Latest News - Page 871

PCI-SIG has published specifications for PCI Express (PCIe) 7.0, and you're looking at some impressive speed increases when it's set to be released and finalized in 2025. But with that, we probably won't see PCIe Gen7 hardware until 2027, and PCIe Gen6 is right around the corner.

From the specifications released this week, PCIe 7.0 will be able to deliver 128 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 512 GB/s bi-directionally via an x16 configuration. This effectively doubles the speed with each new version as PCIe 5.0 tops out at 128 GB/s and PCIe 6.0 at 256 GB/s.

The specifications also mean that members have agreed to key features for the new PCIe 7.0 technology alongside the architecture - which will also support backward compatibility like existing PCIe specifications. Getting all technical, the impressive data transfer rate and bandwidth in PCIe Gen7 will use pulse amplitude modulation with four levels (PAM4) of signaling, 1b/1b flit mode encoding, and forward error correction (FEC).

Phillips is preparing to launch a new 40-inch ultrawide monitor that comes with a staggering 5120 x 2160 resolution at a refresh rate between 45Hz and 75hz.

The 40B1U6903CH is the smaller version of the 45-inch model (45B1U6900CH) that Phillips recently confirmed, but unlike the 45B1U6900CH which has a resolution of 5120 × 1440, the 40-inch model comes with a much higher resolution of 5120 x 2160 pixels. According to the confirmation, the new 40B1U6903CH is expected to deliver an immersive viewing experience with viewing angles of 178°/178°, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 350 cd/m² brightness, a 1 ms (GTG) response time, and VESA DisplayHDR 400.

As for color space coverage, the 40B1U6903CH comes with 134% sRGB, 103% NTSC, and 98% DCI-P3. On the connectivity side of things, Phillips has slapped a Thunderbolt 4 port that gives 100W of power delivery, enabling users to charge devices such as their laptops or phone without a problem. As for other connectivity, the 40B1U6903CH comes with a DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, USB-C, an audio output, and built-in speakers.

NVIDIA has released a new driver update with the GeForce Game Ready 536.23 WHQL driver now available for download or updating via the GeForce Experience app. It brings day-one support for F1 23, out June 16, which supports DLSS and ray-tracing in the form of reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion. Like F1 22, DLSS 3 support is coming with a post-launch update.

GeForce Game Ready 536.23 also supports Aliens: Dark Descent, a cool-looking XCOM strategy game set in the Aliens universe - specifically James Cameron's Aliens. And both F1 23 and Aliens: Dark Descent support is part of the new Intel Game On Drivers for Arc Graphics which has also dropped today. F1 23 is also set to support Intel's XeSS on day one to boost performance on the Intel Arc A750.

Intel's latest driver release preps Arc Graphics for the upcoming release of Counter-Strike 2 from Valve, the official free upgrade to CS:GO. Running on the Source 2 engine, it promises several visual overhauls and dramatically improves the server-side tech. This is excellent news for Arc owners, as CSGO presented quite a few issues when the GPUs launched last year; the Intel Arc A750 can deliver 167 FPS at 1440p High settings with 1% lows of 130 FPS.

Rather than focusing exclusively on mega-hit AAA blockbusters, Xbox Game Pass helps fuel the development of experimental passion projects like Obsidian's Grounded and Pentiment games, and Xbox management sees the service as a kind of cyclic wheel that helps foster creativity.

Game Pass is one of the most interesting and disruptive parts of the modern video games industry. The service not only packs tremendous value due to sheer volume of content offered, but the real driver is the diversity of the games included in the subscription. Microsoft's day-one first-party releases have created an environment where Xbox Game Studios devs can pitch, fund, and eventually release the games they've always wanted to make, including Minecraft offshoots like the Diablo-like Minecraft Dungeons and Rare's Sea of Thieves.

This has fostered a wide array of unique first-party games that appeal to the full spectrum of gaming, from AA indies to long-lasting service games and heavy-hitting AAA titles like, for instance, the Forza series.

The director of Cyberpunk 2077's new Phantom Liberty expansion will also lead the next game in the franchise.

According to a new Bloomberg feature, Phantom Liberty is more than just post-release content. It's essentially a Cyberpunk 2077 refresh that's been in development for over two years. CD Projekt is using the $30 expansion as a gateway to significantly overhaul the game, including new systems, graphical capabilities, and a forced migration over to SSDs on PC.

Gabe Amatangelo, the director of Phantom Liberty, was essentially given a blank check by CD Projekt RED to fix the game. Amatangelo started first with Patch 1.5, which natively optimized the game to leverage the power of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S systems. The director has had great success so far, and this gave CD Projekt the confidence to have Amatangelo also direct the big-budget sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.

As of March 2023, People Can Fly still haven't received royalty payments for its Outriders looter-shooter.

Today People Can Fly announced a big new partnership with Microsoft to develop a new Xbox game. The game is codenamed Project Maverick, and could be some sort of first-person or third-person looter shooter that aligns with the Polish game publisher's core action focus.

While scouting the publisher's investor relations page, I noticed something interesting: Outriders, the well-received third-person co-op game released in 2021, has yet to turn a profit. Outriders was financed by Square Enix and People Can Fly were to receive royalties if the game broke even. As of March of this year, Square Enix hasn't sent any royalties to People Can Fly.

People Can Fly, the developers behind Bulletstorm and Outriders, today announced a lucrative multi-year contract to develop a big new Xbox game for Microsoft.

Polish game developer People Can Fly are pretty busy. The team are currently working on a handful of projects, including new 3 self-published games in IPs wholly-owned by PCF, a new game in an IP owned by Square Enix called Project Gemini, and VR content as well as other concepts.

Following the cancellation of a big publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive, the studio has been seeking new opportunities with other companies. Now it's found a new deal with one of the best independent-friendly companies in gaming. People Can Fly has secured a contract to make a new Xbox game with a hefty $30 - 50 million budget.

There are so many good wireless earbuds on the market that it can be difficult to know where to even start these days. In reality, it's difficult to go wrong but if you really want to push the boat out the upcoming Sony WF-1000XM5 could be the way to go.

Sony hasn't officially announced the WF-1000XM5 yet, but they're expected to be announced soon and a new leak suggests that there are some big changes on the horizon.

According to that leak, the WF-1000XM5 will have 40% larger drivers than the WF-1000XM4 that are currently on offer. That should ensure a more impressive sound, but that isn't all. We're also told to expect the WF-1000XM5 to be around 20% lighter than the previous earbuds thanks to a 1.5g saving off each one.

The Pixel Watch has proven to be one of the more popular wearables, at least when you take the Apple Watch out of the equation, and there was always going to be a sequel on the horizon. Now it looks like that Pixel Watch 2 has started to leak, and it makes for interesting reading.

The leak comes via 9to5Google and what it says are references to the wearable in the beta version of the Google Search app - version 14.24, in case you were wondering. As part of that update, we learn that there are a couple of different codenames in use.

The first is Eos, according to the code found in the app. The second comes via 9to5Google's sources which suggest that Aurora is also being used. It's likely that the two names both relate to the Pixel Watch 2, but with one being the WiFi-only version and the other having LTE connectivity built in.

PlayStation 5 games are coming to PS Plus Premium game streaming, Sony has announced.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is currently testing out PS5 game streaming on its PS Plus Premium service. As it currently stands, the $119/year PS Plus Premium only offers PS4 titles and games in the Classics Catalog section for game streaming.

"We're currently testing cloud streaming for supported PS5 games - this includes PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials, as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own," PlayStation services executive Nick Maguire said on the PlayStation Blog.

Federal judge Jaqueline Scott Corley has granted the FTC's request for a temporary restraining order in the Microsoft-Activision merger case, but the most important order has yet to be issued.

In a bid to stall (and ultimately prevent) the Microsoft-Activision merger from closing, the Federal Trade Commission sought two court orders from federal courts: a temporary restraining order (TRO), which would prohibit Microsoft and Activision from merging for a specified period of time, and the more important preliminary injunction (PI), an order that would restrict the merger from closing until after the FTC's internal administrative lawsuit is complete. The tech firms have indicated they would "close-over," or merge together despite the ongoing FTC admin lawsuit, at any time after June 15. This pressured the FTC to file for emergency intervention from federal courts.

Northern California District Judge Jaqueline Corley has approved the FTC's request for a TRO. This order temporarily restrains Microsoft and Activision from merging. The two billion-dollar games companies cannot join together until five days after the court decides whether or not to issue the preliminary injunction order. The PI order remains the FTC's main goal with seeking federal intervention.

If you own a Samsung Galaxy Watch or plan on picking one up in the future you could one day be thanking it for saving your life. That's thanks to the news that it's getting a new health feature after years of forcing wearers to watch on as Apple Watch owners have their own lies saved by the same thing.

The feature in question is irregular heartbeat recognition and notifications, something that has been a staple feature of the Apple Watch for years. It's also been proven to help save lives, alerting people to an issue with their heart or other problems even when they were unaware that something was amiss. Now, it's coming to a Samsung Galaxy Watch near you.

The feature was first cleared by the FDA back in May 2023 but there's now been another step on the road to making it available to users around the world. The Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) has now also given the wearable the approval it needs for use in that country, too.

WhatsApp is already one of the most popular instant messaging platforms in the world and now it's testing a new video message feature with users.

The new feature is reportedly rolling out to some people who are using the latest beta version of the WhatsApp app on their iPhone or Android device, but it could be some time before it's made available to those who have the version available in the App Store and Google Play Store.

The WhatsApp beta watchers at WABetaInfo report that the new feature is expected to be rolled out to more beta testers over the coming weeks, but for now it allows people to record messages of up to 60 seconds before sending them off to their chosen recipient.

The brand-new Mac Studio and Mac Ultra can connect to up to eight different 4K displays at any one time, Apple has confirmed.

The eight-display limit applies to the new Apple silicon Mac Pro as well as the Mac Studio when kitted out with the latest and greatest M2 Ultra. Both new Macs are available to buy now.

The news comes after Apple released new support documents for the two machines, both confirming that the new Macs can push pixels out to eight 4K displays at once. What's more, that doesn't mean that those displays will have to make do with a low refresh rate - instead, they'll all support 60Hz refresh rates no matter what.

KIOXIA's PM6 and PM7 Series 24G SAS SSDs and its CD6, CD8, and CM6 Series PCIe 4.0 SSDs offer clients and data centers and servers of all sizes a great range to choose from - delivering both reliability and performance to meet all storage needs.

Today we've got word from KIOXIA America that this range of NVMe PCIe SSDs and SAS SSDs have been successfully tested and compatible with Microchip's Smart Storage Adapters. Microchip has fully tested all of the SSDs mentioned in the introduction for deployment in its Adaptec HBA 1200 Series, SmartHBA 2200 Series host bus adapters (HBAs), and SmartRAID 3200 Series RAID adapters.

On the high-end, you've got KIOXIA's PM7 Series 24G SAS SSDs designed for read-intensive applications, including web services, streaming media, and video on demand, featuring KIOXIA's impressive 112-layer BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory. And then there's the CD8 Series NVMe SSD using a PCIe 4.0 (16 GT/s x4) interface, which delivers the consistent performance of up to 1,250K IOPS (random read) and 200K IOPS (random write).

NASA has selected researchers at the University of Colorado to construct a tiny sidekick for the James Webb Space Telescope.

The space agency selected the mission called the Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy (MANTIS), valued at $8.5 million. With NASA's $8.5 million in funding, researchers are able to construct a "CubeSat", a miniature satellite, which will be designed to observe space in ultraviolet light and, more importantly, extreme ultraviolet. Additionally, the CubeSat will be designed to be a companion to the powerful Webb telescope that was launched on December 25, 2021.

The MANTIS cubesat will observe huge bursts of energy from volatile stars that are only within a few dozen light-years of Earth. The data gathered by MANTIS will be added to Webb's own observations of the event. This same strategy will be applied to Webb's main mission of identifying worlds that are potentially habitable. MANTIS will not only be observing ultraviolet light, but extreme ultraviolet light, which has in the past proven difficult for researchers.

The final Beatles record is expected to release sometime this year, and according to Paul McCartney, it will be made using artificial intelligence and feature John Lennon.

McCartney revealed the news throughout an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, where he said that "the last Beatles record" will feature a demo of Lennon's voice. This demo of Lennon's voice has been "extricated" using an artificial intelligence-powered tool that was able to "take John's voice and get it pure through this AI, so then we could mix the record, as you would normally do."

Through the power of this AI technology, Lennon's voice is presumably the same quality as the other singers on the record, or at least good enough that it doesn't take away from the overall audio experience. McCartney didn't reveal any details about the coming record or any songs but did comment on the impact of AI-powered technologies on the music industry, saying, "It's kind of scary but exciting because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads."

Blizzard has taken to its social channels to reveal some statistics that have been accumulated over the week Diablo IV has released.

Blizzard took to its Diablo Twitter account to share a graphic that showcases a bunch of interesting stats, one of which is particularly humorous, and that's the fact that of the 316,991,632 player deaths, 5,792,063 of them can be awarded to The Butcher. According to Blizzard's stats, The Butcher is responsible for 1.6% of all player deaths over the first week of Diablo IV being released.

Diablo IV fans were quick to comment on the hilarious stat, with one writing, "I have added to that stat many times", and another writing, "He is a damn sponge and hits like a truck. I leave the dungeon and re-enter. He has no business being that tough." Another gamer wrote, "The one time I've even seen him was after joining a buddy's game whilst hearing him scream, "THE BUTCHER IS HERREEE".

A newly published study has indicated that even academics across the United States have experienced what the US government categorizes as Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).

The new study has been published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and details a survey that was handed out to faculty members across 144 US universities, asking all participants if they or anyone close to them has "ever observed anything of unknown origin" that fits the US government description of a UAP/UFO. These objects are described in the survey as "airborne objects not immediately identifiable".

According to the results of the survey, 18.9% of participants said they had seen something that fits the UAP description. However, there are some limitations of the survey that need to be pointed out. Out of the 40,000 academics that were sent the email containing the survey, only 1,500 replied. Leading researchers to think that the survey results could be skewed by people that already interested in the topic.

OpenAI wants to keep its number one place in the generative AI space, and to do that, the company has announced new features for ChatGPT along with a price reduction.

The developers of ChatGPT took to the OpenAI blog to announce a new version of GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4. GPT-4 and GPT-3.5-turbo, as OpenAI explains in its blog post, will be getting a feature called "Function Calling", which will allow developers to create chatbots that can outsource made requests to external tools such as ChatGPT plugins. Furthermore, OpenAI has added features such as converting natural language into database queries.

An example of that would be, "Email Anya to see if she wants to get coffee next Friday" to "send_email(to: string, body: string)". Another example would be "What's the weather like in Boston?" to "get_current_weather(location: string, unit: 'celsius' | 'fahrenheit')." The feature also works for converting natural language into API calls or database queries. An example would be converting the prompt, "Who are my top ten customers this month?", which would convert to "get_customers_by_revenue(start_date: string, end_date: string, limit: int)".