Two years and a half into its storied career, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU has finally dropped below MSRP in one European territory. German customers will be stoked to jump on e-tailer CaseKing's new offer - ZOTAC's Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge LHR graphics card is currently available for 449 EUR (not counting additional fees), so a saving of 50 Euros from the recommended retail price (499 EUR/$499). 3DCenter seems to be the first hardware news outlet to report on an RTX 3070 GPU dropping under RRP. The RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti models have been best sellers for NVIDIA (and board partners) since late 2020, yet buyers have long complained about unreasonable asking prices, and semi-generous discounts have been very late in arriving - just in time for the succeeding model.

3DCenter has created an overview of the graphics card market in Germany and Austria, and its findings for May 2023 indicate a trend where: "GPU prices in Euros have consistently dropped by ~10% since the end of January, in single cases up to 20%." The overview places the RTX 3070 8 GB in a price bracket position between AMD's Radeon RX 6750XT 12 GB and RX 6800 16 GB (non-XT) SKUs, which brings recent marketing strategies to mind - Team Red thinks that their cards offer the buyer more VRAM for their money when cross examined with the competition.

Dramatic Labs answers your questions: "Where have we been? We know we've been quiet at times since we announced Star Trek: Resurgence at The Game Awards in December… 2021. You can rest assured we never stopped working on the game, but obviously we all expected it to be released by now. So why the delays? The short answer is because we are a relatively small development team, making a pretty big game, and that has been keeping us very busy! As you might know, we had initially hoped to have the game out in "Spring 2022," but it is now "Spring 2023."

What happened? Honestly, our initial target was just too aggressive. We were very excited to get Star Trek: Resurgence to everyone as fast as we could, but this is our first game as Dramatic Labs, and our first game built with the Unreal Engine. And along the way it became clear the game wouldn't be what we wanted if we kept that release window. We considered trying to hit the holiday season for 2022, but we decided that, if we were going to change the date, we should do it to make the best game we could. Not to meet some arbitrary marketing timeline. That's why we reset for a Spring 2023 release and now we're excited to finally announce a date: May 23, 2023!

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an industry analyst known for making accurate predictions about Apple, we have some new information regarding Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. As Kuo notes, Intel's major Cloud Service Provider (CSP) client, Microsoft, has notified the supply chain that the company is cutting orders of Sapphire Rapids Xeons by 50-70% in the second half of 2023. Interestingly, Intel's supply chain has notified the company to cut chip orders by around 50% amidst weak server demand. This comes straight after Intel's plans to start shipping Sapphire Rapids processors in the second quarter of 2023 and deliver the highly anticipated lineup to customers.

Additionally, Kuo has stated that Intel isn't only competing for clients with AMD but also with Arm-based CPUs. Microsoft also plans to start buying Arm-based server processors made by Ampere Computing in the first half of 2024. This will reduce Microsoft's dependence on x86 architecture and induce higher competition in the market, especially if other CSPs follow.

Seagate is celebrating the debut shipment of very sophisticated storage solutions to a preferred client (dealing in the cloud data center sector). These 30+ terabyte hard drives are based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology - the American data storage company is setting up its next generation Corvault range with the thermal magnetic recording methodology. The first shipment of HAMR-based drives is reported to consist of final qualification samples, but Seagate is anticipating that fully verified equipment - after trial customers give this new product lineup a thumbs-up - will be generating revenue in the coming weeks.

According to a transcript of a recent Seagate financial meeting conference call, CEO Dave Mosley mentioned a dip in business as well as a costly legal settlement, but expects company fortunes to rise due to client uptake of breakthrough storage technologies: "Beyond this cycle, we remain excited about the long-term opportunities presented by the secular growth of data and the relevance of mass capacity storage as new data-centric applications emerge and more workloads migrate to the cloud. We continue to make strong progress on our industry-leading technology road map, including launching HAMR-based products this quarter, which we believe put us in outstanding longer-term position."

Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly known as Facebook) has begun implementing widespread staff layoffs across multiple company departments. The cutback operation was announced last month, with the social media giant targeting 10,000 positions (throughout 2023) in an effort to become more efficient. 13,000 staffers were released from their jobs last year, representing 13% of the workforce at the time - advertising revenues had declined in 2022 and Meta said that the change was required in order to navigate economic downturns. A repeat of that sentiment has been issued this year and two internal games development studios have been affected quite heavily by the latest layoff initiative, reports suggest. Ready at Dawn and Downpour Interactive are getting a lot of press coverage - due to former staffers divulging details of Meta's cutbacks via social media.

Thomas Griebel, a (now former) Senior engine programmer at Ready at Dawn, took to Twitter two days ago and made claim that: "One third of the studio was laid off today, including the studio head." He also observes that the studio has been shrinking over time: "Also lost some really great people just due to attrition. Think we're down almost (down to a) half since when I started in August (2022)." Former Ready at Dawn technical designer Colin McInerney has also released a string of information about co-workers being let go. Michael Tsarouhas (senior designer) and Daan van Zelst (level designer) have confirmed that they were released from their roles at Downpour Interactive.

TSMC today announced consolidated revenue of NT$508.63 billion, net income of NT$206.99 billion, and diluted earnings per share of NT$7.98 (US$1.31 per ADR unit) for the first quarter ended March 31, 2023. Year-over-year, first quarter revenue increased 3.6% while net income and diluted EPS both increased 2.1%. Compared to fourth quarter 2022, first quarter results represented an 18.7% decrease in revenue and a 30.0% decrease in net income. All figures were prepared in accordance with TIFRS on a consolidated basis.

In US dollars, first quarter revenue was $16.72 billion, which decreased 4.8% year-over-year and decreased 16.1% from the previous quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 56.3%, operating margin was 45.5%, and net profit margin was 40.7%. In the first quarter, shipments of 5-nanometer accounted for 31% of total wafer revenue; 7-nanometer accounted for 20%. Advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and more advanced technologies, accounted for 51% of total wafer revenue.

New store page, new trailer... new EVERYTHING for our upcoming puzzle-adventure game Firmament...Firmament will release on May 18th! Firmament is a new puzzle-adventure game by the legendary game studio behind the best-selling games Myst and Riven. Featuring deep storytelling and world-building, discover the story of this seemingly abandoned world as you explore and unlock the mysteries of 3 unique Realms… and beyond!

EXPLORE THE WORLD
Featuring a unique steampunk aesthetic, Firmament invites you to explore the legendary deep world-building Cyan Worlds is known for. Firmament is a fantastic visual feast, with thrilling new sights to see around every corner. At the same time, the world of Firmament feels completely plausible; as though it were constructed with a bigger purpose in mind… A purpose you will be compelled to discover as you play.

What's next for Northgard? A sneak peek into what the future holds for our favorite vikings...Ohoi! We're working hard on Northgard and you can expect a ton of new changes this year. Keep in mind this roadmap is mostly tentative, hence why no dates will be revealed as of today. But enough talk, here is what you came for...

The near future
Our next update is the annual major balancing patch. It is coming in the next month or so but it is not exclusively balancing that it will be bringing to the game. Before expanding the game further, it was important for us to focus on some of the more pressing matters that have been brought to our attention over the last few months.

Taiwan's External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) has announced the keynote speaker for Computex 2023 - NVIDIA co-founder and current CEO Jensen Huang is confirmed as the main host of the opening ceremony event. The forthcoming computer trade show will have a general opening on May 30, with a keynote address delivered by Huang scheduled for the day before. Computex 2023 is set to be hosted at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center (Hall 1 & Hall 2) until June. Co-organizer TAITRA boasts that 1000 exhibitors (from 17 nations) will participate in show floor activities. 3000 individual booths will be setup for exploration by prospective attendees.

Huang is one of several key electronics company CEOs announced as participants in conference events. He joins key representatives from firms such as Qualcomm, Acer, NXP Semiconductors and Supermicro. NVIDIA's leader was named in Time's 100 List of Most Influential People for the year 2021, and is a winner of numerous other awards, so it is no wonder that he gets top billing at Computex 2023. Attendees have a lot to look forward to, not limited to a (potentially) dynamic keynote speech delivered by Huang, since this year's show will be an open door affair. A return to proceedings last experienced in 2019, prior to global shutdowns.

Detectives, we have arrived! After much anticipation, Sherlock Holmes The Awakened has been released! Enjoy the Lovecraftian madness. We made this game during one heck of a time. We made it while our country is at war. We faced challenges such as constant power outages, irregular work schedules, air raids, evacuations, losing our homes, saying goodbyes to our loved ones (through immigration, or worse), and losing team members so that they could defend our country.

We worked from our homes, our office, and from underground bunkers or train stations. It was an enduring and unending nightmare. But with all this chaos around, working on The Awakened helped us maintain a little sense of normalcy. We truly gave it all - sweat, emotions, and spirit to the development of this game.

QuakeCon 2023 Returns to its Roots, Reuniting Fans with a Modern Upgrade to the Classic BYOC - It's official! After three years of digital-only events, QuakeCon 2023 will mark the return of the beloved BYOC, in-person at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13.

"QuakeCon is our favorite event of the year, and we can't wait to finally see our incredible QuakeCon community in-person again, celebrate games, and frag all weekend with thousands of friends." said Marty Stratton, Studio Head, id Software. "For our first year back, QuakeCon 2023 is focusing on the fan favorite BYOC and the players that made QuakeCon the best gaming gathering for more than 25 years."

FrozenCPU has announced that they will be closing their doors to shift focus to their ModRight brand. FrozenCPU was best known for their expansive selection of enthusiast water cooling gear, accessories, mod gear, and excellent customer service in the mid to late 2000s. They were an early example of a premium online storefront in North America that has had a lasting legacy on a niche market. On the announcement page for the closure they state that orders will be taken through April 30th, 2023 and that all in-stock items will be 50% off with the code "SAVENOW" to clear out their entire remaining inventory.

This is not the first time FrozenCPU has shuttered. Back in 2015 they closed with little warning after a dramatic series of events led to warehouse damages and all personnel being fired. Accounts went uncredited, vendors went unpaid, and shipments never left. The company returned after a few months with an entirely new team of staff and leadership, looking to clean the slate and pave a new road forward. Vendors were appeased, previous orders fulfilled, and for the last five years they've remained fairly untroubled.

Samsung Electronics will be cutting back on memory chip production, following a worrying drop in its operational profits. Estimates for the first quarter point to a 96% year-on-year decline - the silicon mega-corporation's lowest profit result in 14 years (since the first quarter of 2009). Samsung's operating profits fell to 600 billion won ($456 million) in January to March 2023, from 14 trillion won the previous year. The company has confirmed that a slump in sales is the main cause behind the smaller margins - with a slow global economy and a drop in demand after the chip shortages of 2020 - 2022. Manufacturers of computer and server equipment have reduced expenditure on procurements of RAM and storage solutions.

In a statement released last week, the company confirmed that it was adjusting its manufacturing output in reaction to the drop in demand: "We are lowering the production of memory chips by a meaningful level, especially that of products with supply secured." Industry analysts in South Korean are foreseeing that Samsung's chip business will post heavy losses (into the billions of dollars) during the first three months of 2023. Samsung is expected to publish detailed financial results later this month. The analysts have spotted similar patterns at other South Korea-based memory chip markers - SK Hynix and Micron have recorded heavy financial losses across recent quarters.

or the fifth consecutive month, International Data Corporation (IDC) has lowered its 2023 forecast for worldwide IT spending as technology investments continue to show the impact of a weakening economy. In its new monthly forecast for worldwide IT spending growth, IDC projects overall growth this year in constant currency of 4.4% to $3.25 trillion. This is slightly down from 4.5% in the previous month's forecast and represents a swing from a 6.0% growth forecast in October 2022.

"Since the fourth quarter of last year, we have seen clear and measurable signs of a moderate pullback in some areas of IT spending," said Stephen Minton, vice president in IDC's Data & Analytics research group. "Tech spending remains resilient compared to historical economic downturns and other types of business spending, but rising interest rates are now impacting capital spending."

IBM today unveiled new single frame and rack mount configurations of IBM z16 and IBM LinuxONE 4, expanding their capabilities to a broader range of data center environments. Based on IBM's Telum processor, the new options are designed with sustainability in mind for highly efficient data centers, helping clients adapt to a digitized economy and ongoing global uncertainty.

Introduced in April 2022, the IBM z16 multi frame has helped transform industries with real-time AI inferencing at scale and quantum-safe cryptography. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4, launched in September 2022, features capabilities that can reduce both energy consumption and data center floor space while delivering the scale, performance and security that clients need. The new single frame and rack mount configurations expand client infrastructure choices and help bring these benefits to data center environments where space, sustainability and standardization are paramount.

Reports from supply chain partners suggests that Apple cut off production of their current generation M2 SoC lineup in the months of January and February following significantly decreased demand for Mac computers containing the chips. The details trace back to partners in Outsourced Semiconductor Package Test, or OSAT, which is many different companies in the supply chain that contribute to assembly and testing of the final packaged SoC. OSAT partners claim they received zero M2 wafers from TSMC during both months, and that shipments have only resumed at half of the previous capacity in the month of March. The breadth of this shutdown touched many different suppliers, from the packaging facilities in Korea, to the solder ball suppliers in Taiwan, the TIM suppliers in Germany, and die underfill material suppliers from Japan. Many of these parts can be specific to the type of chip being produced, as M2 features a different packaging method to Apple's normal A-Series mobile SoCs; a lack of M2 silicon led to a full shutdown of this supply chain. An industry insider for Amcona states, "It is impossible to do other packaging work on the M2 line, the so-called 'Apple line' installed in Amcona chip packs."

In their Q1 2023 earnings conference Apple reported a sharp revenue drop in Mac sales from $10.85B down to $7.74B. "The PC market is facing a very challenging situation," stated Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, "I think we have an advantage with silicon but it will be very difficult in the short term." Apple began production of M2 well over a year ago when demand for Apple silicon equipped MacBooks was still sky high, and likely had large reserves of finished chips and machines stockpiled for the launch of M2 Pro and M2 Max in January. With demand dipping up to the launch of the new MacBook models it would certainly justify slowing down production, but outright halting it for multiple months suggests demand far undershot Apple's expectation.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 16.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2022 (4Q22) to $24.1 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outgrow the non-cloud segment although the latter had strong growth in 4Q22 as well, increasing 9.4% year over year to $18.7 billion. For the full year, cloud infrastructure grew 19.4% to $87.7 billion, while non-cloud grew 13.6% to $66.7 billion. The market continues to benefit from high demand, large backlogs, rising prices, and an improving infrastructure supply chain.

Following the exodus of many high profile companies within the gaming and entertainment industries, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced the cancellation of E3 2023. The event was to be held on June 13th through the 16th at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and would have been the first in-person E3 in 4 years, the last in-person event having been in 2019. In an email sent out to members the ESA stated that E3, "remains a beloved event and brand," but that the 2023 event, "simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry." The email ends with no mention of the event's future.

ESA has issued an official public statement from Kyle Marsden-Kish, Global VP of Gaming, on the cancellation:

This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what's right for the industry and what's right for E3. We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn't have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn't overcome. For those who did commit to E3 2023, we're sorry we can't put on the showcase you deserve and that you've come to expect from ReedPop's event experiences.

All eyes - especially investors' eyes - are on Intel's data center business today. Intel's Sandra Rivera, Greg Lavender and Lisa Spelman hosted a webinar focused on the company's Data Center and Artificial Intelligence business unit. They offered a big update on Intel's latest market forecasts, hardware plans and the way Intel is empowering developers with software.

Executives dished out updates on Intel's data center business for investors. This included disclosures about future generations of Intel Xeon chips, progress updates on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids) and demos of Intel hardware tackling the competition, heavy AI workloads and more.

Xeon Roadmap Roll Call
Among Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids, there is a lot going on in the server CPU business. Here's your Xeon roadmap updates in order of appearance:

Dear players - thank you for the tremendous support we received so far on Atlas Fallen! From your enthusiastic comments on our video teasers online and in person at PAX EAST to the positive previews from critics, we're grateful and honored to have you excited to play our game. Our goal has always been to create a memorable RPG experience in a unique setting, with exciting gameplay and the option for fully playable seamless co-op with a friend.

We'd love to give the game some extra time which will allow us to deliver the best possible version of Atlas Fallen. To achieve this, we have made the difficult decision to delay the worldwide launch of Atlas Fallen to AUGUST 10, 2023.

Hexworks and CI Games have shown off their upcoming RPG, Lords of the Fallen, as part of the State of Unreal GDC Showcase. The trailer demonstrates the team's ambitions and the use of Unreal Engine 5 has allowed them "to create the most immersive game experience possible". The game's character customization system is a cumulation of UE5 generated geometry and 3D scans taken from real life human models. The development team states that this allows players to "create unique faces and bodies by dynamically morphing between a huge range of shapes before finessing the finer details."

Unreal Engine 5's Lumen Global Illumination has been put to good use by the team - the game's complex and rich environments are lit in dramatic and atmospheric fashion, all in real time, with an added layer of technical accomplishment due to the player being able to swap between two parallel worlds. Hexworks devised its own custom toolset to enable the seamless shift from Axiom, the realm of the living, to Umbral, the realm of the dead: "This means our artists and designers can ensure these worlds feel intrinsically linked, like two sides of the same coin... even if one side is decidedly more horrific than the other."

GIGABYTE Technology, an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced participation in the global AI conference, NVIDIA GTC, and will share an AI session and other resources to educate attendees. Additionally, with the release of the NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPU, GIGABYTE has already begun qualifying its G-series servers to support it with validation. Last, as the NVIDIA OVX architecture has reached a new milestone, GIGABYTE has begun production of purpose-built GIGABYTE servers based on the OVX 3.0 architecture to handle the performance and scale needed for real-time, physically accurate simulations, expansive 3D worlds, and complex digital twins.

NVIDIA Session (S52463) "Protect and Optimize AI Models on Development Platform"
GTC is a great opportunity for researchers and industries to share what they have learned in AI to help further discoveries. This time around, GIGABYTE has a talk by one of MyelinTek's senior engineers that is responsible for the research and development of MLOps technologies. The session demonstrates an AI solution using a pipeline function to quickly retrain new AI models and encrypt them.

On the heels of a weaker than expected 2022, International Data Corporation (IDC) has lowered its forecast for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets in 2023. Global shipments are now expected to reach 10.1 million units this year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. Despite the revised outlook, total AR/VR headset shipments are expected to grow 14% in 2023 and accelerate over the 2023-2027 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.6%.

AMD's EPYC lineup already features the new Zen 4 core designed for better performance and efficiency. However, since the release of EPYC Milan-X processors with 3D V-cache integrated into server offerings, we wondered if AMD will continue to make such SKUs for upcoming generations. According to the report from Wccftech, we have a leaked table of specifications that showcase what some seemingly top-end Genoa-X SKUs will look like. The two SKUs listed here are the "100-000000892-04" coded engineering sample and the "100-000000892-06" coded retail sample. With support for the same SP5 platform, these CPUs should be easily integrated with the existing offerings from OEM.

As far as specifications, this processor features 384 MBs of L3 cache coming from CCDs, 768 MBs of L3 cache from the 3D V-Cache stacks, and 96 MBs of L2 cache for a total of 1248 MBs in the usable cache. A 3 MB stack of L1 cache is also dedicated to instructions and primary CPU data. Compared to the regular Genoa design, this is a 260% increase in cache sizes, and compared to Milan-X, the Genoa-X design also progresses with 56% more cache. With a TDP of up to 400 Watts, configurable to 320 Watts, this CPU can boost up to 3.7 GHz. AMD EPYC Genoa-X CPUs are expected to hit the shelves in the middle of 2023.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, has issued a statement for its loyal customer base regarding the upcoming changes in the pricing of certain products: Dear and valued EK customers. In light of full transparency, we wanted to inform you of some changes that will be taking place in the coming weeks. Due to various factors like raw material sourcing difficulties, material prices, and labor costs, we will raise the prices of a selected range of our products.

These changes will occur on March 31, 2023, and the price increase will only affect certain products. Those prices will increase by 8% on average, applying to any selected product or product line our company currently offers.