GoKawiilIn case you've not subscribed to Tom's Hardware Premium yet, here's what you've been missing out on in this week's selection of articles.
First of all, we've fully redesigned Bench, our browsable database of hardware benchmarks. Using the same data that informs our massive hierarchy pages, Bench 2.0 allows you to granularly search and compare benchmarks between products. While you get an aggregated set of data in our reviews and hierarchy lists, Bench allows you much finer detail in seeing every single benchmark we run, whenever we review a new product.
Bench is exclusively available for Tom's Hardware Premium subscribers.
Earlier this week, we published a roadmap, focusing on the foundries that are making co-packaged optics (CPO) a reality. As the demands of data centers increase, so too do the demands on scale-up and scale-out connectivity. With AI accelerators now demanding extremely fast signalling speeds, CPO puts optical engines next to the processor or ASIC in order to shorten electrical paths, increasing data rates, shortening the electrical path, and consuming less power.
We dive deep into TSMC's COUPE roadmaps, which extend to 2030, and to a blistering lane speed of 400 Gb/s, Intel's CPUs with OCI chiplets, Samsung Foundry's path to building a CPO turnkey, and GlobalFoundries' vendor-agnostic OCI-MSA CPO platform.
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That's not all we had on the roadmaps front this week, as we've taken a deeper look at China's chipmaking tool roadmaps, hot on the heels of the country announcing it will build DUV immersion lithography machines capable of producing 7nm chips by 2030. The more difficult equation is building a domestic EUV machine, which demands a robust supply chain of the right tooling and equipment, with over 3,000 workers reported to be working on what's now dubbed China's "Manhattan Project."
The country still relies on ASML's DUV lithography machines for chipmaking, as modern systems are subject to export controls, which is why Huawei, the creator of the Ascend series of AI accelerators, is keenly interested in getting the project off the ground.
But China has more on its mind than merely producing the machines; it also wants to spin up its DRAM output via CXMT, which is planning to expand to a brand-new fab to boost memory output. This comes following consumer brands and computer makers like Dell, Lenovo, and more. But it's no simple task, as we explore how the MATCH Act could impact CXMT's ability to produce DRAM modules on more advanced nodes.
There are also concerns around expanding wafer capacities and procuring the tools required for such an expansion, which targets 30% of market share by 2030.
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