#central_processing_unit

They will be shown at CES 2024 Promotional materials have appeared on the Internet with photos of Dell and Alienware laptops, and some of them will be equipped with the latest Intel Core Ultra processors. [caption id="attachment_85043" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Intel Core Ultra processors[/caption] This is what laptops with new Intel Core Ultra processors look like. The images show the XPS 13, 14, 16, as well as the Alienware m16 R2 and m18 R2. All new products will receive a 14th generation Intel Core CPU, but we know that this same 14th generation will include both Raptor Lake Refresh and the latest Meteor Lake. But only the latter will bear the names Core Ultra. Also, some laptops will have discrete graphics cards of the GeForce RTX 40 line. There are no other technical details yet, but these are all fairly high-end laptops. They should be announced at CES 2024, like many other laptops based on the new Intel processors.

And so far only in one test Yesterday, the Chinese company Loongson finally released its 3A6000 processor to the market , which in a number of tests is actually not inferior to the Ryzen 3 3100 and Core i3-10100F . It turned out that it can even compete with the Core i5-14600K! True, only at the same frequency. [caption id="attachment_84905" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Core i5-14600K[/caption] Recent tests have shown that in the UnixBench test the new Chinese CPU performs at the level of the Core i3-10100, if the frequency of the latter is lowered to 2.5 GHz, like the 3A6000. And in the Spec CPU 2006 test, the same thing happens when comparing the Chinese new product with the Core i5-14600K! Moreover, in one of the modes the latter is even a little slower. The Chinese quad-core Loongson 3A6000 processor is capable of competing with the Core i5-14600K. This indicates the great potential of the Loongson architecture, but, of course, in practice the frequencies still differ by more than twice. In addition, these are separate tests and sometimes separate modes in these tests, so we still don’t have the full picture. But we can say for sure that buying a Loongson 3A6000 for a home PC in order to overclock it well and reach the performance of modern AMD and Intel CPUs is a bad idea. Apparently, the overclocking potential is either in general or is still quite weak. Regular overclocking allows you to increase the frequency from 2.5 to only 2.63 GHz, and liquid nitrogen allows you to achieve 3 GHz, but here the motherboard BIOS limitation comes into force. So perhaps extreme overclocking is possible to higher frequencies.

And eight small ones While Intel Meteor Lake processors have not yet entered the market, the Arrow Lake CPU line, which is expected next year, has appeared on the Internet. [caption id="attachment_84812" align="aligncenter" width="780"] CPU Arrow Lake-H[/caption] CPU Arrow Lake-H with six large cores appeared on the Internet We are talking about the Arrow Lake-H mobile processor. It has six large and eight small cores. We don't yet know all the details about the Arrow Lake configuration, but such CPUs will have a maximum of eight large and 32 small cores. It is expected that the Arrow Lake-H line will offer up to 6 + 8 configurations, like the specified model, and Arrow Lake-HX processors will have 8 + 16 or 8 + 24 cores. [caption id="attachment_84813" align="aligncenter" width="534"] CPU Arrow Lake-H[/caption] Arrow Lake processors are expected in the second half of next year. Unlike Meteor Lake, which is focused primarily on energy efficiency, Arrow Lake will be more versatile and represented in more segments, including the most senior one.

There are still a few years left before such a memory is released. HBM4 memory will appear on the market only in a few years, but it has already become known that its appearance may be associated with a small revolution in the field of semiconductor production. Hynix is ​​reportedly working with Nvidia and other manufacturers on technology that will allow HBM4 memory chips to be placed directly on the computing chip. [caption id="attachment_83411" align="aligncenter" width="600"] CPUs and GPUs[/caption] Now HBM memory is placed on the same substrate as the CPU or GPU, but next to it. Placing memory on the CPU/GPU will not only change the way logic and memory devices are typically connected, it will also change the way they are manufactured. This will change the way CPUs and GPUs are made. In fact, this is approximately the same as AMD's 3D V-Cache, only with a different type of memory. SK Hynix has now begun recruiting specialists to design logic semiconductors such as CPUs and GPUs and is discussing its HBM4 integration design method with several companies without its own manufacturing capabilities, including Nvidia. It is likely that Hynix and Nvidia will initially jointly develop a specific GPU, and then TSMC will produce this chip and immediately place HBM4 memory on top. Considering the type of memory, we are clearly talking about specialized accelerators for AI or data centers. [caption id="attachment_83412" align="aligncenter" width="385"] CPUs and GPUs[/caption] Hynix took on this idea for a reason. The thing is that HBM4 memory will use a 2048-bit interface to connect to host processors, so the latter will be extremely complex and expensive. A direct connection between memory and CPU/GPU will simply be cheaper. However, it is too early to draw any conclusions, since on the way to such implementation there is a very banal problem - heating. The consumption of the Nvidia H100 accelerator is very high, and in a few years such solutions can consume much more. Memory also consumes a lot, and when all this is placed next to each other, there are no problems with cooling. And when a “sandwich” is created, the heating increases significantly with a smaller area of ​​the final crystal. Perhaps Nvidia accelerators in a few years will initially be designed exclusively for liquid cooling.

For free Bitsum has released the CoreDirector application, which allows you to optimize the performance of Intel processors with small cores.  [caption id="attachment_83317" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Intel processors[/caption] To make small cores of Intel processors work normally. It is essentially a thread scheduler that allows the user to configure the CPU to force small CPU cores to be used or not used in the selected application. Of course, we are talking about 12th generation Core processors and newer, which generally have these small cores.  The software is very simple. In fact, it has only three operating modes: small cores are forcibly disabled, forcibly enabled, or their control is given to the OS to a greater extent - this is a kind of hybrid mode.

True, only server ones Samsung, it seems, can finally compete more seriously with TSMC in the semiconductor market. It is reported that the Korean giant will even receive orders for AMD processors. [caption id="attachment_82935" align="aligncenter" width="780"] AMD processors[/caption] More precisely, Samsung will allegedly produce Prometheus server processors based on Zen 5c cores. True, only low-end models, while the top ones will still be produced by TSMC, and using a 3 nm process technology, that is, apparently, they will be much more energy efficient. New AMD processors will be produced by Samsung Samsung's achievement is that it was able to achieve a die yield rate of 70%, which matches TSMC's figure, which means that there can be more production and it can be cheaper. For AMD, this is an opportunity to diversify risks, which is important given how heavily TSMC’s capacity has been loaded lately. This is also important from the point of view that the current year has shown how critical AI will be for the market in the near future, and this in turn creates a huge demand for corresponding accelerators. And it may turn out that manufacturers will opt to produce more of the corresponding chips, sacrificing consumer CPUs and/or GPUs. In this scenario, an additional manufacturer with a modern technological process will definitely not be superfluous.

Gelsinger isn't shy about criticizing his company. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke about three big mistakes and failures of the company. [caption id="attachment_79812" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Intel[/caption] The head of Intel called processors for smartphones the first such failure. Recall that Intel has been releasing Atom platforms for Android smartphones for some time, and these platforms have generally been quite competitive. They never became widespread, but there were even flagships based on Atom. True, the story did not last long. The first smartphone with such a SoC was released in 2012, and the direction was closed in 2016. These are three huge mistakes and failures of Intel. Gelsinger also believes that Intel was wrong to abandon plans to create graphics processors focused on computing. More precisely, we are initially talking about the Larrabee line, which was canceled just after Gelsinger left Intel in 2010. The project later became Xeon Phi, but with much less ambition. Soon it was closed too. Gelsinger notes that Intel would not have had to subsequently buy five different AI companies if the Larrabee project had continued to be developed. The third point concerns the semiconductor business. Now Intel is actively developing it, trying to become a major market player together with TSMC and Samsung, and also promising that it will master five technical processes in four years, but the head of the company believes that it was necessary to start much earlier. However, in this case the company is at least actively working in this direction.

In total, growth is promised in 17 games Intel has released another graphics driver for its Arc video cards, which once again significantly increased performance in a number of games. The increase, depending on the game, can be a modest 6%, or even 53%, as in the case of Returnal and Guild Wars 2. [caption id="attachment_79575" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Intel[/caption] Miracles of optimization from Intel. But that's nothing compared to the results for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Intel says that when running DirectX 11 mode in Full HD resolution, performance increases by 750%! This once again shows the importance of optimization for modern video cards. In total, driver 31.0.101.4952 improves performance in 17 games, and in only two the increase is less than 10%.