When Intel launched its Tiger Lake processors for laptops, the company has foreseen a smooth integration by OEMs and plenty of design wins. While that has turned out to be true, there seems to be a big problem lurking in the OEM component supply chain. In the new Tiger Lake systems, the CPU carries support for Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 technologies. However, these protocols can not work on their own, as they require external power delivery controllers (PDC) to function. These PDCs are used to regulate and control all of the power circulating in the USB specification, and they come in a form of a separate chip. This chip is later integrated into PCBs of various systems implementing these technologies.

Today, we have a report coming from Igor's LAB, in which we are told that the availability of these chips could be very bad. Intel's OEMs are using Texas Instruments (TI) 994AD PDC, however, as the supply of these chips becomes scarce, OEMs are turning to TI 993AC/994AC chips. Intel advises OEMs, carrying these chips in their systems, to only communicate benefits of Thunderbolt 4 and exclude USB 4 mentions, or to communicate benefits of Thunderbolt 4 and reference USB 4 "compatibility." This means that every OEM using the alternative chips will get Intel's Thunderbolt 4 certifications, as the company plans to temporarily issue certifications with these chips included, while the supply chain regulates. TI's 993AC/994AC are assumed to not have the power and regulation capability of the USB 4 as the 994AD PDC can.

Last week,we have covered the leak of AMD's upcoming Raphael processor integrated heat spreader (IHS), which featured a rather unique design. While we have made speculations as to why the design was made like that, it seems that we now have an answer to the question. It was previously believed that the unique IHS design was there to protect a double-substrate design, like Intel designed with Skylake-X. However, thanks to the updated design by ExecutableFix, we now know that AMD's design choice for Raphael is based on the simple fact that the IHS needs those cutouts for capacitors, as this seems to be the only place to have them.

As you can see below, there was no room on the LGA side, where the LGA pads are placed, and a lot of speculation suggested that capacitors were placed under the IHS or in IHS cutouts. The latter has proven to be the case according to this leak. You can check out some of the updated renderings in the images below.

Today, Valve has updated its Steam Hardware Survey with the latest information about the market share of different processors. Steam Hardware Survey is a very good indicator of market movements, as it surveys users that are spread across millions of gaming systems that use Valve's Steam gaming platform. As Valve processes information, it reports it back to the public in a form of market share of different processors. Today, in the Steam Hardware Survey for May 2021, we got some interesting data to look at. Most notably, AMD has gained 0.65% CPU market share, increasing it from the previous 29.48% to 30.13%. This represents a major move for the company, which didn't own more than 30% market share with its CPUs on Steam Survey in years.

As the Steam Survey tracks even the market share of graphics cards, we got to see a slight change there as well. As far as GPUs go, AMD now holds 16.2% of the market share, which is a decrease from the previous 16.3%. For more details about Steam Hardware Survey for May 2021, please check out Steam's website here.

Enterprise SSD procurement has been rising on the back of growing server shipments since 2Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, the share of 8 TB products in shipments of SSDs to data centers has shown the most noticeable growth, which is expected to persist through 3Q21. However, certain SSD components and parts may be in shortage due to insufficient foundry capacity. TrendForce is therefore revising the QoQ hikes in contract prices of enterprise SSDs for 3Q21 to 10-15% from the previous projection of 5-10%.

TrendForce further indicates that the high demand for enterprise SSDs in 3Q21 is attributed to several factors. First, North American cloud service providers (hyperscalers) have pretty much completed their inventory adjustments and now continue to expand their storage capacity. Second, the flow of incoming orders to traditional server brands is getting stronger over the quarters as government agencies and SMBs increase their budgets for IT infrastructure. Third, Intel and AMD are ramping up production for server CPUs based on their respective new processor platforms. Following the adoption of new CPUs, the overall demand for enterprise SSDs has also shifted to higher-density products because clients want to upgrade their computing power and storage capacity. Specifically, demand is mainly trending toward 4/8 TB SSDs since raising NAND Flash density can lower the cost of SSD deployment.

As global market changes spur demand for augmented reality (AR) technology, there is an increasing need for innovations that combine the best technologies in CPU, GPU and machine learning into a single SOC (system on chip) to allow for the creation of the most demanding AR experiences while maintaining power efficiency.

Magic Leap today announced it is partnering with AMD on an AR technology solution that includes a semi-custom SOC to enable enterprise users to re-imagine and transform how virtual content and information is visualized and merged with real-world environments.

AMD is preparing to switch things up a bit with its upcoming AM5 platform. The new platform is said to bring significant changes to the design of the socket and the CPU package, where we will see some new design choices and decisions. For starters, all of the processors made for the AM5 platform will come in a land grid array (LGA) configuration, very similar to that of Intel. Thanks to the rendering of ExecutableFix, we got to see exactly how will the new LGA design look like. And today, we get to see more details of the AMD's upcoming Raphael processor's integrated heat spreader (IHS) design.

The IHS serves the purpose of spreading the heat away from the die and dissipating it efficiently. However, IHS designs can sometimes be very interesting. According to this rendering from ExecutableFix, AMD's upcoming Raphael design, based on Zen 4 core, will feature a unique IHS design, which can be seen below.

AMD is in a constant process of processor development, and there are always new technologies on the horizon. Back in March of 2020, the company has revealed that it is working on new X3D packaging technology, that integrated both 2.5D and 3D approaches to packing semiconductor dies together as tightly as possible. Today, we are finally getting some more information about the X3D technology, as we have the first codename of the processor that is featuring this advanced packaging technology. According to David Schor, we have learned that AMD is working on a CPU that uses X3D tech with stacked dies, and it is called Milan-X.

The Milan-X CPU is AMD's upcoming product designed for data center usage. The rumors suggest that the CPU is designed for heavy bandwidth and presumably a lot of computing power. According to ExecutableFix, the CPU uses a Genesis-IO die to power the connectivity, which is an IO die from EPYC Zen 3 processors. While this solution is in the works, we don't know the exact launch date of the processor. However, we could hear more about it in AMD's virtual keynote at Computex 2021. For now, take this rumor with a grain of salt.

A few details have been let out on Intel's next socket, LGA 1700, which will be the one to accept next-gen Alder Lake CPUs. Apparently, Intel's LGA 1700 - which replaces the current LGA 1200 socket) will feature a lower height (by a full [1] millimeter, helping to further reduce socket load) as well as new mounting holes positions for cooling solutions. This would effectively render existing cooling solutions incompatible with Intel's next-gen CPUs - it will be up to your cooling solution provider to offer a new cooler bracket that's compatible with the new LGA 1700 socket. If the manufacturer doesn't, it's likely you'll have to get a newer cooling solution that actually ships with the required adapter.

It has also come to light that Intel's next-gen Alder Lake-S will eschew Intel's quadrangular design for their CPUs, and instead introduce a rectangular design that's 35.5×45.0 mm. An interesting approach that places these CPUs closer in design to Intel's HEDT platforms, but likely a necessary change due to the expected new Big-Little core design in Alder Lake-S. Current information out in the wild says that Intel will keep on offering boxed cooling solutions for < 65 W TDP CPUs, while higher-performance parts will still ship absent of it. Leaks place Intel as being working on developing a new Peltier-based cooling solution for socket LGA 1700 parts as well, after they partnered with Cooler Master for the MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero cooler.

Antec Inc., leading provider of high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself market, broadens their offer of power supplies with the new line NeoEco Platinum series. The 80 PLUS PLATINUM rating and the Continuous Power with 650 W, 750 W and 850 W make this modular PSU line an efficient and affordable choice.

The PSU line is now commercially available from USD $134.99 for 650 W, USD $144.99 for 750 W and USD $164.99 for 850 W.

The power supplies achieve up to 94 per cent efficiency, so users can reduce their electricity bill significantly. The series features a server-class LLC design with a synchronous rectification based on a DC-DC topology. Japanese capacitors ensure the tightest DC stability and regulation, for reliability that the system can count on. Four PCI Express port connectors enable for multi-GPU support.

Famous chip photographer Fritzchens Fritz has always surprised us with some awesome die shots of the latest processors. Today, he has prepared another interesting surprise for all technology enthusiasts. Mr. Fritz has managed to run Intel's Core i5-11400 "Rocket Lake" processor without any type of colling solution, and use a thermal camera to capture what is happening inside the silicon. As the Rocket Lake design is impossible to run at any low-power setting, the author has made some changes to get a sustained run from the CPU. For starters, he set the operating clock speed to the constant 800 MHz, with iGPU, AVX, and HyperThreading disabled. The VCCSA was offset by -0.200 mV and the memory speed was lowered to DDR4-1333 speed.

The results? Well, the CPU has managed to run some tests without a cooler, and the thermal camera shows us just how the CPU works. As a CPU core gets in use, a thermal camera picks it up and we can see a core sort of spiking. Its temperature increases and it becomes distinctive from the rest of the die. After some time, the CPU became unusable, which is to be expected given that Rocket Lake's power-hungry design managed to survive quite a long time without any sufficient cooling.You can check out the YouTube video below and see the magic happen.

EliteMini TL50 is an ultra-compact and high-performance mini PC specially designed for home and office use. Equipped with Intel 11th generation CPU and Intel Iris Xe graphics. Intel Wi-Fi 6 & triple output, upgrade-friendly & windows 10 pro pre-installed.

TL50 comes with Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor (Tiger Lake), 4 cores/8 threads, backed up by Intel Iris Xe graphics, with 8M Cache, max turbo frequency up to 4.20 GHz. It is 20% faster than its predecessor with more cache memory, DDR4-3200 memory and PCIe 4.0 support. Not only ordinary work but also a little heavy games and video editing can be done comfortably.

The discrete GPU market has been a duopoly for quite some time, and when Intel announced that the company is rebooting plans for its discrete GPU lineup, another player was about to break that duopoly. Today, that has been changed forever and Intel has officially become the third manufacturer of discrete GPUs, as we can see on the online listing. On BestBuy, CyberPowerPC has listed "Gamer Xtreme Gaming Desktop" powered exclusively by Intel components. When it comes to the CPU choice, Intel's 6C/12T Core i5-11400F CPU model is present without iGPU. Now comes the interesting part. The GPU powering the system is Intel Iris Xe discrete graphics card, which is a DG1 GPU based on Xe-LP SKU.

This model features 80 EUs, resulting in 640 shading units. While this is not any gaming beast, casual 1080p gaming should be just fine on this configuration. The system is listed for 750 US Dollars, and it is sold out, as of the time of writing this. While the performance of this configuration may not be something monumental, it is an important step towards Intel's inclusion in the discrete GPU market. By using OEMs, the GPU will reach a very large market without any major problems. We are waiting to see the first reviews of the system, which will surely take a good look at the card and examine its performance.

Noctua first teased their passive CPU cooler at Computex 2019 which weighed 1.5 kg and could handle processors with a TDP of 120 W passively and 180 W with quiet fans. Noctua had been planning to release a commercial version of the cooler in Q1 2021 but that date was pushed to Q2 2021 when Noctua updated its product roadmap in early 2021. Noctua has recently confirmed that this latest launch date is on schedule with an announcement that the cooler is "coming very soon" in response to a user on Twitter. The prototype featured mounting for AM4 and LGA 115x sockets with it keeping the Intel i9-9900K cool under load so we expect it will handle any consumer CPU.

InWin today announced its new BR Series AIO CPU Coolers with a built-in CPU block fan blower. The additional CPU block fan blower chills the upper motherboard area (UMA) up to 35 percent more than traditional AIO CPU coolers, ensuring the more powerful CPUs can be cooled and kept stable. The InWin BR24 and BR36 offer 240 mm and 360 mm radiator variants respectively and are bundled with high-performance Luna AL120 ARGB fans specially designed with higher static pressure.

High Performance AIO CPU Cooling
With outstanding AIO performance, the BR Series is tailored for all PC users, especially for those that operate frequently with higher loads, such as gamers, designers and content creators. High-density microchannel fins in the BR Series copper plate efficiently draw heat away from the CPU, minimizing the temperature delta to unlock maximum thermal headroom and overclocking performance. Its internal pump is designed to sit separately from the water block to minimize vibration and noise.

AMD processors have been very good at the field of security, on par with its main competitor, Intel. However, from time to time, researchers find new ways of exploiting a security layer and making it vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. Today, we have information that two new research papers are being published at this year's 15th IEEE Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT'21) happening on May 27th. Both papers are impacting AMD processor security, specifically, they show how AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) is compromised. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich and the University of Lübeck are going to present their papers on CVE-2020-12967 and CVE-2021-26311, respectfully.

While we do not know exact details of these vulnerabilities until papers are presented, we know exactly which processors are affected. As SEV is an enterprise feature, AMD's EPYC lineup is the main target of these two new exploits. AMD says that affected processors are all of the EPYC embedded CPUs and the first, second, and third generation of regular EPYC processors. For third-generation EPYC CPUs, AMD has provided mitigation in SEV-SNP, which can be enabled. For prior generations, the solution is to follow best security practices and try to avoid an exploit.

The AMD embedded roadmap for 2020 - 2023 was recently leaked and reveals some interesting information about AMD's upcoming Zen 4 based EPYC server processes. The current generation 7003 series of Zen 3 EPYC processors offer up to 64 cores and 128 threads with a TDP range of 120 W - 280 W. The next-generation EPYC 7004 "Genoa" Zen 4 processors will push the maximum core count to 96 cores and 192 threads with a maximum TDP of 320 W. The Zen 4 based EPYC processors will move to a 12 chiplet design up from the current 8 chiplet design which allows for the core increase that will increase the physical size of the processors and require a new SP5 socket. The new EPYC 7004 series processors will also support the latest features such as 12 channel DDR5-5200 ECC memory and PCIe Gen5.

Intel's upcoming Alder Lake-S processors are going to be the company's first attempt at delivering heterogeneous core solutions, combining low-power and high-performance IPs in a single chip. Another important milestone that these processors will reach is DDR5 memory adoption, the first of its kind on consumer platforms. Today, thanks to CapFrameX, a monitoring tool that also hosts a database of benchmark runs, we have a piece of recorded information coming from a test system equipped with an Intel Alder Lake-S processor. The tested system spotted an engineering sample of the Alder Lake-S lineup, clocked at just 2.2 GHz. The core count and core configuration remained unknown.

Alongside the upcoming CPU, the system is composed of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and DDR5 memory running at 4800 MHz. There were four sticks present, each having 8 GB capacity. The leaked system was running the DOTA 2 game at an average of 119.98 FPS, which doesn't mean much, given that we don't know which settings were applied and what was the resolution. There is a chart showing the gaming frame rate and frame time, which could be interesting to look at. However, the only new information we have come to know is that the Alder Lake-S is already capable of playing games and the ecosystem support should be very good at launch.

Yesterday, we got information that Intel's upcoming DG2 discrete graphics card is "right around the corner". That means that we are inching closer to the launch of Intel's discrete GPU offerings, and we are going to get another major player in the current GPU market duopoly. Today, however, we are in luck because Igor from Igor's LAB has managed to get ahold of the specifications of Intel's Xe-HPG DG2 graphics card. For starters, it is important to note that DG2 GPU will first come to laptops later this year. More precisely, laptops powered by Alder Lake-P processors will get paired with DG2 discrete GPU in the second half of 2021. The CPU and GPU will connect using the PCIe 4.0 x12 link as shown in the diagram below, where the GPU is paired with the Tiger Lake-H processor. The GPU has its subsystem that handles the IO as well.

Today, Lenovo in partnership with Intel has announced that Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) is building a supercomputer powered by Intel's next-generation technologies. Specifically, the supercomputer will use Intel's Sapphire Rapids CPUs in combination with the highly-teased Ponte Vecchio GPUs to power the applications running at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. Along with the various processors, the LRZ will also deploy Intel Optane persistent memory to process the huge amount of data the LRZ has and is producing. The integration of HPC and AI processing will be enabled by the expansion of LRZ's current supercomputer called SuperMUG-NG, which will receive an upgrade in 2022, which will feature both Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio.

Mr. Raja Koduri, Intel graphics guru, has on Twitter teased that this supercomputer installment will represent a combination of Sapphire Rapids, Ponte Vecchio, Optane, and One API all in one machine. The system will use over one petabyte of Distributed Asynchronous Object Storage (DAOS) based on the Optane technologies. Then, Mr. Koduri has teased some Ponte Vecchio eye candy, which is a GIF of tiles combining to form a GPU, which you can check out here. You can also see some pictures of Ponte Vecchio below.

Intel's upcoming Alder Lake generation of processors is going to be the first iteration of heterogeneous x86 architecture. That means that Intel will for the first time combine smaller, low-power cores, with some big high-performance cores to provide the boost to all the workloads. If a task doesn't need much power, as some background task, for example, the smaller cores are used. And if you need to render something or you want to fire up a game, big cores are used to provide the power needed for the tasks. Intel has decided to provide such an architecture on the advanced 10 nm SuperFin, which represents a major upgrade over the existing 14 nm process.

Today, we got some information from Igor's Lab, showing the leaked specification of the Intel Core-1800 processor engineering sample. While this may not represent the final name, we see that the leaked information shows that the processor is B0 stepping. That means that the CPU will see more changes when the final sample arrives. The CPU has 16 cores with 24 threads. Eight of those cores are big ones with hyperthreading, while the remaining 8 are smaller Atom cores. They are running at the base clock of 1800 MHz, while the boost speeds are 4.6 GHz with two cores, 4.4 GHz with four cores, and 4.2 GHz with 6 cores. When all cores are used, the boost speed is locked at 4.0 GHz. The CPU has a PL1 TDP of 125 Watts, while the PL2 configuration boosts the TDP to 228 Watts. The CPU was reportedly running at 1.3147 Volts during the test. You can check out the complete datasheet below.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today presented two gaming systems of Intel Z590 platform with AORUS MODEL X and mini system AORUS MODEL S, which adopt the top-notch components and materials for extreme performance. Enhanced by the strict verification and leading technology, GIGABYTE provides the PC system of premium performance with optimized heat dissipation and acoustic control. The system maintains cool and quiet even under the overclocking, which balance the high performance and low temperature to keep the system acoustic under 40dB without throttling. Furthermore, the three-year warranty of full system offers reassuring and comprehensive service for users.

"When tackling the uplift of PC performance, multi-core, high frequency, and copious storage become a standard to the premium PC platform, as well as how to make the best components matrix to provide the optimized performance with reliability turns into more inevitable." indicated by Eddie Lin, Vice President of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions. "The new AORUS system is well-tempered by multiple verification and tuning of GIGABYTE's R&D team, which provide a perfect match of cool, quiet, and powerful performance with optimized compatibility, Expandability, and three-year warranty of whole system.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the maker of various kinds of silicon products, is the manufacturer of AMD's EPYC processors. However, have you ever questioned what CPUs are actually behind TSMC? The answer to that question is quite simple. Today, we have come to know that TSMC is using AMD EPYC processors to power their manufacturing infrastructure and tape out thousands of wafers per month. AMD has published TSMC's case study, which pointed out that the total cost of ownership has been the main challenge of the Taiwanese company. By using AMD EPYC 7702P and 7F72 CPUs, TSMC addresses the need for both reliable and high-performing server infrastructure to power the manufacturing efforts. For research and development purposes, TSMC chose the 7F72 with 24 cores and a high clock speed of 3.2 GHz, which is ideal for the company needs and purposes.

For more details about TSMC's choices and solutions, read the case study here.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2021 of $3.45 billion, operating income of $662 million, net income of $555 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.45. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $762 million, net income was $642 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.52.

"Our business continued to accelerate in the first quarter driven by the best product portfolio in our history, strong execution and robust market demand," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We had outstanding year-over-year revenue growth across all of our businesses and data center revenue more than doubled. Our increased full-year guidance highlights the strong growth we expect across our business based on increasing adoption of our high-performance computing products and expanding customer relationships."

The demands of data center workloads and internet traffic are growing exponentially, and new solutions are needed to keep up with these demands while reducing the current and anticipated growth of power consumption. But the variety of workloads and applications being run today means the traditional one-size-fits all approach to computing is not the answer. The industry demands flexibility; design freedom to achieve the right level of compute for the right application.

As Moore's Law comes to an end, solution providers are seeking specialized processing. Enabling specialized processing has been a focal point since the inception of our Neoverse line of platforms, and we expect these latest additions to accelerate this trend.

Video streaming is looking a bit like magic. The uploader sends a video to one platform in one resolution and encoding format, while the viewer requests a video in a specific resolution and encoding format used by the device the video is streamed on. YouTube knows this best, as it represents the world's largest video platform with over 2 billion users visiting the platform each month. That takes a massive load on the server infrastructure over at Google's data centers that host the service. There is about 500 hours worth of video content uploaded to the platform every minute, and regular hardware isn't being enough anymore to handle everything.

That is why YouTube has developed custom chips, ASICs, that are called VCUs or Video (trans)Coding Units. In Google data centers, there is a large problem with transcoding. Each video needs to adapt to the streaming platform and desired specifications, and doing that on regular hardware is a problem. By using ASIC devices, such as VCUs, Google can keep up with the demand and deliver the best possible quality. Codenamed Argos, the chip can deliver 20-33x improvement in efficiency compared to the regular server platform. In data centers, the VCU is implemented as a regular PCIe card, with two chips under the heatsinks.