US government is adjusting export regulations for China, RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs now banned

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Apr 3, 2024 10:08 PM CDT

The US government is clamping down even harder on high-performance GPUs and AI GPUs being imported to China, with beefed-up US trade regulations stopping the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics card, and H20 AI GPU.

US government is adjusting export regulations for China, RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs now banned

We've seen NVIDIA and AMD restricted on the number of silicon it can send to China, depending on specific performance metrics by the Biden administration. Starting on April 4, GPUs with rated compute performance that is over 70 TFLOPs -- including the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs -- are now restricted, as they offer over 70 TFLOPs of compute performance.

The updated SEC document explains: "License is required (NLR) for computers with an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") not exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) and for "electronic assemblies" described in 4A003.c that are not capable of exceeding an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) in aggregation".

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SK hynix confirms $3.87 billion advanced packaging plant, R&D facility for AI in Indiana, USA

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Apr 3, 2024 9:29 PM CDT

SK hynix is officially building a new advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA with an investment of around $3.87 billion. The South Korean memory giant will build next-gen HBM memory for future-gen AI GPUs, and would be the first advanced packaging for AI products on American soil.

SK hynix confirms $3.87 billion advanced packaging plant, R&D facility for AI in Indiana, USA

The new $3.87 billion facility will see Indiana with a new advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility for AI products, the first of its kind in the United States, with expectations that it will drive innovation in the nation's supply chain for AI products, as well as create over 1000 new jobs in the region.

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PCIe 7.0 specs released: 512GB/sec bandwidth total, next-gen PCIe 7.0 SSDs will pump 128GB/sec

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Apr 3, 2024 9:00 PM CDT

PCI-SIG initially announced the next-generation PCIe 7.0 standard back in 2022, but now the organization behind the PCIe standards -- PCI-SIG, duh -- has announced version 0.5 of PCIe 7.0, now available for member review.

PCIe 7.0 specs released: 512GB/sec bandwidth total, next-gen PCIe 7.0 SSDs will pump 128GB/sec

PCIe 7.0 is gearing up for a full release in 2025, but don't think you'll see workstations or gaming motherboards with PCIe 7.0 connectivity when we don't have PCIe 6.0 in the consumer space just yet, and PCIe 5.0 is only penetrating that market now. We will be living with PCIe 5.0 for a while on the desktop and laptop before we see PCIe 6.0, let alone PCIe 7.0.

For now, the full specification of PCIe 7.0 were released by PCI-SIG, which include:

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The Matrix 5 announced: resurrected, reloaded, refreshed with Drew Goddard directing

Anthony Garreffa | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Apr 3, 2024 8:24 PM CDT

The Matrix 5 has just been announced -- and no, this is NOT an April Fool's Day joke -- with Drew Goddard directing, with the Wachowskis not directing a Matrix movie for the first time in franchise history.

The Matrix 5 announced: resurrected, reloaded, refreshed with Drew Goddard directing

Warner Bros. has officially greenlit The Matrix 5, with the only news of the movie being the name of the director and that a Matrix movie will go into production. Goddard directed one of my favorite surprise movies from years ago, Cabin in the Woods, and will direct The Matrix 5.

The Matrix Resurrections was released last year after Lana Wachowski solo-directed the fourth installment in the franchise with returning stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. Reeves and Moss play Neo and Trinity, respectively, who could reprise their roles, but I'd like to see Hugo Weaving return -- at least in some form -- as Agent Smith, as he was sorely missed in The Matrix Resurrections.

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Knights of the Old Republic PS5 remake is 'alive and well,' but we still have no release window

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Apr 3, 2024 3:02 PM CDT

The highly anticipated Knights of the Old Republic remake has been officially confirmed to be in development...but there's still no word on a potential release window or concrete updates about the project.

Knights of the Old Republic PS5 remake is 'alive and well,' but we still have no release window

The KOTOR remake was announced in 2021 by Sony, but since the tne project has been shuffled around. Aspyr, the team behind many of the Star Wars re-releases, was originally developing the KOTOR remake. Aspyr was acquired by Saber Interactive in 2021 for $100 million. At the time, Saber was still part of Embracer, and Embracer re-assigned the KOTOR remake to Saber's principal dev teams.

Reports indicated that the remake was put on ice in 2022, but apparently the project is still happening.

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Google engineers hacked PS Portal to play PSP games, then handed the secrets to Sony

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Apr 3, 2024 1:57 PM CDT

Google engineers spent a month hacking the PlayStation Portal to run PSP games natively...but then they handed the secrets right to Sony.

Google engineers hacked PS Portal to play PSP games, then handed the secrets to Sony

It's official: The PS Portal's is once again a "remote player." Sony has released a new firmware patch for the PS Portal that fixed a big security vulnerability that ultimately led to PSP games running on the device. The $199 PS Portal is specifically designed as a profitable accessory that requires a PS5 in order to stream games to the controller-screen hybrid. Being able to play games without needing a PS5 goes against the entire point of the handheld.

Two Google security experts--Andy Nguyen and Calle Svensson--spent an entire month hacking the PS Portal to see if it could run games natively. It turns out that it can indeed do this, at least when it comes to 20-year-old PSP games. Yesterday, Nguyen confirmed that Sony had been notified of the vulnerability and that a fix has been employed with PS Portal's new v2.0.6 firmware update.

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AI safety expert predicts a 99.999999% chance of p(doom). What's that mean? Well, it isn't good

Darren Allan | Artificial Intelligence | Apr 3, 2024 10:24 AM CDT

Could AI spell doom for humankind eventually? Depending on which expert you talk to, the chances vary considerably, but one researcher definitely has a gloomy (and doomy) opinion - one that Elon Musk doesn't share.

AI safety expert predicts a 99.999999% chance of p(doom). What's that mean? Well, it isn't good

Business Insider reported on revelations made at the recent Abundance Summit (held last month), which included a 'great AI debate' where Musk estimated the risk of AI ending humanity was "about 10% or 20% or something like that."

Obviously that's something akin to wild guesswork, but the general gist of the billionaire's philosophy is that we should push ahead with AI development as the probable positive outcomes outweigh any negative scenario.

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Microsoft's Copilot key for Windows 11 AI PCs has a secret - it dates back to the mid-1980s

Darren Allan | Software & Apps | Apr 3, 2024 6:06 AM CDT

You've doubtless heard about the Copilot key - the dedicated physical key that's present on the keyboard of AI PCs running Windows 11 - but there's a surprising secret behind this new feature.

Microsoft's Copilot key for Windows 11 AI PCs has a secret - it dates back to the mid-1980s

This was highlighted by Tom's Hardware, who did some digging with new Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops that have the Copilot key on their respective keyboard decks, in an effort to find out how the key works.

In other words, what's behind the Copilot key in terms of mapping, and is it a new key with a new scan code? Well, the answer to that question is a short no.

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US government tasks NASA with creating an out-of-this-world clock

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Apr 3, 2024 3:40 AM CDT

The White House has tasked NASA and other agencies to come up with an idea to keep track of time on Earth, but not on Earth.

US government tasks NASA with creating an out-of-this-world clock

The White House has officially instructed NASA and other US agencies to work with the appropriate international agencies to develop a preliminary idea by the end of the year that creates a moon-centric time reference system, or a moon clock. Notably, there is less gravity on the moon due to its lower mass, which means time moves slightly differently than here on Earth, precisely 58.7 microseconds quicker every day. Why do we need a moon clock?

Highly sophisticated computer systems rely on timing to make communications possible, and with NASA's push back into space exploration with its Artemis missions and future plans, along with other countries' space agencies, keeping track of the time has become more paramount than before. NASA has already proposed creating an atomic clock for the moon, an extremely precise clock that would create a unified time for the moon. Furthermore, the moon will not have a daylight saving time, according to Kevin Coggins, NASA's top communications and navigation official.

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Scientists set world record in creating an 'artificial Sun'

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Apr 3, 2024 2:55 AM CDT

The pursuit to create an "artificial Sun" through nuclear fusion has been a dream of scientists for quite some time, and now a team of researchers has inched a little bit more closer to making that dream a reality.

Scientists set world record in creating an 'artificial Sun'

South Korean scientists have now set a new world record with the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, a nuclear fusion reaction that is capable of generating plasma temperatures of up to 100 million degrees Celsius, or seven times hotter than the Sun's core. The team was able to achieve this temperature for just 48 seconds, with the previous record being set in 2021 at 30 seconds.

The idea behind fusion reactors is quite simple - superheat two elements until they combine into one, which gives off heat and energy. However, maintaining the reaction is the challenging part. The most common way to achieve fusion energy is by heating hydrogen variants within a donut-shaped reactor called a tokamak.

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