The Apple Vision Pro went on sale in February but only in the United States. We're expecting the company to unveil the headset in new countries later this year and Apple's own website has confirmed that it intends to take the spatial computer global in 2024. However, it hasn't been more specific than that and we still don't know for sure which countries Apple has in mind. However, we have seen various hints.

Recent indications have suggested that Apple has a few countries that it is leaning towards including Australia, Canada, the UK, Japan, and others. Now, there is more indication that Apple is going to launch the Apple Vision Pro in France sooner rather than later.

That's after a WatchGeneration report noted that Apple has been inviting employees from its retail stores in France to a special Apple Vision Pro training program this summer.

Samsung is still working on its in-house Mach-1 AI inferencing chip. CEO Kyung Kye-hyun, who is in charge of the chip business, teased a second-gen Mach-2 AI accelerator in a new Instagram post.

Samsung Electronics CEO Kyung Kye-hyun said: "Client interest in inference-committed Mach-1 is increasing. Some of the clients want to use Mach in large-scale applications with more than 1 trillion parameters, which justifies the faster-than-expected development of Mach-2. We should get down to preparation".

The new Mach-1 AI accelerator was announced at Samsung Electronics' recent shareholder meeting, but few details were released: all we know is that it will be used for AI inferencing and will launch in early 2025. Samsung recently formed a new HBM team focused on increasing productivity and quality to ensure HBM leadership against South Korean rival SK hynix.

Apple is now expected to announce the new OLED iPad Pro in both 11- and 12.9-inch configurations in May with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman saying that Apple's supply partners have now begun production. However, a new report suggests that those who want to buy the smaller of the two could potentially find the tablet harder to come by when compared to the larger one.

That's according to a report by Hankooki which claims that LG Display has had to pick up the 11-inch OLED display slack after it was found that Samsung was struggling to meet Apple's exacting quality standards.

A previous report by display analyst Ross Young had claimed that Apple's 11-inch OLED iPad Pro manufacturing was behind that of the larger model, and now the new report appears to add some context to that/ It's said that Samsung Display has been unable to produce displays quickly enough while still maintaining the required quality standards, and now it's over to LG Display to try and produce enough to get things back on track.

A couple of ex-Google chip designers have left the US search giant, forming a new MatX startup to build AI processors specifically designed for LLMs (Large Language Models).

Mike Gunter and Reiner Pope used to work at Google, forming MatX, which has one objective: design next-generation silicon specifically for processing the data needed to fuel large language models (LLMs). LLMs are the basis in which the generative AI world sits on, with the likes of ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, and other LLM-powered generative AI platforms.

Gunter used to focus on designing hardware like chips to run AI software, while Pope wrote the AI software itself for Google. Google has been working hard at building its own in-house AI processors with Tensor Core Processors, first designed before LLMs became a thing and were too generic for the tasks at the time.

Kaspersky's in-house team of cybersecurity experts are warning about new "acoustic side-channeling attacks" -- or ASCA -- as they use sophisticated AI to listen to your keyboards to work out what you're typing... email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, private messages, and more.

The hackers using this new ASCA method rely on the sounds being typed into a keyboard; using AI, the hackers will determine what you're typing. If the hackers have the right equipment, they can analyze the sounds you're making by tapping on your keyboard, and possibly decode the exact letters that you're typing in.

ASCAs are another type of side-channel attack, exploiting unintended lines of communication leakage within a system; they're dangerous as they target indirect channels like power consumption and electromagnetic emissions... or the sounds of your keyboard.

Samsung has set up a dedicated HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) team inside its memory chip division. The new HBM team will increase production yields as the South Korean giant continues developing its sixth-generation AI memory, HBM4, and its new Mach-1 AI accelerator.

In a new report from KED Global, we're hearing about the new HBM team that's in charge of the development and sales of DRAM and NAND flash memory "according to industry sources." Hwang Sang-joon, corporate executive vice president and head of DRAM Product and Technology at Samsung, will lead the new HBM team.

Kyung Kye-hyun, head of Samsung's semiconductor business, said in a note posted on social media: "Customers who want to develop customized HBM4 will work with us. HBM leadership is coming to us thanks to the dedicated team's efforts".

Microsoft and OpenAI have been "drawing up plans" for a data center project to feature an AI supercomputer that is codenamed "Stargate" with millions of next-gen, specialized server chips to power OpenAI's artificial intelligence.

The news comes from The Information and "three people who have been involved in the private conversations about the proposal." According to a person who spoke to OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman about it and had viewed some of Microsoft's initial cost estimates, the new data center and AI supercomputer codenamed "Stargate" would cost as much as $100 billion to build.

The gigantic explosion of AI across virtually every industry has seen demand for AI data centers capable of handling massive use compared to traditional data centers is seeing multiple big players announcing and building new AI-focused data centers.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console will be released later this year, but today, we're learning about the PS5 Pro's new "PS5 Pro Enhanced" label that Sony will introduce with PS5 Pro-ready games.

The new PS5 Pro Enhanced label on PS5 Pro-exclusive games will include using PSSR (PlayStation Spatial Super Resolution) technology to upscale the resolution to 4K, a "constant" 60FPS frame rate, and adding or enhancing ray tracing effects. Insider Gaming reports that this is through a 45% faster GPU that's 67% larger than the regular PS5, and 27% faster RAM.

PS5 Pro Enhanced features in games:

Amazon plans to spend nearly $150 billion over the next 15 years on data centers, as the company expects an "explosion in demand" for AI applications and other digital, cloud-based services.

Microsoft is the king of data centers right now, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been experiencing record lows in the last year as business customers reduce costs and delayed projects. The insatiable AI demand has fueled new energy for Amazon, as AWS is looking at securing land and power systems for its new data centers.

Kevin Miller, an AWS vice president who oversees the company's data centers, said: "We're expanding capacity quite significantly. I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers".

NVIDIA launched its modified GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics card last year, reducing CUDA core counts and TDPs to meet US export restrictions on high-performance chips going into China... and now a custom ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 D has been unlocked to 600W power with impressive results.

In their official sense, all of the GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics cards ship with compliant specs approved to go into the Chinese (and other restricted markets) with lowered TDPs of 425W, down from 450W on the full-spec RTX 4090. There is no factory overclocking, and no dual-BIOS features allowed that push higher GPU clocks... until now.

HKEPC tested an ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics card after ASUS introduced a new 600W overclock power setting for its ROG Strix GPUs. The ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 D is identical to the ROG Strix RTX 4090 non-D, with a new AD102-205 GPU that packs fewer CUDA cores than the full RTX 4090.