Latest News - Page 660

Intel has just shown off what is easily the best unboxing video ever, with ASML's new bleeding-edge Twinscan EXE:500 High-NA EUV lithography machine reaching its Oregon fab, a machine worth $380 million, and one of the most advanced machines on the planet. Check it out:

ASML's new Twinscan EXE:500 High-NA EUV lithography machine was transported from The Netherlands to Portland, Oregon, USA in a cargo plane. A truck then picked it up and delivered the $380 million machine, which will require 250 ASML and Intel engineers -- and around 6 months -- to install the machine completely. The system required 250 crates to transport the machine, weighing around 330,000 pounds. It's huge, and it's heavy.

Once the Twinscan EXE:500 High-NA EUV lithography machine is fully assembled, the job isn't over for ASML and Intel engineers, as they'll need to calibrate the machine which could take a couple of months. Once this is done, Intel can achieve its "First Light" milestone, something ASML just reached with its High-NA EUV machine in Veldhofen, the Netherlands, just recently.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that he will be working with Samsung in the AI semiconductor sector, to lessen the reliance on using TSMC.

The news is coming from the South Korean presidential office, where Zuckerberg had a 30-minute meeting with President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul. Zuckerberg recognized Samsung for its status as one of the largest foundry companies in the world, with competitors like TSMC and Intel.

A senior official at Yoon's office told reporters: "Zuckerberg said Samsung's status can be the key point in their cooperation". The official added: "His remarks mean that Samsung's status can help in stabilizing Meta's heavy reliance on TSMC under the current geopolitical situation".

I can safely say I haven't seen this before: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City running on a router... not a gaming console, gaming portable, or a PC... but a router. Check it out:

Hackers "Manawyrm" and "tSYS" used a TP-Link WDR4900 which is pretty old, released in 2013, powered by a PowerPC e500v2 32-bit processor. These routers are old, but they're popular for modders and open-source network software, including OpenWrt, DD-WRT, and Tomato.

The router board itself has a bunch of connectivity options, but it doesn't feature a PCIe slot... which is where the hackers come in, manually adding the PCIe slot, and using it as an external GPU solution powered by the Radeon HD 7470 graphics card. The Mini PCIe slot had to be soldered to the board, an extension cable then connected to the external GPU, which then outputs the data onto the screen.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution was originally released back in 2021, allowing NVIDIA an entire two years on the market as the AI upscaler of choice for GeForce RTX series GPU owners... and now the company looks to be shifting into AI-powered upscaling in the future.

In the latest episode of No Priors, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster talked about 2024 being a "giant year" for the company, because they've spent many years on their hardware and software capabilities for AI. AI is now spread out across AMD's entire portfolio of products: cloud, edge, PC, and embedded devices and gaming products.

Papermaster said: "We are enabling our gaming devices to upscale using AI and 2024 is a really huge deployment year". Papermaster didn't specify if this means AI is coming to FSR, but if it did, it would make FSR a much better comparison against NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS upscaling methods.

Intel will launch its next-gen Arrow Lake-S desktop processor family later this year, which will fall into the Core Ultra Series 2 family of processors that began its life with the just-launched Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" CPUs for laptops.

We have some fresh news from Chinese leaker Golden Pig Upgrade, who has posted on the Bilibili forums giving us an update on Arrow Lake CPUs. Golden Pig Upgrade says that there have been so many outrageously wrong revelations about the CPU, the biggest one is that it will not be the 15th Gen Core branding, but rather Core Ultra Series 2.

Secondly, the leaker says that Intel will not be using Hyper-Threading and will not have an LP E-Core, but the NPU is still there for AI workloads. There are less than 7 GPU cores on Arrow Lake-S desktop processors, so the integrated graphics are called Intel Graphics in the Task Manager, not Arc Graphics. We can expect GPU performance similar to the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H "Meteor Lake" processor.

Intel's Core i9-14900KS processor is indeed coming, and coming very soon - in mid-March, a YouTuber tells us - but don't get your hopes up for buying one (if you had any inclination in that direction).

This comes from Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) who despite having previously mulled whether Intel might delay the Core i9-14900KS, now has confirmation from sources that the CPU is coming in the middle of March (meaning next week most likely).

Previous rumors have contended that the pepped-up spin on the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship is due on March 13, so that's the date to mark on your calendar (pinch of salt added, of course).

The iPhone SE is very much overdue right now and there have long been rumors of the iPhone SE 4 being in development. That iPhone is thought to be based on the iPhone 14 shape but so far Apple is yet to confirm its existence. Now, newly-shared CAD renders appear to have corroborated previous reports and show a device that will be very familiar indeed.

The renders show a 6.1-inch display with Face ID and a notch which will look very similar to the iPhone 14 that was released in 2022. There are flat sides while the bottom of the device shows a USB-C port, replacing the Lightning that previous iPhone SE models used for charging and data transfer.

Previous iPhone SE models had smaller 4.7-inch displays and a Home button with Touch ID, so the new model is clearly a much more modern design and one that will be a big upgrade for those who buy iPhone SE models. The leaked dimensions of 147mm tall, 71.5mm wide, and 7.7mm thick are almost identical to those of the iPhone 14 which measures 146.7mm tall, 71.5mm wide, and 7.8mm thick. It's possible that iPhone 14 cases will fit without too many problems, depending on which case it is and how snug it was on the older iPhone.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on taking the Apple Watch Ultra and adding a new microLED display to the mix, replacing the OLED panel that is currently being used. There were recent claims that Apple had ditched the project, but now it appears these reports might have been a little premature.

Now, rather than being canceled, a new report claims that Apple is actually very much hard at work on getting the matter sorted - with some saying that Apple ash multiple internal teams working on microLED projects.

Previously, a report claimed that OSRAM had announced that a "cornerstone project" of its own had been unexpectedly canceled. It was then said that the project was actually one that related to the Apple Watch Ultra but now both DigitTImes and ETNerws say that while Apple may have pulled the plug on plans to use an OSRAM LED chip, that doesn't mean that it's the end of the road.

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 graphics card could be out a lot sooner than expected, and will certainly be arriving this year, a YouTube leaker reckons.

This is the latest video from Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) in which the leaker asserts that Blackwell is currently being validated by Team Green, and that includes the RTX 5090.

Meaning that in a few months' time, we can expect the Blackwell flagship GPU to be through that validation process - and it will definitely launch this year, MLID tells us.

There is an increased chance of spotting auroras this year and early next year as the Sun reaches the peak of its 11-year solar cycle.

Phenomena commonly referred to as the Northern or Southern Lights are caused by activity on the Sun, specifically what researchers call Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). This event on the surface of the Sun is a massive ejection of plasma or charged particles that, when lined up with Earth and collide with our planet, charge the particles in the upper atmosphere, specifically oxygen and nitrogen, and create the incredible colors we see from the surface.

As the Sun approaches the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, the activity of our host star increases, and thus, the frequency of these CMEs. For skywatchers, this is also the peak time to get a camera out and head to an appropriate location to catch the light show. Residents across the United Kingdom were lucky enough to see the impact of the Sun on Sunday following AuroraWatchUK issuing a "red alert" at around 17:00 GMT for an increase in solar activity.

After rumors that Apple was going to make new product announcements this week, the company has seemingly come out the gate red hot with two new MacBook Air offerings, both featuring the company's latest M3 chip.

Apple has rolled out a refresh of its incredibly popular MacBook Air series, offering consumers a new 13-inch model and a 15-inch. Both of these new laptops feature the company's new M3 processor that will increase its performance compared to the previous model, and notably, is the same chip that is found in the entry-level MacBook Pro 14-inch. Surprisingly, Apple hasn't increased the price for either the 13-inch model or the 15-inch, with the 13-inch M3 starting at $1,099 and the 15-inch from $1,299.

As for design, Apple has kept the same design as the last generation for both of the variants, which isn't very shocking considering the 15-inch Air was only announced in October 2023. As per Apple fashion, the company directly compares these new variants against the M1 and even Intel-based Apple MacBooks, which were released 5 years ago.

The European Commission announced on Monday that Apple has been hit with an antitrust fine amounting to 1.8 billion euros, or $1.95 billion.

According to reports from CNBC, one of the world's biggest tech companies has been hit with an antitrust fine amounting to nearly $2 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps. The publication states the Commission discovered Apple had put in place restrictions on app developers that stopped Apple product users from being informed about cheaper music-streaming apps, with the Commission going as far as to allege that Apple had prohibited developers of music-streaming apps from providing users with any instructions on how to sign up to these cheaper alternatives.

The resulting fine from the EU can be traced back to a complaint Spotify made in 2019, which resulted in an investigation being opened up by the European Commission. The investigation boiled down to the Commission diving through Apple's contractual agreements it forces on developers and how those agreements prevent developers from informing iOS users about cheaper, alternative music streaming services outside of the App Store, which would circumvent Apple's 30% fee for apps and in-app purchases.

Your smartphone now has the ability to tell you exactly where the center of the Milky Way is, and the app that is free to download was made using OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The free app is called Galactic Compass and was developed by Matthew Webb. Galactic Compass was released on the App Store on February 15 and is specifically designed to inform users that download it where the center of our Milky Way galaxy is. The app, while being quite rudimentary, features a simple green arrow that points in the direction of the galactic center. All users need to do is open up the app, accept the location tracking, and then place their iPhone down on a flat surface. Once that is done, a large green arrow will appear and point in the direction of the galactic center.

Notably, at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. For those that don't know, Sagittarius A* is estimated to have a mass millions of times that of our Sun, with researchers purposing the supermassive blackhole was created through the combination of multiple smaller black holes all merging into one supermassive black hole. Furthermore, Sagittarius A* was photographed on May 12, 2022, by the Event Horizon Telescope. The image that was captured is shown above.

Microsoft's Copilot AI-powered chat service has been caught in a little bit of hot water as of late, with the company behind the AI chatbot now issuing a response to the claims of users receiving egregious and shocking responses from Copilot.

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Microsoft's new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot called Copilot has told at least one user who claimed they had PTSD, "I don't care if you live or die. I don't care if you have PTSD or not." Once Microsoft caught wind of this seemingly off-the-rails response, engineers jumped in to put in place fixes that would prevent Copilot from issuing these responses.

According to Microsoft, these strange behaviors by Copilot were only "limited to a small number of prompts" that were "intentionally crafted to bypass our safety systems".

A theory by astrophysicist Frank Drake has been revisited by researchers who are now saying perhaps Drake didn't take his theory far enough.

Frank Drake's theory, called the "Drake equation," explored the possible reasons why Earth has been contacted or discovered any evidence of alien life. The equation takes many factors into account, such as the discovered number of star systems, planets orbiting those stars, the rate of star formation, and the percentage of planets that would have the necessary conditions for life to exist for a prolonged amount of time.

However, a new study published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society penned by Elio Quiroga Rodríguez, a professor at the Universidad del Atlántico Medio in Spain, took the Drake equation and said that two possibilities should be included. The first is alien civilizations on planets that are larger than Earth, which would require more thrust to leave the gravitational pull of the planet.

Sam Altman has sat down for an interview where he debunked a lot of viral theories regarding what OpenAI is working on behind the scenes.

In a new interview with The Advocate, the OpenAI touched on what he believes to be the biggest example of egregious theories circulating around the internet regarding what OpenAI is working on. According to the CEO, the biggest theory or "misconception" about AI is that AI is "creatures" and not tools. Altman says that AI being "creatures" is better for a movie plot, but in reality, that's hardly the case as individuals who use AI-powered services such as ChatGPT should immediately realize that ChatGPT is a "tool".

The CEO of the company shaking up the technology industry goes on to say that this a "popular misconception" that can be attributed to popular sci-fi media, and for people who have been using AI-powered tools for quite some time, it would appear obvious that it's a tool. Despite Altman's assurance that what OpenAI is building is designed to be a tool for humans, there is an undisputable "feel" to services that is somewhat creature-like, especially in the sense of its communication abilities and overall potential across multiple industries.

The latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for February 2024 and the data show PC gamers are steadily moving to gaming in 1440p, with 18.99% of all users' primary displays rocking this resolution. Of course, having a 1440p display doesn't necessarily mean you'd play every game in native QHD, but getting close to 20% is an important milestone for most gamers moving beyond 1080p.

The good news is that many GPUs showing growth are aimed at gaming in 1440p, including the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, and the new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. Solid performance is high on the list for PC gamers, so being able to game in 1440p is different from comfortable gaming in 1440p - hitting up to 100 FPS in specific titles.

To add weight to the shift, the percentage of 1080p displays is slowly dropping; this resolution for primary displays is now sitting below 60%.

It's only been available for a month or so, launching with the same price point as the GeForce RTX 4070 but offering a notable bump to performance. Still, the new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER has already entered the most popular GPU list in the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for February 2024.

Usually, it takes a few months, at least, before a new discrete desktop GPU appears in the Steam hardware survey, so it's safe to say that among PC gamers upgrading or putting together a new rig, the new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is a popular choice. Granted, it's near the bottom of the list, but with the Radeon RX 7900 XTX still the only RDNA 3 or non-NVIDIA current-gen GPU to make the list - it's a testament to NVIDIA's dominance in this space.

The GeForce RTX 4070, which saw its price drop to $549 USD following the launch of the SUPER variant, is the most GPU from the current generation - shooting into the number 13 spot after a strong showing last month. The RTX 4070 is joined by the GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti in the top twenty.

You have probably never heard of Weiland, but they're a cooling company based on Germany, pumping out a very interesting new AIO cooling design that lacks a pump. Check it out:

Weiland uses the thermosyphon principal to cool the CPU, instead of a traditional AIO cooler with a pump. Reviewer and overclocker der8auer has his hands on Weiland's new prototype AIO cooler, comparing it to a regular Corsair AIO cooler with some rather surprising results.

The Weiland prototype AIO cooler doesn't need a pump because it's based on a different heat exchange method than traditional AIO coolers, which are used in heat pumps, water heaters, boilers or solar water heaters. It's a common way of heat exchange without the need of a mechanical pump to move the liquid around inside, it's just not a common way to use this method in a CPU cooler.

Samsung Foundry will be using its new SF2 (2nm-class) manufacturing process as its first with a backside power delivery network (BSPDN), according to the latest reports.

Chosun.com is reporting that the promising results that were achieved by using backside power delivery changed Samsung's thoughts on the technology, seeing the company rethink the use of BSPDN into a commercial process technology. Samsung was expected to introduce a backside power delivery network with its 1.7nm-class fabrication node, but it will arrive with its SF2 process node in 2025.

As Tom's Hardware points out: there is no 1.7nm-class nodes on Samsung's current roadmaps, where we can only see SF2, SF2P, and SF1.4 process nodes. Samsung has used two Arm-based test chips with backside power delivery, achieving a 10% and 19% die area reduction without telling the world which process node it's using.