Daily Authority: ???? Computex gets going

???? Good morning! Some grand local gardens here in Berlin were open on the weekend for visitors — so cute to see inside inner courtyards and unexpected flowers and bees!

Computex 2022

Computex in Taipei is happening this week — the show officially starts tomorrow but Microsoft’s keynote happened as I was compiling this newsletter; AMD’s finished just before.

AMD:

• AMD’s most important news was announcing desktop Ryzen 7000 processors based on the Zen 4 architecture.
• It will get AMD CPUs beyond the 5GHz barrier, and require a new motherboard as well: the current AM4 motherboards are no longer suitable, shifting to AM5, making it the first need for a new motherboard in about five years.
• Other specs: Fabbed on a 5nm process, more L2 cache, supports DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 and more lanes, and that 5GHz barrier was broken in a demonstration of a chip clocked at 5.5GHz. Also, the chiplet approach remains (here it’s two 5nm Zen 4 CPU modules, and a new 6nm I/O die, which will incorporate basic graphics in an iGPU, not really for gaming but diagnostics, like Intel).
• The top-line number is good but not a game-changer in the race against Intel.
• AMD says Zen 4 has a 15% single-threaded uplift over the 5950X which only sounds okay, not amazing.
• AMD simply isn’t really giving out all the details, no final specs, so maybe it’s sandbagging or waiting for Intel to talk about its 13th-gen chips, Raptor Lake, before it says everything.
• Anyway, we’ll wait for it to come out in fall for overall analysis; and no pricing yet, no official names of CPUs yet.

Also from AMD:

• A “Mendocino” chipset was unveiled too and I’m just going to quote The Verge here on what AMD is promising:
• “…a new series of Ryzen laptop chips that combine four last-gen Zen 2 CPU cores with the latest RDNA 2 graphics on TSMC’s 6nm process to deliver over 10 hours of battery life on a charge — all for a price between $399 and $699. That includes both Windows machines and Chromebooks.”
• Now, AMD has promised this kind of thing before over the years.
• But in 2022 AMD CPUs are not considered weird and strange for laptops, meaning there’s now some 200 options set for 2022. Nice!
• One of these will be from Corsair. The memory manufacturer unveiled a full AMD-exclusive gaming laptop, which comes after it acquired Origin back in 2019. We don’t know much, but there’s a touch bar (as well as normal F-function keys) powered by “Stream Deck” technology. Stream Deck, not Steam Deck. Got it?

Microsoft:

• Microsoft talked about Windows 11 with our old friend Panos Panay, chief product officer at Microsoft but it wasn’t about new things, more Windows 11 and partner devices.
• Not a lot new here …but, there’s probably a good reason.
• Microsoft Build also happens this week (May 24–26): this is where we’ll get the big announcements.

Roundup

???? ICYMI: The new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 offers some speed bumps and efficiency improvements. Our guys benchmarked the 8 Plus Gen 1 chip but the first real device to get one will be something from Xiaomi, perhaps the Xiaomi 12 Ultra. OnePlus, Motorola, Asus, and others suggest they’ll release devices with the chip over the coming months… (Android Authority).

???? A hands-on with Apple’s 79-pound DIY repair kit to swap 1.1 ounce iPhone batteries says: “The more I think about it, the more I realize Apple’s Self-Service Repair program is the perfect way to make it look like the company supports right-to-repair policies without actually encouraging them at all.” Which is true! It’s also true you get all the pro tools …just in a complicated, risky, discouraging way (The Verge).

???? EA is reportedly seeking a sale or a merger (Engadget).

???? Stranger Things’ Season 4 format is bad television: a split-up release and long episodes may or may not bother you as the old rules of TV formats go out the window (Gizmodo).

Have a great start to your week!

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor