AMD Radeon RX 6600 is currently reaching new low prices: A model from Asrock is available in the USA for 180 US dollars and here for 209 euros. The price has fallen quite a bit in the last few weeks.
With AMD’s new Radeon RX 7600, the current graphics card generation has become significantly cheaper. On the one hand, this puts pressure on Nvidia, who will respond in two weeks with a Geforce RTX 4060. At the same time, however, the air for the older portfolio from our own company is getting thinner and thinner. This can be seen in the direct predecessor model, the Radeon RX 6600, because it has become significantly cheaper in the last few days.
RX 6600 at rock bottom price
Specifically, the US dealer Newegg is currently offering one Asrock Radeon RX 6600 Challenger D for $200, which can be reduced to $180 with a coupon. A new low price has thus been reached in the USA, with which the model distances itself from the USD 269 RRP of the RX 7600.
Unfortunately, prices of 180 euros have not yet been reached in this country, but the PCGH price comparison also documents a price drop. The Asrock Radeon RX 6600 Challenger D is also the cheapest model with this GPU there, and there is currently a low price here too. At Mindfactory, the model currently costs 209 euros, whereas it was 219 euros at the end of May and 229 euros in mid-May. Here, too, the direction is correct.
Also exciting: “Graphics memory” dispute: AMD goes on the offensive and teases Nvidia
With the freshly dropped prices, AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 can probably justify its place in the graphics card market for the time being. According to our PCGH test, the RX 7600 is 29 percent faster than its predecessor, while the cheapest variant – an MSI Radeon RX 7600 Mech 2X Classic – costs almost 37 percent more. At the moment, the price-performance ratio of the old generation is a bit better. At the same time, there are fewer features and lower efficiency. So the price of the RX 6600 could possibly fall even further in the near future to keep the model attractive.
Intel has released its new chip focused on quantum research, Tunnel Falls, its first silicon spin qubit device, which it has made available to the academic community to explore this technology and accelerate research development.
A qubit (or quantum bit) is the basic unit of information in quantum computing. While a bit can only represent a single binary value – that is, 0 or 1 – the qubit can represent a 0, a 1 or any ratio of 0 and 1 in the superposition of both states.
In this way, it allows quantum algorithms to process information in a much shorter time than the time required by a classical system. For this reason, quantum computing is being used to carry out discoveries in different fields such as health care, energy or environmental systems.
Within this framework, Intel has launched Tunnel Falls which, as described in a statement, is the company’s first silicon spin qubit device. Specifically, it is a 12-qubit silicon chip manufactured on 300-millimeter wafers at the D1 manufacturing plant.
This device takes advantage of Intel’s most advanced industrial transistor manufacturing capabilities, with technologies such as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and gate and contact processing techniques.
As Intel explains, in the case of silicon spin qubits, the information – the 0s and 1s – is encoded in the spin (up or down) of a single electron. This translates to each qubit device being “essentially a single-electron transistor.” As a result, Intel can manufacture it using a flow similar to that used in a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic processing line.
Furthermore, another of the advantages of silicon spin qubits is that they outperform other qubit technologies for “the synergy it offers with cutting-edge transistors.” This is because they are about the size of a transistor and are therefore “up to a million times smaller” than other types of qubits, which measure around 50 square nanometers. The size of the silicon spin qubits thus allows for “more efficient” scaling, according to Intel.
Following this line, Intel also benefits from being able to use CMOS manufacturing lines to produce this chip, since it allows it to use “innovative” process control techniques to “improve performance and performance.”
In fact, in the case of 12-qubit Tunnel Falls, a 95 percent throughput rate has been achieved across the wafer, as well as voltage uniformity resembling that of CMOS logic processes. Also, each wafer provides 24,000 quantum dot devices.
For all these reasons, as stated by the director of Quantum Hardware at Intel, Jim Clarke, the launch of the new chip is “the next step in Intel’s strategy to build a complete commercial quantum computing system.”
COLLABORATION WITH THE QUANTUM RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Intel has made Tunnel Falls available to the quantum research community in order to promote the development of this technology, facilitating its investigation. To do this, the company is collaborating with the University of Maryland’s Laboratory of Physical Sciences (LPS) and College Park’s Qubit Collaboratory (LQC).
As detailed by the technology, academic institutions do not have large-volume manufacturing equipment like Intel. In this sense, by facilitating Tunnel Falls, researchers can start working with this chip in their quantum computing projects, instead of having to make their own.
As a consequence, this collaboration makes possible a broader range of experiments, learning more about the fundamentals of qubits and quantum dots, and developing new techniques for working with multi-qubit devices, according to Intel.
Specifically, Intel is collaborating with LQC on the Qubits for Computing Foundry (QCF) program through the US Army Office of Research. This cooperation will help democratize silicon spin qubits by allowing researchers to gain experience working with this technology.
The first quantum labs to participate in the program are LPS, Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Rochester, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But, in addition, LQC continues to work with Intel to bring Tunnel Falls to other universities and research laboratories. Likewise, the information obtained in these investigations and experiments will be shared with the community so that the progress is even greater.
For his part, LPS Head of Quantum Information Science, Charles Tahan, has detailed that the LPS Qubit Collaboratory, together with the Army Research Office, intends to address the “difficult challenges facing qubit development.” ”, as well as “developing the next generation of scientists who will create the qubits of tomorrow”.
In the same way, Sandia National Laboratories has valued the possibility of using the Tunnel Falls chip. “The device is a flexible platform that allows Sandia quantum researchers to directly compare different qubit encodings and develop new modes of operation of qubits, which was not possible before,” said Dwight Luhman, Ph.D. and technical team member.
