
AMD Zen 4 CPUs Rumored On Track For 2021 Release - lettergram
https://hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-4-cpus-on-track-for-2021-tsmc-5nm
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m0xte
Very cool. For me this hopefully means higher end Zen 3 CPUs will bomb in
price so I can upgrade my 2600X

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Mirioron
I'd first like to see what Zen 3 CPUs are like though.

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tus88
Holding out hope for PCIe5 and DDR5 too...

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nobodyshere
I wouldn't count on it. There aren't even that many pci-e 4 devices on the
market.

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wtallis
In the server market where the extra bandwidth is actually useful, the
transition from PCIe 3 to PCIe 4 is pretty far along. Switches, NICs, SSDs and
FPGAs supporting PCIe 4 are all either available or announced, and server-
class GPUs should also show up next year. Most of those products have good
reason to continue on to PCIe 5 as soon as suitable hosts are on the way.

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floatboth
Server-class GPUs kinda showed up first, or at least at the same time: Radeon
Instinct MI50 was the first PCIe 4 GPU ever. (The consumer Radeon VII is the
same chip)

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wtallis
Ah, I forgot about that one. Possibly because they didn't enable PCIe 4
functionality on the Radeon VII.

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shpongled
Perhaps 2021 will be the year I upgrade. I've been rocking an i5-4690k stably
overclocked at 4.5GHz for the past 5 years without issue, but I'd like to get
some more threads

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tyingq
The note that Huawei's Hisilicon is one of the three customers for TSMC 5nm is
interesting.

The US trade ban is still in effect for Huawei. If we don't lift it, we will
likely be blocking out the fastest Android.

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DiabloD3
Huawei is accused of state-sponsored spying using their position as a major
LTE backend equipment vendor.

I don't think worrying about who has the fastest Android phone is important
here.

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tiernano
Accused, but still no proof, right?

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ethbro
It's not actually been accused, has it?

The proposed rules are on the basis of _hypothetical_ future spying
capabilities.

(Personally and technically, I don't think the ban is a terrible idea. Non-
audited software, from a country without an independent legal system, running
on privileged network hardware seems a reasonable concern. Especially deployed
by rural ISPs who can't perform security due diligence. Even if the public
debate is being framed poorly)

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tyingq
It is at least not hypothetical for the US. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-
implant/)

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ethbro
The US NSA TAO implants are a bit different ball of wax.

Fundamentally, they illustrate that the NSA (government) can't / won't ask
Cisco (vendor) to directly install backdoors for them.

So in many ways a validation that checks and balances are working as intended,
whatever you think of TAO separately, if supply chain interdiction is
required.

The Huawei bans are predicated on the belief that Huawei is _not_ an
independent vendor, separate from the interests of the mainland Chinese
government.

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tyingq
Sure. But, of course, most cell phones and network equipment is made in China.
Vendor cooperation doesn't seem to be needed.

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ethbro
This is an argument of nuances, but I would make the point that the _design_
and _software / firmware_ stages provide fundamentally different capabilities
than manufacturing.

You have entire industries around supply chain assurance, so manufacturing
corruption is still an issue (although usually more targeted at lower-cost,
replaced components).

But as the post-SuperMicro reporting laid out, it's an order of magnitude more
difficult to embed physical components on a board, in an undetected manner,
that create covert communication channels. Vs doing so at privileged software
layers.

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PedroBatista
Current Intel is so f#%$ed! Either someone at the company has the power and
knowledge to make deep foundational changes or not even their size and
“business prowess” will be able to maintain the current structure and culture.

