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Submission + - Intel Unveils Full Tiger Lake-H Processor Line-Up For Higher Performance Laptops (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: In January, Intel officially announced its Tiger Lake-H mobile platform, but today disclosed full details on the new, higher-end variant of Tiger Lake manufactured using 10nm SuperFIN technology, that brings with it a few significant platform enhancements beyond just its clock speed and core count boost. Intel is refreshing the lineup with higher-power and higher-performance Tiger Lake-H45 processors, with up to 8 physical cores (16 threads). In addition, the CPUs feature 20 reconfigurable PCI Express 4.0 lanes attached directly to the processor, which enable PCIe 4.0 NVMe RAID — a first for any mobile platform. The platform features all of the latest IO and connectivity technologies, like Killer Wi-Fi 6 / 6E, Thunderbolt 4, and support for Resizable BAR. There are an array of consumer and commercial Tiger Lake-H based 11th Gen Intel Core H-series processors coming down the pipeline. The top-end consumer SKU is the Core i9-11980HK, which is an 8-core / 16-thread processor, with a base clock of 2.6GHz and maximum turbo clock of 5GHz on one or two cores. What also makes this particular processor interesting is that it is fully unlocked and overclockable via Intel's XTU utility. Intel has shipped millions of units volume to laptop OEMs already and expects to have laptops in market from all of the majors this month.

Submission + - New Chip Vulnerability Renders All Spectre Security Mitigations Useless (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: University of Virginia Researchers have now found a way to effectively circumvent all of the original Spectre mitigations for processors, essentially resurrecting the ghostly security flaw that will now again haunt billions of PCs globally. Ashish Venkat, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UVA Engineering, likens the team's discovery to how security works in an airport. He explained a hypothetical scenario "where TSA lets you in without checking your boarding pass because (1) it is fast and efficient, and (2) you will be checked for your boarding pass at the gate anyway." However, when you are between the metaphorical TSA checkpoint and the gate, something bad could still happen. "A computer processor does something similar. It predicts that the check will pass and could let instructions into the pipeline. Ultimately, if the prediction is incorrect, it will throw those instructions out of the pipeline," notes Venkat. However, at that point it may be too late and these nefarious instructions could leave "side-effects" in the pipeline that an attacker could use to exploit for critical information like credentials, etc. The solution to this vulnerability is disabling a micro-op cache or halting speculative execution. However, this approach wouldn't be feasible since it would simply crush performance features of modern processors.

Submission + - Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Nano Weighs Under 2 Lbs And Is Powered By Intel Tiger Lake (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The new 13-inch ThinkPad X1 Nano is the thinnest and lightest Lenovo ThinkPad ever in the brand's history. The machine weighs just 1.99 pounds (907 grams), while still sporting a fairly powerful Intel Core i7-1160G7 Tiger Lake quad-core CPU, up to a 1TB NVMe SSD, 16GB of 4267MHz LPDDR4X RAM and a 48 Whr battery. In the benchmarks, the machine holds its own for productivity and content creation tasks as well as a bit of light-duty gaming, versus heavier machines in its peer group. In terms of battery life, the new ThinkPad X1 Nano hangs pretty tough as well, offering about 7.5 hours of constant use up-time with HD video playback. With its 2K (2160X1350 — 16:10) IPS Dolby Vision-certified display and top tier configuration it doesn't come cheap, as you might imagine. The ThinkPad X1 Nano has a current starting price of $1289 and tops out at $2231 for its most powerful configuration and 1TB of fast SSD storage. Regardless, it's impressive what the machine can deliver in terms of features and performance in its weight class.

Submission + - Intel Launches First 10nm 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable Processors For Data Centers (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel just officially launched its first server products built on its advanced 10nm manufacturing process node, the 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable family of processors. 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors are based on the 10nm Ice Lake-SP microarchitecture, which incorporates a number of new features and enhancements. Core counts have been significantly increased with this generation, and now offer up to 40 cores / 80 threads per socket versus 28 cores / 56 threads in Intel's previous-gen offerings. The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor platform also supports up to 8 channels of DDR4-3200 memory, up to 6 terabytes of total memory, and up to 64 lanes of PCIe Gen4 connectivity per socket, for more bandwidth, higher capacity, and copious IO. New AI, security and cryptographic capabilities arrive with the platform as well. Across Cloud, HPC, 5G, IoT, and AI workloads, new 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors are claimed to offer significant uplifts across the board versus their previous-gen counterparts. And versus rival AMD's EPYC platform, Intel is also claiming many victories, specifically when AVX-512, new crypto instructions, or DL Boost are added to the equation. Core counts in the line-up range from 8 — 40 cores per processor and TDPs vary depending on the maximum base and boost frequencies and core count / configuration (up to a 270W TDP). Intel is currently shipping 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable CPUs to key customers now, with over 200K chips in Q1 this year and a steady ramp-up to follow.

Submission + - Arm Unveils Armv9 Architecture With Emphasis On Security And Machine Learning (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: For the past decade, thousands of Arm-based devices have been employing variants of the Armv8 architecture, which was the first native 64-bit Arm instruction set. Today, however, Arm today announced the Armv9 architecture for next-generation devices. With Armv9, a significant emphasis is placed on three technologies that are growing in importance across multiple sectors: machine learning, digital signal processing, and improved security. To that end, Scalable Vector Extensions v2 (SVE2) have been enabled in the Armv9 instruction set, where it will be tasked with ramping up performance for ML and DSP tasks. Arm also claims that SVE2 has the potential to provide a significant performance uplift in 5G and mixed reality (AR/VR) applications as well. On the security front, Arm is introducing its Confidential Compute Architecture (CCA), which "shields portions of code and data from access or modification while in-use, even from privileged software, by performing computation in a hardware-based secure environment." CCA will also usher in the secure sandbox concept of "Realms" to put a partition between secure and non-secure processing domains. With Armv9, it's also promised that annual CPU performance will outpace the average industry growth. More specifically, Arm claims that Armv9 will see "expected CPU performance increases of more than 30% over the next two generations of mobile and infrastructure CPUs."

Submission + - AMD Unveils Radeon RX 6700 XT For Midrange 1440p PC Gaming (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD just unveiled its latest RDNA 2-based GPU that targets 1440p PC gamers, known as Radeon RX 6700 XT. The Radeon RX 6700 XT is built around the company's Navi 22 GPU. In terms of core counts, Navi 22 is effectively a Navi 21 — the "Big Navi" GPU used on the powerful Radeon RX 6900 XT — lopped in half. AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT has fewer CUs and Ray Accelerators (40 vs. 80), and 50% of the total number of Stream Processors (2,560 vs. 5,120). Other parts of the of Navi 22, however, aren't scaled back quite as far. For example, the Radeon RX 6700 XT has 96MB of Infinity Cache, down from 128MB of on the 6900 XT. And the 6700 XT's memory interface is 192-bits wide versus 256-bits on Radeon RX 6800 / 6900 series cards. The 6700 XT also features 12GB of GDDR6 memory (versus 16GB). AMD has set the MSRP for its Radeon RX 6700 XT at $479. That puts its price higher than the competing GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ($399 MSRP), but somewhat lower than the RTX 3070 ($499 MSRP). Looking at the numbers, that's right where the Radeon RX 6700 XT falls in terms of performance with traditional rasterization. Factor ray tracing into the mix, however, and the Radeon falls behind both of NVIDIA's competitive products. Radeon RX 6700 XT card should be available starting today but for sure demand will be very high, so supply will likely be limited.

Submission + - AMD Launches Ryzen Pro 5000 Series Mobile CPUs For Business Laptops (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD expanded its professional line of mobile processors today, with the Zen 3-based Ryzen Pro 5000 series. These new chips target premium business-class and commercial laptops, pairing the company's suite of Pro technologies, including enterprise-class security features, with the power of its latest generation CPU architecture. As with previous-gen Pro models, these latest chips sport enhanced features and capabilities geared towards offering heightened security and robust remote management for IT professionals and organizations. In terms of security, Ryzen Pro 5000 series CPUs take a multi-layered approach with embedded hardware, firmware and software features designed to mitigate malware attacks and support full FIPS encryption. Essentially, AMD's new Ryzen Pro 5000 processors are a subset of the Ryzen 5000 mobile CPU stack, but with Pro features added for commercial applications. The Ryzen Pro 5000 series currently spans 4-core/8-thread, 6-core/12-thread, and 8-core/16-thread options, giving customers a range of performance and price points, depending on need. AMD is planning 18 months of of software stability with 24 months of planned product availability, so enterprise customers can buy into the latest AMD Pro series with a base level assurance of continued support. Top PC vendors like Lenovo and HP are expected to have products in market based on Ryzen Pro 5000 sometime in Q2 this year.

Submission + - AMD Unveils EPYC 7003 Series Server CPUs Based On Zen 3 Architecture (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD announced new additions to its EPYC server processor lineup today, codenamed Milan. The company's EPYC 7003 series brings with it significantly improved IPC and per-core performance, better multi-core scaling, and more flexible memory configuration options, in a package that's socket compatible with its previous-gen CPUs. Like the current AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors, new EPYC 7003 CPUs leverage AMD's new Zen 3 microarchitecture. Unlike its desktop parts, however, EPYC 7003 server processors use much larger packaging and feature up to CPU nine chiplets (up to eight 7nm CPU dies and a 12nm IO die), with up to 64 physical cores and 128 threads per socket. As things stand today, Intel doesn't currently have any Xeon processors that can match AMD in terms of single-socket core density. As such, AMD's EPYC 7003 series should consistently offer better performance in many workloads. Pricing for these new big iron processors ranges from $913 or the 16-core 7313P, and up to $7,890 for the powerful EPYC 7763, which AMD is calling "the world's highest-performing server processor." Though nearly $8K is not cheap, AMD appears to be continuing its aggressive price strategy with the EPYC 7003 series, relative to Intel's Xeon Scalable processors. The company also announced a who's who of data center and cloud service OEMs supporting the new platform, including AWS, Azure, Dell Technologies, HPE, Cisco, Google Cloud, Oracle and others.

Submission + - 3D Printed Rock Pi-Powered Screen Saver Aquarium Is Serene To Behold (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Some may think it strange to design and build an entire PC and custom enclosure, dedicated to running a 20-year-old screensaver, but retro computing fans and well-seasoned enthusiasts may remember the Serene Screen Marine Aquarium. This classic screensaver from the late 90s was created by the legendary artist of Defender of the Crown and more, Jim Sachs. Serene Screen's combination of beautiful fish and technology is still mesmerizing, so why not build a miniature, 3D printed aquarium and power it with a single board computer like the Rock Pi X and a 1920X480 resolution IPS LCD display? That's just what product developer Colton Westrate did. Searching for an x86 PC in a Raspberry Pi-sized form factor, Westrate chose the Rock Pi X that purportedly packs the perfunctory punch to push the Windows OS and aquarium screen saver's pulsating pixels. The Rock Pi X is based on a circa 2016 Intel x5-Z8350 processor, which is a 2 watt quad-core Cherry Trail Atom chip. From there, with a little Fusion 360 parametric modeling, a clear acrylic napkin holder and some serious skills, Westrate created this adorable pint-sized digital fish tank. There's a full parts list and how-to guide on HotHardware, along with links to the CAD files up on Thingiverse, so you can build yourself one too, if you're feeling inspired.

Submission + - AMD Unveils New Radeon RX 6700 XT Midrange GPU To Take On GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD announced a new member of its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card line-up today, dubbed Radeon RX 6700 XT. Based on AMD's RDNA 2 GPU architecture, the Radeon RX 6700 XT targets high frame rate 1440p gaming at max image quality with an MSRP of $479. The new GPU has 40 Compute Units (CUs) with 40 Ray Tracing Accelerators, 96MB of on-chip Infinity Cache, and 12Gb of GDDR6 memory. Game Clocks of up to 2424MHz will be possible and board power is rated for 230 watts. Versus NVIDIA's current competitive offerings, AMD is claiming wins for the Radeon RX 6700 XT across many titles at 1440p / max settings versus the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070, but with the added benefit of a larger 12GB frame buffer, which should add a measure of future-proofing as games get more graphically complex. Finally, AMD also revealed that it will be doing something a bit different with the launch of the Radeon RX 6700 XT. AMD-built refence cards will be available directly from AMD.com and numerous partner boards will be available from etailers and system builders, all on March 18th.

Submission + - NVIDIA's $329 GeForce RTX 3060 With 12GB Of RAM Benchmarked (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA is launching its latest mainstream Ampere-based GPU today, targeting a $329 sweet-spot of the PC gaming market, dubbed GeForce RTX 3060. All of the GeForce RTX 3060 series cards that hit store shelves today will come by way of NVIDIA's board partners, however, rather than Founders Edition reference card versions. EVGA's GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming card was put through its paces at HotHardware. The GPU is comprised of 3584 CUDA cores with a 1777MHz boost clock and 12GB of GDDR6 memory at 7501MHz, along with 28 second generation RT cores for ray tracing workloads. What this translates to in the benchmarks, is that a GeForce RTX 3060 is roughly on-par or slightly ahead of NVIDIA's previous-generation RTX 2060 Super cards, offering solid 1440p gaming performance with and without ray tracing enabled. So, if you haven't upgraded for a few generations and are still running anything below a GTX 1660-class GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060 will offer a big performance and feature boost. However, if you've already got an RTX 20-series card, the RTX 3060 will be less appealing since it trades blows with the GeForce RTX 2060 Super. Spending a few extra dollars on an RTX 3060 Ti (when street prices come back to reality), will net significantly better performance.

Submission + - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-Series Laptops Put To The Test (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: This morning, NVIDIA lifted its embargo on the performance and experiences of new GeForce RTX 30 Series-powered gaming laptops. Thinner, higher-performance form factors aren't the only features NVIDIA is touting with this launch. A number of new laptops will also sport 1440p, high refresh rate IPS displays like the MSI GS66 Stealth with a GeForce RTX 3080 mobile GPU tested at HotHardware. This machine features a 15.6-inch IPS, 1440p panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support. However, the biggest difference between these new laptop GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs and their desktop counterparts, are their core counts. Desktop GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 series GPUs have 8,704, 5,888, and 3,584 CUDA cores, respectively, whereas these new laptop offerings have 6,144, 5,120, and 3,840 — it is only the RTX 3060 laptop GPU that has more cores than its similar-branded desktop counterpart. In the benchmarks, with a retail-ready Alienware m15 R4 gaming laptop powered by a GeForce RTX 3070 mobile GPU, the new platform offered sizable performance gains of 15 — 25% over the previous generation RTX 20 series mobile offering, and an even stronger performance lift with ray tracing enabled, sometimes in excess of a 40%. NVIDIA GeForce 30 Series laptops are in production now and available in the next few weeks from major OEMs like Alienware, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte and others.

Submission + - Intel Unveils New Core H-Series Laptop And 11th Gen Desktop Processors At CES (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: At its virtual CES 2021 event today, Intel's EVP Gregory Bryant unveiled an array of new processors and technologies targeting virtually every market, from affordable Chromebooks, to enthusiast-class gaming laptops and high-end desktops. Intel's 11th Gen Core vPro platform was announced, featuring new Intel Hardware Shield AI-enabled threat ransomware and crytpo-mining malware detection technology. In addition, the Intel Rocket Lake-S based Core i9-11900K 8-core CPU was revealed, offering up to a 19% improvement in IPC performance and the ability to out-pace AMD's Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core CPU in some workloads like gaming. Also, a new high-end hybrid processor, code-named Alder Lake was previewed. Alder Lake packs both high-performance cores and high-efficiency cores on a single product, for what Intel calls its "most power-scalable system-on-chip" ever. Alder Lake will also be manufactured using an enhanced version of 10nm SuperFin technology with improved power and thermal characteristics, and targets both desktop and mobile form factors when they arrive later this year. Finally, Intel launched its new 11th Gen Core H-Series Tiger Lake H35 parts that will appear in high-performance laptops as thin as 16mm. At the top of the 11th Gen H-Series stack is the Intel Core i7-11375H Special Edition, a 35W quad-core processor (8-threads) that turbos up to 5GHz and supports PCI Express 4.0, and is targeted for ultraportable gaming notebooks. Intel is claiming single-threaded performance improvements in the neighborhood of 15% over previous-gen architectures and a greater than 40% improvement in multi-threaded workloads. Intel's Bryant also announced an 8-core mobile processor variant leveraging the same architecture as the 11th Gen H-Series that is slated to start shipping a bit later this quarte at 5GHz on multiple cores, with 20 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity.

Submission + - Boston Dynamics Robots Bust Freakishly Good Moves On The Dance Floor (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Boston Dynamics made news recently when 80% of the company was acquired by Hyundai. The company's family of robots is always impressive and now it appears they're having some fun to celebrate the close of 2020. Boston Dynamics' robot dog, Spot and its humanoid-like Atlas bot friend, were joined by their oddball sibling Handle to shake their booties on the dance floor to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours. The video starts off impressive enough with just a single Atlas showing its incredible dexterity while busting out some sweet moves that would leave even the late Patrick Swayze envious. However, as the routine progresses, the camera pulls back to show that another twin Atlas is dancing along with the first one as they show off their synchronized and fresh rug-cutting ways. As this robotic soul train continues to roll, Spot the dog saunters in to join in on the fun with the distinct flare that only rover can bring. The entire 3 minute clip is really a marvel to behold, and maybe even slightly unsettling for some that might not fully welcome our robot overlords.

Submission + - AMD Launches Radeon RX 6900 XT To Compete With NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD launched its highest end Radeon gaming graphics card today, dubbed the Radeon RX 6900 XT. At a $999 MSRP, the product is a competitive answer to NVIDIA's pricey, $1499 GeForce RTX 3090 in the very top end of the GPU market for PC gamers. The Radeon RX 6900 XT built around a fully-enabled AMD Navi 21 RDNA 2-based GPU, which is manufactured on TSMC's 7nm process node. The GPU is comprised of roughly 26.8 billion transistors and sports 80 Radeon Compute Units (CUs) and 80 ray accelerators with a 2250MHz core boost clock. Like other members of the Radeon RX 6000 family, the 6900 XT also has 16GB of GDDR6 memory on board but maintains a 300 Watt board power rating like the lower end Radeon RX 6800 XT. In the benchmarks, with traditional rasterization, the Radeon RX 6900 XT and GeForce RTX 3090 are fairly nip and tuck, trading victories depending on game title, though the RTX 3090 does have the overall edge. Turn on AMD's Rage Mode overclocking and things tighten up a bit. With ray tracing enabled, however, NVIDIA's high-end GeForce RTX 30 series cards have a clear advantage currently.

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