tuning in the past within the Intel P-State driver for prior generations of Intel processors and this is much the same here. The ACPI EPP value is typically a range from 0 to 255 for indicating the processor/system power to performance preference."

He continued onto present day circumstances: "To date though the Intel P-State EPP override/tuning has been focused on the default "balanced_performance" mode while the first patch (from Monday) allows for model-specific EPP overrides for all pre-defined EPP strings. The second patch then goes ahead and updates the EPP values for Meteor Lake so that the balanced_performance default is now treated as 115 rather than 128 and the "performance" EPP is set to 16 rather than 0." Larabel is hopeful that a public release will coincide with the "upcoming Linux v6.9 cycle." Intel software engineers reckon that their tweaks/overrides have produced higher performance results—for "small form factor devices"—while reducing CPU temperatures and thermal throttling. Meteor Lake is considered to be quite energy inefficient when compared to the closest mobile processor architectures from AMD and Apple. Team Blue's next-gen Arrow Lake family is expected to launch later this year, but the current crop of CPUs require a bit of TLC and optimization in the meantime.

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty is being rolled out on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. In this update we focused on fixing the most common issues encountered by players, including Finisher animations, and added a little something for Rayfield enthusiasts! PC-specific changes include the addition of a Hybrid CPU Utilization setting, which can be found under Gameplay → Performance. It can be set either to "Auto" (lets the operating system automatically decide how to distribute threads among the cores) or "Prioritize P-Cores" (prioritizes performance cores). It is set to "Auto" by default. We have also implemented a fix that improves graphics performance, especially on AMD Radeon RX Vega GPUs.

Visual Changes
Patch 2.11 adds Neon-lit rims for the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X—these parts will now light up properly. We also fixed shadows appearing on V's torso when wearing tank tops, as well as dark shadows appearing on V's hands when holding some weapons with Ray Tracing enabled. The Devil and Judgment tarot cards will now be properly displayed on the end-game reward screen. For complete patch details, check out the full list of changes below.

Digital Chat Station has seemingly received insider information regarding the performance of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 mobile chipset—their source reports that a probable engineering sample is already exceeding its predecessor's Big core (Cortex-X4) maximum limit of 3.3 GHz. The rumor mill has Nuvia's custom Oryon cores linked to the next generation mobile processor, although some experts think that the Phoenix design was selected for Gen 4. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite notebook SoC was unveiled last October—this ARM-based solution is set to deliver "a dramatic leap in innovation for computing" thanks to Nuvia's custom Oryon technology. Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Compute & Gaming stated that the Snapdragon X Elite offers: "super-charged performance that will delight consumers with incredible power efficiency and take their creativity and productivity to the next level."

Digital Chat Station's brief assessment of the prototype Snapdragon 8 Gen 4's Big core prowess is also glowing: "4.0 GHz is no longer a dream" on smartphones. Past reports have Qualcomm signed up with TSMC for an unspecified 3 nm production process—next generation silicon will benefit greatly in terms of power efficiency, with custom Oryon or Phoenix cores (allegedly) achieving greater clock speeds thanks to some extra headroom. As mentioned above, the previous-gen Kryo Prime core—using TSMC's advanced 4 nm node—is factory restricted to 3.3 GHz. Tipsters reckon that efficiency cores are not part of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 design, due to the innate benefits of 3 nm—according to Digital Chat Station, MediaTek is taking similar steps with its upcoming Dimensity 9400 SoC.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation, has outlined future performance expectations for the company's Core range of processors. In a recent fourth quarter 2023 earnings call he declared: "The Core Ultra platform delivers leadership AI performance today with our next-generation platforms launching later this year, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake tripling our AI performance. In 2025 with Panther Lake, we will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x." Team Blue's Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors arrived right at the tail end of last year, as a somewhat delayed answer to AMD's Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APU series—both leveraging their own AI-crunching NPU technologies. Gelsinger believes that the launch of Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake Core product lines will bring significant (3x) AI processing improvements over Meteor Lake. He seemed to confident in a delay-free release schedule for the new year and beyond: "We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year."

He proceeded to gush about their next node advancement: "Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half 2024, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." Industry experts posit that Core "Panther Lake" parts could borrow elements from the next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" efficiency-focused family—possibly the latter's "Darkmont" E-cores, to accompany "Cougar Cove" P-cores. The Intel CEO is quite excited about the manufacturing outlay for 2025: "I'll just say, hey, we look at this every single day and we're scrutinizing carefully our progress on 18A. And obviously the great news that we just described those Clearwater Forest taping out, that gives us a lot of confidence that 18A is healthy. That's a major product for us. Panther Lake following that shortly."

Intel has released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers, version 101.5234 WHQL. This appears to be a major update as it brings Game On Driver support for Arc A-Series Graphics for plenty of new games including Enshrouded, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, and the recently released and quiet popular Palworld, as well as Game On Driver support on Intel Core Ultra CPUs with Intel Arc Graphics for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, and Palworld.

The new drivers also bring plenty of game performance improvements for a rather extensive list of games for both Arc A-series Graphics and Intel Core Ultra CPUs with Arc Graphics. These improvements range anywhere from 4 percent, up to 268 percent, and include both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 titles. You can check out the full list below. Intel also fixed a couple of issues, including Alan Wake 2 white corruption issue on reflective surfaces, Sons of the Forest corruption on the item text issue, and issues with Intel Smooth Sync in some DirectX 11 titles. It also fixes issues with on Intel Core Ultra CPUs with Arc Graphics where The Talos Principle may experience an application crash with certain upscaling presets, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III application crash issues, and Blackmagic Fusion application crash during render operations.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5234 WHQL

According to the recent listing on Goofish, discovered by VideoCardz, Chinese companies have begun selling mobile versions of NVIDIA's latest RTX 40-series GPUs as desktop graphics cards. Initially designed for gaming laptops, the GeForce RTX 4080M and RTX 4090M are now being marketed in China as more affordable alternatives to their official desktop counterparts. This development is no surprise to industry observers who recall similar adaptations with the RTX 20 and 30 series. These companies are leveraging the lower cost of mobile GPUs, combined with budget cooling solutions and simpler PCB designs, to offer more affordable desktop GPU options. The mobile GPUs, which are capped at a power consumption of 175 Watts, are being repurposed without official sanction, with NVIDIA seemingly disregarding this practice. Despite the lack of official endorsement, these modified GPUs are finding their way into the market, providing gamers a cost-effective alternative to the more expensive desktop versions.

While not officially supported by NVIDIA, these cards utilize the mobile GPU dies paired with custom cooling solutions and PCBs to work in desktop PCs. According to reports, the RTX 4080M desktop variant offers 7424 CUDA cores and 12 GB GDDR6 memory, representing a 24% reduction in cores and 4 GB less memory versus the desktop RTX 4080. The desktop RTX 4090M is even more cut-down, with 9728 cores and 16 GB memory—a 40% drop in cores and 8 GB less memory than the flagship RTX 4090 desktop card. Pricing falls between $420 and $560 for the RTX 4080M and exceeds that of even the desktop RTX 4090 for the 4090M variant. Performance and longevity still need to be determined for these unofficial cards. While they present a cheaper RTX 40-series option for Chinese gamers, the reduced specifications come with tradeoffs. Still, their availability indicates the ongoing demand for next-gen GPUs and the lengths some vendors go to to meet that demand.

At CES, AMD didn't give away too many technical details of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G-series APUs, but details are starting to trickle out and it's not all good news. As has been known for some time, AMD is using two different chips to make the Ryzen 8000G APUs and they're known as the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2, where the Phoenix 2 parts feature Zen 4c cores, which are not present in the Phoenix 1 APUs. This in and of itself shouldn't be a huge issue, although the Zen 4c CPU cores can be slightly slower in some tasks based on testing of AMD's EPYC server parts.

However, PCGamesN noticed that Gigabyte has posted the full specs for the B650E Aorus Elite X AX Ice motherboard and it looks like there's a much bigger difference between the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2 based APUs. Namely, the Phoenix 2 APUs have fewer PCIe lanes and as such are limited to two PCIe 4.0 lanes for the secondary NVMe slot. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Phoenix 2 APUs only have four PCIe 4.0 lanes for add-in GPUs, whereas the Phoenix 1 APUs have eight. This is very likely to lead to reduced performance if a higher-end GPU is used with such an APU. Note that this will vary depending on the motherboard design, but many B650/B650E boards feature a similar design with regards to the PCIe lanes coming from the CPU socket. Luckily, it's easy to avoid this issue, as the Ryzen 5 8600G and the Ryzen 7 8700G are both Phoenix 1 designs, whereas the Ryzen 5 8500G is the only Phoenix 2 design available in retail, as the Ryzen 3 8300G is an OEM only part.

Neuchips, a leading AI Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) solutions provider, will demo its revolutionary Raptor Gen AI accelerator chip (previously named N3000) and Evo PCIe accelerator card LLM solutions at CES 2024. Raptor, the new chip solution, enables enterprises to deploy large language models (LLMs) inference at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions.

"We are thrilled to unveil our Raptor chip and Evo card to the industry at CES 2024," said Ken Lau, CEO of Neuchips. "Neuchips' solutions represent a massive leap in price to performance for natural language processing. With Neuchips, any organisation can now access the power of LLMs for a wide range of AI applications."

NZXT, a leader in PC gaming hardware and services, today announces the H6 Flow and H6 Flow RGB, a compact dual chamber mid-tower ATX case. The H6 Flow offers a harmonious blend of performance and visual appeal for PC enthusiasts. Designed for an expansive and uninterrupted view, the H6 Flow is adorned with consistent tempered glass on the front and sides, granting a panoramic peek into the insides of your build. Leveraging its dual chamber architecture, the new angel front panel directs the airflow from the three pre-included 120 mm fans (or 120 mm RGB fans for the H6 Flow RGB version) and two 140 mm fans at the base of the case allow you to cool your heat generating components. The revamped perforated panels come with a design fine-tuned for optimal airflow and superior performance. While all being easy to build with the H6 Flow facilitates generous cable-routing channels and straps, ensuring organized cable management.

Today, Google announced its next generation of Chromebook devices, called the Chromebook Plus, said to improve upon the legacy set by Chromebooks over a decade ago. Starting at an enticing price point of $399, this new breed of Chromebooks integrates powerful AI capabilities and a range of built-in Google apps. Notably, it features tools like the Google Photos Magic Eraser and web-based Adobe Photoshop, positioning itself as a dynamic tool for productivity and creative exploration. In collaboration with hardware manufacturers such as Acer, ASUS, HP, and Lenovo, Google is launching a lineup of eight Chromebook Plus devices on the launch date, with more possibly coming in the future.

Each model boasts improved hardware configurations over the regular Chromebook, including processors like the Intel Core i3 12th Gen or the AMD Ryzen 3 7000 series, a minimum of 8 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage. Users are also in for a visual treat with a 1080p IPS display, ensuring crisp visuals for entertainment and work. And for the modern remote workforce, video conferencing gets a substantial upgrade. Every Chromebook Plus comes equipped with a 1080p camera and utilizes AI enhancements to elevate video call clarity, with compatibility spanning various platforms, including Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. Set to be available from October 8, 2023, in the US and October 9 in Canada and Europe, the Chromebook Plus is positioning itself as the go-to device for many users. On the other hand, the AI features are slated for arrival in 2024, when companies ensure their software is compatible.Below you can see the upcoming models.

First, an enormous thank you to all of you playing Starfield and your support. We are absolutely blown away by the response and all you love about the game. We're also reading all your great feedback on what you'd like to see improved or added to the game. This is a game we'll be supporting for years and years to come, so please keep all the feedback coming! Even if we don't get to your requests immediately, we'd love to do it in the future, like city maps. Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for.

This first update is a small hotfix targeted at the few top issues were are seeing. After that, expect a regular interval of updates that have top community requested features including:

• Brightness and Contrast controls
• HDR Calibration Menu
• FOV Slider
• Nvidia DLSS Support (PC)
• 32:9 Ultrawide Monitor Support (PC)
• Eat button for food!

MIPS, a leading developer of high- performance RISC-V compute IP, has announced embedded systems industry veteran Sameer Wasson as the company's new CEO. Before joining MIPS, Wasson spent 18 years at Texas Instruments (TI), most recently as Vice President, Business Unit (BU) Manager, Processors, where he was responsible for the company's Processor businesses. In that role, Wasson re-established TI as a mainstream microprocessor (MPU) and microcontroller (MCU) supplier for high growth automotive and industrial markets, and established the company's footprint in embedded AI, software defined vehicles, and electrification.

As the new CEO of MIPS, Wasson will further accelerate the company's leadership in the High-Performance RISC-V market as it continues to expand its footprint in Automotive and Enterprise markets.

Maxon, developers of professional software solutions for editors, filmmakers, motion designers, visual effects artists and creators of all types, is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated release of Cinebench 2024. This latest iteration of the industry-standard benchmarking software, which has been a cornerstone in computer performance evaluation for two decades, sets a new standard for performance evaluation, embracing cutting-edge technology to provide artists, designers, and creators with a more accurate and relevant representation of their hardware capabilities.

Redshift Rendering Engine Integration
Cinebench 2024 ushers in a new era by embracing the power of Redshift, Cinema 4D's default rendering engine. Unlike its predecessors, which utilized Cinema 4D's standard renderer, Cinebench 2024 utilizes the same render algorithms across both CPU and GPU implementations. This leap to the Redshift engine ensures that performance testing aligns seamlessly with the demands of modern creative workflows, delivering accurate and consistent results.

Intel's next-generation designs are nearing launch, and we are already getting information about the upcoming generations. Today, we have the information that Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop/client implementations of the Arrow Lake family will feature as much as 3 MB of level two (L2) cache for each performance core. Currently, Intel's latest 13th-generation Raptor Lake and 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh feature 2 MB of L2 cache per performance core. However, the 15th generation Arrow Lake, scheduled for launch in 2024, will bump that up by 50% and reach 3 MB. Given that P-cores are getting a boost in capacity, we expect E-cores to do so as well, but at a smaller size.

Arrow Lake will utilize Lion Cove P-core microarchitecture, while the E-core design will be based on Skymont. Intel plans to use a 20A node for this CPU, and more details will be presented next year.

Intel has recently revealed a security vulnerability named Downfall (CVE-2022-40982) that impacts multiple generations of Intel processors. The vulnerability is linked to Intel's memory optimization feature, exploiting the Gather instruction, a function that accelerates data fetching from scattered memory locations. It inadvertently exposes internal hardware registers, allowing malicious software access to data held by other programs. The flaw affects Intel mainstream and server processors ranging from the Skylake to Rocket Lake microarchitecture. The entire list of affected CPUs is here. Intel has responded by releasing updated software-level microcode to fix the flaw. However, there's concern over the performance impact of the fix, potentially affecting AVX2 and AVX-512 workloads involving the Gather instruction by up to 50%.

Phoronix tested the Downfall mitigations and reported varying performance decreases on different processors. For instance, two Xeon Platinum 8380 processors were around 6% slower in certain tests, while the Core i7-1165G7 faced performance degradation ranging from 11% to 39% in specific benchmarks. While these reductions were less than Intel's forecasted 50% overhead, they remain significant, especially in High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads. The ramifications of Downfall are not restricted to specialized tasks like AI or HPC but may extend to more common applications such as video encoding. Though the microcode update is not mandatory and Intel provides an opt-out mechanism, users are left with a challenging decision between security and performance. Executing a Downfall attack might seem complex, but the final choice between implementing the mitigation or retaining performance will likely vary depending on individual needs and risk assessments.