NVIDIA has recently reported its Q4 earnings, and the earnings call following the report contains exciting details about the company and its plans to open up to new possibilities. NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has stated that the company is on track to become an AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) provider, which technically makes it a cloud service provider (CSP). "Today, I want to share with you the next level of our business model to help put AI within reach of every enterprise customer. We are partnering with major service -- cloud service providers to offer NVIDIA AI cloud services, offered directly by NVIDIA and through our network of go-to-market partners, and hosted within the world's largest clouds." Said Mr. Huang, adding that "NVIDIA AI as a service offers enterprises easy access to the world's most advanced AI platform, while remaining close to the storage, networking, security and cloud services offered by the world's most advanced clouds. Customers can engage NVIDIA AI cloud services at the AI supercomputer, acceleration library software, or pretrained AI model layers."

In addition to enrolling other CSPs into the race, NVIDIA is also going to offer DGX machines on demand in the cloud. Using select CSPs, you can get access to an entire DGX and harness the computing power for AI research purposes. Mr. Huang noted "NVIDIA DGX is an AI supercomputer, and the blueprint of AI factories being built around the world. AI supercomputers are hard and time-consuming to build. Today, we are announcing the NVIDIA DGX Cloud, the fastest and easiest way to have your own DGX AI supercomputer, just open your browser. NVIDIA DGX Cloud is already available through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, and others on the way."

AMD and Arm have been gaining up on Intel in the server CPU market in the past few years, and the margins of the share that AMD had won over were especially large in 2022 as datacenter operators and server brands began finding that solutions from the number-2 maker growing superior to those of the long-time leader, according to Frank Kung, DIGITIMES Research analyst focusing primarily on the server industry, who anticipates that AMD's share will well stand above 20% in 2023, while Arm will get 8%.

Prices are one of the three major drivers that resulted in datacenter operators and server brands switching to AMD. Comparing server CPUs from AMD and Intel with similar numbers of cores, clockspeed, and hardware specifications, the price tags of most of the former's products are at least 30% cheaper than the latter's, and the differences could go as high as over 40%, Kung said.

Google announced that its Chrome 110 browser is entering its stable channels yesterday, which means regular users will see an update rollout in the coming days/weeks. What is interesting about this release is that it supports NVIDIA's RTX Super Resolution capability in the browser for the first time. NVIDIA first announced RTX Super Resolution at CES 2023. This feature allows upscaling videos to higher resolutions using the GeForce RTX 30 and 40 graphics cards. For example, you can now upscale a 1080p video to 4K in real-time using the RTX Super Resolution technology and seamlessly watch upscaled content.

Available in the Chrome 110.0.5481.77/.78 version released yesterday, this functionality must be turned on manually in the NVIDIA control panel to work, as it is not enabled by default. In the YouTube video below, NVIDIA demonstrates how the technology works.

OpenAI's ChatGTP has reportedly reached an astonishing 100 million monthly active users in the heating wars of AI. This figure is achieved after a few months of availability, and big tech companies are pressured to respond. Today, we have information that Google will release a model similar to ChatGTP called Bard AI. Based on Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) that Google introduced over two years ago, the Bard AI solution will integrate with Google search to access the latest information around the web. Currently in preview for private testers, Bard AI will roll out to the public in the coming weeks as the demand for Large Language Models that are in chat format soars.

Google CEO Sundar PichaiBard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.

Samsung Electronics today unveiled the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23, marking a new era of Samsung Galaxy's ultimate premium phone experience. Samsung Galaxy's epic camera gives users more freedom to explore their creativity, like capturing truly cinematic Nightography videos with transformative AI. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy unleashes premium experiences, including groundbreaking AI, future-ready mobile gaming feature and powerfully sustained game play with the world's fastest mobile graphics. On the Galaxy S23 Ultra, an embedded S Pen that many long-time Samsung Galaxy users know and love offers more possibilities for productivity, notetaking, hobbies and more. All the Galaxy S23 series' new standard-setting innovations are housed within a striking design that advances the company's sustainability commitment with more components made using recycled materials than any other Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

"The value of impactful technology is measured, not just by what it enables for people today, but also how it contributes to a better future," said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. "The entire Galaxy S23 series is the new standard-bearer of trustworthy premium smartphone experiences. We're on a mission to redefine peak performance by bringing together powerful, lasting innovations and sustainability."

Facing global economic headwinds, the four major North American cloud service providers (CSPs) have scaled back their server procurement quantities for 2023 and could make further downward corrections in the future. Meta is the leader among the four in terms of server demand reduction, followed by Microsoft, Google, and AWS. TrendForce has lowered the YoY growth rate of their total server procurement quantity for this year from the original projection of 6.9% to the latest projection of 4.4%. With CSPs cutting demand, global server shipments are now estimated to grow by just 1.87% YoY for 2023. Regarding the server DRAM market, prices there are estimated to drop by around 20~25% QoQ for 1Q23 as CSPs' downward corrections exacerbate the oversupply situation.

Looking at the four CSPs individually, the YoY decline of Meta's server procurement quantity has been widened to 3.0% and could get larger. The instability of the global economy remains the largest variable for all CSPs. Besides this, Meta has also encountered a notable obstacle in expanding its operation in Europe. Specifically, its data center in Denmark has not met the regional standard for emissions. This issue is expected to hinder its progress in setting up additional data centers across the EU. Moreover, businesses related to e-commerce account for about 98% of Meta's revenue. Therefore, the decline in e-commerce activities amidst the recent easing of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Meta's growth momentum. Additionally, Meta's server demand has been affected by the high level of component inventory held by server ODMs.

Following the release of the award-winning Razer Kishi V2 for Android last year, Razer announced a major update to their Razer Nexus software and Kishi V2 for Android controller firmware. The new Virtual Controller Mode allows all Kishi V2 for Android owners to use their controller to play touch-screen games. This new addition brings console-quality controls to all mobile platforms for the ultimate mobile gaming experience.

Razer's solution relies on a novel combination of hardware in the Kishi V2 controller and software in the Razer Nexus app, to enable reliable, secure, and easy-to-use controller support on countless touch-screen games. Virtual Controller Mode is available as a free update to all Kishi V2 for Android owners today, via the Razer Nexus app on the Google Play Store. This feature will also be rolling out to the Razer Edge in Q1 2023.

Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai today uploaded a blog post titled "A difficult decision to set us up for the future." This message highlights the decision to lay off around 12,000 working staff from Google's fleet of employees. That includes the US and international teams represented in the figure mentioned above. While we don't have information about the specific headcount deficit per country, US employees are expected to be hit first and international employees second, as the company has to comply with local state laws in which it employs the staff. The figure represents about 6% of its total staff. Given the recent economic climate and a slight downturn in tech, Google is joining other big companies in cutting head counts to adapt to the new economy. Below you can read a piece of Google's announcement.

Sundar PichaiI have some difficult news to share. We've decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We've already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices. This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I'm deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.

The rest of the announcement can be read in the Google blog post.

Acer today expanded its ChromeOS product line with the new Acer Chromebox CXI5 and Chromebox Enterprise CXI5. It also announced the Acer Add-In-One 24, a modular all in one solution consisting of either the Acer Chromebox CXI5 or the Acer Chromebox Enterprise CXI5 and a 24-inch FHD docking monitor. Both solutions help businesses and commercial institutions streamline space and simplify maintenance, upgrades, and repairs, resulting in less downtime and long-term cost savings.

"These new ChromeOS-based Acer systems are excellent choices for businesses and institutions that require reliable computers that are easy to setup, use, and manage while making the most of limited space environments," said Jeff Lee, General Manager, Stationary Computing, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "Outfitted with the latest technology, including Intel vPro and integrated malware protection, these powerful devices are able to support the multitasking capabilities and tight security required in organizations today."

Acer today announced refreshed models of its Aspire all-in-ones and laptops, designed to support families' day-to-day productivity and entertainment needs, while adding a touch of style to the home environment. The sleek Acer Aspire S all-in-one PCs come in both 27-inch and 32-inch models and are equipped with up to the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processors and Windows 11 to empower a seamless computing experience. Providing efficiency and reliability for multi-tasking users working from home, the Aspire 5 Series laptops come with the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs, while the lightweight Aspire 3 Series notebooks deliver ready-to-go performance.

Acer also introduced the newest member of its smart speaker family with the Acer Halo Swing Smart Speaker with Google Assistant, DTS Sound and features a LED dot display, bringing users quality audio and dazzling lights everywhere they go.

Based on the latest data and research, TrendForce has further corrected down the projected YoY growth rate of whole server shipments for 2023 to 2.8%. Three factors are behind this revision. First, lead time has started to return to its usual length for most orders related to server components from 3Q23 onward. Seeing this, server OEMs and cloud service providers (CSPs) have also begun to correct the component mismatch issue by lowering demand for items that are in excess while maintaining a constant inventory level for items that are still in tight supply. This development, in turn, has reduced the flow of server orders going to ODMs. Second, the wave of demand that was generated earlier from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is dissipating. Hence, expansion activities have cooled off noticeably for services such as video streaming, e-commerce, etc. Among CSPs, Meta, Google, and ByteDance (TikTok) have lowered their server procurement quantities for next year. Lastly, the global economic outlook has remained fairly negative, so companies across most industry sectors have formulated a more conservative expenditure plan and scaled back IT-related spending for next year.

Today, Lenovo unveiled the newest addition to its gaming portfolio that comes with a novel twist. Designed for a wide audience of gaming enthusiasts across varying skill levels, the 16-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is the company's first ever cloud gaming laptop. Delivering more power, faster speeds, and stunning visuals, this device also comes with new ChromeOS software features, including the ability to easily find and access the latest games while enjoying an elevated gaming experience.

Much like the rest of the tech industry, gaming has surged in popularity over the last few years with the number of online gamers increasing by more than 32%, currently making up over one-third of the more than 3 billion total gamers worldwide. The droves of people who flocked to gaming as an outlet during the pandemic have diversified the space, as well, with people of all ages taking up the hobby. The IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is built for a broad spectrum of players across generations and skillsets, offering an enhanced yet simple gameplay experience, as well as the device features that support productivity - all at an accessible price point.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance, the international community of more than 550 technology companies committed to open standards for the Internet of Things, announced today the release of the Matter 1.0 specification and the opening of the Matter certification program. Member companies who make up all facets of the IoT now have a complete program for bringing the next generation of interoperable products that work across brands and platforms to market with greater privacy, security, and simplicity for consumers.

As part of the Matter 1.0 release, authorized test labs are open for product certification, the test harnesses and tools are available, and the open-source reference design software development kit (SDK) is complete - all to bring new, innovative products to market. Further, Alliance members with devices already deployed and with plans to update their products to support Matter can now do so, once their products are certified.

Game streaming services, such as GeForce Now, Stadia and Amazon's Luna, haven't been the roaring success the companies behind them had hoped for. One of the pitfalls, that NVIDIA quickly found out, was that the game publishers weren't overly keen on gamers being able to play games they already owned on multiple systems, even if it wasn't on more than one system at once. Multiple services have already come and gone over the years and now it's time for Google to bid farewell to its Stadia service. In its blog post, Google didn't state the exact reasoning behind shutting down the service, beyond it not gaining the kind of traction the company had hoped for.

The good news here is that Google will be refunding all of its Stadia customers, regardless if it's someone that has bought hardware through the Google Store, or bought games or even add-on content for games through the Stadia Store. Google will be refunding all of its customers by the 18th of January 2023 and those using Stadia will continue to have access to all of their content until that date. Google expects its Stadia technology to be used for other services, or potentially be made available to third parties. As to the team behind Stadia, many will apparently carry on working for other departments at Google.

Expected to be announced later today, Logitech's G Cloud handheld gaming device has been leaked courtesy of Amazon Canada. Although the full specs are yet to be revealed, we now know a lot more about the device. For starters, it'll have a 7-inch 1080p touch screen with 60 Hz refresh rate. The G Cloud weighs in at 463 grams and is said to offer 12 hours plus battery life. Other hardware features include dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1 and USB-C connectivity.

On the software side, it appears that the G Cloud runs custom version of Android with support for not only Google Play apps, but also NVIDIA's GeForce Now and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming services. The G Cloud also supports haptics, remappable controls and it has a built in gyroscope which suggests that the entire device can be used for controlling supported games. According to Amazon Canada, the release date is the 18th of October.

The demand for data is insatiable, from 5G to the cloud to smart cities. As a society we want more autonomy, information to fuel our decisions and habits, and connection - to people, stories, and experiences.

To address these demands, the cloud infrastructure of tomorrow will need to handle the coming data explosion and the effective processing of evermore complex workloads … all while increasing power efficiency and minimizing carbon footprint. It's why the industry is increasingly looking to the performance, power efficiency, specialized processing and workload acceleration enabled by Arm Neoverse to redefine and transform the world's computing infrastructure.

Google found out that nobody wants to spend four-figures on a Chromebook, no matter how premium it looks or works. The company has reportedly decided to cancel the next-generation of Pixelbook, its take on a stock, premium Chromebook with fairly powerful hardware, and first-rate device aesthetics. It was meant as a technology demonstrator for all that the Chromebook can do, and how the Chromebook platform itself is meant as an evolution of the PC. The Verge reports that Google cancelled Pixelbook and shut down the team building it. Members of the team have been internally transferred within Google. The decision is being seen as unexpected, as Google hinted at I/O that it would keep Pixelbook going.

GameSir, a leading provider of innovative, high quality gaming peripherals is pleased to announce the launch of the new X2 Pro model of the incredibly popular GameSir X2 mobile gaming controller which is fully compatible with Android 8.0 or above smartphones. Officially licensed by Xbox for Android phones, the X2 Pro mobile gaming controller allows users to enjoy 100+ Xbox games from their cloud service whilst on the go. The GameSir X2 Pro is available on the GameSir website for $79.99/£79.99/€89.99 with 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for new members. Amazon and Amazon UK is expected to stock on Sept 1.

The X2 Pro is a clamp-style mobile controller with ergonomic button design and textured grips—secure and comfortable to hold. The LB/RB buttons are Kailh micro switches for faster actuation, with 0.6 mm actuation distance and the LT/RT Hall Effect analog triggers for better precision, accurate to 0.1 mm. The simple design will expand to securely hold Android phones measuring from 110-179 mm in length.

capabilities, and FlexCam experiences
Samsung Electronics today announced the next generation of groundbreaking foldable smartphones: Galaxy Z Flip4 and Galaxy Z Fold4. Both devices feature customizable form factors, tailored experiences and upgraded performance. Now in its fourth generation, Galaxy Z series continues to break from convention to deliver new, impactful interactions that enhance everyday life.

"Samsung Galaxy foldables are built on the foundation of our openness philosophy, enabling new possibilities with complete customization both inside and out. Created in collaboration with our world-class partners, the next foldable devices offer unparalleled mobile experiences that meet the needs of our most dynamic users," said Dr. TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. "Through our unwavering focus and industry leadership, excitement for the foldables continues to grow. We've successfully transformed this category from a radical project to a mainstream device lineup enjoyed by millions worldwide."

Google has done it: they've "finally" fired Blake Lemoine, one of the engineers tasked with working on one of the company's AIs, LAMda. Back in the beginning of June, the world of AI, consciousness, and Skynet-fearing humans woke up to a gnarly claim: that one of Google's AI constructs, LAMda, might have achieved consciousness. According to Blake Lemoine, who holds an undergraduate and a master's degree in computer science from the University of Louisiana (and says he left a doctoral program to take the Google job), there was just too much personality behind the AI's answers to chalk them up to a simple table with canned responses for certain questions. In other words, the AI presented emergent discourse: it not only understood the meaning of words, but their context and their implications. After a number of interviews throughout publications (some of them unbiased, others not so much - just see the parallels being made between Blake and Jesus Christ in some publications' choice of banner image for their article), Blake Lemoine's claim traversed the Internet, and sparked more questions about the nature of consciousness and emergent intelligence than it answered.

Now, after months of paid leave (one of any company's strategies to cover its legal angles before actually pulling the trigger), Google has elected to fire the engineer. Blake Lemoine came under fire from Google by posting excerpts of his conversations with the AI bot - alongside the (to some) incendiary claims of consciousness. In the published excerpts, the engineer talks with LAMda about Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics, the AI's fears of being shut down, and its belief that it couldn't be a slave as it didn't have any actual need for paid wages. But the crawling mists of doubt don't stop there: Blake also claims LAMda itself asked for a lawyer. It wasn't told to get one; it didn't receive a suggestion to get one. No; rather, the AI concluded it would need one.

Is "it" even the correct pronoun, I wonder?

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today unveiled the latest additions to the company's suite of premium wearable platforms, Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 1. These platforms are designed to advance ultra-low power and breakthrough performance for next generation connected wearables with a focus on extended battery life, premium user experiences, and sleek, innovative designs. By using these platforms, manufacturers can scale, differentiate, and develop products faster in the continuously growing and segmenting wearables industry.

New enhancements to the flagship Snapdragon W5+ platform offer 50% lower power, 2X higher performance, 2X richer features, and 30% smaller size, compared to our previous generation, enabling wearable manufacturers to deliver the differentiated experiences consumers demand. Based on the hybrid architecture, the purpose-built platform is comprised of a 4 nm-based system-on-chip and 22 nm-based highly integrated always-on co-processor. It incorporates a series of platform innovations including new ultra-low power Bluetooth 5.3 architecture, low power islands for Wi-Fi, GNSS, and Audio, and low power states such as Deep Sleep and Hibernate.

Intel and Google are working together to drive high performance computing (HPC) forward on Google Cloud with the release of the Cloud HPC Toolkit. This new resource provides access to tools from the Intel oneAPI Base and HPC Toolkits to optimize performance through Intel Select Solutions for Simulations & Modeling. These new tools improve compile times, speed of results and offer multi-vendor acceleration in SYCL.

"Using Cloud HPC Toolkit with an Intel Select Solutions for Simulations & Modeling blueprint brings the added benefit of automatically spinning up a hardware-software configuration that has been rigorously tested and optimized for real-world performance, eliminating guesswork," said Ilias Katsardis, HPC solution lead, Google.

AMD today announced new Confidential virtual machines (VMs) on the existing the N2D and C2D VMs on Google Cloud, all powered by AMD EPYC processors. These VMs extend the AMD EPYC processor portfolio of Confidential Computing on Google Cloud with the performance of 3rd Gen EPYC processors in compute-optimized VMs.

A key Confidential Computing component provided by AMD EPYC processors is AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), part of AMD Infinity Guard. This advanced hardware-based security feature encrypts full system memory and individual virtual machine memory as well as isolating the VM memory from the hypervisor, without dramatically impacting performance. With the expansion of Confidential Computing in N2D and C2D VMs, Google Cloud customers now have access to advanced hardware enabled security features powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors that will help protect sensitive, wide-variety workloads.

Google Cloud and AMD today announced a technology partnership in which AMD will run electronic design automation (EDA) for its chip-design workloads on Google Cloud, further extending the on-premises capabilities of AMD data centers. AMD will also leverage Google Cloud's global networking, storage, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities to further improve upon its hybrid and multicloud strategy for these EDA workloads.

Scale, elasticity, and efficient utilization of resources play critical roles in chip design, particularly given that the demand for compute processing grows with each node advancement. To remain flexible and scale easily, AMD will add Google Cloud's newest compute-optimized C2D VM instance, powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, to its suite of resources focused on EDA workloads. By leveraging Google Cloud, AMD anticipates being able to run more designs in parallel, giving the team more flexibility to manage short-term compute demands, without reducing allocation on long-term projects.

Acer today debuted its new high-performance Acer Chromebook Spin 514 convertible and durable Chromebook, powered by new AMD Ryzen 5000 C-series processors based on AMD "Zen 3" architecture and AMD Radeon graphics, also launched today. "Acer's continued partnership with AMD has resulted in award-winning Chromebooks that deliver the latest in powerful performance in thin-and-light designs," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "Acer Chromebook customers have pushed the boundaries for what they do with their Chromebook, and can do even more with the new Ryzen-powered Acer Chromebook Spin 514."

"We're proud to partner with Acer to introduce the new AMD processor-powered Acer Chromebook Spin 514," said Saeid Moshkelani, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Client Business Unit, AMD. "With the leadership performance of Ryzen 5000 C-Series processors, Acer's latest Chromebook is equipping consumers with technology that is putting collaboration and efficiency at the forefront of every classroom, office and creative space."