During the 69th annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Intel demonstrated some of its latest transistor design and manufacturing advancements. The first one in line is the 3D integration of transistors. According to Intel, the company has successfully stacked complementary field effect transistors (CFET) at a scaled gate pitch down to 60 nm. With CFETs promising thinner gate channels, the 3D stacked CFET would allow for higher density by going vertically and horizontally. Intel's 7 node has a 54 nm gate pitch, meaning CFETs are already close to matching production-ready nodes. With more time and development, we expect to see 3D stacked CFETs in the production runs in the coming years.

Next, Intel has demonstrated RibbonFET technology, a novel approach that is the first new transistor architecture since the introduction of FinFET in 2012. Using ribbon-shaped channels surrounded by the gate, these transistors allow for better control and higher drive current at all voltage levels. This allows faster transistor switching speeds, which later lead to higher frequency and performance. The width of these nanoribbon channels can be modulated depending on the application, where low-power mobile applications use less current, making the channels thinner, and high-performance applications require more current, making the channels wider. One stack of nanoribbons can achieve the same drive current as multiple fins found in FinFET but at a smaller footprint.

According to the latest Canalys forecasts, worldwide PC shipments are on the verge of recovery following seven consecutive quarters of decline. The market is expected to return to growth of 5% in Q4 2023, boosted by a strong holiday season and an improving macroeconomic environment. Looking ahead, full-year 2024 shipments are forecast to hit 267 million units, landing 8% higher than in 2023, helped by tailwinds including the Windows refresh cycle and emergence of AI-capable and Arm-based devices.

"The global PC market is on a recovery path and set to return to 2019 shipment levels by next year," said Canalys Analyst Ben Yeh. "The impact of AI on the PC industry will be profound, with leading players across OEMs, processor manufacturers, and operating system providers focused on delivering new AI-capable models in 2024. These initiatives will bolster refresh demand, particularly in the commercial sector. The total shipment share of AI-capable PCs is expected to be about 19% in 2024. This accounts for all M-series Mac products alongside the nascent offerings expected in the Windows ecosystem. However, as more compelling use-cases emerge and AI functionality becomes an expected feature, Canalys anticipates a fast ramp up in the development and adoption of AI-capable PCs."

The Chinese chipmaker Loongson has launched its newest desktop processors, the 4-core, 8-thread 3A6000 series, based on the company's LoongArch microarchitecture. We have previously reported that the company wants to match Intel's "Willow Cove" and AMD's Zen 3 instruction per clock (IPC) levels with its 3A6000 CPU series, and today we have the first preview of the performance. Powered by the LA664 cores, 3A6000 is built on a 14/12 nm manufacturing process, with clock speeds going from 2.0 to 2.5 GHz and power consumption of up to 50 Watts. It features 256 KB of L2 cache and 16 MB of L3 cache in total.

While several hardware partners are announcing new Loongson-powered solutions, ASUS China's "Uncle Tony" managed to get his hands on one of them and overclocker the CPU to 2.63 GHz on air cooling. In overclocking tests using liquid nitrogen cooling, a 3A6000 processor reached 3.0 GHz, though there are indications that there is still overhead. In standard out-of-the-box configuration, the 3A6000 performs similarly to Intel's Core i3-10100 four-core CPU, an achievement for Loongson but still behind Intel's latest offerings that clock nearly twice as high. This rapid development of Loongson IP has led to a massive performance increase, matching the IPC of modern CPUs. We are still left to see more information about these 3A6000 series SKUs; however, early benchmarks suggest a significant improvement. You can see the CPU benchmarks below, which include UnixBench and SPEC CPU 2006.

Rapidus Corporation, a company involved in the research, development, design, manufacture, and sales of advanced logic semiconductors, today announced an agreement with Tenstorrent Inc., a next-generation computing company building computers for AI, to jointly develop semiconductor IP (design assets) in the field of AI edge devices based on 2 nm logic semiconductors.

In addition to its AI processors and servers, Tenstorrent built and owns the world's most performant RISC-V CPU IP and licenses that technology to its customers around the world. Through this technological partnership with Rapidus, Tenstorrent will accelerate the development of cutting-edge devices to meet the needs of the ever-evolving digital society.

Alibaba's T-Head unit, responsible for the design and development of in-house IC design, has announced the first domestic SSD controller based on the PCIe 5.0 specification standard. Called the Zhenyue 510, the SSD controller is aimed at enterprise SSD offerings. Interestingly, the Zhenyue 510 is powered by T-Head's custom Xuantie C910 cores based on RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Supporting the PCIe 5.0 standard for interfacing, the SSD controller uses DDR5 memory as a cache buffer. Regarding the performance, there are no official figures yet, but the company claims to have 30% lower input/output latencies compared to competing offerings. T-Head claims the SSD has an IO processing capability of "3400 Kilo IOs per second, a data bandwidth of 14 Gbytes/s, and an extremely high energy efficiency of 420 Kilo IO per second for every Watt".

This is an essential step towards Chinese self-sufficiency as T-Head has designed various ICs for processing different tasks. Still, now Alibaba's chip design unit has a domestic design for storage as well. Claiming low latency figures, the Zhenyue 510 is suitable for enterprise workloads like big data analysis, as well as AI inference/training systems workloads. The development of Zhenyue 510 started in 1H 2021, and it took the company more than two years to complete the design and validation of the chip to prepare it for deployment. This is the second Chinese-made SSD controller after Yingren Technology (InnoGrit) announced their chip in September.

Thanks to the TMTPost interview with the Global Vice President and China President of ASML, Shen Bo, the Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer has revealed that around 1,400 of its deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography and metrology machines are currently installed in China. The company is expected to achieve a global output of 600 DUV equipment units by the end of 2025. Shen Bo stated that the company aims to install 500-600 units of DUV machinery in China by late 2025 or early 2026. The growth in ASML's Chinese revenues was notably high, with China contributing 46% of the company's system sales in 3Q 2023, representing an 82% revenue increase from the previous quarter.

China plans to build 25 12-inch wafer fabs in the next five years, covering logic wafers, DRAM, and MEMS production. ASML currently has a substantial presence in China, with 16 offices, 12 warehouses, distribution centers, development centers, training centers, and maintenance centers. The company employs over 1,600 people for its China operations. Despite the export restrictions imposed by the US government, ASML anticipates that the new measures will have little impact on its financial outlook for 2023 as it strives to meet the growing demand for semiconductor manufacturing equipment in the global market.

A research paper released this week describes ways generative AI can assist one of the most complex engineering efforts: designing semiconductors. The work demonstrates how companies in highly specialized fields can train large language models (LLMs) on their internal data to build assistants that increase productivity.

Few pursuits are as challenging as semiconductor design. Under a microscope, a state-of-the-art chip like an NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU (above) looks like a well-planned metropolis, built with tens of billions of transistors, connected on streets 10,000x thinner than a human hair. Multiple engineering teams coordinate for as long as two years to construct one of these digital mega cities. Some groups define the chip's overall architecture, some craft and place a variety of ultra-small circuits, and others test their work. Each job requires specialized methods, software programs and computer languages.

During the Q3 2023 earnings call, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was answering some questions from analysts regarding the company's future and its position on emerging competition. One of the most significant problems the company could face is the potential Arm-based chip development not coming from x86 vendors like Intel and AMD. Instead, there could be fierce competition in the near future with the recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X, possible NVIDIA Arm-based PC processor, and in the future, even more Arm CPU providers that Intel would have to compete against in the client segment. During the call, Pat Gelsinger noted that "Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business. And we take all competition seriously. But I think history as our guide here, we don't see these potentially being all that significant overall. Our momentum is strong. We have a strong roadmap."

Additionally, the CEO noted: "When thinking about other alternative architectures like Arm, we also say, wow, what a great opportunity for our foundry business." If the adoption of Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs becomes more present, Intel plans to compete with its next-generation x86 offerings like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and even Panther Lake in the future. As stated, the CEO expects the competition to manufacture its chips at Intel's foundries so that Intel can provide a platform for these companies to serve the PC ecosystem.

Oxide Computer Company today unveiled the world's first commercial Cloud Computer, a true rack-scale system with fully unified hardware and software designed for on-premises cloud computing. The company also announced a $44 million Series A financing round led by Eclipse with participation from Intel Capital, Riot Ventures, Counterpart Ventures, and Rally Ventures to accelerate production for Fortune 1000 enterprises. This brings the company's total financing raised to date to $78 million.

Despite the rapid rise of cloud computing, the vast majority of IT infrastructure today continues to live outside the public cloud in on-premises data centers, where enterprises are forced to cobble together a set of disjointed hardware and software components to run their businesses. Since its inception, Oxide's mission has been to solve this problem, developing the first unified product that delivers the developer experience and operational efficiencies of the public cloud to on-premises environments.

Moore Threads Technology (MTT), a Chinese GPU manufacturer, is reportedly testing its next-generation graphics processors for client PCs and data centers. The products under scrutiny are the MTT S90 for client/gaming computers and the MTT S4000 for data centers. Characterized by their Device IDs, 0301 and 0323, this could imply that these GPUs belong to MTT's 3rd generation GPU lineup. While few details about these GPUs are available, the new Device IDs suggest a possible introduction of a novel microarchitecture following the MTT Chunxiao GPU series. The current generation Chunxiao series, featuring the MTT S70, MTT S80, and MTT S3000, failed to compete effectively with AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.

Thanks to @Löschzwerg who found the Device Hunt submission, we see hardware identifiers in PCI ID and USB ID repositories earlier than launch, as this often signals the testing of new chips or drivers by various companies. In the case of MTT, the latest developments are complicated by its recent inclusion on the U.S. Entity List, limiting its access to US-made technologies. This introduces a problem for the company, as they can't access TSMC's facilities for chip production, and will have to turn to domestic production in the likely case, with SMIC being the only leading option to consider.

TrendForce reports that from 2023 to 2027, the global ratio of mature (>28 nm) to advanced (<16 nm) processes is projected to hover around 7:3. Propelled by policies and incentives promoting local production and domestic IC development, China's mature process capacity is anticipated to grow from 29% this year to 33% by 2027. Leading the charge are giants like SMIC, HuaHong Group, and Nexchip, while Taiwan's share is estimated to consolidate from 49% down to 42%.

Expansion predominantly targets specialty processes such as Driver ICs, CIS/ISPs, and Power Discretes, with second and third-tier Taiwanese manufacturers at the forefront
Within the Driver IC sector, the spotlight is on high voltage (HV) specialty processes. As companies aggressively pursue the 40/28 nm HV process, UMC currently dominates, trailed by GlobalFoundries. Yet, SMIC's 28HV and Nexchip's 40HV are gearing up for mass production in 4Q23 and 1H24, respectively—narrowing their technological gap with other foundries. Notably, competitors with similar process capabilities and capacities, such as PSMC, and those without twelve-inch factories like Vanguard and DBHitek, are poised to face challenges head-on in the short term. This trend may also have long-term implications for UMC and GlobalFoundries.

Gaming allows us to experience worlds beyond imagination, share our stories and forge friendships with people across the world. At Xbox we believe that gaming is for everyone, including the over 429 million players with disabilities, and it is our responsibility to create a place where everyone feels welcome, safe, and included to experience the joy and community of gaming.

Each October we take a moment to celebrate the disability community, and earlier this month Xbox celebrated its partnership with Special Olympics in the form of Gaming for Inclusion, a hybrid, multi-day tournament that aims to showcase the power of inclusion through gaming, break down barriers and empower Special Olympics athletes through technology. Prioritizing accessibility in gaming invites more people to experience gaming, by empowering all gamers to play in the way that is true to them.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and the GPT-4 large language model, is reportedly exploring the possibility of creating custom silicon to power its next-generation AI models. According to Reuters, Insider sources have even alluded to the firm evaluating potential acquisitions of chip design firms. While a final decision is yet to be cemented, conversations from as early as last year highlighted OpenAI's struggle with the growing scarcity and escalating costs of AI chips, with NVIDIA being its primary supplier. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has been rather vocal about the shortage of GPUs, a sector predominantly monopolized by NVIDIA, which holds control over an astounding 80% of the global market for AI-optimized chips.

Back in 2020, OpenAI banked on a colossal supercomputer crafted by Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, which harnesses the power of 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs. This setup is instrumental in driving the operations of ChatGPT, which, as per Bernstein's analyst Stacy Rasgon, comes with its own hefty price tag. Each interaction with ChatGPT is estimated to cost around 4 cents. Drawing a comparative scale with Google search, if ChatGPT queries ever burgeoned to a mere tenth of Google's search volume, the initial GPU investment would skyrocket to an overwhelming $48.1 billion, with a recurring annual expenditure of approximately $16 billion for sustained operations. For an invitation to comment, OpenAI declined to provide any statements. The potential entry into the world of custom silicon signals a strategic move towards greater self-reliance and cost optimization so further development of AI can be sustained.

Dell Technologies expands its Dell Generative AI Solutions portfolio, helping businesses transform how they work along every step of their generative AI (GenAI) journeys. "To maximize AI efforts and support workloads across public clouds, on-premises environments and at the edge, companies need a robust data foundation with the right infrastructure, software and services," said Jeff Boudreau, chief AI officer, Dell Technologies. "That's what we are building with our expanded validated designs, professional services, modern data lakehouse and the world's broadest GenAI solutions portfolio."

Customizing GenAI models to maximize proprietary data
The Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with NVIDIA for Model Customization offers pre-trained models that extract intelligence from data without building models from scratch. This solution provides best practices for customizing and fine-tuning GenAI models based on desired outcomes while helping keep information secure and on-premises. With a scalable blueprint for customization, organizations now have multiple ways to tailor GenAI models to accomplish specific tasks with their proprietary data. Its modular and flexible design supports a wide range of computational requirements and use cases, spanning training diffusion, transfer learning and prompt tuning.

The recent development of AI models that are more capable than ever has led to a massive demand for hardware infrastructure that powers them. As the dominant player in the industry with its GPU and CPU-GPU solutions, NVIDIA has reportedly discussed leasing data center space to power its own cloud service for these AI applications. Called NVIDIA Cloud DGX, it will reportedly put the company right up against its clients, which are cloud service providers (CSPs) as well. Companies like Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle actively acquire NVIDIA GPUs to power their GPU-accelerated cloud instances. According to the report, this has been developing for a few years.

Additionally, it is worth noting that NVIDIA already owns parts for its potential data center infrastructure. This includes NVIDIA DGX and HGX units, which can just be interconnected in a data center, with cloud provisioning so developers can access NVIDIA's instances. A great benefit that would attract the end-user is that NVIDIA could potentially lower the price point of its offerings, as they are acquiring GPUs for much less compared to the CSPs that receive them with a profit margin that NVIDIA imposes. This can attract potential customers, leaving hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google without a moat in the cloud game. Of course, until this project is official, we should take this information with a grain of salt.

Launching on October 5, Assassin's Creed Mirage takes place in ninth-century Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age not only for Islam, but for art, science, culture, poetry, architecture, and so much more. To help the development team at Ubisoft Bordeaux make Mirage as culturally, religiously, and historically authentic as possible, three Ubisoft employees brought their local and global expertise: Mohammed Alemam, localization and social media manager at Ubisoft MENA (Middle East and North Africa); Malek Teffaha, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Senior Manager of Project Management; and Maya Loréal, Senior Manager, Inclusive Games and Content.

The three joined forces with Ubisoft's Humanities & Inspiration taskforce, led by Thierry Noël, in-house historians Dr. Raphaël Weyland and Maxime Durand, and Strategic Alliances director Amy Jenkins. Loréal managed relationships, and Alemam and Teffaha served as cultural, religious, and linguistic consultants. The three were integral to helping build the game from the ground up.

Pixelworks, Inc., a leading provider of visual processing solutions, today announced that it has partnered with a flagship game IP, Revelation, developed by the Thunderfire Business Group, a game studio of the world's leading game developer, NetEase Games, and provided visual processing solutions to optimize the display quality of the mobile version of the game. The Revelation Mobile integrates Pixelworks' Rendering Accelerator SDK to significantly enhance the visual quality for mobile gaming. Coupled with a Pixelworks X7 visual processor, the Rendering Accelerator works as a bridge, delivering an exceptional 120 FPS visual experience on mobile devices with low power consumption, enabling a more immersive gaming experience for mobile gamers.

Revelation Mobile is a flagship mobile game developed by NetEase Games. Centered around the theme of oriental fantasy, the game creates a 3D fantasy world where characters can soar to the heights of the heavens and plunge into the depths of the seas. It faithfully recreates the vast and beautiful Cloud Song Continent. The game boasts stunning and eye-catching visuals, from the boundless cloudscapes to the enchanting underwater scenes, all meticulously crafted to bring the world to life. Rich colors, together with impressive lighting effects, make the Cloud Song Continent, a realm where diverse human landscapes intertwine with natural beauty, even more vivid and vibrant. Players follow their characters on a journey of growth, where navigating vast expanses of distant skies and deep oceans allows them to embrace innate sense of freedom, while simultaneously enduring the challenges of pioneering exploration and harvesting unique life experiences through blocking strategies and gaming moves.

Ubisoft has confirmed that development on Tom Clancy's The Division 3 is underway, with the reappointment of a series veteran—Julian Gerighty will become the Executive Producer for The Division Universe "once Star Wars Outlaws - a game he is currently overseeing as Creative Director - has shipped." The publisher's low-key press release reveals that Gerighty is not making an enormous geographical move—he is simply moving up the rankings at Massive Entertainment (a Ubisoft-owned studio located in Malmö, Sweden). The French video game publisher revealed initial plans for the next mainline entry in their popular online-only action role-playing series: "A core focus of Gerighty's is to build a team for Tom Clancy's The Division 3, which will be led by Massive Entertainment, while making sure Tom Clancy's The Division 2 remains well supported. Outside of that, his attention will be on a solidification of brand identity."

He will oversee work on existing live service games, including Tom Clancy's The Division Resurgence (on mobile), and franchise spin-off—The Division Heartland—a free-to-play survival-action shooter (developed by Red Storm Entertainment). Gerighty stated: "We may have over 40 million players, but The Division is still in its early years as a franchise. There are so many incredible stories to tell, places to explore and people to protect." A high bar has been set with presentation, he continued: "I think that we delivered that with Tom Clancy's The Division's cutting-edge visuals, incredible gameplay, and promise to the player that they can't get this experience anywhere else, and then again with Tom Clancy's The Division 2. It's about refinement, it's about pushing the quality bar consistently forward."

Reading a mystery novel on an ePaper device, as tension grows, you start flipping through the pages faster and faster to uncover who the murderer is. Second to spoilers, what may bother you could be ghosting—faint traces of previously displayed text lingering on the screen. For most E Ink products, that's a tricky problem. However, after years of study, BOOX came out with a solution—BOOX Super Refresh (BSR) technology.

Challenges Facing the ePaper Industry
In the ePaper industry, the trade-off between display and responsiveness is a long-existing puzzle. And the issue mostly comes down to how electronic ink works. The content you see on the screen is created by up to millions of microcapsules, each roughly the diameter of human hair. Within these microcapsules are charged black and white particles. Depending on varying electrical fields, different particles change positions, becoming either visible or invisible on the top of the capsule, thus forming what you see on the screen.

The introduction of Generative AI (GAI) has significantly increased the demand for advanced semiconductor chips, drawing increased attention to the development of complex calculations for large-scale AI models and high-speed transmission interfaces. To assist the industry in grasping the key to high-end semiconductor manufacturing and integration capabilities, the Heterogeneous Integrated Chiplet System Package (Hi-CHIP) Alliance brings together leading semiconductor companies from Taiwan and around the world to provide comprehensive services, spanning from packaging design, testing and verification, to pilot production. Since its establishment in 2021, the alliance has accumulated important industry players as its members, including EVG, Kulicke and Soffa (K&S), USI, Raytek Semiconductor, Unimicron, DuPont, and Brewer Science. Looking forward, the alliance is set to actively explore its global market potential.

Dr. Shih-Chieh Chang, General Director of Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories at ITRI and Chairman of the Hi-CHIP Alliance, indicated that advanced manufacturing processes have led to a considerable increase in IC design cycles and costs. Multi-dimensional chip design and heterogeneous integrated packaging architecture are key tools to tackle this demand in semiconductors. On top of that, the advent of GAI such as ChatGPT, which demands substantial computing power and transmission speed, requires even higher levels of integration capacity in chip manufacturing. ITRI has been committed to developing manufacturing technologies and upgrading materials and equipment to enhance heterogeneous integration technologies. Achievements include the fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP), 2.5 and 3D chips, embedded interposer connections (EIC), and programmable packages. With both local and foreign semiconductor manufacturer members, the Hi-CHIP Alliance is establishing an advanced packaging process production line to provide an integrated one-stop service platform.

British semiconductor specialist firm, Arm Ltd., has has confirmed that it will be offering its clients the option to license "SoC solutions," as opposed to the usual model of paying for intellectual properties. A new Bloomberg article reaffirms previous claims that Arm's engineering department was beavering away on reference chip designs. An IPO filing, registered with the SEC, reveals that various system-on-chip designs are in the pipeline—likely targeting fast-growing tech markets.

An Arm statement explained: "More recently, we have invested in a holistic, solution-focused approach to design, expanding beyond individual design IP elements to providing a more complete system. By delivering SoC solutions optimized for specific use cases, we can ensure that the entire system works together seamlessly to provide maximum performance and efficiency. At the same time, by designing an increasingly greater portion of the overall chip design, we are further reducing incremental development investment and risk borne by our customers while also enabling us to capture more value per device." Arm is probably keen to boost its profit margins, and become more attractive in the eyes of potential investors—lately their designs have been implemented in more expensive product segments, namely automotive, client PCs, and cloud data center solutions.

Hello XDefiant Fans! I've got an update for you and it's a big one! We want to explain further why we haven't given a specific date yet for our launch. And sometimes full transparency is like drinking from a firehose so hope you all are thirsty! First things first. Here is a detailed description of how the submission process goes: Submission is the part of development where we give the game to the 1st parties (Sony, Xbox, etc.) to check that the game works correctly in their environments. To get to that we have to self-test with internal QA/Compliance teams to try and find any issues that might get flagged in the submission process. Once we have fixed or completed all of the tasks that we want/think we need for submission we then spend about 2-3 weeks prepping and validating a CM (Candidate Master) that we think is the final version of the game for submission.

It then goes through 1 week of heavy QA & Compliance testing by several Ubisoft teams. If it passes, then it goes to the 1st parties to be certified for release. 1st parties take a week to get their final report on the submission and give us a Pass or Not Pass with a list of must fixes for the next submission. Also, to be clear during this submission process, the QC team at Ubisoft are putting the build through the ringer looking for functionality bugs and another team at Ubisoft, divided up into PC, Sony and Xbox groups are looking for compliance bugs.

Taiwan's Economic Daily reckons that a freshly formed partnership between TSMC, Broadcom, and NVIDIA will result in the development of cutting-edge silicon photonics. The likes of IBM, Intel and various academic institutes are already deep into their own research and development processes, but the alleged new alliance is said to focus on advancing AI computer hardware. The report cites a significant allocation of—roughly 200—TSMC staffers onto R&D involving the integration of silicon photonic technologies into high performance computing (HPC) solutions. They are very likely hoping that the usage of optical interconnects (on a silicon medium) will result in greater data transfer rates between and within microchips. Other benefits include longer transmission distances and a lower consumption of power.

TSMC vice president Yu Zhenhua has placed emphasis on innovation, in a similar fashion to his boss, within the development process (industry-wide): "If we can provide a good silicon photonics integrated system, we can solve the two key issues of energy efficiency and AI computing power. This will be a new one...Paradigm shift. We may be at the beginning of a new era." The firm is facing unprecedented demand from its clients—it hopes to further expand its advanced chip packaging capacity to address these issues by late 2024. A shift away from the limitations of "conventional electric" data transmissions could bring next generation AI compute GPUs onto the market by 2025.

Blasphemous set itself apart in 2019's crowded indie scene thanks to a firm belief in its roots. Developed in Spain, it was clear from the beginning that The Game Kitchen would have to adapt itself to an international audience—but even if the game released with an English demographic in mind, the art direction and overall tone were uniquely Spanish.

With the sequel, the team was adamant that they preserve that identity in the writing as well, regardless of which language you choose to play in. For Enrique Cabeza, Creative Director at The Game Kitchen, the development of Blasphemous 2 felt sentient. It continued to shift and morph of its own volition, almost as if providing guidance to the team about where to go next. "You have to make mistakes and realize when it's time to change course to avoid paths you shouldn't take," he said.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation (SSS) today announced that it has developed an energy harvesting module that uses electromagnetic wave noise energy. The new module applies technology that SSS has cultivated in the tuner development process to generate power from electromagnetic wave noise with a high level of efficiency. For example, this technology can use the constant electromagnetic wave noise generated by robots inside factories, monitors and lighting in offices, monitors and TVs in stores and homes, and the like to provide the stable power supply needed to run low-power consumption IoT sensors and communications equipment.

With attention on the challenge of providing power to the increasing number of IoT devices as they grow in popularity and sophistication, this highly efficient energy harvesting technology shows promise for a wide range of applications. SSS aims to employ the new technology as part of its effort to build a power circulation model, thereby contributing to the development of a sustainable IoT society.