The Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan CPU Cooler Review: Towering Value
Standard CPU coolers, while adequate for managing basic thermal loads, often fall short in terms of noise reduction and superior cooling efficiency. This limitation drives advanced users and system builders to seek aftermarket solutions tailored to their specific needs. The high-end aftermarket cooler market is highly competitive, with manufacturers striving to offer products with exceptional performance.
Endorfy, previously known as SilentiumPC, is a Polish manufacturer that has undergone a significant transformation to expand its presence in global markets. The brand is known for delivering high-performance cooling solutions with a strong focus on balancing efficiency and affordability. By rebranding as Endorfy, the company aims to enter premium market segments while continuing to offer reliable, high-quality cooling products.
SilentiumPC became very popular in the value/mainstream segments of the PC market with their products, the spearhead of which probably was the Fera 5 cooler that we reviewed a little over two years ago and had a remarkable value for money. Today’s review places Endorfy’s largest CPU cooler, the Fortis 5 Dual Fan, on our laboratory test bench. The Fortis 5 is the largest CPU air cooler the company currently offers and is significantly more expensive than the Fera 5, yet it still is a single-tower cooler that strives to strike a balance between value, compatibility, and performance.
Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Posted by The Techinical Support
Intel and Sandia National Labs Roll Out 1.15B Neuron “Hala Point” Neuromorphic Research System 
While neuromorphic computing remains under research for the time being, efforts into the field have continued to grow over the years, as have the capabilities of the specialty chips that have been developed for this research. Following those lines, this morning Intel and Sandia National Laboratories are celebrating the deployment of the Hala Point neuromorphic system, which the two believe is the highest capacity system in the world. With 1.15 billion neurons overall, Hala Point is the largest deployment yet for Intel’s Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which was first announced at the tail-end of 2021.
The Hala Point system incorporates 1152 Loihi 2 processors, each of which is capable of simulating a million neurons. As noted back at the time of Loihi 2’s launch, these chips are actually rather small – just 31 mm2 per chip with 2.3 billion transistors each, as they’re built on the Intel 4 process (one of the only other Intel chips to do so, besides Meteor Lake). As a result, the complete system is similarly petite, taking up just 6 rack units of space (or as Sandia likes to compare it to, about the size of a microwave), with a power consumption of 2.6 kW. Now that it’s online, Hala Point has dethroned the SpiNNaker system as the largest disclosed neuromorphic system, offering admittedly just a slightly larger number of neurons at less than 3% of the power consumption of the 100 kW British system.
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
Hala Point will be replacing an older Intel neuromorphic system at Sandia, Pohoiki Springs, which is based on Intel’s first-generation Loihi chips. By comparison, Hala Point offers ten-times as many neurons, and upwards of 12x the performance overall,
Both neuromorphic systems have been procured by Sandia in order to advance the national lab’s research into neuromorphic computing, a computing paradigm that behaves like a brain. The central thought (if you’ll excuse the pun) is that by mimicking the wetware writing this article, neuromorphic chips can be used to solve problems that conventional processors cannot solve today, and that they can do so more efficiently as well.
Sandia, for its part, has said that it will be using the system to look at large-scale neuromorphic computing, with work operating on a scale well beyond Pohoiki Springs. With Hala Point offering a simulated neuron count very roughly on the level of complexity of an owl brain, the lab believes that a larger-scale system will finally enable them to properly exploit the properties of neuromorphic computing to solve real problems in fields such as device physics, computer architecture, computer science and informatics, moving well beyond the simple demonstrations initially achieved at a smaller scale.
One new focus from the lab, which in turn has caught Intel’s attention, is the applicability of neuromorphic computing towards AI inference. Because the neural networks themselves behind the current wave of AI systems are attempting to emulate the human brain, in a sense, there is an obvious degree of synergy with the brain-mimicking neuromorphic chips, even if the algorithms differ in some key respects. Still, with energy efficiency being one of the major benefits of neuromorphic computing, it’s pushed Intel to look into the matter further – and even build a second, Hala Point-sized system of their own.
According to Intel, in their research on Hala Point, the system has reached efficiencies as high as 15 TOPS-per-Watt at 8-bit precision, albeit while using 10:1 sparsity, making it more than competitive with current-generation commercial chips. As an added bonus to that efficiency, the neuromorphic systems don’t require extensive data processing and batching in advance, which is normally necessary to make efficient use of the high density ALU arrays in GPUs and GPU-like processors.
Perhaps the most interesting use case of all, however, is the potent... CPUs
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM 
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
Sabrent Launches Rocket Nano M.2-2242 SSD: Up to 5 GB/sec 
Sabrent tends to get into news when it launches ultra-high-performance SSDs for enthusiast-grade desktops, but this week the company introduced a completely different type of product: a small form-factor M.2-2242 SSD aimed at Lenovo's Legion Go handheld and ultra-thin laptops that don't accomodate M.2-2280 drives. And even though it's not an enthusiast-grade drive, the Rocket Nano still boasts with quite decent performance and capacity.
The Sabrent Rocket Nano 2242 (SB-2142) drive is based on the Phison E27T platform, a PCIe 4.0 x4 controller that is that is designed for mainstream DRAM-less SSDs, and in the case of the Rocket Nano, is paired with 3D TLC memory. The SSD is available in a single 1TB configuration, and is rated for read speeds up to 5 GB/s. Interestingly, the Phison E27T controller itself is rated for read speeds up to 7 GB/s, so it appears that the petite Rocket Nano isn't making full use of the controller's performance.
Sabrent positions its Rocket Nano 2242 SSD as drives for upgrading Lenovo's Legion Go portable game console, select Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other M.2-2242-sized PCs that can't accomodate larger 2280 drives. Keeping in mind that most devices shipping with M.2-2242 SSDscome with pretty slow stock drives, Sabrent solution seems to be a viable product for such upgrades. All the while, Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 will also work in systems with a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, so the market for these drives is pretty wide.
Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 SSD 1 TB (SB-2142-1TB) SSD has a recommended price of $99.99, which is more or less in line with other 1 TB drives in the same form-factor and offering comparable performance. The SSD is currently available at Amazon for $101.
Sources: Tom's Hardware, Sabrent
Storage
Intel and Sandia National Labs Roll Out 1.15B Neuron “Hala Point” Neuromorphic Research System
While neuromorphic computing remains under research for the time being, efforts into the field have continued to grow over the years, as have the capabilities of the specialty chips that have been developed for this research. Following those lines, this morning Intel and Sandia National Laboratories are celebrating the deployment of the Hala Point neuromorphic system, which the two believe is the highest capacity system in the world. With 1.15 billion neurons overall, Hala Point is the largest deployment yet for Intel’s Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which was first announced at the tail-end of 2021.
The Hala Point system incorporates 1152 Loihi 2 processors, each of which is capable of simulating a million neurons. As noted back at the time of Loihi 2’s launch, these chips are actually rather small – just 31 mm2 per chip with 2.3 billion transistors each, as they’re built on the Intel 4 process (one of the only other Intel chips to do so, besides Meteor Lake). As a result, the complete system is similarly petite, taking up just 6 rack units of space (or as Sandia likes to compare it to, about the size of a microwave), with a power consumption of 2.6 kW. Now that it’s online, Hala Point has dethroned the SpiNNaker system as the largest disclosed neuromorphic system, offering admittedly just a slightly larger number of neurons at less than 3% of the power consumption of the 100 kW British system.
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
Hala Point will be replacing an older Intel neuromorphic system at Sandia, Pohoiki Springs, which is based on Intel’s first-generation Loihi chips. By comparison, Hala Point offers ten-times as many neurons, and upwards of 12x the performance overall,
Both neuromorphic systems have been procured by Sandia in order to advance the national lab’s research into neuromorphic computing, a computing paradigm that behaves like a brain. The central thought (if you’ll excuse the pun) is that by mimicking the wetware writing this article, neuromorphic chips can be used to solve problems that conventional processors cannot solve today, and that they can do so more efficiently as well.
Sandia, for its part, has said that it will be using the system to look at large-scale neuromorphic computing, with work operating on a scale well beyond Pohoiki Springs. With Hala Point offering a simulated neuron count very roughly on the level of complexity of an owl brain, the lab believes that a larger-scale system will finally enable them to properly exploit the properties of neuromorphic computing to solve real problems in fields such as device physics, computer architecture, computer science and informatics, moving well beyond the simple demonstrations initially achieved at a smaller scale.
One new focus from the lab, which in turn has caught Intel’s attention, is the applicability of neuromorphic computing towards AI inference. Because the neural networks themselves behind the current wave of AI systems are attempting to emulate the human brain, in a sense, there is an obvious degree of synergy with the brain-mimicking neuromorphic chips, even if the algorithms differ in some key respects. Still, with energy efficiency being one of the major benefits of neuromorphic computing, it’s pushed Intel to look into the matter further – and even build a second, Hala Point-sized system of their own.
According to Intel, in their research on Hala Point, the system has reached efficiencies as high as 15 TOPS-per-Watt at 8-bit precision, albeit while using 10:1 sparsity, making it more than competitive with current-generation commercial chips. As an added bonus to that efficiency, the neuromorphic systems don’t require extensive data processing and batching in advance, which is normally necessary to make efficient use of the high density ALU arrays in GPUs and GPU-like processors.
Perhaps the most interesting use case of all, however, is the potent... CPUs
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
Sabrent Launches Rocket Nano M.2-2242 SSD: Up to 5 GB/sec
Sabrent tends to get into news when it launches ultra-high-performance SSDs for enthusiast-grade desktops, but this week the company introduced a completely different type of product: a small form-factor M.2-2242 SSD aimed at Lenovo's Legion Go handheld and ultra-thin laptops that don't accomodate M.2-2280 drives. And even though it's not an enthusiast-grade drive, the Rocket Nano still boasts with quite decent performance and capacity.
The Sabrent Rocket Nano 2242 (SB-2142) drive is based on the Phison E27T platform, a PCIe 4.0 x4 controller that is that is designed for mainstream DRAM-less SSDs, and in the case of the Rocket Nano, is paired with 3D TLC memory. The SSD is available in a single 1TB configuration, and is rated for read speeds up to 5 GB/s. Interestingly, the Phison E27T controller itself is rated for read speeds up to 7 GB/s, so it appears that the petite Rocket Nano isn't making full use of the controller's performance.
Sabrent positions its Rocket Nano 2242 SSD as drives for upgrading Lenovo's Legion Go portable game console, select Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other M.2-2242-sized PCs that can't accomodate larger 2280 drives. Keeping in mind that most devices shipping with M.2-2242 SSDscome with pretty slow stock drives, Sabrent solution seems to be a viable product for such upgrades. All the while, Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 will also work in systems with a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, so the market for these drives is pretty wide.
Sabrent's Rocket Nano 2242 SSD 1 TB (SB-2142-1TB) SSD has a recommended price of $99.99, which is more or less in line with other 1 TB drives in the same form-factor and offering comparable performance. The SSD is currently available at Amazon for $101.
Sources: Tom's Hardware, Sabrent
Storage
![Rapidus Adds Chip Packaging Services to Plans for $32 Billion 2nm Fab <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21411/rapidus-adds-chip-packaging-services-to-plans-for-32b-2nm-fab"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21411/microsoft-azure-datacenter-custom-chip-processor-wafer-semiconductor-fab-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>To say that the global foundry market is booming right now would be an understatement. Demand for leading-edge process technologies driven by AI and HPC applications is unprecedented, and with Intel joining the contract chipmaking game, this market segment is once again becoming rather competitive as well. Yet, this is exactly the market segment that Rapidus, a foundry startup backed by the Japanese government and several major Japanese companies, is going to enter in 2027, when its first fab comes online, just a few years from now.</p>
<p>In a fresh update on the status of bringing up the company's first leading-edge fab, Rapidus has revealed that they are intending to get in to the chip packaging game as well. Once complete, the ¥5 trillion ($32 billion) fab will be offering both chip lithography on a 2nm node, as well as packaging services for chips produced within the facility – a notable distinction in an industry where, even if packaging isn't outsourced entirely (OSAT), it's still normally handled at dedicated facilities.</p>
<p>Ultimately, while the company wants to serve the same clients as TSMC, Samsung, and Intel Foundry, the firm plans to do things almost completely differently than its competitors in a bid to speed up chipmaking from finishing design to getting a working chip out of the fab.</p>
<p>"We are very proud of being Japanese," said Henri Richard, general manager and president of Rapidus's subsidiary in the U.S. "[…] I know that some people may be looking at this thinking [that] Japan is known for quality, attention to detail, but not necessarily for speed, or flexibility. But I will tell you that Atsuyoshi Koike (the head of Rapidus) is a very special executive. That is, he has all the quality of Japan, with a lot of American thinking. So he is quite a unique guy, and certainly extraordinarily focused on creating a company that will be extremely flexible and extremely quick on its feet."</p>
<h3>2nm Only, At First</h3>
<p>Perhaps the most significant difference between Rapidus and traditional foundries is that the company will offer only leading-edge manufacturing technologies to its clients: 2 nm in 2027 (phase 1) and then 1.4 nm in the future (phase 2). This is a stark contrast with other contract fabs, including Intel, which tend to offer their customers a full range of fabrication processes to land more clients and produce more chips. Apparently, Rapidus hopes that that there will be enough Japanese and American chip developers that are inclined to use its 2 nm fabrication process to produce their designs. With that said, the number of chip designers that are using the most advanced production node at any given time is relatively small – limited to large firms who need first-mover advantage and have the margins to justify taking the risk – so it remains to be seen whether Rapidus's business model becomes successful. The company believes it will, since the market of chips made on advanced nodes is growing rapidly.</p>
<p>"Until recently IDC was giving a an estimation of the 2nm and below market as about $80 billion and I think we are going to see soon a revision of the potential to $150 billion," said Richard. "[…] TSMC is the 800 pound gorilla in the space. Samsung is there and Intel is going to enter that space. But the market growth is so significant and the demand is so high, that it does not take a lot of market share for Rapidus to be successful. One of the things that gives me great comfort is that when I talk to our EDA partners, when I talk to our potential clients, it is obvious that the entire industry is looking for alternative supply from a fully independent foundry. There is a place for Samsung in this industry, there is a place for Intel in this industry, the industry is currently owned by TSMC. But another totally independent foundry is more than welcome by all of the ecosystem partners and by the customers. So, I feel really, really good about Rapidus's positioning."</p>
<p>Speaking of advanced process technologies, it is notable that Rapidus does not plan to use ASML's High-NA Twinscan EXE lithography scanners for 2 nm production. Instead, Rapidus is sticking to ASML's proven Low-NA scanners, which will reduce costs of Rapidus's fab, though it will entail usage of EUV double patterning, which brings up costs and lengthens the production cycle in other ways. Even with those trade-offs, <a href="https://www.semianalysis.com/p/asml-dilemma-high-na-euv-is-worse">SemiAnalysis analysts believe</a> that given the cost of High-NA EUV litho tools and halved imaging field, ... Semiconductors](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t2WK3pcGW3_iVZq7vHOu_aEVHUimiXudPq9LSFMp5WXhRcELIvRy7eX5I3QGdtysQZMYkOb-gQKTN6NSiYY6o2ncF1zB_XF-o6r4m2wbshjsMvH8T9yeIwf7sF-hQkOusxrmdgllv8bOh9Pal36s9thbNAqPZMXa8OqTCrLQ7cP_Yh08-7n1EF92xydtA6j7y76e8SAHLcvlCL8OL8byxqIw=w72-h72-p-k-no-nu)
Rapidus Adds Chip Packaging Services to Plans for $32 Billion 2nm Fab 
To say that the global foundry market is booming right now would be an understatement. Demand for leading-edge process technologies driven by AI and HPC applications is unprecedented, and with Intel joining the contract chipmaking game, this market segment is once again becoming rather competitive as well. Yet, this is exactly the market segment that Rapidus, a foundry startup backed by the Japanese government and several major Japanese companies, is going to enter in 2027, when its first fab comes online, just a few years from now.
In a fresh update on the status of bringing up the company's first leading-edge fab, Rapidus has revealed that they are intending to get in to the chip packaging game as well. Once complete, the ¥5 trillion ($32 billion) fab will be offering both chip lithography on a 2nm node, as well as packaging services for chips produced within the facility – a notable distinction in an industry where, even if packaging isn't outsourced entirely (OSAT), it's still normally handled at dedicated facilities.
Ultimately, while the company wants to serve the same clients as TSMC, Samsung, and Intel Foundry, the firm plans to do things almost completely differently than its competitors in a bid to speed up chipmaking from finishing design to getting a working chip out of the fab.
"We are very proud of being Japanese," said Henri Richard, general manager and president of Rapidus's subsidiary in the U.S. "[…] I know that some people may be looking at this thinking [that] Japan is known for quality, attention to detail, but not necessarily for speed, or flexibility. But I will tell you that Atsuyoshi Koike (the head of Rapidus) is a very special executive. That is, he has all the quality of Japan, with a lot of American thinking. So he is quite a unique guy, and certainly extraordinarily focused on creating a company that will be extremely flexible and extremely quick on its feet."
2nm Only, At First
Perhaps the most significant difference between Rapidus and traditional foundries is that the company will offer only leading-edge manufacturing technologies to its clients: 2 nm in 2027 (phase 1) and then 1.4 nm in the future (phase 2). This is a stark contrast with other contract fabs, including Intel, which tend to offer their customers a full range of fabrication processes to land more clients and produce more chips. Apparently, Rapidus hopes that that there will be enough Japanese and American chip developers that are inclined to use its 2 nm fabrication process to produce their designs. With that said, the number of chip designers that are using the most advanced production node at any given time is relatively small – limited to large firms who need first-mover advantage and have the margins to justify taking the risk – so it remains to be seen whether Rapidus's business model becomes successful. The company believes it will, since the market of chips made on advanced nodes is growing rapidly.
"Until recently IDC was giving a an estimation of the 2nm and below market as about $80 billion and I think we are going to see soon a revision of the potential to $150 billion," said Richard. "[…] TSMC is the 800 pound gorilla in the space. Samsung is there and Intel is going to enter that space. But the market growth is so significant and the demand is so high, that it does not take a lot of market share for Rapidus to be successful. One of the things that gives me great comfort is that when I talk to our EDA partners, when I talk to our potential clients, it is obvious that the entire industry is looking for alternative supply from a fully independent foundry. There is a place for Samsung in this industry, there is a place for Intel in this industry, the industry is currently owned by TSMC. But another totally independent foundry is more than welcome by all of the ecosystem partners and by the customers. So, I feel really, really good about Rapidus's positioning."
Speaking of advanced process technologies, it is notable that Rapidus does not plan to use ASML's High-NA Twinscan EXE lithography scanners for 2 nm production. Instead, Rapidus is sticking to ASML's proven Low-NA scanners, which will reduce costs of Rapidus's fab, though it will entail usage of EUV double patterning, which brings up costs and lengthens the production cycle in other ways. Even with those trade-offs, SemiAnalysis analysts believe that given the cost of High-NA EUV litho tools and halved imaging field, ... Semiconductors
![TSMC to Expand Specialty Capacity by 50%, Introduce 4nm N4e Low-Power Node <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21397/tsmc-to-expand-specialty-capacity-by-50-introduce-4nm-lowpower-node"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21397/tsmc-semiconductor-fab-wafer-1-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>With all the new fabs being built in Germany and Japan, as well as the expansion of production capacity in China, TSMC is planning to extend its production capacity for specialty technologies by 50% by 2027. As disclosed by the company during its European Technology Symposium this week, TSMC expects to need to not only convert existing capacity to meet demands for specialty processes, but even build new (greenfield) fab space just for this purpose. One of the big drivers for this demand, in turn, will be TSMC's next specialty node: N4e, a 4nm-class ultra-low-power production node.</p>
<p>"In the past, we always did the review phase [for upcoming fabs], but for the first time in a long time at TSMC, we started building greenfield fab that will address the future specialty technology requirements," said Dr. Kevin Zhang, Senior Vice President, Business Development and Overseas Operations Office, at the event. "In the next four to five years, we actually going to grow our specialty capacity by up to 1.5x. In doing so we actually expanding the footprint of our manufacturing network to improve the resiliency of the overall fab supply chain."</p>
<p>On top of its well-known major logic nodes like N5 and N3E, TSMC also offers a suite of specialty nodes for applications such as power semiconductors, mixed analog I/O, and ultra-low-power applications (e.g. IoT). These are typically based on the company's trailing manufacturing processes, but regardless of the underlying technology, the capacity demand for these nodes is growing right alongside the demand for TSMC's major logic nodes. All of which has required TSMC to reevaluate how they go about planning for capacity on their specialty nodes.</p>
<p>TSMC's expansion strategy in the recent years has pursued several goals. One of them has been to build new fabs outside of Taiwan; another has been to generally expand production capacity to meet future demand for all types of process technologies – which is why the company is building up capacity for specialty nodes.</p>
<p>At present, TSMC's most advanced specialty node is N6e, an N7/N6 variant that supports operating voltages between 0.4V and 0.9V. With N4e, TSMC is looking at voltages below 0.4V. Though for now, TSMC is not disclosing much in the way of technical details for the planned node; given the company's history here, we expect they'll have more to talk about next year once the new process is ready.</p>
</p> Semiconductors](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ue6KRkKe_10xkiePol99rhkrBQyFfvz7n-B77gMoI9ruN61H94K-qb9ffRju4mh7neH21gxg84832SpMKcbEStKYh_mn1-2PMIYCgM59ojbIk1bdDwFuZBLYsBTd6nIO9ILuFMFzYAYvhqAvix6dCIxba-WMVAgw=w72-h72-p-k-no-nu)
Report: MediaTek Working on Arm-Based Processor for Windows PCs 
As Qualcomm's exclusivity for Arm-powered processors for Windows PCs is reportedly coming to its end, other chipmakers are getting ready to offer their Arm-based system-on-chips for Windows computers. And, according to a new report from Reuters, MediaTek will be among the companies jumping into the Windows-on-Arm field, with plans to launch their first PC processor late next year.
MediaTek's system-on-chip for Windows PCs will rely on Arm's 'ready-made designs,' according to Reuters. Which in turn hints that MediaTek would be using Arm's compute sub-system (CSS) for client PCs, a building block designed to significantly speed up development of SoCs.
With the vauge nature of the Reuters report, however, which version of Arm's IP MediaTek might be using remains unclear, and the answer to that will largely hinge on timing. Arm refreshes its client cores and IP offerings yearly – typically announcing them to the public in May – with finished chips rolling out as early as later in the year. So depending on just how late in the year MediaTek is planning to launch their chip, the company has a large enough window to potentially use either the current 2024 client designs, or next year's 2025 designs.
For reference, Arm's 2024 CSS for client systems is quite powerful on its own. It includes two ultra-high-performance Arm Cortex-X925 cores (each with up to 3MB L2 cache and clock speeds over 3.60 GHz, supporting SVE and SVE2), four high-performance Cortex-A725 cores, two energy-efficient Cortex-A520 cores, and an Immortalis-G925 graphics processor. And, of course, MediaTek has the expertise to skip Arm's CSS and build their own bespoke designs as well, if that's what they'd prefer.
Overall, the latest client designs from Arm can accommodate up to 14 CPU cores – Arm intentionally leaves headroom for designs to be scaled-up for laptops – which would make for quite a formidable chip. But the PC SoC market has no shortage of capable contenders with their own designs; besides Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors, MediaTek would also be going up against the latest designs from Intel and AMD. All of whom are planning to make big plays for the mobile PC market in the next several months. So MediaTek will need to make a serious effort if their effort to jump into the PC SoC market are to succeed.
Since 2016, Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm to bring Arm's processor architecture, which is widely used in smartphones, to Windows PCs. Qualcomm has an exclusive agreement to supply these chips for the next several months (the exact timing remains unclear), after which other designers like MediaTek can enter the market. Qualcomm, for its part, has benefited greatly from collaborating with Microsoft, so it will be interesting to see if Microsoft extends a similar hand out to other Arm chip makers.
Ultimately, the market for Arm PC SoCs has the potential to get crowded quickly. According to previous reports from Reuters, both AMD and NVIDIA are also developing Arm-based chips for Windows. So if all of those projects come to fruition, there could potentially be several Arm SoCs available to PC manufacturers around the same time. All of which would be a massive change from the past 20 years of the PC, where Intel and AMD have been the entire market.
Both MediaTek and Microsoft have declined to comment on the ongoing developments, the news agency states.
CPUs
NVIDIA Closes Above $135, Becomes World’s Most Valuable Company 
Thanks to the success of the burgeoning market for AI accelerators, NVIDIA has been on a tear this year. And the only place that’s even more apparent than the company’s rapidly growing revenues is in the company’s stock price and market capitalization. After breaking into the top 5 most valuable companies only earlier this year, NVIDIA has reached the apex of Wall Street, closing out today as the world’s most valuable company.
With a closing price of $135.58 on a day that saw NVIDIA’s stock pop up another 3.5%, NVIDIA has topped both Microsoft and Apple in valuation, reaching a market capitalization of $3.335 trillion. This follows a rapid rise in the company’s stock price, which has increased by 47% in the last month alone – particularly on the back of NVIDIA’s most recent estimates-beating earnings report – as well as a recent 10-for-1 stock split. And looking at the company’s performance over a longer time period, NVIDIA’s stock jumped a staggering 218% over the last year, or a mere 3,474% over the last 5 years.
NVIDIA’s ascension continues a trend over the last several years of tech companies all holding the top spots in the market capitalization rankings. Though this is the first time in quite a while that the traditional tech leaders of Apple and Microsoft have been pushed aside.
| Market Capitalization Rankings | ||
| Market Cap | Stock Price | |
| NVIDIA | $3.335T | $135.58 |
| Microsoft | $3.317T | $446.34 |
| Apple | $3.285T | $214.29 |
| Alphabet | $2.170T | $176.45 |
| Amazon | $1.902T | $182.81 |
Driving the rapid growth of NVIDIA and its market capitalization has been demand for AI accelerators from NVIDIA, particularly the company’s server-grade H100, H200, and GH200 accelerators for AI training. As the demand for these products has spiked, NVIDIA has been scaling up accordingly, repeatedly beating market expectations for how many of the accelerators they can ship – and what price they can charge. And despite all that growth, orders for NVIDIA’s high-end accelerators are still backlogged, underscoring how NVIDIA still isn’t meeting the full demands of hyperscalers and other enterprises.
Consequently, NVIDIA’s stock price and market capitalization have been on a tear on the basis of these future expectations. With a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 76.7 – more than twice that of Microsoft or Apple – NVIDIA is priced more like a start-up than a 30-year-old tech company. But then it goes without saying that most 30-year-old tech companies aren’t tripling their revenue in a single year, placing NVIDIA in a rather unique situation at this time.
Like the stock market itself, market capitalizations are highly volatile. And historically speaking, it’s far from guaranteed that NVIDIA will be able to hold the top spot for long, never mind day-to-day fluctuations. NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft’s valuations are all within $50 billion (1.%) of each other, so for the moment at least, it’s still a tight race between all three companies. But no matter what happens from here, NVIDIA gets the exceptionally rare claim of having been the most valuable company in the world at some point.
(Carousel image courtesy MSN Money)
GPUs
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Intel and Sandia National Labs Roll Out 1.15B Neuron “Hala Point” Neuromorphic Research System
While neuromorphic computing remains under research for the time being, efforts into the field have continued to grow over the years, as have the capabilities of the specialty chips that have been developed for this research. Following those lines, this morning Intel and Sandia National Laboratories are celebrating the deployment of the Hala Point neuromorphic system, which the two believe is the highest capacity system in the world. With 1.15 billion neurons overall, Hala Point is the largest deployment yet for Intel’s Loihi 2 neuromorphic chip, which was first announced at the tail-end of 2021.
The Hala Point system incorporates 1152 Loihi 2 processors, each of which is capable of simulating a million neurons. As noted back at the time of Loihi 2’s launch, these chips are actually rather small – just 31 mm2 per chip with 2.3 billion transistors each, as they’re built on the Intel 4 process (one of the only other Intel chips to do so, besides Meteor Lake). As a result, the complete system is similarly petite, taking up just 6 rack units of space (or as Sandia likes to compare it to, about the size of a microwave), with a power consumption of 2.6 kW. Now that it’s online, Hala Point has dethroned the SpiNNaker system as the largest disclosed neuromorphic system, offering admittedly just a slightly larger number of neurons at less than 3% of the power consumption of the 100 kW British system.
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
Hala Point will be replacing an older Intel neuromorphic system at Sandia, Pohoiki Springs, which is based on Intel’s first-generation Loihi chips. By comparison, Hala Point offers ten-times as many neurons, and upwards of 12x the performance overall,
Both neuromorphic systems have been procured by Sandia in order to advance the national lab’s research into neuromorphic computing, a computing paradigm that behaves like a brain. The central thought (if you’ll excuse the pun) is that by mimicking the wetware writing this article, neuromorphic chips can be used to solve problems that conventional processors cannot solve today, and that they can do so more efficiently as well.
Sandia, for its part, has said that it will be using the system to look at large-scale neuromorphic computing, with work operating on a scale well beyond Pohoiki Springs. With Hala Point offering a simulated neuron count very roughly on the level of complexity of an owl brain, the lab believes that a larger-scale system will finally enable them to properly exploit the properties of neuromorphic computing to solve real problems in fields such as device physics, computer architecture, computer science and informatics, moving well beyond the simple demonstrations initially achieved at a smaller scale.
One new focus from the lab, which in turn has caught Intel’s attention, is the applicability of neuromorphic computing towards AI inference. Because the neural networks themselves behind the current wave of AI systems are attempting to emulate the human brain, in a sense, there is an obvious degree of synergy with the brain-mimicking neuromorphic chips, even if the algorithms differ in some key respects. Still, with energy efficiency being one of the major benefits of neuromorphic computing, it’s pushed Intel to look into the matter further – and even build a second, Hala Point-sized system of their own.
According to Intel, in their research on Hala Point, the system has reached efficiencies as high as 15 TOPS-per-Watt at 8-bit precision, albeit while using 10:1 sparsity, making it more than competitive with current-generation commercial chips. As an added bonus to that efficiency, the neuromorphic systems don’t require extensive data processing and batching in advance, which is normally necessary to make efficient use of the high density ALU arrays in GPUs and GPU-like processors.
Perhaps the most interesting use case of all, however, is the potent... CPUs
A Single Loihi 2 Chip (31 mm2)
XPG Demos "Nia" Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM
With the rise of the handheld gaming PC market, we've seen PC vendors and their partners toy with a number of tricks and tweaks to improve improve framerates in games, with some of their latest efforts on display at this year's Computex trade show. Perhaps the most interesting find thus far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who is demoing their prototype "Nia" handheld PC, which uses eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to further improve their rendering performance.
For those unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics technique that is sometimes used to boost performance in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications by taking advantage of how human vision works. Typically, humans can only perceive detailed imagery in the relatively small central area of our vision called the fovea, while our peripheral vision is much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in turn, exploits this by using real-time eye tracking to determine where the user is looking, and then rendering just that area in high/full resolution, while rendering the peripheral areas in lower resolution. The net result is that only a fraction of the screen is rendered at full detail, which cuts down on the total amount of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited devices.
As stated before, this technology is sometimes used in high-end AR/VR headsets, where high resolution displays are placed mere inches from one's face. This ends up being an ideal use case for the technique, since at those distances, only a small fraction of the screen is within the fovea.
Using dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, on the other hand, is a more novel application. All of the same visual principles apply, but the resolutions at play are lower, and the screen is farther from the users' eyes. This makes a handheld device a less ideal use case, at least on paper, as a larger portion of the screen is going to be in the fovea, and thus will need to be rendered at full resolution. None the less, it will be interesting to see how XPG's efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is beneficial enough for handheld PCs. As we sometimes see with trade show demos, not everything makes it out of the prototype stage.
According to a press release put out by ADATA ahead of the trade show, the eye tracking technology is being provided by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based approach runs on top of standard webcams, rather than requiring IR cameras. So the camera hardware itself should be pretty straight-forward.
Foveated rendering aside, XPG is making sure that the Nia won't be a one-trick pony. The handheld's other major claim to fame is its hardware swappability. The prototype handheld not only features a removable M.2-2230 SSD, but the company is also taking advantage of the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 memory module standard to introduce removable DRAM. Via a hatch in the back of the handheld, device owners would be able to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for higher capacity versions. This would give the handheld an additional degree of future-proofness over current handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down memory.
Rounding out the package, the current prototype is based on an AMD's Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used across both of the company's current mobile lines (Ryzen Mobile 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). Meanwhile, the unit's display is adjustable, allowing it to be angled away from the body of the handheld.
Assuming all goes well with the prototype, XPG aims to release a finished product in 2025.
ADATA
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