• chevron_right

      Intel’s CPU branding was already confusing, and today’s new CPUs made it worse

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 8 January - 23:00 · 1 minute

    Intel's Core chips are here, and they have dropped the i and the 14th-generation branding. But unlike the Core Ultra, they are fundamentally "14th-generation" processors.

    Enlarge / Intel's Core chips are here, and they have dropped the i and the 14th-generation branding. But unlike the Core Ultra, they are fundamentally "14th-generation" processors. (credit: Intel)

    Intel usually uses CES to fill out the processor lineups that it launched late the year before, and that hasn't changed this year. The company has announced a full range of 14th-generation Core desktop CPUs, some new 14th-generation Core CPUs for high-end gaming and workstation laptops, and the first non-Ultra chips to bear the new "Core 3/5/7" branding that sheds the generational branding entirely. We'll go over the updates shortly.

    But my main takeaway, as a long-time observer of processor branding, is that Intel had made its new naming system even more confusing for people who actually want to know what kind of processor they're getting.

    Intel said in October that it was sticking with the 14th-generation branding for its new desktop CPUs because they were so similar to the 13th-generation chips (they all use the same underlying Raptor Lake architecture, itself a minor revision of the 12th-gen Alder Lake). It makes some degree of sense that it's being extended to the HX-series laptop chips, because these have always been desktop silicon repackaged for laptop use. So far so good.

    Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Intel accuses AMD of selling old CPUs with new model numbers, which Intel also does

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 6 December - 22:19

    A now-deleted Intel presentation makes a good point, but with a side of disingenuousness.

    Enlarge / A now-deleted Intel presentation makes a good point, but with a side of disingenuousness.

    AMD changed the way it numbers its Ryzen laptop processors last year, switching to a new system that simultaneously provides more concrete information than the old one while also partially obfuscating the exact age of the various CPU and GPU architectures being mixed-and-matched.

    For instance, a knowledgeable buyer can look at the "3" in the Ryzen 5 7530U processor and determine that it uses an older Zen 3-based CPU core. But a less-knowledgeable buyer could be forgiven for looking at the "7000" part and assuming that the chip is significantly newer and better than 2021's Ryzen 5600U, when in reality the two are substantially identical.

    Intel came out swinging against this naming scheme in a confrontational slide deck this week—now deleted, but preserved for posterity by VideoCardz—where it accuses AMD of selling "snake oil" by using older processor architectures in ostensibly "new" chips.

    Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Intel’s 14th-gen desktop CPUs are a tiny update even by modern standards

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 17 October - 16:54 · 1 minute

    Intel’s 14th-gen desktop CPUs are a tiny update even by modern standards

    Enlarge (credit: Intel)

    Intel's new desktop processor generations haven't always come with significant generational improvements in recent years, as the company has struggled with new manufacturing tech that enables big leaps in performance and power efficiency. For every major jump—the 12th-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake , come to mind—you usually get several faster but less-than-thrilling iterations.

    Intel is officially launching its 14th-generation desktop processors today, and they're firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling group, even compared to last year's 13th-generation chips. The good news for price-conscious PC builders is that they'll continue to work in all current 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS update, and Intel isn't launching a series of new motherboards to accompany them—there aren't many compelling reasons to upgrade from a 12th-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, but it's an available option.

    Even the branding Intel is using here signifies that the processors are a throwback— next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel's other chips are losing the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in favor of "Core" and "Core Ultra." By Intel's admission, the last gasp of the 14th-generation branding here is a nod to how similar they are to the 13th-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that matter, the 12th-gen ones before that).

    Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Intel reiterates: Next-gen Meteor Lake CPUs aren’t coming to most desktops

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 27 September, 2023 - 17:38 · 1 minute

    Intel reiterates: Next-gen Meteor Lake CPUs aren’t coming to most desktops

    Enlarge (credit: Intel)

    Intel’s Meteor Lake processor architecture promises to be its most interesting in recent history, but we’ve known for a while now that Intel isn’t planning to launch a version for socketed desktop motherboards like the ones you’d find in a self-built PC or an off-the-shelf mini tower. For those systems, Intel plans to release a second consecutive refresh of the old Alder Lake architecture, the one that first came to desktops in 12th-generation Core CPUs in 2021.

    In an interview with PCWorld ( via Tom's Hardware ), Intel Client Computing Group General Manager Michelle Johnston Holthaus said that Meteor Lake chips would be coming to desktops after all. But the company backpedaled a bit a couple of days later, clarifying that these Meteor Lake desktop chips would be of the soldered-to-the-motherboard variety, not intended as high-performance replacements for current desktop Core i7 and Core i9 chips.

    This kind of bifurcation isn't totally unheard of, especially when Intel is in the process of shifting to a new manufacturing technology, as it is with Meteor Lake. Chips for high-performance desktops tend to be physically larger and also need to be able to scale up to higher clock speeds, two things that are harder to do when a manufacturing process is new. And Meteor Lake is nothing if not complex to manufacture, using new Intel Foveros packaging technology to combine four different silicon dies produced on three different manufacturing processes by two different companies.

    Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Intel’s biggest laptop CPU update in years is a huge departure from past designs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 20 September, 2023 - 18:16 · 1 minute

    An Intel Meteor Lake processor, which will come to market under the "Core" and "Core Ultra" banners later this year.

    Enlarge / An Intel Meteor Lake processor, which will come to market under the "Core" and "Core Ultra" banners later this year. (credit: Intel)

    Intel’s next-generation Meteor Lake laptop processors are nearing release—the company announced this week that the first processors will launch on December 14. It’s unclear whether actual Core and Core Ultra systems will be available to buy on that date, but at a bare minimum, the official announcement will pave the way to many laptop announcements at CES in January.

    We already know a lot of basic facts about Meteor Lake; it uses a combination of chiplets manufactured by both Intel and TSMC rather than a single monolithic die, and it will mark the retirement of Intel’s “nth-generation” and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding. We also know that it won’t be ready for desktops and that the next round of Core desktop CPUs will be very similar to the 12th- and 13th-generation chips.

    But at Intel's Innovation event this week, the company dove a little deeper into some of Meteor Lake’s advancements, describing more about how the chips would balance E-cores and P-cores and announcing its most substantial integrated GPU upgrade in years. We’ll hit some highlights below, though it’s worth watching or reading the full presentation to find out more.

    Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      510K CPUs, HDDs & more seized as smugglers keep trying to sneak tech into China

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 30 March, 2023 - 22:34

    Hong Kong customs said it seized about $3.8 million in tech, including these HP laptops, on Monday.

    Enlarge / Hong Kong customs said it seized about $3.8 million in tech, including these HP laptops, on Monday. (credit: Hong Kong Customs )

    The recent chip shortage showed us how far people will go to obtain rare components and gadgets. Those who couldn't wait for new electronics battled enormous price tags, frustrating lottery systems, questionable sellers, and unreliable stock. But just as people will go to extremes to buy tech, extreme measures can be taken to sell them.

    In 2023, the gray market for PC components, including CPUs, SSDs, and HDDs, and devices like phones and computers in mainland China appears thriving. Just ask the China and Hong Kong customs agents who have been announcing seizure after seizure of tech hardware, including a batch reportedly worth about $3.8 million obtained on Monday.

    510,000 electronics seized

    Hong Kong customs announced it seized 508,000 PC parts, including CPUs, computer hard drives, and RAM sticks, with an estimated market value of around $3.5 million. There were also 2,000 electronic devices, like laptops, phones, dash cams, and styli for touchscreens, that are estimated to be worth about $255,000.

    Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      China hits back at US chip sanctions with WTO dispute

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 13 December, 2022 - 14:26

    The export controls were aimed at complicating Chinese efforts to use high-end US technology for military applications, such as nuclear warhead modeling and hypersonic weapons.

    Enlarge / The export controls were aimed at complicating Chinese efforts to use high-end US technology for military applications, such as nuclear warhead modeling and hypersonic weapons. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

    China has hit back against sweeping US export controls on chips, filing a dispute with the World Trade Organization and escalating the tech war between the two countries.

    China’s commerce ministry said on Monday its WTO complaint was a legal and necessary measure to defend its “legitimate rights and interests,” after the US Department of Commerce introduced sanctions in early October to make it harder for China to buy or develop advanced semiconductors.

    “At a minimum, the case is about China pushing back on how it’s perceived as an unfair actor in the global trading world,” said Ben Kostrzewa, an expert on US-China trade relations at Hogan Lovells.

    Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      New working speculative execution attack sends Intel and AMD scrambling

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 12 July, 2022 - 16:00 · 1 minute

    Intel and AMD CPUs vulnerable to a new speculative execution attack

    Enlarge

    Some microprocessors from Intel and AMD are vulnerable to a newly discovered speculative execution attack that can covertly leak password data and other sensitive material, sending both chipmakers scrambling once again to contain what is proving to be a stubbornly persistent vulnerability.

    Researchers from ETH Zurich have named their attack Retbleed because it exploits a software defense known as retpoline , which chipmakers introduced in 2018 to mitigate the harmful effects of speculative execution attacks. Speculative execution attacks, also known as Spectre, exploit the fact that when modern CPUs encounter a direct or indirect instruction branch, they predict the address for the next instruction they’re about to receive and automatically execute it before the prediction is confirmed. Spectre works by tricking the CPU into executing an instruction that accesses sensitive data in memory that would normally be off-limits to a low-privileged application. Retbleed then extracts the data after the operation is canceled.

    Is it a trampoline or a slingshot?

    Retpoline works by using a series of return operations to isolate indirect branches from speculative execution attacks, in effect erecting the software equivalent of a trampoline that causes them to safely bounce. Stated differently, a retpoline works by replacing indirect jumps and calls with returns, which many researchers presumed weren’t susceptible. The defense was designed to counter variant 2 of the original speculative execution attacks from January 2018. Abbreviated as BTI, the variant forces an indirect branch to execute so-called “gadget” code, which in turn creates data to leak through a side channel.

    Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      AMD Ryzen 6000 gets DisplayPort 2.0-certified, product testing ramps up

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 11 May, 2022 - 20:52

    Cable Displayport on isolated white background

    Enlarge / DisplayPort cable. (credit: Getty )

    Pixel and speed enthusiasts have anticipated DisplayPort 2.0 products since the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), which makes the spec, announced its incoming in 2019. While the pandemic inhibited the ability to test products for supporting the video protocol and slowed its release, we've inched closer to seeing monitors, PCs, and other devices earn DisplayPort 2.0 certification.

    VESA on Monday announced certification for AMD's Ryzen 6000 laptop CPUs to support DisplayPort 2.0 at up to one of its highest data link rates, Ultra-high Bit Rate 10 (UHBR10), which has a 10Gbps link rate and max throughput of 40 Gbps across four lanes.

    VESA introduced UHBR labels to DisplayPort 2.0 in February. Once DisplayPort 2.0 products are readily available, it'll be easier to determine which products support the higher bandwidth capabilities of the backward-compatible spec. The move came after the HDMI Licensing Administrator, which makes the HDMI spec, received backlash for not clarifying which HDMI 2.1-certified products support the max capabilities.

    Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments