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AMD Next-Gen Zen 4 Powered Ryzen ‘Raphael’ Desktop CPU Rumors Point Out To Over 20% IPC Gains, 16 Core Flagship Chip at Launch
A bucket of information surrounding AMD’s Zen 4 powered Ryzen ‘Raphael’ CPUs has been posted by Moore’s Law is Dead. In the latest video discussing Zen 4, the leaker reveals new info while also reiterating a few things we already know from the previous leaks.
AMD Next-Gen Zen 4 Powered Ryzen ‘Raphael’ Desktop CPU Rumors Point Out To Over 20% IPC Gains, 16 Core Flagship Chip at Launch, DDR5-5200 & AM5 LGA1718 Platform For 2022
For those of you who missed it, information regarding the AMD AM5 platform and the compatible Zen 4 Ryzen Desktop CPUs leaked out a couple of days back. The new rumors from MLID not only reiterate those but also add in some new information which we are going to talk about in this post.
For starters, the AMD Zen 4 core architecture will be fabricated on the TSMC 5nm process node & the IOD will be based on TSMC’s 6nm process node. The Zen 4 core architecture is going to deliver over 20% IPC increase which is in line with the previous rumors that indicated a 25% IPC gain. Zen 4 CPUs will feature 8 core chiplets and we can expect up to 50% performance per watt gains between Zen 3 and Zen 4. The Zen 4 core architecture will support AVX-512 instructions but it remains to be seen whether we will see the technology on mainstream parts too or not. Intel has been including AVX-512 acceleration on its mainstream consumer chips and while they do boost up performance significantly in select workloads, the power cost is way too much. AMD’s implementation may work differently from Intel’s but for now, the tech is only expected on the EPYC Genoa chips.
Moving onward, the Zen 4 powered AMD Ryzen ‘Raphael’ Desktop CPU family is said to include 16 cores as the flagship offering at launch. We have heard about AMD upping the core count for its mainstream offerings but the leaker isn’t fully convinced from his sources if a 16+ core part will be happening or not. If AMD goes beyond 16 cores then that would mean a CPU with three chiplets, and given the package size of Raphael CPUs, I am kind of skeptical. In the case we do get beyond 16 cores, it won’t come cheap and we can see a mainstream consumer CPU with a cost of around $1000 US.
AMD Ryzen Raphael ‘Zen 4’ Desktop CPU Expected Features:
- Brand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)
- Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD
- Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 Socket
- Dual-Channel DDR5 Memory Support
- 28 PCIe Gen 4.0 Lanes (CPU Exclusive)
- 105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)
As for the platform itself, the AM5 motherboards will feature the LGA1718 socket which is going to last quite some time. The platform will feature DDR5-5200 memory, 28 PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes, more NVMe 4.0 & USB 3.2 I/O, and may also ship with native USB 4.0 support. With that said, much about the AM5 platform will be confirmed in early-2022 when we get details of AMD’s Rembrandt APUs that are going to launch on the desktop platform. The AMD Ryzen ‘Raphael’ Zen 4 CPUs are slated to launch in late 2022.
Here’s Everything We Know About AMD’s Raphael Ryzen ‘Zen 4’ Desktop CPUs
The next-generation Zen 4 based Ryzen Desktop CPUs will be codenamed Raphael and will replace the Zen 3 based Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs that are codenamed, Vermeer. From the information we currently have, Raphael CPUs will be based on the 5nm Zen 4 core architecture & will feature 6nm I/O dies in a chiplet design. AMD has hinted at upping the core counts of its next-gen mainstream desktop CPUs so we can expect a slight bump from the current max of 16 cores and 32 threads.
The brand new Zen 4 architecture is rumored to deliver up to 25% IPC gain over Zen 3 and hit clock speeds of around 5 GHz.
‘Mark, Mike, and the teams have done a phenomenal job. We are as good as we are with the product today, but with our ambitious roadmaps, we are focusing on Zen 4 and Zen 5 to be extremely competitive.
‘There will be more core counts in the future – I would not say those are the limits! It will come as we scale the rest of the system.’
AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su via Anandtech
AMD’s Rick Bergman on Next-Gen Zen 4 Cores For Ryzen CPUs
Q- How much of the performance gains delivered by AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs, which are expected to use a 5nm TSMC process and might arrive in early 2022, will come from instructions per clock (IPC) gains as opposed to core count and clock speed increases.
Bergman: “[Given] the maturity of the x86 architecture now, the answer has to be, kind of, all of the above. If you looked at our technical document on Zen 3, it was this long list of things that we did to get that 19% [IPC gain]. Zen 4 is going to have a similar long list of things, where you look at everything from the caches, to the branch prediction, [to] the number of gates in the execution pipeline. Everything is scrutinized to squeeze more performance out.”
“Certainly [manufacturing] process opens an additional door for us to [obtain] better performance-per-watt and so on, and we’ll take advantage of that as well.”
The Raphael Ryzen Desktop CPUs are also expected to feature RDNA 2 onboard graphics which means that just like Intel’s mainstream desktop lineup, AMD’s mainstream lineup will also feature iGPU graphics support. The Zen 4 based Raphael Ryzen CPUs aren’t expected till late 2022 so there’s still a lot of time left in the launch. The lineup will compete against Intel’s Raptor Lake 13th Gen Desktop CPU lineup.
AMD Zen CPU / APU Roadmap:
Zen Architecture | Zen 1 | Zen+ | Zen 2 | Zen 3 | Zen 3+ | Zen 4 | Zen 5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Node | 14nm | 12nm | 7nm | 7nm | 6nm? | 5nm | 3nm? |
Server | EPYC Naples (1st Gen) | N/A | EPYC Rome (2nd Gen) | EPYC Milan (3rd Gen) | N/A | EPYC Genoa (4th Gen) | EPYC Turin (5th Gen) |
High-End Desktop | Ryzen Threadripper 1000 (White Haven) | Ryzen Threadripper 2000 (Coflax) | Ryzen Threadripper 3000 (Castle Peak) | Ryzen Threadripper 5000 (Chagal) | N/A | Ryzen Threadripper 6000 (TBA) | TBA |
Mainstream Desktop CPUs | Ryzen 1000 (Summit Ridge) | Ryzen 2000 (Pinnacle Ridge) | Ryzen 3000 (Matisse) | Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) | Ryzen 6000 (Warhol / Cancelled) | Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) | Ryzen 8000 (Granite Ridge) |
Mainstream Desktop . Notebook APU | Ryzen 2000 (Raven Ridge) | Ryzen 3000 (Picasso) | Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) Ryzen 5000 (Lucienne) |
Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne) Ryzen 6000 (Barcelo) |
Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) | Ryzen 7000 (Phoenix) | Ryzen 8000 (Strix Point) |
Low-Power Mobile | N/A | N/A | Ryzen 5000 (Van Gogh) Ryzen 6000 (Dragon Crest) |
TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
Watch: Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary Special – Live! – Nintendo Life
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PlayStation Confirms Title of New God of War Game [UPDATE]
Update: It appears the “God of War: Ragnarok” logo used in the official Sony Interactive Entertainment IR Day presentation is a fan logo pulled from Google. It’s unclear why it was used, but as a result, the information below is no longer accurate.
Original: God of War: Ragnarokwas revealed less than a year ago, but precious little has been said about the game since then. It’s unknown what it’s supposed to be about, if it’s a spin-off or a direct sequel to 2018’s God of War, and until now, the title itself wasn’t even a guarantee. That last part has now apparently changed, however, with the latest investor relations presentation from Sony featuring an updated logo for the game that features the same name we saw in the reveal trailer in 2020.
The presentation seen here featured a slideshow showing off different incentives for the PlayStation 5 and perspectives from Sony on why it believes in the new console. The figures touted the PlayStation 5 as having the “best ever launch line-up” while listing a number of games that were playable both right when the console released and through backwards compatibility. Over in the post-launch line-up section, Sony touted games like the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel Horizon Forbidden Westas well as God of War: Ragnarok. No other information about the new God of War game was shared, but the logo below shared by Okami on Twitter was featured in the presentation.
Updated logo for God of War Ragnarok from the Sony presentation. 🔥https://t.co/43k35HkBBu #PS5 #GodOfWarRagnarok pic.twitter.com/2aLUDs0fro
— Okami (@Okami13_) May 26, 2021
It doesn’t look a great deal different from what we’ve seen in the past, and with so little known about the game, you might think you’ve seen it already before this presentation. That’s the first time this sort of logo treatment has been revealed to the public, however, so unless something else changes before the game is released or shown off more, it looks like God of War: Ragnarok will be the name of the game with that logo above representing it.
With so little being said about the game, God of War fans are left to speculate about Ragnarok and fill the void with their own guesses and anticipations. Some have theorized that the game will only release on the PlayStation 5 which isn’t too unlikely an outcome, but games like Horizon Forbidden West are coming to the PlayStation 4, too, so the new God of War game could release on both platforms. Others have suggested that the game might’ve been delayed, but that hardly matters anyway when we didn’t even have a release date for the game to begin with.
God of War: Ragnarok does not yet have a confirmed release window nor has it been said what platforms it’ll launch on.
Arm’s Cortex X2-based CPUs are 30 percent faster and more efficient
Arm has announced its next-generation CPU designs, which will probably hit the market in early 2022. With all-new cores, a new architecture, and the death of 32 bit, the new designs are proving to be among Arm’s biggest releases in some time. It looks like ARM has not published a post with this information, but you can’t ask for a better source than the pages of info at Anandtech.
Arm CPU designs include cores in three sizes: “little,” “big,” and “performance,” all of which tackle different workloads at various power-consumption levels. The follow-up to this year’s “performance” X1 core is the Cortex X2, the big core is the Cortex A710, and for the first time in four years, ARM is introducing a new “little” core for high-efficiency workloads, the Cortex A510. Devices will finally be rid of the smaller Cortex A55 cores that were introduced in 2017.
Naturally, everything is faster. ARM is promising a 16 percent faster X2 core compared to current-generation X1-based chips, a 10 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient “big” core, and a 35 percent faster and 20 percent more efficient “little” core. Every core design is also seeing a 2-3x improvement in machine-learning performance, for whatever that’s worth. Put all those digits together and ARM says a CPU cluster with the typical phone layout (one Cortex X2, three A710s, and four A510s) should have 30 percent better peak performance and 30 percent better-sustained efficacy.
While the Cortex X1 and A710 are both based on the previous designs that go back to 2018 Cortex A76 cores, the smaller Cortex A510 is an entirely new design. ARM says this small core is within striking distance of the Cortex A73, the “big” CPU core in 2017 flagship smartphones. All three CPU designs use the new Armv9 architecture, which includes several security enhancements like the containerized “confidential compute architecture.”
Arm’s new CPUs continue the march toward the death of 32-bit. Google is doing its part on the Android side of things. Since August 2019, Google has required all app developers to ship 64-bit versions of apps on Google Play alongside 32-bit versions. In August 2021, the Play Store will stop serving 32-bit apps to phones and tablets. As for Arm’s new CPU designs, two of the three cores don’t support 32-bit code. Only the medium-size Cortex A710 core can run 32-bit code, so if you manage to find a 32-bit app and try to run it on one of these new X2-based phones, you’ll only be able to use the medium cores. This will be your last year for backward compatibility—Arm flagships are switching to all-64-bit in 2023.
Everyone wants to know if ARM’s CPU design department will attempt to answer Apple’s M1 chip, which tackles a laptop form factor that Arm previously hasn’t designed a class of chips for. Arm floated a possible M1 competitor: a chip design that features eight Cortex X2 CPUs instead of the mix of smaller chips. Arm is promising 40 percent better “peak single thread performance versus 2020 mainstream laptop silicon” with this design, but will anyone actually build it?
Arm just designs CPU cores—the company isn’t announcing or shipping an actual product to end-users. For that, you’ll need to go through a mobile SoC manufacturer like Qualcomm, Samsung, or MediaTek, which should ship Cortex X2-based products in early 2022. All this info needs to be filtered through the customizations and actual implementations these companies make, which could differ from Arm’s estimates. Qualcomm is one of the biggest distributors of Arm CPU designs, but after this round of chips, Qualcomm will probably start using its own designs. The company bought chip-design firm Nuvia and announced plans to ship laptop chips designed in-house in the second half of 2022.
Listing image by Arm
Unreal Engine 5 – Official Valley of the Ancient Tech Showcase – IGN
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Scammy iOS app discovered that refuses to open unless you give it a good review
App developer and scam app hunter Kosta Eleftheriou’s latest discovery is a real doozy, an iOS app that refuses to function before you give it at least a 3-star review in the App Store. Although the UPNP Xtreme app — which claimed to let users stream video to their TVs — now appears to have been pulled, we were able to verify that it generates the App Store rating box the second it opens. You can’t dismiss the ratings box, nor can you tap the 1 or 2-star ratings, Eleftheriou said. We verified this behavior, but some other users report they were able to dismiss the dialog box or leave a lower rating.
This is just the latest scammy app to have been unearthed by Elefheriou, who’s been waging a war against them after his own Apple Watch keyboard app, FlickType, was overtaken by expensive apps with fake reviews. Eleftheriou says Apple has removed over 100 apps as a result of his reports, but it’s concerning that the multi-billion dollar company isn’t catching these scams during its App Store review process.
If you think you can trust App Store ratings, you haven’t been paying enough attention.
This is the iOS *system* rating prompt, not a custom look-alike one.
The worst part? This trick is EXTREMELY easy for any developer to do, and not limited to this app.
— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) May 25, 2021
The UPNP Xtreme app’s behavior directly contradicts one of the best practices Apple lists on its developer site, which states that developers should “avoid showing a request for a review immediately when a user launches your app.” Generally, developers are allowed to prompt for a rating up to there times in a 365-day period.
Apple’s review process has been under particularly intense scrutiny recently because of Epic Games’ lawsuit against the company. Central to the dispute is the 30 percent commission Apple takes on many App Store payments and in-app purchases. Apple argues it needs the commission to run the App Store and create a safe environment for users. But that argument gets undermined pretty quickly if obvious scammy apps are able to slip through Apple’s review process.
Apps like the ones discovered by Eleftheriou not only harm customers who end up downloading scammy software and can get tricked into paying for difficult-to-cancel recurring subscriptions. It also harms legitimate developers who have to contend with apps that are willing to play dirty to get the good reviews needed to rise up the App Store’s rankings.
Eleftheriou filed a lawsuit against Apple earlier this year, arguing it exploits its monopoly power over iOS app to make money at the expense of app developers and consumers.
Google Feed now supports Android 12’s wallpaper-based theming system
Android 12’s new wallpaper-based theming system automatically changes the background and accent color of various UI elements across the system. To do so, it picks a dominant color from the current wallpaper and applies it uniformly across elements like the lockscreen, quick settings, notification panel, and even the newly-added adaptive widgets. Earlier this month, we saw evidence suggesting that the theming system might change the Google Assistant background color as well. Although Google Assistant support in the theming system is yet to roll out to early adopters, the latest Google App brings theming support for the Google Feed.
Google App 12.20.6.23 just started rolling out on the Play Store, and Twitter user @panduu221 has spotted that it adds support for the new wallpaper-based theming system. As you can see in the attached screenshots, the theming system automatically changes the background color of the Google Feed based on the color picked from the current wallpaper. However, it doesn’t apply to the Google Discover tab in the Google App yet.
Automatically themed Google Feed and Quick Settings in Android 12 Beta 1
While our tipster spotted the new addition in an Android 12 Beta-based custom ROM running on a Xiaomi phone, we can confirm that it’s available on all Android 12 Beta releases running the latest Google App. The screenshots attached above are from our Pixel 3 XL running Android 12 Beta 1.
If you’ve installed Android 12 Beta 1 on any of your devices, you can experience the wallpaper-based theming integration for the Google Feed by downloading the latest version of the Google App from the Play Store link below.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition Review – GameSpot
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USB-C upgrade delivers a whopping 240W for gaming laptops and other power-hungry devices
An upgrade to the USB-C standard will accommodate levels of up to 240 watts, an improvement that could let you plug power-hungry devices like gaming laptops, 4K monitors and printers into the universal port. The jump in maximum power is more than double today’s 100-watt capacity.
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that develops the technology, revealed the new power levels in the version 2.1 update to its USB Type-C specification on Tuesday. The USB-IF didn’t immediately provide a comment. The new 240-watt option is called Extended Power Range, or EPR.
USB began as a useful but limited port for plugging keyboards, mice and printers into PCs. It later swept aside Firewire and other ports as faster speeds let it tackle more demanding tasks. It proved useful for charging phones as the mobile revolution began, paving the way for its use delivering power, not just data. The 240W Extended Power Range option means USB could expand its turf yet again.
Cables supporting 240 watts will have additional requirements to accommodate the new levels. And USB-IF will require the cables to bear specific icons “so that end users will be able to confirm visually that the cable supports up to…240W,” USB-IF said in the specification document.
A capacity of 240 watts is enough to run larger monitors, printers, gaming laptops and other devices. Dell’s UltraSharp 32-inch 4K monitor has a peak power usage of 230 watts, for example, the same level as HP’s 17-inch Omen gaming laptop.
It isn’t, however, enough for everything. Try NewEgg’s power supply calculator to see how a gaming PC with a higher-end video quickly surpasses 240 watts. Laser printers can also draw a lot of power.
USB-C is the relatively new variety of oval ports and reversible cables, a design that means you no longer have to worry which side is up on plugs. The design also means the same cable works on phones, tablets and PCs. The USB-C specification isn’t the only one covering how USB ports and cables work. Today’s mainstream USB 3.2 and brand-new USB 4 govern how data is sent over cables, while USB Power Delivery governs how devices negotiate with chargers and other devices.
One port USB hasn’t managed to displace is Intel’s Thunderbolt. With USB 4, it’s caught up to Thunderbolt’s 40Gbps speed by actually embedding Thunderbolt technology.
But USB 4 is rare, just arriving now in newer laptops, and Thunderbolt offers some reliability advantages. Thunderbolt uses a laptop’s USB-C ports through a repurposing called “alt mode,” but not all USB-C ports support Thunderbolt.
Alt mode also can let you plug in external monitors’ HDMI and DisplayPort cables into USB-C ports. However, HDMI cables remain commonplace, and rumors suggest Apple could be restoring the HDMI port after years of offering only combination USB-C/Thunderbolt ports.