Thread: Anandtech News

Today, we are taking a look at the Kinesis TKO Tournament Gaming keyboard, a 60% mechanical keyboard designed with gamers in mind. Looking to tap into the market for gamers who are after a small keyboard designed for portability and single-hand gaming ergonomics, the company has designed a 60% gaming keyboard that is also something gamers can easily take with them to use on other computers and at torunaments, all without requring any additional software.

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The Call for Writers is something of an annual tradition over here at AnandTech. As anyone who follows the site knows very well, the list of things we have to review/cover easily exceeds our available time. So the call for writers gives us a chance to find new talent and new opportunities to grow, be it into new coverage areas entirely or just covering more of the existing products our readers have come to enjoy over the years.
The ultimate purpose of the Call for Writers is to find new talent. To continue to grow and improve our content, we need your help. We're looking for writers with a true passion for the technology we cover, a deep understanding of what's out there and a thirst for more knowledge.
Like many other publications, the coronavirus pandemic over the past year has thrown a wrench in our coverage plans – both in terms of content and staffing. But now that we're finally starting to turn the corner on the pandemic, we're preparing to resume staffing up, expanding our coverage, and training the next generation of AnandTech editors.
To that end, we're looking for contributors to help out both with reviews as well as our short-to-medium form Pipeline coverage. The areas in particular we're looking for help with are listed below:

• News/Pipeline (PC)
• News/Pipeline (Mobile)
• Networking
• Storage (Inc. Solid State)
• GPUs (US-only)
• Systems/Laptops (US-only)
• Mobile/Smartphones (US/Canada & Europe)
• Memory
• Community Manager (US-only)
• Monitors
• Home Automation/IoT
• Professional Graphics/GPU

If you find yourself at the intersection of knowledge and passion about any of those areas, and have some time to contribute, you're exactly what we're looking for. These are paid, part-time positions that we're looking to fill, with most positions open on a world-wide basis, and certain positions primed for a quick promotion to full-time. What I need is a writing sample that demonstrates your ability to talk about any one of these topics. Your sample can be in the form of a review, a pipeline post or an analysis piece - it should be something that looks like it would fit in on AnandTech.
Once you've produced it, send it on over to callforwriters@anandtech.com. Please also include a description of what subject(s) you would be interested in writing about, and some basic information about your background and where you're located. We'll read through all samples, but we can't guarantee a reply due to the sheer volume of submissions we tend to receive. If we like what you've sent and there's a potential fit on the team, we'll be in touch.
And even if we aren't, please don't hesitate in trying again next year; anyone who has applied before is welcome to apply again. 2019 was a banner year for us, for example, and we had many more good submissions than we could realistically respond to.
I'll conclude this post with a passage from our About page:

In the early days of technology reporting on the web the focus was almost exclusively on depth. We had a new medium for content that didn't come with the same restrictions as more traditional forms. We could present as much data as we felt was necessary and we could do it quicker.
As the web grew, so did the approach to gaining readership. In many cases, publishers learned from the tips and tricks of more traditional media to growing their audience. The focus shifted away from ultimate understanding of what was being reported, to producing content significantly motivated by increasing traffic, or revenue, or both. Thorough observations were out; sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting were in.
While I believe it's definitely easier to produce content by going this route, I don't believe it's the only way to build a well read website.

If the above resonates with you and you'd like to help by being a part of something different, I'd encourage you to submit a writing sample.
Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How old do I need to be to work for AnandTech?
A: You need to be old enough to legally work in your country of residence without significant restriction. Otherwise we have no specific requirements so long as you can do the job well. Anand started the site at 14, after all...
Q: Do I need to be located in the United States to work for AnandTech?
A: Some positions do require that you be in the US for logistical reasons, and those specific positions are noted. However unless otherwise noted, most positions are open on a world-wide basis.
Q: Do I need to supply my own products for testing or contacts at companies? (i.e. do I need to be an insider?)
A: No. Assuming for the moment you have a computer to write on, then you already have the most important piece of equipment that you need. Meanwhile you will need some knowledge of the field at hand, but we will introduce you to the people you need to know for your position at AnandTech.
Q: Do I need a computer or engineering-related degree to work at AnandTech?
A: We are first and foremost looking for people with a passion to learn, and the knack to make it happen, regardless of experience or qualifications. There's a certain degree of baseline knowledge needed for any given position, but if you can read existing AnandTech articles then you're already half-way there.
Q: Why would I want to work for AnandTech?
A: Besides offering a paying job, of course, working for AnandTech is a chance to look at the cutting-edge of hardware, inform an audience of millions about what's new in the world, and help shape the tech industry for the better. Past that, over the last 24 years many of AnandTech's writers have gone on to take important roles in (or adjacent to) the tech industry, spanning everything from developing the next generation of products at companies like Samsung and Apple, to heading up investment funds, developing electric cars, and even shooting rockets into space!
Q: Is there a submission deadline?
A: We have a tentative end point for May 10th

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For TSMC, being the world's largest foundry with nearly 500 customers has its peculiarities. On the one hand, the company can serve almost any client with almost any requirements. On the other hand, it has to stay ahead of everyone else both in terms of capacity and in terms of technology. As far as capacity is concerned, TSMC is unchallenged and is not going to be for years to come. As for fabrication technologies, TSMC has recently reiterated that it's confident that its N2, N3, and N4 processes will be available on time and will be more advanced than competing nodes.
Confidence

Early this year TSMC significantly boosted its 2021 CapEx budget to a $25 – $28 billion range, further increasing it to around $30 billion as a part of its three-year plan to spend $100 billion on manufacturing capacities and R&D.

About 80% of TSMC's $30 billion capital budget this year will be spent on expanding capacities for advanced technologies, such as 3nm, 4nm/5nm, and 6nm/7nm. Analysts from China Renaissance Securities believe that most of the money on advanced nodes will be used to expand TSMC's N5 capacity to 110,000 ~ 120,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM) by the end of the year. Meanwhile, TSMC said that 10% of its CapEx will be allocated for advanced packaging and mask making, whereas another 10% will be spent on specialty technologies (which includes tailored versions of mature nodes).
TMSC's the most recent CapEx hikes announcements were made after Intel announced its IDM 2.0 strategy (that involves in-house production, outsourcing, and foundry operations) and to a large degree reaffirms TMSC's confidence in both short-term and long-term future even ahead of intensified competition.
"As a leading pure-play foundry, TSMC has never been short on competition in our 30-plus-year history, yet we know how to compete," said C.C. Wei, president and CEO of TSMC, at a recent conference call with analysts and investors. "We will continue to focus on delivering technology leadership, manufacturing excellence, and earning our customers' trust. The last point, customers' trust, is fairly important because we do not have internal products that compete with customer."

Advertised PPA Improvements of New Process Technologies Data announced during conference calls, events, press briefings and press releases
	TSMC
N7 vs 16FF+	N7 vs N10	N7P vs N7	N7+ vs N7	N5 vs N7	N5P vs N5	N4 vs N5	N3 vs N5
Power	-60%	37%	-	~17%	0.55x -45% (1.8x)	-	?	0.58x -42% (1.7x)
Volume Manufacturing	2018	2018	2019	Q2 2019	Q2 2020	2021	2022	H2 2022

N5 Gaining Customers

TSMC was the first company to start high volume manufacturing (HVM) of chips using its N5 (5 nm) process technology in mid-2020.

Initially, the node was used solely for TSMC's alpha customers — Apple and HiSilicon. Shipments to the latter ceased on September 14, which left all of the leading-edge capacity to Apple. By now, more customers are ready with their N5 designs, so the adoption of this node is growing. Meanwhile, TSMC says more customers are planning to use N5 family of technologies (including N5, N5P, and N4) than it expected just several months ago.
"N5 is already in its second year of volume production with yield better than our original plan," said Mr. Wei. N5 demand continues to be strong, driven by smartphone and HPC applications, and we expect N5 to contribute around 20% of our wafer revenue in 2021. […] In fact, we are seeing stronger engagement with more customers on 5 nm and 3 nm [versus 7 nm at similar stages]. The engagement is so strong that we have to really prepare the capacity for it."
For TSMC, HPC applications include many different types of products, including AI accelerators, CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, NPUs, and video gaming SoCs, just to name a few. Since they're just a contract manufacturer, TSMC does not disclose what kinds of products it makes using one node or another (we do know that it builds the Apple A14 SoC for smartphones/tablets/STBs as well as the Apple M1 SoC for PCs and tablets), but the very fact that adoption of N5 is growing in the HPC segment is important.
"We expect demand for our N5 family to continue to grow in the next several years, driven by the robust demand for smartphone and HPC applications," the head of TSMC said. "We expect to see HPC, not only in the first wave, but in additional waves of demand to support our leading [N5] node in the future, actually."
It is not particularly surprising that TSMC's N5 is gaining market share among adopters of leading-edge technologies. Analysts from China Renaissance estimate that TSMC's N5 features a transistor density of around 170 million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm²), which if accurate, makes it the densest technology available today. By contrast, Samsung's Foundry's 5LPE can boast with about 125 MTr/mm² ~130 MTr/mm², whereas Intel's 10 nm features an approximately 100 MTr/mm² density.
In the coming weeks TSMC is set to start making chips using a performance-enhanced version of its N5 technology called N5P that promises to increase frequencies by up to 5% or reduce power consumption by up to 10% (at the same complexity). The technology offers a seamless migration path for customers without requiring significant engineering resource investment or longer design cycle time, so anyone with an N5 design can use N5P instead. For example, early adopters of N5 could re-use their IP for their N5P chips.
N4: On Track for Next Year

TSMC's N5 family of technologies also includes evolutionary N4 process that will enter risk production later this year and will be used for mass production in 2022.

This technology is set to provide further PPA (power, performance, area) advantages over N5, but keep the same design rules, design infrastructure, SPICE simulation programs, and IPs. Meanwhile, since N4 further extends usage of EUV lithography tools, it also reduces mask counts, process steps, risks, and costs.
"N4 will leverage the strong foundation of N5 to further extend our 5 nm family," said Mr. Wei. "N4 is a straightforward migration from N5 with compatible design rules while providing further performance, power and density enhancement for the next wave of 5-nanometer products. N4 risk production is targeted for second half this year and volume production in 2022."
By the time N4 enters HVM in 2022, TSMC will have about two years of experience with N5 and three years of experience with EUV. So expectations are that yields will be high and the performance variability promises to be low.
But even as cutting-edge as N4 is slated to be, it's not going to be the most advanced fabrication technology that TSMC will offer next year.
N3: Due in H2 2022

In 2022, the world's largest contract maker of chips will roll out its brand-new N3 manufacturing process, which will keep using FinFET transistors, but is expected to offer the whole package of PPA improvements.

In particular, versus their current N5 process, TSMC's N3 promises to increase performance by 10% – 15% (at the same power and complexity) or reduce power consumption by 25% – 30% (at the same performance and complexity). All the while the new node will also improve transistor density by 1.1 ~ 1.7 times depending on the structures (1.1X for analog, 1.2X for SRAM, 1.7X for logic).
N3 will further increase the number of EUV layers, but will keep using DUV lithography. Also, since the technology keeps using FinFET, it will not require a new generation of electronic design automation (EDA) tools redesigned from scratch and development of all-new IPs, which might become a competitive advantage over Samsung Foundry's GAAFET/MBCFET-based 3GAE.
"N3 will be another full node stride from our N5 and will use FinFET transistor structure to deliver the best technology maturity, performance, and cost for our customers," said Mr. Wei. "Our N3 technology development is on track with good progress. We continue to see a much higher level of customer engagement for both HPC and smartphone applications at N3 as compared with N5 and N7."
In fact, TSMC's claims about growing customer engagement with N3 indirectly telegraphs its high expectations for N3.
"[N3] risk production is scheduled in 2021," said TSMC's CEO. "The volume production is targeted in second half of 2022. Our N3 technology will be the most advanced foundry technology in both PPA and transistor technology, when it is introduced. […] We are confident that both our [N5] and [N3] will be large and long-lasting nodes for TSMC."
Beyond N3

Gate-all-around FETs (GAAFETs) are still a part of TSMC's development roadmap. The company is expected to use a new kind of transistors with its 'post-N3' technology (presumably N2). In fact, the company is in path-finding mode for next generations of materials and transistor structures that will be used many years down the road.

"For advanced CMOS logic, TSMC’s 3nm and 2nm CMOS nodes are progressing nicely through the pipeline," the company said in its annual report recently. "In addition, TSMC's reinforced exploratory R&D work is focused on beyond-2nm node and on areas such as 3D transistors, new memory and low-R interconnect, which are on track to establish a solid foundation to feed into many technology platforms.
It is noteworthy that TSMC is expanding capacity for R&D operations at Fab 12, where N3, N2, and more advanced nodes are currently being researched and developed.
Summary

Overall, TSMC is confident that its "everyone's foundry" strategy will enable it grow further in terms of scale, market share, and sales. The company also expects to maintain its technology leadership going forward, which is pivotal for growth.
"For the full year of 2021, we now forecast […] foundry industry growth [at] about 16%," said Wendell Huang, CFO of TSMC, at a recent conference call with analysts and investors. "For TSMC, we are confident we can outperform the foundry revenue growth and grow by around 20% in 2021."

The company has a strong technology roadmap and it is set to continue introducing improved leading-edge nodes every year, thus offering its customers improvements at a predictable cadence.
TSMC knows how to compete against rivals with leading-edge nodes as well as makers of chips focused on specialty process technologies, so it does not see Intel Foundry Services (IFS) as an immediate threat especially because the blue giant is going primarily after leading-edge and advanced nodes.
Financial analysts generally share TSMC's optimism mainly because of the expectation that the company's N3 and N5 nodes are not going to have competitors offering similar transistor densities and wafer starts.
"Following Intel's announced foundry comeback in March, TSMC’s willingness to set a 3-year $100 billion CapEx/R&D investment plan, starting from 2021, indicates its confidence to widen its foundry leadership," Szeho Ng, an analyst with China Renaissance Securities. "We see TSMC’s strategic value rising with N3/N5: strong N5 tape-out activities from HPC/smartphone applications and more N3 client engagement vs N5/N7 at similar stages."

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Today Arm is announcing the details on the new Neoverse V1 and N2 CPU microarchitectures, impressive at +50% and +40% IPC, as well as the new CMN-700 mesh network. 128 N2 cores on 5nm with DDR5 in 2022? Arm says so!

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The fervor of cryptocoin mining has consumed a large part of the semiconductor industry of late. The demands for high performance silicon to mine these virtual assets with value is one factor in a global shortage of available parts for computers, automobiles, defense, research, and other industries. One consistent element to cryptocoin mining over the last decade is the prevalence of hijacked machines and devices through malware, commonly known as botnets. Previously these armies of machines were co-opted to perform bandwidth attacks against various targets, but they have also been used for their compute resources – mining coins that have value for those that control the botnet. This week Intel and Microsoft are announcing an additional layer of protection against these sorts of attacks.



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The combination of Intel’s ability to drive 10nm product onto the shelves coupled with silicon supply chain shortages has put into question exactly what might be coming into the market later this year on the client side of the business. A few weeks ago Intel stated that across the company five CPU platforms would be coming to market in 2021: Rocket Lake, Jasper Lake, Ice Lake Xeon, Alder Lake, and the Tiger Lake-H series of processors. Tiger Lake-H at 45W+ will come to market in Q2, however AnandTech has learned and confirmed that later in 2021 Intel will also be launching a refresh of its notebook 15-28W Tiger Lake-U processors as well.

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Among the items touched upon by AMD in today’s earnings release, CEO Dr. Lisa Su’s prepared remarks included a brief update on AMD’s GPU product roadmap.
For those of you wondering where AMD’s mobile Radeon RX 6000 (Navi 2x) parts are, you shouldn’t be waiting too much longer. At the start of this year AMD announced that RDNA2 mobile products would be launching in the first half of the year, and on today’s call, Dr. Su has confirmed that this is still the case. At this point the company is expecting the first notebooks using its mobile-suitable GPUs to launch later in the quarter – which means that the hardware itself should be shipping to OEMs and ODMs soon.
Overall, AMD is continuing to ramp production of GPUs in what continues to be a tight environment for 7nm production capacity at TSMC, as well as the packaging AMD’s advanced chips require. Today’s financial release didn’t include any further information on when additional (mid-range) desktop video cards would launch, but those are expected on a similar time scale as AMD’s mobile parts.

AMD CES 2021

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As Q1 earnings season continues to roll along, on deck today is AMD, who is getting the privilege of reporting some very positive earnings for the first three months of 2021. Firing on all cylinders – CPU, GPU, and semi-custom – AMD’s numerous product launches over the last several months are now paying major dividends for the company, as everything AMD is in high demand. And indeed, AMD is the poster child for the current chip crunch, as the company is making everything it can and even after selling over 3.4 billion dollars’ worth of chips in Q1, it’s still not enough.
For the first quarter of 2021, AMD reported $3.45B in revenue, making for another staggering jump over a year-ago quarter for AMD, when the company made just $1.79B in what was their best first quarter in a decade. For 2021 it’s now all about setting (and beating) records for the company, as evidenced by the 93% leap in year-over-year revenue.



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The latest flagship desktop processor from Intel, the Core i9-11900K, has been out for over a month, and we've been busy putting numerous Z590 motherboards on tests to see how some of the motherboard options stack up against each other. Up for analysis today is GIGABYTE's Z590 Aorus Master, which is one of its premium models and has plenty of high-quality features and controllers onboard. Based on the Aorus gaming series, the Z590 Aorus Master includes 10 gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, three M.2 slots, and large power delivery. From the specifications, it's a behemoth but with an attractive price tag when compared to the flagship Z590 offerings.

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NVIDIA this morning has released a new driver set for their GeForce cards, version 466.27. And though it’s primarily for next week’s release of Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition and a couple of other games, this latest driver drop from NVIDIA also includes an update to their anti-Ethereum throttle, which they first implemented in their GeForce RTX 3060 cards. In short, NVIDIA has tweaked future RTX 3060 cards to require this driver (or newer), which will prevent them from using older drivers that can bypass NVIDIA’s hash limiter. As a result, RTX 3060 cards shipping starting in mid-May will once again be fully locked down against running Ethereum at full (native) speed.
As a quick refresher, back in February with the launch of the GeForce RTX 3060 family of desktop video cards, NVIDIA implemented a novel throttling mechanism to artificially limit the Ethereum mining performance of the cards. This was done in an attempt to make the cards less palatable for miners – who have infamously been buying up cards in what is already a supply-constrained market – and thereby ensure more cards made it to gamers. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, this strategy worked for less than a month before the company accidentally released a driver without the full anti-Ethereum code in place, making it possible to mine Ethereum at full speed in some cases.
Now, having learned from their previous snafu, NVIDIA is taking another shot at locking down the Ethereum mining performance in future RTX 3060 cards by updating their hash limiter and preventing those new cards from using the older, broken development driver.

It also updates the hash limiter for the GeForce RTX 3060 and is required for products shipped starting mid-May 2021.

Unpacking this short (and somewhat ambiguous) statement a bit, starting with the next batch of RTX 3060 cards, which are expected to begin shipping in mid-May, 466.27 will be the minimum driver version required for these cards. Which, despite NVIDIA’s multi-branch naming system, is a newer driver than the compromised 470.05 released back in March. This driver has the updated hash limiter code, and thus, baring future unforced errors on NVIDIA’s part, it will not be possible to mine Ethereum at full speed on future RTX 3060 cards.
NVIDIA has otherwise been fairly tight-lipped on their anti-Ethereum code, but thanks to their March flub and efforts by miners to get around the code, we can take an educated guess at what NVIDIA is doing under the hood with these future RTX 3060 cards. Most likely, NVIDIA has blown an eFuse or two in order to require that newly-minted GA106 GPUs can’t be used with older BIOSes. By changing the minimum BIOS requirement, NVIDIA can have the newer BIOS enforce the newer driver requirement, with the driver in turn enforcing (or at least helping to enforce) the Ethereum throttle. All told, this is very similar to how hardware security works on consoles, where NVIDIA has some experience thanks to the Tegra X1-powered Nintendo Switch.
As for whether this attempt will fare any better than NVIDIA’s previous one, it remains to be seen. But even as things stand with current-generation RTX 3060 cards, NVIDIA’s anti-Ethereum throttle has largely held up; the March snafu has exposed that NVIDIA is already operating a “defense in depth” strategy with multiple checks to identify mining cards, looking for things such as cards operating on a PCIe x1 bus and cards not hooked up to monitors. So if there are any weaknesses, especially on the Linux side of things, then this will be NVIDIA’s opportunity to shore things up for their anti-Ethereum throttle.
Finally, NVIDIA has also informed us that these revised RTX 3060 cards will not be labeled any differently than existing RTX 3060 cards. Since the actual product specifications and functionality haven’t changed – and presumably the GPU hasn’t either – the revised cards will be sold with the same RTX 3060 branding as they have since their launch in February. So once these cards hit the market, it will end up being a relatively silent swap.

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