BenQ today announced the latest addition to its monitor family design for professional use. The SW321C, as it is called, is a 32-inch monitor with an IPS panel of 4K (3840×2160p) resolution. The panel itself is a 60 Hz screen with 250 nits of brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5 ms GtG response time, and it offers 178-degree viewing angles, which is standard for IPS panels. When it comes to the color coverage and the ability to accurately represent them, the SW321C features 95% of the DCI-P3, 99% of the Adobe RGB, and 100% of the sRGB color gamut. It has a 16-bit 3D look-up table (LUT) and features calibration for DeltaE ≤ 2.

The monitor comes with HDR10 specification, however, due to the brightness of 250 nits, it is not capable of performing any serious HDR content editing. Another interesting note is that this monitor supports Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) standard, which is an uncommon one. For input, the monitor had support for one DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, and one USB-C port. There is a dual-port USB hub, which has an SD card reader right next to it, making this very useful feature for photographers. Exact pricing and availability of this monitor are unknown, however, it is supposed to hit the market soon.

Intel and Micron have signed a new agreement for the production of 3D XPoint memory. As currently the only source of 3D XPoint memory solutions, Micron will get a significant increase in cash flow coming from Intel for the memory production. While Intel and Micron ended their partnership on 3D XPoint memory, they have signed a new contract for the production and supply of new 3D XPoint wafers to Intel. This shows that the demand for 3D XPoint memory is strong, so Intel needs production capacity to deliver the memory, and Micron is the obvious choice.

Previously, Intel sold its ownership of Lehi fab based in Utah, which was manufacturing the 3D XPoint memory solutions, so it was left to Micron to use. However, they signed a new deal and now Micron is in charge of manufacturing and addressing the supply issues for Intel's future Optane products. The new agreement comes with changed pricing and forecast of the sales, so Intel is likely paying more cash to Micron this time.

TSMC today announced it has collaborated with Broadcom on enhancing the Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS ) platform to support the industry's first and largest 2X reticle size interposer. With an area of approximately 1,700mm2, this next generation CoWoS interposer technology significantly boosts computing power for advanced HPC systems by supporting more SoCs as well as being ready to support TSMC's next-generation five-nanometer (N5) process technology.

This new generation CoWoS technology can accommodate multiple logic system-on-chip (SoC) dies, and up to 6 cubes of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), offering as much as 96 GB of memory. It also provides bandwidth of up to 2.7 terabytes per second, 2.7 times faster than TSMC's previously offered CoWoS solution in 2016. With higher memory capacity and bandwidth, this CoWoS solution is well-suited for memory-intensive workloads such as deep learning, as well as workloads for 5G networking, power-efficient datacenters, and more. In addition to offering additional area to increase compute, I/O, and HBM integration, this enhanced CoWoS technology provides greater design flexibility and yield for complex ASIC designs in advanced process nodes.

Chiplet design of processors is getting more popular due to many improvements and opportunities it offers. Some of the benefits include lower costs as the dies are smaller compared to one monolithic design, while you are theoretically able to stitch as much of the chiplets together as possible. During the ISSCC 2020 conference, CEA-Leti, a French research institute, created a 96 core CPU made from six 3D stacked 16 core chiplets. The chip is created as a demonstration of what this modular approach offers and what are the capabilities of the chiplet-based CPU design.

The chiplets are manufactured on the 28 nm FD-SOI manufacturing process from STMicroelectronics, while the active interposer die below them that is connecting everything is made using the 65 nm process. Each one of the six dies is housing 16 cores based on MIPS Instruction Set Architecture core. Each chiplet is split into four 4-core clusters that make up for a total of 16 cores per chiplet. When it comes to the core itself, it is a scalar MIPS32v1 core equipped with 16 KiB of L1 instruction and an L1 data cache. For L2 cache, there is 256 KiB per cluster, while the L3 cache is split into four 1 MiB tiles for the whole cluster. The chiplets are stacked on top of an active interposer which connects the chiplets and provides external I/O support.

VR has been hailed as the next coming of truly ingenious, engrossing, enveloping experiences, and to some extent, it already does offer those. There are still limitations to the technology and the level of realism it can impart (there is a whole slew of senses we need to trigger for truly enveloping experiences, of course), but I feel we sometimes get somewhat limited in the way we look at VR. Of course, we can all imagine video games built in VR - and when we do, we likely imagine them as they were presented to us in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.

Then there are other use-cases, such as real-estate experiences that place you right inside your future home and allow you to see the changes you'd make. Architecture design, engineering, game world design, even strolls through museums, your mind a subatomic particle able to instantly travel to foreign countries and explore their marvels. All for this, mind you, without ever leaving the comfort of our home, without the required expenses and no wasted time with travelling or passport checks - all, however, simulated. But what if VR could go even further? What if VR could be used as a coping mechanism? What if you could meet your dead parents, siblings... Or children? This is the story I bring to you today: of how VR was used to reunite a mother with her deceased seven-year-old girl. This is the story of Ji-sung and her daughter Nayeon.

Xperi Corporation today announced that it entered into a new patent and technology license agreement with SK hynix, one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers. The agreement includes access to Xperi's broad portfolio of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and a technology transfer of Invensas DBI Ultra 3D interconnect technology focused on next-generation memory.

"We are delighted to announce the extension of our long-standing relationship with SK hynix, a world-renowned technology leader and manufacturer of memory solutions," said Craig Mitchell, President of Invensas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi Corporation. "As the industry increasingly looks beyond conventional node scaling and turns toward hybrid bonding, Invensas stands as a pioneering leader that continues to deliver improved performance, power, and functionality, while also reducing the cost of semiconductors. We are proud to partner with SK hynix to further develop and commercialize our DBI Ultra technology and look forward to a wide range of memory solutions that leverage the benefits of this revolutionary technology platform."

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has successfully developed its fifth-generation BiCS FLASH three-dimensional (3D) flash memory with a 112-layer vertically stacked structure. Kioxia plans to start shipping samples of the new device, which has a 512 gigabit (64 gigabytes) capacity with 3-bit-per-cell (triple-level cell, TLC) technology, for specific applications in the first quarter of calendar year 2020. The new device aims to fulfill ever-growing bit demands for a wide variety of applications, including traditional mobile devices, consumer and enterprise SSDs, emerging applications enabled by the new 5G networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

Going forward, Kioxia will apply its new fifth-generation process technology to larger capacity devices, such as 1 terabit (128 gigabytes) TLC and 1.33 terabit 4-bit-per-cell (quadruple-level cell, QLC) devices.

This year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) that will take place in March is forming to become a very interesting one. According to the GDC schedule platform, Intel is having a presentation about its upcoming Xe graphics card architecture. Saying that "Intel's brand new Xe Architecture, has been teased for a while, and is scheduled for release later this year! This update brings a significant compute, geometry and throughput improvements over today's widely used Gen9 and Gen11 graphics.", Intel is giving us a slight hint of what is to come.

Presented by Intel's senior developer relations engineer, Antonie Cohade, the talk will include an in-depth look of the Xe hardware architecture and its implementations. Said to introduce "powerful new features", the talk about Xe graphics should include a mention of the latest trend in the world of 3D graphics, ray tracing, and show us what are the capabilities of the new GPU architecture.

Kioxia Corporation today announced the development of the world's first three-dimensional (3D) semicircular split-gate flash memory cell structure "Twin BiCS FLASH" using specially designed semicircular Floating Gate (FG) cells. Twin BiCS FLASH achieves superior program slope and a larger program/erase window at a much smaller cell size compared to conventional circular Charge Trap (CT) cells. These attributes make this new cell design a promising candidate to surpass four bits per cell (QLC) for significantly higher memory density and fewer stacking layers. This technology was announced at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, CA on December 11th.

3D flash memory technology has achieved high bit density with low cost per bit by increasing the number of cell stacked layers as well as by implementing multilayer stack deposition and high aspect ratio etching. In recent years, as the number of cell layers exceeds 100, managing the trade-offs among etch profile control, size uniformity and productivity is becoming increasingly challenging. To overcome this problem, Kioxia developed a new semicircular cell design by splitting the gate electrode in the conventional circular cell to reduce cell size compared to the conventional circular cell, enabling higher-density memory at a lower number of cell layers.

Today, Intel announced the Intel RealSense lidar camera L515, the world's smallest and most power-efficient, high-resolution lidar that captures millions of depth points per second. Designed with proprietary technology that creates entirely new ways to incorporate lidar into smart devices to perceive the world in 3D, the L515 provides high-quality performance and millimeter accuracy to products that require vision capabilities.

"Intel RealSense technology is used to develop products that enrich people's lives by enabling machines and devices to perceive the world in 3D. With the L515 depth camera, we are excited to bring high-resolution lidar performance to markets previously inaccessible to this technology."
-Sagi BenMoshe, corporate vice president, Intel RealSense Group

Crucial has started shipping a 2 TB version of its famous, budget/minded BX500 Series of SATA SSDs. As pricing on NAND density has come down, it makes sense that budget solutions start to increase their capacities as well, since there is no longer a premium on new, advanced technologies. The Crucial BX500 2 TB model features the same 3D TLC NAND as the other capacities in Crucial's portfolio: 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory mated to an SMI SM2258XT DRAM-less controller.

Since it maintains the communication protocol (SATA), and the hardware is virtually unchanged except for higher densities, don't expect improved performance: the 2 TB drive is still rated for up to 540 MB/s reads and up to 500 MB/s writes. Pricing is set at $214 (or €241) for the 2 TB model, which means price per GB stands at roughly $0.10.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a breakthrough in nonvolatile memory technology with the introduction of the world's fastest SSD, the Micron X100 SSD. The Micron X100 SSD is the first solution in a family of products from Micron targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for the data center. These solutions will leverage the strengths of 3D XPoint technology and usher in a new tier in the memory-to-storage hierarchy with higher capacity and persistence than DRAM, along with higher endurance and performance than NAND.

"Micron's innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases," said Micron Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana. "Micron is the only vertically-integrated provider of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint solutions in the world, and this product continues the evolution of our portfolio towards higher value solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence capabilities, drive faster data analytics and create new insights for our customers."

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing 250-gigabyte (GB) SATA solid state drive (SSD) that integrates the company's sixth-generation (1xx-layer) 256-gigabit (Gb) three-bit V-NAND for global PC OEMs. By launching a new generation of V-NAND in just 13 months, Samsung has reduced the mass production cycle by four months while securing the industry's highest performance, power efficiency and manufacturing productivity.

"By bringing cutting-edge 3D memory technology to volume production, we are able to introduce timely memory lineups that significantly raise the bar for speed and power efficiency," said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. "With faster development cycles for next-generation V-NAND products, we plan to rapidly expand the markets for our high-speed, high-capacity 512 Gb V-NAND-based solutions."

Epic Games, as part of the company's $100 million Epic MegaGrants program, is awarding the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash to further the success of Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the full range of tools empowering artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games.

The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.

Scaling and manufacturing of ever shrinking semiconductor devices is becoming more challenging as smaller nodes are introduced. As we have approached 7 nanometers, economies of scale are becoming more influential than scales of manufacturing. For example, the development of the 7 nm node development cost more than 3 billion USD, while smaller nodes are expected to see that price cross the 5 billion USD mark. So given that we are approaching the limit where we can't squeeze more transistors in two-dimensional space without huge economical impact, we have to utilize another dimension in order to keep performance improvements coming.

AMD has filed a patent for cooling a 3D stacked memory with thermo-electric coolers - TECs, also known as Peltier devices. Being that TECs are made out of P-type and N-type semiconductors, they can easily be integrated into existing silicon manufacturing methods and controlled like a regular device. The process AMD has patented basically describes how to insert the TEC between memory and logic devices, where it draws heat from either logic or memory with each side being able to dissipate the heat. That effect is possible due to nature of TEC, where the direction of heat flow is changed inverting the voltage.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced KC2000, its next generation M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD for enterprise and power users. Kingston's KC2000 NVMe PCIe SSD delivers powerful performance using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 controller and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. Offering superior read and write speeds up to 3,200 and 2,200MB/s, respectively, KC2000 delivers outstanding performance and endurance, and improves workflow in desktop, workstations and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

KC2000 is a self-encrypting drive that supports end-to-end data protection using 256-bit AES Hardware-based encryption and allows the usage of independent software vendors with TCG Opal 2.0 security management solutions such as Symantec , McAfee , WinMagic and others. KC2000 also has built-in Microsoft eDrive support, a security storage specification for use with BitLocker.

The Vive Cosmos was not the only major announcement coming out of HTC's Vive business unit at CES this year. While that has massive mainstream appeal, the company was quick to let us know that it was still to early to comment further than what has already been covered in the aforelinked news post. Instead, they invited us to their suite to take a closer look at the Vive Pro Eye- one of the few things that really stood out for us at the trade show.

The Vive Pro Eye is, as the name would suggest, a new SKU with integrated eye tracking in the Vive Pro HMD. Working together with Tobii, the Vive Pro Eye allows for a more natural control mechanism within VR via eye controls, which in turn means a revamped menu navigation system is possible. This allows for increased accessibility to end users with disability, more optimization on VR performance, and detailed analysis of VR experiences for both the client and the businesses alike. Read past the break for a breakdown of our experience with the Vive Pro Eye, and the various demos on hand to showcase the feature.

Immersive 5.1.4 sound and deep bass that has to be heard to be believed: Sennheiser's new AMBEO Soundbar will be available from May. Created by the audio specialist to be one of the world's best soundbars, the AMBEO Soundbar places the listener inside the sound experience with incredible realism, delivering 3D sound that blurs the line between playback and reality from a single all-in-one device. Visitors to CES can experience the AMBEO Soundbar at the Sennheiser booth.

Sennheiser's soundbar has been developed under the audio specialist's AMBEO trademark. The AMBEO 3D audio technology program is dedicated to creating immersive audio solutions that deliver the ultimate in audio capture and reproduction to transform the way users experience content. Bringing this transformation to the living room, the AMBEO Soundbar is another milestone in the program. "We are thrilled to be introducing the AMBEO Soundbar as Sennheiser's first foray into the home entertainment speaker category. We have developed it with the ambition to create one of the best soundbars on the market - an elegant all-in-one solution for all those seeking an immersive 3D, audiophile-grade home entertainment experience," said Stephane Hareau, Global Head of Products - Consumer at Sennheiser.

Otoy, based in Los Angeles, announced a few months ago the launch of RNDR, a cloud rendering platform that is based on the same blockchain used on the Ethereum platform. The idea is simple: it leverages a distributed network of idle GPUs to render graphics more quickly and efficiently.

The solution takes advantage of the unused power of our GPUs, and allows those who need to render images at full speed to do so through this platform. RNDR distributes the revenue through its own blockchain in a decentralized fashion, and in a recent survey of 1,200 of its contributors Otoy said it has the world's largest cloud rendering platform. One that has even been praised by Hollywood director and producer J.J. Abrams, founder of Brave and Basic Attention Token Brendan Eich, and famed talent agent Ari Emanuel.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing its fifth-generation V-NAND memory chips with the fastest data transfers now available. In the industry's first use of the 'Toggle DDR 4.0' interface, the speed for transmitting data between storage and memory over Samsung's new 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND has reached 1.4-gigabits per second (Gbps), a 40-percent increase from its 64-layer predecessor.

The energy efficiency of Samsung's new V-NAND remains comparable to that of the 64-layer chip, primarily because the operating voltage has been reduced from 1.8 volts to 1.2 volts. The new V-NAND also has the fastest data write speed to date at 500-microseconds (μs), which represents about a 30-percent improvement over the write speed of the previous generation, while the response time to read-signals has been significantly reduced to 50μs.

Beijing Memblaze Technology Co., Ltd. newly released high-performance PBlaze5 910/916 and low-power 510/516 series NVMe SSD. They adopt the 64-layer enterprise-level 3D-NAND and support NVMe standard protocol with a user capacity up to 15.36TB.

The PBlaze5 910/916 series NVMe SSD features 6GB/s sequential read bandwidth, 1 million IOPS read performance and 89/11microsecond read/write latency. With the high performance shared by PBlaze series products, PBlaze5 910/916 series boasts advanced features like High-speed TRIM and Multiple-namespace, with higher QoS and more flexible.

Corsair today launched a new series of SSDs under their brand. The MP300 carry a more budget affiliation, offering a high-speed NVMe solution (which Corsair says is up to three times faster than SATA) for relatively low prices. Like other budget NVMe solutions, the Corsair MP300 runs on a PCIe 2x bus, instead of the higher performance 4x (which carries higher cost for the controllers, hence, the price savings).

With that bus, Corsair is quoting up to 1600 MB/s read speeds, and up to 1040 MB/s writes, which are still more than enough for mainstream workloads. The usage of 3D TLC NAND also helps in the cost savings, naturally - and doesn't carry the same performance and longevity issues as it may have had in its inception. Corsair is selling these drives at 120, 240, 480 and 960 GB capacities, at €59.99, €94.99, €154.99, and €314.99 respectively.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking and connectivity semiconductor solutions, today announced its latest NVM Express (NVMe ) solid-state drive (SSD) controller family for mainstream and high-performance PC client and edge computing SSDs. The Gen 3x4 PCIe SSD controllers, the 4-channel 88SS1084 and 8-channel 88SS1100, bring leading performance, endurance and reliability to the industry and will help broaden the adoption of NVMe SSDs across emerging client and edge computing applications. The controllers integrate Marvell's fourth generation of NANDEdge technology, offering the advanced error correction capabilities to address the increasing demands required to enable future SSD solutions with emerging 96-layer triple level-cell (TLC) and quad level-cell(QLC) NAND architectures.

As gaming, video-on-demand, CAD, imaging, photography and video surveillance proliferate and scale, NVMe SSDs can meet the increasing storage performance and capacity requirements that these end use applications seek. The new Marvell client NVMe SSD controller family can provide up to 3.6GB/s of bandwidth and up to 700,000 input output per second (IOPS). The 88SS1084 and 88SS1100 devices can save system power consumption by supporting lower voltage NAND devices and LPDDR4 DRAM components. These features enable PCs and edge computing devices to process and store increasingly data-intensive workloads more quickly and reliably.

Kingston's UV500 family of SSDs debuted last April with capacities ranging from 120 GB all the way up to 960 GB. However, Kingston has decided to add a 2 TB model to the existing lineup due to increasing demands for higher capacity drives. Like its siblings, the 2 TB model also employs the Marvell 88SS1074 controller and 3D TLC NAND. It will also carry the same features like support for 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption and TCG Opal 2.0. While the 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB models are available in 2.5-inch, M.2, and mSATA formats, the 2 TB model only comes in the 2.5-inch form factor. In terms of performance, the 2 TB variant delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 520 MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively. It also offers 4 KB random read performance up to 79,000 IOPS and 4 KB write performance up to 50,000 IOPS. Backed by a 5-year warranty, the UV500 2 TB SSD is priced at $695.50 according to Kingston's website.

In the business world, companies fail all the time, and startups are no exception either. Ossic is the latest startup to make the headlines after announcing over the weekend that the company is shutting its door. The audio startup had successfully raised $3.2 million through Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns to produce their high-end "3D sound" Ossic X headphones. The headphones, which costed between $199 to $299, incorporated special head-tracking technology to deliver surround sound in VR environments. Apparently, they were also capable of determining the shape of the user's ears and customize the sound profile to match the user.

Ossic had received over 22,000 pre-orders over the company's life. Unfortunately, the company only managed to produce 250 pairs of their Ossic X headphones and delivered around a dozen of them to Kickstarters. As the well has run dry, Ossic has no other alternative but to cease operations. Kickstarter backers are extremely angry - and with right as they will not receive their headphones or refunds. A Facebook group with over 2,500 members threaten to pursue a class action lawsuit against the company.