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Following their exit from the royal life in early 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex Harry and Meghan experienced a considerable amount of hate on social media, among other places, including substantial abuse targeted specifically at the duchess. Bot Sentinel Inc. analyzed the phenomenon to determine what, exactly, was fueling this negativity and whether it was simply the result … Continue reading

Mercedes is using the impending COP26 climate conference to highlight its EV efforts — and show how sustainability can involve more than a switch to battery power. The newly unveiled Sustaineer delivery van concept is fully electric, as you’d guess, but it also improves the environment around it. Fine particulate filters on the front and underbody purify the air around the van no matter what its speed. It even uses cast iron, ceramic-coated disc brakes that both reduce the amount of dust in the air and limit brake wear.

The Sustaineer also has solar panels on its roof to extend range and reduce the need for plug-in charging (this sometimes contributes to CO2 emissions). It can further power devices whether or not the van is running, such as tools and laptops. Solar power on electrified vehicles is nothing new, but Mercedes clearly hopes implementations like this would keep EVs as green as possible.

Other eco-conscious technology includes an energy-saving heating system that hews close to the body (including the seatbelt) and a heavy use of recycled materials. The filler is made from household waste, the cab partition is built from natural straw and the underbody includes recycled polypropylene and used tires. Mercedes lowers noise pollution, too, thanks to a quiet electric drivetrain, low rolling resistance tires and a hushed automatic delivery door.

Safety is a concern as well. A camera monitors road conditions to share reports of potholes and other hazards with cities, while digital mirrors provide a clearer field of view than you normally get with cargo vans. A “biologically active” light keeps the driver alert by filling the cab with illumination similar to daylight while maintaining a natural rhythm.

There are no mentions of plans to mass-produce the Sustaineer. With that said, Mercedes stressed that all the van’s technology was crafted with large-scale production in mind. You might see this in other vans, not to mention other Mercedes vehicles. The company already has other green tech on the horizon, such as sustainable repairs for EV batteries in 2022, and Sustaineer is ultimately a logical extension of those plans.

Just five companies have spent $96.3 million over the past two years in a fight over a transmission line in northern Maine that will face a reckoning at the ballot box next week. A remote transmission line running through miles of sparsely populated woods may not seem like such a big deal, but the issue has…

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A prominent Chinese tech firm that sells hardware used throughout the world is currently under federal investigation after—according to reports—being tied to cyberattacks on various American and European targets.

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At today’s Intel InnovatiON event, the chipmaker revealed nearly all the relevant information consumers need to assess the technology featured in Intel’s 12^th generation CPU designs codenamed Alder Lake.

Intel previously disclosed some architectural and technical details during its Intel Architecture Day 2021 in August. We’re now getting commercial information, including the CPU lineup and prices.

This article will present the essential aspects of Intel’s Alder Lake architecture and how it improves next-generation PCs. Not surprisingly, most have to do with computing performance, and Intel is making headways in many directions to ensure that PC systems are balanced.

CPU design

Intel’s new CPUs are built on a 10nm Enhanced SuperFin semiconductor process, known as “Intel 7”. The company uses a hybrid core approach with high-performance and high-efficiency cores for the first time, like what smartphones do. Intel calls this a “Performance hybrid architecture, combining P-cores and E-cores.” P and E stand for Performance and Efficiency.

Like ARM’s big.LITTLE, this strategy is better because simple tasks (=threads) can be sent to the more power-efficient E-cores, while heavy computing tasks land in the performance-optimized P-cores. Any computer runs dozens or hundreds of threads at all times, so this is a proven way of improving overall power usage and absolute performance at the same time.

At the lowest level, each core’s architecture has been optimized and improved just like Intel does for every new core design. And as usual, memory cache buffers might get larger and faster. To orchestrate how tasks (threads) are distributed, Intel has created the Intel Thread Director that the operating system will rely on to best dispatch workloads.

Intel claims a 19% performance lift from the new P-cores and that the global increase in the total number of cores will also increase multi-threaded performance. All in all, these estimates are believable as it makes complete sense.

Intel says that in some instances, a task could be executed 50% faster for a given power level or at one-quarter of the power when compared to the 11^th generation Core processors. The efficiency differential makes the new CPUs more adaptable to any use case (speed vs. battery life) and represents a massive leap for Intel.

For heavy workloads such as content creation (video editing, 3d modeling, etc.), Intel estimates performance increases of 22%-37%, with a peak to 100% in the Adobe After Effects Pulse Benchmark.

Intel’s presentations show a significant average performance increase when compared to the Gen11, of course, but more importantly, when compared to the AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU.

Introducing DDR5 memory

The CPU cores need to be fed with an ever-higher data stream coming from the RAM. The Alder Lake platform introduces DDR5 memory that is significantly faster than the previous DDR4, adding about 1.87X the bandwidth, from 16.8GB/s to 31.4GB/s (in theory).

For overclockers, Intel is adding the Intel XMP 3.0, a technology that makes it easier and more convenient by adding more profiles with easy-to-recognize names. I’m more interested in the Dynamic Memory Boost Technology that automatically switches from the default JEDEC RAM speeds to one of the XMP profiles, depending on the load.

DDR5 is also more efficient, but most people tend to focus on the peak bandwidth, and it’s a good metric to use. If you’re curious about DDR5, watch this neat video from Crucial as they illustrate it well.

I/O, Chipset, and peripherals

PCIe 5.0 support is now available at the processor and the Intel Z690 chipset level. This chipset can handle a lot of I/O, including a ton of USB ports, WiFi 6E. The 2.5G Ethernet has caught my attention, but there’s 10/100/1000 Ethernet as well.

PCIe 5.0 will lift SSD speeds to new levels, with early numbers showing sequential reads reaching 14,000 MB/s and 7,000 MB/s for sequential writes. Even the latency should be noticeably lower than current SSDs, and the IOPS should nearly double as well, making every single operation potentially much faster.

Such performance increase is fascinating since technologies such as Microsoft’s DirectStorage could better utilize the I/O potential of PCIe 5.0 and the upcoming PCIe 5.0 SSD. We’ll see.

SKUs and pricing

At the moment, Intel has announced a couple of processors for each of the i3, i5, and i9 families for a total of 6 SKUs. Prices go from $264 (i5-12600KF) to $589 (i9-12900K), but given these chips’ new architecture and performance profile, I’d rather wait for real-world performance numbers prior to commenting on their value proposition.

You can find the complete specs, models, and pricing table in this official Intel product brief on page 6 (PDF link).

Intel’s 12^th generation CPUs are shaking things up and could re-ignite excitement in the CPU market. We will run CPU benchmarks and will report back soon. In the meantime, you can watch today’s event here.

Intel’s Alder Lake 12th Gen CPUs Launched

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