19 posts
The Hot Take: Why did it disappear in the first place?
AMD has confirmed that it will restore Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) support on consumer Ryzen processors after previously removing the feature through AGESA firmware updates.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: AMD getting ready for Intel refocus on HPDT?
With Threadripper, it has always been a bit like heavy-haul transport on the motorway: massively overdimensioned for normal users, but for certain workloads exactly the kind of tool where every additional lane matters. Now AMD’s next workstation generation has become tangible for the first time. An entry for “TR6 Mustang Peak” has appeared in AMD’s […]
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Making the CPU important again on the x86 platform.
ACE, the upcoming set of x86 Extensions defined by both AMD & Intel, has seen the latest spec release, focusing on AI acceleration. AMD & Intel Focus on AI Acceleration Through Next-Gen x86 Architectures That Are ACE Compliant Last year, Intel and AMD partnered to strengthen the x86 ecosystem through their "x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group" initiative. The plan was to offer a standardized set of features across architectures to make x86 accessible, scalable, and compatible with future requirements. Four key features were announced: FRED, AVX10, ChkTag, and ACE. Now, the latest ACE "AI Compute Extensions" specifications have been published by AMD […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-intel-arm-x86-with-ace-matrix-multiply-engines-low-precision-ai-formats-future-cpus/
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Well now....
AMD appears to have yanked a memory encryption protection from consumer Ryzen chips, leaving users to play firmware detective. For those who came in late: a decade ago, AMD added Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) to higher-end CPUs to protect systems from cold-boot attacks and other physical exploits that can siphon data from memory. The feature encrypts everything stored in RAM, making stolen memory contents useless to attackers with physical access. Over time, TSME turned up on cheaper Ryzen consumer chips, and privacy-minded users reasonably started treating it as part of the package. Recently, without warning, that protection vanished from lower-end AMD chips in a way Windows users could not easily detect and Linux users could spot only with some technical faffing. According to Ars Technica AMD has not explained why TSME worked on these CPUs or fully confirmed the change, saying only that TSME “is a security feature only applied to PRO CPUs as part of AMD PRO Technologies.” In April, Linux hobbyist Ben Kilpatrick installed a new operating system on a Ryzen 7 9700X system and ran Host Security ID to check firmware and hardware protections. He found HSI reporting “encrypted RAM: not supported”, even though TSME had been enabled in BIOS and had previously shown as “encrypted”. Kilpatrick’s digging led MSI engineers to test consumer Ryzen chips on MSI and Gigabyte boards, where older AGESA firmware enabled TSME but newer AGESA 1.2.7.0 showed it as unsupported. Pro Ryzen chips supported TSME across motherboard brands and firmware versions, which rather spoiled the idea that this was just a random board-level wobble. “The big outstanding question is whether this is a deliberate policy decision by AMD to restrict TSME to PRO chips, or an unintentional regression that was introduced in AGESA 1.2.7.0,” Kilpatrick told Ars. After Kilpatrick filed a bug report on AMD’s public engineering GitHub, AMD fellow software engineer Tom Lendacky suggested toggling the BIOS option and then speaking to MSI if that failed. AMD senior principal software engineer Mario Limonciello gave similar advice, telling him: “If it still doesn’t work; then yes please report it to your board vendor to debug.” Kilpatrick later said MSI had been told by AMD that TSME was officially supported only on PRO processors, and tests showed TSME active on a Ryzen 9945 PRO but off on a consumer Ryzen 9800X3D. MSI’s ABL dump comparisons reportedly showed the internal AGESA flag DfIsTsmeEnabled returning FALSE for consumer chips, even when TSME was set to AUTO or ENABLED in BIOS. Kilpatrick pressed AMD on whether this was a silicon limitation or a firmware policy decision, because one is fixed and the other could be changed. Limonciello replied: “My apologies, but I don’t have any more information to share on this topic.” This is embarrassing as Lendacky said in 2020 that a consumer Ryzen 3700X “should support TSME”, and in 2025 recommended using it if the BIOS exposed the option. Silicon-level security expert Joe Fitzgerald said: “But I really feel like an explanation should be in order, even if it was ‘TSME was never supposed to be supported. We did ship some firmwares that erroneously enabled it, but you shouldn’t use them since we can’t guarantee it’ll work properly.’”
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: CISC muscle on display... When you don't care about how many watts your cpu consumes ARM/RISC will never touch the raw throughput of these chips.
AMD has shared the first official results for its 256-core EPYC Venice CPU, saying it beats Nvidia's Vera by 3.3x in a rack-level deployment.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Creeps back into the chips...
AMD’s Zen 5 looked efficient, but weak demand and a dodgy RDSEED bug have taken the shine off. For those with long memories, AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series arrived in 2024, promising strong efficiency and decent IPC gains. Months later, the launch looks messier. Sales were soft, prices fell quickly, and a documented random-number flaw has spooked some buyers. The line-up included the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X, 12-core 9900X, eight-core 9700X and six-core 9600X. Early benchmarks were mixed. Gaming gains were often single-digit at higher resolutions, while productivity wins varied by workload. Reviewers liked the cooler running and lower power use, but Zen 4 owners saw little reason to upgrade. AMD leaned harder into X3D chips, where stacked cache delivered clearer frame-rate gains for gamers. According to Webpro News in late 2025, AMD detailed an RDSEED flaw affecting all Zen 5 processors. The bug, tracked as AMD-SB-7055 and CVE-2025-62626, hits the 16-bit and 32-bit versions of RDSEED. They can return zero far more often than proper randomness allows, while the carry flag still reports success. That means software trusting the hardware output can swallow predictable data, which is grim news for cryptography. Linux patches moved to disable the affected instruction or use other sources, but AMD has not issued a recall and points to microcode and software mitigations. By early 2026, AMD was preparing refreshed SKUs to counter Intel’s Arrow Lake updates. Leaks pointed to Ryzen 7 9750X and Ryzen 5 9650X models with higher TDPs, higher clocks and improved memory support in some setups. That looks like squeezing more speed from existing silicon. Power rises and Zen 5’s efficiency pitch gets thinner. Corporate buyers have reason to wait until mitigations are stable. Gamers are likely to favour X3D models, which offer clearer frame-rate gains and less early-launch baggage. Server and workstation buyers have more to worry about because secure boot, VPNs and database encryption depend on reliable entropy. Zen 5 still brought gains in branch prediction, cache design and TSMC N4P fabrication. The RDSEED bug does not erase that work, but it exposes an awkward validation gap. AMD keeps shipping Zen 5 parts, and AM5 support remains a useful strength. Still, modest adoption, a documented RNG flaw and fast refresh plans make Zen 5 look less tidy than AMD wanted. System builders running cryptographic workloads should avoid first-wave Zen 5 chips unless mitigations are tested. Everyone else should look harder at refreshed SKUs or X3D parts while AMD patches the trust problem.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Ai sucking everything up.
AMD's next-gen Radeon GPUs based on the RDNA 5 architecture are still far away from launch as memory shortages grip the PC segment. Memory Shortages & Rising Component Prices Are The Reason Behind AMD's Push Back on Radeon "RDNA 5" Gaming GPUs The Radeon RX 9000 GPUs based on the RDNA 4 graphics architecture launched last year. This year, AMD launched the Radeon RX 9070 GRE for gamers, still based on the RDNA 4 architecture. While the new card aims to provide gamers with a good 1440p solution, the majority of those who have been waiting for next-generation solutions from […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amds-radeon-rdna-5-gaming-gpus-slip-to-late-2027-or-early-2028/
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Just WOW.
AMD has announced that its 6th Gen EPYC processor, codenamed Venice, has entered production ramp on TSMC's N2 process in Taiwan.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: AMD seems to be out performing Intel & Nvidia on the market, while Nvidia is still the preferred Ai holy-grail? Just seems odd.
While Nvidia has dominated the "infrastructure boom" since 2022's launch of ChatGPT and "the generative AI craze," CNBC writes that "This week offered the starkest illustration yet of what MIzuho analyst Jordan Klein said could be a 'changing of the guard in AI.'" Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25%, while memory maker Micron jumped more than 37% and fiber-optic cable maker Corning climbed about 18%. All four of those companies have more than doubled in value this year, with Intel leading the way, up well over 200%. Nvidia, meanwhile, is only slightly ahead of the Nasdaq in 2026, gaining 15% for the year, aided by an 8% rally this week. In spreading the wealth to a wider swath of hardware companies, investors are clearly betting that the bull market in AI has long legs and that data centers are going to need a wider array of advanced components for years to come. Memory has been the biggest theme of late due to a global shortage that's driven up prices and turned Micron, a 47-year-old company tucked in a sleepy corner of the semiconductor market, into one of the hottest trades over the past 12 months. Micron blew past an $800 billion market capitalization for the first time this week, and the stock is now up over 750% in the past year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC in March that key customers are only getting "50% to two-thirds of their requirements" because of supply issues. The memory market is largely dominated by Micron, along with Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix, which are also both in the midst of historic rallies... Bank of America estimates the data center CPU market could more than double from $27 billion in 2025 to $60 billion in 2030. AMD's quarterly results this week underscored the emerging trend, as earnings, revenue and guidance sailed past estimates on strong data center growth. The company has long led the CPU charge, and CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that AMD now expects 35% growth over the next three to five years in the server CPU market, up from a forecast of 18% growth that the company provided in November. The article cites two other big movers: Intel "is in the midst of a revival sparked by a major investment from the U.S. government last year. Intel's stock had its best month on record in April, more than doubling, and has continued notching massive gains, rising 33% in the early days of May." Nvidia still remains the world's most valuable company "and is expected to show revenue growth of 70% this fiscal year," the article points out — adding that companies like Corning are also benefiting from Nvidia partnerships. "Glass maker Corning, which celebrated its 175th anniversary this week, signed a massive deal with Nvidia on Wednesday that involves the development of three new U.S. factories dedicated entirely to optical technologies... likely a major step in Nvidia's move away from copper cables and towards fiber-optic cables as it builds out its rack-scale systems." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: So was ARM not breaking into the WinTel market so they shifted to Ai market or are they just chasing the highest dollars?
Investment bank UBS reckons agentic AI will send CPU demand soaring, with Arm and AMD best placed to grab the spoils. UBS analysts believe the growth of agentic AI software will drive strong demand for CPUs in the AI era. The bank said agentic AI increases processor workloads and favours chips with higher core counts and better power efficiency. That view gives Arm the biggest potential upside, followed by AMD. Intel could benefit too, since a growing total addressable market tends to lift more than one silicon boat. In fresh coverage of British chip design house Arm, UBS said CPU demand is surging. The bank said agentic AI computing will favour chips with higher core counts and a bias towards power efficiency. UBS reckons the total server market could grow five times by calendar year 2030. It put the figure at $170bn, up from $30bn in calendar year 2025. Within that market, UBS expects Arm to benefit the most. The bank said Arm could potentially grab as much as 40-45 per cent of the total share, which would make the x86 crowd choke on its roadmaps. The bank’s report cited expert comments behind three main themes explaining the surge in CPU demand. The first is that agentic AI workloads rely more heavily on CPU cores. That shift is expected to require a three- to fivefold increase in CPU core counts per user and per GPU. Servers with standalone CPUs will need more chips, which is the kind of problem chip sellers enjoy having. UBS said that demand for agentic AI will push some workloads to local PCs. It pointed to Anthropic’s Claude Code as an example. The need for higher core counts and power efficiency should tilt demand first towards Arm and then AMD. That sounds grim for anyone still selling yesterday’s watt-guzzling boxes as tomorrow’s AI answer. Chipzilla could still serve this market through its Coral Rapids platform, according to UBS. The catch is that benefiting from a bigger market and winning the best bits of it are not quite the same trick.
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