intel – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Intel will unveil 8th-gen Core processors on August 21st

Intel’s 7th-generation Core processors still feel relatively young, but the company is already poised to talk about their successors. The chip designer has announced that it will premiere its 8th-generation Core CPUs on August 21st, complete with a livestream on Intel’s Facebook page . The company is unsurprisingly shy on technical details, but it promises previews of PCs built on 8th-gen chips as well as a demo from a VR creator. As it stands, there’s already some idea of what to expect. On the record, Intel has already acknowledged that the 8th-gen (aka Coffee Lake) won’t be a radical redesign: it’s still built on a 14-nanometer manufacturing process and shares a lot in common with its predecessors. However, both Intel’s early benchmarking tease and various leaks suggest there may be reasons to get excited. More than anything, the focus is on cramming in more cores at similar power levels. Both the Core i5 and Core i7 would move to six cores on the desktop, while you’d see four cores in the Core i3, Pentium and some low-power laptop chips. In essence, it should be a continuation of what Intel is doing with the Core i9 and X-series Core i7: it’s adding extra cores both a foil to AMD’s Ryzen processors (where core count is an advantage) and as an acknowledgment that there are diminishing returns from tweaking familiar architectures and processes. This gives it a big boost to performance in multitasking and highly multithreaded apps without having to reinvent the wheel. The real breakthrough should come with Cannonlake, which should move to a far more efficient (and likely faster) 10nm process. Via: AnandTech Source: Intel

Intel 18-core Core i9-7980XE launches September 25 for $2,000

Enlarge Intel’s monstrous 18-core, 36-thread Core i9-7980XE CPU launches September 25 for a whopping $2,000, Intel announced today. It will be joined by the $1,700 16C/32T i9-7960X and the $1,400 14C/28T i9-7940X, while the 12C/12T i9-7920X launches a month earlier on August 28 for $1,200. UK prices are TBC, but the top-end chip will likely start at around £1,900, and then work its way down from there. Alongside release dates, Intel also revealed TDPs and boost clock speeds—information that was curiously missing from the original X299 announcement back in May. The Core i9-7980XE features a 2.6GHz base clock, a Turbo Boost 2.0 clock of 4.2GHz, and a Turbo Boost 3.0 clock (up to two cores) of 4.4GHz. That’s accompanied by 24.75MB of L3 cache, 44 PCIe lanes, and a 165W TDP (the 10-core i9-7900K has a 140W TDP). Boost and turbo clocks for the remaining i9 chips are largely the same, with a mere 100MHz variance, although the i9-7940X sports a higher 3.1GHz base clock. PC Gamer dug up a more detailed look at stock clock speeds, which shows the variance depending on how many cores are under load. In the case of the i9-7980XE, clock speeds vary from 4.2GHz to 3.9GHz up to 12 cores, dropping to 3.4GHz when all 18 cores are active. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
Intel 18-core Core i9-7980XE launches September 25 for $2,000

Intel unveils full specs for its 18-core i9 Extreme Edition CPU

Intel made a big splash at Computex with its new Core i9 X-series family , which is spearheaded by its first 18-core processor for desktops. But we haven’t much in the way of technical details, until now. Today, Intel revealed that the 18-core i9-7980XE will feature a base speed of 2.6GHz, with a Turbo Boost 2.0 clock of 4.2GHz. And using Turbo Boost 3.0, which speeds up performance of its fastest two cores, it’ll reach 4.4GHz. That’s just below the 4.5GHz top speed of Intel’s Core i7-7700K, its fastest mainstream processor for desktops. Basically, that means the 18-core chip will be no slouch when it comes single-threaded performance for games. (Check out our in-depth story on the development of the 18-core processor here .) Yes, it might seem strange to see the company’s most powerful processor with a base clock speed under 3GHz. But what’s more important are the boost figures, which will kick in when you actually need more computing power. As for the other members of the X-series family, the 16-core model will feature speeds between 2.8GHz and 4.4GHz, while the 14-core version starts at 3.1GHz. As usual, Intel can reach higher speeds on chips with fewer cores, since there’s less of a heat issue to worry about. It’ll be a while until we get full benchmarks from these chips, but Intel gave us a small preview from its own testing. The 16-core i9 CPU reached a Cinebench R15 score of 3200, while running an NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti GPU. That’s below a 24-core Xeon E5 2697, according to 3D Fluff’s database . The quad-core i7-7700K, meanwhile, scored just 966 on that same benchmark. You can nab the 14-18 core i9 CPUs on September 25th, while the 12-core version is coming sooner, on August 28th. The other chips are already available on the market. Intel Source: Intel

Continued here:
Intel unveils full specs for its 18-core i9 Extreme Edition CPU

The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes

Nota bene: This is the concluding part of the surprisingly interesting history of the IBM PC. You should probably read part one of the story if you haven’t already. In November 1979, Microsoft’s frequent partner Seattle Computer Products released a standalone Intel 8086 motherboard for hardcore hobbyists and computer manufacturers looking to experiment with this new and very powerful CPU. The 8086 was closely related to the 8088 that IBM chose for the PC; the latter was a cost-reduced version of the former, an 8-bit/16-bit hybrid chip rather than a pure 16-bit like the 8086. Read 44 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes

Samsung topples Intel as world’s largest chipmaker

Samsung registered a record profit of $12.6 billion in its second quarter earnings report, but hidden in those numbers lies another milestone. Of its $54 billion in revenue, $15 billion came solely from Samsung Semiconductors — pushing it above the $14.8 billion that all of Intel brought in. In short: Samsung just ended Intel’s 24-year-reign and became the largest chipmaker in the world. But Samsung didn’t get there by outselling processors — it’s been diversifying its chip offerings for years. While Intel has focused on CPUs for computers and servers after burying its wearables division last November, Samsung has broadened into making chips for mobile devices, as well as connected chips for IoT and smart vehicles. But the company also got ahead of Intel on the strength of its flash memory with more popular SSD products. Intel isn’t giving up on the rivalry, and claimed its next generation of long-delayed Cannon Lake 10nm chips will feature twice as many transistors as Samsung’s or TMSC’s, putting them “light years” ahead. Via: Sam Mobile Source: Samsung Second Quarter 201 Earnings , Intel Second Quarter Earnings (PDF)

Windows 10 Creators Update now available to all, November Update end-of-life’d

Enlarge / The announcement of the Creators Update in October 2016. (credit: Ars Technica) Some four months after its initial release, Microsoft says it has opened the floodgates and is now pushing out Windows 10 version 1703, the Creators Update, to every compatible PC (a category that excludes systems using Intel’s Clover Trail Atoms ). Earlier this month, AdDuplex, which tracks the penetration of the different Windows 10 versions, reported that as of July 18, the Creators Update had just passed 50 percent of Windows 10 systems. Forty-six percent are on the previous version, 1607 (aka the Anniversary Update). Until now, the deployment of the Creators Update has been throttled to stage its rollout. That throttle is now removed, so most of that 46 percent should now start upgrading. Microsoft is also saying that with this full rollout, enterprise customers should have confidence deploying the update. With Microsoft getting rid of the “Current Branch” and “Current Branch for Business” nomenclature , this is the closest thing to a signal that the version is enterprise-ready. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Windows 10 Creators Update now available to all, November Update end-of-life’d

USB 3.2 doubles your connection speeds with the same port

Your future computer or phone will be capable of stupidly fast transfer speeds. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group unveiled the USB 3.2 specification that effectively doubles the current USB 3.1 spec by adding an extra lane. As such, it will allow for two lanes of 5 Gbps for USB 3.0, yielding 10 Gbps, or two lanes of 10 Gbps for 20 Gbps with USB 3.1. As a bonus, the “superspeed” USB-C cable you’re currently using already has the capability for dual-lane operation built in. By way of example, the group says that a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/s transfer over a “superspeed” certified USB 3.1 cable. “When we introduced USB Type-C to the market, we intended to assure that USB Type-C cables and connectors certified for SuperSpeed USB or SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps would, as produced, support higher performance USB as newer generations of USB 3.0 were developed, ” said USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman Brad Saunders. You should take those Thunderbolt-like numbers with a grain of salt, however. USB 3.0 or 3.1 devices (which confusingly use USB-C cables) rarely come close to their certified speeds. For instance, WIrecutter found that the fastest USB 3.0 flash drive, the Extreme CZ80, could read and write at 254 MB/s and 170 MB/s, tops — half of what USB 3.0 is capable of. (Some USB 3.1 superspeed SSD drives can saturate a USB 3.0 connection, however.) Still, flash storage is advancing rapidly, thanks to 64-layer and higher tech from Toshiba , Intel, Samsung and WD, and those kind of speeds are handy if you’re editing RAW or 4K video. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group (with Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft and others as members) says that the 3.2 spec will be finalized by the end of 2017, so don’t expect to see any devices until then. In the meantime, we’ll hear more about it in September this year in North America during the USB Developer Days. Source: USB 3.0 Promoter Group

View original post here:
USB 3.2 doubles your connection speeds with the same port

Asus ROG GX800VH review: A ludicrous liquid-cooled $6,000-plus laptop

Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton) The Asus ROG GX800VH, a liquid cooled monstrosity of a gaming laptop, is one of those things that, like 4K phones or the Apple Watch , is wholly unnecessary yet awfully desirable. Beneath its fully mechanical, RBG-lit keyboard is Intel’s top-of-the-line mobile i7-7820HK processor, which is based on the same Kaby Lake architecture as the i7-7700K and is similarly overclockable. There are two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards paired in SLI, 64GB of DDR4 memory, and an 18.4-inch 4K display with G-Sync. Buying one costs £6,600 /$6,300, which is an astonishing amount of money even considering the tech that’s included. Specs at a glance: Asus ROG GX800VH Screen 3840×2160 18.4-inch IPS G-Sync display 100 percent RGB OS Windows 10 Home x64 CPU 4C/8T 2.9GHz Core i7-7820HK (OC to 4.4GHz) RAM 64GB 2800MHz DDR4 GPU 2x Nvidia GTX 1080 HDD 2x 512GB NVMe SSD in RAID 0 Networking 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, Gigabit Ethernet Ports 1 x Microphone-in jack 1 x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF) 1 x Type C USB3.1 (GEN2) Thunderbolt 3 x Type A USB3.0 (USB3.1 GEN1) 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert 1 x HDMI 1 x Docking port (HOT swap) 1 x mini Display Port 1 x SD card reader Size Laptop: 45.8 x 33.8 x 4.54 cm (WxDxH) Dock: (Thermal Dock) 35.9 x 41.8 x 13.3 cm (WxDxH) Other perks 8 Cells 71 Whrs Battery, HD Web Camera, Mechanical Keyboard Warranty 1 year Price £6,600 /$6,300 The GX800VH certainly isn’t for everyone, then, not least those that want the most bang-for-the-buck. But as an example of what’s possible on the bleeding edge when money is no object, it’s one of the finest pieces of technological willy-waving that we’ve ever seen. Buying a GX800VH requires a commitment from both your credit card and your ego. Not only is the laptop itself physically large and covered in orange highlights, but it comes with both a backpack and a suitcase to carry the accompanying liquid cooling unit around—and the graphics on the suitcase are hardly what you’d call subtle. Still, the suitcase—which is filled a pre-cut foam insert for the liquid cooling unit and extra power supply—and bag do make carrying the whole setup around that much easier, should you want to lug it around to a friend’s house or, if you’re seriously committed to gaming, on holiday. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ever-changing memory could lead to faster processors

Virtually every central processor in your devices uses a tiered set of memory caches to speed things up by fetching commonly used data. But it’s not very efficient — in trying to accommodate everything, it’s rarely the fastest at anything. MIT’s CSAIL researchers want to fix that. They’ve developed a cache system (appropriately named Jenga ) that creates new cache structures on the spot to optimize for a specific app. As Jenga knows the physical locations of each memory bank, it can calculate how to store data to reduce the travel time (and thus lag) as much as possible, even if that means changing the hierarchy. Whether an app would benefit from multiple cache levels or one gigantic cache, this system would be ready. The gains could be huge. A simulated 36-core chip ran up to 30 percent faster just by adopting Jenga, and could use up to 85 percent less power. You wouldn’t necessarily face a penalty for having many cores in a chip, even in laptops and smartphones where every watt counts. Of course, there’s one major problem: Jenga is just a simulation. It could take a while before you see real-world examples of this cache, and longer still before chip manufacturers adopt it (assuming they like the idea, that is). This also assumes that Jenga scales neatly across different core counts. Will you see similar gains with ‘just’ an 8-core chip? It’s easy to imagine CPU giants like Intel or Qualcomm leaping on this concept, though. Chip makers frequently boost performance by moving to ever-smaller manufacturing processes, but they’re gradually running into physical limits . So long as there’s software to take advantage of it, Jenga could wring extra performance out of chips with relatively little effort. Source: MIT News

View post:
Ever-changing memory could lead to faster processors

Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world, but too darn expensive

Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton) Intel’s latest 10-core, high-end desktop (HEDT) chip—the Core i9-7900X—costs £900 /$1000. That’s £500/$500 less than its predecessor, the i7-6950X. In previous years, such cost-cutting would have been regarded as generous. You might, at a stretch, even call it good value. But that was at a time when Intel’s monopoly on the CPU market was as its strongest, before a resurgent AMD lay waste to the idea that a chip with more than four cores be reserved for those with the fattest wallets. The i9-7900X—which debuts the “i9” moniker alongside the new X299 platform, replacing X99 —is the most powerful consumer desktop chip money can buy. In nearly every benchmark, it delivers the highest scores. In multitasking and heavily multithreaded applications like photo editors, video editors, and 3D computer graphics, it ably demonstrates the appeal of more cores. But as a product, a piece of aspirational tech to flaunt on Reddit, Intel’s HEDT chips are far less alluring. It doesn’t help that X299 is a confusing mess of chips, PCIe lanes, and consumer-unfriendly feature lockouts that hint at a rushed launch in the wake of increased competition from AMD. Nor does it help that, like Intel’s mainstream Kaby Lake architecture before it, Skylake-X offers little in the way of raw instructions-per-clock (IPC) performance improvement over Broadwell-E . Read 54 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world, but too darn expensive