https://www.techpowerup.com/256526/speed...nd-of-2020

Quote:AnandTech, who spoke with the USB Promoter Group at Computex, have shared that the new protocol is expected to manifest in physical, consumer products by the end of 2020. The specification for the next-generation bus is currently on version 0.7, with the USB Promoter Group expecting it to be finalized by this Summer. Then it's just a matter of manufacturers developing new products powered by the latest protocol.

USB 4.0 borrows heavily from Intel's thunderbolt 3 technology - which, if you'll remember, was made available as an open specification very recently. Intel's contribution of the Thunderbolt 3 protocol will enable USB 4.0 to achieve speeds of up to 40 Gbps with multiple data and display protocols being able to share available bandwidth. Additionally, USB 4.0 will make use of USB Type-C's interface, ensuring backwards compatibility not only with it, but also USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 3. Due to the many improvements in data transfer speeds and ability to stream multiple data and display protocols, the USB Promoter Group is looking at the possibility of changing USB's trademark logo for the next generation interface, alongside a revised branding scheme.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/29...itor-stand

Quote:On Monday, Apple announced a number of products, including the long-awaited Mac Pro follow-up and a new professional display. But what turned people’s heads the most is the fact that Apple thinks you should have to pay $1,000 for a monitor stand. People in the audience didn’t clap when the announcer unveiled the price — they audibly groaned. And Apple doesn’t want people to know that.

The Register embedded a clip of the audience reaction in one of its stories — and Apple killed the video on the grounds that it supposedly infringed on the company’s copyright. As of this writing, the original clip of Apple announcing the $1K price tag that The Register embedded in its own story remains offline.
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That tells you something right there. A VESA mount isn’t a brand name, it’s a standard. Here’s a VESA articulating wall mount intended for up to 39-inch LED TVs. $20 on Amazon. Is the Apple version better? Maybe. Is it 10x better? Guarantee it isn’t. Not when an articulating wall arm intended for 55-inch screens is $30. But by launching two peripherals, Apple creates an illusion that you have to choose between a suddenly reasonable-seeming VESA wall mount at $200 and a $1,000 absurdity. No, the company won’t sell a very large number of display stands/mounts in absolute terms, but every person who ponies up for either the $200 or $1,000 option is handing Apple pure profit.

Of course, some people — even Apple fans dedicated enough to show up to WWDC in person — know a bad deal when they hear it. And that’s why Apple cracked down on a video clip in the dubious name of copyright. The company doesn’t want you to hear that even its own biggest fans know they’re getting screwed.

5-28-2019

U.S. to place 25% Tariff on Game Consoles


The Trump administration's escalating trade dispute with China could have a significant impact on gaming in the near future. The Office of the United States Trade Representative has proposed a tariff of up to 25% on a wide array of products imported from China.

The US has been raising tariffs on Chinese goods in waves since the middle of last year. The newly proposed product list is the largest yet, representing an approximate annual trade value of $300 billion.

The USTR says it covers "essentially all" products not already covered by previous tariffs, apart from a select few categories like pharmaceuticals, medical goods, and rare earth minerals.

The extensive list of affected product categories includes video game consoles, game controllers, and coin-op arcade games.

https://www.techpowerup.com/255338/intel...ve-in-2021

Quote:When it goes live and fit for mass production some time in 2021, Intel's 7 nm process will be a staggering 3 years behind TSMC, which fired up its 7 nm node in 2018. AMD is already mass-producing CPUs and GPUs on this node. Unlike TSMC, Intel will implement EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography straightaway. TSMC began 7 nm with DUV (deep ultraviolet) in 2018, and its EUV node went live in March. Samsung's 7 nm EUV node went up last October. Intel's roadmap doesn't show a leap from its current 10 nm node to 7 nm EUV, though. Intel will refine the 10 nm node to squeeze out energy-efficiency, with a refreshed 10 nm+ node that goes live some time in 2020.
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The 7 nm EUV node will receive two major updates in quick succession. The 7 nm+ node is slated for 2022, and succeeding 7 nm++ node in 2023. Intel did not detail the two besides illustrating performance/Watt gains by almost as much as the transition from 10 nm+ to 7 nm. Elsewhere in the market, the early 2020s could see TSMC 6 nm EUV take center-stage, and Samsung implement its 5 nm EUV node.

Intel will build an Xe enterprise GPGPU based on 7 nm EUV for market release in 2021. The company was specific in mentioning that an "enterprise GP-GPU" will be built on it, and not its entire Xe lineup that includes client-segment, professional, and cloud GPUs. The Xe discrete GPU team, led by Raja Koduri, is probably making a ropewalk, by giving Intel "something" to build on its own fabs, while seeking out Samsung's cutting-edge 5 nm EUV node for the rest of its lineup. Intel confirmed that the its first 7 nm product will be a GPGPU, followed closely by a server CPU.

Quote:Intel traditionally released new CPU microarchitectures and new silicon fabrication nodes with the client segment, and upon observing some degree of maturity with both, graduated them to the enterprise segment. With its homebrew 7 nanometer silicon fabrication process that takes flight in 2021, Intel will flip its roadmap execution strategy, by going "Data Center First." Speaking at the 2019 Investors Day summit, Intel SVP and GM of Data Center Group Navin Shenoy revealed that the first product built on Intel's 7 nm process will be a GPGPU accelerator chip derived from the Xe architecture for the Data Center, followed closely by a new server CPU. Both these products come under Shenoy's group. One is a competitor to likes of NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Radeon Instinct, while the other is a Xeon processor competing with AMD EPYC.
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With 10 nm, however, Intel is sticking to the client-first model, by rolling out the "Ice Lake" processor towards the end of 2019. Within the Client Computing group, Intel has flipped its roadmap execution such that mobile (notebook) CPUs take precedence over desktop ones.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-50...39080.html

Quote:AMD's 50th Anniversary is fast approaching on May 1, and several new postings at online retailers have revealed that AMD is on the cusp of releasing a new 50th Anniversary Ryzen 7 2700X to celebrate. (Hat tip to @Dayman58 for the spot).

Aside from the mention of a bundled Wraith Prism LED cooler, the listings tell us little about the chip, including what differentiates it from existing Ryzen 7 2700X models. The chip is listed for preorder at $340.95, which is well above the typical ~$295 street price, but that's to be expected with a collector's item.

Several of the sites haven't listed retail availability yet, but on further investigation, we found a retailer that claims the part will become available on April 30, the day before AMD's anniversary celebration.
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AMD has also released special edition chips in the past–the company released its Limited Edition Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600X MAX bundles last year. Even though those chips, which come with a better Wraith Max cooler than the standard models, still haven't made their way to American shores, you can still find them for sale overseas.

Quote:Given that AMD hasn't changed the model number, we expect these processors to have the same specifications as regular Ryzen 7 2700X, but with some special packaging material, and perhaps some special laser engraving on the processor's IHS. AMD has used tin boxes in the past for its first FX-series processors, so the possibility of something similar cannot be ruled out. Since pricing of this SKU isn't significantly higher, we don't expect it to be of a higher bin (better overclockers) than regular 2700X chips.

Quote:Portuguese online retailer PCDIGA has listed the Sapphire AMD 50th Anniversary Edition Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GB graphics card for €299.90, or roughly $338.99, on the company's website.
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The 50th Anniversary Edition will look awfully familiar if you're a fan of Sapphire products. That's because the graphics card employs the same Dual-X cooler that Sapphire has been using for some time. On this occasion, however, Sapphire has dipped the 2.2-slot cooler in gold-colored paint instead of the blue or black color that we've grown accustomed to.
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The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GB AMD 50th Anniversary Edition is currently selling for €299.90 (~$338.99) on PCDIGA. While Portugal complies to the VAT (value-added tax) rules dictated by the European Union, the country is free to apply its own rate with the condition that it must be higher than 15 percent. Computer hardware should fall under the standard 23 percent rate, so if we deduct it from the price, the graphics card's price drops down to $275.60, which is a $45 premium over the Nitro+ RX 590 8GB Special Edition. That's apparently the price you pay for a collector's item.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/crypto...39027.html

Quote:The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday that it is seeking public opinions on a revised list of industries that it should encourage, restrict, or eliminate. The first version of NDRC's list appeared in 2011, and the revised list puts cryptocurrency mining on the chopping block for immediate removal.
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According to Reuters, Jehan Chu, managing partner at blockchain investment firm Kenetic, told state-owned newspaper Securities Times that the Chinese government isn’t really trying to eliminate cryptocurrencies in the country for good.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/eu-sla...39001.html

Quote:Update 4/5/19, 9:20 a.m. PT: Valve sent us a statement in response to the European Commission's announcement. The company reiterated that the commission's issues don't involve sales through Steam, just Steam activation keys used by physical copies of games and said it neither receives compensation directly from the companies nor a portion of sales for providing this service.

More important is the company's claim that few titles were affected by geo-blocking, that it shouldn't be subject to any penalties for providing a platform on which other companies did wrong and that the commission's complaint arrived a few years late:
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The European Commission announced today that it sent Statements of Objections to Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax for "geo-blocking" Steam activation keys for physical copies of games (which do, in fact, still exist) based on national borders.
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The European Commission said Valve and the game publishers agreed to block cross-border sales involving "Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and in some cases Romania." All of the publishers except Capcom also included export restrictions in their contracts with other game distributors that "may have prevented consumers from purchasing and playing PC video games sold by these distributors."

These restrictions are said to violate Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union via Regulation 2018/302, which prohibits geo-blocking, which is why the commission sent these Statements of Objections. That regulation went into effect in December 2018, but the commission's investigation into Valve and these game publishers actually started in February 2017. Now the companies have a chance to respond.

3-23-2019

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/28714...ive-by-may

Quote:Microsoft is reportedly bringing the new console to market as a way to lower the base cost of entry into the Xbox ecosystem. Pre-orders are expected by April, with the console actually going on-sale in May. Given the rumors, we suspect the system will be reworked to lower the BoM when possible, though no additional information has been provided in terms of port loadouts or wireless support. The rumor is that Microsoft is targeting a price point as much as $100 below the current $299 Xbox One S price.

The company hasn’t forgotten its customers who still rely on discs, however. Reportedly there will be a disc-to-digital program at Microsoft stores, allowing gamers to transfer physical copies to digital licenses. Details of how this would work haven’t been rolled out and the program isn’t officially announced. There’s also supposedly a cost-reduced version of the Xbox One S coming later this year as well that would keep the ability to play physical discs but still target a price below $299.
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The chart from the NPD Group, shown above, illustrates just how dramatically sales have shifted from retail to online outlets. According to NPD data, even in 2013, 46 percent of console games were still sold in physical stores. Today, that ratio has fallen to 21 percent. I’ve long been a proponent of keeping physical distribution — there are too many people with metered connections or slow download speeds for me to feel comfortable with an all-digital distribution system — but it’s clear that patterns are changing. Microsoft’s latest Xbox One will attempt to change with them.

https://www.techpowerup.com/253373/toshi...nand-flash

Quote:Toshiba and its strategic ally Western Digital are readying a high-density 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory. In Toshiba's nomenclature, the chip will be named BiCS-5. Interestingly, despite the spatial density, the chip will implement TLC (3 bits per cell), and not the newer QLC (4 bits per cell). This is probably because NAND flash makers are still spooked about the low yields of QLC chips. Regardless, the chip has a data density of 512 Gb. With 33% more capacity than 96-layer chips, the new 128-layer chips could hit commercial production in 2020-21.