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SK hynix has just announced that it has begun volume production of HBM3E memory, the newest AI memory product for ultra-high performance that it supplied to a "customer" (NVIDIA) in late March.

SK hynix is the first provider of next-gen HBM3E memory after enjoying great success with its HBM3 memory on various AI GPUs on the market. The company issued a press release to announce that it is the first in the industry to mass provide HBM3E memory and that supply to a customer after 7 months of development offers best-in-class performance to lead level of AI capabilities to the world's best.

The company recently invested another $1 billion into future HBM memory while filling NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPU with ultra-fast HBM3E memory sees SK hynix at the top of its game. Sungsoo Ryu, Head of HBM Business at SK hynix said that mass production of HBM3E has completed the company's lineup of industry-leading AI memory products, adding: "With the success story of the HBM business and the strong partnership with customers that it has built for years, SK hynix will cement its position as the total AI memory provider".

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC this week that the new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs will cost $30,000 to $40,000 each.

In the CNBC interview, Jensen also said that NVIDIA spent a whopping $10 billion on R&D efforts into Blackwell, which is a monumental amount of money for what will be the best AI GPU technology the world has ever seen. At a price of $30,000 to $40,000 each, that's not bad considering that it was expected that NVIDIA would charge $50,000 to $60,000 each.

We don't know if Jensen meant the Blackwell B100 AI GPU or the flagship B200 AI GPU... but considering B200 was the one that NVIDIA showed off and detailed some of its specifications for at GTC 2024 this week, you'd expect Jensen meant B200. NVIDIA will be making some mighty profits if B200 costs $6000 to make, with a selling price of 5x that... profits for later this year and into 2025 are going to make the recent record gains seem like a tiny wave compared to the AI GPU financials with a B200-powered tsunami.

The R&D budget of NVIDIA's next-generation Blackwell GPU architecture was "something like" $10 billion, according to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.

Jensen was on CNBC this week, where he said NVIDIA's next-gen Blackwell AI GPU "will cost $30-$40K USD. The very first one, the R&D budget of this generation is probably something like $10 billion USD". Rumor has it that NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPU will cost over $6000 to make, so they can expect some truly healthy profits from Blackwell GPU sales.

Blackwell costs $30,000 to $40,000 per AI GPU, which means at a cost of, let's say, $8000, NVIDIA is in the green, pun intended. If we thought that record-breaking share prices pushing the company over the $1 trillion market cap was good, Blackwell will hit another few home runs for NVIDIA.

It looks like there are some major issues with US semiconductor manufacturing plans, with Intel pushing out the launch date of its bleeding-edge plant in Ohio. It was meant to be producing chips in 2025, but now that has been delayed until somewhere between 2027-2028.

Intel is working on two new semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Licking County, Ohio, with the company promising $20 billion of investment into the construction project and that the fabs would be operational in 2025. But in a new report published by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Wednesday, Intel has coughed up just $1.5 billion of the money and that the fabs would be operational "between 2027 and 2028".

Intel promised $20 billion but has so far only committed around $4.5 billion into the Ohio plant project, with over $2 billion received through incentives through the CHIPS Act, from which Intel has been demanding more money. But now, the fab that was meant to be ready by next year, is another two to three away.

ASUS has unveiled two brand new ROG gaming monitors, both in 27-inch size but differing resolutions and refresh rates, and they're both not overpriced.

ASUS has designed both of the new ROG gaming monitors to be clutter-free, with an interesting design tweak that lets gamers use a stand on the monitor to hold their smartphone. Both of the new gaming monitors also feature USB Type-C connectors, which can be used to charge your USB-C devices.

The first is the ASUS ROG Strix XG27USC, which features a 27-inch panel with a native 4K resolution and super-smooth 160Hz refresh rate. If you want to run 4 K at 160FPS or more, you'll want to make sure you've got a high-end graphics card, so first off, you'd want NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090, if not, the RTX 4080 SUPER or RTX 4080 at a minimum.

Samsung has been showing off its next-generation GDDR7 memory at NVIDIA's GTC 2024 event, showing off 28Gbps and 32Gbps at the show.

The new picture of Samsung's next-gen GDDR7 memory comes from HardwareLuxx, which spotted the GDDR7 memory at GTC 2024. NVIDIA unveiled its next-gen Blackwell GPUs at GTC 2024, but they were using ultra-fast HBM3E memory, while GDDR7 will be baked into the next-gen Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series that will debut later this year.

Samsung says that its new GDDR7 memory has 20% better power efficiency at just 1.1V -- compared to the industry standard 1.2V -- much lower than the power-hungry 1.35V that GDDR6X memory modules consume.

Sony's new PS5 Pro is expected to deliver surprising upgrades including a beefy 45% GPU performance increase, but the CPU hasn't been adjusted much.

New PlayStation 5 Pro spec leaks paint an interesting picture for Sony's new mid-gen upgrade. The PS5 Pro will have a RDNA 3 GPU with 60 Compute Units, an increase of 67% compared to the PS5's 36 RDNA 2.0 GPU with 36 Compute Units. But the PS5 Pro's CPU is a different story--it's not expected to actually change outside of a frequency bump.

Reports indicate that the PS5 Pro will use the same Zen 2 CPU found in the base PS5 and PS5 Slim models. Instead of making big changes to the CPU, Sony slightly raised the PS5 Pro's CPU clock speeds to 3.8GHz, compared to the 3.5GHz of the original PS5. This 300MHz increase is to help streamline performance, namely helping games that are bound/limited by the CPU maintain more stable frame rates within the confines of their respective caps. But developers can't get the 300MHz CPU boost without taking a 1% GPU performance hit--Sony has provided new upscaling tech to help devs mitigate this performance hit, and if everything goes right, gamers won't even notice the GPU downclocking.

Sony's mid-gen PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to deliver beastly performance with 4K 120FPS targets, but the Pro's new custom chip may not see any major efficiencies from a die shrink.

New reports sourced from Sony's internal developer network portal suggest that the PlayStation 5 Pro will bring a hefty upgrade over the existing models. According to leaked info, the PS5 Pro's specs will enable higher-end gaming thanks to built-in machine learning and advanced new upscaling technologies like PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is Sony's custom answer to NVIDIA DLSS or AMD's FSR. Reports suggest the GPU will also leverage RDNA 3 and RDNA 4 tech from AMD to deliver up to 33 TFLOPs of power.

But what about the SoC itself? The PS5 Pro is built on a new Voila SoC, but this new chip may not benefit from a process reduction like Sony's other mid-gen PS4 Pro, which leveraged significant advantages from a production die shrink (the Pro shrank from the stock PS4's 28nm to 16nm). The PS5, conversely, is built on TSMC's N7 node family, which includes 7nm, 7nm+, and 6nm processes.

Sony has temporarily paused production on the PlayStation VR2 gaming headset due to oversupply, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki.

Reports indicate that Sony's new PSVR2 headset isn't selling as fast as the company had hoped. The virtual reality headset released in February 2023 to strong sales, and sales of the second-gen HMD even managed to significantly outpace its predecessor at launch. That momentum apparently has been short-lived, and unsold units are starting to stack up in Sony's warehouses.

Sources tell Bloomberg that Sony produced 2 million PSVR2 headsets, but exact sell-through to customers remains unknown. Analyst firm IDC estimates that the PSVR2 has shipped around 1.699 million units worldwide. Some hurdles that Sony faces to speed up PSVR2 adoption is the headset's higher $549 price tag, as well as the requirement of extra hardware like a PlayStation 5 console to power the device.

AMD's RX 7900 XTX graphics card has dropped back down to $899 for one model, the lowest price seen in a while (although not the cheapest price ever, by any means).

VideoCardz noticed that the MSI Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX currently has a discount of $150 at Newegg, with the flagship at $899 as mentioned. Going by the reviews, this is a well-made board that runs cool and quiet, which is always a bonus.

So, is it worth forking out for the RX 7900 XTX at this price compared to what NVIDIA has to offer in this price bracket?

Following the unveiling of NVIDIA's B100 (Blackwell GPU for heavyweight lifting and AI usage) some fresh chatter on the rumor mill is causing concern regarding the incoming RTX 5090.

Kopite7kimi sparked off these worries on X (formerly Twitter), as well as another respected hardware leaker on the platform, Kepler, as you can see in the above and below tweets.

With performance gains of 50% or 60%, or even 70% being floated previously for the RTX 5090 (using GB202), those estimates have been called into question. As Kopite7kimi makes clear, GB202 will use the same process as GB100, based not on 4nm, but on 4NP, a custom performance-oriented spin on 4N (an upgraded 5nm process).

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind many popular and powerful AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, Sora and the underlying technology called GPT, was asked during an interview if he was worried about losing control of AGI once its created.

Altman sat down for an interview with Lex Fridman on the "Lex Fridman Podcast," where he was asked if he worries about "losing control of the AGI itself", as there are many people out there, including numerous security researchers concerned about the creation of a super-intelligent AI system and the implications that has on the planet through existential risk. Fridman prefaces the question by saying that "losing control" would not be because of "state actors, not because of security concerns, but because of the AI itself".

The OpenAI CEO responded promptly by saying, "That is not my top worry as I currently see things." Adding, "there have been times I worried about that more. There may be times again in the future where that's my top worry. That's not my top worry right now." Fridman followed up by asking "What's your intuition about that not being your top worry," adding "do you think we could be surprised?".

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, Sora, and many other industry-leading AI technologies, has sat down for an interview with Lex Fridman to discuss multiple topics regarding artificial intelligence and the impressive creations being made at OpenAI.

Lex Fridman asked Altman if he trusts himself with the power of leading a company that could potentially create the first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), an AI system that is capable of human-level and beyond intelligence. Altman responded honourably to the question, saying that he believes that its important that "I nor any other one person have total control over OpenAI, or over AGI, and I think you want a robust governance system."

The OpenAI CEO further explained that he "continues to not want super voting control over OpenAI" and "I continue to think that no company should be making these decisions and that we really need governments to put rules of the road in place."

Whether you've been using Apple devices for years or just picked up your first iPhone, you'll be familiar with the Apple ID. It's your login for all things Apple and it's been the key to accessing your devices and services for a long time. But a new report suggests that the humble Apple ID is about to change in an attempt to better reflect the way that it is used.

Apple IDs are now used as a method of authentication for third-party apps, Apple itself, the Apple Store, and more and that means that its name perhaps doesn't best fit the way people think about it. Now, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple intends to rebrand the Apple ID to Apple Account, changing the branding across all Apple devices as well as the iCloud.com website. The move could happen this year, Gurman wrote in the latest Power On weekly newsletter.

Gurman's report matches a previous one by MacRumors that suggested such a move was in the works. Gurman says that Apple will start to use the new Apple Account branding later this year with iOS 18 and watchOS 11 among the first software releases to initiate the switch. Those releases are all expected to debut this June at the annual WWDC event, while the updates aren't expected to arrive on devices until this fall.

Apple is very much expected to update the iPad Pro lineup of tablets within the next few weeks with upgraded OLED displays as one of the biggest additions. The iPad Pro will of course come in two sizes with an 11-inch model and a 12.9-inch version offering plenty of flexibility, but those who want to buy the smaller of the two might find it harder to pick up than the larger one.

That's according to a new report by 9to5Mac based on a post on the X social network by Ross Young, a display history with a strong track record in terms of sharing details about Apple's upcoming plans. According to the analyst and his DSCC firm, Apple has found it difficult to choose which OLED suppliers to use with LG Display and Samsung Display involved.

It was thought that Samsung Display would be the only company responsible for producing the OLED panels that would be used in the 11-inch iPad Pro but that now seems to have changed with LG Display also involved in production. However, it also appears that the production of the 11-inch OLED displays now lag behind that of the larger 12.9-inch version as a result and that could mean that there will be fewer iPad Pro models of that size available on launch day.

YouTube has taken to its blog to announce a new rule for its platform designed to protect users from being deceived by creators who are trying to pass off their content as authentic when it was created using the assistance of artificial intelligence-powered tools.

With the unveiling of OpenAI's Sora tool, which is designed to create photorealistic video content from user text prompts, and the popularity of ChatGPT, it isn't a reach to say that AI-powered tools such as Sora will be popular when they are fully developed and released.

Some of the video examples provided by Sora creator OpenAI featured tell-tale signs of AI-powered creation, but the vast majority at a glance, or even viewed by the untrained eye, wouldn't raise alarm bells for synthetic creation, further blurring the line between what's real and what's fake on the internet.

It sounded like a slam dunk, taking the beloved multiplayer game series from 2004 and 2005 and bringing it back online in remastered form with support for modern PC hardware and consoles.

Not to be confused with EA and DICE's recent reboot, the original Star Wars Battlefront (2004) and Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) took iconic settings from the original and prequel trilogies and gave them a massively multiplayer Battlefield-style makeover. Although fans have kept these games alive on PC with mods and private servers, they were primed and ready for a comeback.

When news dropped that Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games were releasing a remastered Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection on March 14, 2024 - with support for up to 64 players - many gamers got their nostalgia glasses ready for a fun trip down memory lane. Except it was anything but.

When you think of the fighting game genre, odds are you're thinking about Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, two franchises that date back to the early 1990s and are still going strong. Suppose you grew up during that period and spent many afternoons at the local arcade. In that case, there is no doubt you'd be aware of SNK and its iconic output, including series like Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown.

Interestingly, Fatal Fury, the SNK fighting game franchise that began in 1991 (making it one of the oldest fighting games in video game history), hasn't received a new entry since 1999, when Garou: Mark of the Wolves was released.

Fast-forward to 2024, and SNK has announced that Fatal Fury will return in early 2025 after a 26-year absence.

In what seems like a first, Apex Legends professional players were hijacked by a hacker during the Apex Legends Global Series to be given cheats, resulting in the NA finals being postponed.

The Apex Legends North American finals were infiltrated by at least two hackers named "Destroyer2009" and "R4andom", who managed to somehow gain access to at least two professional players' PCs during a match. As the match was being streamed to thousands of fans around the world, a message box briefly popped up and then disappeared, which was followed by the player realizing that they had aimbot, wallhacks, and other cheats. Shortly after the discovery, the match was promptly ended.

Following the shutdown of the match Anti-Cheat Police Department, a group of volunteers that specialize in gathering intelligence on cheats to detect and disrupt cheating vendors, took to its X account to provide a public service announcement, stating that an RCE exploit was used to gain access to the players' PCs. For those that don't know, an RCE exploit is a "remote code execution", which means the hackers were able to execute codes on the target machines remotely.

NVIDIA has unveiled its next-gen Blackwell AI GPU, which features 208 billion transistors, 192GB of super-fast HBM3E memory, a cutting-edge custom TSMC 4NP process, and groundbreaking new networking that sees NVIDIA NVLink deliver 1.8TB/s bidirectional throughput per GPU.

The company also announced its new NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which connects two NVIDIA B200 Tensor Core GPUs to the NVIDIA Grace CPU "over a 900GB/s ultra-low-power NVLink chip-to-chip interconnect." With serious AI horsepower, NVIDIA's powerful next-gen AI hardware arrives during the AI boom, so, unsurprisingly, it announced its long list of Blackwell partners.

NVIDIA writes, "Among the many organizations expected to adopt Blackwell are Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla, and xAI." Even though most, if not all, of these companies are investing in creating their own AI chips and hardware for generative AI-which is used in everything from scientific research to medicine and chatbots-Blackwell will drive many of the advances over the next few years.