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20 USB Ports
USB Overload: Portwell Motherboard Has 20 USB Ports
Surprisingly, the PEB-9783G2AR supports all 20 of it's USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports natively. That means there are no fancy gizmos like splitters or hubs, so you'll get the full bandwidth of the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface on all USB ports. Of course, there are compromises; both chipsets support up to eight USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 1, and 4 USB 2.0 ports natively. Presumably, to get to 20 USB ports, Portwell used the chipset lanes dedicated to 6 of the SATA ports and repurposed them to USB ports (there are only two SATA3 ports available).
Portwell positions the motherboard for server and workstation workloads. As such, it comes with an Intel W480E or Q470E chipset that supports 10th Gen Core i7/i5/i3 CPUs, including the 10th Gen Xeon W family of CPUs. However, the board doesn't support all CPUs from the 10th Gen Core and Xeon W Family - you're limited to a peak of 10 cores and an 80W TDP.
Seems I've got a secret admirer :)
https://soylentnews.org/~Azuma+Hazuki+2.0/
So someone's registered as "me 2.0" and is trying to mimic my writing style, likely by copying and pasting plus a little modification. Gods, what a lame troll. I'm impressed I get to live in someone's head rent-free like this, but really, how dumb can you get?
Accept no substitutions. Check the username before replying. There is only one of me, and apparently that's already more than some people can handle :)
Belarus and Human Rights Violations
Belarus repeatedly interrupts at UN amid 'new iron curtain' warnings
Belarus and its allies have repeatedly tried to muzzle speakers at the UN amid warnings of a new iron curtain falling across Europe during an ill-tempered debate on alleged human rights violations.
The body’s 47-member human rights council voted by 23 votes to two with 22 abstentions to adopt a resolution condemning rights violations in Belarus and requesting the UN high commissioner on Human Rights to take up the issue and report back to the council.
The debate was repeatedly interrupted by the Belarus representative, backed by delegates from Russia, China and Venezuela, who tried to limit presentations – including from Alexander Lukashenko’s main election challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, on procedural grounds.
Tikhanovskaya’s short video message had barely begun when the Belarusian representative, Yuri Ambrazevich, demanded it be switched off. He repeatedly interrupted the screening, raising procedural objections and insisting her words had “no relevance on the substance ... on the events that are taking place today”.
He was overruled by the council president, Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger.
Would you buy a 10-core CPU?
Does this level of granularity make sense in AMD's lineup? Previously, if you wanted more than 8 Zen cores, you went directly to 12.
Here's the Zen 2 launch prices + $1 (July 2019). All of these CPUs have two threads per core:
Ryzen 5 3600 - 6 cores, $200
Ryzen 5 3600X - 6 cores, $250
Ryzen 7 3700X - 8 cores, $330
Ryzen 7 3800X - 8 cores, $400
Ryzen 9 3900X - 12 cores, $500
Ryzen 9 3950X - 16 cores, $750
Two quad-cores, the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X, were added at $100 and $120 in April 2020.
One "problem" that AMD has is that TSMC yields are "too good". There aren't that many 8-core chiplets with 4 bad cores on them, so they disable perfectly acceptable cores. For lower-core count models, they can lower costs by using a single chiplet. So there's never any reason to make a 6-core with two chiplets, 3 cores enabled on each, because those chiplets could be used in more expensive CPUs with more cores enabled.
The 3300X was distinguished from the 3100 by including all of its 4 cores on a single CCX (half of the Zen 2 chiplet). That improves latency and performance somewhat. With Zen 3, the entire chiplet will be unified (to some extent). Enabling 5 cores on each chiplet may make more sense than it would have with Zen 2. So there's your possibility of a 10-core.
Here's some discussion about it, although it was a couple months before the surprise launch of the Zen 2 quad-cores, which showed that AMD is willing to disable half a chiplet.
If the rumor is correct, AMD can use the 10-core model to push down prices and/or "increase core counts" despite the top model continuing to sit at 16 cores. For example, AMD can slide the 10-core in at $400, knock out a superfluous 6 or 8-core, and lower those prices a bit, while keeping 12-core at $500 and 16-core at $750 (or slightly lower, like $700).
Previously: AMD 2021-2022 Roadmap: Zen 3 Refresh on AM5?
PicoRio RISC-V SBC: Flame On
Board only exists on paper:
PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an Open Source Alternative to Raspberry Pi Board
Linux capable RISC-V boards do exist but cost several hundred dollars or more with the likes of HiFive Unleashed and PolarFire SoC Icicle development kit. If only there was a RISC-V board similar to the Raspberry Pi board and with a similar price point… The good news is that the RISC-V International Open Source (RIOS) Laboratory is collaborating with Imagination technologies to bring PicoRio RISC-V SBC to market at a price point similar to Raspberry Pi.
From the comments:
I was compelled to comment after laughing hysterically at seeing “open source” and “Imagination Technologies” mentioned in the same breath.
Samsung 16 GB LPDDR5 DRAM Package Take Two
Samsung Begins Mass Production of 16Gb LPDDR5 DRAM
Samsung is now manufacturing 16 Gb LPDDR5 DRAM chips, which it will use to make 16 GB packages, among others.
They were stacking 8x 12 Gb and 4x 8 Gb chips in their previous abominations. These ones are likely to be cheaper. It's also 16.3̅6̅% faster at 6,400 MT/s instead of 5,500 MT/s.
No word yet on 24 GB or 32 GB packages.
Previously: Samsung Announces Mass Production of 16 GB LPDDR5 DRAM Packages
Statues + Machine Learning
XuanTie 910 / Alibaba XT910 RISC-V Core
More Details about Alibaba XT910 64-bit RISC-V Core
No GPU! "Legal challenges for a high-performance core"!
Previously: Alibaba Announces a 16-Core RISC-V CPU
Alibaba Claims its RISC-V Core is Faster than ARM Cortex-A73
AMD 2021-2022 Roadmap: Zen 3 Refresh on AM5?
AMD Ryzen 2021-2022 roadmap partially leaks
The big takeaways seem to be:
Warhol: A 2021 Zen 3 refresh desktop CPU (after this year's Zen 3 Vermeer), except that it may be on the new AM5 socket with DDR5 memory, so it would break compatibility with current motherboards. It could have some "Zen 3+" IPC enhancements, reminiscent of the slight gains of "Zen+". Still uses PCIe 4.0.
Raphael: 2022 Zen 4 desktop CPU. It could have an entry-level amount of integrated graphics on a chiplet. Most of Intel's desktop CPUs have integrated graphics, while AMD has forgone it. But there is probably plenty of room for the I/O die, 2-3x 8-core CPU chiplets, and a tiny GPU chiplet, especially given that it will be on TSMC's dense "5nm" node. This is the one I'm hoping will have gigabytes of L4 cache stacked on the I/O die.
Dragon Crest: Early 2022 successor to the low power Van Gogh APU, featuring Zen 3 cores and enhanced RDNA2. If the target is really early 2022, then AMD is being very aggressive about introducing new products at a fast pace.
AMD's Van Gogh: Low Power Zen 2 + RDNA2 + LPDDR5
This looks excellent for low power laptops/2-in-1s and maybe SBCs/SFF. Some details have been known for a while but this fleshes it out a bit. I'm expecting it will top out at quad-core but hexa/octo-core would be hilarious. One piece of information that came out at Hot Chips 2020 was that AMD originally planned for Renoir to have up to 6 cores, but was able to bump that up to 8 cores because of how good the "7nm" node was. It looks like an enhanced version of "7nm" will be used here which should have some performance, power, and maybe density improvements.
If it features RDNA2 graphics, it may have real-time ray-tracing support. This is presumed to work in AMD's IP by repurposing a number of the GPU's cores (i.e. they can't be used for rasterization at the same time). Van Gogh may have more GPU die area than you would expect for low power integrated graphics, just clocked low enough to meet the TDP target.
The main downside I see is that almost every single device will have soldered (non-expandable) RAM. That's the norm these days but it's still disappointing.
