Latest News - Page 528

Micron has just announced it's the first in the industry to develop a PCIe Gen6 data center SSD for ecosystem development.

Ahead of FMS 2024 this week, the US-based memory giant continues on its announcements recently of the world's fastest data center SSD -- the new Micron 9550 -- which further bolsters Micron's leadership position in AI storage.

Micron's new PCIe Gen6 SSD delivers a sequential read bandwidth of over 26GB/sec, which is a large leap over the 14GB/sec (or so) that we're getting from new Gen5 SSDs on the market now. Micron is making its new PCIe Gen6 SSD available to partners, kickstarting the PCIe Gen6 ecosystem.

On August 8 the NFL will roll out new facial recognition technology across its thirty-two stadiums located in various states.

The new facial recognition software is called Wicket and it's powered by an artificial intelligence. The new system is designed with the goal of decreasing the time it takes people to get in and out of stadiums, verifying credentials, and enabling staff to move more easily around stadiums. Notably, the software is primarily designed to assist credentialed officials in verifying their identify at restricted areas, and to prevent any fraudulent use of counterfeit physical credientials.

As for ticketholders, some teams have extended the technology to customers, which will require customers to link their ticketing account to their facial image selfie. The Wicket software will create a unique digital code that represents a customer's facial features instead of storing an actual image of a person.

The last time we heard about the second human patient undergoing a Neuralink brain implant, the story was that they had to be canceled for the surgery due to the discovery of unforeseen medical issues.

However, it appears Neuralink found the right applicant as Elon Musk has revealed during an interview the company has successfully implanted its second Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) into a human patient. Musk revealed the news on a recent 8-hour-long episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, where the Neuralink founder sat down for an hour and a half to discuss the goal of BCIs, their potential at curing previously incurable diseases, and societal impacts of the technology being integrated with people that don't have any medical issues.

During the interview, Musk revealed the surgery with the second patient went "extremely well" and the implanted BCI is "working very well." Musk said Neuralink has detected 400 electrodes on the second patient's BCI, which are essentially the bridge between the device and the human brain's electrical signals.

Unsurprisingly, NVIDIA's mainstream gaming GPU is a hit among PC gamers. That's what has happened with the GeForce RTX 4060, which launched on June 29, 2023. In the space of a little over a year, it's now sitting pretty as one of the most popular gaming GPUs, according to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey Results for July 2024.

The card's popularity skyrocketed in the past month, surpassing the iconic (Pascal is still holding strong!) GeForce GTX 1060 and the Turing-based GeForce RTX 2060. It's cracked the top five, sitting just below the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, GTX 1650, and the reigning champ the GeForce RTX 3060.

Last month was a good one for the GeForce RTX 40 Series, with the Steam data also showing the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 moving steadily up the charts - both are sitting just outside the top ten.

Chinese tech forum Board Channels has been a great source of information in recent years. Its admin and users feature multiple people close to or representative of NVIDIA's key partners divulging information relating to GPUs - from hardware shortages to launch timings to potential issues.

The latest news out of the forum is surprising: NVIDIA plans to halt production of its most popular gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060. The GeForce RTX 3060 was first released in early 2021, and the company's new mainstream option quickly became popular among gamers.

Currently, the GeForce RTX 3060 is sitting on top of the Steam Hardware Survey for July 2024, a position it has held for several months as the most used GPU among PC gamers. Hearing the news that NVIDIA is potentially halting production and putting the RTX 3060 into 'end-of-life' mode is surprising.

Valve is working on a next-generation single-player game, codenamed "HLX" and is rumored to be Half-Life 3. Yes, that Half-Life 3.

The news of Half-Life 3 is coming from a voice actor who has leaked HLX, with references to "Project White Sands (video game)," in which Natasha Chandel performed voice work. The reference to "white sands" is probably a reference to Half-Life 3 through "White sands is a park in New Mexico... state where is (was) Black Mesa". Alright, hyped.

But, through datamining, we've got Valve leaker Tyler McVicker giving us the rundown on what's happening in the world of Half-Life 3 (in the video above, and the post on X below). There are a ton of points towards Half-Life 3 in the leaks, something McVicker covers beautifully in his video.

A business that sells a mixture of custom and preconfigured computer systems for desktops, workstations, and servers has released a report revealing its failure rate for CPUs in the wake of the recent Intel fiasco.

The CPU industry is currently on fire, with recent damaging reports about the instability issues with Intel's 14th and 13th Gen CPUs. There has been quite a lot of ambiguity around the fix for the problem, which has been linked to a microcode issue that resulted in excess voltage requests and general instability. Intel has said it's issuing a microcode update in mid-August that will remedy the problem. Unfortunately, Intel still hasn't said how significant the issue's impact is and how many CPUs are affected.

The general concern is the breadth of the impact across SKUs and generations, which was exacerbated by developers coming out and saying they have seen failure rates of up to 100% across 14th and 13th Gen CPUs. Now, Puget Systems, a custom and preconfigured computer system business has published a report revealing its internal failure rate estimations.

AMD's new Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs are finally out in the wild, with some fresh leaks on the beefier "Strix Halo" APU that will be released in 2025.

The new Strix Halo APU will feature up to a higher 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power, and a massively upgraded RDNA 3.5 GPU system over the current Strix Point APUs that will deliver discrete GPU levels of gaming performance.

In the new leak, we're seeing the new Strix Halo APU huge package: 37.5 x 45.0 mm and using the same FP11 package. The APU itself will be much smaller, with the biggest die on the Strix Halo APU being the RDNA 3.5 GPU that will consume 307mm² die space, while the 2 x Zen 5 CCDs use 66mm² die space, with a total die space (Strix Halo is multi-chiplet) of 439mm².

NVIDIA has hit some major roadblocks with its new Blackwell AI GPUs, with redesigns in the works, and a new B200A on the way... but in the middle of this mess, we get some new details on the specs of Blackwell Ultra.

NVIDIA first teased its mid-generation refresh "Blackwell Ultra" earlier this year, as well as its next-gen Rubin R100 AI GPU that will feature ultra-fast HBM4 memory in 2025 (if there's no delays for Rubin, as there are with Blackwell).

SemiAnalysis has the scoop here, with Blackwell Ultra acting as a mid-generaiton enhancement of Blackwell, with the standard CoWoS-L Blackwell Ultra known as "B210" or "B200 Ultra". Inside, NVIDIA's new Blackwell Ultra features both a memory refresh -- up to 288GB of 12-Hi HBM3E memory -- and performance enhancements of up to 50% in FLOPS.

NVIDIA is reportedly experiencing some major issues with its new Blackwell AI GPUs, with the new B100 and B200 AI GPU shipments heavily impacted, with design flaws causing major headaches not just for NVIDIA.

In a new report published by SemiAnalysis, the outlet reports that there are issues with the Blackwell die needing a possible redesign or that the bridge dies inside TSMC's new CoWoS-L advanced packaging needs a redesign.

The result? NVIDIA is now reportedly working on the B200A AI GPU, which will be released towards the second half of 2025 and won't have the issues that are now plaguing the fastest AI GPU before it could hit the market.

NVIDIA's upcoming Blackwell AI GPU family is "encountering major issues" according to a new detailed breakdown by SemiAnalysis, which will impact production targets through into the first half of 2025.

The main problems are from the NVIDIA Blackwell GPU architecture and the chip packaging used: TSMC's new CoWoS-L. SemiAnalysis explains that one of the rumors swirling is that one of the top few global routing metal layers and bump out of the Blackwell die needs a redesign, while another is that the bridge dies inside the CoWoS-L packaging need a redesign.

SemiAnalysis explains that there has a been a warpage in the CoWoS-L packaging that was caused by heat, with TSMC's new CoWoS-L advanced packaging being more complex than the now more mainstream CoWoS-S packaging.

Elon Musk has officially dubbed Tesla's new supercomputer cluster at Giga Texas "Cortex" which will be powered by 100,000 x NVIDIA H100/H200 AI GPUs with "massive storage" for video training its FSD and Optimus projects.

Elon Musk revealed the new name of the Tesla Gigafactory Texas supercomputer cluster in a post on X, which comes as no surprise to the SpaceX and Telsa (and X) boss.

Elon did say that the new Cortex supercomputing cluster will feature around 100,000 x NVIDIA H100 and H200 AI GPUs that will be used to video train the neural networks for FSD (Full Self-Driving) and Optimus robotics.

AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs have had their new RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M integrated GPU tested at 18W of power, compared to 28W+ power and the Arc GPU on Intel's current Meteor Lake processors.

The gaming tests between the integrated GPUs was conducted by TechEpiphany, comparing the 17W Strix Point APU against the 28W+ Meteor Lake CPU. On the AMD side of things, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" flagship APU was used, with 16 compute units of RDNA 3.5-based GPU with clocks of up to 2900MHz.

It is inside of the ASUS VivoBook S16 OLED which is equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory, and tuned down to 17W as the APU itself is set to 60W by default. For comparison, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" processor was used, with 8 Xe-Cores and a 2.25GHz GPU clock (which is 100MHz slower than the Core Ultra 9 185H integrated GPU). This chip also featured 32GB of RAM, but LPDDR5X-6400 (slightly slower).

The US Department of Justice is being pushed to investigate NVIDIA over anti-competitive concerns in its dominance in the AI GPU business.

Progressive groups backed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, have written a letter to anti-trust boss Jonathan Kanter, to open an investigation into NVIDIA. The push is coming from Demand Progress and 9 other entities that push for government scrutiny against monopolies in business, and now NVIDIA is in their crosshairs.

A magnifying glass is being put over NVIDIA's bundling of hardware and software, which has created a tight-grip monopoly on the AI GPU market. The groups wrote: "This aggressively proprietary approach, which is strongly contrary to industry norms about collaboration and interoperability, acts to lock in customers and stifles innovation".

NVIDIA's next-gen Blackwell AI GPUs have reportedly been delayed, with The Information reporting that "design flaws" are stopping Blackwell from flooding the world of AI.

The Information reports on information from two unidentified people that helped produce the Blackwell AI GPU and its server hardware said that NVIDIA's new Blackwell AI GPUs could be delayed for 3 months or more, affecting major customers like Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

NVIDIA reportedly made Microsoft aware of the issue of Blackwell AI GPUs being delayed this week, at least its "most advanced" AI chip models, according to Bloomberg reporting on unidentified Microsoft staffers and "another person." The delays mean that big shipments aren't to occur until Q1 2025, according to The Information.

Samsung is completely dominating the foldable smartphone business, with a step further seeing its new foldable Galaxy Z Flip smartphones used as police body cameras.

Samsung is promoting the use of its Galaxy Z Flip smartphones as body-warn cameras for police officers, promoting the fact that some US police officers are using them as body cameras. The South Korean giant started a pilot program with the Kimberling City Police and the Indian Point Police in Missouri, where they started testing the Galaxy Z Flip as a body camera for police officers in the field.

The police officers in the pilot program wore the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip smartphones as body cameras in the field, to better maintain transparency. The program was a success, and expanded to other departments.

Intel is experiencing some pain right now. It has lost 30% of its share price in the last 48 hours and is now announcing extended warranty periods for its 13th- and 14th-generation Core CPUs because of their instability issues.

The company has issued a further two years of warranty for 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs, extending their 3-year warranty to a larger 5-year warranty. However, this is the for the retail boxed versions of the CPUs. There is STILL no recall on Intel's 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs, and there will be no stopping sales of these processors either.

Intel said it is "committed to making sure all customers who have or are currently experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors are supported in the exchange process. We stand behind our products, and in the coming days we will be sharing more details on two-year extended warranty support for our boxed Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors".

Intel posted its Q2 2024 earnings report and within hours, saw its stock price absolutely TANK by over 30% and wiping away tens of billions of dollars in market cap in a near-instant.

The news comes on the announcement of Intel set to lay off over 15% of its global workforce, which will result in 17,500 people losing their jobs before the year is out. Q3 2024 forecast revenues were below market expectations, bleeding CPU market share to AMD all over the place (Ryzen for consumers, Threadripper for workstation users and content creators, and EPYC for servers and data centers).

Intel stock has dropped over 31% in the last couple of days, from $31 to $21 which wiped away over $30 billion in market cap, with large-scale lay offs to now occur.

Intel has been having some seriously bad issues with its 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs, with instability issues, crashes, and more... with no recall in sight and no real admittance to a gigantic issue by the company, Intel is now being slapped with a class action lawsuit.

Millions of customers are affected, so a class action lawsuit was inevitable. Now, Abington Cole + Ellery is tackling the case as the law firm specializes in class action lawsuits and intellectual property (IP). The law firm made a post about the issue, acknowledging the latest developments in the story, including 65W non-K processors being affected.

The law firm posted a summary of the issues in 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs from Intel, explaining: "Recent reports have highlighted instability issues with Intel's 13th and 14th Generation Core desktop processors. The primary cause of these instabilities has been identified as elevated operating voltages. Intel's analysis revealed that a microcode algorithm was incorrectly requesting higher voltages, leading to instability in the processors. This issue apparently does not stem from the earlier resolved via oxidation problem in Intel's manufacturing process​".

The rumors of Intel laying off thousands of employees were right, but it's even worse than that: Intel is laying off over 15% of its global workforce over a seriously bad Q2 2024 earnings report that has seen Intel stock sinking over 30% in 24 hours.

Intel stock has dropped from $31 down to $21 post-Q2 2024 earnings, which is a disaster for Intel shareholders, the brand itself, and the future of the company.

On top of that, their 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs are plagued with issues... no recalls announced... Arc is almost DOA apart from being thrown into Lunar Lake CPUs as GPU tiles... and now 30%+ of its stock price sliced away, and 15%+ of its global workforce to lose their jobs.