March 2021

Famous overclocker Hicookie has achieved the highest frequency overclock so far on Intel’s new flagship Core i9-11900K. With 5 of the processor’s 8 cores deactivated, he was able to use that extra headroom to hit a whopping 7.314-GHz on the first core with help from liquid nitrogen cooling and a high-end Aorus motherboard. Hicookie is sponsored by Gigabyte, which issued a press release a few hours after the record posted to HWBot, stating that he used the Z590 Aorus Tachyon motherboard to reach this clock speed. Intended to compete with the best motherboards, the Tachyon launched last month but it…

Intel officially positions its Rocket Lake CPUs as the best CPUs for gaming today, yet like all desktop chips it will inevitably be used for a wide variety of applications. Nonetheless, Asus this week made a surprising move and introduced a small form-factor low-power desktop powered by Intel’s latest Rocket Lake CPU.  Measuring 175×175×42 mm, the Asus Mini PC PB62 can be equipped with Intel’s Rocket Lake processor with up to eight cores as well as a 35W or 65W TDP, up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory, two M.2-2280 SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 x4 interface, and one 2.5-inch HDD. Since…

Here’s some bad news: Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told Yahoo Finance Live today that he thinks it could take “a couple years” for the ongoing chip shortage to finally end. Here’s some worse news: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger agreed with Robbins. “We can’t build fabs overnight,” he told Yahoo, “it takes a couple of years to get built up.” This isn’t the first we’ve heard about the shortage lasting more than a few quarters. AMD CEO Lisa Su issued a similar warning in January when she said the company simply couldn’t keep pace with the higher-than-expected demand for its products….

It appears that at least someone is sold on Nvidia’s Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) offerings. Hut 8 Mining Corp., one of the world’s largest and oldest Bitcoin mining companies, has put in an order worth $30 million for Nvidia’s CMP graphics cards. Nvidia will start delivering the order starting May 2021, and Hut 8 Mining Corp. plans to get everything up and running by the summer. With the purchase, Hut 8 Mining Corp. hopes to increase its mining operations substantially. The company estimates a collective performance up to 1,600 Gigahash. The incorporation of Nvidia’s CMP devices will also allow Hut…

Marc Liu, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., believes that it is economically unrealistic to expand production of semiconductors in the U.S. and Europe as this will create excessive capacity that will generate losses. TSMC has enough capacity currently  to serve demand for chips, Liu said. There are less than a dozen of companies and several countries on the planet that can make chips using advanced process technologies such as those found in the best CPUs. Historically, makers of semiconductors have built their multi-billion fabs in countries that had enough qualified workforce and could offer incentives to those willing to…