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AMD expands its arsenal by snatching up programmable chip maker Xilinx
AMD is buying Xilinx for $35 billion to give it chip designs it could never have considered before.
Acer updates its Swift 3 and 5 laptops with 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs
They should go on sale in November.
Intel puts Dr. Ann Kelleher in charge of its delayed 7nm CPU project
Last week Intel announced its 7nm process is running behind schedule. This week it announced the departure of chief engineering officer Dr. Murthy Renduchintala amid a restructuring of its technology group.
Intel's 7nm CPUs are delayed, won't arrive until at least 2022
Intel delivered bad news to its investors today, announcing that its plans for 7nm chips have slipped another six months, and yields are now running a year behind original projections. This comes after Apple announced plans to rely on its own CPUs for future computers, and as competitors like AMD and NVIDIA already take advantage of 7nm tech to build more efficient processors. Intel is accelerating its transition to 10nm products this year with increasing volumes and strong demand for an expanding line up.
AMD's 4700G APU is a mid-range PC on a single chip
It's been a year since AMD's Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 CPUs changed the desktop PC market, with best-in-class productivity and "good enough" gaming performance. One area has been left behind, though: desktop APUs, which combine a processor with integrated graphics. Today that changes, as AMD is announcing a family of "4000G" APUs for desktop PCs.
AMD's XT chips are faster versions of its Ryzen 3000 CPUs
AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs have been available in various forms for about a year now. AMD says that these chips will have a four percent performance boost over those from the 3000 series. The Ryzen 9 3900XT, 7 3800XT and 5 3600XT processors have 12, eight and six cores, respectively.
Samsung's Exynos 880 delivers 5G speeds to mid-range phones
Samsung has unveiled the Exynos 880 processor aimed at mid-range phones that has much of the power of the Exynos 980 announced last year.
How much does your CPU matter for gaming?
For the latest episode of our explainer show Upscaled, we compared Intel’s new flagship 10-core chip, the i9-10900K, with AMD’s budget-level Ryzen 3 3300X. We were trying to answer one question: How much does your CPU matter in gaming performance?
Chrome will start blocking resource-demanding ads in August
Beginning this summer, Google will cap the resources a display ad can use in Chrome in order to protect users’ batteries and data plans.
Qualcomm's latest mobile gaming chip packs faster graphics and global 5G
Qualcomm has introduced a Snapdragon 768G chip that promises faster gaming performance and worldwide 5G.
White House said to be in talks with Intel, TSMC for US chip factories
The White House reportedly hopes to reduce its dependence on Asia for processors by having Intel and TSMC set up US factories.
Can Intel's 10th-gen desktop CPUs compete?
Now, with its 10th-gen “Comet Lake” desktop chips, Intel is offering up to 10 cores on top-line chips. These Intel 10th-gen chips are also still based on Intel’s aging 14nm manufacturing process and Skylake architecture, so aside from more cores, don’t expect huge performance gains here.
Microsoft's Flight Simulator won't require a super-powerful PC rig
One of the most anticipated games this year is Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2020. Not only do the graphics look lush and detailed, but it’ll simulate the entire flying world, including all 37,000 real-world airports, real-life air traffic and up-to-date weather conditions. You’d think all that would require quite a powerful PC rig, but Microsoft has just unveiled the machine specifications for Flight Simulator 2020 and you won’t necessarily need the latest and fastest gear.
AMD's latest 3rd-gen Ryzen 3 CPUs start at $99
AMD's Ryzen 3 3100 lowers the price of its current-gen desktop CPUs to $99, while the B550 chipset brings PCIe 4.0 to a wider audience.
AMD's efficient Ryzen 9 CPUs target Intel's gaming laptop crown
While AMD is winning over the workstation market, Intel still dominates laptop gaming. However, AMD aims to change that in a hurry with the Ryzen 9 4900HS and 4900H Zen 2 mobile processors, launching soon on laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. They pack eight cores and 16 threads, along with up to 8 cores of integrated Vega graphics, and run at overclocked speeds up to 4.4 GHz. Best of all, the 7-nanometer 4900HS chip consumes just 35 watts of power, boosting battery life for gaming and entertainment apps.
AMD CPUs for the past 9 years are vulnerable to data leak attacks
It's not just Intel chips that are vulnerable to hard-to-fix security flaws. Researchers at the Graz University of Technology have detailed a pair of side channel attacks under the "Take A Way" name that can leak data from AMD processors dating back to 2011, whether it's an old Athlon 64 X2, a Ryzen 7 or a Threadripper. Both exploit the "way predictor" for the Level 1 cache (meant to boost the efficiency of cache access) to leak memory content. The Collide+Probe attack lets an intruder monitor memory access without having to know physical addresses or shared memory, while Load+Reload is a more secretive method that uses shared memory without invalidating the cache line.
An algorithm could make CPUs a cheap way to train AI
AI is the backbone of technologies such as Alexa and Siri -- digital assistants that rely on deep machine learning to do their thing. But for the makers of these products -- and others that rely on AI -- getting them "trained" is an expensive and often time-consuming process. Now, scientists from Rice University have found a way to train deep neural nets more quickly, and more affordably, through CPUs.
Intel is patching its Zombieload CPU security flaw for the third time
For the third time in less than a year, Intel has disclosed a new set of vulnerabilities related to the speculative functionality of its processors. On Monday, the company said it will issue a software update "in the coming weeks" that will fix two more microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) or Zombieload flaws. This latest update comes after the company released two separate patches in May and November of last year.
AMD's 64-core Threadripper will be available February 7th
When AMD said its 64-core Threadripper 3990X would be ready in 2020, it apparently didn't intend to make people wait very long. The brag-worthy processor is now slated to be available on February 7th for a staggering $3,990 (yes, that matches the model number). Clearly, this is meant primarily for workstations where more cores could easily save time and money; you're better off with one of the more 'affordable' Threadrippers if you just want to lord an advantage over your fellow gamers.
Watch AMD's CES 2020 event here at 5PM ET
AMD's CES 2020 press conference is about to take place and it should include some details on next-generation Ryzen processors. There also might be some more info on Renoir chips as well as another GPU to round out the current 5000 lineup.
