Thread: Anandtech News

Today we're taking a look at ADATA's XPG Gammix S50 Lite, a mid-range consumer NVMe SSD based on Silicon Motion's new SM2267 controller. Among other notable features, the Gammix S50 Lite is the first mainstream-focused SSD that supports PCIe 4.0 – though as we'll see in our benchmarks that support is largely incidental, as the drive's performance is mostly the same as high-end Gen3 SSDs.

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At a news conference today, Intel has announced that its Rio Rancho campus in New Mexico will be getting an investment of $3.5 billion USD for an expansion of its current state-of-the-art facilities for the company to roll out its new Foveros packaging technology in volume for its own products as well as its customers. This comes on top of the $20 billion USD that Intel has committed to two new fabrication plants in its Ocotillo campus in Arizona for wafer production. In partnership with New Mexico state and local government, the new investment is expected to provide 1000 construction jobs over three years, 700 permanent technical positions at the company, and 3500 ancillary positions in the area when the facility is fully functional.

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One of the key commentaries about the current semiconductor shortages is around where exactly the bottlenecks are. The traditional interpretation of a semiconductor shortage implies that not enough silicon can be made, but over the last few months a number of companies have pointed to post-silicon production, such as testing and packaging, causing some of the issues. To the best of our knowledge, none of the companies affected by the shortages are specifically pointing at partner companies or specific supply chain areas where there is a bottleneck, however there have been a number of comments focused in the direction of packaging, substrates, and the specialist films involved for high performance compute.
AnandTech has learned that at its Partner Connect 2021 event recently, Intel Chief Revenue Officer Michelle Johnston Holthaus expanded the dimensions to which the supply chain is causing the semiconductor shortage. During the event Keynote, as part of a planned Q&A session with the host John Kalvin (Intel GM of Scale and Partner Organization), Holthaus expanded on the commentary surrounding Intel’s silicon flow and where the supply chain bottlenecks are for Intel and associated partners.

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As part of Intel’s Partner Connect conference last month, AnandTech has learned that information has been provided to European, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) customers and partners regarding the current level of semiconductor supply through the rest of the year. Intel works closely with its key distributors and customers in each region to ensure that they have sufficient support to effectively sell to their customers, however the recent high demand for semiconductors has put additional strain on Intel’s ecosystem, perhaps more so than the high demand period for server processors a couple of years ago. In a discussion session led by Intel’s GM for EMEA, Maurits Tichelman, it was highlighted that May was set to be a testing time for distribution, with the rest of the year still subject to market forces. It was also mentioned that despite Intel’s decades of experience with demand surges, it is not invulnerable to substrate shortages.

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One of the targets of the modern foundry business is to have a wide array of manufacturing process technologies. This enables it to cater to as many customers as possible. That includes logic, embedded memory, radio frequency, analog, high voltage, long life cycle, and now silicon photonics. As part of a partnership between GlobalFoundries and PsiQuantum announced today, new proprietary manufacturing tools have been installed into GlobalFoundries' most advanced facility in Malta, New York. This will enable GF to build silicon photonics to enable what could be a 1 million+ qubit quantum computer from PsiQuantum.

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Every decade is the decade that tests the limits of Moore’s Law, and this decade is no different. With the arrival of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) technology, the intricacies of multipatterning techniques developed on previous technology nodes can now be applied with the finer resolution that EUV provides. That, along with other more technical improvements, can lead to a decrease in transistor size, enabling the future of semiconductors. To that end, Today IBM is announcing it has created the world’s first 2 nanometer node chip.

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Over the years, Microsoft’s Surface team has become quite a driver of innovation in the PC space. While the original Surface Pro was mostly just a curio, Microsoft continued to iterate through designs, and eventually found their breakthrough product with the very popular Surface Pro 3 convertible tablet. Since then, Microsoft has been able to further build off of the Surface brand's success with additional and interesting designs, including the Surface Book with its detachable display, the Surface Studio all-in-one, and the Surface Pro X which pushes the Surface Pro design into a new, more modern take on the convertible tablet.
But with a burgeoning brand, Microsoft has also developed some more conservative devices under the Surface family, and this is most evident with Microsoft's Surface Laptop lineup. The Surface Laptop, now in its fourth generation, has never felt like it was as innovative as the other designs, but the most conventional member of the Surface family does something that no other Surface device can: cater to a wider market looking for a more traditional laptop design. As a result, the Surface Laptop has become a quiet workhorse of sorts for the Surface family, filling the need for a traditional clamshell laptop while still finding just enough space to put the Surface flourish on the complete package.
Today, we are looking at the latest generation Surface Laptop 4 to see how the changes under the hood impact the experience of Microsoft’s thin and light clamshell laptop design.

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In the last few months we have tested the latest x86 integrated graphics options on the desktop from AMD, with some surprising results about how performant a platform with integrated graphics can be. In this review, we’re doing a similar test but with Intel’s latest Rocket Lake Core 11^th Gen processors. These processors feature Intel’s X^e-LP graphics, which were touted as ‘next-generation’ when they launched with Intel’s mobile-focused Tiger Lake platform. However, the version implemented on Rocket Lake has fewer graphics units, slower memory, but a nice healthy power budget to maximize. Lo, Intel set forth for battle.

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One of the elements of building a complete end-to-end solution means having all the components under one brand. The complexity of modern gadgets means that having everything made under one company is near-on impossible - especially with the wealth of IP and patents in every small segment of the modern electronic device. To facilitate the appearance of uniform branding, companies will often rebrand the components under their own name. Introducing the AMD RZ608, a Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 wireless module!

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Usually, when vendors release dual-socket motherboards, this is typically done on larger form factors such as extended ATX (E-ATX) and even larger ones such as SSB-EEB for server form factors. Supermicro looks to buck the trend and has recently listed a pair of Intel motherboards with dual LGA4189 sockets, designed for Intel's latest Ice Lake 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors.
Both the Supermicro X12DPL-NT6 and X12DPL-i6 conform to the ATX form factor and have a very similar design. The key metrics include support for two Intel 3rd generation Ice Lake Xeon processors but also eight memory slots between the two, indicating that each processor runs in only quad-channel mode. This is important as some enterprise situations do not require the full memory bandwidth of eight memory channels, and thus having fewer physical channels on board helps with form factor as well as cost. That being said, this motherboard can support up to 2TB of DDR4-3200 ECC memory (1 TB per socket). Also, due to the size of the board, Supermicro recommends that only 185 W TDP processors maximum are used.

The Supermicro X12DPL-NT6 ATX motherboard

Towards the bottom of the board is four full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, each with single slot spacing. Providing both physical and remote access to the system is ASPEEDs latest AST2600 BMC controller. For storage, the chipset is powering twelve SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. Both models also include two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, supporting both 22110/2280 M.2 form factors, while the second port is limited to 2280 M.2.
Focusing on the differences between the two boards, the X12DPL-NT6 is the higher-end variant. It includes a dual 10 G-Base T Ethernet powered by an Intel X550 controller, which is cooled by a heatsink, and it also includes an additional PCIe 4.0 x8 port for NVMe drives. The Supermicro X12DPL-i6 instead dual Intel i210 Gigabit controllers and does not have the additional PCIe 4.0 x8.
On the rear panels, both models include two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports, with an additional port on the motherboard directly at the bottom. There is also a USB 3.2 G1 front panel header that offers an additional two Type-A ports.
At the time of writing, we don't know when the Supermicro X12DPL-NT6 or the X12DPL-i6 will be available to purchase, nor do we have any pricing information at this time. But fitting a dual-socket design on a simple ATX is rather fun.
Related Reading

• Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake SP) Review: Generationally Big, Competitively Small
• Intel's Full Enterprise Portfolio: An Interview with VP of Xeon, Lisa Spelman
• GIGABYTE Server: Three New E-ATX Motherboards For Intel Ice Lake-SP Xeons
• Axiomtek Unveils IMB700 Motherboard, LGA4189 For Intel Ice Lake-SP

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