Samsung Electronics revealed they'd gotten underway with wafer production on its next process node, 7nm LPP EUV. That's also known as 7-nanometer (nm) LPP (Low Power Plus) with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. Also in the mix this week were new SmartSSD, QLC-SSD, and 256GB 3DS RDIMM.
The first 9th-gen Intel Core processors were revealed with release prices and dates this morning at an Intel event. The first wave of these processors will - SHOCK - be aimed at desktop processing power enthusiasts as well as gamers. Inside we'll find support for Optane-based memory sticks and hardware-level fixes (and pre-fixes) for Spectre and Meltdown attacks. You'll find the first chip in the series comes as a monster: That's the Intel Core i9-9900K, the first so-called "broad volume" processor to hit 5Ghz.
Today Intel revealed the 8th Gen Core m3, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 mobile processors. This release includes both the U-series (Whiskey Lake) and the Y-series (Amber Lake) primarily made for thin and light laptops and 2 in 1 form factors. This generation supports up to 4 cores in a 15W envelope with gigabit wi-fi via integrated Intel WIreless-AC 160 MHZ hardware. Inside this architecture is support for USB 3.1, dedicated quad-core audio DSP, and a whole batch of other features included in a variety of potential final products.
Just because Intel has yet again delayed its 10 nm silicon to 2020, if all goes well, that doesn’t mean fans of the processors won’t have anything to look forward to this year. And, no, they don’t have to wait for the still to be revealed Cascade Lake processors. As early as October, Intel is expected to announce its 9th gen Core lineup, still on the 14 nm Coffee Lake architecture, that will be bringing, for the first time, 8 cores to the mainstream market.
It’s not a good year for Intel. Never mind AMD’s comeback, Intel’s 2018 kicked off with its biggest embarrassments to date: Meltdown and Spectre. And then it had to admit that the long-overdue 10nm processors will have to wait until 2019. At its Data-centric Innovation Summit, however, the silicon maker is now saying that those won’t actually be coming until 2020, with a “half step” coming in 2019 instead.
It’s probably a bad time to launch a new smartwatch these next few weeks, unless you’re Samsung or Apple. That’s because any smartwatch you put into the market will be running on a mobile platform that is effectively two years old. Even older if you consider that the Snapdragon Wear 2100 is based on a modified Snapdragon 400 chipset. And in about 30 days, that wearable processor will be rendered obsolete now that Qualcomm itself is teasing when the long-overdue successor, tentatively known as the Snapdragon Wear 3100, will be unveiled.
Inside the Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented/mixed-reality headset is tipped the most major appearance of Qualcomm's own XR1 VR chip. This processor isn't technically as powerful as the Qualcomm Snadpragon 845, but according to all the information we have on the XR1 so far, it's made for and capable of running a device just such as this. The hardware itself is tipped to be coming to the market starting in early 2019.
Intel has finally begun shipping a 10nm processor, though this first Cannon Lake Core i3 is a tidbit ahead of what will be the main event next year. The chip-maker has been struggling to meet its own 10nm manufacturing promises, discovering that transitioning to the new architecture was trickier than it initially expected.
Rumor has it Facebook is aiming to create their own semiconductors in the near future. That's chips, processors - the things in your smartphone that make it able to think. If Facebook did indeed take up arms to create chips, they'd be going up against competition like Samsung, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, and a few more that'll be getting into the game soon - think Apple.
It's time for the second generation of the AMD Ryzen brand of PC processors. The first lineup includes the Ryzen 7 2700X, Ryzen 7 2700, Ryzen 5 2600X, and Ryzen 5 2600. Two of these CPUs roll with 8-core, 16-thread tech, and the other two are 6-core, 12-thread models. Each of these AMD Ryzen (2nd-gen) CPUs have advanced AMD SenseMI technology under the hood.
Intel announced a new batch of 8th-generation Core CPUs for laptops today, with the star of the show being the new Core i9-8950HK. This CPU is notable for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the biggest is the fact that this is the first six-core processor Intel has made for laptops. Obviously, we're probably only going to see this CPU in top-of-the-line notebooks, which means that most people probably won't experience its benefits.
AMD processors were the subject of a report on security vulnerabilities by CTSlabs this week. In the report, CTSlabs reported that some of the most secure portions of several different sorts of AMD processors were at risk of exploit by malicious parties. Those malicious parties would need to have access to the computer with the AMD processor, but once they've got that, they'd potentially be free to do one whole heck of a lot of damage.