Hardware

Apple’s M1 Ultra (2022)

In March 2022, at its annual new products conference, Apple announced a new version of the M1—the M1 Ultra, a dual-die chiplet device that introduced Apple’s UltraFusion interconnect technology. Apple’s UltraFusion packaging architecture connects two M1 Max die to create the M1 Ultra. (Source: Apple)   Apple’s UltraFusion used a silicon interposer to connect the chips across more than 10,000 … Read more

Chiplets need a home—UCIe has one for them

Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) is an open specification that defines the interconnect between chiplets within a package, enabling an open chiplet ecosystem and ubiquitous interconnect at the package level. Forming an open industry standard organization around UCIe are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, and TSMC. The feasibility of implementing complex systems … Read more

Gunnir enters AIB market with Intel GPU

China-based Gunnir has introduced three AIBs and got featured on Intel’s newish GPU website along with Asus as users of the Intl Iris Xe DG1 GPU. Gunnir’s page, in Chinese, reveals the following (after a Google translation):  Gunnir’s Lanji DG1-based AIB. (Source: Gunnir)   The company offers two additional DG1-boards: the Iris Xe IndexV2 and the Iris Xe Max Index … Read more

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5

Happy researchers running their screen with a ball-point pen. (Source: Lenovo)   Lenovo has done a springtime refresh of their mobile office products and brought some new, powerful features to the enterprise market. Announced at MWC, Lenovo showed the latest additions to its ThinkPad and ThinkVision portfolios. The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 is powered by an Intel vPro with … Read more

Back to the future—full-circle on GPU construction

AMD and Intel have been leading with the adoption of chiplets for GPUs. Nvidia recently published another paper on how they plan to do it. The era of monster chips may be over. AMD will also migrate their APUs to chiplets with GPU and CPU separated. That is ironic. Part of the motivation of Hector Ruiz and Dave Orton for … Read more

Intel brings a bonanza to ISSCC 2022

The 69th International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), sponsored by IEEE and Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS), took place virtually from February 20 to February 28, 2022. The ISSCC is, and has been, the leading global forum for the presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and devices, and is geared to integrated circuit design engineers, academicians, students, and architects. It used to … Read more

Gelsinger’s grand strategy—leave no socket behind

I suspect Pat Gelsinger has thought about what Intel should (and shouldn’t) do since he left in ‘09. He’s had the benefit of being inside for 30 years, and then 12 years on the outside watching the company. No one could have a better perspective and understanding from the transistor level to the macroeconomics of the 80 billion global company. … Read more

AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 processor

AMD announced the Fusion project in 2006 after the acquisition of ATI: the integrating of a GPU with the CPU. However, Intel beat AMD to it and in January 2011 introduced the Clarkdale with an integrated GPU. AMD came out in June 2011 with the Llano and called it an APU—Accelerated Processing Unit. AMD always had more shader cores than … Read more

HP Z2 G9 tower and mini WS

HP did a refresh of their popular Z workstation line and introduced gen 12 based Z2s in a flat charcoal black finish. The Z2 Tower is the top of the line and come with a choice of i5, i7, or i9 gen 12 Intel processors, and up to 128 GB of ECC SDDR5 RAM. They can also be equipped with … Read more

HP’s all-in-one idea for the home office

HP blasted out several new PCs and workstations after CES and among them was a slick new AiO. HP invented the AiO (in 1972 with the HP9830) and has been at the forefront of it since. The company’s latest offering is the EliteOne AiO 800 Evolution—doesn’t that trickly little name just roll right off the tongue. Regardless of the silly … Read more

Imagination Technologies penetrates the RISC-V ecosphere

It's RISC, not Risk   Frankwell Lin, Andes Technology Corporation, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Andes Technology Corporation, founded in 2005, is a Taiwanese supplier of 32-/64-bit embedded CPU cores and a founding Premier member of RISC-V International Association. The company focuses on the embedded market and delivers CPU cores with an integrated development environments and associated software and hardware for … Read more