We have an update on developments in the European CPU project. We recently reported that deliveries of the first generation of these server CPUs, Rhea1, have begun, after a considerable delay. Now we have more details on the follow-up generation, which SiPearl is currently developing. It could be significantly better and more competitive—provided that it arrives on time this time and is not again delayed by several years. Read more “Rhea2 & Mobius100: Details of Second-Generation EU CPUs”
For some time now, Intel has been working on the APX extension, which adds more working registers to x86 CPUs along with other improvements that should make the x86 instruction set more competitive with, say, Arm processors. APX will be introduced in Intel Core Ultra 4000 “Nova Lake” CPUs. We assumed that it would take time for software to utilise it, and that it would initially be of little use. That turns out to not be the case. Read more “Windows 11 To Support APX Instructions in Nova Lake CPUs Early”
Intel has had 1.8nm chips since January, while TSMC’s 2nm technology arrived much later. The official names don’t mean much, though—evidence has emerged that Intel’s 1.8nm process has significantly worse characteristics despite the “better number”. Intel has apparently developed versions of their next-gen processor for both technologies internally, but the in-house process suffered worse transistor density and poor performance. Read more “Intel Tried Their Own Process for Nova Lake, But Had to Capitulate”
Two years after the Core Ultra 200 “Arrow Lake” processors, Intel is finally close to launching new generation of CPUs for desktop computers, which are mostly used for gaming thee days. Gaming performance specifically was a weak point of Arrow Lake and that is is one of the things expected to be fixed by the upcoming Core Ultra 4000 “Nova Lake” processors. However, the improvements may not be as good as expected, according to leaks. Read more “Intel Nova Lake CPUs Without “BFC” Reportedly Weak in Games”
HWCooling Techtour ’26 was built around Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. Among other things, these were also available at the booth, and the schools learned various details that could be described as “already available.” By that we mean various pieces of information that students and teachers had only learned secondhand, for example on the internet. Now, however, a representative of AMD came, gave a talk, showed… Read more “AMD Processors, the Main Topic of HWCooling Techtour ’26”
At the beginning of the year, Gerrard Williams III and other ex-Nuvia and ex-Apple processor architects had left Qualcomm, who had acquired their company five years earlier for the high performance Arm cores that power current Snapdragon X and X2 processors, as well as mobile chips. They immediately founded another new CPU-development startup, Nuvacore. The strategy they have revealed will be quite different from Nuvia’s, though. Read more “Nuvia Architects’ New CPU Core Can Use Arm, RISC-V or x86”
The final quarter of the year is here, and it increasingly looks like we will not see a new generation of x86 CPUs before the end of it, whether from AMD (Zen 6 has been launched in servers only) or Intel. There is a sign that the latter’s new CPUs are getting closer, though. The silicon for “Nova Lake” CPUs with a new architecture and 2nm manufacturing process has now successfully passed certification for USB4 and PCI Express 5.0 support. Read more “Intel Nova Lake CPUs Already Passed USB4 and PCIe 5.0 Validation”
We reported that Intel was preparing to raise CPU prices next month, but according to further information, the same was planned by AMD. Further sources have now confirmed that this manufacturer will also be raising prices. However, the scope of the price increases is to be much broader—it will affect not only CPUs, but apparently all chips manufactured by AMD. As a result, graphics cards pricing will rise further, but so will prices of motherboards. Read more “AMD to Raise Prices on All Products: GPUs, CPUs and Chipsets”
It’s not just Apple’s new A20 Pro mobile chip. Arm, the company designing the instruction set used by mobile SoCs as well as full core designs licensed by companies such as MediaTek, Nvidia, and others, is now introducing a new generation of CPU architectures as well. Arm replaced the Cortex cores with the Lumex C1 series last year, and now follows up with a new C2 generation that pushes the single-threaded performance further. Read more “Arm’s C2-Ultra Core raises 1T Performance by up to 15% [Analysis]”
It looks like whole ten years since the time AMD officially launched the AM4 platform (initially for the Excavator architecture and only on the OEM market, in 2016), a new CPU will now be released for this socket. But not a completely new one. AMD has now released two configurations that did not previously exist, but are based on 2020 and 2022 silicon, and the first of them is coming to the older platform using DDR4. Read more “AMD Releases New Budget CPUs. Even for the AM4 Socket”
Cautiously optimistic news have been coming about the upcoming Intel Nova Lake processors lately (if a 9% 1T performance boost is a reason for optimism). Unfortunately, leaks that paint a bleaker picture are also coming in. Although Nova Lake processors will transition from a 3nm to a more advanced 2nm process, which would normally be expected to improve efficiency, their power consumption will reportedly increase instead. Read more “Intel Power Limit Inflation Is Back with 296W Nova Lake CPUs”
We wrote that AMD has once again canceled its plans to produce Arm processors. However, the industry veteran IBM is now moving in the opposite direction, actually adopting the Arm instruction set. But it is doing so in an interesting way—it is not replacing its existing architecture (or at least not yet), but is introducing a processor that features its own instruction set while also being fully compatible with the Arm architecture. Read more “IBM’s Processor Supports Two Instruction Sets at Once: Z and Arm”
We recently reported that Intel is preparing special laptop CPUs with BLLC, its equivalent of AMD’s 3D V-Cache. CPUs with BLLC will feature up to 144 MB of L3 cache promising significant boost in games. BLLC will come to laptops in the Razor Lake lineup, but that will not be the only interesting thing about them. A leaker has shared further details, suggesting that this could be a surprisingly powerful generation. Read more “Surprise Triumph for Intel? Razor Lake has a new P-Core”
While AMD is preparing its next-gen Zen 6 CPUs, Intel is also approaching the launch of a significant next-gen CPUs codenamed “Nova Lake”. With 2nm process and a new architecture, it could improve the competitiveness of Intel’s chips after the somewhat disappointing Core Ultra 200 “Arrow Lake” generation. The first functional and running Nova Lake chips have now apparently emerged, revealing these CPUs for the first time. Read more “First Intel Nova Lake Processors Spotted, with AVX-512 and APX”
One of the signs—or perhaps more a symbol—accompanying Intel’s decline in the processor space the company was an unchallenged leader of just a few years ago, was the removal of HT or Hyper‑Threading, a technology processing two threads on a single core that significantly boosted multithreaded performance. So much so that the new CEO promised a reintroduction. Intel has now confirmed this, providing an outlook on when it will happen. Read more “Intel CPUs To Get Hyper‑Threading Back in Two Years”
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