Latest News - Page 1054

It was barely two weeks ago that I reported from leaks that Intel's Arc desktop GPU is so bad, it could be CANCELLED altogether... But now a major analyst has said that Intel could shut its GPU business because it's bleeding too much money: $3.5 billion so far.

In a new market research report from Jon Peddie Research, the firm estimates that Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group has lost $3.5 billion SO FAR. Intel bleeding out $3.5 billion in a division that should be around for decades to come and pull hundreds of billions in that time, is not a good sign, and neither is one of the biggest analysts in the world saying Intel should shut the GPU department down because of it.

JPR founder Jon Peddie said: "So, the rumor mill has been hinting that the party is over and that AXG would be the next group to be jettisoned".

PassMark is building its big update of MemTestX86, the first update since January 2022, which will support next-gen DDR5 memory.

The creator of MemTestX86 took to Twitter to tease "a new era of memory testing is coming to MemTestX86", with a follow-up tweet explaining: "direct identification of the bad memory module and the chip (for specifically selected DDR5 reference systems" he added.

In the photo provided, we have some Crucial DDR5-4800 memory modules being tested with MemTestX86, which spoiler alert: they'll be supported as the "specifically selected DDR5" modules. Intel already has its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs with 600-series motherboards supporting DDR5 memory, but AMD is about to launch its Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs and X670E + X670 motherboards that will also have DDR5, so MemTestX86's big new update couldn't come at a better time.

Jared Mauch is a senior network architect based in Michigan, who after having crappy internet and being told by Comcast it would cost $50,000+ to extend their fiber service to his house, built his own ISP.

Yes, you read that right: the mad man built his own ISP thanks to $2.6 million in funding from the US government and their Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program. Mauch continued to work at his day job while building his own ISP, where he was a senior network architect at Akamai, while building his own ISP: Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC, which was home to around 70 customers and will be expanding to around 600 customers in the near future thanks to those recovery funds.

The US government's slice of recovery funds to Washtenaw County was $71 million for infrastructure projects, with the county dedicating a part of those funds for broadband internet. The county has completed a broadband study before the pandemic, where it surveyed unserved locations -- places that didn't have internet connections -- according to Mauch. Once the funds were flowing, the county then issued a request for proposals (RFP) that asked contractors to start connecting fiber to houses "that were known to be unserved or underserved based on the existing survey".

Exclusive: Intel has confirmed with TweakTown that its upcoming Intel Arc graphics cards will NOT support multi-GPU for gaming, which is not a surprise, but still disappointing to hear.

In the last 36 hours, it's been a whirlwind about Intel supporting multi-GPU for its upcoming Arc GPUs and their oneAPI software. Our own Rob Squires wrote: "software support for an Intel multi-GPU solution is here and almost made its debut at SIGGRAPH 2022".

But then this morning I woke up to emails from an Intel representative clearing it all up, with the Intel representative explaining: "Intel showed a Blender Cycles rendering demo at SIGGRAPH with Intel Arc graphics. Multi-GPU rendering support for Intel Arc and Intel Arc Pro graphics cards through oneAPI is supported starting in Blender 3.3. Intel Arc graphics does not support multi-GPU for gaming".

Microsoft's legal counsel has responded to Sony's claims about the Activision-Blizzard deal, and has over-dramatized a common business practice among platform holders.

Microsoft representation had interesting things to say about Sony in its response letter to Brazil's CADE agency, which functions similar to the FTC in the United States. CADE is currently asking games companies about Microsoft's huge Activision-Blizzard deal and how it could affect the industry. Sony counsel implied that Call of Duty being kept off of PlayStation could cause anti-competitive harm, and said that subscription services can lower a game's overall quality. It's important to remember that attorneys and lawyers representing Microsoft and Sony have made these comments.

Now Microsoft's counsel has issued a document arguing against Sony's claims namely exclusivity. One of the more interesting sections has dramatized how exclusivity works in regards to subscription services. Legal reps allege that Sony pays video game developers and publishers for "blocking rights" to "prevent" a game from coming to Game Pass. This nomenclature can be simplified in a term that all gamers will recognize: Exclusivity.

When Disney+ released in 2019 for just $6.99 it seemed too good to be true. Everyone knew price hikes were coming, and of course they happened. Disney+ jumped to $7.99, and now the service is getting its second price hike.

Today Disney announced it's increasing Disney+ subscription prices by $3. Subscribers will have two options on what plans to buy: an ad plan for $7.99 that will run interstitial advertisements periodically through shows or movies, or an ad-free plan for $10.99. The new ad plan will cost as much as the current ad-free plan.

This price hike represents a 38% increase as Disney continues spending big to produce new content. Disney has spent $3.55 billion on Disney+ programming and production costs throughout this fiscal year, with a record $1.435 billion spent during Q3'22 alone. Domestic Disney+ subscribers have reached 44.5 million in Q3 and a whopping 152 million worldwide including Hotstar in India.

Former U.S. presidential candidate and consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader has come out against Tesla vehicles' Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities.

Nader referred to the Tesla feature as "one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades," and appealed to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a recall of every Tesla vehicle with the technology to have it removed. The NHTSA is already investigating 16 crashes involving Tesla Autopilot in some capacity, resulting in 15 injuries and one fatality.

Google went down earlier this week for a brief period, with Google claiming it was due to a software update.

Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Images were all affected when Google's search engine went down, with thousands of people across over 40 countries reporting outages. According to a Google spokesperson, "a software update issue" led to the "briefly affected availability of Google search and Maps," but they "worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online."

Notably, an accident had occurred only hours prior at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in which an "electrical incident" seriously injured three electricians working onsite. They were all transported to a local hospital with burns but are now in stable condition. According to Google, the incident is unrelated to its outage later that day and into the next.

A study on the forever chemicals titled "Exposure to Perfluoroalkyl Substances and Risk of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the Multiethnic Cohort: A Proof-of-Concept Analysis" has been published in the journal JHEP Reports.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) have established a link between the wide-reaching synthetic chemical perfluooctane sulfate (PFOS) and non-viral hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer. PFOS falls under the umbrella of polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are found in many consumer and industrial products, and are known as "forever chemicals" due to the extremely long time they take to break down.

As such, these chemicals can accumulate and persist in the environment and human tissues, including the liver. Though some manufacturers have phased them out, the long-lasting PFAS are still found in drinking water, numerous food products, and the blood of over 98% of adults in the United States.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has caught some debris inside its drill chuck.

An image of the drill chuck was captured by the rover's SHERLOC WATSON camera, located on the turret at end of its robotic arm, on August 4th, 2022, 517 days into its mission on Mars. The images were taken after Perseverance successfully collected and stored the 12th Martian sample of its mission, and show two pieces of debris. A small object was spotted on the coring bit that the rover uses to drill out core samples.

The second was a "small hairline object" spotted on the drill chuck, where different drilling implements are inserted into. The team behind the rover is now working to determine the origin of the debris; whether it originated from the rover itself or external debris from the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system that the rover used to reach the planet's surface at the start of its mission before it was jettisoned.

A study on the continents titled "Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents" has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from Curtin University have shown that giant meteorite impacts during the first billion years of Earth's 4.5 billion year lifetime are the likely cause of the planet's continents. Evidence to support the theory was previously thin, but scientists have found strong evidence now by studying the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, one of the two pristine Earth crusts from the Archaean period 3.6 to 2.7 billion years ago.

Unity has announced it is partnering up with Mercedes-Benz to power their future vehicles with a next-gen infotainment system powered by the MB.OS operating system.

Mercedes will be using the Unity Industrial Collection to make the UI for the in-car cockpits of Mercedes-Benz vehicles that will roll out in 2024, with Unity's technology powering things like the 3D navigation software, and virtual avatars, in-car augmented reality experiences, and more. We should expect to see Unity-powered local weather and traffic data, streaming services, and more.

Gordon Wagener, Mercedes' chief design officer explained to GamesBeat: "At Mercedes, we believe that infotainment systems should be able to understand and learn the driver's needs and habits in order to become a personal assistant. Maximum comfort and minimal distraction is the goal. Interaction between humans and vehicles is increasingly based on voice assistants, touchscreens, and smart surfaces".

AMD's next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" platform is nearly here, with Team Red entering the DDR5 memory battle... and now we have some more details on DDR5 memory + Zen 4.

GIGABYTE's leaked BIOS for their upcoming X670-based motherboards has been checked over, with overclockers and enthusiasts discovering data hidden in the firmware. The BIOS leak confirms that AMD EXPO technology (EXtended Profiles for Overclocking) is real, something previously rumored, but also confirms AMD's upcoming EXPO technology will have two main profiles: one for bandwidth, and another for low latency.

You'll be able to tweak the active memory timings for the 4 x DDR5 memory channels, while the maximum frequcny of AMD's Infinity Fabric is 3000MHz in the BIOS.

Intel is back again with another video detailing its Intel Arc A750 graphics card, which has been benchmarked in close to 50 games with both DX12 and Vulkan API-based games.

In a new video from Intel, we have Ryan Shrout and Tom Peterson benchmarking their lives away with the Arc A750 Limited Edition graphics card in 49 games at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Intel versed its own Arc A750 graphics card against NVIDIA's mid-range GeForce RTX 3060, where it beat the RTX 3060 by 3-5% on average.

Ryan explains on the official Intel website: "For games with dedicated benchmarks like Dirt 5 and Hitman 3, we used their benchmark modes. Other games without built-in benchmarks were run using repeatable scenarios, though other testers might come up with different results. And you'll see in our results disclosure that we had two different Intel labs with slightly different configurations contribute to this collection of data, but all measurements for both Intel Arc and competitive products on a per game basis were performed by the same labs. We're confident that the combined data tells the story of the type of performance you can expect when playing some of your favorite modern games".

AMD's new Ryzen 7 6800U processors have been sent to AOKZEO, to be baked into their upcoming A1 handheld gaming console.

AOKZEO founder Chengzhi Zong has got hands-on with the first batch of CPUs from AMD, with 22 boxes in total and inside of each of the box is 5 trays with 32 x Ryzen 7 6800U processors for a grand total of 3520 processors. Remember, this is the first delivery... there will be many more to AOKZOE.

AMD's new Ryzen 7 6800U is a new mobile CPU that's designed for these exact devices: but still rocks a Zen 3+ powered CPU architecture with 8 cores and 16 threads. On the graphics side of things, we have an RDNA 2-based GPU with 12 Compute Units, which is a big upgrade over the Ryzen 4000 and Ryzen 5000 series chips that use Vega GPUs.

NVIDIA has been playing with fire before the launch of its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, which will power the new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards coming later this year.

But now we're hearing fresh news from Moore's Law is Dead, who reached out to his industry sources to find out what is going on with the current situation of warehouses filled with current-gen and even older-gen Ampere and Turing-based graphics cards.

MLID says that his sources have said that AIBs are being helped by NVIDIA to clear their reserve stockpiles of GA102 (GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3080 12GB, GeForce RTX 3080). His sources state that this was "the compromise" of the "NVIDIA AIB Revolt" which is when AIBs told NVIDIA to "go pound sand" over their warehouses of older-gen GPUs before the next-gen Ada Lovelace cards arrive.

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 might get all the rumor limelight, but the GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4070 are going to be the real big sellers for gamers, and now we have the very latest rumors to continue driving up that hype train.

The next-gen GeForce RTX 4070 is rumored to have higher GPU clocks than the flagship GeForce RTX 4090, with leaker "kopite7kimi" tweeting last week that the RTX 4070 spec had been updated. NVIDIA's third-most powerful Ada Lovelace GPU in its upcoming GeForce RTX 40 series family will use the PG141-SKU331 GPU, with 7680 CUDA cores, and 12GB of GDDR6X memory clocked at 21Gbps which should provide 504GB/sec of memory bandwidth

The last we heard on the GeForce RTX 4070 and its memory system was that it would have 10GB of GDDR6X at 18Gbps, so we're looking at a decent upgrade: 12GB GDDR6X memory clocked at 21Gbps. Kopite7kimi also says that we should expect GPU boost clocks to be over 2800MHz+ which should result in custom AIB models of the GeForce RTX 4070 to hopefully breach 3000MHz+ which would be a very, very cool thing to see from NVIDIA.

MSI has officially unveiled its next-gen MEG Ai1300P power supply, the world's first ATX 3.0 compliant PSU with next-gen 600W PCIe 5.0 power connectors ready for next-gen GPUs of the future.

The new MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 PSU is the "ultimate future-proof power supply unit" says MSI, given that it rocks Intel's new ATX 3.0 specification that helps increase reliability, improve power efficiency, and allow next-gen graphics cards to chew down on 600W of power. ATX 3.0 was created in response to the growing needs of graphics cards, where they strive for more performance: and thus, more power.

ATX 3.0 puts "heavy emphasis on power excursions" which is something we've been hearing about for a while now, and something MSI says is there to "make sure high-performance graphics cards can be sustained and your system can remain stable. Thanks to ATX 3.0 there is now an increase in efficiency while idling and a new power connector is added to help achieve all the above. ATX 3.0 added a new PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR connector that features 12+4 pins instead of the traditional 6 or 8. With the new PCIe 5.0 connector, the power supply and cable can supply up to 600 watts of power".

The US has been dependent on making chips with other countries for a very long time: Apple, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and many others may be US companies, but they fab their chips overseas... mostly with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

But when President Donald Trump was in the White House, he wanted to bring manufacturing, jobs, and fab plants back to US soil. Today, the fruits of that labor have now been inked: a $280 billion package that includes $52 billion to inject US domestic semiconductor manufacturing with the CHIPS and Science Act signed into law.

Biden tweeted: "Today, I sign into law the CHIPS and Science Act. It's a once-in-a-generation law that invests in America by supercharging our efforts to make semiconductors here at home. Today represents a more secure economy, jobs, and a stronger future for our nation. America is delivering".

UPDATE: Intel reached out to us to clarify some details, saying "Intel showed a Blender Cycles rendering demo at SIGGRAPH with Intel Arc graphics. Multi-GPU rendering support for Intel Arc and Intel Arc Pro graphics cards through oneAPI is supported starting in Blender 3.3. Intel Arc graphics does not support multi-GPU for gaming."

We learned something quite interesting at SIGGRAPH 2022 today: Intel is finalizing their oneAPi software for multi-GPU support. It turns out that it was only due to the inability to find the right chassis that prevented Intel from showing off a multi-GPU solution on the show floor this week.

Support for a multi-GPU solution could allow Intel to narrow the gap somewhat against NVIDIA and AMD on their entry-level cards for Arc discrete GPUs that are set to debut shortly, as we just reported.