more-important – Tech Today w/ Ken May

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

(credit: Indigo Skies Photography ) An organization that manages transmission systems across the central US announced on Tuesday that it broke a record for wind penetration in North America. On Sunday at 4:30am, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) became the first regional transmission organization (RTO) to serve 52.1 percent of its load using wind energy. SPP also set the previous record in April 2016 with 49.2 percent wind generation. A record previous to that was set by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in late March 2016, when the organization hit 48.28 percent wind penetration at 1:10am. Records for wind penetration, which measure the amount of total load supplied by wind on a moment-to-moment basis, are being broken more frequently these days, on a regional and internal level. As RTOs, which generally serve large areas and cross state lines, add more wind turbines to their portfolios , wind is becoming a more important part of the energy mix. SPP noted that “wind is now the third most-prevalent fuel source in the SPP region,” which covers 550,000 square miles of territory in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and portions of neighboring states. Natural gas and coal are still the primary fuel sources for SPP, but the organization said that wind accounted for 15 percent of its generating capacity in 2016. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View original post here:
Wind penetration on central US grid hits 52% Sunday night, breaking record