CPU

The Arc of the Alchemist

No, not a new Steve Winward song, a new GPU family   As you know, or should know, Intel has been up to their old trick of changing names and requiring you to get an upgrade to your Captain Midnight decoder ring. They did a few weeks back when Pat Gelsinger came in and introduced the world to Angstroms. And … Read more

Moore’s Law decline: the short and the long, the incremental and the revolutionary

In the literal sense, Moore’s Law—long a definition and quantification of the down-scaling of the silicon-integrated transistor area and cost—has slowed or ended, depending on how strictly one interprets the definition. But, Moore’s Law is not the point, it's a metric. Technology R&D will continue to find new ways to advance the performance and price-performance of processors and that is the point.  The semantic details … Read more

Intel enters the age of the ångström

Intel has received a lot of criticism about losing its cadence in semiconductor node steps. Part of the criticism was over naming the features used for defining a node. Should it be the width of the gate, the length, how do you address 3D, stacking, and wrapping? No simple answer. If you think you might live long enough, you could … Read more

AMD Ryzen PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processors

AMD introduced its Ryzen Pro 5000 Series Mobile Processors based on the Zen 3 core architecture. The new processors are designed for premium business laptops and include  AMD’s hardware-based PRO technologies for enterprise-class security features. AMD addresses security on multiple levels for the new Ryzen Pro 5000 series   The chips were announced with two significant design wins, one from … Read more

You want processors, asks Intel

Besides changing its CEO and sending automated automobiles cruising in Munich, Intel also had a lot of processor news for CES. Intel’s Executive VP Gregory Bryant kicked off the presentation of the company’s 11th gen CPUs saying, “Only Intel has the breadth of products spanning multiple architectures; the large, open ecosystem; sheer scale of manufacturing footprint; and deep technical expertise … Read more

If you like Zen2, you’ll love Zen3

(Source:  AMD) AMD created an extraordinarily good design with the Zen architecture in April 2017. You can measure that by the steady generation-to-generation improvements the company has made with Zen’s various derivatives. The latest iteration is the new Ryzens. AMD predicts a 19% improvement in instructions-per-clock (IPC) for the Zen 3 over last year’s Zen 2 design version. This improvement … Read more

Intel launches EVO

After months of leaks, rumors, and speculation, Intel formally and officially released the details of its 11-generation processor, code-named Tiger Lake. The processor leverages Intel’s SuperFin 10 nm process and introduces Intel’s first integrated Iris Xe GPU claiming 2× the performance over the previous generation — 2× is a lot. The CPU and other processors as well as the communications … Read more