Latest News - Page 638

Intel will launch its next-generation low-power mobile chip later this year, codenamed "Lunar Lake" which will be the first processor in Intel history to be outsourced completely, made on TSMC's new N3 process node.

Samsung has been using Intel processors in its Galaxy Book family of laptops, and the company is looking at Intel's new Lunar Lake CPUs for its upcoming Galaxy Book5 Pro laptop. Intel's new Lunar Lake CPUs will be the first processors on the market to pack next-gen Xe2 GPUs, and Lunar Lake is the only Xe2 product confirmed by the company for release in 2024.

A new entry on the SiSoft Sandra database shows an in-development Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro laptop with an Intel Lunar Lake CPU inside, identified as "Samsung 999JZR Galaxy Book5 Pro (Samsung NT940XGK-DSD)." This laptop has a Lunar Lake CPU with 8 cores and CPU clock speeds of 1.6GHz up to 2.8GHz.

Microsoft has just announced that its new Windows and Surface chief is Pavan Davuluri, after losing Panos Panay to Amazon last year, where Microsoft split Windows and Surface teams with two different leaders.

Davuluri took over as the Surface silicon and devices boss, with Mikhail Parakhin leading a new team that will work on Windows and web experiences, but now both Windows and Surface are under the responsibility of Davuluri, as Parakhin has left as he "decided to explore new roles".

Microsoft is pooling the Windows and devices team together, which is news learned by an internal memo from Microsoft's head of experiences and devices, Rajesh Jha, who outlined the new Windows organization. The Verge got their hands on the memo, where Jha explained: "This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building silicon, systems, experiences, and devices that span Windows client and cloud for this AI era".

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite CPU platform has been tested, capable of running Baldur's Gate 3 at 1080p 30FPS... not bad. Check the game running on the SoC below:

The company will provide three different ways of running games through its Arm-based SoC platform, including running native on ARM64, which has the best performance and efficiency. Second is the hybrid ARM64EC for emulation; drivers and libraries are native and have similar gaming performance. Lastly, there's x64 emulation, with "no dev work required," but it'll perform slower than running natively on ARM64.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite SoC has an Adreno GPU that features 4.6 TFLOPs of compute performance, with support for APIs including DX12, DX11, Vulkan, and OpenCL. There's even legacy support for DX9 and OpenGL 4.6, too. The company teased an 80% performance increase over the popular integrated AMD Radeon 780M GPU, which is based on the RDNA 2 GPU architecture and has the same TDP.

OpenAI's impressive new text-to-video tool, Sora, loves some GPU compute power. New numbers from Factorial Funds estimate that 720,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs would be needed for peak times on Sora.

720,000 x NVIDIA AI GPUs is a monumental amount of AI GPU computing power. With each costing around $30,000 x 720,000, that's $21.6 billion. Not only is it a mountain of money, but the amount of power at 700W per GPU is astounding, too, totaling 504,000,000W of power. Yeah, that's a lot of power.

Factorial Funds estimated that Sora used between 4,200 and 10,500 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs for one month, with a single H100 AI GPU capable of generating a one-minute video in about 12 minutes, or around 5 x one-minute videos per hour.

TSMC is enjoying an increasing number of orders as chip giants trip over themselves to get 3nm process node manufacturing for their upcoming designs. Customers include Apple, AMD, Intel, and more.

In a new report from Economic Daily News, we hear that TSMC's new 3nm process node orders are set to see huge growth throughout the year and to "remain robust until the end of the year." Q4 2023 saw TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) see 15% of its revenue derived from 3nm orders, but that's expected to pass 20% this year.

Apple will use TSMC's new 3nm process node for its upcoming A18 series processor, which will power its next-gen iPhone 16 family of smartphones later this year. Apple will also use the N3 node from TSMC for its upcoming next-gen M4 processor, which will power upcoming MacBook laptops.

A new NAS motherboard has appeared on AliExpress, powered by an Intel Kaby Lake-G processor and integrated AMD Vega graphics. Yeah, Vega is back, baby.

The new Topton N9 NAS motherboard features an Intel Core i7-8705G "Kaby Lake-G" processor, with 4 cores and 8 cores at up to 4.1GHz. The CPU is designed on the 14nm node process, with a 65W TGP. Topton's new N9 NAS motherboard features an AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU as a separate tile, with 20 Compute Units and 4GB of HBM2 memory.

Topton's new N9 NAS motherboard also features an integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 GPU with 24 Execution Units that uses shared memory. But the bigger deal here is not one or two, but 8 x 2.5GbE ethernet ports (this is a NAS motherboard, remember), so plenty of storage + networking options are required.

A NAS or Network Attached Storage device is a portable and robust solution that lets you keep all of your files in a single location (with redundancy and security), with the option to access your collection from anywhere in the world.

The exciting new UGREEN NASync Series offers a variety of solutions for personal and home use, businesses, and content creators. It focuses on easy access, sharing, streaming, and storage, backed by powerful hardware underneath the hood. With up to 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processing, 8GB of expandable DDR5 memory, dual M.2 NVMe slots for fast caching, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and 2-Bay, 4-Bay, 6-Bay, 8-Bay, and All-Flash models - the NASync Series boasts some seriously impressive specs for all users.

The Kickstarter campaign for the UGREEN NASync Series will commence on March 26. Early adopters will get access to Super Early Bird Prices - up to 40% off for those who put down a $5 deposit.

Samsung teased its next-gen GDDR7 memory last week at NVIDIA's recent GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event, but now it's officially listed GDDR7 at both 32Gbps and 28Gbps speeds on its website.

Samsung's next-gen GDDR7 memory comes in 16Gb density, allowing for 2GB of GDDR7 memory per module, which is the same capacity as we see on both GDDR6 and GDDR6X memory. Each GDDR7 memory module from Samsung will feature a 32-bit wide memory interface with a refresh rate of 16K/32ms. Samsung says its new GDDR7 memory modules come in 266 FBGA packaging, with two speeds listed: 32Gbps and 28Gbps.

The company will offer its standard 32Gbps GDDR7 memory die and a low-voltage optimized 28Gbps GDDR7 die. We should expect to see next-gen high-end flagship GPUs from NVIDIA like the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards debut with 32Gbps GDDR7, while more mid-range and higher-end models (but not flagship) cards like the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 use 28Gbps GDDR7 memory.

Rockstar's new Game Pass-like subscription service GTA+ gets a huge value boost.

In a recent Q3 earnings call, Take-Two management said it expects to make more money from Rockstar's premium GTA+ subscription. Now we're seeing how exactly that will happen: With must-play games.

Rockstar today announced that fan favorite Western sim Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare expansion are now available on its $5.99/month GTA+ subscription. RDR joins other hits like the recent GTA trilogy collection on consoles. This service is kind of like Xbox Game Pass for Rockstar titles; pay a fee to access a handful of Rockstar games and get GTA Online benefits along the way.

Why is Xbox making radical changes? It's all part of a big strategy that hopes to capture a new generation of gamers.

The games industry is changing, and Xbox is changing with it. Higher production costs have led to $70 games and microtransactions being included in practically every new release. The industry grew under COVID, but contracted due to economic pressures from inflation and reduced disposable income.

According to Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, the console market isn't growing, and global gaming revenues have been down for the past 2 years in a row. So that leaves Spencer and his team with an important question to answer: How does Xbox create growth if its core market isn't growing? Diversification is one option, and that's the current route Microsoft is trying to take.

Apple's iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are expected to debut this coming September and while we are only six months on from the release of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro, there are already plenty of rumors about what we can expect from the refreshed models. It would also appear that there are plenty of plans being made outside of Apple with a new iPhone 16 Pro case having leaked online.

That case, which was shared on the X social network by Sonny Dickson, appears to show an iPhone 16 Pro case with a space for what is thought to be called the Capture button. That button first leaked not long after the arrival of the iPhone 15 lineup and is thought to be designed to give iPhone owners a hardware button for launching and interacting with the camera app.

It isn't yet clear which company is behind the case, but it does show a cutout for a new button. It's been rumored that the button will be flush with the side of the iPhone itself, and it's also been said to be a capacitive button. Such a button was originally rumored for the iPhone 15 Pro's new Action button but that ultimately didn't happen.

Apple has today confirmed that it intends to hold the annual WWDC event starting from June 10 which means that will be the date that the company unveils its new iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro software. And now one of the company's senior vice presidents appears to have today teased some rumored iOS 18 improvements.

We've been hearing for weeks now that Apple intends to debut some much-needed new AI features and improvements during WWDC with iOS 18 in particular set to benefit from the AI focus. Now, Apple's SVP of Marketing Greg Joswiak has posted on X to promote the WWDC 2024 event and he appears to have given the AI rumors a nod as part of that post.

As you will see in the post that is embedded above, Joswiak said that the event is going to be Absolutely Incredible, with the specific capitalization thought to be a hint that AI will indeed be a focus this time around.

Apple has today announced the WWDC 2204 event and its starting date while also confirming that there will be an in-person component on the initial day.

The announcement confirmed that June 10 through June 14 will be the dates for WWDC this year and that the event will be held online to allow developers from around the world to enjoy the benefits of the event without the excessive expense that would normally be associated with plane tickets and accommodations in the WWDCs of the past.

The opening day special event at Apple Park will be available to developers and students but all of the sessions that will see Apple share details about the new APIs and tools available for Apple's upcoming software updates will be available to all via Apple's online streaming platform. Apple says that the Developer app and website as well as YouTube will be available for those who want to enjoy the opening keynote, too.

More first-party Xbox games could break exclusivity and release on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch platforms, a new interview with Xbox CEO Phil Spencer indicates.

A bit ago, Microsoft made the controversial decision to officially break first-party exclusivity and sell Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. Four first-party Xbox Game Studios titles crossed over to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, including Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. Now it sounds like more games are coming.

In a recent interview with Polygon, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer asserted that Microsoft's new business plan has a few goals. Xbox wants to reduce friction and break the barriers in between the walled garden ecosystems that separate the Big 3's platforms. There's some ambiguity to Spencer's words because of the author's paraphrasing, but overall the interview shows how Spencer is thinking about the current gaming landscape and the future of Xbox.

Fortnite-maker Epic Games plans to bring its digital storefront to mobile, and this move should help improve the odds of the store becoming profitable.

Europe's new Digital Markets Act is helping shake up the video games industry. Apple made $14.8 billion from mobile games in 2022, despite not having released its own games. That money was generated from the 30% fee that Apple takes from mobile developers, which would put App Store mobile game revenues at nearly $50 billion. The EU's new DMA law requires Apple to let developers sell their games and goods directly to iOS users via separate stores, thereby avoiding the 30% revenue sharing "tax."

With the runway cleared, Epic Games is making big moves and intends to launch the Epic Games Store on both Android and iOS sometime in 2024. Epic has secured the support of key third-party partners that could include some of the biggest players in the business. In any case, mobile offers another endpoint for Epic to sell their digital wares--not just another endpoint, but the largest games platform on the market--and should help boost overall revenues and sales on EGS.

Dragon's Dogma 2 players struggling with frame rates - seemingly pretty much everyone - can pep up their FPS courtesy of a freshly launched unofficial mod that implements DLSS frame generation for those with NVIDIA's Lovelace graphics cards.

This is from well-known modder PureDark, who has previously brought DLSS 3 to the likes of Starfield, Elden Ring, and another high-profile PC games.

While Dragon's Dogma 2 has witnessed some considerable critical acclaim as a game, the performance issues have led to a seriously mixed bag of reviews on Steam. Frame rates can plummet to unplayable levels in towns, even bringing the mightiest GPUs to their knees and that includes NVIDIA's RTX 4090.

Epic Games has announced its plans to bring the Epic Games Store to mobile devices this year with the help of unnamed publishers and partners.

The European Union's new Digital Market Act has cracked open Apple's billion-dollar walled garden, forcing Apple to allow companies like Epic Games to bring their own stores into the iOS environment. Thanks to EU's DMA, Epic can sell its own games and Fortnite V-Bucks on iOS and Google through its own storefront and keep 100% of earnings. To gain traction on mobile, Epic has sought and acquired the help of some partners.

"We're excited to be leading the charge and bringing Fortnite back to mobile, along with a selection of third-party partners that have expressed interest in joining us when we launch," said Epic's Steve Allison said at GDC 2024.

Windows 11 users should look out for a Copilot app which may have sneaked onto their system potentially, or so a German tech site reports.

Anecdotally, other users have discovered this Copilot app flagged up by Deskmodder.de by checking the roster of apps installed on their PC - so you might want to hop on over to that yourself.

If the app is present you'll find it listed under Installed Apps, but it appears to be just an empty shell at this point.

An email sent out by Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been leaked online, revealing that Tesla has now changed the way it delivers its electric vehicles to customers.

The email was originally leaked online by WholeMarsBlog and then later confirmed by BusinessInsider, which details some internal changes to Tesla throughout North America. According to Musk, it's now "mandatory" to install and activate Full Self-Driving (FSD) V12.3.1 and take customers on a "short test ride before handing over the car". The reason for these changes is Musk believes "almost no one actually realizes how well (supervised) FSD actually works".

Musk went on to acknowledge that he is aware that these changes will "slow down the delivery process, but it is nonetheless a hard requirement." According to the BusinessInsider, Musk followed up with another companywide email that requires staff to give customers a demo of the vehicle after they are returned from service centers. Musk wrote, "This is very important".

Since OpenAI announced its new AI video generation platform, Sora, the company has been slowly releasing videos created by its new model, increasing the hype surrounding the tool before it becomes available to the public.

OpenAI has now taken to its blog to share a new selection of Sora-created videos, but this time around, they have been made by a select group of filmmakers, artists, advertising agencies, and musicians. OpenAI is attempting to demonstrate the capabilities of Sora when its in the hands of creatives, and how the upcoming text-to-video tool can be used by creatives to help bring ideas to reality.

As you can probably imagine, all of the lucky individuals who were able to use Sora to create some content praised the capabilities of the new tool, with there being no mention of what video content Sora was trained on to be able to create the new content.