[LEAK] Intel Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X Specs, Release Dates Leaked

"Intel is feeling the pressure of AMD's successful Ryzen CPU launch and is bringing its own product refreshes forward."

                                                    - Digitimes(Taiwanese supply chain tracker)

On Monday, Intel’s top desktop processors include those using the Broadwell-E architecture, such as the Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition. That will be changing with the release of Skylake-X and other products and at least a rumor till now. The report lines up with previous leaks about changes to Intel's roadmaps. Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X will supposedly launch together under a common platform named Basin Falls, replacing the current Broadwell-E platform which is architecturally two generations behind the mainstream Kaby Lake lineup.

Bench Life uncovered some leaked information that appears to show off a range of possible released dates for Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X, the latter of which would represent seventh-generation high-performance desktop CPUs. According to the leak, Skylake-X will arrive at the end of June or beginning of July, a bit earlier than the August release that was previously expected. Kaby Lake-X would arrive during roughly the same timeframe.

The publication previously reported that Intel planned to launch a new X299 chipset at Gamescom in late August. Given the revised timeframe, one would think that we’ll see the new chipset and CPUs debut at Computex which kicks off on May 30 and runs through June 3 in Taipei. 

Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X are expected to share the same LGA 2066 socket. Skylake-X processors are said to pack anywhere between six to 12 cores, support quad-channel DDR4 memory and have loads of PCIe 3.0 lanes and have 140W TDP ratings, while Kaby Lake-X might be restricted to four cores at 112W. Kaby Lake-X parts, meanwhile, are reportedly limited to just four cores, dual-channel memory and far fewer PCIe lanes.


Author : Saatvik Awasthi

Source : Click Here

[SNEAK/PEAK] AMD RYZEN Processor Sneak Peak

AMD has given a sneak peak of its latest Zen architecture aka Ryzen core processors. The live stream was done on AMDs website. Here some specs and performance of early Ryzen chips were shown. These were in straight comaparasion with Intel's 6900k Broadwell-E processor which packs the same configuration as the chip shown. 

The first Ryzen-based chip will be the Summit Ridge family of high-end desktop chips. These will feature an 8-core 16-thread CPU i.e. is a true 8-core chip using simultaneous multithreading with a base clock of 3.4GHz. This chip also outperforms Broadwell-E processors not only in speed but also IPC and TDP. The IPC is 40 percent less and the TDP also has a huge margin of 45W as Ryzen has a TDP of 95W while Broadwell-E has a TDP of 140W. 

AMD's new chipset AMD AM4 Platform was released that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2, NVMe, SATA Express and Unlimited Upgrade and Expansion as said by AMD. 

These processors have AMD's new SenceMI technology where MI stands for Machine Intelligence. It packs Five technologies which are Pure Power, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, Neural Net Prediction and Smart Prefetch. 

Pure Power:-

It monitors temperatures, speed and voltage of the chip and optimizes the silicon chip behavior to deliver lower power usage by using adaptive control for real time management. 

Precision Boost:-

It works with Pure Power control loop and utilizes it's information  to optimize clock speeds without halts. It has a high precision tuning with 25MHz increments.

Extended Frequency Range:-

It provides higher clock frequencies as per the users cooling criteria.Those running big air coolers, liquid coolers will apparently see a big improvement compared to a stock cooler. The process is entirely automated, so even those without any overclocking skills can gain a performance boost.  

Neural Net Prediction:-

As claimed by AMD it uses true artificial network that are able to predict future decisions, pre-load instructions, and learn application data access patterns in order to improve performance.

Smart Prefetch:-

it works with Neural Net Prediction and learning algorithms designed to learn application access patterns to prefetch vital data into local cache for fast and improves usage and speeds.

At the end there was also a speak of EA's Star Wars Battlefront DLC The Rouge One which was played on Ryzen and AMDs next gen graphic architecture VEGA and performed quite well. 

"Now the stage is set for the massive showdown between processor giants Intel and AMD"  

Author: Saatvik Awasthi 

[NEWS] Bluetooth 5.0 is finally here !

Bluetooth 5's faster, longer-ranged wireless is here

Bluetooth 5 was unveiled on June 16th of this year, and today has officially come to market as a technology ready for implementation.

The biggest additions to the standard are increased range, speed, message capacity, and interoperability. The goal for this version of the wireless connection standard is aimed at Internet of Things technologies, which require strong connections that can relay information instantly across large homes. The company says it can deliver four times the range, two times the speed, and eight times the broadcast message capacity. This isn’t just a 4.3 standard upgrade, it’s 5.0 for a reason.

Bluetooth 5.0 was also made to reduce interference with similar wireless technologies which should vastly improve connectivity. Even with all of these updates, the new standard should still remain extremely low power just like it’s predecessors. This should ensure that consumers can have a streamlined experience without having to worry about battery usage. With four times the range like the company is touting, consumers should be able to walk around their house with a headset without having to worry about having their phone on them at all times.

The company says consumers can expect Bluetooth 5-enabled products to launch within two to six months, meaning we are sure to see a variety of new products sporting the technology at CES 2017. With one of the biggest focus points being IoT this year, the technology should be quite popular at the show.

The biggest thing for me would be wireless headphones, allowing users to have a large distance delta between them and their phone or computer before the connection breaks.

For more information on Bluetooth 5: www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth5

[LAUNCH] Samsung's new 960 series NVMe SSDs Hit In OCT16

Samsung's spacious new 960 Pro and 960 Evo hit the market. Both come in the relatively newfangled gumstick sized M.2 form factor supporting the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) specification for fast speeds, high bandwidth, and low latency storage access. Where they differ is in the type of memory each one employs.

It uses stacked 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory and a four lane PCIe 3.0 interface, uses 48-layer V-NAND, allowing for significantly more storage than last year's 950 Pro. According to Samsung, all three capacities 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB can deliver up to 3,500MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 2,100MB/s of sequential writes.

The 512GB also features 512MB of DRAM cache and is rated to deliver up to 330,000 IOPS of 4K random read and write performance. DRAM cache is doubled to 1GB for the 1TB model, which bumps up 4K random read and write performance to 440,000 IOPS and 360,000 IOPS, respectively, while the 2TB model boasts 2GB of DRAM cache with the same read and write IOPS as the 1TB model.

As for the 960 Evo, it also boasts a four lane PCIe 3.0 interface, but uses slower triple-level cell (TLC) memory chips and comes in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. However, don't ready slower to mean slow, because the 960 Evo line is anything but. All three capacities are rated to deliver up to 3,200MB/s of sequential write performance, also besting the previous generation 950 Pro.
Samsung says the new drives will be available in October.
The prices are as follows:

    960 Pro 2TB: $1,299
    960 Pro 1TB: $629
    960 Pro 512GB: $329
    960 Evo 1TB: 479
    960 Evo 500GB: $249
    960 Evo 250GB: $129

[RECALL] Samsung Note 7 Explodes!!!

Samsung has issued a global recall for all 2.5 million of the phones it has shipped so far. Some of the phones shipped with faulty batteries that could catch on fire. Samsung has announced an unprecedented recall of the Galaxy Note 7 just weeks after launching the well-received smartphone. Sales have been halted globally, and over the coming weeks Samsung will issue replacements to anyone affected. The issue is related to the phone's battery, with some scattered reports that the cell can explode while charging.

The percentage of affected phones is small estimated at 24 out of every 1,000,000 phones but Samsung only has one battery supplier in each of the countries in which the phone has shipped. All units could potentially be affected, though the models sold in China apparently include batteries that are unaffected by the flaw.

Official Statement by Samsung:

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue. To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7. For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks."

Author : Saatvik Awasthi

[NEWS] PCI Express 4.0 PCI Express 4.0 Brings 16 GT/s Bandwidth Speed

The next iteration of PCI Express will double the bandwidth per lane, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. During Intel Developers Forum,we found the hidden gem in the next specification; it provides at least a 4x increase in power delivery at the slot, which might eliminate the need for auxiliary power cables with some GPUs.

Speeds and Feeds

The next iteration of the PCI Express standard will officially pass the 1-gigabyte bandwidth mark and knock on the door of 2 gigabytes per second, per lane, per direction. The performance shifts from 3.0 to 4.0 while x16 devices like video cards get a massive headroom increase that will aid in providing the bandwidth needed for next generation virtual and augmented reality. PCI Express is a full-duplex protocol that can send and transfer data at the same time. The speeds listed above are for single direction performance. PCIe 4.0 uses the same encoding scheme as PCIe 3.0.

PCI Express 4.0 Performance Usage

There are many usage cases for the New/Upcoming PCI Express 4.0. The faster 16 GT/s data Bandwidth rate and high power efficiency would be useful for the connection of the M.2, U.2 and PCIe expansion cards that would be able to take advantage of higher Bandwidth, providing higher speed and would also in turn draw less power.

PCI Express has moved well beyond video cards. Currently, nearly every IO device routes through PCIe to send signals back to the CPU.

NVMe SSDs using PCIe 3.0 x4 recently reached the usable limit of the interface, such as the Samsung SM961 that reads data at 3,100 MB/s. Enterprise NVMe SSDs using the add-in card form factor and bifurcation will ship later this year with PCIe 3.0 x16. The increase in throughput will allow manufacturers to reduce costs by delivering the same performance with half the number of PCIe lanes. Analyst firm Forward Insights predicts enterprise PCIe storage devices will surpass the number of SATA products shipped between 2017 and 2018.

Mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and other battery-operated devices will benefit from low-power states and a new focus on burst performance. PCIe 4.0 adapts new L1 sub-states with half and quarter-swing bursts, which use just 400 and 200-millivolt steps.

During the last year, we've seen a number of companies build external graphics housings that route back to a small form factor PC via external cabling. The big fear is that a product from Company A will not work with a product from Company B. The PCI-SIG looks to end interoperability issues with the OCuLink standard.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi
Source : TomsHardware

[LEAK] AMD Zen Architecture Sample Processor Benchmarks Leak !

After a much hyped wait for AMD Zen Architecture processor family, the first verified benchmarks of one of the sku's just leaked out via Ashes of Singularity benchmarks database. This leak displays the first real world performance of the new Architecture. However, the benchmarks leaked out are of the Engineering Sample of AMD Zen and may not represent  the performance of the finished product in any way. 

Benchmarks show some real improvements over AMD's FX-8350

A few days ago, the OPN (Order Part Number) of AMD’s Zen Engineering Sample leaked out. This was 1D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N. The first part of the number indicates the unique identifier of the Zen ES CPU while the second part (32/28) reveals the base clock as well as the turbo clock. This means we are looking at a base clock of 2.8 Ghz and a turbo of 3.2 Ghz. It goes without saying that the frequencies of the engineering sample are probably not final and could get an uplift by the time the product actually hits the shelf.

With this context, we continue on to the main spectacle of today. The exact flavor is the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark. We can quickly confirm that the benchmarks are indeed of a Zen processor because:

• It lists the OPN Zen has previously been identified with (1D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N), 
• It lists another OPN that we have yet to identify Zen with but appears to be a different revision of the same (2D2801A2M88E4_32/28_N) 
• So in short, we have at least two variants of Zen being tested here. I’ll refer to them as 1D and 2D. 
• We can see that the profile has previously tested Carrizo engineering samples of AMD – so this isn’t a newly minted spoofer profile. 

Here are the Benchmarks:

We can see that the Zen 1D ES sample is performing rather well. Across all 4 settings, the CPU is able to earn a consistent CPU frame-rate of 58-60 frames per second. The benchmark was conducted with the AMD Radeon RX 480, so we cannot make direct comparisons from just this benchmark alone. We can however, compare this setup to similar setups where only the CPU has been replaced.

There doesn’t seem to be any difference at first sight between the 1D and 2D variants. They are both clocked at the same rates and the only difference that we can see is the fact that the 2D variant fares much worse in terms of performance. There could be multiple reasons for why this is the case. It is possible that this particular variant is actually a cut down core and the benchmark is reading it incorrectly or even that its simply another revision being tested that did not like the AotS benchmark. In any case, because of these reasons, I decided to focus on the 1D variant for our comparison.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Source: Click here