ASUS has just pushed out some new BIOS updates for its fleet of X670E-powered AM5 motherboards, which supports AMD's next-gen Zen 5-based "Granite Ridge" processors coming later this year.

The next-gen AMD Ryzen "Zen 5" family of processors is codenamed Granite Ridge, powered by the new Zen 5 core architecture, and is now supported on ASUS X670E-based motherboards with a new AMD AM5 AGESA 1.1.7.0 BIOS update. This is the second notable BIOS update from ASUS, the previous one added 256GB DDR5 RAM support through the latest 64GB modules... and now, Zen 5 support.

HardwareLuxx posted the latest AM5 SMU table, showing all of the latest updates found in the AMD AGESA firmware, with the latest AGESA 1.1.7.0 UPDATE dropping the ComboAM5PI scheme to FireRangePI. FireRange, you say? Fire Range is the codename of AMD's upcoming mobile-focused Zen 5-based processors, with Granite Ridge being the desktop-focused Zen 5-powered CPUs.

Taiwan was rocked by a huge 7.5-magnitude earthquake yesterday, seeing TSMC evacuate its facilities, but the Taiwanese semiconductor giant was back to nearly 70% operations within 10 hours.

Wen-Yee Lee, a Taiwan-based semiconductor reporter, posted on X, providing some updates from TSMC. The company said that "due to safety concerns, TSMC has decided to suspend work at fab construction sites across Taiwan today. Construction will resume after the inspection".

Patriot has just teased that it partnered with MSI on some new Viper DDR5 memory, themed with a gorgeous all-white design and RGB lighting strip at the top. Check it out:

Patriot's Viper memory account on X said that this is NOT an April Fool's joke and that the MSI x Patriot Viper DDR5 memory was "coming soon." The new all-white DDR5 memory will be part of the Viper Extreme 5 RAM family, but we don't know how high the speeds will be.

The US government is clamping down even harder on high-performance GPUs and AI GPUs being imported to China, with beefed-up US trade regulations stopping the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics card, and H20 AI GPU.

We've seen NVIDIA and AMD restricted on the number of silicon it can send to China, depending on specific performance metrics by the Biden administration. Starting on April 4, GPUs with rated compute performance that is over 70 TFLOPs -- including the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs -- are now restricted, as they offer over 70 TFLOPs of compute performance.

The updated SEC document explains: "License is required (NLR) for computers with an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") not exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) and for "electronic assemblies" described in 4A003.c that are not capable of exceeding an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) in aggregation".

SK hynix is officially building a new advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA with an investment of around $3.87 billion. The South Korean memory giant will build next-gen HBM memory for future-gen AI GPUs, and would be the first advanced packaging for AI products on American soil.

The new $3.87 billion facility will see Indiana with a new advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility for AI products, the first of its kind in the United States, with expectations that it will drive innovation in the nation's supply chain for AI products, as well as create over 1000 new jobs in the region.

PCI-SIG initially announced the next-generation PCIe 7.0 standard back in 2022, but now the organization behind the PCIe standards -- PCI-SIG, duh -- has announced version 0.5 of PCIe 7.0, now available for member review.

PCIe 7.0 is gearing up for a full release in 2025, but don't think you'll see workstations or gaming motherboards with PCIe 7.0 connectivity when we don't have PCIe 6.0 in the consumer space just yet, and PCIe 5.0 is only penetrating that market now. We will be living with PCIe 5.0 for a while on the desktop and laptop before we see PCIe 6.0, let alone PCIe 7.0.

For now, the full specification of PCIe 7.0 were released by PCI-SIG, which include:

The Matrix 5 has just been announced -- and no, this is NOT an April Fool's Day joke -- with Drew Goddard directing, with the Wachowskis not directing a Matrix movie for the first time in franchise history.

Warner Bros. has officially greenlit The Matrix 5, with the only news of the movie being the name of the director and that a Matrix movie will go into production. Goddard directed one of my favorite surprise movies from years ago, Cabin in the Woods, and will direct The Matrix 5.

The Matrix Resurrections was released last year after Lana Wachowski solo-directed the fourth installment in the franchise with returning stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. Reeves and Moss play Neo and Trinity, respectively, who could reprise their roles, but I'd like to see Hugo Weaving return -- at least in some form -- as Agent Smith, as he was sorely missed in The Matrix Resurrections.

The highly anticipated Knights of the Old Republic remake has been officially confirmed to be in development...but there's still no word on a potential release window or concrete updates about the project.

The KOTOR remake was announced in 2021 by Sony, but since the tne project has been shuffled around. Aspyr, the team behind many of the Star Wars re-releases, was originally developing the KOTOR remake. Aspyr was acquired by Saber Interactive in 2021 for $100 million. At the time, Saber was still part of Embracer, and Embracer re-assigned the KOTOR remake to Saber's principal dev teams.

Reports indicated that the remake was put on ice in 2022, but apparently the project is still happening.

Google engineers spent a month hacking the PlayStation Portal to run PSP games natively...but then they handed the secrets right to Sony.

It's official: The PS Portal's is once again a "remote player." Sony has released a new firmware patch for the PS Portal that fixed a big security vulnerability that ultimately led to PSP games running on the device. The $199 PS Portal is specifically designed as a profitable accessory that requires a PS5 in order to stream games to the controller-screen hybrid. Being able to play games without needing a PS5 goes against the entire point of the handheld.

Two Google security experts--Andy Nguyen and Calle Svensson--spent an entire month hacking the PS Portal to see if it could run games natively. It turns out that it can indeed do this, at least when it comes to 20-year-old PSP games. Yesterday, Nguyen confirmed that Sony had been notified of the vulnerability and that a fix has been employed with PS Portal's new v2.0.6 firmware update.

Could AI spell doom for humankind eventually? Depending on which expert you talk to, the chances vary considerably, but one researcher definitely has a gloomy (and doomy) opinion - one that Elon Musk doesn't share.

Business Insider reported on revelations made at the recent Abundance Summit (held last month), which included a 'great AI debate' where Musk estimated the risk of AI ending humanity was "about 10% or 20% or something like that."

Obviously that's something akin to wild guesswork, but the general gist of the billionaire's philosophy is that we should push ahead with AI development as the probable positive outcomes outweigh any negative scenario.