The CHIPS and Science Act was signed by the Biden administration in 2022, authorizing $280 billion in new funding to see the US becoming the beacon for the best semiconductor factories and chips made on the planet.

Today, the Biden administration unlocked $53.7 billion to unleash R&D and semiconductor manufacturing, with billions going to the likes of Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. The US Commerce Department has announced that Intel has signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms for federal grants of up to $8.5 billion, while Intel can access up to $11 billion of loans from the CHIPS Act.

Intel will also claim US Treasury Department's Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of up to 25% for its planned investments of around $100 billion to establish multiple facilities and fabs in the USA. This includes a new fab in Arizona, an advanced packaging center in New Mexico, a leading-edge manufacturing site in Ohio -- which was just delayed from 2025 to 2027 or 2028 -- and a new R&D center in Oregon.

Samsung has just announced its started the development of next-generation artificial general intelligence (AGI) dedicated semiconductors through its AGI Computing Labs in the USA and South Korea.

Kyung Kye-hyun, president of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions Division, said on his own social media on March 19: "I am pleased to announce the establishment of Samsung Semiconductor's AIG Computing Labs in both the United States and Korea".

Dr. Woo Dong-gyuk is a former developer of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) as one of the three that designed the TPU platform for the search giant, is now running the AGI Computing Lab and is recruiting more staff to help with Samsung Semiconductor's journeys into completely new semiconductor technology for the future of AGI. He said: "We will create a completely new type of semiconductor specifically designed to meet the astonishing processing requirements of future AGI".

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told the press during a media briefing at GTC 2024 that "HBM memory is very complicated and the value added is very high. We are spending a lot of money on HBM". Jensen added: "Samsung is very good, a very good company".

SK hynix gobbles up most of the advanced HBM3 and HBM3E memory needs for NVIDIA and its growing arsenal of AI GPUs with the Hopper H100, H200, and new Blackwell B100 and B200 AI GPUs all using HBM memory. Jensen continued: "The upgrade cycle for Samsung and SK Hynix is incredible. As soon as NVIDIA starts growing, they grow with us. I value our partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung very incredibly".

The news directly from the CEO of NVIDIA that it will be using HBM memory supplied by Samsung saw the South Korean company's shares jump by 5.6% on Wednesday.

Meta has purchased NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs to train its Llama models, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company is also training a third-generation of its Llama model on two GPU clusters that it announced last week, each of them packing around 24,000 of NVIDIA's current-gen Hopper H100 AI GPUs.

The news is coming from a new report by Reuters, which said that Meta will continue using its current H100-powered AI GPU clusters to train its current-gen Llama 3 model, but will use NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs to train future generations of the model, according to a Meta spokesperson.

NVIDIA announced its new Blackwell B200 AI GPU at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event this week, offering gigantic improvements to all things AI.

Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro might actually be an affordable console that doesn't cost $700.

On paper, the new PS5 Pro sounds like an expensive machine. Recent leaks have basically unearthed all of the PlayStation 5 Pro's secrets and exposed some interesting new advancements to the world, including a beefy new RDNA 3 GPU capable of 33.5 TFLOPs of power clocked at 2.1GHz. The PS5 Pro is also said to have a special new machine learning (ML) block on its GPU that will power Sony's new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling tech. All of this is said to enable more detail-heavy gaming experiences at boosted effective resolutions without biting so much into FPS, potentially leading to more sustainable 4K gameplay.

This has led to lots of talk about the PS5 Pro's price tag. Will it be a $600 machine that doesn't move the needle very much in terms of mass adoption? Or is it a carefully planned and budget-balanced device that is specifically made to sell as a profitable, cost-effective piece of hardware aimed at helping stabilize Sony's falling operating margins? The latter seems more likely, especially given Sony's current position.

Corsair has just unveiled an all-white version of its RMx SHIFT power supplies, which range from 750W to 1200W, with new side-mounted connectors. The company has a video going over it all below:

The family of RMx SHIFT power supplies feature a side-mounted DC connector panel which makes for neater cable management, but you'll want to make sure you've got the room in your case to handle power cables feeding into the PSU on those side-mounted connectors.

Corsair provides PC builders with access to all the micro-fit cables through the side-mounted connectors, which makes for quicker and easier installation, and maintenance -- like installing some more SSDs or additional fans -- without digging around in your system. The cable design from Corsair also reportedly reduces cable strain by minimizing bending and testing, which makes for longer-lasting cables and connectors.

We all know Sony is working on a beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console for later this year, but now we're hearing news about a new Xbox console that has just hit South Korean regulatory offices.

The South Korean Radio Research Agency (RRA) regulatory office received a new Microsoft Xbox Development Kit (XDK) for testing, which is usually part of the procedure before new hardware launches in a few months' time. We saw the Xbox 360 console back in 2005 being sent through regulatory offices before the console hit retailers a month later.

We heard about Sony's new PlayStation Spatial Super Resolution (PSSR) technology from new leaks last week, but now the folks at Digital Foundry have torn through the rumors and provided some more information on the PlayStation 5 Pro console and its beefed-up hardware capabilities.

PSSR will reportedly be capable of being backported to any existing PlayStation game, which will make for some even better-looking PS5 games on the faster PS5 Pro console. Digital Foundry explains that Sony says PSSR has a 250MB memory footprint, but developer disclosures show that PSSR can be backported to ANY game... now we're talking.

Digital Foundry explained: "This is at odds with 'back compat plus' features bolted on to PS4 games running on PS5, which required games to run on modern development environments (SDKs). This could be of crucial importance in upgrading existing PS5 games that suffer from image quality problems - and we're seeing a lot of those thanks to low internal resolutions and FSR2 upscaling. The Pro could deliver vastly improved results via its extra GPU power and PSSR upscaling".

AMD shipped its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card with 6GB of memory, but now YouTuber and modder Paulo Gnomes has more than doubled the memory capacity from 6GB to an incredible 16GB.

Not only that, but the modder also increased the stock 192-bit memory bus up to a higher 256-bit memory bus, which, when overclocked, the PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Devil graphics card that was modded was up to 29% faster than its stock 192-bit memory bus and stock 6GB of GDDR6.

The modder had to modify the BIOS on the Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Devil graphics card, adjusting the right hexadecimal code to tell the GPU to unlock the additional memory controllers inside of the Navi 10 GPU die.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is out in a couple of days, but the review embargo is lifted, and to say there's some high praise is an understatement - although it's tempered by concerns on the performance front for PC gamers.

Cleary, this much-awaited open world action RPG sequel has been extremely well received, offering immersion and depth aplenty, and an innovative pawn system, and... well, the positivity gushes on, frankly.

James Galizio, who reviewed the game for RPG Site, enthused: "At the best of times, Dragon's Dogma 2 feels far less like a game and more like a world you're exploring - learning about those that live in it, and in turn yourself by how you choose to engage with those same people. It's unlike any other RPG."