Final Fantasy XVI is the all-new mainline entry in the Final Fantasy series, releasing on Thursday June 22. The launch trailer for Final Fantasy XVI, "Salvation," was revealed today as part of the PlayStation Showcase. With only around a month left until release, this outstanding trailer comes as we eagerly await the game!

The story of Final Fantasy XVI takes place in Valisthea, a land studded with Mothercrystals—glittering mountains of crystal that tower over the realms around them, blessing them with aether. People use the aether from the Mothercrystals to fuel the magicks they rely upon in their everyday lives, hailing Valisthea as "a land blessed in the light of the Mothercrystals." Yet now the aether begins to fade and the lifeless deadlands spread ever further. Such desperate conditions drive the nations towards conflict and strife.

Renowned HDTVTest YouTube reviewer and presenter, Vincent Teoh, has been exploring the showroom floor at this year's Display Week trade symposium (in Los Angeles, CA). He was intrigued by some cutting-edge screen tech at BOE's booth and announced this discovery on Twitter yesterday evening: "Forget 8K. Here's the world's first 110-inch 16K display unveiled by BOE at Display Week 2023. LCD-based, max 400 nits. The resolution is unreal though, no visible pixels even right up close."

The demo unit appears to be a prototype - BOE Displays has not revealed any type of official product launch. Their giant screen is reported to be almost 2.8 meters wide in terms of diagonal length, and a specification sheet placed nearby lists a maximum 15360x8640 resolution paired with a 60 Hz refresh rate. The 16K display has a contrast ratio of 1200:1 and is capable of reproducing 99% DCI-P3 color coverage. We hope to view further reports from this tradeshow - hopefully a BOE rep will provide details about the required GPU power to run their monster LCD monitor.

Today, Apple unveiled the lineup for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including the timing of the keynote and Platforms State of the Union presentations, and shared more information with developers about what they'll learn and experience. Free for all developers, WWDC23 will take place in an online format from June 5 through 9, with an opportunity for developers and students to celebrate in person at a special experience at Apple Park on opening day.

The packed week of events and activities will help developers learn about the latest technologies, tools, and frameworks coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Throughout the week, developers will be able to connect directly with Apple engineers and experts through one-on-one labs and activities in Slack for guidance on building innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games.

Lenovo Group today announced full-year results, reporting Group revenue of US$62 billion and net income of US$1.6 billion, or US$1.9 billion on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) [1] basis. Profitability was stable with gross margin and operating margin both delivering 18-year highs and non-HKFRS net margin flat year-to-year. While Group revenue was impacted due to the softness in the device market, revenue from non-PC businesses reached a fiscal year high of nearly 40%, fueled by Lenovo's diversified growth engines of Solutions and Services Group (SSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) growing revenue to record highs of US$6.7 billion and US$9.8 billion respectively, up 22% and 37% year-on-year.

After a year of industry and global uncertainties, Lenovo sees positive signs of the market stabilizing. The Group expects the entire PC and smart devices market to resume year-to-year growth in the second half of 2023, and for the IT services market to resume relatively high growth - together these will drive the total IT market in 2023 back to moderate growth. In the mid-to-long term, digital and intelligent transformation will continue to accelerate, leading to a big growth potential for cloud and computing infrastructure.

Samsung Display today announced it will exhibit a variety of paradigm-shifting, next-generation OLED technologies at the SID Display Week 2023, May 23-25, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California. At the event, Samsung Display is unveiling Rollable Flex, which aims to revolutionize the portability of tablet PCs or laptops, and Sensor OLED display, which provides new usability by embedding fingerprint and blood pressure sensors in panels without attaching separate modules. With these and other OLED innovations, Samsung is demonstrating its drive to create and lead new market segments.

Now in its 60th year, Display Week by SID (Society for Information Display) is the world's largest professional display event held annually in North America, featuring international exhibits, symposiums and seminars.

During the ISC High Performance 2023 international conference, Intel announced interesting roadmap updates to its high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). With the scrapping of Rialto Bridge and Lancaster Sound, Intel merged these accelerator lines into Falcon Shores processor for HPC and AI, initially claiming to be a CPU+GPU solution on a single package. However, during the ISC 2023 talk, the company forced a change of plans, and now, Falcon Shores is GPU only solution destined for a 2025 launch. Originally, Intel wanted to combine x86-64 cores with Xe GPU to form an "XPU" module that powers HPC and AI workloads. However, Intel did not see a point in forcing customers to choose between specific CPU-to-GPU core ratios that would need to be in an XPU accelerator. Instead, a regular GPU solution paired with a separate CPU is the choice of Intel for now. In the future, as workloads get more defined, XPU solutions are still a possibility, just delayed from what was originally intended.

Regarding Intel's Gaudi accelerators, the story is about to end. The company originally paid two billion US Dollars for Habana Labs and its Gaudi hardware. However, Intel now plans to stop the Gaudi development as a standalone accelerator and instead use the IP to integrate it into its Falcon Shores GPU. Using modular, tile-based architecture, the Falcon Shores GPU features standard ethernet switching, up to 288 GB of HBM3 running at 9.8 TB/s throughput, I/O optimized for scaling, and support for FP8 and FP16 floating point precision needed for AI and other workloads. As noted, the creation of XPU was premature, and now, the initial Falcon Shores GPU will become an accelerator for HPC, AI, and a mix of both, depending on a specific application. You can see the roadmap below for more information.

TrendForce forecasts a global downturn in AR and VR device shipments for 2023, predicting a shipment total of roughly 7.45 million units—an 18.2% YoY decrease. VR devices are expected to shoulder the majority of this decline, with projected shipments hovering around 6.67 million units. This dip is primarily attributed to weaker-than-expected sales of newly released high-end devices. Consequently, manufacturers are likely to pivot their sales strategies, shifting their focus to more cost-effective offerings. Conversely, shipments of AR devices are expected to remain stable, with projected shipments exceeding 780,000 units. While Apple's latest offerings could stimulate some demand, the high price tags attached to these units continue to pose a significant barrier to broader market growth.

Two key factors emerge when examining the impending decline in shipments in the VR sector. Firstly, brands may have been overly optimistic regarding the sales of their top-tier products. Despite these premium devices offering enhanced features courtesy of advanced hardware and software, consumers are showing reluctance to shoulder the associated higher costs. Instead, they seem to be gravitating towards more budget-friendly models this year. Secondly, the shortage of appealing, new, cost-effective models in the market is exacerbating the downturn. Meta Quest 2 continues to maintain its status as this year's market-leading VR product as the release of Meta Quest 3 has been pushed back to 2024.

The fate of Intel's Meteor Lake-S desktop CPU lineup has been the topic of much debate since the end of last year - at the time, industry tipsters proposed that part of the product range had been disposed of entirely, but several leaks throughout the course of 2023 have indicated that MTL-S processors were on-track for a launch later in the year - albeit restricted to i3 and i5 offerings. An Intel employee has also confirmed that a new SKU naming system will be implemented as part of the upcoming Meteor Lake lineup - although he did not clarify whether this would encompass both mobile and desktop variants.

An alleged Intel client CPU roadmap has made its way onto the internet, and tipsters think that the information on hand shows that Team Blue has pulled the plug on its Meteor Lake-S (6 Performance and 8 Efficiency cores) desktop processors. The presentation slide was likely authored earlier this month - so these developments are relatively fresh, with provisions for Core S, H, PX, M, U & N series. The heavily redacted infographic maps out product release windows going as far forward as Q4 2026. OneRaichu posits that an Arrow Lake-S (6P + 8E) CPU lineup will replace MTL-S. It is possible that Intel's Raptor Lake-S refresh could serve as an interim release this year, since the Arrow Lake generation is expected to arrive in 2024.

RIKEN and Intel Corporation (hereafter referred to as Intel) have signed a memorandum of understanding on collaboration and cooperation to accelerate joint research in next-generation computing fields such as AI (artificial intelligence), high-performance computing, and quantum computers. The signing ceremony was concluded on May 18, 2023. As part of this MOU, RIKEN will work with Intel Foundry Services (IFS) to prototype these new solutions.

Microsoft is determined to get the entirety of its Windows 10 userbase onto the final version - 22H2 - by early summer. Older iterations including 21H2 (issued in November of 2021), will not receive official support beyond the date: June 13 2023. The announcement crept out quietly last week, via the company's Learn Documentation center: "Home, Pro, Pro Education, and Pro for Workstations editions of Windows 10, version 21H2 will reach end of servicing. The upcoming June 2023 security update, to be released on June 13, 2023, will be the last update available for these versions. After this date, devices running these version will no longer receive monthly security and preview updates containing protections from the latest security threats."

The reminder does not give specific details about rollout timings, but news outlets reckon that OS-focused enforcements will begin in early June: "To help keep you protected and productive, Windows Update will automatically initiate a feature update for Windows 10 consumer devices and non-managed business devices that are at, or within several months of, reaching end of servicing. This keeps your device supported and receiving monthly updates that are critical to security and ecosystem health. For these devices, you will be able to choose a convenient time for your device to restart and complete the update." Microsoft provides further advice and recommends that users update (manually) to version 2H22 at the earliest opportunity, or take the larger step of transferring to Windows 11. Last month TPU reported on a similar official advisory blog entry, where the author/product manager (in effect) proposed "that current Windows 10 users move to 11 as soon as possible, in order to enjoy a continued stream of feature updates."

After four years of gathering online-adventuring through Azeroth, teaming up in Overwatch, traversing the fields of Sanctuary, or warming yourself by the fire in the Tavern - it's finally time to gather in person once more. We are happy to announce that BlizzCon will be returning to the Anaheim Convention Center on November 3-4!

Our players are at the heart of what makes BlizzCon great-a place where games are the common ground for connection and friendship. Whether you're coming to hang out with friends you only ever get to see online, celebrating epic moments in the games we love, exploring what's on offer in the convention center halls, or eager to learn what's next for our universes, BlizzCon is being created for you. It's the community that has always made this event so special, and we can't wait to see you all again.

Chinese company Loongson, specializing in creating processors for usage in mainland China, has been steadily working on enabling its next-generation Loongson 3A6000 CPUs. Aiming to provide the performance level of Intel Willow Cove and AMD Zen 3, these new CPUs will use Loongson's custom LoongArch Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) with a new set of 64-bit superscalar LA664 cores. Today, thanks to the report from Phoronix, we find out that Loongson has submitted some Linux patches that enable the upcoming 3A6000 CPUs to work with Linux-based operating systems at launch. Interestingly, as the new CPU generation gets closer to launch, more Linux kernel patches begin to surface.

Today's kernel patches focus on supporting the hardware page table walker (PTW). As PTW can handle all fast paths of TLBI/TLBL/TLBS/TLBM exceptions by hardware, software only needs to handle slow paths such as page faults. Additionally, in the past, LoongArch utilized "dbar 0" as a complete barrier for all operations. However, this full completion barrier severely impacted performance. As a result, Loongson-3A6000 and subsequent processors have introduced various alternative hints. Loongson plans to ship samples to select customers in the first half of 2023, so we could see more information surfacing soon.

TrendForce reveals that alongside the four major CSPs reducing their procurement volumes, OEMs like Dell and HPE have also scaled back their annual shipment volume forecasts at some point between February and April, predicting YoY declines of 15% and 12%, respectively. Furthermore, server demand in China is facing headwinds due to geopolitical and economic challenges. Consequently, TrendForce projects a downward revision in global server shipment volumes for this year—a 2.85% YoY decrease at 13.835 million units.

TrendForce emphasizes that the server market in 1H23 remains pessimistic, with 1Q23 shipments experiencing a 15.9% QoQ decrease due to off-season factors and end-user inventory adjustments. The expected industry boom in 2Q23 failed to materialize, leading to a modest QoQ growth estimate of only 9.23%. Persistent influences on server shipments include OEMs lowering shipment volumes, subdued domestic demand in China, and continuous supply chain inventory adjustments. ESG issues have also led CSPs to prolong server lifecycles and reduce procurement volume. Moreover, OEMs are lengthening supports period for older platforms as businesses seek to control capital expenditures, further contributing to market strain.

Three years ago, Intel announced a goal to increase global annual spending with diverse suppliers to $2 billion by 2030. We are proud to announce we reached $2.2 billion in diverse supplier spending in 2022, eight years ahead of schedule. This $2.2 billion represents nearly 15 times the annual total when our supplier diversity program launched in 2015 and double our 2019 results.

According to data from Mercury Research posted on Twitter, AMD has gained CPU market share against Intel over the past year. AMD has gone from a 27.7 percent market share in Q1 2022 to a 34.6 percent market share in the first quarter of 2023, which is an increase of 6.9 percent, whereas Intel has gone from 72.3 percent to 65.4 percent, still placing Intel at almost two thirds of the market of x86 CPUs. It should be noted that this includes all types of CPUs, but it's unclear if it includes the chips AMD sells to Microsoft and Sony for their respective consoles.

A separate screenshot posted by @firstadopter details server CPU market share, excluding IoT, although it's unclear what that means in this specific case. Here, AMD has gained 6.3 percent market share, but the company has only gone from a meager 11.6 percent last year, to 18 percent this year, with Intel holding a massive 82 percent market share. AMD's gain here was lower than overall, but it shows that larger corporations are starting to adopt more and more AMD hardware on the server side, where in all fairness, AMD has taken something of a lead over Intel when it comes to the maximum amount of CPU cores each company can offer, even though the per core performance still lags behind Intel to a degree. It'll be interesting to see if AMD can maintain its momentum in market share gain once Intel launches more competitive products later this year, especially in the server market space.

Following on from the reveal of EA SPORTS F1 23 last week, dive into the details you might have missed and more about what to expect ahead of launch on June 16, 2023 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. F1 23's handling and physics have had a significant upgrade on previous years, resulting in better handling, low-speed traction, and overall vehicle driveability. Veteran players will immediately notice a difference, as vehicle behaviour in particular is more authentic thanks to three key areas of reworking: acceleration, braking, and cornering.

Updates to physics calculations for the slip of the tyres and how this interacts with the inertia of the car have been made. Plus, the way each car's engine delivers torque has been refined, with more progressive steps relative to gear and throttle input. On-track surfaces such as kerbs and rumble strips will be noticeably more pronounced, thanks to improvements made to the underfloor of each car, delivering a more true-to-life experience. Adopting feedback from real F1 teams and drivers such as Anthony Davidson, players will notice a closer balance between mechanical grip from tyres and aerodynamic grip from the cars. All these changes result in F1 23 offering the most authentic F1 driving experience around.

Team Cherry, the indie development outfit responsible for producing smash hit 2D platformer Hollow Knight (2017), has this week announced that the sequel - Silksong - will be missing its proposed early-ish 2023 launch window. The Australian team's publishing and marketing manager Matthew Griffin confirmed via a tweet that Hollow Knight: Silksong is still a work-in-progress project: "Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong. We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We're excited by how the game is shaping up, and it's gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can."

Hollow Knight: Silksong was first revealed to the public back in 2019, with Team Cherry taking a quiet approach to the release of preview material since then. A playable demo was on show at E3 2019, but a wider internet-based public has only had access to a pair of video trailers, some screenshots and minimal written details on official sites and product pages. Silksong was initially conceived as a DLC/expansion for the base game, but the designers expanded their project's scope - thus creating a standalone and entirely new entry in the series. It seems that the development team's ambitions have grown over the years - Griffin has not confirmed a revised release date but requests that fans wait for further announcements: "Expect more details from us once we get closer to release."

MediaTek has been unveiling some new mobile chipsets this week, but keen-eyed news outlets have noticed that the Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company is simply renaming and relaunching hardware from last year, with some tweaks here and there. Today's announcement of the Dimensity 8050 SoC was almost immediately questioned - GSMArena noticed that this "new" model was a near dead ringer, in terms of specifications, for last year's mid-range Dimensity 1300 and 1200 smartphone chipsets. There are some upgrades in terms of memory bandwidth, and MediaTek boasts that the 8050 has been updated with its sixth generation HyperEngine technology.

Alarm bells were ringing when folks realized that the much older Dimensity 8000 SoC was built on a 5 nm process - the supposedly superior (in terms of model number hierarchy) 8005 is a 6 nm chip. Last week the mobile specialist site also spotted that MediaTek's Dimensity 7050 chipset was yet another example of the smartphone tech company rolling out a "rebranding phase." The news outlet pointed out that this newly revealed mobile CPU was just a renamed Dimensity 1080 - with the original model having hit the market in November 2022. MediaTek seems to renaming several older chipsets based on TSMC's 6 nm process - it is possible that this effort is part of a company drive to clear surplus silicon.

Earlier today Nintendo released its financial/earning reports for the fiscal year ending March 2023, and company president Shuntaro Furukawa has briefed investors about sales forecasts, according to a report published by Bloomberg. Furukawa-san predicts that the Switch gaming console will only sell 15 million units over the next fiscal year - sales have been slowing down for a while according to Nintendo's figures, with almost 18 million units purchased throughout 2022-23. The numbers are still very impressive when you consider that Nintendo's flagship gaming platform has been on the market for just over six years - across that span of time, total unit sales have hit the 125.62 million mark.

Furukawa also informed shareholders about the prospect of a Switch console successor arriving within the next fiscal period - Bloomberg's article brings the bad news at this point - it seems that Nintendo is not anticipating a new hardware launch within that time frame. Nintendo's software release schedule - especially in regards to first party titles - looks very threadbare for the rest of the year. The much anticipated Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives on Friday (May 12) followed by Pikmin 4 in July, but things look to be quiet after that - unless Nintendo has a few surprises lined up for June's preview event season. Rumors of a next generation Switch have been doing the rounds since 2020, back then a "Pro" model was often touted - fans later found out that Nintendo had simply refreshed the system with an OLED panel, some tweaks to chipset efficiency, and updated the docking system to modern output standards - this premium model hit the market in late 2021.

Noctua has, as of this month, refreshed its product roadmap for the rest of 2023, and even provides a couple of scant details about far-off hardware scheduled for launch in early 2024 and beyond. The Austrian computer cooling hardware specialist is probably updating their release forecast in preparation for Computex 2023 - set to start at the end of the month - where brand new goodies could be debuted to industry-types and public attendees.

Noctua's 8-way fan hub seems to be delayed - the previous version of the roadmap had it down for a Q1 2023 launch, but the update now indicates a second quarter window. A bunch of next-gen AMD Threadripper coolers are marked down for an estimated third-quarter release, and Noctua has a slim 60 mm fan
as well as a 24 V 40 mm fan lined up for the final quarter. All-black versions of existing NH-D12L, NH-D9L and NH-L9x65 CPU coolers are due by the end of this year - a number of coolers are already available in the company's "chromax.black" finish - for those who do not enjoy the signature beige and brown aesthetic. A single next-generation 140 mm fan is teased for a Q1 2024 launch, with a chromax.black version coming later in the year. Finally, a re-designed NH-D15 CPU cooler gets a loose 2024 window.

The Linux 6.3 Kernel has been patched and a couple of developer notes indicate that support for Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup has been added. The subject matter of this memo is "Add support for Meteor Lake-S SPI serial flash," and the driver list of supported devices has been updated with Meteor Lake-S PCI IDs. Intel is ramping up for the launch of its 14th generation processors, scheduled for a possible second half of 2023 release window, and is ready to roll out some new product naming spiel at the same time.

A "P" type 14th generation range is also discussed in the patch notes: "Intel Meteor Lake-S has the same SPI serial flash controller as Meteor Lake-P. Add Meteor Lake-S PCI ID to the driver list of supported devices." Meteor Lake-P likely refers to mobile variants, with a lot of previously leaked information providing an in-depth look at Intel's "Tile" chip design. Rumors of the desktop variants getting canned have persisted (in 2022 and early 2023) due to a lack of insider info, but last month it emerged that the Meteor Lake-S family was alive and well to some degree - Intel has restricted the product range with offerings of budget "i3" and mid-range "i5" SKUs only. Who knows what sort of branding/naming scheme they have in mind to distinguish between desktop and portable processors.

According to Taiwanese United Daily News, Acer and ASUS are expecting the downturn in PC sales to turn around in the second half of the year. That said, Acer reported its worst results in years for the first quarter this year and ASUS is expected to follow suit, when its first quarter earnings numbers are released on Friday this week. The slow sales for both companies are expected to continue for the first half of 2023, but according to the report, there should be an improvement in the second half of the year.

That said, both companies are betting on improved sales of not just PCs to improve their books, as Acer is hoping to sell more displays, while ASUS is focusing on its component business. ASUS has already seen a small improvement in component sales, which the company is hoping is the first signs of a stabilising components market, with more of its potential customers upgrading their systems. That said, with certain components like graphics cards still being priced at levels that many consumers aren't willing to pay for the performance on offer, it might be a slower recovery than these companies are expecting.

At VLSI Symposium 2023, scheduled to take place between June 11-16, Intel is set to demonstrate its PowerVia technology working efficiently on an E-Core chip built using the Intel 4 node. Conventional chips have power and signal interconnects distributed across multiple metal layers. PowerVia, on the other hand, dedicates specific layers for power delivery, effectively separating them from the signal routing layers. This approach allows for vertical power delivery through a set of power-specific Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) or PowerVias, which are essentially vertical connections between the top and bottom surfaces of the chip. By delivering power directly from the backside of the chip, PowerVia reduces power supply noise and resistive losses, optimizing power distribution and improving overall energy efficiency. PowerVia is set to make a debut in 2024 with Intel 20A node.

For VLSI Symposium 2023 talk, the company has prepared a paper that highlights a design made using Intel 4 technology and implements E-Cores only in a test chip. The document states: "PowerVia Technology is a novel innovation to extend Process Scaling by having Power Delivery on the backside. This paper presents the pre and post silicon findings from implementing an Intel E-Core in PowerVia Technology. PowerVia enabled standard cell utilization of greater than 90 percent in large areas of the core while showing greater than 5 percent frequency benefit in silicon due reduced IR drop. Successful Post silicon debug is demonstrated with slightly higher but acceptable throughput times. The thermal characteristics of the PowerVia testchip is inline with higher power densities expected from logic scaling."

Last October, the US Department of Commerce imposed semiconductor restrictions on Chinese imports of equipment for processes of 18 nm and below. SK hynix's Wuxi fab was granted a one-year production license, but geopolitical risks and weak demand prompted the company to reduce wafer starts by about 30% per month in 2Q23, according to TrendForce's latest research.

TrendForce reports that SK hynix had planned to transition its Wuxi fab's mainstream process from 1Y nm to 1Z nm, decreasing the output of legacy processes. However, due to limitations imposed by the US ban, the company instead opted to increase the share of its 21 nm production lines, focus-ing on DDR3 and DDR4 4Gb products. SK hynix's long-term strategy involves shifting its capacity expansion back to South Korea, while the Wuxi fab caters to domestic demand in China and the legacy-process consumer DRAM market.

Intel has posted two product change notifications regarding the Gemini Lake Refresh, which is now reaching the end of its life. Launched in 2019 as a refresh to the original Gemini Lake, these low-end products had a longer lifespan than the original Gemini Lake (2017-2020). Most commonly found on low-end PCs, AIOs, and Mini PCs, these Gemini Lake Refresh CPUs were based on the 14 nm Goldmont Plus microarchitecture. Coming with up to four cores without HyperThreading, these CPUs were ideal for lower-power applications as their TDP was rated between 6-10 Watts.

Intel has separated the product change into two categories, with the first consisting of Celeron N4120, Celeron 4020, and Pentium Silver N5030, while the other features Celeron J4025, Pentium Silver J5040, Celeron N4020C, and Celeron J4125. Intel will ship the first group of CPUs by May 24, 2024, and the second by February 23, 2024. The last round of orders will go out by November 24, 2023, and August 25, 2023, respectively.