Latest News - Page 643

You probably haven't missed that Microsoft just launched a new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 for businesses, and consumer models are inbound - except they may come with a sting in the tail.

According to chatter on the grapevine, those consumer Surface devices will be the ones to carry ARM chips - specifically the Snapdragon X Elite, or a custom version of it tinkered with by Microsoft - whereas the business-targeted models revealed today have Intel Meteor Lake CPUs.

On X (formerly Twitter), well-known Microsoft leaker Zac Bowden was talking about the new Surfaces and somebody chimed in with a question about whether there will be an Intel option with the consumer Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6.

NVIDIA may have new spins on its RTX 4070, 4060 Ti and 4060 graphics cards inbound, but if so, let's make it clear from the outset that these won't be anything interesting.

A tweet has surfaced from regular leaker MEGAsizeGPU claiming some new versions are planned by NVIDIA, but before you begin imagining some kind of 4060 Super (or indeed 4060 Ti Super), these graphics cards will keep the exact same specifications as the existing versions (if they're anything at all - add salt as ever).

So, what's the point of that? Well, they will have a different chip, with the changes being as follows:

During the recent State of Unreal livestream, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra was showcased in a new trailer, revealing a seemingly head-to-head battle between Captain America and Black Panther.

The new game is developed by Skydance New Media, and according to the overview of the title found on the Marvel website, the game will put players into the chaos of the 1940s where Captain America and Azzuri, T'Challa's grandfather and the Black Panther of the 1940s, will need to overcome their differences and form an alliance to confront their common enemy.

Additionally, the overview reveals that both heroes will be fighting alongside Gabriel Jones of the Howling Commandos and Nanali, a Wakandan spy embedded in Occupied Paris, to stop "a sinister plot that threatens to turn the havoc of WWII into the ultimate rise of Hydra." Captain America will be voiced by Drew Moerlein, and Black Panther will be voiced by The Walking Dead's Khary Payton.

With Intel's Arc graphics now covering discrete GPUs like the Arc A750 and recent Arc A580 and integrated graphics in the new Intel Core Ultra series of mobile processors, the diligent team over at Team Blue continues to improve driver support for new games and older titles.

Over the past year, we've seen significant overhauls to DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 performance, with per-game optimizations bringing some game-changing improvements. The latest Intel Game On Graphics Driver release for Arc Graphics is no different, with new game support for Dragon's Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Diablo IV's upcoming ray-tracing update; a bunch of older titles are also getting "up to 174% average FPS uplift."

Those massive performance increases are limited to a handful of titles, like Detroit: Become Human (Vulkan) and Granblue Fantasy: Relink (DX11). Still, a 36% performance bump to God of War running on a desktop Arc GPU and a 17% performance bump running on an Intel Core Ultra with built-in Arc are great to see.

It was only earlier this year that Elon Musk announced his brain chip company Neuralink had implanted the first brain chip into a human patient.

Neuralink has since taken to social media platform X to share an update with the first patient, a 29-year-old man named Nolan Arbaugh, who said he was unfortunately paralyzed from the neck down following a tragic diving accident eight years ago. The livestream on the Neuralink X account featured Arbaugh explaining the surgery for the implant was "super easy" and that he had to go through a learning process to differentiate "imagined movement versus attempted movement" in order to control a cursor on a PC.

The video shows Arbaugh using the brain-computer interface (BCI) to move a cursor around on the screen of a laptop, with the patient even saying that he was able to play Civilization IV for up to 8 hours and the only thing stopping him from playing more was the BCI running out of battery requiring a recharge. The livestream shows Arbaugh playing chess and then pausing an on-screen music player. Notably, not everything with the BCI is perfect, as Arbaugh says he has encountered some issues. However, Arbaugh said it "has already changed my life".

A new report has revealed that SpaceX satellites may become a target of Russia over its purported use by the US military to gather intelligence.

The threats from Russia come after Reuters reported earlier this month that SpaceX signed a $1.8 billion deal with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to develop hundreds of spy satellites designed to gather intelligence. This array of spy satellites is reportedly called Starshield, and according to one source who spoke to Reuters, it will be so vast that "no one can hide".

Now, a new report from Reuters reveals that Russia has threatened the US over its encroaching use of commercial satellites to expand its presence in orbit, saying they will "become legitimate target for retaliatory measures, including military ones," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to reporters. Notably, Germany recently warned in February that Russia is developing nuclear-powered anti-satellite space weapons that are capable of taking out all satellites within its range.

One day NASA may fly a plane above the surface of the Red Planet, as the space agency is currently in the early stages of exploring the idea under its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

NASA's NIAC program encourages the proposal of unique ideas that could transform the way NASA carries out its missions and one idea the space agency selected is called MAGGIE, or the Mars Aerial and Ground Intelligent Explorer. This conceptual technology has received NASA funding, and the above NASA-approved video showcases how Coflow Jet, the company behind the project, would carry out landing MAGGIE on the Red Planet and then deploy the extraterrestrial aircraft.

Notably, MAGGIE takes off vertically, just like a helicopter, and if you are wondering why that its designed that way there is one answer, Martian atmosphere density. Mars' atmosphere is extremely thin with a density of about 1% of Earth's, which means to generate enough lift for flight it must have many rotor blades spinning a speed much faster than a typical airplane on Earth. Just like taking off, MAGGIE is designed to also land vertically.

AMD just announced FSR 3.1, which brings a couple of significant updates to the company's upscaling and frame generation tech for PC - image quality improvements when upscaling and decoupling frame generation so it can run with other upscaling technologies like DLSS or as-is.

AMD has also included support for the Vulkan API and Xbox in the update - specifically, "Xbox Game Development Kit (GDK) support." Although FSR 3 upscaling and frame generation have been available on PC for a while, they have yet to make their console debut.

The new FSR 3.1 update only hints at the update arriving "later this year," but mentioning Vulkan and Xbox in the same sentence does suggest that we might see its support in Xbox's big first-party holiday release - Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from Machine Games and Bethesda. Hear me out.

AMD's FSR 3 with Frame Generation, the company's answer to NVIDIA DLSS 3, launched in September 2023. It is supported by just two games-Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum. A slow start, FSR 3 was also not quite as impressive as it should have been. Visual fidelity was a step down from DLSS 3, and features like support for VRR displays and tech like AMD's own FreeSync were missing.

All that changed in December 2023 with AMD releasing the full source code and an updated, more impressive version of FSR 3 launching with Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. With AMD improving frame issues and adding VRR support, 2024 saw an influx of games supporting FSR 3 (most recently with Starfield and The Last of Us Part I), bringing the total number of games with FSR 3 support to 40.

It's still far from where DLSS 3 is, but it's picking up pace - and FSR 3.1 was announced at GDC 2024. FSR 3.1 brings two significant updates: an improvement to upscaling image quality and the ability for FSR's frame generation technology to work with "other upscaling solutions" like NVIDIA's DLSS or Intel's XeSS.

After turning a few heads at CES 2024, ENERMAX is ready to launch its latest high-performance premium power supply, the new ENERMAX PlatiGemini 1200W PSU. It's the world's first 80 PLUS Platinum-rated power supply that supports both Intel ATX 3.1 and ATX12VO standards.

Designed for system integrators and professionals, 12VO is a step forward for power requirements. A 10-pin energy-saving motherboard connection delivers 12 volts to system components, eliminating the need for voltage conversion while improving energy efficiency. Naturally, ENERMAX is looking forward with an eye to the present, so the ENERMAX PlatiGemini 1200W PSU still supports the traditional 24-pin connection found on most motherboards.

The PlatiGemini is compatible with PCIe 5.1 and Intel ATX 3.1 standards, so it also arrives with a 600W 12V-12x6 cable. The power supply can handle power surges up to 235% (aka Power Excursion) and features 100% industrial-grade Japanese capacitors. We'd love to see this PSU paired with the GeForce RTX 5090 when it launches later this year (fingers crossed).

AMD has released AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 for Radeon GPU owners, and the latest driver update from Team Red is a big one - not only in terms of new game support but also in the number of 'Fixed Issues.'

First, the Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 adds day-one support to the two biggest PC game releases of the week (and month), with Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2 and Sony's Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition getting some Radeon love. Outpost: Infinity Siege, the third game listed in the release notes, is more of an unknown. It's described as an "FPS, Base Building, Tower Defense" game, launching next week on Steam.

Onto the fixed issues, high-end Radeon RX 7900 Series GPU owners playing the smash-hit Helldivers 2 will be pleased to know that Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 resolves and improves driver timeout issues and crashes when playing the game. Another win for all Radeon owners is AMD fixing micro stutter issues with AMD Fluid Motion Frames, improving the driver-based Frame Generation solution that's part of HYPR-RX.

Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-H processor has just been teased, with leaker Moore's Law is Dead showing off the chip featuring its CPU Tile, GPU Tile, SoC Tile, and I/O Tile -- and even some dummy Tiles thrown into the mix -- which you can see below:

The chip above is reported of the Intel Arrow Lake-H processor, which will be a laptop chip that should pack 24 cores (and no HT according to recent leaks). Intel will have Xe-LPG integrated graphics, the same integrated GPU found inside of the new Meteor Lake chips. There's no upgrade in GPU here, a pity because Xe2-LPG would've been good to see.

MLID shows the die with a dedicated SoC and I/O die, with two dummy dies on the Arrow Lake chip. The Compute die will feature the same core types as Meteor Lake, which are Lion Cove and Skymont CPU architectures.

Intel just launched its new Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors inside laptops and portables, as well as an entire family of 14th-gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs, but looking forward, Team Blue's big upgrade comes from its next-gen Arrow Lake CPU architecture.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, one of Tom's sources said: "We were just told by Intel that they're hoping to ship Arrow Lake QS samples in October, and it usually takes another 1-3 months to launch a product after QS begins. So, if there are no new delays, it's certainly possible that ARL will launch in Q4 of this year".

The source continued: "However, the only reason I still think that it is possible for ARL to launch in Q4, is that I know that there is A LOT riding on this product for Intel. If this was any other project at any other company, I would be telling you that December is already looking unlikely if QS is in October...".

NVIDIA only just announced and detailed its new Blackwell GPU architecture and new B200 AI GPU at GTC 2024 this week, but now we're hearing fresh rumors on the next-gen Vera Rubin GPU, which could be released in the first half of 2025.

The news is coming from sources close to Moore's Law is Dead, with the leaker saying one of his sources said that AMD is doing everything possible to get its next-gen Instinct MI400X out in the wild, which would arrive in Q1 2025 "at the earliest". NVIDIA doesn't want to stop the AI GPU domination, so don't think Blackwell is where it stops... as Vera Rubin dropping in 2025 would be absolutely insane.

Blackwell is said to be the GPU architecture for both the AI and data center GPUs from NVIDIA and its upcoming next-gen GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards. Vera Rubin will succeed Blackwell, but will only be for the AI GPU market like Hopper and Volta are. Vera Rubin won't be for gamers, so we could expect NVIDIA to reveal its next-gen Vera Rubin GPU architecture at its GTC 2025 event.

Remedy Entertainment posted its latest quarterly report for Q4 2023 after the mega-successful launch of Alan Wake 2, which became Remedy's fastest-selling game ever.

Inside that report, Remedy provides some updates on its upcoming Max Payne 1+2 Remake, which the developer said is fully funded by the IP owner and publishing partner, Rockstar Games, who is currently working on the next-generation Grand Theft Auto 6.

Remedy CEO Tero Vertala said: "Max Payne 1&2 Remake also continued in the production readiness stage. The team made considerable progress throughout the year. Max Payne 1&2 remake is going to be a major new game with great potential, enabled by a similar development budget as Alan Wake 2".

The CHIPS and Science Act was signed by the Biden administration in 2022, authorizing $280 billion in new funding to see the US becoming the beacon for the best semiconductor factories and chips made on the planet.

Today, the Biden administration unlocked $53.7 billion to unleash R&D and semiconductor manufacturing, with billions going to the likes of Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. The US Commerce Department has announced that Intel has signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms for federal grants of up to $8.5 billion, while Intel can access up to $11 billion of loans from the CHIPS Act.

Intel will also claim US Treasury Department's Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of up to 25% for its planned investments of around $100 billion to establish multiple facilities and fabs in the USA. This includes a new fab in Arizona, an advanced packaging center in New Mexico, a leading-edge manufacturing site in Ohio -- which was just delayed from 2025 to 2027 or 2028 -- and a new R&D center in Oregon.

Samsung has just announced its started the development of next-generation artificial general intelligence (AGI) dedicated semiconductors through its AGI Computing Labs in the USA and South Korea.

Kyung Kye-hyun, president of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions Division, said on his own social media on March 19: "I am pleased to announce the establishment of Samsung Semiconductor's AIG Computing Labs in both the United States and Korea".

Dr. Woo Dong-gyuk is a former developer of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) as one of the three that designed the TPU platform for the search giant, is now running the AGI Computing Lab and is recruiting more staff to help with Samsung Semiconductor's journeys into completely new semiconductor technology for the future of AGI. He said: "We will create a completely new type of semiconductor specifically designed to meet the astonishing processing requirements of future AGI".

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told the press during a media briefing at GTC 2024 that "HBM memory is very complicated and the value added is very high. We are spending a lot of money on HBM". Jensen added: "Samsung is very good, a very good company".

SK hynix gobbles up most of the advanced HBM3 and HBM3E memory needs for NVIDIA and its growing arsenal of AI GPUs with the Hopper H100, H200, and new Blackwell B100 and B200 AI GPUs all using HBM memory. Jensen continued: "The upgrade cycle for Samsung and SK Hynix is incredible. As soon as NVIDIA starts growing, they grow with us. I value our partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung very incredibly".

The news directly from the CEO of NVIDIA that it will be using HBM memory supplied by Samsung saw the South Korean company's shares jump by 5.6% on Wednesday.

Meta has purchased NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs to train its Llama models, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company is also training a third-generation of its Llama model on two GPU clusters that it announced last week, each of them packing around 24,000 of NVIDIA's current-gen Hopper H100 AI GPUs.

The news is coming from a new report by Reuters, which said that Meta will continue using its current H100-powered AI GPU clusters to train its current-gen Llama 3 model, but will use NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs to train future generations of the model, according to a Meta spokesperson.

NVIDIA announced its new Blackwell B200 AI GPU at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event this week, offering gigantic improvements to all things AI.

Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro might actually be an affordable console that doesn't cost $700.

On paper, the new PS5 Pro sounds like an expensive machine. Recent leaks have basically unearthed all of the PlayStation 5 Pro's secrets and exposed some interesting new advancements to the world, including a beefy new RDNA 3 GPU capable of 33.5 TFLOPs of power clocked at 2.1GHz. The PS5 Pro is also said to have a special new machine learning (ML) block on its GPU that will power Sony's new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling tech. All of this is said to enable more detail-heavy gaming experiences at boosted effective resolutions without biting so much into FPS, potentially leading to more sustainable 4K gameplay.

This has led to lots of talk about the PS5 Pro's price tag. Will it be a $600 machine that doesn't move the needle very much in terms of mass adoption? Or is it a carefully planned and budget-balanced device that is specifically made to sell as a profitable, cost-effective piece of hardware aimed at helping stabilize Sony's falling operating margins? The latter seems more likely, especially given Sony's current position.