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Wave of Intel Rumors Before Zen 3 Announcement
AMD announces Zen 3 CPUs tomorrow.
Intel Desktop Roadmap Through Q2 2021 Leaked – No HEDT Update Till 2H 2021, RKL-S In Mid March
Intel ‘Rocket Lake’ Desktop Processor With Next Generation Willow Cove Cores Landing In 2021
Intel Confirms Rocket Lake on Desktop for Q1 2021, with PCIe 4.0
Rocket Lake will compete with Zen 3, using backported "Willow Cove" cores on "14nm" instead of "10nm". That could improve performance by around 10%.
If it needs to, AMD could respond in the middle of 2021 with a Zen 3+ refresh, possibly on the new AM5 socket, or just wait until Zen 4 (late 2021, early 2022).
Intel 12th Generation ‘Alder Lake’ CPU With 8 + 8 Cores Spotted In Sisoft Sandra Benchmark
Alder Lake will likely end up competing with Zen 4.
This would be a second attempt at a hybrid x86 architecture, and it will probably find its way into laptops. Maybe even with the full "16" cores?
56 cores was expected, on-board HBM2e is new.
Kyrgyzstan Protesters Storm Parliament Over Vote-Rigging
Kyrgyzstan election: Protesters storm parliament over vote-rigging claims
Protestors in Kyrgyzstan calling for the country's parliamentary election to be annulled have broken into parliament in the capital, Bishkek.
Footage showed people throwing papers from the building's windows, while others were seen entering the office of President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.
The break-in follows a day of clashes with police, who initially dispersed crowds with water cannon and tear gas.
The clashes come amid allegations of vote-rigging in last Sunday's election.
Following the vote, only four parties out of 16 passed the 7% threshold for entry into parliament, three of which have close ties to President Jeenbekov.
Kyrgyzstan election: 120 taken to hospital following result protest
M.2/mPCIe AI accelerator card with 26 TOPS
Hailo-8 M.2 and mini PCIe AI accelerator cards deliver up to 26 TOPS
When looking at the performance chart released by Israeli startup Hailo, which pits Hailo-8 against Google Edge TPU and Intel Myriad X using popular ResNet and MobileNet models, I might as well titled this article as “Hailo-8 M.2 card mops the floor with Google Edge TPU and Intel Movidius Myriad X AI accelerators”.
The amount of AI processing power packed in such a tiny M.2 card is impressive, and it’s made possible by the higher 3 TOPS per watt efficiency compared to the typical 0.5 Watt per TOPS (or 2 TOPS per Watt) advertised by competitors. So a 26 TOPS Hailo-8 card will consume around 8.6 W, while a 4 TOPS Google Coral M.2 card should consume about 2 W.
As noted by LinuxGizmos who alerted us of the new cards, Hailo-8 was previously seen integrated into Foxconn fanless “BOXiedge” AI edge server powered by SynQuacer SC2A11 24x Cortex-A53 cores SoC and capable of analyzing up to 20 streaming camera feeds in real-time.
12-core 5900X: 5 GHz hype?
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X “Vermeer” 12 Core & 24 Thread Zen 3 CPU Allegedly Up To 5 GHz With 150W TDP
Rumors say:
AMD will skip over 4000 to name the new Zen 3 desktop CPUs. There were plenty of complaints about Zen+ APUs being lumped in with Zen 2 CPUs and so on.
Somewhere between 15-20% higher overall IPC, ~10% higher clocks. Higher TDP: 150 Watts for the 12-core. Single core boost to 5 GHz.
Part of the improvement will be a unified 32 MB L3 cache for an entire core complex die (CCD). Maybe applications that are sensitive to that will show the most improvement.
12-core might be the top model at launch. That's how it was with Zen 2. The 16-core 3950X launched 4½ months after the 12-core 3900X. But it used better binned chiplets and had higher power efficiency than the 3900X.
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.
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
