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SK hynix has just posted record-breaking HBM sales over the last few months, driven by the insatiable demand of AI GPUs from the likes of AMD, but more particularly, NVIDIA.

It was known last year that both Samsung and SK hynix had sold out of their HBM memory supplies for 2024, but now SK hynix has confirmed it's sold out of every piece of HBM silicon it can muster, for the rest of the year, and that 2025 is going to be a gigantic year.

SK hynix vice president Kim Ki-tae explained: "With the diversification and advancement of generative AI services, demand for HBM, an AI memory solution, has also exploded. HBM, with its high-performance and high-capacity characteristics, is a monumental product that shakes the conventional wisdom that memory semiconductors are only a part of the overall system. In particular, SK Hynix HBM's competitiveness is outstanding".

If you've just spent $3499 on Apple's revolutionary new Vision Pro headset, you'll want to at least try some games on it... this is where Apple has highlighted 12 of the 250 games that are designed for spatial computing that are available on the Apple Vision Pro through the Arcade game subscription service.

Apple explained: "Spatial games built specifically for Arcade on Apple Vision Pro unlock amazing new gameplay opportunities by blending digital content with the physical world. visionOS delivers powerful spatial experiences with a brand-new three-dimensional user interface and input system controlled entirely by a user's eyes, hands, and voice".

"Players are able to slice apples with their hands as their living room transforms into their very own dojo in Super Fruit Ninja, tee up the perfect shot as they move freely around a quirky golf course right in their home in WHAT THE GOLF?, escape into a mesmerizing audiovisual experience in Synth Riders, and so much more".

AMD's CEO Lisa Su has been confirmed as giving the opening keynote at Computex 2024.

The show, which runs from June 4 to June 7 in Taipei, is themed around 'connecting AI' (to no one's surprise) and Lisa Su will be given the opportunity to open the proceedings (as VideoCardz flagged up). That opening keynote will actually happen on June 3.

What will the CEO's speech contain in the way of revelations? The immediate obvious possibility that springs to mind is an announcement of Zen 5, which in its desktop incarnation will be either Ryzen 8000 or 9000 processors.

With the Mobile World Congress event set to kick off next week, there are sure to be plenty of announcements for us to sink our teeth into, but we don't have to wait that long to learn what the folks at Xiaomi have been working on. The Xiaomi 14 Pro has been unveiled already, and it has some cool features to go with it including impressive satellite caopabilities and new cameras.

The new phone hasn't been officially unveiled for a global launch, however, so all we have to go on is the Chinese launch right now. But with the aforementioned MWC around the corner, we can expect more details of a global nature to be shared then.

We still know the board strokes, at least. They begin with a new second-gen Sony 1-inch camera sensor with a variable aperture of up to f/1.63. The 120mm periscope camera also now has a faster f/2.5 aperture when compared to the previous Xiaomi models, but there are new AI smarts that promise to bring large model computational photography improvements.

When Google released the Pixel Fold last year it was the company's first entry into the foldable device market and it was one that was hotly anticipated. The phone was also largely well received as well, and now we're starting to learn more about what the phone will have to offer when it goes through its first refresh.

Almost sure to be called the Pixel Fold 2, the unconfirmed handset has now leaked via a set of renders by the usually-reliable leaker OnLeaks. They come via a collaboration with Spartprix and show the Pixel Fold 2 off in all its glory, albeit in a rather uninspiring black finish. Regardless of your thoughts on the color, however, there is sure to be one thing that jumps out as soon as you see these renders.

That thing is of course the new camera array on the back of the phone. Ever since the Pixel 6, Google's phones have had a camera bar on the back that has reached from one side of the phone to the other. The Pixel Fold had one of its own, but if these leaks are accurate the Pixel Fold 2 will ditch the look, instead going for something more akin to a stretched rectangle with curved edges. It's definitely a look, and we find yourselves wondering if we should expect it to also extend to the Pixel 9 series as well.

New research that investigated the top 10 best-selling smartphones around the world found that the table had a very familiar look to it. Why? Because one manufacturer accounted for seven of the top 10 smartphones on the list with one other making the remaining three devices.

The best-selling phone was the iPhone 14, and from there it was followed by a who's who of iPhones including the older iPhone 13. But as bad as the news is for every smartphone maker that isn't Apple, the results actually represented a slight improvement for Samsung - the company took three spots which was an increase over the two spots it accounted for in 2022.

The full rundown of the top 10 best-selling smartphones in 2023 according to Counterpoint Research reads:

If you're a Google Chrome web browser user you're about to benefit from not just one, but three different AI capabilities that will do everything from automatically organizing your open tabs to writing text for you the next time that you need to fill in a form online. The new AI features are part of a new Chrome M121 release and are experimental, which means that they could change or just not work. But the fun is in the finding out.

There are three different features all announced under one AI-based blog post and they're all set to be useful to varying degrees. The first will automatically suggest and create tab groups based on the tabs that a user has open which could be useful when you're researching something but also want to keep those tabs separate from where you're ordering your groceries.

Chrome already has generative AI wallpapers on the Google Pixel 8 devices thanks to Android 14 and now the same text-to-image technology is now coming to Chrome. It'll create you new custom themes based on a mood or subject, or you can just give it a color or style and let it work its magic. The feature could be huge for people who just want a new theme but have no idea what they want it to look like - just let the generative AI do the creative thinking for you.

With Samsung, Google, and countless other Android manufacturers already producing new foldable phones at a rate of knots it's surely only a matter of time before Apple joins the fray with a foldable iPhone. We've been hearing rumors to that effect for a long time now, but so far, Apple has refused to actually ship anything - although we have to imagine that it has been prototyping foldable iPhones for years. Now, a new report claims that's indeed the case except they aren't foldable iPhones at all.

Instead, the report claims that the devices Apple has been working on are something entirely different. Larger than an iPhone, the new foldable devices are more likely to be something akin to a tablet or notebook computer. That's according to supply chain sources speaking as part of a paywalled DigiTimes report picked up by MacRumors.

The report goes on to claim that Apple has been developing the device for at least five years with design efforts now said to be converging ahead of plans to enter mass production. It isn't clear what the product will actually be nor how Apple will market it, however.

Microsoft is apparently reaching the upper limits of what exclusivity can offer, and now Xbox is taking cues from platform-agnostic giants like Fortnite, Roblox, and Apex Legends.

Like much of the world right now, the video games market is under tremendous pressure. The unsustainably high budgets of AAA gaming have taken a toll, leading to mass layoffs as companies try to squeeze out profits. There's a common theme in the games industry right now: Everyone is willing to try anything in order to scrape together more earnings.

Some of these hail mary approaches include disrupting business models that've been in place for a decade. Microsoft, in particular, recently announced that it will break first-party exclusivity on Xbox games and bring four titles to competing platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

Sony is opening up its niche VR headset in an effort to sell more units.

Since 2013, Sony's game plan put PlayStation consoles at the center of the business. Peripherals like controllers, headphones, and even higher-cost virtual reality headsets all orbited the might PS4 and PS5. That plan appears to have been disrupted by Sony's quest for improved profit margins, and Sony is now open to break platform exclusivity in an effort to sell more products.

While most of PlayStation's accessories are compatible with PC, the PlayStation VR headsets are notorious for not being able to play PC VR games. That's about to change. Sony has officially confirmed that it is experimenting and testing PSVR2 support on PC.

Hardware and software go hand-in-hand, and the latter often gets overlooked. NVIDIA has been creating powerful software and tools for its GeForce RTX hardware and GPUs for years, from the first Control Panel to recent efforts like RTX Broadcast. Not to mention timely and robust driver support.

However, in recent years, it's all felt a little disjointed thanks to the GeForce Experience app used for updating drivers and optimizing games being completely separate from the NVIDIA Control Panel that offers deep drivel-level customization tools and the best display and color calibration suite currently available for Windows.

It doesn't help that Control Panel looks like an app for Windows XP and GeForce Experience, like an app from the mid-2000s. To say that we've been waiting for something like the NVIDIA App would be an understatement; something that would overhaul the GeForce Experience and expand its capabilities.

Elden Ring's new Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is FromSoftware's biggest DLC ever, and it'll bring a ton of new content to twisted fantasy world.

The upcoming Shadow of the Erdtree launches on June 21, 2024 for $39.99--that's the same price as most AA games. FromSoftware's horror maven Hidetaka Miyazaki had some interesting things to say about the expansion, confirming that Shadow of the Erdtree is the most ambitious post-release content to date.

In sheer size, SotE will take place in a special new map that's about a little bigger than the Limgrave region from Elden Ring. Miyazaki tells Eurogamer that the explorable areas will be a mix of large and compact.

NVIDIA has overhauled how GeForce RTX gamers and content creators access all of its apps, settings, drivers, and features with the arrival of the new NVIDIA App, which is currently in beta. It combines all of the features from the GeForce Experience app and NVIDIA Control Panel into a sleek, minimal, and fast app that offers some cool new toys and things to play with.

Two of these are brand-new AI Freestyle Features added to the NVIDIA Freestyle suite of post-processing filters. Compatible with over 1,200 games, the new NVIDIA App introduces AI-powered RTX HDR to convert any SDR game to HDR in real-time and RTX Dynamic Vibrance. And yes, this is the same technology recently uncovered in NVIDIA drivers and released by fans as an RTX Video HDR mod for games.

The latter is all about 'dynamic visual clarity' that makes colors and details pop without 'crushing colors' to help enhance and preserve immersion. RTX HDR and RTX Dynamic Vibrance, like NVIDIA DLSS, require a GeForce RTX 20 Series GPU to run because they use a GPU's AI-based Tensor Core hardware.

The new NVIDIA App is now available in beta. It modernizes the look and feel of the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience apps while combining their features and giving NVIDIA GPU owners and gamers access to all of the company's apps and RTX technologies in a single package.

For those who have been switching between the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience apps in recent years to do all of their display and graphics configuration and driver updating, you'll be pleased to know that NVIDIA has been working on the new NVIDIA App for some time - with the goal being unification.

In addition to a clean, modern, and minimal look, the new client is reportedly 50% more responsive than the previous GeForce Experience app for gamers while taking up 17% less disk space. And you no longer need to log in to use its features!

Signal has long been one of the more popular secure instant messaging platforms and it's the one that has also required that people use a phone number by way of identification. That also meant that people needed to share their number if they wanted to connect with anyone on the platform which is less than ideal. But now, that's all changing.

Signal has now confirmed via a blog post that it is going to start hiding phone numbers as default, making it easier than ever for people to protect their privacy. In its place will be a username, and that's also how people will be able to identify people in the future. The username isn't a permanent handle however, with Signal saying that it is simply a way to initiate contact on the network without sharing a phone number.

The announcement also comes as Signal confirms that it is launching a new, optional privacy setting that will allow people to stop themselves from being searchable using a phone number at all. The result is that unless someone knows an exact username, they won't be able to contact people who don't want to be.

All of the talk in the world of AR/VR headsets might be about the Apple Vision Pro right now, but there is no denying that the Meta Quest products are popular. With prices that make Apple's $3,499 starting price seem so far out of reach that it's a wonder anyone bought an Apple Vision Pro, the headsets are self-contained and powerful. And soon, they could also support a key Apple feature.

That feature is AirPlay, and it could change the way that Meta Quest owners enjoy media on their headsets. AirPlay allows iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to share their displays and the content of streaming apps to other devices. Those devices could be an Apple TV streaming box or a smart TV, while smart speakers are also offered as an AirPlay option for music fans. And if things go according to plan, Meta Quest headsets could be next.

The move, confirmed by Meta's VP of VR Mark Rabkin, would mean that owners of Apple devices could potentially AirPlay content from those devices and onto a Quest device. As Upload VR notes, the state of video streaming apps on the Quest is dire - Netflix hasn't been updated in years and only supports 480p video and the Peacock app is just a link to the website. The Amazon Prime Video app simply does not work.

There are plenty of instant messaging platforms to choose from right now and most phones have first-party options built in, including Apple's wildly popular iMessage. But WhatsApp is also a great option and it's free, encrypted, and available across every platform you're likely to think of. And now it has some new text formatting options that make it easier than ever to get the point across.

While WhatsApp already offered Markdown-like syntax for formatting text, it now has four new options to go with bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace. The new options are bulleted lists, numbered lists, block quotes, and inline code.

The first of those is fairly obvious and users can create a bulleted list by placing a '-' before a line. Numbered lists are the same, but a number followed by a period replaces the hyphen. All simple stuff and great for sending things like shopping lists to your significant other.

If your fancy new smartwatch or ring claims that it can measure your blood glucose levels without piercing your skin, it might be lying to you. Or, at the very least, providing results that shouldn't be used to inform your decisions in terms of medication. That's according to a new FDA safety warning which suggests that such devices might not be quite so smart as they claim.

With smartwatches already hugely popular and smart rings now expected to boom in popularity, there are plenty of eyes on such technology. Oura's smart rings are the best on the market right now and Samsung's Galaxy Ring will be officially unveiled later this year. Apple was also recently tipped to launch its own smart ring sooner or later, and blood glucose monitoring is something that people seem to really need, especially if they're diabetic.

But knowing how much glucose is in the blood normally means pricking a finger, and that isn't something rings can do for obvious reasons. Non-invasive checks are where technology is going, but the FDA isn't convinced. No smartwatch or ring has been cleared by the FDA to do such a thing, but that doesn't mean that they aren't available. Apple is thought to be trying to make blood glucose monitoring a feature of future Apple Watches, but it hasn't done so to date.

We've all been in that situation where we need to sign into the PlayStation website or if we're lucky, a new console, and find that we just can't quite remember our PlayStation Network passwords. Yes, we should probably have used a password manager and no, the password that we set shouldn't be the same one we used elsewhere. But thankfully these days are coming to an end.

Sony has now announced that PlayStation Network users can ditch the passwords for good and instead use a passkey, a new type[e of authentication that uses biometrics rather than alphanumeric strings like those passwords we can never remember.

The idea is simple. Once a passkey has been configured users can sign into apps and services using Face ID or Touch ID on Apple devices and a fingerprint scanner on Android devices. That's all they need to do and all of the key-matching magic is done behind the scenes. It's more secure than passwords because passkeys can't be leaked, and they're easier to use because you can't forget a passkey, either.

Intel has penciled in that it will be making the world's best chips later this year, beating TSMC, and teasing its next-gen Intel 14A process node that will go into production in 2026.

The latest Intel 18A process node is gearing up right now, with Microsoft being the first customer with a next-gen processor made on Intel 18A, but the company was confident in announcing its new Intel 14A process node that will cement its position as the fastest chip maker in the world, toppling TSMC, in 2026.

The news was announced at the Intel Foundry Services (IFS) Direct Connect 2024 event. Intel said its current Intel 7 and Intel 4 process nodes are in the market, with its upcoming Intel 3 preparing for high-volume manufacturing (HVM).