The Hot Take: AMD getting ready for Intel refocus on HPDT?
With Threadripper, it has always been a bit like heavy-haul transport on the motorway: massively overdimensioned for normal users, but for certain workloads exactly the kind of tool where every additional lane matters. Now AMD’s next workstation generation has become tangible for the first time. An entry for “TR6 Mustang Peak” has appeared in AMD’s […]
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The Hot Take: Making the CPU important again on the x86 platform.
ACE, the upcoming set of x86 Extensions defined by both AMD & Intel, has seen the latest spec release, focusing on AI acceleration. AMD & Intel Focus on AI Acceleration Through Next-Gen x86 Architectures That Are ACE Compliant Last year, Intel and AMD partnered to strengthen the x86 ecosystem through their "x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group" initiative. The plan was to offer a standardized set of features across architectures to make x86 accessible, scalable, and compatible with future requirements. Four key features were announced: FRED,…
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The Hot Take: Well now....
AMD appears to have yanked a memory encryption protection from consumer Ryzen chips, leaving users to play firmware detective.
For those who came in late: a decade ago, AMD added Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) to higher-end CPUs to protect systems from cold-boot attacks and other physical exploits that can siphon data from memory. The feature encrypts everything stored in RAM, making stolen memory contents useless to attackers with physical access.
Over time, TSME turned up on cheaper Ryzen consumer chips, and privacy-minded…
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The Hot Take: CISC muscle on display... When you don't care about how many watts your cpu consumes ARM/RISC will never touch the raw throughput of these chips.
AMD has shared the first official results for its 256-core EPYC Venice CPU, saying it beats Nvidia's Vera by 3.3x in a rack-level deployment.
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The Hot Take: Creeps back into the chips...
AMD’s Zen 5 looked efficient, but weak demand and a dodgy RDSEED bug have taken the shine off.
For those with long memories, AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series arrived in 2024, promising strong efficiency and decent IPC gains. Months later, the launch looks messier. Sales were soft, prices fell quickly, and a documented random-number flaw has spooked some buyers.
The line-up included the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X, 12-core 9900X, eight-core 9700X and six-core 9600X. Early benchmarks were mixed. Gaming gains were often single-digit at higher resolutions,…
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The Hot Take: Ai sucking everything up.
AMD's next-gen Radeon GPUs based on the RDNA 5 architecture are still far away from launch as memory shortages grip the PC segment. Memory Shortages & Rising Component Prices Are The Reason Behind AMD's Push Back on Radeon "RDNA 5" Gaming GPUs The Radeon RX 9000 GPUs based on the RDNA 4 graphics architecture launched last year. This year, AMD launched the Radeon RX 9070 GRE for gamers, still based on the RDNA 4 architecture. While the new card aims to provide gamers with a good 1440p solution, the majority of those who have been waiting…
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The Hot Take: Just WOW.
AMD has announced that its 6th Gen EPYC processor, codenamed Venice, has entered production ramp on TSMC's N2 process in Taiwan.
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The Hot Take: AMD seems to be out performing Intel & Nvidia on the market, while Nvidia is still the preferred Ai holy-grail? Just seems odd.
While Nvidia has dominated the "infrastructure boom" since 2022's launch of ChatGPT and "the generative AI craze," CNBC writes that "This week offered the starkest illustration yet of what MIzuho analyst Jordan Klein said could be a 'changing of the guard in AI.'"
Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25%, while memory maker Micron jumped more than 37% and fiber-optic cable maker Corning climbed about 18%. All four of those companies have more than doubled in value this year, with Intel leading the way, up…
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The Hot Take: So was ARM not breaking into the WinTel market so they shifted to Ai market or are they just chasing the highest dollars?
Investment bank UBS reckons agentic AI will send CPU demand soaring, with Arm and AMD best placed to grab the spoils.
UBS analysts believe the growth of agentic AI software will drive strong demand for CPUs in the AI era. The bank said agentic AI increases processor workloads and favours chips with higher core counts and better power efficiency.
That view gives Arm the biggest potential upside, followed by AMD. Intel could benefit too, since a growing total addressable market tends to lift more than one silicon boat.
In fresh coverage of…
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The Hot Take: Closed source finally making it onto OSS OS, nice!
AMD has taken a major step toward enabling native open-source HDMI 2.1 support on Linux by submitting new patches for its AMDGPU driver. AMD Moves Closer to Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Support on Linux With New AMDGPU FRL Patches It appears that the HDMI 2.1 support is finally arriving to Linux as AMD has submitted the new Fixed Rate Link (FRL) patches for its AMDGPU driver. This has been one of the longest-standing limitations that affected Radeon GPUs on the platform. There have been years of restrictions tied to the HDMI Forum (Org behind the HDMI…
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