Latest News - Page 870

AMD's new Instinct MI300X is designed for generative AI and is a big play for the company to compete with NVIDIA's H100 and Grace Hopper in high-performance computing. And it's a beast, with the AMD Instinct MI300X being an APU with up to 24 'Zen 4' Cores alongside the new CDNA 3 GPU Architecture.

It uses AMD's groundbreaking chiplet design with 8 Chiplets and 8 Memory Stacks using 5nm and 6nm processes, too, and even supports up to 192 GB of HBM3 Memory. But it will also be one of the most power-hungry GPU releases we've seen, with footnotes on AMD's slides covering the new AI accelerator rated at 750W for a single decked-out module.

Comparatively speaking, the NVIDIA H100 SXM GPU goes up to 700W, already big news as a power-hungry data center chip. However, a 350W PCIe version with traditional air-cooling of NVIDIA's chip exists with AMD is set to offer a lower-specced MI300A.

No more i3, i5, and i7, as Intel is shifting to a simpler naming convention for its CPUs, starting with upcoming 'Meteor Lake' processors. Intel's naming conventions for desktop and laptop processors have been the same for over a decade, so undoubtedly, there'll be some adjustment.

So then, what can we expect? Intel notes that without the "i," products will follow simple Core 3, Core 5, and Core 7 branding. The new naming scheme doesn't stop there, as Intel will introduce a new processor tier - Intel Core Ultra - for the most advanced client processors. So basically, you're looking at Intel Core for mainstream CPUs and Intel Core Ultra for enthusiast high-performance models.

This means you can expect product names like Intel Core 7 14700 and possibly Intel Core Ultra 9 14900. There are examples and not indicative of any upcoming products.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is still hesitant to disrupt its virtuous cycle business model and follow Microsoft's lead.

Sony has a great thing going right now. The company sells millions of games and makes lots of profit from PlayStation 5 hardware and accessories. While Sony's newer multi-game PlayStation Plus subscription model takes direct inspiration from Xbox Game Pass, the company isn't ready to disrupt its own business and put services and engagement at the forefront of its gaming empire.

Services like PlayStation Plus are additive for Sony. The reverse is true for Xbox, and Game Pass is at the heart of Microsoft's gaming business. This is reflected through the dramatic decision to release first-party Xbox games day-one on Game Pass, a move that lowers the potential full game sales opportunities for these titles. Sony, on the other hand, isn't ready to forgo game sales just yet, and for good reason: Its AAA titles have sold tens of millions of copies.

Three of Twitch's top executives sit down to answer questions about the new Partner Plus program.

Today, Twitch introduced its Partner Plus program. The initiative allows streamers to keep 70% of net revenue generated from subscriptions, provided they meet certain criteria.

These qualifications include:

Gen 8 is finished, and Microsoft is now focusing on the Xbox Series X/S console duo.

Following expanded efforts to preserve backwards compatibility across four generations of consoles, the advent of Smart Delivery, and a 3-year cross-gen transition period, Microsoft is now moving on from the Xbox One generation. The billion-dollar tech giant is now solely focusing its new games for the Gen 9 Xbox Series X and Series S consoles introduced in 2020.

In a recent interview with Axio's Stephen Totilo (via Axios Gaming's newsletter, sign up here), Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty confirms that the company's 23 internal studios are no longer making new games for the Xbox One.

Microsoft has revealed new performance measurements that highlight the company's engagement-driven business model.

In some ways, Xbox is a lot different than PlayStation. Microsoft's games division has prioritized services, subscriptions, and digital engagement above all else, and this paradigm shift has helped the Xbox brand stay competitive. Along with cross-platform unification through OS and services, Game Pass is the purest example of this model. The subscription thrives from the breadth of content offered, but also the successful capturing and exploitation of player engagement through key online-driven and replayable experiences.

This model is paying off in terms of players engaged with specific titles, which remains a critical part of today's video games market. The most popular and lucrative games on the planet rely on digital engagement models that monetize players over time directly through in-game purchases, but Xbox Game Pass is another method of indirect monetization through recurring subscriptions. Rather than just relying on full game sales alone, Xbox is diversifying its games to leverage the strongest elements of engagement through steady digital content releases. These ultimately serve both monetization and retention of its Game Pass service.

The iOS 17 update hasn't yet been released to the public, but if you're running the developer beta you might already have discovered that there's a bit of a probe;m in relation to SMSes.

That's because those who are running iOS 17 have started to report an issue that causes their iPhone to report that it was unable to send an SMS. Sending an iMessage continues to work as normal and that's good news for people who are sending messages to iPhone owners. But when it comes to sending them to people with Android, SMS is often the way to go.

However, people have been reporting on social media for the last week that something is amiss. And interestingly, while the iPhone does consistently warn that it was unable to send an SMS and that it wasn't delivered, that isn't the full story. According to posts on Reddit, the SMSses are actually arriving at their destination, no matter what the iPhone says.

Google Maps users in four European cities now have access to the app's Immersive View feature., Google has confirmed.

The new feature is rolling out to users in Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice and is already available in cities including New York City, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.

The new expansion was announced on Google's The Keyword blog. Alongside the support of four new cities, Google also confirmed that it is expanding it to over 500 iconic landmarks around the world including the Sydney Harbor Bridge and more.

Samsung already knows how to launch a great phone color and the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a great example of that. But rather than rest on its laurels it now looks like the company is getting ready to ship some new colors as well.

The news comes via the Samsung India Twitter account which shared details about two colors that will apparently be so impressive they'll make us "go WOOOW!" We're not sure about that, but this accompanying 10-second video does at least give us a glimpse at what's to come.

Samsung hasn't yet said what names it is giving to the two new colors, but the teaser suggests that we're looking at something blue and something close to a copper.

Xiaomi has officially unveiled the Redmi 12 smartphone, a budget device that is replacing the Redmi 11 that was already on offer.

The new phone isn't likely to compete with many iPhones or high-end Android devices and the specifications bear that out. They aren't bad of course, but there are areas where you can see Xiaomi saving money in order to hit a price point.

Those specs start with a 6.79-inch FHD+ resolution display with a 90Hz refresh rate. Nestled in that display you'll find an 8-megapixel camera, while a main 50-megapixel camera takes care of photography needs around the back. It isn't alone though - there's an 8-megapixel ultrawide and 2-megapixel macro lens keeping it company.

Heavy WhatsApp users could be about to get a feature that they've been crying out for, while those who also administer business accounts will also want to pay attention. Because it seems, finally, that multi-account support is on its way to the instant messaging platform.

While Meta nor WhatsApp have yet officially announced the feature, the beta watchers at WABetaInfo report that they are now seeing signs that multi-account support is on the way. What's more, a screenshot of the account switching screen has also been shared for the first time.

WABetaInfo notes that this screenshot was taken on an Android phone and using the WhatsApp Business app. However, the outfit says that there is no expectation that this feature will be limited to that app, meaning those of us that use the standard WhatsApp should also be able to use it as well.

HPE Discover 2023 is taking place at the Venetian Conference and Expo Center in Las Vegas from June 20 to 22, and with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) solutions all about data, the inventors of NAND flash memory, KIOXIA, will be on hand to showcase its latest solutions.

Recently we reported on KIOXIA's new line of data center NVMe SSDs, the first EDSFF drives (Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor), using PCIe Gen5 technology for improved speed and performance. The good news is that the KIOXIA CD7 Series EDSFF E3.S Data Center SSDs will be at HPE Discover 2023, and KIOXIA will demonstrate them running "running real-world applications" on the HPE Alletra 4110 Gen 11.

EDSFF E3.S NVMe SSDs are the next evolution of the standard 2.5-inch form factor, providing more densely layered deployment (1.5 to 2X) in the same rack unit compared to more conventional 2.5-inch drives. KIOXIA notes that the smaller size also improves the cooling and thermal characteristics of the storage setup.

The iPhone 15 lineup is expected to be announced later this year and if that's the case, we can expect four new models to arrive. Now, we're being told that two of those models are going to get camera upgrades that were previously limited to only the Pro iPhones.

According to the report by IT Home citing supply chain sources, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will both get new 48-megapixel cameras. Those cameras are currently available in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, but not the iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Plus.

With that in mind, it would appear that Apple is going to change its previous method of only giving the Pro iPhones the new camera sensors. If that's the case then iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus buyers can look forward to more detailed images as well as support for 48-megapixel ProRAW photos.

The very first Apple silicon Mac Pro is finally here and you can buy one right now starting from $6,999. But if you do, you might want to think twice about installing your SATA hard drives.

That's because Apple has already admitted that there is a problem that could cause some hard drives to disconnect when the Mac Pro wakes from sleep, leaving them in a state where they cannot be used for accessing the files that are saved on them. The good news? Apple says that it's already working on a fix.

In a new support document, Apple says that some models of internal SATA drives might disconnect from the Mac Pro when it's waking up from sleep. In the short term, the fix appears to be to simply disable the feature that automatically puts the Mac to sleep when it is idle. Otherwise. the only way to make the Mac reconnect to its hard drives is to restart it.

Science fiction is slowly becoming real life as humans continue to level up technology and be able to see further and more accurately out into the universe.

One could argue that Star Wars is one of the biggest movies to inspire generations of scientists and engineers, as the science fiction that was displayed on the big screen back in 1970 was simply draw dropping. Astronomers, along with everyone else, would have noticed that Luke Skywalker's home planet on Tatooine featured two Suns. Now new research, confirmed by astronomers, indicates that a Tatooine-like planet exists, and its called BEBOP-1C.

The findings of the planet were published in Nature Astronomy, and according to astronomers, the official description of a planet with two suns, or a planet that is orbiting two stars, is a circumbinary planet. BEBOP-1C is located approximately 1,320 light-years from Earth, and now that it's been discovered, astronomers have added BEBOP-1C to the very short list of previously discovered circumbinary planets, a list that only now stretches to 15, making discoveries such as this extremely rare.

If you're gaming on a PC, then no doubt most of that time is spent using Valve's Steam client, and today it just got a massive update that overhauls everything from the underlying framework and codebase to the UI elements, in-game overlay, and more.

In fact, if you fire up Steam, you'll notice that even things like font choices and how information and notifications are laid out look different.

This update has been in the works for quite some time, with the big goal being how the client shares code between its various modes - Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. This means new features and updates will be easier for Valve to implement going forward. Plus, hardware acceleration has been added to Steam's Mac and Linux versions.

A team of engineers has unveiled a unique robot design that's similar to origami as it can fold and change its shape.

Astronauts heading to the Moon may be joined by shapeshifting robots called Mori Modular Robot for Space, or Mori3 for short. The team of engineers from EPFL's School of Engineering has taken to its website to announce the new research has been published in Nature Machine Intelligence, and that the idea behind the Mori3 is to create a shapeshifting robot that can be easily assembled for specific functions. The origami-like robot features individual triangular modules that can be joined together to make polygons of various sizes.

The robots can be delivered to the Moon via a flatpack, making storage easy. According to the announcement, Mori3 robots are able to achieve three necessities a lunar robot should do; move around, handle and transport objects, and the ability to interact with human users. The researchers behind the Mori3 acknowledge that robots designed for specific tasks will be much more efficient, but hope the Mori3's versatility will make it an attractive option, especially for astronauts that need to complete tasks in confined and sometimes cramped spaces.

Meta has released a demo of what it's calling MusicGen, an artificial intelligence system designed to take text prompts and convert them into sounds or melodies.

The Facebook parent company released the demo on Hugging Face, and it has since been used by many. Interesting Engineering decided to give Meta's newest AI tool a try, requesting the system produce a "rock lullaby," and according to the publication, it only took 341 seconds for it to create a 15-second audio clip that featured a combination of guitar and piano. Interesting Engineering reported the audio clip sounded like the beginning of an old-school classic rock track.

So, how did Meta do this? MusicGen is a model that has been fed more than 20,000 hours of music. This digested music contained various harmonies and instrumentals, which, when combined, create a large number of possible sounds that can be produced.

Iran's Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Coordinating Deputy of the Islamic Republic's Army (and former Commander of the Navy), alongside Imam Khomeini University of Marine Sciences and Technologies (RA), has unveiled what it is calling the "first product of the quantum processing algorithm."

Essentially, a newly-designed quantum computing board that is apparently already being used by the Iranian Military to "counter navigation deception in detecting surface vessels using the quantum algorithms." And with the hardware showcased as part of a photo-op, it didn't take long for someone to notice that the hardware being shown is an off-the-shelf ARM-based FPGA SoC development board (ZedBoard) built by the US-based Digilent.

In fact, you can see the ZedBoard branding in close-up shots of the "quantum" computing product, so it looks like there was no real effort to make what was being shown look different from the off-the-shelf product. Perhaps it was chosen because the radial circuitry pattern looks futuristic.

Our good friend Igor Wallossek over at Igor's Lab has tested the new professional Radeon Pro W7800 GPU as a potential gaming card - the still-to-be-announced Radeon RX 7800 XT. The big thing is that these GPUs are not like-for-like; one is designed for efficiency and professional workloads, while the other is all about gaming performance.

First up, with the Radeon Pro W7800 GPU rated at 260W, the estimation made by Igor's Lab is that the Radeon RX 7800 XT proper will be rated at around 270W, not to mention the fact that it will probably feature 16GB of VRAM. Other considerations were taken, including drivers that will be a factor and that memory speeds will differ. The Radeon PRO W7800's 4480 shader units, 280 texture mapping units, and 70 ray tracing acceleration cores match the expected Radeon RX 7800 XT specs.

And with that, Igor's Lab's extensive benchmarks - which go into far greater technical detail than my quick summary here - present 1080p, 1440p, and 4K simulated results for the Radeon RX 7800 XT plus adjusted results. And for those wondering, you're looking at a modest improvement to the Radeon RX 6800 XT, albeit with better power efficiency, thanks to the new RDNA 3 architecture.