NVIDIA might have just announced its next-generation Blackwell B200 AI GPU, but the beefed-up Hopper H200 AI GPU is smashing performance records in the very latest MLPerf 4.0 results.

NVIDIA's optimizations on TensorRT-LLM have been a non-stop chain of progression since the company released its AI Software suite last year. There were major performance increases from MLPerf 3.1 results to MLPerf 4.0, with NVIDIA amplifying Hopper's AI performance.

Using these new TensorRT-LLM optimizations, NVIDIA has pulled out a huge 2.4x performance leap with its current H100 AI GPU in MLPerf Inference 3.1 to 4.0 with GPT-J tests using an offline scenario. With server-based scenarios using GPT-J, NVIDIA's current H100 AI GPU had a huge 2.9x increase in MLPerf 3.1 to 4.0 performance.

If you thought the insatiable AI GPU demand was (and is, and will continue) nuts, well... the cocoa beans market is in trouble, with the price of cocoa beans skyrocketing. The price of cocoa beans has smashed through $10,000 a ton for the first time in the futures market.

The last major cocoa tree planting spree happened throughout the early 2000s in West Africa, which, if you didn't think was important to the global cocoa business, you're wrong: West Africa counts for around 75% of the global supply of cocoa beans. After already bad weather amplified by the ongoing El Nino phase of the Pacific Ocean, cocoa trees throughout Ghana and the Ivory Coast have been decimated.

Fast-forward to today, and the world is heading to an annual supply deficit of between 300,000 and 500,000 tons of cocoa beans, the largest shortfall in over 60 years. Right now, the price of cocoa is more expensive than copper on the commodities market, and we're sprinting directly into Easter, which is when chocolate makers have now increased pricing for consumers after multiple years of subpar cocoa harvests in West Africa with another on the way.

Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake-MX mobile processor for future-gen thin and light laptops has been leaked by our good friend Igor at Igor's Lab. Check it out:

The next-gen Intel Lunar Lake-MX processor will have up to 8 cores, with 4 powerful "Lion Cove" P-Cores and 4 efficient "Skymont" E-Cores. There's no need for massive amounts of cores in thin and light laptops, as Intel is focusing on balancing performance and efficiency, something Lunar Lake-MX is expected to deliver.

On the integrated GPU side of things, Lunar Lake will feature an Intel Arc Battlemage GPU with a maximum of 64 Xe2-based Execution Units (EUs) and 8 x Xe2 GPU cores. Igor's report says that this will provide a "significant leap in graphics performance that could set new benchmarks for integrated graphics solutions".

LG is promising a whopping 100 trillion won (around $74.3 billion USD) in investments in South Korea through 2028. Half of the $74.3 billion will go towards future growth drivers, including AI, biotechnology, batteries, and displays.

According to LG, the huge $74.3 billion sum will be 65% of LG's entire global investment for the same four-year period. The gigantic new investment plan was announced on Wednesday at LG's recent 62nd shareholders meeting. It comes in hot off the heels of fellow South Korean company -- SK hynix -- which announced an even bigger $90 billion investment for the "world's largest mega fab complex" in South Korea.

LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, said: "The global management environment in 2024 will have more uncertainties as a number of inflection points reside related to the generalization of AI, decarbonization, and so on. While closely monitoring the industries around our core businesses, we will bolster future businesses like AI, bio and cleantech so they can grow into main pillars of our future business portfolio".

Apple has confirmed that it will hold the annual WWDC event starting from June 10 and that's likely to be when the company will unveil the new iOS 18 software update, among others. Apple has yet to officially confirm what the update will have to offer but strong rumors have suggested that new AI functionality will very much be the order of the day. However, those hoping for Apple's in-house chatbot to debut are going to be left disappointed.

That's according to a new report by the well-connected Mark Gurman, writing at Bloomberg. According to him, Apple's chatbot won't be ready for iOS 18, but that doesn't mean that there won't be those rumored AI improvements this time around. Instead, Apple has plans to use technology from other companies instead.

We'd already heard from previous reports that Apple is in talks with both Google and OpenAI about potentially using their own generative AI technology instead. Baidu is also thought to be a company that Apple is in talks with, but its AI features will only be used in China.

With Apple announcing yesterday that it intends to launch the WWDC 2024 event on June 10 we now know exactly how long we will have to wait before we get to see what the company has been cooking in terms of new software updates. We're expecting new releases for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro and we've been told to expect big things. Now, a new report has again reiterated that fact, saying that the iOS 18 update will be "the most ambitious overhaul" of the iPhone's software that we have ever seen.

The iOS 18 software update has long been tipped to be a key update for Apple especially given its intent to bring new AI technology to bear this year. Now, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has again upped the ante, saying that people working on the new software update have told him that this will be a huge update for iPhone owners.

There are a few things that we've been told to expect from this release with Apple itself also tipping that that AI will be a focus this time around. SVP of marketing Greg Joswiak posted to the X social network to say that the event is going to be "Absolutely Incredible," with the choice of capitalization thought to be a clear nod to Apple's AI work.

Apple has long been rumored to have plans to launch a new iPhone SE 4 device as a new budget model for those who don't want to pay for more high-end models like the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. However, despite those rumors there has so far been no indication from Apple that the phone is on the way, and it's continued to be pushed back in terms of when analysts and commentators expect it to be released. Now, it seems that Apple has taken a key step towards making the new phone available.

According to a new report by IT Home, Apple is now ready to give BOE the contract to build the new displays for the iPhone SE 4 after Samsung Display and Tianma were also thought to have been in discussions with Apple. Today's report says that Samsung has decided to withdraw itself from negotiations over concerns in relation to pricing, despite already having iPhone 14 OLED displays that it could potentially have used.

It's reported that Apple wanted to get the price of iPhone SE 4 displays down to around $25 per panel while Samsung wasn't ready to budge from a $30 per panel price point. Tianma now seems unlikely to be the supplier of choice, however, with the company reportedly struggling to meet Apple's quality requirements which now leaves BOE as the primary option for Apple.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 has a recommended price of $299, though it has sunk a bit below this before - although a fresh low has now been reached with its price tag in the US.

VideoCardz noticed that - at least at the time of writing - there's a Zotac RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC White Edition on sale for $279 at Newegg.

Now, while that pricing may have been seen as part of local offers (in-store pick up) in the past, this is the first time that we're aware of that the vanilla RTX 4060 has sunk to $279 via an online listing you can just click and buy, there and then.

We keep hearing about AI PCs, and some more info just dripped through on the topic - namely that such a device will have a hard requirement in terms of a dedicated key for Copilot on the keyboard.

The concept of the Copilot key was introduced by Microsoft back at in January 24, with the idea being that it's a dedicated key in the same vein as the Windows key, except obviously in this case tapping it summons the AI assistant.

Apparently having a Copilot key on the keyboard deck of your AI PC will be mandatory going by details Intel just shared as spotted by The Verge.

Smuggling video cards into China is understandable, considering the current trade restrictions and the U.S. flat-out banning the sale of the GeForce RTX 4090 to the region. However, smuggling a batch of second-hand seven-year-old GPUs is more of a stretch because you wouldn't think it would be worth trying to smuggle 44 Radeon RX 580 graphics cards through Chinese customs.

According to a new report on MyDrivers (via Tom's Hardware), Shanghai Pudong International Airport customs officers caught a passenger trying to sneak in a batch of old Radeon GPUs into the country. Based on the seizure image all 44 Radeon RX 580 GPUs look to be the same make and model, presumably used for crypto mining.

Naturally, this is a case of someone trying to avoid paying import fees by not declaring that they have a bunch of old graphics cards they will wipe down and sell for a quick profit.