Intel

'Intel 11th-Generation Rocket Lake-S Gaming CPUs Did Not Impress Us' (arstechnica.com) 68

ArsTechnica: Today marks the start of retail availability for Intel's 2021 gaming CPU lineup, codenamed Rocket Lake-S. Rocket Lake-S is still stuck on Intel's venerable 14 nm process -- we've long since lost count of how many pluses to tack onto the end -- with features backported from newer 10 nm designs. Clock speed on Rocket Lake-S remains high, but thread counts have decreased on the high end. Overall, most benchmarks show Rocket Lake-S underperforming last year's Comet Lake -- let alone its real competition, coming from AMD Ryzen CPUs. Our hands-on test results did not seem to match up with Intel's marketing claims of up to 19 percent gen-on-gen IPC (Instructions Per Clock cycle) improvement over its 10th-generation parts. It shouldn't come as an enormous surprise that Core i9-11900K underperforms last year's Core i9-10900K in many multithreaded tests -- this year's model only offers eight cores to last year's 10. On the plus side, Intel's claims of 19% gen-on-gen IPC are largely borne out here, mostly balancing the loss out in Passmark and Geekbench. This year's Core i5 makes a much better showing than its Core i9 big sibling. In Cinebench R20, Core i5-11600K almost catches up with Ryzen 5 5600X, and it easily dominates last year's Comet Lake i5 equivalent. It doesn't catch up to its Ryzen competitor in Passmark or Geekbench multithreaded tests, but it outpaces last year's model all the way around.
Graphics

AMD Unveils Radeon RX 6700 XT For Midrange 1440p PC Gaming (hothardware.com) 45

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.

Intel

Intel Launches 11th-Gen Rocket Lake-S CPUs (venturebeat.com) 91

The new generation of Intel Core CPUs is here. Intel is using a new architecture on its ancient 14nm process to power the 11th-generation Rocket Lake-S processors. From a report: That results in some significant power improvements, but it also means that Intel can only fit 8 cores on its flagship Core i9-11900K. That sacrifice to the number of cores looks bad compared to the 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or even the last-gen 10-core i9-10900K. But Intel is also promising massive improvements to efficiency that should keep the Rocket Lake-S parts competitive -- especially in gaming. Rocket Lake-S CPUs launch March 30. The $539 Core i9-11900K has 8 cores and 16 threads with a single-core Thermal Velocity boost of 5.3GHz and 4.8GHz all-core boost. The slightly more affordable $399 i7-11700K boosts up to 5GHz, and the i5-11600K is $262 with 6 cores at a 4.9GHz boost.

While the lack of cores is going to hurt Rocket Lake-S CPUs in multi-threaded applications, Intel claims that its 19% improvement to instructions per clock (IPC) will make up much of the difference. The UHD graphics processor in the CPUs also deliver 50% better performance than last generation. Of course, Intel is focusing on games because that is where its processors remain the most competitive versus AMD. And that should continue with its Rocket Lake-S chips. These high-clocked parts with improved performance should keep up and even exceed AMD's Zen 3 chips in certain games, like Microsoft's Flight Simulator (according to Intel).

AMD

AMD Unveils EPYC 7003 Series Server CPUs Based On Zen 3 Architecture (hothardware.com) 27

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.
Graphics

AMD Unveils New Radeon RX 6700 XT Midrange GPU To Take On GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (hothardware.com) 76

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 reference cards will be available directly from AMD.com and numerous partner boards will be available from retailers and system builders, all on March 18th.
Businesses

Nvidia Made $5 Billion During a GPU Shortage and Expects To Do It Again in Q1 (theverge.com) 67

Nvidia has shared its Q4 2021 earnings, and despite the company's GPUs being in extremely low supply, it didn't seem to hurt how much money the company made. From a report: In fact, it reported a record $5 billion in revenue, which is up 61 percent year-over-year. What's more impressive is that Nvidia expects to make another $5 billion in revenue during Q1 2022. This positive outlook is surprising given that Q1 is generally slower than other quarters, even for the biggest tech companies, as it follows the rush of people buying lots of products during the holiday period. It's generally a slower period in general for product releases across tech and gaming. Also, let's not forget the GPU shortage is still happening. Nvidia reiterated that sparse supply will continue through the next quarter, but that's likely factored into its rosy revenue prediction.

Nvidia says it expects most of that $5 billion revenue estimate in Q1 2022 to come from the gaming market, despite being the segment it's currently having the toughest time serving. Since the launch of the RTX 30-series desktop graphics cards, leading with the RTX 3080, 3090, 3070, and followed by other products, Nvidia hasn't been able to meet the demand -- though it's not the only company affected. AMD has also struggled, perhaps more than Nvidia, to keep a steady stock of graphics cards heading to retailers.

AMD

AMD Is Currently Hiring More Linux Engineers (phoronix.com) 24

According to Phoronix, AMD currently has several interesting job openings on the Linux front. From the report: While AMD has been delivering reliable Linux support with their recent launches, there is room for improvement in areas like more timely compiler support for new processors, better alignment of their new hardware enablement for getting the code not only upstreamed but into distributions for launch-day, and similar areas. Based on recent job postings, it looks like AMD is working to make such strides.

Here is a look at some of the new and currently active Linux-related job openings at AMD: [Manager Linux Kernel Development, Linux Technical Lead, Linux Engineer, and Linux Systems Architect, among other traditional software/hardware engineering roles].

Several of these new job descriptions do begin with, "step up into a new organization built to engage more strategically and deeply with the technical teams of our commercial customers." Interestingly, I only see that opening line on their current Linux job postings. When asking AMD if there is a "new (Linux) organization" at AMD, the comment was there is no organization to announce but this is part of the overall expansion at AMD. So for now it's back to dreaming about a new unit akin to the defunct AMD Operating System Research Center that previously drove their Linux support or Intel's former Open-Source Technology Center.

Chrome

Chrome Will Soon Lose Support For Some Ancient CPUs (techspot.com) 141

If you're one of the few people still using a PC with an x86 processor more than 15 years old, here's another reason to upgrade: the devices will not work with future Chrome releases, starting with version 89 of the world's most popular browser. TechSpot reports: The Chromium development team announced that CPUs older than the Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 would not work with Chrome 89 and future versions as they do not meet the new minimum instruction set requirement of SSE3 (Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3) support. So, if you are still sporting an Intel Atom or Celeron M CPU, you'll soon be counting Chrome as one of the many programs that are incompatible with your potato-like rig. The devices will no longer attempt to install the browser, while running it will result in the software crashing. It's noted that the change only affects Windows as Chrome OS, Android and, Mac already require SSE3 support.
Transportation

Tesla's New Cars Can Run The Witcher 3 on Their 10-Teraflop Gaming Rigs (ign.com) 117

Tesla has unveiled refreshed versions of its Model X and Model S cars, revealing that both are equipped with gaming hardware supporting "up to 10 teraflops of processing power." This theoretically puts a car within the ballpark of a new generation console. From a report: The Tesla models, priced in excess of $80,000 and shipping in March, are fitted with hardware to power Tesla Arcade, an in-car gaming system that is already available in current Tesla models. The difference is that previous models are only able to run less demanding games such as Cuphead and Cat Quest, while the promotional materials for the new Tesla models show The Witcher 3 displayed on the 17" central console. This suggests a significant step up for the car's gaming potential. Specifics on how powerful the car's gaming rig is isn't easy to tell, as the quoted "up to 10 teraflops of processing power" can't be directly translated to the power of a PS5, which is capable of 10.28 teraflops. The accompanying components must also be taken into account, and Tesla has offered no details on the full specs of the hardware. It's unclear if Nvidia or AMD GPUs are being used, or if it all comes from Tesla's own system-on-a-chip. And while The Witcher 3 is an impressive game by... err... car standards, it's very much a last-gen experience now. Theoretically, though, the system in the new Teslas is capable of strong gaming performance.
Intel

Intel Iris Xe Video Cards Now Shipping To OEMs: DG1 Lands In Desktops (anandtech.com) 14

Ryan Smith, writing at AnandTech: Following plans first unveiled last year during the launch of their DG1 GPU, Intel sends word this morning that the first Iris Xe video cards have finally begun shipping to OEMs. Based on the DG1 discrete GPU that's already being used in Intel's Iris Xe MAX laptop accelerators, the Iris Xe family of video cards are their desktop counterpart, implementing the GPU on a traditional video card. Overall, with specifications almost identical to Xe MAX, Intel is similarly positioning these cards for the entry-level market, where they are being released as an OEM-only part. As a quick refresher, the DG1 GPU is based on the same Xe-LP graphics architecture as Tiger Lake's integrated GPU. In fact, in broad terms the DG1 can be thought of as a nearly 1-to-1 discrete version of that iGPU, containing the same 96 EUs and 128-bit LPDDR4X memory interface as Tiger Lake itself. Consequently, while DG1 is a big first step for Intel -- marking the launch of their first discrete GPU of the modern era -- the company is planning very modestly for this generation of parts. The first DG1 GPUs were shipped in the fall as part of Intel's Iris Xe MAX graphics solution for laptops. At the time, Intel also indicated that a desktop card for OEMs would also be coming in 2021, and now, right on schedule, those desktop cards have begun shipping out. Further reading: Intel's Iris Xe DG1 Graphics Cards Not Compatible with AMD, Older Systems.
Intel

Intel Has To Be Better Than 'Lifestyle Company' Apple at Making CPUs, Says New CEO (theverge.com) 215

Intel's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, doesn't start his new role until February, but he's already prepping the company to take on Apple's M1 chips. From a report: The Oregonian, a local newspaper in Oregon where Intel maintains a large presence, reports that the chip maker held an all-hands company meeting yesterday, and Gelsinger attended. "We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino" makes, Gelsinger reportedly told Intel employees. "We have to be that good, in the future." Intel has been facing increased competition from both Apple and AMD recently. Apple announced its transition to its own silicon back in June, calling it a "historic day for the Mac." The transition has gone well, with M1-based Macs providing impressive performance and battery life compared to existing Intel-based Macs.
Businesses

Qualcomm To Acquire NUVIA: A CPU Magnitude Shift (anandtech.com) 25

Today, Qualcomm has announced they will be acquiring NUVIA for $1.4 billion -- acquiring the start-up company consisting of industry veterans which originally were behind the creation of Apple's high-performance CPU cores. AnandTech reports: NUVIA was originally founded in February 2019 and coming out of stealth-mode in November of that year. The start-up was founded by industry veterans Gerard Williams III, John Bruno and Manu Gulati, having extensive industry experience at Google, Apple, Arm, Broadcom and AMD. Gerard Williams III in particular was the chief architect for over a decade at Apple, having been the lead architect on all of Apple's CPU designs up to the Lightning core in the A13 -- with the newer Apple A14 and Apple M1 Firestorm cores possibly also having been in the pipeline under his direction.

NUVIA had been able to recruit a lot of top industry talent from various CPU design teams across the industry, and had planned to enter the high-performance computing and enterprise market with a new server SoC with a new CPU core dubbed "Phoenix." NUVIA particularly had made aggressive claims about how their design would be able to significantly outperform the competition both in raw performance and power efficiency once it came to market -- usually such claims are always to be taken with scepticism, however due to the members of the design team and talent having proven themselves in the form of Apple's very successful CPU microarchitectures, there's a lot more weight and credibility to them compared to other start-ups.

Qualcomm now acquiring NUVIA gives them the possibility to take advantage of the start-up's early work in the server space, possibly reinvigorating the company's ambitions in the server space, and giving them a second shot at the market. It's to be noted however that in today's press release about the acquisition there had been no mention of server or enterprise plans. Furthermore, the move also has larger repercussions in the consumer space, with Qualcomm claiming that NUVIA CPU designs are expected to be deployed in flagship mobile SoCs and next generation laptops, as well as other industrial applications such as digital cockpits and ADAS.

Intel

Intel CEO Bob Swan To Step Down in February, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger To Replace Him (cnbc.com) 41

Intel CEO Bob Swan is set to step down effective Feb. 15. From a report: VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger will take over the position, sources told CNBC. Intel's stock was up about 13% in premarket trading following the news. VMWare's stock was down nearly 5%. Swan was named CEO in January 2019 after serving as interim CEO for seven months. During Swan's tenure, Intel has suffered blows from competitors. Over the summer, Intel reported that its latest generation chips would be delayed while AMD's were already shipping inside laptops. Apple announced in the fall that it would use its own proprietary chips in its Mac computers, breaking a 15-year partnership with Intel for its chip supplies.
AMD

AMD Shows Off Impressive Ryzen 5000 Mobile Processors and 3rd Gen Epyc Server Chips (venturebeat.com) 34

Advanced Micro Devices showed off some impressive Ryzen 5000 mobile processors today and teased the performance of its 3rd Gen Epyc server chips. From a report: Those chips are aimed at keeping AMD's performance lead over its rival Intel in the mobile and server markets. AMD CEO Lisa Su showed off the new chips in a keynote speech at CES 2021, the online-only tech trade show. AMD is launching its Ryzen 5000 Series mobile processors for gaming laptops and thin-and-light notebooks. These eight-core x86 chips are built with a 7-nanometer manufacturing process (where the circuits are 7 billionths of a meter apart). They are also based on the Zen3 design for processor cores, which can process instructions 19% faster per clock cycle than Zen2 cores.

The H-Series focuses on top performance in laptops for gamers and content creators, while the U-Series focuses on thin-and-light notebooks with great battery life. The chips have four to eight cores and they range in power consumption from 15 watts to 45 watts. AMD said the 5000 Series will be available in PCs in February, and we'll see more than 150 systems using it. That compares to 100 systems for the Ryzen 4000 Series and 70 for the Ryzen 3000.

Intel

Intel Unveils New Core H-Series Laptop and 11th Gen Desktop Processors At CES 2021 (hothardware.com) 68

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 quarter at 5GHz on multiple cores, with 20 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity.

Hardware

Graphics Cards Are About To Get a Lot More Expensive, Asus Warns (pcworld.com) 159

Ever since Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series and AMD's Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards launched last fall, the overwhelming demand and tight supply, exacerbated by a cryptocurrency boom, has caused prices for all graphics cards to go nuts. Brace yourself: It looks like it's about to get even worse. From a report: In the Asus DIY PC Facebook group, Asus technical marketing manager Juan Jose Guerrero III warned that prices for the company's components will increase in the new year. "We have an announcement in regards to MSRP price changes that are effective in early 2021 for our award-winning series of graphic cards and motherboards," Guerrero wrote, though he warned that "additional models" may also wind up receiving price increases as well. "Our new MSRP reflects increases in cost for components. operating costs, and logistical activities plus a continuation of import tariffs. We worked closely with our supply and logistic partners to minimize price increases. ASUS greatly appreciates your continued business and support as we navigate through this time of unprecedented market change."
Intel

Linus Torvalds Rails At Intel For 'Killing' the ECC Industry (theregister.com) 218

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has accused Intel of preventing widespread use of error-correcting memory and being "instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with its horribly bad market segmentation." ECC stands for error-correcting code. ECC memory uses additional parity bits to verify that the data read from memory is the same as the data that was written. Without this check, memory is vulnerable to occasional corruption where a bit is flipped spontaneously, for example, by background radiation. Memory can also be attacked using a technique called Rowhammer, where rapid repeated reads of the same memory locations can cause adjacent locations to change their state. ECC memory solves these problems and has been available for over 50 years yet most personal computers do not use it. Cost is a factor but what riles Torvalds is that Intel has made ECC support a feature of its Xeon range, aimed at servers and high-end workstations, and does not support it in other ranges such as the Core series.

The topic came up in a discussion about AMD's new Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5000 series processors on the Real World Tech forum site. AMD has semi-official ECC support in most of its processors. "I don't really see AMD's unofficial ECC support being a big deal," said an unwary contributor. "ECC absolutely matters," retorted Torvalds. "Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously. And if you don't believe me, then just look at multiple generations of rowhammer, where each time Intel and memory manufacturers bleated about how it's going to be fixed next time... And yes, that was -- again -- entirely about the misguided and arse-backwards policy of 'consumers don't need ECC', which made the market for ECC memory go away."

The accusation is significant particularly at a time when security issues are high on the agenda. The suggestion is that Intel's marketing decisions have held back adoption of a technology that makes users more secure -- though rowhammer is only one of many potential attack mechanisms -- as well as making PCs more stable. "The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage. Now even the memory manufacturers are starting to do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to," said Torvalds. Torvalds said that Xeon prices deterred usage. "I used to look at the Xeon CPU's, and I could never really make the math work. The Intel math was basically that you get twice the CPU for five times the price. So for my personal workstations, I ended up using Intel consumer CPU's." Prices, he said, dropped last year "because of Ryzen and Threadripper... but it was a 'too little, much too late' situation." By way of mitigation, he added that "apart from their ECC stance I was perfectly happy with [Intel's] consumer offerings."

AMD

Xbox Series X and S Shortages Have Microsoft Asking AMD for Help (gizmodo.com) 32

Supply issues have hamstrung the rollout of the latest generation of video game consoles. Even now, nearly two months after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S released, Microsoft is still scrambling to meet demand and has reportedly reached out to chipmaker AMD to fast-track production on its end. From a report: AMD manufactures the GPU and CPU for both consoles, so if it's able to push out its chips faster, Microsoft could, in theory, churn out more consoles by extension. As spotted by VGC, Microsoft is "working as hard as we can" to pump out more systems and has even contacted AMD for help, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer in a recent appearance on the Major Nelson Radio podcast hosted by Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb "I get some people [asking], 'why didn't you build more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you ship them earlier?' I mean, all of those things," Spencer said. "It's really just down to physics and engineering. We're not holding them back: We're building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], 'How do we get more? How do we get more?' So it's something that we're constantly working on."
AMD

Speculation Grows As AMD Files Patent for GPU Design (hothardware.com) 39

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: AMD filed a patent on using chiplets for a GPU with hints on why it has waited this long to extend their CPU strategy to GPUs. The latency between chiplets poses more of a performance problem for GPUs, and AMD is attempting to solve the problem with a new interconnect called high bandwidth passive crosslink. This new interconnect will allow each GPU to more effectively communicate with each other and the CPU.
"With NVIDIA working on its own MCM design with Hopper architecture, it's about time that we left monolithic GPU designs in the past and enable truly exponential performance growth," argues Wccftech.

And Hot Hardware delves into the details, calling it a "hybrid CPU-FPGA design that could be enabled by Xilinx tech." While they often aren't as great as CPUs on their own, FPGAs can do a wonderful job accelerating specific tasks... [A]n FPGA in the hands of a capable engineer can offload a wide variety of tasks from a CPU and speed processes along. Intel has talked a big game about integrating Xeons with FPGAs over the last six years, but it hasn't resulted in a single product hitting its lineup. A new patent by AMD, though, could mean that the FPGA newcomer might be ready to make one of its own...

AMD made 20 claims in its patent application, but the gist is that a processor can include one or more execution units that can be programmed to handle different types of custom instruction sets. That's exactly what an FPGA does...

AMD has been working on different ways to speed up AI calculations for years. First the company announced and released the Radeon Impact series of AI accelerators, which were just big headless Radeon graphics processors with custom drivers. The company doubled down on that with the release of the MI60, its first 7-nm GPU ahead of the Radeon RX 5000 series launch, in 2018. A shift to focusing on AI via FPGAs after the Xilinx acquisition makes sense, and we're excited to see what the company comes up with.

Bug

'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt (vice.com) 79

Cyberpunk 2077 is here in all its glory and pain. On some machines, it's a visual spectacle pushing the limits of current technology and delivering on the promise of Deus Ex, but open world. On other machines, including last-gen consoles, it's a unoptimized and barely playable nightmare. Developer CD Projekt Red has said it's working to improve the game, but fans already have a number of fixes, particularly if you're using an AMD CPU. From a report: Fans aren't waiting for the developer however and over the weekend AMD CPU users discovered that a few small tweaks could improve performance on their PCs. Some players reported performance gains of as much as 60 percent. Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be a CPU intensive game and, at release, it isn't properly optimized for AMD chips. "If you run the game on an AMD CPU and check your usage in task manager, it seems to utilise 4 (logical, 2 physical) cores in frequent bursts up to 100% usage, whereas the rest of the physical cores sit around 40-60%, and their logical counterparts remain idle," Redditor BramblexD explained in a post on the /r/AMD subreddit. Basically, Cyberpunk 2077 is only utilizing a portion of any AMD chips power.

Digital Foundry, a YouTube channel that does in-depth technical analysis of video games, noticed the AMD issue as well. "It really looks like Cyberpunk is not properly using the hyperthreads on Ryzen CPUs," Digital Foundry said in a recent video. To fix this issue, the community has developed three separate solutions. One involves altering the game's executable with a hex editor, the other involves editing a config file, and a third is an unofficial patch built by the community. All three do the same thing -- unleash the power of AMDs processors. "Holy shit are you a wizard or something? The game is finally playable now!" One redditor said of the hex editing technique. "With this tweak my CPU usage went from 50% to ~75% and my frametime is so much more stable now."

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