Two key breakthroughs are enabling next-generation semiconductor future https://www.wired.com/2017/06/ibm-silicon-nanosheets-transistors/ “IBM, its Research Alliance partners GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung, and equipment suppliers have developed an industry-first process to build silicon nanosheet transistors that will enable 5 nanometer (nm) chips. The details of the process will be presented at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits conference in Kyoto, Japan. In less than two years since developing a 7 nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip.” http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-found-a-metal-that-conducts-electricity-but-not-heat “a team in the US has shown that this isn’t the case for metallic vanadium dioxide(VO2) –
AMD Previews Next Gen Opteron, Naples Server Processor
After a big interest and success with the launch of Ryzen family of processors for consumers, AMD formally announced its new Naples server CPU today, featuring up to 32 cores, eight memory channels, and new, 128-lane Infinity Fabric. Codenamed “Naples”, the new server chip targets one and two-socket servers, aimed squarely at Intel’s Broadwell-EP-based Xeon E3/E5 V4 range, and the upcoming Skylake-EP-based Xeon E3/E5 “V5”. The overall theme of AMD’s chip is “have more of everything.” Naples has 32 cores, capable of 64 simultaneous threads, eight memory channels, supporting up to 2TB RAM and 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The PCIe pins are multiplexed and can
Intel Announces Powerful Xeon E7 v3 Chips
No More SeaMicro: AMD Exits the Microserver Business
Haswell-EP Workstation Preview: Xeon E5 v3 Rocks, But Still More To Go
Today, as Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) launches the third generation of its Xeon E5 dual-CPU platform, many eyes are on the improvements it brings to the servers in the datacenter. However, the benefits are just as high – if not higher – on the high-end workstation front. First of all, Haswell core means sped-up AVX floating point, by inclusion of fused multiply-add (FMA) ops for theoretical FP rate doubling in benchmarks like Linpack, for instance. Haswell’s AVX2 also, just as importantly, moves integer processing to the wide parallel AVX engines, essentially offloading anything aside the address calculations to the RISC-like, three-address AVX instruction format and wide
Haswell-EP Workstation Preview: Xeon E5 v3 Rocks, But Still More To Go
Today, as Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) launches the third generation of its Xeon E5 dual-CPU platform, many eyes are on the improvements it brings to the servers in the datacenter. However, the benefits are just as high – if not higher – on the high-end workstation front. First of all, Haswell core means sped-up AVX floating point, by inclusion of fused multiply-add (FMA) ops for theoretical FP rate doubling in benchmarks like Linpack, for instance. Haswell’s AVX2 also, just as importantly, moves integer processing to the wide parallel AVX engines, essentially offloading anything aside the address calculations to the RISC-like, three-address AVX instruction format and wide
Intel Officially Unveils Haswell-Powered Xeon at IDF 2014
A day before Intel’s Developer Forum kicked off in San Francisco, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) officially unveiled the Xeon E5-2600 v3 known previously by its code name of Grantley. On stage, Intel’s Diane Bryant, the company’s general manager of its Data Center Group, said that the “big data” economy was driving demand for a new series of Xeon Chips. “The digital services economy imposes new requirements on the data center, requirements for automated, dynamic and scalable service delivery,” Bryant said on stage. “Our new Intel processors deliver unmatched performance, energy efficiency and security, as well as provide visibility into the hardware resources required to enable software defined infrastructure. “We
Asus X99-E WS Motherboard Leaked
As more and more X99 motherboards leak, it only made sense to release a portion of the trove of boards that haven’t already been announced or leaked. The Asus X99-E WS, a Bright Side of News* exclusive, is a particularly interesting one because it is Asus’ (TPE:2357) latest high performance motherboard for workstation users. Because X99 is an entirely new platform there are very likely going to be a lot of people searching for new workstation boards like the X99-E WS to upgrade their workstations. In terms of features, you get all the expected things like Haswell-E support, a plethora of PCIe 3.0 slots, which includes support
Intel Navigating the New Landscape: Focus on the Golden Goose, or Fight for the Peanuts With the ARM Crowd?
The Portland suburb of Hillsboro, where all Intel’s high end product operations – and its main cash cow – are located, was unusually hot for this time of the year, with temperatures almost touching 30 Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) some days. So was Intel inside (pun intended), overheated in preparation for the imminent launch of new workstation, server and, yes, high-end desktop Haswell flavours that will have a public debut before the September IDF opens its doors. These were already well written about by many in the media community, so this time it’s pointless repeating what’s already widely known. What is interesting is where Intel would
