Latest news with #Xeon
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Intel experimenting with direct liquid cooling for up to 1000W CPUs
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Intel is testing a new way to tackle the growing heat output of its power hungry chips. At its recent Foundry Direct Connect event, the company showcased an experimental package-level water cooling solution designed to more efficiently cool CPUs . Intel has working prototypes for both LGA (Land Grid Array) and BGA (Ball Grid Array) CPUs, with demos using Intel's Core Ultra as well as Xeon server processors. The cooling solution doesn't apply coolant directly to the silicon die. Instead, a specially designed compact cooling block sits atop the package, featuring microchannels made of copper that precisely guide the coolant flow. These channels can be optimized to target specific hotspots on the die, potentially improving heat removal where it matters the most. Intel claims the system can dissipate up to 1,000 watts of heat using standard liquid cooling fluid. That kind of thermal load isn't typical for consumer CPUs, but it could be relevant for high-end AI (Artificial Intelligence) workloads, HPC (High Performance Computing), and workstation applications. Image 1 of 9 Image 2 of 9 Image 3 of 9 Image 4 of 9 Image 5 of 9 Image 6 of 9 Image 7 of 9 Image 8 of 9 Image 9 of 9 The cooling assembly is also said to make use of solder or liquid metal TIM (Thermal Interface Material), which is said to offer better contact than polymer based TIM. Compared to a traditional liquid cooler mounted to a delidded bare die, Intel says this solution can deliver 15–20% better thermal performance. Notably, Intel's approach isn't just a lab experiment. The company has reportedly been working on this technology for years. With rising thermal demands from modern chip designs, Intel is now exploring how to produce this system for real-world deployment. While Intel refines its prototype, the enthusiast community is already experimenting with similar concepts. YouTuber octppus recently modified the heatspreader of an Intel Core i9-14900KS, machining it into a functioning miniature water block. With internal channels carved into the IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) and sealed under acrylic, the mod somewhat mirrors Intel's concept in DIY fashion. Intel hasn't confirmed when or if this cooling approach will hit mainstream products, but the demonstration is critical for CPU thermal design. As power consumption and package density increase, direct cooling may become a necessity for both professional and enthusiast hardware in the coming future. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Intel LGA9324 leak reveals colossal CPU socket with 9,324 pins for up to 700W Diamond Rapids Xeons
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An alleged picture of the socket that is expected to host Intel's next-generation Diamond Rapids (Xeon seventhgeneration) family of server CPUs has emerged, as spotted by HXL on X. The LGA9324 socket reportedly carries over 10,000 pins, once you consider debug pins and the like. This will likely be the largest LGA CPU socket yet, unless future Venice offerings from AMD exceed this amount. Last August, test tool listings for partners indicated that Intel's future Diamond Rapids processors will reportedly require a new Oak Stream platform with its LGA9324 socket. Under the Xeon 7 family, these CPUs are expected to supersede existing Granite Rapids offerings, across AP (Advanced Performance) Xeon 6900P and SP (Scalable Performance) Xeon 6700P/6500P offerings. Prototype cooler designs from Dynatron suggest Intel will fragment Diamond Rapids into AP and SP flavors, and so we might see a toned-down socket under the Oak Stream family for Diamond Rapids-SP. Currently, Intel's largest socket, LGA7529, features at least 7,529 contacts, while AMD's SP5 offers 6,096. Xeon 6900P CPUs, utilizing the LGA7529 socket, offer up to 128 P-cores, support 12 DDR5 memory channels, and can reach a TDP of 500W. With a nearly 30% increase in pin-counts, expect more I/O, memory channels, increased TDPs, and even core counts. While we don't have a banana for scale, visually, this is a massive socket, dwarfing LGA1851 (used by Arrow Lake) by almost five times. The Goofish listing mentions that the model in the shared image was apparently acquired from a scrap yard and was initially part of a thermal test board. What this means is that Intel is probably validating Diamond Rapids as we speak with their partners, and who knows if benchmarks or even an actual CPU sample surfaces soon? Diamond Rapids is expected to leverage the Panther Cove-X architecture, which is believed to serve as a server analogue to Coyote Cove on Nova Lake. Rumored to be built using 18A, the launch of Diamond Rapids hinges greatly on its High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) readiness, with Panther Lake targeting HVM by late 2025. This isn't an apples-to-apples comparison since Panther Lake's Compute Tile (Likely 18A) is expected to span between 100-150mm^2, while Compute Tiles on Intel's Xeon processors can be as large as 600mm^2. Even though Intel hasn't confirmed an exact release window for Diamond Rapids, we can expect these CPUs to arrive sometime in 2026, rivaling AMD's Venice. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Globe and Mail
07-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Intel Excels in Stringent AI Benchmark: Should You Buy the Stock?
Intel Corporation INTC recently announced that it has successfully achieved industry-first full NPU (Neural Processing Unit) compliance in the MLPerf Client v0.6 benchmark. MLPerf is an industry-standard benchmarking suite created to assess AI system performance. The newly released MLPerf Client v0.6 Benchmark is a subset of MLPerf designed to evaluate client devices such as laptops and PCs with a strong emphasis on large language model acceleration and NPU performance. It offers a clear assessment of hardware and software capabilities in swiftly handling AI tasks such as content generation and summarization. During the process, Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors showcased the fastest NPU response time with an impressive token latency of just 1.09 seconds and the highest NPU throughput at 18.55 tokens per second. Intel also demonstrated remarkable GPU performance during the process. Intel Core Ultra processor is the only NPU to achieve complete compliance, accentuating its strong AI compute capabilities. Intel Rides on AI Traction, Portfolio Optimization Intel has been taking several strategic decisions to gain a firmer footing in the expansive AI sector, spanning cloud and enterprise servers to networks, volume clients, and ubiquitous edge environments, in line with the evolving market dynamics. Intel's Xeon 6 processors with Performance-cores have garnered significant industry attention owing to their high-performance AI processing. Intel XEON platforms offer extensive performance improvements coupled with energy efficiency and easy-to-deploy software. With these features, Intel XEON has set a new benchmark in 5G cloud native core, which is driving demand from software vendors and independent telecom manufacturers. The company is witnessing solid market traction in the AI PC market. Backed by strong demand for its core Ultra Chips, Intel remains firmly on track to power more than 100 million AI PCs by the end of 2025. Intel is also venturing into the automotive market to capitalize on the growing AI proliferation in that industry. The company's second-generation AI-powered software-defined vehicle system-on-chip with multi-process node chiplet architecture brings advanced capabilities. The chip offers 10x performance enhancement for generative and multimodal AI, 3x graphics performance, and enhances camera and image processing features. Such state-of-the-art features will boost Intel's new AI chip demand in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. Intel is divesting 51% of its Altera business to Silver Lake, a prominent global technology investment firm. The move highlights Intel's strategy to reshape its portfolio, optimize cost structure, strengthen its liquidity position, and boost focus on core operations. One-Year INTC Stock Price Performance Intel has plunged 33.3% in the past year against the industry 's growth of 18.7%. The company has underperformed its peer NVIDIA Corporation NVDA but outperformed Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD. INTC Plagued by Margin Woes Despite investing heavily in new chip design and manufacturing, Intel is playing a catch-up game with NVIDIA and AMD. In the CPU space, AMD has gained a strong foothold with its Ryzen and EPYC processors. AMD's strategy of offering competitive pricing with high performance has challenged Intel's dominance in the CPU market. In the graphics and AI acceleration space, NVIDIA has made significant inroads. It is witnessing strong demand for generative AI and large language models using GPUs based on NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures. Backed by strong industry expertise, both NVIDIA and AMD are aiming to expand their influence in the automotive segment. Intensifying competition with NVIDIA and AMD across multiple end markets is weighing on Intel's margin. Intel's debt-to-capital ratio stands at 32% compared to the industry average of 17.3%. As of March 31, 2025, Intel had cash and cash equivalents of $8.95 billion with $44.91 billion of long-term debt. A high debt level may limit sufficient cash flow generation, which is required to meet future debt obligations. Additionally, Intel has a significant presence in China. Growing Sino-U.S. trade hostilities can impact its operations. Estimate Revision Trend of INTC Earnings estimates for Intel for 2025 have moved down 37.5% to 30 cents over the past 60 days, while the same for 2026 has declined 28.32% to 81 cents. The negative estimate revision depicts bearish sentiments for the stock. End Note Intel's strong AI focus and the expansion of its portfolio offerings for AI PCs, data centers, and automotive markets are commendable. Its effort to lower costs and improve liquidity with strategic divestiture is a positive. However, intensifying competition in the commercial PC, server, storage and networking markets remains a major headwind. In addition, its high dependence on China, imposition of trade tariffs, and Beijing's move to replace U.S.-made chips with domestic alternatives are impeding Intel's commercial prospects. Its high debt levels make it vulnerable to economic downturns and growing geopolitical unrest. Declining earnings estimate revisions underscore dwindling investors' confidence. Despite heavy investment in chipset innovation and AI acceleration, Intel's ability to regain a competitive edge appears to be a challenging endeavor. Intel carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) at present. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2024. While not all picks can be winners, previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Intel Corporation (INTC): Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Don't Bet the Farm,' Cautions Analyst as Intel's Comeback Story Fizzles Out
Intel (INTC) has ticked all the boxes to earn the title of a disappointing stock. While it has shown signs of a potential recovery at times this year, it's still down more than 34% over the past twelve months. And the longer-term picture looks even worse—it's lost over 65% of its value in the last five years. Staying neutral on INTC stock seems like the most prudent strategy. Discover companies with rock-solid fundamentals in TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter. Receive undervalued stocks, resilient to market uncertainty, delivered straight to your inbox. One full-service investment bank, Seaport Global, just initiated coverage on INTC with a Sell recommendation and a price target of $18. Seaport's analysis pointed to several challenges Intel faces, including losing its manufacturing edge, which has led to its products struggling against competitors. More worrying were concerns regarding the financing of Intel's Foundry services and internal manufacturing, which is projected to require around $100 billion over the next three years. A big reason for Intel's poor performance is its slow adoption of more advanced manufacturing technologies, which has left it trailing key competitors that have moved faster on both performance and efficiency. So, at a time when AI is booming — and Intel arguably had everything it needed to be a major player—it has struggled operationally. Instead of leading, the company's been forced to take a step back and get its house in order, trying to play catch-up in the long term under the direction of its new leadership. Once again, the most recent earnings were underwhelming. Intel's earnings call highlighted a solid start to the fiscal year, with revenue and EPS exceeding guidance, driven by strong sales of Xeon and Raptor Lake processors. Under new leadership, the company is implementing strategic cost reductions and a cultural transformation. However, macroeconomic uncertainties, ongoing losses in the foundry segment, capacity constraints, and competitive pressures present significant challenges. Weak guidance didn't help, either, failing to spark any real enthusiasm in the market. Given the updated projections and some aggressive assumptions, I would argue Intel is trading with no margin of safety. That puts a lot of pressure on the turnaround story. In my view, Intel is a Hold—a stock investors are better off staying away from for now. Intel, which recently reported its earnings results, reaffirmed that it's still transitioning, prioritizing cost discipline over growth. This was the first quarter under the new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, and the company is clearly working through execution issues, with a long road ahead to recovery. For instance, Intel posted Q1 revenue of $12.7 billion, which is flat compared to last year. This happened even as the AI and data center markets grew significantly (up 8% year-over-year), largely offset by continued weakness in Intel's legacy PC segment, which declined 8% over the same period. The outlook for Q2 remains soft, with revenue guidance at a midpoint of $11.8 billion, down from Q1, highlighting ongoing market share losses and sluggish demand across key segments. While the Q1 results weren't particularly surprising, the real news came from the direction set by the new CEO. Going forward, the focus will shift from expansion to improving operational efficiency. Near-term cost cuts will be modest, but more substantial reductions are expected by 2026, with operating expenses targeted at $17 billion in 2025 and $16 billion in 2026. In line with that, capex was trimmed to $18 billion, down from $20 billion, marking a clear shift away from former CEO Pat Gelsinger's aggressive investment approach. At the moment, it seems Intel is taking the right steps, at least in the short to medium term, to address its ongoing structural issues with operational inefficiency. The company's plans to cut 20% of its workforce under the new CEO are a move to eliminate long-standing bureaucratic bloat, signaling a shift back to an 'engineering-first culture'. Given the pressure on operating margins and the operating loss in 2024, these measures are necessary to stabilize the business in 2025, provide some near-term support for the stock, and prepare for bigger goals down the line. However, in the long term, Intel's strategy raises concerns. While competitors like Nvidia (NVDA) and TSMC (TSM) have been increasing investment to capitalize on the booming AI demand, Intel is going in the opposite direction by cutting back on capex. This could cause Intel to fall further behind in critical areas like advanced node manufacturing and AI accelerators. Unlike its competitors, who have reported strong demand resilience despite tariff risks, Intel's outlook suggests potential TAM contraction and rising costs. While this conservative approach may be risk-aware, it could hurt Intel's competitiveness just as the semiconductor industry enters a new growth phase. The partial sale of its Altera programmable chip business and the decision to retain Intel Capital (the venture capital arm of Intel Corporation) suggest that Intel isn't fully committing to streamlining or realigning its operations. While improving operational efficiency is important, it's not enough on its own to drive a true turnaround, in my opinion. After updating market estimates following Intel's Q1 earnings, an inverse discounted cash flow (DCF) model is worth running to see what expectations are baked into the current share price. For this exercise, I'll use the consensus forecast among analysts, which assumes Intel will grow revenue at a 5% CAGR over the next five years — a fairly modest outlook. On the profitability side, even though Intel reported a negative operating income in 2024, consensus estimates point to a gradual recovery. Operating margins are expected to hit 3.8% in 2025 and grow at a 42% CAGR, reaching 16% by 2029. Under those assumptions, Intel could generate a net operating profit after tax (NOPAT) of around $8.8 billion in five years, assuming a 15% stable effective tax rate. Given Intel's current focus on cutting capex and improving efficiency over growth, I think it's reasonable to expect depreciation and amortization (D&A) to remain relatively steady. Last year, D&A was around 50% of capex, but based on industry norms and Intel's asset base, I assume 60% going forward. I'm conservatively estimating it will drop to about 15% of revenue during this transition phase. With Intel also tightening its operations, changes in working capital should be minimal — I've assumed 1% of revenue. Discounting these projections at 7%, with a 3% terminal growth rate, I estimate Intel's equity value at roughly $90 billion, or about $20.70 per share. At current prices, that leaves no margin of safety for fully believing in the turnaround story just yet. Based on Wall Street consensus, there are clearly more doubts than confidence regarding Intel's outlook. Of 31 analysts who've covered the stock in the past three months, only one is bullish, while 26 are neutral and four are bearish. The average price target is $21.29, suggesting a 6.5% upside over the coming twelve months. With most Wall Street analysts staying out of the picture and remaining neutral, other bearish analysts include Ingo Wermann from DZ BANK and Harlan Sur from J.P. Morgan. Gus Richard from Northland Securities is the only analyst recommending a buy. Overall, Intel showed in its first quarter under the new CEO that it plans to follow a classic turnaround playbook: stabilize first, then rebuild, with a focus on cost discipline and a return to its core business. Strategically, Intel's recent moves seem more reactive than forward-looking. But to be fair, pushing aggressive investments and chasing growth while the company still struggles with major operational inefficiencies would likely be a much riskier approach. That said, even when factoring in the market consensus and some fairly optimistic projections, I don't think there's enough margin of safety at current prices to fully buy into the turnaround story. At this stage, I still see it as more of a speculative bet than a trade backed by strong rationale. Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Yahoo
Intel is trying out on-chip water cooling too and I'm just happy I'm not the one having to place liquids so close to expensive electronics
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. If there's one thing about the AI boom that doesn't make my eyes roll or make me feel a disquieting sense of impending doom and existential dread, it's the fact that many of the computing improvements for that industry will hopefully (emphasis on 'hopefully') trickle down into the PC gaming sphere. In-package liquid cooling seems to be quite the rage of late, and hopefully it'll be one of those things that makes its way to the PC gaming market. Not even a week after a YouTuber made a DIY version of something similar, Intel has just shown off a water cooler that sits on top of the CPU package (instead of an IHS) and schlepps coolant through to… well, to cool to the chip, of course (via Tom's Hardware). The incredibly thin cooling solution has little copper microchannels that guide the coolant and can focus thermal relief on the spots that really need it. Intel is displaying such experimental in-package cooling solutions at its ongoing Foundry Direct Connect event. The prototypes are designed for both LGA (land grid array) and BGA (ball grid array) surface mount chips, and Intel is showing such coolers for Core Ultra as well as Xeon CPUs. The kind of cooling on offer is apparently good for dealing with up to 1,000 W of heat, which is certainly more Xeon-level than Core Ultra-level, and is what makes me tentatively grateful for at least some of the AI boom. The server industry's certainly getting a lot of cash injected into it, and no doubt innovations such as this will come off the back of that. Then, hopefully, a tiny slice of that will end up in PC gamers' laps. Saying that, though, Intel has apparently been working on this tech for a long time. According to HardwareLuxx, at least some of the research for this dates back to 2005. Image 1 of 3 Image 2 of 3 Image 3 of 3 It's interesting, though, that this is now finally in a state to be shown off to the public at the same time that similar solutions are being shown off elsewhere by third parties. Just a week ago I reported on a cooler from EmCool that's supposed to attach to a delidded CPU and has liquid flowing through micro-pin fins to keep cool. Then there was the DIY version I mentioned earlier which machined channels for liquid cooling to flow through directly into the IHS. One of the key benefits of Intel's cooling tech here seems to be the ability to channel liquid where it's needed most: to hot spots. Given recent thermal imaging seems to show hot spots in some RTX 50-series graphics cards, we should be acutely aware of the benefits of such a tailored cooling system. Intel certainly seems to claim benefit, anyway, reportedly citing a 20% improvement in cooling performance. Noice. I'd certainly take one. Anything so I don't have to delid my own CPU and do the mod myself. Best AIO cooler for CPUs: Keep your chip air cooler for CPUs: Classic, quiet PC fans: Quiet and efficient.
