According to a source familiar with the situation, Intel Corp is close to buying Israeli firm Tower Semiconductor for roughly $6 billion, as the US company aims to extend its strategy of contract manufacturing chips for other companies.
The person indicated on Monday that a deal might be announced as soon as this week, but declined to be identified since the topic was confidential. The acquisition would strengthen Intel’s position in a market dominated by Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker. It also comes at a time when a global semiconductor shortage is causing delays in the production of everything from smartphones to automobiles.
The Core i9-12900KS is the Core i9-12900younger K’s brother. The 16-core, 24-thread architecture is still in place. With 30MB of L3 cache, the forthcoming Alder Lake processor will include eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores. Being a Special Edition SKU, the Core i9-12900KS proudly wears the “S” suffix. The 16-core CPU has been binned to allow for faster clock speeds.
The Core i9-12900KS has a single-core boost frequency of 5.5 GHz, which is 300 MHz faster than the vanilla Core i9-12900K. In addition, all cores on the KS model get a 5.2 GHz increase. The all-core boost clock on the Core i9-12900K, on the other hand, varies according to the workload. The Core i9-12900K boosts about 5 GHz on average, therefore the Core i9-12900KS offers a 200 MHz boost in that department.
Higher clock speeds imply better performance and, as a result, higher consumption as well as, more crucially, a visible price premium. Although the Core i9-12900KS has yet to be released, it has already outperformed AMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 5950X Zen 3 processor in early Cinebench R23 tests. However, before passing judgement, we should conduct a comprehensive investigation.
The Core i9-12900KS is listed as having a 150W PBP (Processor Base Power) rating, which is Intel’s fancy way of referring to the PL1 (power level 1). We’re looking at a 20% increase over the regular Core i9-12900125W K’s PBP. The Core i9-12900MTP K’s (Maximum Turbo Power) is yet unknown. However, because Intel specifies 241W for the Core i9-12900K, the Core i9-12900KS is likely to exceed 260W.
When all factors are considered, the Core i9-12900KS costs 26% more than the Core i9-12900K, but it has a 20% higher PBP and a 4% higher all-core boost clock. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages, but there’s always a market for processors like the Core i9-12900KS.
The Core i9-12900KS, like all Alder Lake CPUs, fits into the LGA1700 socket on 600-series motherboards, and manufacturers will most likely produce new software to support the Core i9-12900KS. If overclocking is on your mind, you’ll need a Z690 motherboard first, as well as a more powerful cooling system to handle the projected increase in power usage.
also read:
