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Intel will announce and release its next-gen Arrow Lake processors later this year, representing the first top-to-bottom client CPU architecture featuring totally new CPU and GPU architectures in many years from the company.

Intel's current-gen Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" processors feature brand new GPU cores in Xe-LPG, but Arrow Lake CPUs will come with either Xe-LPG or Xe-LPG+ graphics, something we're learning today in some new leaks.

Intel engineer Haridhar Kalvala, explained: "Some SKUs of Arrow Lake use slightly newer Xe-LPG+ graphics IP (version 12.74). Add some additional PCI IDs and extend the code to support the newer IP version. The general code flow should continue to match existing MTL and Xe-LPG code paths".

FurMark 2 is now official and available for download right now from here. The new GPU stress testing, diagnostics, and benchmarking tool has been popular for years now, but its successor is here to melt your GPU even harder.

The new FurMark 2 was created using the latest cross-platform tool called GeeXLab with a GUI, while the command tool uses GeeXLab SDK. You've got support with FurMark 2 and Windows 64-bit, Windows 32-bit, and even Linux 64-bit with operating systems.

The next update for FurMark 2 will include support for Linux 32-bit and Raspberry Pi, with possible MacOS support coming in the near future. Future 3D APIs can be added into FurMark 2, including OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL 3.0/3.1 APIs, but were most likely omitted from the v2.0 release because they're not cross-platform compatible.

NVIDIA is offering customers samples of two new artificial intelligence chips for the Chinese market, where NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang wants to defend its market dominance in China against the tides of US export restrictions on AI GPUs in the country.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said: "We're sampling it with customers now. Both of them comply with the regulation without a license. We're looking forward to customer feedback on it. We're expecting that we're... going to go compete for business, and hopefully we can serve the market successfully".

Jensen didn't mention which AI GPUs NVIDIA is preparing for China, but back in November 2023, we began hearing about three new AI GPUs that the company was preparing for the country: H20, L20, and L2. These new AI GPUs are cut-down variants that meet the US export regulations, with the same latest features from NVIDIA, but their AI computing power has been culled.

Sony's PlayStation games division sets a new high watermark for quarterly holiday revenues.

Holiday 2023 was supposed to be a stellar period for PlayStation. Sony hoped to ship 25 million PlayStation 5's during FY23 and finally push the PS5 past its predecessor for the first time. While Sony did fall short of this lofty target with 16.2 million PS5s shipped during Q3, the company did break another big record with its sales performance.

According to data provided by Sony and analyzed by TweakTown, the PlayStation gaming segment generated $9.766 billion revenue during the holiday quarter running from October - December 2023. This is a new all-time high for Sony's Game & Network Services division in both total quarterly revenues and holiday Q3 period revenues.

AMD launched its new Instinct MI300X not too long ago, featuring up to 192GB of HBM3 memory with 5.3TB/sec of memory bandwidth, but now the next-gen Instinct MI400X is being teased for 2025.

AMD's next-gen Instinct MI400X should be based on the next-gen CDNA 4 GPU architecture and upgraded HBM3e memory, which is faster than the HBM3 used on Instinct MI300X. According to leaker Kepler in a new post on X, AMD will reportedly also have a refreshed MI300 that should also feature HBM3e memory.

NVIDIA has its current-gen Hopper H100 AI GPU on the market with HBM3 memory, but its beefed-up H200 AI GPU features the new ultra-fast HBM3e memory, and its next-gen Blackwell B100 AI GPU is expected to debut with HBM3e later this year, after being unveiled at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event in March.

Helldivers 2 has burst onto the scene on PC and PlayStation 5, racking up 700,000+ concurrent players and overloading Arrowhead servers... with its engine discontinued back in 2018.

Say what? Helldivers 2 was created on the Autodesk Stingray engine, which was discontinued in 2018. This means the engine hasn't had any updates over the last six years, leaving developer Arrowhead needing to put in some considerable work to squeeze everything they could -- and wanted -- from Helldivers 2.

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt confirmed the news in a post on X that explained: "This is true. Our crazy engineers had to do everything, with no support to build the game to parity with other engines. And yes. The project started before it was discontinued".

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) first announced a new chip fabrication facility in Japan back in 2022, where it planned to have production up and running in 2024... and now it's operational.

The two years flew past, and now the facility is ready to begin mass production later this year, with TSMC tapping Sony's assistance to get the plant operational in Japan. The new Kumamoto fab plant has been dubbed "Nightless Castle" as there were workers there on 24-hour shifts, which is how the new TSMC plant was built in just two years, with plants regularly taking three or more years to get up and running.

Sony is an investor and a customer for TSMC's new plant in Japan; with the new fab plant getting up and running so quickly in Japan, that wouldn't necessarily be done in other countries. Why? TSMC had efficient government support, strict construction timetables, and a low-cost workforce that was flooding the site and then working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

TSMC has just celebrated a "topping out" milestone event at its Phoenix, Arizona fabrication facility by placing the last steel beam on its construction project.

The company posted on its official LinkedIn, explaining that TSMC had also recently achieved the topping milestone for its second fab's auxiliary buildings, which will be supplying the required utility infrastructure to the second fab clean room.

TSMC's post on LinkedIn explained: "TSMC Arizona celebrated a "topping out" milestone today - signifying the last steel beam being raised into place on a construction project - for our second semiconductor fab in Phoenix, Arizona. We also recently achieved the topping milestone on our second fab's auxiliary buildings, which will supply the necessary utilities infrastructure to the second fab clean room. We also continue to make significant progress completing our first fab which remains on track to begin production in the first half of 2025".

While it had previously been reported that Apple had been a potential buyer for Microsoft's Bing search engine business, it wasn't entirely clear just how much Microsoft had tried to make a deal happen. That is, until now.

The new information comes after new documents were shared as part of the US Justice Department's lawsuit which claims that Google has a monopoly in the search market. As part of Google's argument that isn't the case, it says that Apple was offered Bing as a new default search engine for the iPhone. Google says Apple decided that Bing was subpar compared to its own offering. adding that the mere fact that Apple had to consider the options suggests there is indeed competition.

Microsoft reportedly pitched Apple on switching to using Bing as the default search option for users in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020. But with there being no sign of a deal being done. Microsoft also tried to get Apple to simply buy Bing as a whole. Another option was some kind of joint venture that would have seen Apple and Microsoft work on Bing together. This went down in 2018, with Apple ultimately deciding against any kind of deal.

It might not seem like it but it's been almost four years since Apple announced a new iPhone and Apple Watch Wallet feature that would allow car owners to unlock their vehicles without the need for a key or key card. Instead, all they would need is their iPhone or Apple Watch and they'd be able to unlock, lock, and start their vehicles. Unfortunately, that requires that carmakers also get on board.

As is so often the case with features that Apple adds in relation to cars - CarPlay is another example - it has taken some time for carmakers to either update or release vehicles that support the new car key feature. 9to5Mac has put together a list of all the vehicles that can be used with the Wallet car key offering, and it's a surprisingly large number - although the majority have a BMW logo on the front.

The full list reads:

When Apple announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max back in September of 2022 there was one big change that captured the attention. The Dynamic Island had been leaked to some extent, so its arrival wasn't entirely unexpected. But we didn't know quite what it would do or what it would look like. That's ancient history today and while the iPhone 14 missed out on the Dynamic Island, it was present in the following year's iPhone 15. But according to one new report, the Dynamic Island could have been very different indeed.

That report comes via MacRumors and is reportedly based on information gleaned from unspecified sources. According to the report, Apple was very much undecided on how the Dynamic Island would work and in one example, it wasn't even part of the area that hides the selfie camera and Face ID mechanics, either. The Dynamic Island that shipped dynamically adjusts its size and shape to both hide the holes in the display for various cameras and sensors as well as give Apple somewhere to place notifications and information. But one example put all of that down the side of the phone.

That ditched Dynamic Island idea moved the time, cellular signal strength, Wi-Fi, and more to the side of the phone via a software-based notch that protruded from the side of the device. When not visible, the area would disappear leaving users without anywhere to see such information at a glance - including the time.

If you're in the market for a new laptop and want to treat yourself to a new 14-inch MacBook Pro, doing so could now be cheaper than you first thought - especially if you're in Canada or one of a number of European countries. That's because the Apple Stores in those countries are now offering refurbished models for the first time.

The new move means that those in Canada, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK now have the option of buying a refurbished M3 14-inch MacBook Pro directly from Apple which makes buying cheaper than ever. And while these machines are indeed renewed rather than brand-new, the difference between the two is negligible.

Apple says that each of the MacBook Pros that it refurbished has been thoroughly cleaned and inspected to ensure that they work as if they were new and are in good condition. They're also backed by Apple's one-year limited warranty and those who want to add extra coverage can do so via the AppleCare+ program. Each laptop comes with all accessories and manuals as if it were new, although it will arrive in a plain white box rather than the normal retail one.

Ever since current owner Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, he's been trying to create what some call the everything app. Such an app would become the central focus for a whole range of activities with China's WeChat being the example most people think of. The app is a social network but also used for a variety of things in the country, including payments. One of the features that Musk had X's engineers add was support for video and audio calling, but it was limited to only those who pay for X Premium. Now, that's all changed.

First announced by an X engineer before being confirmed by current CEO Linda Yaccarino, the change means that everyone who wants to take advantage of video and audio calls now can, with X also adding the feature to choose to allow calls from everyone or limit the number of people who call to just those who they follow, are verified, or are being followed. Choosing to only allow calls from people you follow is also an option.

Checking to see if your account now has the feature and managing who can call you is simple. Just open the X app on your phone, tap your profile picture, and choose the Privacy and Safety option in the app's settings. The calling feature is for some reason hidden inside the Direct Messages option, and that's where you can select the different settings to tailor the calling feature to match your specific requirements.

Helldivers 2 has come out of nowhere and is lighting up PC gamers and PlayStation 5 gamers, with the unstoppable popularity of the game seeing the developers having their servers needing to handle an insane 700,000 concurrent players at once.

The studio was forced to temporarily reduce the concurrent player count to a capped 450,000 players, as there were server issues for Helldivers 2 players. The developer had way more gamers wanting to play Helldivers 2 than they thought, with developer Arrowhead needing to iron out issues on-the-fly, which they've done amazingly well, I might add, to handle an influx of close to a million concurrent Helldivers 2 players.

Helldivers 2 is so popular it's the second most-played game on Steam right now, losing only to Counter-Strike 2; Helldivers 2 is beating Dota 2, PUBG, Palword, Apex Legends, and even Grand Theft Auto V. PlayStation 5 gamers are also jumping down and spreading some democracy in Helldivers 2, leaving soured Xbox gamers who are begging Arrowhead to release it on Xbox Series X/S consoles.

WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav sees multi-subscription bundles as the future of streaming services.

Now that the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger is complete and that Max is a profitable subscription, one of the key parts of streaming growth could lie in cross-service bundling options. Streaming allowed the world's disparate content creators, providers, and labels to fragment the market and monetize their TV shows and movies on a wholly-controlled platform. The results led to the downfall of cable TV as consumers shifted towards streaming.

But now the future of streaming could look a lot cable TV, at least that's what WBD CEO David Zaslav believes. In a recent Q4 earnings call with investors and analysts, Zaslav said some interesting things about subscription service bundles, and hints that WBD might be able to broker more favorable deals with other content providers.

Rocksteady's new live service game appears to be a miss for WB Games.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's performance hasn't lived up to the internal expectations set by its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. That's according to Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels, who didn't elaborate on sales figures or overall performance for the game outside of the quick assertion.

"Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, one of our key releases in 2024 has fallen short of our expectations since its release earlier in the quarter, setting our games business up for a tough year-over-year comp in Q1," Wiedenfels said in the earnings call.

AMD is just about to unleash a new GPU in the US, rumor has it, namely the RX 7900 GRE which was initially for the Chinese market only (but has since come to Europe).

This isn't the first time we've heard chatter about the RX 7900 GRE ('Golden Rabbit Edition') being launched in the US - VideoCardz has floated this idea before - but now Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) on YouTube is claiming the release of this graphics card is imminent.

MLID has sources who reckon the RX 7900 GRE will be on shelves in the US as soon as February 27, the start of next week. It's pretty much being rushed out of the door by AMD, and it'll be priced at $549.

Sony plans to expand access to its first-party software in an effort to boost sales and resurrect profit margins.

PlayStation isn't doing so hot right now. Revenue is at an all-time high, with Sony generating a record-breaking $9.76 billion over the holidays. But operating profit is quite low. PlayStation only made $582 million in operating profit during Q3FY23, the lowest period since 2019 and a represented 6% profit margin. Costs are the main reason for the lower operating profit, including the $3.7 billion Bungie buyout alongside rising game budgets. (Transparency: PlayStation's Q3 operating profit also reflects $200 million+ in PS5 console inventory that was shifted to Q4).

In a bid to increase operating profits, Sony could follow Microsoft's game plan and break exclusivity for select first-party PlayStation games. Microsoft has announced plans to bring 4 first-party Xbox games to PlayStation and Switch, including Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves. What if Sony does the same thing, bringing heavy-hitters like Spider-Man to Xbox? Sony wants to boost profits, and a good way to do that is to increase software sales, hence why a lot of first-party PS4 and PS5 games are now also available on PC.

The Apple Vision Pro has been on sale for a few weeks and it's already seen a couple of software updates land. But those updates haven't been big, feature-laden ones and that will instead likely come later this year. If Apple follows the pattern that we expect, the visionOS 2.0 software update will be announced at WWDC in June before being released to the public in September. And a new concept posted to the X social network gives us some ideas of what we could see. Or, at the very least, some new features that we would like to see Apple add in a later software update.

The new concept was shared by Parker Ortolani and includes a number of improvements to the Home Screen, notifications, multitasking, and more. And while it's unlikely that these changes will all arrive, it's clear that the Apple Vision Pro and visionOS software experience has already very much captured the imagination.

One of the first things that jumped out to us when looking at the concept is the ability to automatically unlock a paired iPhone when wearing the headset. With Face ID unavailable, having the headset automatically unlock the iPhone like an Apple Watch can would be a huge improvement.

The Apple AirPods Pro wireless earbuds are among the best on the market, but they almost had a completely different name. According to a new report, Apple almost chose to call the AirPods Pro something much more exciting during development but the idea was ultimately canned.

MacRumors reports that in the months leading up to the AirPods Pro launch in October 2019, Apple pondered changing the name to AirPods Extreme. Without citing a specific source the report says that the AirPods Extreme name was suggested by at least one member of Apple's leadership team before it was decided that AirPods Pro branding would be a better option. Many employees reportedly objected to the AirPods Extreme name, perhaps because Apple already used that branding - for the 2003 launch of the AirPort Extreme router back in 2003.

Ultimately, Apple chose the AirPods Pro name which was probably the better option. The Pro and non-Pro naming convention is one that Apple customers are familiar with across the Mac and iPad lineup, not to mention the iPhone. With the launch of the AirPods Max, having the AirPods Extreme might make them appear to be a better product than the wireless headphones Apple sells - a complication given the fact the AirPods Max cost more than twice as much.