Today, we shared our vision for the next era of the Windows PC, where the PC and the cloud intersect and tap into innovative AI technology that unlocks new experiences. So that each of us can participate, be seen, heard and express our creativity.

For nearly 40 years, the Windows PC has held a place at the center of our lives. It's contributed to new levels of productivity, kept us all connected, and unlocked our creativity and potential through innovations we couldn't have imagined when we first began this journey. Just think about how far we've come in how people interact with it. From the very first text-based keyboard input to the precision of point and click with the mouse, up to today, where touch, voice, pen and gestures all help people use the Windows PC more naturally and intuitively. From its inception, Surface has been a catalyst for that change.

Declines continued for the traditional PC market as global shipments totaled 74.3 million units during the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Cooling demand and uneven supply have contributed to a year-over-year contraction of 15.0%. However, shipment volumes remain well above pre-pandemic levels when PC volumes were largely driven by commercial refreshes due to the looming end of support for Windows 7.

"Consumer demand has remained muted though promotional activity from the likes of Apple and other players has helped soften the fall and reduce channel inventory by a couple weeks across the board," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "Supply has also reacted to the new lows by reducing orders with Apple being the only exception as their third quarter supply increased to make up for lost orders stemming from the lockdowns in China during the second quarter."

Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase approximately 9% year-over-year (YOY) to a new all-time high of US$99 billion in 2022, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. The report also shows the global fab equipment industry increasing capacity this year and again in 2023. "After achieving a record level in 2022, the global fab equipment market is projected to remain healthy next year driven by new fabs and upgrade activity," said Ajit Manocha, SEMI President and CEO.

Taiwan is expected to lead fab equipment spending in 2022, increasing investments 47% YOY to US$30 billion, followed by Korea at US$22.2 billion, a 5.5% decline, and China at US$22 billion, a 11.7% drop from its peak last year. Europe/Mideast this year is forecast to log record high spending of US$6.6 billion, a 141% YOY surge this year though outlays remain comparatively smaller than in other regions. Strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) advanced technologies is driving the region's jump in spending. The Americas and Southeast Asia are also expected to register record high investments in 2023.

According to TrendForce research, due to steady weakening of overall demand for consumer electronics, inventory pressure has increased among downstream distributors and brands. Although there are still sporadic shortages of specific components, the curtain has officially fallen on a two-year wave of shortages in general, and brands have gradually suspended stocking in response to changes in market conditions. However, stable demand for automotive and industrial equipment is key to supporting the ongoing growth of foundry output value. At the same time, since the creation of a marginal amount of new capacity in 2Q22 led to growth in wafer shipments and a price hike for certain wafers, this drove output value among top ten foundries to reach US$33.20 billion in 2Q22. Quarterly growth fell to 3.9% on a weakening consumer market.

A prelude to inventory correction was officially revealed in 3Q22. In addition to intensifying severity in the initial wave of order slashing for LDDI/TDDI, and TV SoC, diminishing order volume also extended to non-Apple smartphone APs and peripheral IC PMIC, CIS, and consumer electronics PMICs, and mid-to-low-end MCUs, posing a challenge for foundry capacity utilization. However, the launch of the new iPhone in 3Q22 is expected to prop up a certain amount of stocking momentum for the sluggish market. Therefore, top ten foundry revenue in 3Q22 is expected to maintain a growth trend driven by high-priced processes and quarterly growth rate is expected to be slightly higher than in 2Q22.

During its GTC 2022 session, NVIDIA introduced its new generation of gaming graphics cards based on the novel Ada Lovelace architecture. Dubbed NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series, it brings various updates like more CUDA cores, a new DLSS 3 version, 4th generation Tensor cores, 3rd generation Ray Tracing cores, and much more, which you can read about here. However, today, we also got a new Ada Lovelace card intended for the data center. Called the L40, NVIDIA updated its previous Ampere-based A40 design. While the NVIDIA website provides sparse, the new L40 GPU uses 48 GB GDDR6 memory with ECC error correction. Using NVLink, you can get 96GBs of VRAM. Paired with an unknown SKU, we assume that it uses AD102 with adjusted frequencies to lower the TDP and allow for passive cooling.

NVIDIA is calling this their Omniverse GPU, as it is a part of the push to separate its GPUs used for graphics and AI/HPC models. The "L" model in the current product stack is used to accelerate graphics, with display ports installed on the GPU, while the "H" models (H100) are there to accelerate HPC/AI installments where visual elements are a secondary task. This is a further separation of the entire GPU market, where the HPC/AI SKUs get their own architecture, and GPUs for graphics processing are built on a new architecture as well. You can see the specifications provided by NVIDIA below.

During Evercore ISI TMT conference, Intel announced that the company would continue to lose market share, with a possible bounce back in the coming years. According to the latest report, Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that he expects the company to continue to lose its market share to AMD as the competition has "too much momentum" going for it. AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors continue to deliver power and efficiency performance figures, which drives customers towards the company. On the other hand, Intel expects a competing product, especially in the data center business with Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors, set to arrive in 2023. Pat Gelsinger noted, "Competition just has too much momentum, and we haven't executed well enough. So we expect that bottoming. The business will be growing, but we do expect that there continues to be some share losses. We're not keeping up with the overall TAM growth until we get later into '25 and '26 when we start regaining share, material share gains."

The only down years that are supposed to show a toll of solid competition are 2022 and 2023. As far as creating a bounceback, Intel targets 2025 and 2026. "Now, obviously, in 2024, we think we're competitive. 2025, we think we're back to unquestioned leadership with our transistors and process technology," noted CEO Gelsinger. Additionally, he had a say about the emerging Arm CPUs competing for the same server market share as Intel and AMD do so, stating that "Well, when we deliver the Forest product line, we deliver power performance leadership versus all Arm alternatives, as well. So now you go to a cloud service provider, and you say, 'Well, why would I go through that butt ugly, heavy software lift to an ARM architecture versus continuing on the x86 family?"

Tumultuous times are ahead for the PC and tablet markets according to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Global shipments of traditional PCs are forecast to decline 12.8% in 2022 to 305.3 million units while tablet shipments will fall 6.8% to 156.8 million. Inflation, a weakening global economy, and the surge in buying over the past two years are the leading causes for the reduced outlook.

Further contraction is also expected in 2023 as consumer demand has slowed, the education demand has been largely fulfilled, and enterprise demand gets pushed out due to worsening macroeconomic conditions. The combined market for PCs and tablets is forecast to decline 2.6% in 2023 before returning to growth in 2024.

LG Electronics (LG) is unveiling its latest premium monitors at IFA 2022 in Berlin, Germany, including the superb, new UltraGear OLED gaming monitor (model 45GR95QE). LG's first curved OLED display with a 240Hz refresh rate, the 45-inch model is designed for immersive gaming experiences, offering the visual performance, speed and features serious gamers demand.

Visitors to LG's booth at IFA 2022 can explore a wide range of cutting-edge LG monitor products, including the new UltraGear and the UltraFine Display Ergo AI (model 32UQ890), which delivers a truly customizable setup for superior user comfort at home or at the office.

LINE Games Corporation announced today that it will participate online in Europe's biggest game exhibition Gamescom 2022 to showcase its upcoming PC title Quantum Knights. On August 24, LINE Games will present Quantum Knights on the official website of Gamescom 2022 with a new gameplay trailer. Currently in development by Space Dive Games, Quantum Knights is an online third-person looter shooter for PC. Set in a medieval fantasy open world where magic and firearms coexist, Quantum Knights offers stylish action based on shooter game's dynamic combat and movement mechanisms.

Each firearm featured in Quantum Knights has its own unique design and can be enhanced by carving in magic circles, which allows for the player to tailor the character's specialty and combat style accordingly. LINE Games plans on releasing Quantum Knights in 2023, and has opened a dedicated teaser site and social media channel where intrigued players can take a first look at the game.

Corsair, one of the world's leading PC component brands, is being hit hard by macroeconomics and consumers' choice - and sometimes need - to keep more dollars in their pockets. According to its own internal accounting, the company has announced that it expects between $10 and $11 million dollars in losses for 2Q 2022 (April-June) throughout its business. Remember that this isn't a case of a company being too specific in its product line and taking the heat from it; Corsair has one of the most diverse lineups in PC components, ranging from memory, water and air cooling, SSDs, peripherals, and even monitors.

Not unlike other businesses, which have seen inventory levels soar on account of much lower than expected sales, Corsair too has seen its warehouses starting to fill up - not unlike the company's financials, there's less and less oxygen within its warehouses as inventory piles up. Corsair did say it expects business to pick up considerably in the third quarter, as it has seen an uptick in enthusiast-level PC gaming sales (likely spurred by the dropping prices of GPUs as miners dump their graphics cards in expectation of Ethereum's Merge event, set for September). The increase in sales leads the company to believe it will achieve a 35% YoY (year-over-year) growth throughout the second half of 2022, which will hopefully be enough to push the company back above the red line.

Today ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2022 second-quarter results. Q2 net sales of €5.4 billion, gross margin of 49.1%, net income of €1.4 billion. Record quarterly net bookings in Q2 of €8.5 billion. ASML expects Q3 2022 net sales between €5.1 billion and €5.4 billion and a gross margin between 49% and 50%. Expected sales growth for the full year of around 10%.

The value of fast shipments*in 2022 leading to delayed revenue recognition into 2023 is expected to increase from around €1 billion to around €2.8 billion.
"Our second-quarter net sales came in at €5.4 billion with a gross margin of 49.1%. Demand from our customers remains very strong, as reflected by record net bookings in the second quarter of €8.5 billion, including €5.4 billion from 0.33 NA and 0.55 NA EUV systems as well as strong DUV bookings.

In 2017, the semiconductor world was shocked to discover new vulnerabilities in modern Intel, AMD, and Arm processors. Dubbed Spectre and Meltdown, these exploits used cache-based side-channel attacks to steal information from the system. Today, we are getting a more advanced side-channel vulnerability hidden in every CPU capable of boosting frequencies. Interestingly called "Heartzbleed," the new exploit can steal secret AES cryptographic keys when observing CPU's boost frequencies. The attack works by monitoring the power signature of any cryptographic workload. As with any other element in a CPU, the workload's power varies according to the processor's frequency scaling in different situations. Observing this power information can be converted into timing data, allowing an attacker to steal cryptographic keys. This is done using Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS), a part of any modern processor.

Intel and AMD already published that their systems are vulnerable and affected by Heartzbleed exploit. It is labeled Intel-SA-00698 ID and CVE-2022-24436 ID for Intel CPUs and CVE-2022-23823 for AMD CPUs. It affects all Intel processors, and Zen 2 and Zen 3 AMD CPUs. The attacker can exploit this vulnerability remotely without requiring physical access. Intel and AMD will not offer microcode mitigations that should prevent this type of exploit from executing successfully. Additionally, Intel stated that this attack is not very practical outside of laboratory research, as it allegedly takes hours to days to steal cryptographic keys. The performance penalty for mitigating this attack ranges from high to low, depending on the type of implementation.

Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase 20% year-over-year (YOY) to an all-time high of US$109 billion in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth following a 42% surge in 2021, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. Fab equipment investment in 2023 is expected to remain strong.

"The global semiconductor equipment industry remains on track to cross the $100 billion threshold for the first time as shown in our latest update of the World Fab Forecast,"said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. "This historic milestone puts an exclamation point on the current run of unprecedented industry growth."

Based on a report in the Taiwanese media, AMD is quickly becoming a key customer for TSMC and is expected to become its third largest customer in 2023. This is partially due to new orders that AMD has placed with TSMC for its 5 nm node. AMD is said to become TSMC's single largest customer for its 5 nm node in 2023, although it's not clear from the report how large of a share of the 5 nm node AMD will have.

The additional orders are said to be related to AMD's Zen 4 based processors, as well as its upcoming RDNA3 based GPUs. AMD is expected to be reaching a production volume of some 20,000 wafers in the fourth quarter of 2022, although there's no mention of what's expected in 2023. Considering most of AMD's products for the next year or two will all be based on TSMC's 5 nm node, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise though, as AMD has a wide range of new CPU and GPU products coming.

In 2021 TSMC saw an increase in sales of 24.9 percent in monetary value, but for 2022, the company is expecting this figure to reach somewhere around the 30 percent mark. For this quarter alone, TSMC is expecting a revenue of somewhere between US$17.6 to US$18.2 billion, with a gross margin ending up as high as 58 percent. Despite the positive outlook, TSMC hasn't been doing well on the Taiwanese stock exchange this year, as the company has lost more than a tenth of its value in 2022.

That said, TSMC is pressing forward and will still be spending in excess of US$40 billion in 2023 to expand its production capacity, following the US$40 to US$44 billion it will invest this year. The company isn't overly concerned about inflation at this point in time either, saying it doesn't have a direct impact on the semiconductor industry. TSMC is seeing a slowdown in the consumer chip space, but it's seeing an uptick in business when it comes to EV related ICs. TSMC's production lines are at full utilisation for at least the rest of 2022, but most likely long into 2023.

Jon Peddie Research reports that the global PC-based graphics processor units (GPU) market reached 96 million units in Q1'22 and PC GPUs shipments decreased 6.2% due to disturbances in China, Ukraine, and the pullback from the lockdown elsewhere. However, the fundamentals of the GPU and PC market are solid over the long term, JPR predicts GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 6.3% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 3.3 million units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of discrete GPUs (dGPU) in the PC market will grow to reach a level of 46%.

AMD's overall market share percentage from last quarter increased 0.7%, Intel's market share decreased by -2.4%, and Nvidia's market share increased 1.69%, as indicated in the following chart.

Cooler Master launches the availability of the all-new GM Series Curved Monitor lineup for work and play. The ultra-fast GM27-CFX with a 240 Hz refresh rate is available starting today May 26 2022 while the ultra-wide GM34-CWQ ARGB hits shelves on May 30 2022.

GM27-CFX
Cooler Master's new FHD GM27-CFX 1500R Curved monitor delivers outstanding performance for "Work & Play" Setups with a 98% DCI-P3 color spectrum coverage. The GM27-FQX runs an ultra-fast 240 Hz framerate with 0.5 ms response time and features quantum dot picture quality enabling a 3001:1 contrast ratio for deep blacks and bright whites.

Ayar Labs, the leader in chip-to-chip optical connectivity, is developing with NVIDIA groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure based on optical I/O technology to meet future demands of AI and high performance computing (HPC) workloads. The collaboration will focus on integrating Ayar Labs' technology to develop scale-out architectures enabled by high-bandwidth, low-latency and ultra-low-power optical-based interconnects for future NVIDIA products. Together, the companies plan to accelerate the development and adoption of optical I/O technology to support the explosive growth of AI and machine learning (ML) applications and data volumes.

Optical I/O uniquely changes the performance and power trajectories of system designs by enabling compute, memory and networking ASICs to communicate with dramatically increased bandwidth, at lower latency, over longer distances and at a fraction of the power of existing electrical I/O solutions. The technology is also foundational to enabling emerging heterogeneous compute systems, disaggregated/pooled designs, and unified memory architectures that are critical to accelerating future data center innovation.

Today we got information that AMD's upcoming Instinct MI300 will be allegedly available as an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). AMD APUs are processors that combine CPU and GPU into a single package. AdoredTV managed to get ahold of a slide that indicates that AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator will also come as an APU option that combines Zen4 CPU cores and CDNA3 GPU accelerator in a single, large package. With technologies like 3D stacking, MCM design, and HBM memory, these Instinct APUs are positioned to be a high-density compute the product. At least six HBM dies are going to be placed in a package, with the APU itself being a socketed design.

The leaked slide from AdoredTV indicates that the first tapeout is complete by the end of the month (presumably this month), with the first silicon hitting AMD's labs in Q3 of 2022. If the silicon turns out functional, we could see these APUs available sometime in the first half of 2023. Below, you can see an illustration of the AMD Instinct MI300 GPU. The APU version will potentially be of the same size with Zen4 and CDNA3 cores spread around the package. As Instinct MI300 accelerator is supposed to use eight compute tiles, we could see different combinations of CPU/GPU tiles offered. As we await the launch of the next-generation accelerators, we are yet to see what SKUs AMD will bring.

AMD has been on a roll ever since it launched its first generation Zen core, which brought a much-needed performance and efficiency boost that finally brought a level of competitiveness against Intel's offerings. Years of iterations and design improvements have only increased AMD's value proposition towards consumers and businesses. A testament to that fact is that AMD in Q1 2022 hit its largest market share in history.

According to market analysis firm Mercury Research, AMD's offerings have continued to claw back market share from Intel, despite its strong recovery in performance and efficiency metrics following the debut of the 12th Gen Intel CPU family, Alder Lake. The firm places AMD's overall x86 market share for 1Q 2022 (including IoT and SoCs such as the ones found in the latest gaming consoles) at a record-breaking 27.7%, up 2.1% QoQ and a staggering 7% YoY. The server side of the equation has seen less stellar gains, but still increased by 0.9% QoQ, and 2.7% YoY, achieving a high of 11.6% share against Intel's decades-long market stranglehold.

According to TrendForce, Taiwan is crucial to the global semiconductor supply chain, accounting for a 26% market share of semiconductor revenue in 2021, ranking second in the world. Its IC design and packaging & testing industries also account for a 27% and 20% global market share, ranking second and first in the world, respectively. Firmly in the pole position, Taiwan accounts for 64% of the foundry market. In addition to TSMC possessing the most advanced process technology at this stage, foundries including UMC, Vanguard, and PSMC also have their own process advantages. Under the looming shadow of chip shortages caused by the pandemic and geopolitical turmoil in the past two years, various governments have quickly awakened to the fact that localization of chip manufacturing is necessary to avoid being cut off from chip acquisition due to logistics difficulties or cross-border shipment bans. Taiwanese companies have ridden this wave to become partners that governments around the world are eager to invite to set up factories in various locales.

For many years, TEAMGROUP has been developing high-quality products for industrial use and automation applications. In response to the growing market for 5G applications, the company this year is focusing on the new market demands of 5G infrastructure, AloT edge computing, and autonomous driving, as well as in-vehicle computing and environmental safety control applications. Today, TEAMGROUP is announcing its 745 SSD Series, which features the 5th generation BiCS NAND flash memory. It's a comprehensive industrial solution that comes with high capacities, low latencies, and high durability for the various application of industrial market.

The TEAMGROUP 745 SSD Series uses the new 112-layer 3D TLC and the latest 5th generation BiCS NAND flash memory, giving it approximately 40% more capacity and 50% better I/O performance than BiCS4 SSDs. This makes it fully suitable for the high-capacity, low-latency transmission requirements of edge computing. To meet the needs of a wide range of industrial applications, the 745 SSD Series is available in a variety of form factors with mainstream specifications, including models with SATA and PCIe Gen3x4 interfaces and capacities from 128 GB to 2 TB, offering the industry a variety of professional options. The 745 SSD Series is also equipped with SLC cache technology, which improves SSD read and write efficiency and supports high AI load for smart manufacturing and autonomous driving, while the AES 256-bit encryption prevents data security concerns and ensures safety and stability of the SSD.

Our first-quarter net sales came in at €3.5 billion which is at the high end of our guidance. The gross margin of 49.0%, is as guided. Our first-quarter net bookings came in at €7.0 billion, including €2.5 billion from 0.33 NA and 0.55 NA EUV systems as well as very strong DUV bookings, reflecting the continued high demand for advanced and mature nodes.

"We continue to see that the demand for our systems is higher than our current production capacity. We accommodate our customers through offering high-productivity upgrades and reducing cycle time in our factories, and we continue to offer a fast shipment process. In addition, we are actively working to significantly expand capacity together with our supply chain partners. In light of the demand and our plans to increase capacity, we expect to revisit our scenarios for 2025 and growth opportunities beyond. We plan to communicate updates in the second half of the year.

A physical show of COMPUTEX 2022 will be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall from May 24 to 27, 2022. In addition, TAITRA will simultaneously hold an online exhibition called COMPUTEX DigitalGo (May 24 to June 6). This year, exhibitors and visitors are invited to participate in COMPUTEX both online and offline. The online registration is now open to buyers worldwide. COMPUTEX is one of the world-leading ICT exhibitions. This year, the show focuses on six trendy themes: Accelerating Intelligence, Connected X-Experience, Digital Resilience, Innovative Computing, Innovations & Startups, and Sustainability. In addition, a number of top ICT leaders, including Acer, AMD, Apacer, Arm, ASUS, ATEN, Delta, GIGABYTE, IBM, Infineon, KIOXIA, Microsoft Corp., MSI, NVIDIA, NXP, Qualcomm, Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT), Supermicro, Texas Instruments, ZOTAC and more, will participate in hybrid events.

COMPUTEX will hold many events during the show this year. Some highlights include five COMPUTEX CEO Keynotes by the global tech giants. They will deliver hot topics and the latest trends that attendees could walk away with informative and insightful views. The COMPUTEX Forum will revolve around the theme "Create the New Normal", consisting of two technological innovation and application sessions. The first session will focus on technology innovation, with the topic of "Technology Empowerment, Building Industry Chains", dissecting computing, 5G, IoT to drive the opportunities in AI. The second session will cover technology application with the topic of "Application Advancements - Realizing Future Scenarios", which focuses on virtual reality, smart life, remote work, and ESG management by using digital technology.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 5.1% in the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22) but exceeded earlier forecasts, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The PC market is coming off two years of double-digit growth, so while the first quarter decline is a change in this momentum, it doesn't mean the industry is in a downward spiral. Despite ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges, vendors still shipped 80.5 million PCs during the quarter. The 1Q22 volume marks the seventh consecutive quarter where global shipments surpassed 80 million, a feat not seen since 2012.

"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected. The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges," said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "We have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong. We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future. The result of 1Q22 was PC shipment volumes that were near record levels for a first quarter."