Asus this week formally introduced its ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD OC Edition 8 GB graphics card, an unusual video card that also offers an M.2 SSD slot. First showcased earlier this year, the card is aimed at small form factor systems, giving system builders access to a full-bandwidth M.2 slot for additional storage without having to occupy a second PCIe slot.

Just like other GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards, the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD is based on NVIDIA’s AD106 GPU with 4352 CUDA cores (that can operate at up to 2595 MHz). But rather than wiring up all 16 PCIe lanes coming into the card to the GPU, Asus has wired up just 8, giving the GPU a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface while leaving the remaining 8 PCIe lanes to drive the M.2 slot.

An M.2 2280 slot is located on the backside of the card and can be easily accessed by the user. Internally, Asus is relying on PCIe bifurcation here, meaning there isn’t a PCIe switch or bridge chip present. Rather, the M.2 slot is fed directly via the PCIe lanes, allowing it to run at up to PCIe 5.0 speeds. The cooling system of the graphics card can contact the SSD using a thermal pad, so the cooler of the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD can cool down the drive to ensure its consistent performance even under high loads.

Compared to a prototype board that Asus demonstrated back in June, Asus has simplified the final product. Specifically, whereas the prototype featured two M.2 slots – one of which required removal of the cooling system – the commercial product only has one M.2 slot on the back that is easy to access.

Internally, the use of PCIe bifurcation does present some additional complications. The host needs to support bifurcation of a single PCIe x16 link down to x8 + x8, which virtually all modern AMD and Intel platforms do (and indeed, this is how most of these systems drive multiple x16 slots). But there are the rare exceptions, particularly with entry-level platforms. And even then, bifurcation at the device level isn’t something commonly used in consumer hardware, which is to say it’s not always well-tested. To that end, Asus offers a list of its own motherboards that are guaranteed to support its Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD graphics card.

Otherwise, the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD OC Edition 8GB is a fairly typical RTX 4060 Ti card. Additional power is supplied via an 8-pin PCIe power connector, and Asus offers the standard 3x DisplayPort 1.4a + 1x HDMI 2.1b video outputs. Meanwhile, cooling for the 2.5-slot wide card is provided by a pair of axial fans.

At this point, Asus has not announced a release date or a suggest price for the card. So it remains to be seen when it will become available.

Source: AnandTech – Asus Intros GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Video Card With Integrated M.2 SSD Slot

With the launch of AMD new Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series processors and associated TRX50 platform comes the need for new memory kits. Thanks to UDIMMs and RDIMMs requiring different slot designs under DDR5, AMD has opted to go exclusively with RDIMMs for their latest generation of Threadripper processors. Which for memory makers has included putting together overclockable registered memory modules with ECC that support EXPO timings, such as the kits G.Skill and V-Color have announced this week with their Zeta R5 Neo and v-color DDR5 OC R-DIMM memory kits.

G.Skill’s Zeta R5 Neo product family and v-color’s OC R-DIMM are exclusively designed for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series processors. Both vendors are currently offering two types of kits: a 64 GB quad-channel kit consisting of four 16 GB RDIMMs, and a 128 GB quad-channel kit featuring four 32 GB RDIMMs. For systems using the TRX50 platform, a single kit suffices, while the high-end workstation-class WRX90 platform requires two of these quad-channel kits to fully populate all eight channels.

G.Skill’s modules with ECC are rated for of DDR5-6400 CL32 39-39-102 at massive 1.40 Volts, whereas v-color promises data transfer rates of up to 7200 MT/s, never mentions timings or voltages, but stresses that its kits are aimed at TRX50-based machines.

G.Skill and v-color note that their overclockable RDIMMs, similar to other premium memory modules, are built using hand-selected memory ICs, making them better suited for overclocking. G.Skill’s modules come with very basic heat spreaders, which in case of DDR5 may become a limiting factor for overclocking potential. By contrast, v-color’s modules come with rather serious heat spreaders akin to those used for some server-grade modules.

All the overclockable RDIMM modules from G.Skill and v-color come with AMD’s EXPO profiles for simplified setup, with G.Skill using DDR5-6400 CL32 timings, while v-color runs at DDR5-7200 at unspecified timings.

The exact overclocking potential of G.Skill’s and v-color’s Threadripper memory kits remain to be seen. The actual I/O die powering Threadripper is the same I/O die as AMD’s other server processors, which is to say it’s been optimized for stability over performance – not to mention supporting a much larger amount of memory. Still, as we’ve seen on AMD’s consumer CPU platforms, the company’s memory controllers are no slouches. All the while memory vendors are already offering high-clocked RDIMM kits for Intel’s rival Sapphire Rapids Xeon platform.

G.Skill’s Zeta R5 Neo memory kits designed for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series processors are already available at Newegg: the 64 GB kit is priced at $530, whereas the 128GB kit costs $1,070. This is of course a huge price premium, but this can be explained by the fact that we are talking about unique memory kits designed for very specific high-end CPUs.

As for v-color’s DDR5 OC R-DIMM memory kits for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper TRX50 platform, the company says that they will be available in November on its website.

Sources: G.Skill, v-color

Source: AnandTech – G.Skill and V-Color Unveil Factory Overclocked ECC RDIMMs for Ryzen Threadripper 7000

AMD’s top-of-the-line Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX is a unique workstation-grade processor that not only offers unbeatable performance in programs that can take advantage of all of its 96-core might, but it also supports overclockability. As it turns out overclocking potential of the CPU is quite huge as it can hit 4.80 GHz on all cores with air cooling and 6.0 GHz on all cores with liquid nitrogen.

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX is a quite formidable processor that packs 96 Zen 4 cores clocked at 2.50 GHz by default (and which can push one core all the way to 5.10 GHz with decent cooling), an eight-channel DDR5 memory subsystem, and 128 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes. But AMD decided to show that the processor can do much better with advanced and extreme cooling. To do so, the company teamed up with Bill ‘Sampson’ Alverson, an accomplished overclocker from the U.S., who took an Asus Pro WS TRX50-Sage WiFi motherboard, four G.Skill DDR5-6400 CL32 memory (which he set to work at 3200 MT/s CL32 mode), and an Asus Thor 1.5 kW power supply.

At first, Sampson tried to overclock AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX using a giant IceGiant ProSiphon Elite air cooler with four huge fans. He managed to hit 4,791 MHz in Cinebench R23 and 4,875 MHz in Cinebench R15. Then, he took a custom liquid cooling system and pushed the 96-core CPU to 4,966 MHz in Cinebench R23; 5,000 MHz in Cinebench R15; and a whopping 5,265 MHz in GPUPI 1B for CPU.

But the most interesting part is of course usage of liquid nitrogen cooling as −196°C (− 320 °F) certainly removes most of thermal constraints. The results are quite impressive: Sampson has managed to push AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX all the way to 5,550 MHz with LN2 cooling, which is over 584 MHz higher compared to his result with custom liquid cooling. The CPU scored 186,756 points in Cinebench R23, up from 100,000 points for the CPU at default clocks. The processor consumed 980W at such an extreme frequency, which is up dramatically from its 350W TDP. Meanwhile Elmor and Der8auer have managed to overclock his Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX to 6.0 GHz wih LN2 and scored 201,501 points in Cinebench R23.

Meanwhile, to somewhat simplify overclocking botg overlockers had to reduce the number of memory modules to two and lowered its data transfer rate to 3,000 MT/s, which somewhat reduced the value of such overclocking (after all, nobody uses this CPU with only two memory modules). Meanwhile, considering the fact that AMD wanted to achieve the maximum clock possible for its 96-core processor, playing with memory configuration is a fair thing to do.

Source: AnandTech – AMD’s 96-Core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX Hits 6.0 GHz on All Cores with LN2

Western Digital is announcing today that it has begun volume shipments of its 24 TB hard drives based on conventional magnetic recording (CMR) to its full customer base. In addition, the company started to ramp up production of its 28 TB HDDs featuring shingled magnetic recording (SMR) that will be used by select customers.

The new lineup of 3.5-inch 7200 RPM hard drives includes Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC HC580 24 TB and WD Gold 24 TB HDDs, which are based on the company’s energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) technology. Both of these drives are further enhanced with OptiNAND to improve performance by storing repeatable runout (RRO) metadata on NAND memory (instead of on disks) and improve reliability.

The company is also preparing their Ultrastar DC HC680 SMR 28 TB hard drive, which relies on shingled ePMR and OptiNAND.

When it comes to performance, the new hard drives are a tad faster than predecessors due to higher areal density. Meanwhile, per-TB power efficiency of Western Digital’s 24 TB and 28 TB HDDs is around 10% – 12% higher than that of 22 TB and 26 TB drives, respectively, due to higher capacity and more or less the same power consumption. For CSPs and hyperscalers, the main value advantage of the new 24 TB drives is their higher capacity, which enables up to 612 TB of raw storage per rack using 102-bay 4U chassis.

All three models feature 10 platters and largely re-use the company’s current enterprise-grade platform for multi-drive environments, which was introduced over a year ago. The platform traditionally features a top and bottom attached motor as well as RV sensors to ensure consistent performance in vibrating multi-HDD chassis. The latest Ultrastar HDDs are generally being aimed at cloud service providers, hyperscalers, and large enterprises, whereas WD Gold are going primarily to VARs, enterprises, enterprise-grade NAS, and small businesses that need to store loads of data.

Western Digital is shipping WD Gold 24 TB hard drives through their distribution channel, so expect them to hit the market shortly. The Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 HDDs are now in the qualification phase with select CSPs, hyperscalers, and OEMs. They are also available for enterprises that deploy these devices internally. It looks like WD is just shipping the SATA versions of these drives initially, as the company is separating noting that that the SAS versions of the Ultrastar DC HC680 and HC580 HDD will be available in the first quarter of 2024.

“With these new offerings, Western Digital is once again proving that hard drives are not just keeping pace, they are forging a path forward, ensuring that data-intensive applications of today and tomorrow have a strong foundation to build on while the industry prepares for HAMR,” said Ed Burns, research director of HDD and storage technologies at IDC. “We are seeing strong momentum for Western Digital’s SMR HDDs and believe that SMR adoption will continue to grow as their new 28TB SMR HDD offers the next compelling TCO value proposition that cloud customers cannot ignore.”

Source: AnandTech – Western Digital Releases 24TB Ultrastar & Gold Hard Drives, 28TB SMR Drives Ramping

Corsair has introduced its MP700 Pro-series solid-state drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that offer sequential read speed of up to 12.4 GB/s. The new high-end drive family offers a trio of cooling options, including active air cooling and liquid cooling. The SSDs will complement the company’s MP700-series PCIe Gen5 drives and will offer a new level of performance for PC enthusiasts.

Corsair’s MP700 Pro drives are based on Phison’s PS5026-E26 controller as well what initial teardowns have discovered to be 232 layer Micron 3D TLC NAND memory. Compared to their earlier E26-based MP700 drive, Corsair has been able to increase the drive’s maximum sequential read speed to 12.4 GB/s and maximum sequential write speed to 11.8 GB/s thanks to the use of faster NAND, which offers a higher 2000 MT/sec transfer rate (versus the original’s 1600 MT/sec rate). In addition, the company increased random read speed to 1.5 million IOPS and random write speed to 1.6 million IOPS, which is comparable to speeds offered by enterprise-grade SSDs.

As far as capacity points are concerned, Corsair’s MP700 Pro are currently available in 1 TB and 2 TB configurations, whereas 4 TB versions will be available sometimes in the future.

In addition to very high out-of-box performance, there is another selling point that Corsair’s MP700 Pro drives have. They are available with three different cooling system to cater different PC form-factors and audiences. For high-performance laptops and compact desktops, Corsair offers MP700 Pro with a simplistic graphene heatspreader; for high-performance desktops, the company will offer these drives with an aluminum heatsink and a fan to ensure sufficient cooling and consistent performance even under high loads; whereas for owners of PCs with custom-built liquid cooling the company will offer a SSDs with a waterblock.

When the first M.2-2280 solid-state drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface hit the market earlier this year, the majority of PCIe Gen5 SSDs topped out at a 10 GB/s sequential reads and writes since fast 3D NAND chips were in short supply. Now that 3D NAND with a 2000 MT/s interface is getting more widespread, Corsair and other manufacturers of SSDs are rolling out drives that can hit 12.4 GB/s read speeds.

In fact, Sabrent and some other makers are working on even faster SSDs with around 14 GB/s read speeds, so it is well possible that we are going to see a yet another ‘sub-generation’ PCIe Gen5 drives that will saturate a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

Source: AnandTech – Corsair Releases MP700 Pro SSDs: Up 12.4 GB/s With Three Cooling Options

SK hynix had started volume shipments of its LPDDR5T-9600 memory for high-end smartphones, the company announced this week. So far, the company’s LPDDR6 ‘Turbo’ memory with a 9600 MT/s data transfer speed has been certified to work with two range-topping mobile application processors from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

SK hynix’s LPDDR5T-9600 memory is available in 16 GB packages with a VDD voltage range of 1.01V to 1.12V and a VDDQ of 0.5v. Notably, this VDD range is just slightly over the LPDDR5X specfication (1.00V to 1.1V), which shouldn’t be a serious problem, but likely warrants some extra compatibility testing with existing chips.

Smartphone and SoC manufacturers have a great incentive to validate SK hynix’s LPDDR5T-9600 and Micron’s LPDDR5X-9600 memory as these modules offer a 76.8 GB/s peak bandwidth, up 12.5% from 68.2 GB/s offered by LPDDR5X-8533.

So far, SK Hynix’s LPDDR6T-9600 modules have been certified by Qualcomm for its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile SoC as well as MediaTek for its Dimensity 9300 and some subsequent processors. Meanwhile, SK Hynix confirmed that it had begun shipments of its LPDDR6T-9600 devices to Vivo, which will use it for X100 and X100 Pro mobile application processors.

Following the latest trends, SK hynix mentions that its very fast LPDDR5T-9600 memory will be particularly useful for on-device AI applications. And, of course, faster DRAM is always welcomed for graphics intensive mobile applications, such as games.

“Smartphones are becoming essential devices for implementing on-device AI technology as the AI era kicks into full swing,” said Myoungsoo Park, Vice President and Head of DRAM Marketing at SK hynix. “There is a growing demand for high-performing, high-capacity mobile DRAMs in the market. We will continue to lead the premium DRAM market based on our technological leadership in AI memories, while staying in tune with market demands.”

Source: AnandTech – SK hynix Ships LPDDR5T: 9600 MT/s Memory for Smartphones

AMD has announced the Ryzen Embedded 7000 Series processor family at Smart Production Solutions 2023, primarily targeting industrial markets such as automotive, robotics, and edge solutions. Built on the Zen 4 architecture and incorporating integrated Radeon graphics, it offers a new level of performance and functionality for the embedded market. Announced today are five new SKUs, ranging from 12C/24 down to 6C/12T, with three models with a 65 W TDP and two overclockable X-series models with a higher 105 W TDP.

Designed for industrial applications such as automotive, edge robotics, and IoT, AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Embedded series finally includes integrated graphics via their Radeon RDNA™ 2 graphics, reducing the need for discrete GPUs. The Ryzen Embedded 7000 series processors also feature support for multiple operating systems, including Windows Server and Linux/Ubuntu, as well as  Windows 10 and 11.

Touching on the specifications of the five new Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 Embedded SKUs, AMD has opted to launch two overclockable X series variants, the Ryzen Embedded 7700X (8C/16T) and the Ryzen Embedded 7600X (6C/12T). These processors shouldn’t be confused with their Ryzen 7000 desktop counterparts. However, the Ryzen Embedded 7700X does have 8 x Zen 4 cores, 32 MB of L3 cache, with a base frequency of 4.5 GHz and a boost frequency of up to 5.4 GHz; this puts it in a similar position to the Ryzen 7 7700X, which is virtually identical in specifications.

The same can be said about the Ryzen Embedded 7600X, which is a 6C/12T part with a base frequency of 4.7 GHz, a turbo frequency of 5.3 GHz, 32 MB of L3 cache, with both X series Embedded chips coming with a 105 W TDP. Moving down the stack to the non-X series CPUs, the Ryzen Embedded 7945 has 16 x Zen 4 cores, with a larger 64 MB L3 cache, but has lower base clock speeds of 3.7 GHz, but has a 5.4 GHz turbo at just 65 W.

Coming in below the 7945 is the Ryzen Embedded 7745, an 8C/16T part with a 3.8 GHz base and 5.3 turbo frequencies, with 32 MB of L3 cache, all within a 65 W TDP. Offered as the entry-level chip to the Ryzen 7000 Embedded series is the Ryzen Embedded 7645, which has 6 x Zen 4 cores with a 3.8 GHz base frequency, with a turbo of up to 5.1 GHz.

The AMD Ryzen Embedded 7000 series processors have multiple platform options, including conventional AM5 socketed X670 and B650 motherboards. Interestingly, AMD includes support for an X600 “activator” socketed board, which provides the full 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the processor. The only caveat with not using PCIe lanes to connect to the chipset is that the X600 activator boards don’t have a chipset and thus don’t include any benefits such as I/O. Combining one of the Ryzen Embedded 7000 series processors with an X670 motherboard provides up to 24 x PCIe 5.0 lanes and 12 x PCIe 4.0 lanes for devices such as PCIe slots, M.2 storage, and other connectivity.

Unveiling the Ryzen Embedded 7000 series processors at the Smart Production Solutions 2023 event in Nuremberg, Germany, AMD’s Corporate VP and GM of the Embedded Processors Group, Rajneesh Gaur, went on to say, “With the integration of key performance features and a scalable design, Ryzen Embedded 7000 Series processors are ideal for a broad range of applications from advanced robotics and instrumentation design to power control, video surveillance and more.”

AMD hasn’t provided retail pricing at the time of writing, which is typical for their Embedded solutions. ODM and OEMs are expected to start shipping Ryzen Embedded 7000 products imminently.

Gallery: AMD Unveils Ryzen Embedded 7000 Series: Embedded Zen 4 for Industrial And Edge Solutions

Source: AnandTech – AMD Unveils Ryzen Embedded 7000 Series: Embedded Zen 4 for Industrial And Edge Solutions

Although AMD doesn’t have any major HPC announcements for this year’s SC23 show, the company isn’t starting this week empty-handed. For the workstation market the company is introducing its latest (and likely final) Radeon Pro W7000 series card, the Radeon Pro W7700.

Based on AMD’s latest-generation RDNA 3 architecture, the W7700 slots in between the Navi 31-based Radeon Pro W7800 and the Navi 33-based Radeon Pro W7600. As the final member of the lineup, the Navi 32-based card is designed to split the difference between AMD’s high-end and low-end Radeon Pro cards, offering a more modest level of performance for a far more modest price tag. Priced at $999, AMD is looking to hit a sweet spot in terms of hitting the high-end workstation market, edging out more expensive NVIDIA cards with a combination of higher performance and lower pricing.

Under the hood, the Radeon Pro W7700 looks a lot like a Radeon RX 7800XT that’s been dialed down to make a lighter TDP. We’re looking at a Navi 32 GCD with just 48 CUs enabled, and a more modest peak clockspeed of around 2.3GHz. The total rated throughput of the card is 28.3 TFLOPS FP32, trailing the more powerful (and more power-hungry) consumer cards a bit.

The Radeon Pro W7700 is paired with Navi 32’s full suite of Memory Cache Dies (MCD) however, giving it a better-than-usual ratio of FLOPS to memory bandwidth. With 16GB of GDDR6 attached to a 256-bit memory bus, the card offers 576GB/second of memory bandwidth – and ECC-protected memory, at that, a feature carried over from the high-end Radeon Pro models.

As noted earlier, AMD is aiming a bit more conservatively in terms of power consumption for this card, looking to offer something between the toasty 250W+ flagship cards, and the more petite 130W W7600. The end result is that AMD has set the TBP for the W7700 at 190W, allowing for the construction of an easily-cooled dual slot card.

In terms of features, as the fifth RDNA 3 video card in AMD’s Radeon Pro lineup, the W700 is on par with its peers. Like the flagship parts, we’re looking at a fairly performant version of AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture, with the company looking to leverage various optimizations and new features throughout the card to offer better performance, and for specific tasks, new features. The core architecture includes a significant update to the CUs to improve the total number of compute FLOPS attainable, as well as optimizations to improve the kind of dense matrix math used in AI inference calculations. As well, the ray tracing units have been updated to provide better performance and a larger overall ray rate.

RDNA 3’s marquee video feature of AV1 encoding support also makes it over to the card as well. The W7700 can encode a single AV1 stream at up to 8K60, a very useful feature as AV1 adoption increases – though it doesn’t get the more powerful dual media engine found on the flagship W7800/W7900’s cards.

Meanwhile, AMD’s ace in the hole on the display output side of matters is their support for DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity, something all of NVIDIA’s cards in this generation lack. Still, Pro users intending to take advantage of DP 2.1 will want to pay close attention to the specifications for AMD’s Radeon Pro lineup, as support is not consistent throughout the cards. Whereas the cheaper W7500/W7600 only have UHBR 10 data rate support, the W7700 gets faster UHBR 13.5 support for higher resolution/color depth displays. Still, this is a step down from the W7800/W7900, which can uniquely drive a max-bandwidth UHBR 20 display.

As for the physical W7700 card itself, it is a fairly typical-for-workstations dual slot blower design. AMD is using their standard DisplayPort configuration here, equipping the card with a quartet of full-sized DisplayPorts. In terms of length, the W7700 is a bit shorter than its W7800/W7900 counterparts, though AMD hasn’t sent over the exact dimensions for the card. And while not shown in any of AMD’s pictures, the card is fed additional power a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Wrapping things up, the Radeon Pro W7700 is getting a hard launch, and will be available today in stand-alone card form from the usual PC parts retailers at an MSRP of $999. Meanwhile, OEMs are expected to start shipping the card in their workstations beginning later this month.

Gallery: Radeon Pro W7700 Press Deck

Source: AnandTech – AMD Intros Radeon Pro W7700: Rounding Out RDNA 3 For Workstations

In a quite unexpected turn of events, Valve has introduced a revamped version of its Steam Deck console that got a larger OLED display, a more efficient system-on-chip, a higher-performance memory subsystem, a 1 TB storage option, faster Wi-Fi 6E, and higher-capacity battery. While performance target of the portable gaming device remained the same, the new unit might just be faster than the original one due to faster memory. Meanwhile, the cheapest 256GB version of the console, which retained an LCD screen, now costs $399.

The main difference between the new Steam Deck OLED and the original Steam Deck is the larger 7.4-inch OLED display. The new screen retains a 1280×720 resolution, but it has a 600 nits typical brightness (a major improvement) and also supports HDR with a maximum zonal luminosity of 1000 nits, according to Tom’s Hardware. The new monitor can also cover 101.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, up from 48.5% in case of the original Steam Deck, our colleagues found out. Despite the larger display, the console retained dimensions of the original one, but got 29 grams lighter since OLEDs do not need a backlighting module and a display driver with all the appropriate circuitry.

Another major change from the original one is that Steam Deck OLED uses AMD’s new semi-custom SoC with four Zen 2 x86 cores and an RDNA 2-based GPU with 512 stream processors that is now made on TSMC’s N6 process technology. Usage of N6 made the SoC a little cheaper to produce and allowed to retain the original 4W – 15W power envelope without the need to vary GPU clock from 1.0 GHz to 1.60 GHz, which may have a mild positive effect on performance in certain games.

An interesting detail about the new unit is that it uses a 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 memory subsystem with a 102.4 GB/s of peak bandwidth, up from 88 GB/s bandwidth in case of the original one. We can only wonder whether a 16% memory bandwidth boost will significantly affect gaming performance, but we feel it could bring a boost in certain bandwidth-hungry scenarios. Alternatively, faster memory may be just a bit more power efficient.

Speaking of power, it should be noted that the Steam Deck OLED also comes with a 50 Wh battery, up from a 40 Wh battery in the original one, so expect the new one to have a longer battery life. Meanwhile, the new console comes with a longer 2.5-meter power cord.

Yet another notable improvement of the Steam Deck OLED is 1 TB storage subsystem (and the M.2-2230 drive can still be replaced with something different) on the range-topping model. Meanwhile, to download games faster, Steam Deck OLED comes with a Wi-Fi 6E adapter, up from Wi-Fi 5 on the original model.

Valve launches its Steam Deck OLED in time for the holiday shopping system and in addition to make the product more attractive overall, it also makes the platform more accessible. The older 64 GB eMMC model with an LCD screen will be available for $349 while supplies last, whereas the 256 GB LCD version will cost $399 from now on (down from $529). The new Steam Deck OLED 512 GB is priced at $449, while the Steam Deck OLED 1 TB carries a $649 MSRP.

Source: AnandTech – Valve’s Steam Deck OLED: Bigger Display, New SoC, Faster Memory, More Storage, Same Performance

The path to high-capacity RDIMMs for servers has primarily been through 3D stacking (3DS) of DRAM dice using Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs). However, this has presented significant challenges in packaging (driving up the cost), and has also not been efficient in terms of energy consumption. The demand for large memory capacity RDIMMs is being primarily driven by the sudden emergence of large-language models (LLMs) for generative AI and increasing CPU core counts. Both of these require significant amount of DRAM to keep pace with performance requirements. Keeping these in mind, Micron is introducing 128 GB DDR5 RDIMMs capable of operating at up to 8000 MT/s today, with mass-production slated for 2024.

Micron has recently started fabricating 32 Gb monolithic DDR5 dice using its proven and mature 1β technology. The new dice have a 45%+ increase in bit density, and are capable of reaching up to 8000 MT/s while also operating with much more aggressive timing latencies compared to the standard JEDEC specs. The company is claiming that it improves energy efficiency by as much as 24% compared to the competition’s 3DS TSV offerings, and the faster operation can also help in faster AI training times. Avoiding 3DS TSV allows Micron to optimize the data input buffers and critical I/O circuits better, while also reducing the pin capacitance on the data lines. These contribute to the reduced power and improved speeds.

Micron has been doubling its monolithic die density every 3 years or so, thanks to advancements in CMOS process as well as improvements in array efficiency. The company sees a clear path to 48 Gb and 64 Gb monolithic dice in the future with continued technological progress. Micron is also claiming that its 1β node has reached mass production ahead of the competition, and that it has had the fastest yield maturity in the company’s history. Dual-die packages and tall form-factor (TFF) modules using 1β DRAM are expected to enable 1TB modules in the near future.

Along with the announcement of the 128 GB RDIMMs using 1β technology, the company also laid out its roadmap for upcoming products. HDM and GDDR7 are expected to dominate bandwidth-hungry applications, while RDIMMs, MCRDIMMs, and CXL solutions are in the pipeline for systems requiring massive capacity. LPDDR5X, and LPCAMM2 solutions going up to 192 GB are expected to make an appearance in power-sensitive systems as early as 2026.

Source: AnandTech – Micron Introduces 128 GB DDR5-8000 RDIMMs with Monolithic 32 Gb Dice

In an update posted to its support pages, Intel has disclosed that it had stopped development of its thermoelectric Cryo Cooling Technology that was aimed to provide sub-ambient cooling for its top-of-the-range processors. As a result, the company will not provide Cryo Cooling software support for its latest 14^th Generation Core ‘Raptor Lake Refresh’ processors, essentially making units made by EKWB and Cooler Master obsolete for the newest CPUs.

“As of July 1, 2023, development on the Intel Cryo Cooling Technology solution was discontinued,” a statement by Intel reads. “All versions of the software are provided as-is. Functional, Note security, or other updates will not be provided after December 31, 2023. No support for Intel Core processors 14th Gen will be provided. Please check with your auxiliary cooling provider for alternative solutions.”

Intel introduced its Cryo Cooling Technology in 2020 along the 10^th Generation Core ‘Comet Lake-S’ processors as it struggled to deliver competitive performance with CPUs made on its dated 14nm-class fabrication technology.

Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to transfer heat from one side of a device to the other, creating a cooling effect on one surface. This method is compact, allows to precisely control temperature of the cooling surface, and has no moving parts, which makes it a good fit for CPUs. Thermoelectric cooling has several drawbacks. Firstly, thermoelectric coolers are generally not energy-efficient as they use power to transfer heat from one side to another and the more heat it has to transfer, the more power it consumes. Secondly, the hot part of the surface has can generate condensate and has to be cooled down itself (at least in PC applications).

Intel’s Cryo Cooling Technology used a combination of hardware, software, and firmware technology to precisely control cooling performance and therefore boost performance of the CPU. Without any doubts, Intel’s Peltier effect-based cooling did a fine job in reducing temperature and enabling higher performance at all costs. But at $350 per unit, these cooling systems were very expensive for the vast majority of users. Furthermore, they were also power hungry and not exactly quiet.

And though Intel backing out of officially supporting thermoelectric cooling is a blow to adoption of the tech, Intel’s support is not strictly required to begin with – so we don’t expect the tech to disappear entirely.

Source: Intel (via @momomo_us)

Source: AnandTech – Intel Abandons Development of Phase-Changing Cryo Cooling Tech

Hidden deep in Seagate’s financial report released late last month was a brief roadmap update for the company’s heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. As noted in the latest update, Seagate is now planning to begin mass production of its 32 TB HAMR in early 2024, which is a slight delay from what the company announced early this year. Meanwhile, the company expects to start production of 40+ TB HDDs in about two years’ time.

“Qualification and revenue ramp plans for our 30-plus terabyte products remain fully on track with high-volume ramp starting early in calendar 2024,” said Dave Mosley, chief executive of Seagate, during conference call with financial analysts and investors. ” These drives deliver capacity starting at 30 terabytes and offer customers the same flexibility to adopt either CMR or SMR configurations to further boost aerial density into the mid-30TB range.”

As noted back in October, Seagate’s Exos X24 series of HDDs will help set the stage for HAMR-based hard drives, as the latter will keep using the same 10-platter platform – albeit with new platters as well as write heads with lasers to heat the media surface. Those Exos drives will use 10 2.4 TB perpendicular magnetic recording disks and will begin shipments in the first half of calendar 2024. Around the same time — in early calendar 2024 — Seagate plans to start volume ramp of 32 TB HAMR HDDs.

Even with the volume ramp and enviable capacity, Seagate is only expecting to sell a modest number of HAMR HDDs in the first quarters of their availability. The company believes that it can move around one million units in the first half of 2024, though the firm does not disclose whether the number is limited by its ability to produce the drives, or by demand from customers who need to qualify such products before deploying them in their datacenters.

“We will start our HAMR revenue fairly strongly in the first six months of the calendar 2024,” said Gianluca Romano, chief financial officer of Seagate. “We think we have about a million unit as opportunity to be sold.”

Another interesting disclosure found in the document is that Seagate intends to start producing HAMR-based HDDs featuring 4+TB platters within the next two years, which would have them arriving sometime in late 2025 or early 2026. This is somewhat is behind the company’s optimistic schedule revealed a few years back, which anticipated 50+TB HDDs in calendar 2026. Though it’s arguably a more realistic schedule that’s in line with the development cadence thus far, especially given how development and deployment of hard drive proceeds these days.

Another noteworthy thing is that Seagate’s brief roadmap update does not mention HDDs with more than 10 platters. Meaning that the company seems to be done adding platters to gain additional capacity, at least for now. Perhaps, the company believes that increased areal density that is enabled by HAMR will enable it to offer competitive capacities and it does not need to throw in any additional disks. Or maybe installing over 10 HAMR platters is risky from yields point of view as of now, so the company prefers not to mention such a technological option.

Source: Seagate (via StorageNewsletter)

Source: AnandTech – Seagate’s HAMR Update: 32 TB in Early 2024, 40+ TB Two Years Later

As AMD is now well into their third generation of RDNA architecture GPUs, the sun has been slowly setting on AMD’s remaining Graphics Core Next (GCN) designs, better known by the architecture names of Polaris and Vega. In recent weeks the company dropped support for those GPU architectures in their open source Vulkan Linux driver, AMDVLK, and now we have confirmation that the company is slowly winding down support for these architectures in their Windows drivers as well.

Under AMD’s extended driver support schedule for Polaris and Vega, the drivers for these architectures will no longer be kept at feature parity with the RDNA architectures. And while AMD will continue to support Polaris and Vega for some time to come, that support is being reduced to security updates and “functionality updates as available.”

For AMD users keeping a close eye on their driver releases, they’ll likely recognize that AMD already began this process back in September – though AMD hasn’t officially documented the change until now. As of AMD’s September Adrenaline 23.9 driver series, AMD split up the RDNA and GCN driver packages, and with that they have also split the driver branches between the two architectures. As a result, only RDNA cards are receiving new features and updates as part of AMD’s mainline driver branch (currently 23.20), while the GCN cards have been parked on a maintenance driver branch – 23.19.

At present, AMD has not published anything about this change in driver support to their website. But, responding to a request for a comment on Windows driver support from AnandTech, issued the following statement.

The AMD Polaris and Vega graphics architectures are mature, stable and performant and don’t benefit as much from regular software tuning.  Going forward, AMD is providing critical updates for Polaris- and Vega-based products via a separate driver package, including important security and functionality updates as available.  The committed support is greater than for products AMD categorizes as legacy, and gamers can still enjoy their favorite games on Polaris and Vega-based products.

Notably, AMD is actively asserting that this is not “legacy” status for Vega and Polaris, which is an important distinction because of what “legacy” means within AMD’s ecosystem. For AMD, legacy products are effectively considered end-of-life, and ongoing driver support is retired. Which in the case of previous generation GPU architectures going legacy, AMD did not have any further driver releases of any kind planned – though in practice did AMD release a couple of drivers to fix critical security issues.

AMD’s support plans for Vega and Polaris, by contrast, still call for regular driver releases, albeit without major feature updates or performance optimizations. That means receiving bug fixes and other occasional updates as AMD sees fit to backport them to the older driver branch, but not the full scope of updates that AMD’s RDNA products are now receiving via their up-to-date mainline driver. In practice, this is much closer to how NVIDIA has handled their legacy GPU products, which have traditionally received security fixes for a minimum length of time – making for a more welcome offramp for going from fully supported to unsupported.

But regardless of what AMD is calling their driver support policy for Polaris and Vega, the end result is that major driver development for these GPU architectures has effectively come to an end, and these parts have now entered an extended support phase. AMD considers the drivers for the hardware mature, and with games increasingly taking advantage of features not supported by the hardware (e.g. Alan Wake II and mesh shaders), there’s clearly less of a need to add support/optimizations for new games to drivers for old hardware.

More broadly speaking, with the current high-end game consoles using a RDNA2-ish (DX feature level 12_2) architecture, we’re finally approaching a rather hard switch that will be leaving pre-12_2 GPUs behind. Consequently, I’m not surprised to see AMD semi-retire both Polaris and Vega at the same time – there is a clear gulf in archtiecture between GCN and the greatly reworked RDNA that underpins AMD’s more recent cards.

As AMD enacted this driver split back in September, we can already see some of the ramifications of this with AMD’s latest drivers. Polaris and Vega did not receive an October driver release (Adrenaline 23.10), and the November release (Adrenaline 23.11.1) contains only a handful of fixes for GCN cards, as opposed to the much more extensive list of fixes and new game support for RDNA cards.

Ultimately, while the remaining GCN GPUs haven’t been put out to pasture quite yet, this is clearly the beginning of the end for a line of GPU architectures that stretches back to AMD’s 2011 GPU architecture modernization. AMD has been selling Polaris (GCN 4) cards since mid-2016 – starting over seven years ago – and in practice the core compute and graphics architecture of GCN 4 is virtually identical to the even older GCN 3 architecture. Consequently, AMD has essentially been supporting that core GPU architecture for almost 9 years at this point.

Meanwhile, things are a little more short-lived for the newer Vega GPU architecture (GCN 5). While AMD introduced the first discrete Vega GPUs and video cards in mid-2017 – and replaced the whole lot of them in mid-2019 – that GPU architecture remained in use in current-generation products for much longer as an integrated graphics solution. AMD’s current desktop APUs, the Ryzen 5000G series, integrate a Vega GPU. And the same silicon is still sold in the mobile space as the budget-minded Ryzen Mobile 7030 series. So although the Vega architecture is only a year younger than Polaris, it has stuck around for much longer overall.

Unfortunately, that does also mean that these Vega-based APUs are also getting something of the short end of the stick when it comes to driver support, receiving only a few years of mainstream driver support before being deprioritized. Though as these are also the weakest Vega GPUs, they’re admittedly also the least likely to be used with new games. More critical here will be how long AMD supplies security fixes for the Vega GPU architecture, especially since GPU drivers are popular targets for privilege escalation attacks.

In any case, while this isn’t a eulogy for the final members of the Graphics Core Next GPU architecture – at least, not quite yet – it’s clear that, 12 years later, GCN’s time is finally approaching its end.

Source: AnandTech – AMD Begins Polaris and Vega GPU Retirement Process, Reduces Ongoing Driver Support

AMD has sent word over this morning that the company is extending the product lifecycle for their previous-generation EYPC 7003 “Milan” family of server CPUs. The company will now be offering the Zen 3-based CPUs through at least 2026, and as part of that extension plan, has already launched a further 6 SKUs. With these changes, Milan is effectively being repositioned as a budget server platform for AMD, offering AMD’s past tech at a discount to cost-weary customers.

First launched in early 2021, AMD’s EPYC 7003 “Milan” platform is based on the company’s Zen 3 architecture, offering chips with up to 64 CPU cores, 8 channels of DDR4 memory, and PCIe 4.0 connectivity. The platform has since been superseded by AMD’s numerous Zen 4-based EPYC 9004/8004 server platforms – Genoa, Bergamo, and Siena – but for continuity and support reasons, the Milan platform is still being offered to customers. And now, it seems, it will be for even longer than AMD was first expecting.

As of today, AMD is extending the availability of the Milan platform to 2026. All the while, the company is repositioning the platform as their newest budget offering, pitching it at customers who are on the trailing-edge of server technology and need a proven platform to upgrade to, but for whatever reason aren’t ready to upgrade to the 4^th generation EPYC platforms. In practice, AMD is trying to entice Intel Xeon Scalable customers who are looking to replace their aging servers, but aren’t ready or eager to move on to 4^th gen Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids).

Competitively, Milan doesn’t offer much of note with regards to performance or features compared to AMD and Intel’s contemporary platforms. But for customers already invested in it and who need the ability to repair or bring online additional matching systems over the next couple of years, it will remain in service.

Meanwhile, the company is also re-launching 6 new Milan SKUs to underscore its position as a budget platform. All of these chips were first released by AMD back in September without much fanfare, but now that AMD is extending Milan’s availability to 2026, they are using the moment to spotlight their existence.

The 6 new chips are a bit of an eclectic mix. The top two SKUs – the 56-core 7663P and 48-core 7643P – are 1P-only versions of existing Milan chips at a lower price. Meanwhile the 7303 and 7203 parts are new, with AMD offering ultra-budget server chips with just 16 and 8 cores respectively. The 7203/7203P are true entry-level chips by server standards, with just 8 CPU cores, 64MB of L3 cache, and peak clockspeed well below AMD’s only other 8 core Milan (72F3). However, all of these chips come with the full I/O and memory channels supported by the Milan/SP3 platform, allowing AMD to position them as alternatives to the more limited EPYC 8004 Siena platform.

Source: AnandTech – AMD’s EPYC 7003 “Milan” Receives Extended Lifecycle: Availability To 2026 With 6 New SKUs