Latest news with #processors
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Advanced Micro Devices Logs Higher Profit, Sales
Advanced Micro Devices AMD -1.40%decrease; red down pointing triangle logged an increase in profit and sales for its latest quarter on record server and personal computer processor sales. The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker on Tuesday posted a profit of $872 million, or 54 cents a share, compared with $265 million, or 16 cents a share, a year earlier.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Intel's new Core Ultra 120 will be DOA if stores sell them at anything like these prices
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. I'm a big fan of little, cheap processors for gaming, so when Intel stealthily announced the specifications for its six-core, 12-thread Core Ultra 120/120F processors, I was really looking forward to seeing them on retailers' shelves. Unfortunately, the first prices for them have just dropped, and Raptor Lake Regurgitated is anything but cheap, weighing in nearly three times more than an equivalent AMD chip. The first I learned of the Intel Core Ultra 120 was from a post on X by user Momomo_us. Delving into Intel's processor database tells us everything we need to know about the new CPU: it's a Raptor Lake-based chip but with all its E-cores completely disabled. That means you just get six P-cores, with 12 threads in total. Add in a boost clock of 4.5 GHz, 18 MB of L3 cache, and a 65 W base power limit, and you've got Intel's version of a Ryzen 5 9600X. Except you haven't, because while the 9600X uses AMD's latest Zen 5 architecture, the Core Ultra 120 is actually a marginally faster Core i5 12400. Yes, that's right: it's Alder Lake, not Raptor Lake. The telltale clue is the fact that the total L2 cache is 7.5 MB—1.25 MB per core—whereas a true Raptor Lake chip would sport 12 MB (2 MB apiece). This means that the 120 is really Intel's version of the Ryzen 5 5500. So Intel has taken some duff old chips from 2022 and repackaged them as something new. I honestly have no problem with that, as long as the price reflects the aged architecture and the total lack of E-cores. Well, thanks to another post by Momomo_us on X, it would seem that somebody at Intel forgot to look up what cheap means. I don't know what distributor the user has listed, but at $246.01 for the Core Ultra 120 and $216.66 for the iGPU-less 120F, there's a snowball's chance in hell that I'd recommend anyone to buy one at these prices. You can pick up a slower-but-still-six-core Ryzen 5 5500 is a mere $73 at Amazon. I don't care how good Intel's P-cores are; there's no way that they're worth three times more than AMD's Zen 4 cores. To make matters worse, you can get a Core i5 12400 for $144 at Amazon. Hopefully, those distributor prices are just placeholders and not the final price tags, because if they are, Intel isn't going to shift a single one of them. Shame really, as I'd hope that Intel's plans for its E-coreless Raptor Lake chips were going to involve something cheap and gamer-friendly. What we've actually been 'treated' to is a pile of regurgitated tat. Gosh, aren't we the lucky ones?
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
TSMC's next generation of system-on-wafer packaging will make today's CPUs and GPUs look pathetically feeble in comparison
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. From powering watches to phones, handheld consoles to desktop PCs, office servers to data centers, processors can be found everywhere and in every size possible. That last aspect is set to take a gargantuan leap forward thanks to the world's top chip manufacturer and its next generation of system-on-wafer packing. As reported by PC Watch, TSMC has recently announced that it has commenced development of a new version of its SoW (System-on-Wafer) packaging technology. The computer you're using to read this on will have a range of different-sized processors inside it. If your device is a top-tier gaming PC with an RTX 5090, then the GPU will be the biggest single chip it has. On the other hand, if the CPU is a Ryzen 9 9950X3D or a Core Ultra 9 285K, then your PC will also have lots of tiny chiplets, all packaged together to make one 'large' processor. This is essentially what TMSC's new SoW technology is, albeit on a much grander scale. Rather than just taking three or four small dies and mounting them on a substrate that's around 7,000 square millimetres in area, SoW-X (X for eXtreme) covers an area 10 to 15 times larger. It's so big that an entire 300 mm silicon wafer is required. TSMC's first generation of SoW packaging involved mounting just the processing dies to the wafer, whereas the new version will be able to include HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips, removing the need to have costly and complex interconnects linking the RAM to the processors. The whole setup makes the system used to manufacture AMD's huge MI300X AI processors look decidedly tiny, and those things are hardly what you'd call small. Each one of those comprises 20 chips and chiplets (four big I/O base chiplets, eight CNDA 3 GPUs, and eight HBM modules)—TMSC's SoW-X could potentially multiply that by a factor of 10. Naturally, a SoW-X creation isn't something that you can just drop into a socket. For a start, the wafer on which all the chiplets are mounted has to be layered with structures to remove heat, provide electricity, and transfer data to and from the system. Silicon wafers are slim, delicate things, but once packaged in a SoW-X device, they're all hulking, heavy, and massive. These are going to be used for (no prizes for guessing) the very largest AI data centers, where having as much processing power in the smallest amount of space is crucial to maximising the available area within the center's buildings. SoW-X isn't just about making bigger and better processors, pushing the limits of Moore's Law to extreme lengths. By keeping as many components as possible on the same substrate, power consumption can be greatly reduced. It's still huge, of course, as TSMC says that SoW-X will be reaching as high as 17,000 W, but it also says the relative performance-per-watt is 65% higher than a traditional data center cluster, where everything is externally connected via PCIe links. Image 1 of 2 Image 2 of 2 None of this might seem relevant to gaming PCs and other household devices, but the knowledge and experiences that TSMC gains with shipping SoW-X systems to customers will filter down to its 'everyday' packaging technologies. Phones, desktop CPUs, and graphics cards will all benefit at some point in the future, either because they're already using chiplets or chip-stacking, or they will once process nodes hit the practical limit to the number of transistors one can stuff into a single die. For now, though, TSMC says we won't see SoW-X out in the wild until 2027 and even then, the very high cost of doing it all means that only a select few customers will be able to afford it. A more important question is what's next after SoW-X? Will the wafers just have to get bigger, or will we see system-on-wafer-on-wafer packaging being developed (I've decided that this should be called SoS, system-on-sandwich) to continue the drive to have ever more processing power? While transistors might not get much smaller, I think we can safely bet that processors are just going to get a lot bigger.
Bloomberg
30-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bunge Second-Quarter Profits Shrink to Lowest Since 2018
Bunge Global SA's second-quarter profits fell to the lowest in seven years as lingering uncertainty over tariffs and US biofuel policy continued to pressure crop traders and processors. The Chicago-based company reported adjusted earnings of $1.31 per share in the three-month period ended in June, the lowest since 2018 for the period. That exceeded the $1.11 average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg
23-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
SK Hynix Reports Record Profit and Sales on Booming AI Demand
SK Hynix Inc. reported record quarterly profit that beat expectations, reinforcing its lead in advanced memory chips that help Nvidia Corp. 's processors develop artificial intelligence. The South Korean company reported an operating profit of 9.21 trillion won ($6.7 billion) in the June quarter versus the 8.93 trillion won analysts had projected, and said its capex is expected to increase from previous plans. Revenue rose to 22.23 trillion won, compared with expectations for 20.48 trillion won.
