Tag: Reviews

SK hynix and TSMC announced early on Friday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on developing the next-generation HBM4 memory and advanced packaging technology. The initiative is designed to speed up the adoption of HBM4 memory and solidify SK hynix's and TSMC's leading positions in high-bandwidth memory and advanced processor applications. The primary focus of SK hynix's and TSMC's initial efforts will be to enhance the performance of the HBM4 stack's base die, which (if we put it very simply) acts like an ultra-wide interface between memory devices and host processors. With HBM4, SK hynix plans to use one of TSMC's advanced logic process technologies to build base dies to pack additional featu

AMD is looking to drive the AI PC market with options across multiple product lines, which aren't limited to consumer processors. While primarily designed for the commercial sector, AMD has announced the Ryzen Pro 8000 'Phoenix' series of APUs for desktops, which AMD claims is the first professional-grade CPU to include an NPU designed to provide on-chip AI neural processing capabilities. AMD has also announced the Ryzen Pro 8040 'Hawk Point' series of mobile processors designed for commercial laptops and notebooks. AMD's Ryzen Pro 8000 and Ryzen Pro 8040 series processors come with support from AMD's Pro Manageability and AMD Pro Business Ready suites and are

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week released its financial results for Q1 2024. Due to a rebound in demand for semiconductors, the company garned $18.87 billion in revenue for the quarter, which is up 12.9% year-over-year, but a decline of 3.8% quarter-over-quarter. The company says that in increase in demand for HPC processors (which includes processors for AI, PCs, and servers) drove its revenue rebound in Q1, but surprisingly, revenue share of TSMC's flagship N3 (3nm-class) process technology declined steeply quarter-over-quarter. "Our business in the first

This week ASML is making two very important announcements related to their progress with high numerical aperature extreme ultraviolet lithography (High-NA EUV). First up, the company's High-NA EUV prototype system at its fab in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, has printed the first 10nm patterns, which is a major milestone for ASML and their next-gen tools. Second, the company has also revealed that it's second High-NA EUV system is now out the door as well, and has been shipped to an unnamed customer. "Our High-NA EUV system in Veldhoven printed the first-ever 10 nanometer dense lines," a statement by ASML reads. "Imaging was done after optics, sensors and stages completed coa

While neuromorphic computing remains under research for the time being, efforts into the field have continued to grow over the years, as have the capabilities of the specialty chips that have been developed for this research. Following those lines, this morning Intel and Sandia National Laboratories are celebrating the deployment of the Hala Point neuromorphic system, which the two believe is the highest capacity system in the world. With 1.15 billion neurons overall, Hala Point is the largest deployment yet for Intel’s Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which was first announced at the tail-end of 2021. The Hala Point system incorporates 1152 Loihi

Samsung today has announced that they have developed an even faster generation of LPDDR5X memory that is set to top out at LPDDR5X-10700 speeds. The updated memory is slated to offer 25% better performance and 30% greater capacity compared to existing mobile DRAM devices from the company. The new chips also appear to be tangibly faster than Micron's LPDDR5X memory and SK hynix's LPDDR5T chips. Samsung's forthcoming LPDDR5X devices feature a data transfer rate of 10.7 GT/s as well as maximum capacity per stack of 32 GB. This allows Samsung's clients to equip their latest smartphones or laptops with 32 GB of low-power memory

Iceberg Thermal Inc. is one of the newer players in the PC cooling market. The company was founded in 2019 by an experienced team of designers and engineers setting off on their own, aiming to deliver a wide range of PC cooling products to industrial and commercial users alike. They only have a handful of retails products currently available, with the vast majority of them being CPU air coolers, but they have just launched their first liquid cooler products, the IceFLOE Oasis series. In today’s review, we are having a look at the IceFLOE Oasis 360mm AIO (All-In-One) CPU cooler, the larger of the company's two recently-released liquid coolers. The IceFLOE Oasis CPU cooler targets the high-performance PC cooling market with a sub-$100 price point, aiming to deliver the performance needed to effectively cool a power-hungry processor without being a drain on the wallet in the process. This cooler features a 360mm radiator for an ample heat dissipation area, as well

Samsung Electronics this week was awarded up to $6.4 billion from the U.S. government under the CHIPS and Science Act to build its new fab complex in Taylor, Texas. This is the third major award under the act in the last month, with all three leading-edge fabs – Intel, TSMC, and now Samsung – receiving multi-billion dollar funding packages under the domestic

With NVIDIA’s Turing architecture turning six years old this year, the company has been retiring many of the remaining Turing products from its video card lineup. And today that spirit of spring cleaning is coming to the entry-level segment of NVIDIA’s professional visualization lineup, where NVIDIA is introducing a pair of new desktop cards based on their low-end Ampere hardware. The new RTX A1000 and RTX A400 cards will be replacing the T1000/T600/T400 lineup, which was released three years ago in 2021. The new cards slot into the same entry-level category and finally finish fleshing out the RTX A series of proviz cards, offering NVIDIA’s

SK hynix is one of the few vertically integrated manufacturers in the flash-based storage market. The company is well-established in the OEM market. A few years back, they also started exploring direct end-user products. Internal SSDs (starting with the Gold S31 and Gold P31) were the first out of the door. Late last year, the company introduced the Beetle X31 portable SSD, its first direct-attached storage product. In February, a complementary product was introduced - the Tube T31 Stick SSD. The Beetle X31 is a portable SSD with a Type-C upstream port and a separate cable. The Tube T31 is a take on the traditional thumb drive with a male Type-A interface. The size of the Beetle X31 makes the use of a bridge solution obvious. Our investigation into the Tube T31 also revealed the use of the same internal SSD, albeit with a different bridge. Read on for a detailed look at the Tube T31, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power