Samsung has announced today that its 8nm LPP FinFET process has been qualified and ready for production three months ahead of schedule.

According to the announcement, Samsung’s 8nm LPP will bring up to 10% power efficiency and 10% area reduction over the 10nm LPP thanks to the narrower metal pitch. The 8nm LPP node will be Samsung’s last node before transitioning to 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet).

Samsung states that the 8nm LPP will soon transition into stable mass production using current production techniques used for the 10nm LPP node.

“With the qualification completed three months ahead of schedule, we have commenced 8LPP production,” [...]

Last year, TSMC announced that development for 5nm, 3nm, and even 2nm process nodes were in progress and it appears that everything is going well. TSMC’s 7nm process is on track for 2018 and their 5nm process is on track for early 2019. While details on their 3nm process was relatively sparse, it appears that 3nm is on track as well given a recent announcement from TSMC confirms that they’ve  already selected the location for their next generation semiconductor manufacturing.

According to the short announcement, TSMC’s upcoming 3nm fab will be built in the Tainan Science Park in southern Taiwan. TSMC selected the site in order to [...]

In a blog post today, AMD announced support for native bootable NVMe RAID for its x399 HEDT platform.

Now you may ask, what does NVMe RAID bring to the table? Well, AMD highlighted some performance gains in RAID 0 with six NVMe SSDs connected, showcasing a whopping 21.221GB/s sequential read speed and 11.532GB sequential write speeds. Performance scaling is shown to be almost close to linear.

To add the capability, simply update your BIOS for your motherboard and install the latest RAID driver package here. The driver package includes an easy to use GUI software to help you guide though setting up a new RAID array once it detects that you have [...]

According to a report from Digitimes, AMD has revealed to its motherboard partners that it plans to launch its next generation 12nm Ryzen CPUs in February of 2018. The new CPUs will be manufactured on Global Foundries upcoming 12nm process.

The upcoming 12nm Ryzen CPUs will be codenamed Pinnacle Ridge and will feature both a die shrink as well as architecture improvements over current generation Summit Ridge Ryzen CPUs. Like Summit Ridge, Pinnacle Ridge will be divided into Pinnacle 7, Pinnacle 5, and Pinnacle 3. Pinnacle 7 will be launching first in February 2018 followed by Pinnacle 5 and 3 in March 2018. Following these will also be the Pinnacle Ridge low power [...]

Following the release of the 8th generation “Kaby Lake-R” mobile CPUs last month, Intel has finally launched its 8th generation “Coffee Lake” CPUs.

Coffee Lake uses an improved version of the 14nm FinFET. Though there’s still no transistor node shrink (we’ll have to wait until [...]

Chinese tech site Expreview reports that the six core Intel Core i7-8700K CPU has its overclocking potentials gimped once again as the company has decided to use lower quality TIM rather than solder.

The article states that while the chip itself is excellent and can overclock beyond 4.8GHz without dramatic increases in voltage, heat will be the greatest barrier to achieving this. While Expreview hasn’t posted pictures of the CPU de-lidded, the author attributes the thermal compound as the culprit, stating that the thermal compound applied under the lid is poor quality TIM rather than solder. As a result, those who want overclocks beyond 4.8 GHz or 5 GHz will [...]

Several weeks ago, an Intel presentation slide was leaked detailing Intel’s upcoming chipset roadmap. The roadmap revealed a previously unknown Z390 chipset, which is a consumer enthusiast chipset coming in the 2H2018.

At the time, little additional details of the upcoming chipset was revealed however, according to a recent forum post on Notebook Review by a representative for system integrator, Eurocom, it appears that the Z390 chipset will support 8-core/16-thread CPUs that Intel may be releasing to accompany the new chipset. If this rumor is accurate, this will be the first time Intel’s mainstream platform will have 8-core/16-thread [...]

Geekbench scores for AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U APU has surfaced, showing almost double the performance of AMD’s current flagship consumer APU, the A12-9800B.

According to the leaked benchmark, the Ryzen 5 2500U scores 3,561 single core and 9,421 in multi-core, beating AMD’s current flagship APU, the A12-9800B, by 54% in single-core [...]

Der8auer, the German overclocker who’s become quite famous for delidding CPUs, has recently published a video not only de-lidding the AMD Threadripper 1950X, but he also removed the dies to learn more about what lies inside.

As the AMD Threadripper 1950X has 16 cores/32 threads, it was originally assumed to only have two 8-core Ryzen dies. Interestingly, Der8auer discovered that there are not two, but four dies under the heatspreader in a previous video. Further, each of the four dies are confirmed to be 8-core Ryzen dies by removing all the dies. This means that half the dies are disabled and are essentially just there as placeholders. Currently, it’s [...]

Samsung is continuing the push to the limits of process technology as the company recently revealed two of its newest manufacturing processes, 11nm LPP (Low Power Plus) and 7nm LPP with EUV.

According to the announcement, Samsung’s new 11nm LPP is an alternative process to the 10nm FinFET process designed for mid-range to high end mobile processors. The 11nm LPP process offers up to 15% higher performance and up to 10% chip area reduction while drawing the same amount of power as their current 14nm LPP process. The new process is scheduled for production in the 1H2018.

Following the 11nm LPP process is the 7nm LPP process with EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) [...]