Latest News - Page 1486

Apple has already impressed with its M1 SoC but its next-gen M1X is looking to really ramp things up in every department: CPU, GPU, RAM support, and more.

The next-gen Apple M1X will reportedly have a 12-core CPU up from the 8-core CPU in the M1 chip -- with the 12-core CPU being clocked at up to 3.2GHz. The 12 cores will be split in to 8 x Firestorm performance cores, and 4 x Icestorm power-efficient cores.

As for GPU cores we're looking at the Apple M1X reportedly packing a 16-core GPU, double the 8-core GPU inside of the M1 with the 16-core GPU including 256 execution units. We should expect double the GPU performance out of Apple's new M1X chip over the original M1 from the doubling in GPU cores and execution units.

Manus today revealed the Manus Pro Tracker, a SteamVR tracking puck for the enterprise market. These will be the third option for SteamVR tracking puck on the market this year.

The Manus Pro Tracker is a lot like the HTC Vive Trackers, which have been on the market for several years, but with an improved industrial design more suited to professional use cases.

The new Manus Pro Trackers are smaller than the Vive Trackers, and Manus said they weigh 40% less than Vive Trackers. The reduced weight helps to increase mounting stability, which in turn increases tracking accuracy.

Samsung has just announced its new adventure into HBM technology, with the introduction of HBM-PIM with the 'PIM' standing for processing-in-memory. But what the hell does that mean?

The new HBM-PIM technology allows for some programmability inside of the memory layer, thanks to an embedded "DRAM-optimized" AI engine inside of the memory banks. This new AI engine is called a PCU or Programmable Compute Unit, which will handle the data between your CPU and memory in a parallelized way.

This is because most computing systems of today are based on the von Neumann architecture, which separates processor and memory units to do millions of individual processing tasks. This can be congested as you can imagine, so HBM-PIM provides processing power directly stored on a DRAM-optimized AI engine inside of each memory bank.

The rumblings of Apple's future foldable iPhone have been coming in larger numbers over the last few weeks, with a new rumor that Apple has LG helping it with display tech for its foldable iPhone.

DigiTimes reports that LG will be collaborating with Apple on its foldable iPhone with its future foldable OLED technology, instead of Samsung which was the company most thought Apple would use for the display side of things on the foldable iPhone. It seems LG will instead be helping with the foldable iPhone development with some foldable OLED panel tech.

The new report is just that -- LG is reportedly working with Apple on the foldable iPhone, but we don't know anything apart from that. It's been reported that there are a couple of foldable iPhone prototypes in the wild, one of them being a clamshell design similar to the Galaxy Z Fold from Samsung.

ZOTAC stepped in a huge puddle of sh*t a few hours ago, happily posting and endorsing the huge of its GPUs with huge crypto mining farms and then tagging it with #PcGaming... yeah. It was removed, but the internet being the internet means it's forever:

In the picture you can see that ZOTAC is showing off a crypto mining rig that is powered by a bunch of their own GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge graphics cards and then ZOTAC used a bunch of hashtags that are for PC gamers. These hashtags include #PcGaming, #Gaming, #Gamers, #Tech, #PcHardware, #PcComponents, #PCMR, #PcMasterRace, and #RTX.

It seems ZOTAC has no issues with miners... and maybe that's why I can't get anymore samples out of them. I've tried, but they told me they don't have the stock... meanwhile other AIBs are sending more review samples than ever before. Maybe ZOTAC is happy to keep them all, because they're racking up those mining $$$.

Today's Nintendo Direct didn't live up to expectations, but Nintendo gives a potential update window for one of the Switch's most anticipated game.

Back in September 2020, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said gamers would have to "wait a big longer" for news on the big Breath of the Wild sequel. Fast-forward five months later, and Nintendo still doesn't have news to share. But we did get a promise of an update later this year (hopefully):

"I'm sure a lot of you saw me and thought there might be news on the sequel to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately, we don't have anything to share right now. We apologize. Development is proceeding smoothly and we should be able to bring you some new information this year," Aonuma said in the most recent Nintendo Direct show.

Today's Nintendo Direct showcase had a few big announcements, but no details on a Switch Pro were revealed.

Today was the first Nintendo Direct in 533 days and it was a bit of a disappointment for anyone expecting colossal things. Gamers didn't get any huge earth-shattering reveals like a new Switch Pro model, nor did we get big Metroid or Zelda collections to celebrate both franchises' 35th anniversary. No Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 news, either.

So what did we get? The big headlining news was Apex Legends' March 9 release date on Switch, details on Octopath Traveler 2, Fall Guys, a surprise Ninja Gaiden 3-pack remaster collection,, Splatoon 3, a new Mario Golf game, and a fully-fledged Skyward Sword HD remaster on Switch complete with JoyCon-adapted controls.

Kingdom Hearts is finally coming to PC...as an Epic Games Store exclusive.

Square Enix has teamed up with Epic Games to bring its beloved Kingdom Hearts series to PC for the first time. The franchise will skip Steam for an unannounced period of time and will be available on the Epic Games Store on March 30, 2021. Square Enix didn't reveal when or if the series will drop on Steam.

The press materials don't mention exclusivity terms (if there even are any), and the only exclusive is a custom keyblade for Sora to use in Kingdom Hearts III: "Those who purchase KINGDOM HEARTS III + Re Mind (DLC) will receive an exclusive Epic Games Store "Elemental Encoder" Keyblade to use in-game."

Nintendo is finally releasing a new Direct showcase--the first since September 14, 2019.

It's been a long time since the last main Nintendo Direct stream--533 days to be exact--and today's show has a lot of anticipation behind it. Gamers might want to tamper their expectations, though. Nintendo has dropped a few clues on what to expect:

That's it. That's all we get. There's lots of speculation running around about a possible 35th anniversary Zelda event or collection of games, as well as Metroid, who also turns 35 this year. Then we have the usual indie reels that could show off more info on Silksong. As for big mainline AAA Switch games, or a Switch Pro confirmation, that seems iffy at best.

As an Australian, I have just awoken to some world-changing news: Facebook and the Australian government are having a blue -- a fight, they're having a fight.

Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law is swinging its 1984 powers around, with the federal government forcing social media companies to pay for news content -- Google buckled under pressure and coughed up the money, but Facebook didn't and now things are changing.

Facebook has now seen the end of Australian news publishers being able to post their stories on Facebook, while international news won't be seen on Australian users' walls nor will they be able to be shared by Aussies on Facebook. Across the pond, everyone else won't be able to read or share any Australian content on Facebook.

Can you believe it's barely a month until Zack Snyder's Justice League is streaming on HBO Max, and we see what Snyder's original vision of the movie would've been -- and some more. Well, now we can listen to some of the score from the movie, listen to this:

This is the track "The Crew at Warpower" from Zack Snyder's Justice League, with Junkie XL handling the score to the movie. Junkie XL or Tom Holkenborg, worked with Hans Zimmer on Snyder's previous movie in the DCEU with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

I've listened to it a few times before writing this post and I'm really enjoying what Junkie XL has here so far with his score to Zack Snyder's Justice League. The movie is a lengthy 4 hours long so it'll be interesting to see how long and how many tracks there are for the soundtrack for Zack Snyder's Justice League.

A large new update for Microsoft Flight Simulator is here, with the new World Update III providing digital makeovers for the UK and Ireland.

Asobo Studio had already updated Flight Simulator with US and Japan regions receiving improvements, but now there's new high-res 3D photogrammetry to London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford. Not only that, but 5 airports have been recreated by hand which include Barra, Liverpool, Land's End, Manchester-Barton and Out Skerries.

The developer has made some "visual and logistical improvements" to 85 more airports in Flight Simulator, with Asobo Studio also enhancing regional architecture including manors, castles, churches and Victorian homes and even drive-thrus. Asobo has also updated Buckingham Palace, Premier League stadiums, Blarney Castle and the Forth bridges.

Bitcoin has been gaining more and more traction with the likes of Tesla Motors buying $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, Mastercard supporting cryptocurrency payments on its network this year, Apple possibly supporting cryptocurrency and so much more, driving the price of Bitcoin to a historic high of $50,000.

With the price of Bitcoin surging up and over $50,000 -- at the time of writing it was a shave under $49,700 we're looking at a market cap of $918 billion. $918,000,000,000 -- just $82 million shy of that record-breaking $1 trillion market cap which is incredible.

Major companies are turning to cryptocurrency in growing numbers, especially when the likes of Elon Musk backs Bitcoin so strongly and through his company with Tesla buying $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and will soon accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its Tesla electric vehicles.

Intel is fresh with its new CEO Pat Gelsinger stepping into the role, sending out a note to Intel's vast 110,000+ employees telling them he's thirsty for the company to be the leader in every single category.

Gelsinger explains that Intel must "stay ahead of customer needs and become more agile in a very competitive market and prove the differentiated value of our products, our roadmap and our manufacturing capability". He adds that Intel needs to executive flawlessly to their commitments and push the envelope when it comes to innovation using their "unmatched IP, engineering talent and research into new next-generation computing architectures".

He also notes that there are 4 key superpowers with the world turning everything digital, with the new Intel CEO noting the cloud, mobility fueled by 5G, artificial intelligence and the intelligent edge. Gelsinger said: "Intel is the only semiconductor company that has the depth and breadth of intelligent silicon, platform, software, architecture, design, manufacturing and scale that our customers need to capitalize on these opportunities and fuel their next-generation innovations".

The very latest rumor on Apple's first foldable iPhone is that it will release sometime in 2023, with an OLED display ranging between 7.3-inch to 7.6-inch and would support the Apple Pencil, too.

The news is coming from Chinese investment research firm EqualOcean which predicted the foldable iPhone will launch in 2023. The report reads: "Omdia, a global communications and digital media research organization, predicts that Apple may launch a 7.3-7.6-inch foldable OLED smartphone in 2023 and add an activity pen to its foldable iPhone".

We heard back in October 2020 that the foldable iPhone could even have self-healing display technology, which was teased in a new patent at the time. The foldable display would be protected against small scratches from being placed in and out of your pocket or bag, or onto the table for example.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has teamed with Microsoft on getting a PC onto the International Space Station connected to Azure. HPE has now sent their new Spaceborne Computer-2 system up and onto the ISS.

The new Spaceborne Computer-2 system will be connected to the cloud and into Microsoft Azure, through NASA and HPE ground stations. What this new Spaceborne Computer-2 system allows astronauts on the International Space Station to do is work on data processing up on the ISS, versus having to send it back down to Earth.

The news release for the Azure connection says: "Astronauts and space explorers deserve access to the best cloud computing technologies and advanced processing at the ultimate edge. Sometimes analysis needs to be done immediately at the edge where every passing moment counts, and other times the analysis is so massively complex that it can only be performed with the power of the hyperscale cloud".

Researchers have made a discovery about what kind of conditions life can still live in as experts drilled deep into the Antarctic ice shelf.

The discovery of this new life has challenged the assumption that life cannot live in the conditions below the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey drilled through 2,860 feet of ice, and used a Go Pro to make the discovery, which also wasn't intentional. Huw Griffiths, one of the researchers who made the discovery, said in a Twitter video, "The area underneath these ice shelves is probably one of the least-known habitats on Earth."

Griffiths also said to The Guardian, "Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn't think it would be there." The researchers discovered the stalked animals can be found in the image below outlined in red. For comparison, the sponges have been highlighted in white, and as you can see, the animals in red have long stalks, and the sponges don't.

I'm sure you've heard of the raging winter storms across many states in the US, with Texas hit very hard with a historic winter cold front -- which has seen millions of Americans without power, cell phone and internet services.

T-Mobile president of technology Neville Ray tweeted: "We're experiencing network issues following severe weather in several areas of the country and especially across Texas. Our teams are working hard to restore service. Stay tuned, stay safe and thank you for your patience".

Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma explained the storm: "We're living through a really historic event going on right now". The storm has plunged millions of Americans into darkness in more ways than one, with state officials saying that the demand for power mixed with the freezing conditions has knocked down power stations as Texas' systems are overloaded.

I'm a huge fan of these die shots and X-ray shots of any tech for that matter, but now we have some awesome pictures of the PlayStation 5 die. Check it out:

Twitter user @FritzchensFritz shared the images of the extremely close-up shot of the PS5 die, which shows that the PlayStation 5 doesn't have Infinity Cache like the RDNA 2-powered Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards do. There's no 128MB of purpose-built cache helping out the GDDR6 memory here, as you can see the caches are separated.

Why is that? Because Sony is using a semi-custom chip designed between Sony and AMD for the PS5, so it works differently to the off-the-shelf-if-you-can-find-it Radeon RX 6800 series cards with their 128MB of super-fast Infinity Cache. Remember that what we're looking at isn't just the GPU of the PS5, but the CPU + GPU (APU = Accelerated Processing Unity which is both the CPU and GPU combined).

Metro Exodus fans will be delighted to hear that there is a new version of the game in the oven, with the freshly announced Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition.

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition will see the 4A Engine "radically overhauled" to introduce full ray tracing into the game for both next-gen NVIDIA GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon RX series graphics cards as well as the next-gen Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles.

The developed explains: "When Metro Exodus released two years ago, it was one of the first games to feature Ray Tracing (on high-end PC only) thanks to NVIDIA's new RTX series of graphics cards, although we still utilized many more traditional rendering techniques for console and older PC graphics cards. But with Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 consoles offering Ray Tracing support, we took the decision to radically overhaul our proprietary 4A Engine and realise our ambitions for a fully Ray Traced experience on next gen consoles and high-end PC".