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.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Many companies, including Intel and AMD, have stopped product shipments to Russia amidst the war in Ukraine in the past few months. This has left the Russian state without any new processors from the two prominent x86 designers, thus slowing down the country's technological progress. To overcome this issue, it seems like the solution is embedded in the Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs. According to the latest report from Habr, a motherboard designer called Dannie is embedding Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs into motherboards to provide the motherland with an x86-capable processor. More precisely, the company had designed a BX-Z60A micro-ATX motherboard that embeds Zhaoxin's KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC with eight cores based on LuJiaZui microarchitecture. The SoC is clocked at a frequency range of 2.1-2.7 GHz, carries 4 MB of L2 cache, 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0, and has integrated graphics, all in a 25 Watt TDP.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, it supports two DDR4 memory slots, two PCIe x16 connectors, M.2-2280 and M.2-2230 slots, and three SATA III connectors for storage. For I/O you have USB ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA/D-Sub, GbE, 3.5-mm audio, and additional PS/2 ports. This is a pretty decent selection; however, we don't know the pricing structure. A motherboard with KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC like this is certainly not cheap, so we are left to wonder if this will help Russian users deal with the newly imposed restriction on importing US tech.

According to TrendForce research, looking at NAND Flash wafers, the pricing of which more sensitively reflects the market, suppliers are increasingly motivated to cut prices in exchange for sales due to weak retail demand since March and a more conservative outlook for shipments of other end products. The price of NAND Flash wafers is expected to begin falling in May and the supply of NAND Flash will gradually overtake demand in 2H22. The price decline of NAND Flash wafers in 3Q22 may reach 5~10%.

At the same time, TrendForce indicates that February's contamination incident at Kioxia was expected to tighten the market in 2Q22 and 3Q22. However, as a consequence of rising inflation and the war between Russia and Ukraine, market demand for consumer products in the traditional peak season of the second half of the year is trending conservative and the prices of client SSD, eMMC, and UFS in 3Q22 will be flat compared to 2Q22, breaking from the original expectation that prices may rise. In terms of enterprise SSDs, as demand for data centers remains strong, no significant correction in demand has yet been observed. However, as the overall NAND Flash market gradually moves into oversupply, prices will only grow slightly by approximately 0~5% in 3Q22.

Russia has been dealt yet another blow to its technological capabilities, as countries around the world engage in an economic war against the nation following its invasion of Ukraine back in February. The UK government has recently added two major chip-design Russian companies, Baikal Electronics and MCST (Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies) to its sanctioned entity list, meaning that these companies are no longer able to acquire ARM licensing for its homegrown chips. The move is just another in a series of coordinated (and uncoordinated) sanctions.

According to a note provided by the UK government, the aim of the sanctions is to curb Russia's access to devices that could support its war efforts in Ukraine while propping-up the country's degrading technological infrastructure. This effectively shuts the door for Russia to solicit manufacturing from foundries outside its own territory. And even if Russia elected to manufacture its ARM-based designs in-country, thus skirting sanction-respecting foundries, the country's chip manufacturing is currently thought to only be capable of manufacturing chips at a 90 nm process - which the Western world has moved on from since 2006 already.

According to TrendForce forecasts, average overall DRAM pricing in 2Q22 will drop by approximately 0~5%, due to marginally higher buyer and seller inventories coupled with the demand for products such as PCs, laptops, and smart phones being influenced in the short-term by the Russian-Ukrainian war and high inflation weakening consumer purchasing power. At present, the only remaining source of demand is on the server side, so overall DRAM stocks will remain oversupplied in 2Q22.

In terms of PC DRAM, PC OEMs are adopting a conservative stocking strategy for orders in 2Q22 due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which may continue affecting orders during peak season in 2H22, and revising 2022 shipment targets downwards. Additionally, the overall supply of bits is still growing, so the PC DRAM price slump in 2Q22 will further expand to 3~8% and may continue to deteriorate.

Following the international sanctions levied at the Russian state as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, AMD, Intel and NVIDIA announced they'd be pulling all of their products from the country. That decision has led to quickly dwindling stocks of high-performance computing products, including graphics cards - and as we've learned form the recent graphics card supply issues, prices go up as availability decreases. This, in turn, led some workers of Russian company "Wildberries" to attempt to exfiltrate 20 RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards from the warehouse they were being stored in. Due to skyrocketing prices in Russia, each of these cards was reportedly evaluated at around 200K roubles (~$1931). That unit price made the entire haul worth an estimated $38,620.

While stealing the graphics cards went without a hitch, actually flipping them for profit proved out to be fatal for the criminals. As they attempted to sell their loot at a pawnshop, the shop owner contacted the authorities - no doubt finding it suspicious for so many new (and rare) tech bits to be on the groups' hands. It's reported that the criminals were ultimately arrested, and the graphics cards confiscated and returned to their rightful owners. As access to significant western technology becomes more and more limited in sanctioned Russia, it's likely we'll be seeing further reports such as this.

In light of the Russian military invasion in our neighboring country of Ukraine, until further notice the CD PROJEKT Group has made the decision to halt all sales of our games to Russia and Belarus. Today, we begin working with our partners to suspend digital sales and cease physical stock deliveries of CD PROJEKT Group products, as well as all games distributed on the GOG platform, to the territories of Russia and Belarus.

The entire CD PROJEKT Group stands firm with the people of Ukraine. While we are not a political entity capable of directly influencing state matters, and don't aspire to be one, we do believe that commercial entities, when united, have the power to inspire global change in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. We know that players in Russia and Belarus, individuals who have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine, will be impacted by this decision, but with this action we wish to further galvanize the global community to speak about what is going on in the heart of Europe.

To our brothers and sisters fighting for their home country — stay strong!

Unless you have been living under a rock, chances are you are following the news about the Russia-Ukraine war disputes. Not to get too political, we are here to report about your favorite rivals—AMD and Intel—officially stopping the delivery of processors to Russia and Belarus. Firstly, an AMD representative told PCWorld that "Based on sanctions placed on Russia by the United States and other nations, at this time AMD is suspending its sales and distribution of our products into Russia and Belarus. It is all AMD products and products we power (PCs, etc) in Russia and Belarus." Additionally, Intel posted an official quote, which you can find below.

IntelIntel condemns the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and we have suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by this war, including the people of Ukraine and the surrounding countries and all those around the world with family, friends and loved ones in the region.

"We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, especially those with close ties to this region. We have launched an employee donation and matching campaign through the Intel Foundation that has already raised over $1.2 million for relief efforts, and we are proud of the work our teams in surrounding areas including Poland, Germany and Romania are doing to aid refugees. We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine and the global community in calling for an immediate end to this war and a swift return to peace.

Last week, NVIDIA systems were compromised by the attack of a hacking group called LAPSUS$. It has been a few days since the attack happened, and we managed to see source code of various software leaks through third-party anonymous tipsters and next-generation GPU codenames making an appearance. Today, NVIDIA issues a statement for the German PC enthusiast website Hardwareluxx, and we manage to see it below fully. The key takeaway from this quote is that NVIDIA believes that the compromised files will not impact the company's business in any meaningful manner, and operations continue as usual for NVIDIA's customers. The company's security team is analyzing the situation, and you can check out the complete statement below.

NVIDIA StatementOn February 23, 2022, NVIDIA became aware of a cybersecurity incident which impacted IT resources. Shortly after discovering the incident, we further hardened our network, engaged cybersecurity incident response experts, and notified law enforcement.

We have no evidence of ransomware being deployed on the NVIDIA environment or that this is related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, we are aware that the threat actor took employee credentials and some NVIDIA proprietary information from our systems and has begun leaking it online. Our team is working to analyze that information. We do not anticipate any disruption to our business or our ability to serve our customers as a result of the incident.

Security is a continuous process that we take very seriously at NVIDIA - and we invest in the protection and quality of our code and products daily.

Much of the globalized world's logistics is still in disarray from the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, Russia has thrown its weight on the matter through its invasion of Ukraine. As the initial offensive played out in the early hours of February 24th, semiconductor industry analysts turned to the situation with a prying eye - how exactly could this deadlock, and the following political and economical sanctions towards Russia, impact the semiconductor industry? The consensus seems to be a favorable one: not that much.

"The semiconductor industry has a diverse set of suppliers of key materials and gases, so we do not believe there are immediate supply disruption risks related to Russia and Ukraine," said John Neuffer, chief executive and president of the Semiconductor Industry Association. That sentiment was echoed by Intel; a company representative told Bloomberg that the company does not anticipate "(...) any impact on our supply chain. Our strategy of having a diverse, global supply chain minimizes our risk of potential local interruptions."

Intel Corporation today announced that Christoph Schell has been appointed executive vice president and chief commercial officer to lead the Sales, Marketing and Communications Group (SMG), starting March 14. Schell will succeed Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who will take on a new role as general manager of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG).

"Christoph has an exceptional track record of driving innovative and disruptive go-to-market strategies around the globe. He brings expertise in understanding business segments, verticals and the solutions and services customers want," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "We are harnessing our core strengths as an advantage to grow in our traditional markets and accelerate our entry into new ones. I'm confident Christoph is the right leader to take on this critical role and guide the talented SMG organization to achieve our growing ambitions."

Schell joins Intel from HP Inc., where he was most recently chief commercial officer. With his go-to-market team, he led customer and partner success, category management and customer support globally. During his 25 years with the company, Schell held various senior management roles across the globe, including president of 3D Printing & Digital Manufacturing. Prior to rejoining HP in 2014, Schell served as executive vice president of Growth Markets for Philips, where he led the lighting business across Asia Pacific, Japan, Africa, Russia, India, Central Asia and the Middle East. He started his career in his family's distribution and industrial solutions company and worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble.

In recent years, government institutions have been funding the development of home-grown hardware that will power the government infrastructure. This trend was born out of a desire to design chips with no back doors implemented so that no foreign body could monitor the government's processes. Today, Russian company Baikal Electronics managed to boot up the Baikal-S processor with 48 cores based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). The processor codenamed BE-S1000 manages to operate 48 cores at a 2.0 GHz base frequency, with a maximum boost of 2.5 GHz clock speed. All of that is achieved at the TDP of 120 Watts, making this design very efficient.

When it comes to some server configurations, the Baikal-S processor run in up to four sockets in a server board. It offers a home-grown RISC-V processor for safe boot and management, so the entire SoC is controlled by a custom design. Baikal Electronics provided some benchmark numbers, which you can see in the slides below. They cover SPEC2006 CPU Integer, Coremark, Whetstone, 7Zip, and HPLinkpack performance. Additionally, the company claims that Baikal-S is in line with Intel Xeon Gold 6148 Skylake design and AMD EPYC 7351 CPU based on Zen1 core. Compared to Huawei's Kunpeng 920, the Baikal-S design provides 0.86x performance.

NVIDIA was originally planning to release the RTX 3080 Ti with 20 GB of memory however this was changed shortly before the official announcement to 12 GB. This plan came very close to fruition with NVIDIA manufacturing and distributing these GPU's to board partners including Gigabyte, some of these completed cards have now been sold in limited quantities. The Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB Gaming OC was purchased by a Russian YouTuber who tested the card's cryptocurrency mining performance and uploaded the BIOS to our GPU database.

The RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB lacks official NVIDIA Game Ready drivers with Gigabyte Russia denying the existence of the model making cryptocurrency mining the only viable use for the product. The card doesn't feature the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) algorithm NVIDIA has been including on all their new cards including the RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB giving it excellent performance in Ethereum mining. The retailer had pre-configured the card with a 100 MHz boost clock increase and a 1000 MHz boost to the memory speed along with a TDP limiter of 80%.

Perhaps the most controversial system requirement of the upcoming Windows 11 operating system is the need for a hardware trusted platform module that meets TPM 2.0 specs. Most modern computers fulfill this requirement using fTPM (firmware TPM) solutions built into their processors; and those that don't, have TPM headers for add-on TPMs, which scalpers have their eye on. It turns out, that Microsoft is designing special variants of Windows 11 for special contracts Microsoft will execute.

Computers sold under the scheme will be marked "special purpose systems," and the Windows 11 version running them will do away with the TPM 2.0 requirement. These systems are very likely to be Government or Military; or perhaps even variants Microsoft exports to countries like China and Russia, which have their own specialized cybersecurity policies and dictate software to be written a certain way to be sold in the country.

When governments need a hardware upgrade, they will usually take the route of exploring options with security in mind. However, if you happen to have some engineering talent to employ on a new project, why wouldn't you just build a custom motherboard for your own purposes. Today, GS Group Holding and Philax, have announced that they are starting the manufacturing of Russia's first motherboard based on a B450 chipset from AMD. Looking at the motherboard, which you can see below, you might find it very similar to those of ASRock. And that is because Philax has a licensing agreement with ASRock to use the design of the B450M Pro4 motherboard, with the addition of a TPM module which is often used by government agencies, to produce this board.

Producing around 40,000 pieces, these motherboards are expected to handle anything from 4000 series to 5000 series of AMD processors. As far as the specifications go, the board is coming in a standard Micro-ATX form factor. It is equipped with four DDR4 memory slots that can take a memory with up to 3200 MHz speed. There are two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, which are of course limited by CPU choice. The motherboard enables four SATA III and two M.2 ports for storage expansion. When it comes to I/O, the board features HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D, four USB 3.1 Gen1, two USB 2.0, one USB Type-C, and one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port. GS Group Holding and Philax also have a partnership that goes beyond just motherboards. They also plan to produce about 50,000 custom monitors for government purposes as well.

FSP, one of the world's leading power supply manufacturers, is pleased to announce a newly signed contract with FPS (FSP Power Solutions Gmbh) to market and distribute a range of FSP products across Russia & Ukraine. FPS will officially become the only business partner across Russia & Ukraine for FSP's products. The new agreement will create a solid foundation in Russia & Ukraine and cover product information, warranty, product enquiries, and contact information of the new partner.

FPS and ELKO Group will establish a strategic partnership for the region and have already successfully launched into key markets with the following: Region New Exclusive PSU for Desktop PC - FSP PNR PRO, Retail PSU for Gamers, and Desktop PC Cases & UPS. FPS recognizes a huge potential in the market and plans to implement an aggressive marketing strategy which allows it to reinforce sales in the region.

In a clear sign of Intel's 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors being prepared to support the company's 400-series chipsets, including the entry-level H410, the Russian language manual of the company's Infinite 915 pre-built compact gaming desktop that uses an Intel H410 chipset motherboard. The manual references support for the 65 W TDP versions of "CML-S" (10th Gen "Comet Lake-S") and "RKL-S" (11th Gen "Rocket Lake-S") processors in the manual. Besides increased IPC (single-threaded performance) riding on the new "Cypress Cove" CPU cores that are a backport of "Willow Cove" to the 14 nm process, "Rocket Lake-S" features an updated Gen12 Xe iGPU.

Microsoft today announced it was part of a global operation meant to disrupt the world's largest online criminal network. Dubbed Necurs, the network functioned as a botnet - a number of computers infected by malware or otherwise malicious software that are functioning on behalf of a botmaster. The botmaster is basically akin to an administrator - but for nefarious purposes.

Thought to be controlled by criminals based in Russia, Necurs spanned more than nine million computing devices across 35 countries, making it one of the largest spam email threat ecosystems known to authorities - besides being used for pump-and-dump stock scams, fake pharmaceutical spam email and "Russian dating" scams. Necurs was such a well-oiled machine that it was seen sending 3.8 million spam messages to over 40 million targets across a 58-day long time frame in the investigation.

Yesterday, Bloomberg ran a story entitled "Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working With Russian Intelligence", in which the editors said that "Emails show the security-software maker developed products for the FSB and accompanied agents on raids." Eugene Kaspersky, Kaspersky CEO, naturally responded by saying that claims about Kaspersky Lab's ties to the Kremlin are "unfounded conspiracy theories" and "total BS." Bloomberg Businessweek even goes so far as to say that Kaspersky Lab has "maintained a much closer working relationship with Russia's main intelligence agency, the FSB, than it has publicly admitted. It has developed security technology at the spy agency's behest and worked on joint projects the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public."

In the same article, Bloomberg's editors go on to say that "The U.S. government hasn't identified any evidence connecting Kaspersky Lab to Russia's spy agencies (...) In June, FBI agents visited a number of the company's U.S. employees at their homes, asking to whom they reported and how much guidance they received from Kaspersky's Moscow headquarters. And a bill was introduced in Congress that would ban the U.S. military from using any Kaspersky products (...)", with one senator calling ties between the company and the Kremlin "very alarming."