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.

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. announced it is bringing the power of next-generation AI to its workplace productivity tools with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Currently in testing with select commercial customers, Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with business data and the Microsoft 365 apps, to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and up-level skills.

Customers will experience Microsoft 365 Copilot in two ways
Microsoft 365 Copilot isn't just a better way of doing the same things. It's an entirely new way of working. Copilot will work alongside Microsoft 365 customers in two ways:

• First, it is embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps people use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more.
• Today, the company also announced an entirely new experience: Business Chat. Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and a customer's calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts to do things that people weren't able to do before. With natural language prompts like "tell my team how we updated the product strategy," Business Chat will generate a status update based on the morning's meetings, emails and chat threads.
  With Copilot, the customer is always in control. Customers decide what to keep, modify or discard. With these new tools, people can be more creative in Word, more analytical in Excel, more expressive in PowerPoint, more productive in Outlook and more collaborative in Teams.

Microsoft today unleashed a slew of updates for its March Patch Tuesday to address around 80 security vulnerabilities in the wild. To begin, Windows 10 patches KB5023696 and KB5023697 address system and security issues in Windows 10 versions 22H2, 21H2, 21H1, 1809, and 1607 as well as Windows Server 2016. These are being deployed as non-optional updates and will be automatically installed via Windows Update (unless you run a modified or locked down install). Windows 10 1507 also received a small patch, KB5023713, which similarly addresses security fixes as well as hyperlinks in Excel.

Microsoft today also releases fixes for two critical zero-day vulnerabilities that were being actively exploited as far back as April of 2022. The two exploited vulnerabilities are CVE-2023-23397 and CVE-2023-24880. CVE-2023-23397 is an elevated privilege attack that allows crafting special emails that can force a target's device to connect to remote URLs and transmit the Windows account's Net-NTLMv2 hash. CVE-2023-24880 is a Windows SmartScreen vulnerability that can be exploited to create executables which bypass the Windows Mark of the Web security warning.

According to TrendForce's latest survey of the global foundry market, electronics brands began adjusting their inventories in 2Q22, but foundries were unable to rapidly adapt to this development because they reside in the more upper portion of the supply chain. Moreover, revising procurement quantities of long-term foundry contracts takes time as well. Hence, only some tier-2 and -3 foundries were able to immediately respond to the changes in their clients' demand. Also, among them, 8-inch wafer foundries made a more pronounced reduction in their capacity utilization rates. As for the remaining foundries, the downward corrections that they made to their capacity utilization rates did not become noticeable until 4Q22. Hence, in 4Q22, the quarterly total revenue of the global top 10 foundries registered a QoQ decline for the first time after 13 consecutive quarters of positive growth. The quarterly total revenue of the top 10 foundries came to US$33,530 million, reflecting a drop of 4.7% from 3Q22. Moving into 1Q23, TrendForce projects that the quarterly total revenue of the top 10 will show an even steeper drop on account of seasonality and the uncertain macroeconomic situation.

Earlier this week a 160 GB hoard consisting of 2869 files from Acer internal systems appeared for sale on a shady internet forum. The hacker claims to have stolen the data over the course of February 2023, and that it contains valuable files including confidential product data, technical manuals, binaries, backend infrastructure data, product model documentation, BIOS and ROM components, product keys, ISOs, and internal information on various laptops, phones, and tablets. Alongside the list of ill-gotten data they provided a snapshot of the trove to prove the authenticity, and requested payment via the cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).

Acer confirmed the breach on Tuesday to multiple sources stating:

We have recently detected an incident of unauthorized access to one of our document servers for repair technicians. While our investigation is ongoing, there is currently no indication that any consumer data was stored on that server."

According to TrendForce's latest survey of the server market, many cloud service providers (CSPs) have begun large-scale investments in the kinds of equipment that support artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This development is in response to the emergence of new applications such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence of things (AIoT), and edge computing since 2018. TrendForce estimates that in 2022, AI servers that are equipped with general-purpose GPUs (GPGPUs) accounted for almost 1% of annual global server shipments. Moving into 2023, shipments of AI servers are projected to grow by 8% YoY thanks to ChatBot and similar applications generating demand across AI-related fields. Furthermore, shipments of AI servers are forecasted to increase at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2022 to 2026.

EK, the premium water-cooling gear manufacturer, is launching a new distro plate for the Lian Li O11D XL chassis. The distro has a built-in EK-Quantum Lumen screen, a 7" IPS monitor that can be seen from the front of the case. It is designed to provide advanced water cooling with the latest 3rd-generation SATA-powered D5 pump, removing the need for additional 4-pin Molex cables. The Reflection² series distribution plates are EK-Matrix7 compliant.

The EK-Quantum Reflection² PC-O11D XL D5 PWM D-RGB - Screen Edition is a custom water-cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution that seamlessly fits into the front of the case showing off a beautiful 7" IPS screen with an aluminum frame. This waterway is also equipped with six innovative push-in ports that come with female G1/4" threaded adapters. The idea is that users can easily assemble the whole radiator + fittings + tubing combo and use these push-in adapters to simply slide it into the distribution plate. The bottom radiator is mounted via a special metal bracket.

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

According to TrendForce's research, global DRAM revenue fell by 32.5% QoQ to US$12, 281 million for 4Q22. The QoQ decline for 4Q22 is larger than the QoQ decline of 28.8% for 3Q22 and comes close to the QoQ decline of 36% for the final quarter of 2008, when the global economy was in the midst of a major financial crisis. The main cause of the steep revenue drop in 4Q22 was the plummeting overall ASP. DRAM suppliers experienced a rapid accumulation of inventory in 3Q22 due to a freeze in buyers' demand. Subsequently, suppliers were much more energetic in price negotiations for 4Q22 contracts as they were struggling for market share. Among the major categories of DRAM products, server DRAM suffered the sharpest price drop in 4Q22. Contract prices of DDR4 and DDR5 server DRAM products registered QoQ drops of 23~28% and 30~35% respectively.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.

NVIDIA today announced that company founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the opening keynote at GTC 2023, covering the latest advancements in generative AI, the metaverse, large language models, robotics, cloud computing and more. More than 250,000 people are expected to register for the four-day event, which will include 650+ sessions from researchers, developers and industry leaders in virtually every computing domain. GTC will also feature a fireside chat with Huang and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, plus talks by DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, Stability AI's Emad Mostaque and many others.

"This is the most extraordinary moment we have witnessed in the history of AI," Huang said. "New AI technologies and rapidly spreading adoption are transforming science and industry, and opening new frontiers for thousands of new companies. This will be our most important GTC yet."

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced two additions to the popular DeathAdder line - the Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition and the Razer DeathAdder V3.

Designed in collaboration with world renowned esports player and League of Legends icon Lee "Faker" Sang-Hyeok, the DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition showcases a unique personalized design for the Unkillable Demon King, while equipped with high-performance hardware. The cult-favorite esports mouse has always been Faker's weapon of choice, with the DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition as a testament. Separately, the DeathAdder V3 presents a wired option updated with Razer's latest mice technology, for the best advantage in competitive play.

Since 2022, DRAM suppliers have been adjusting their product mixes so as to assign more wafer input to server DRAM products while scaling back the wafer input for mobile DRAM products. This trend is driven by two reasons. First, the demand outlook is bright for the server DRAM segment. Second, the mobile DRAM segment was in significant oversupply during 2022. Moving into 2023, the projections on the growth of smartphone shipments and the increase in the average DRAM content of smartphones remain quite conservative. Therefore, DRAM suppliers intend to keep expanding the share of server DRAM in their product mixes. According to TrendForce's analysis on the distribution of the DRAM industry's total bit output for 2023, server DRAM is estimated to comprise around 37.6%, whereas mobile DRAM is estimated to comprise around 36.8%. Hence, server DRAM will formally surpass mobile DRAM in terms of the portion of the overall supply within this year.

iBUYPOWER, a leading manufacturer of high-performance custom gaming PCs, today announced the new RDY Ouro Kronii system featuring the special edition Y60 Ouro Kronii PC case.

"It's been an incredible journey collaborating with Kronii and hololive Engish," said King Perez de Tagle, Marketing Executive Producer of HYTE and iBUYPOWER. "It's about time The Warden of Time gets a high-performance gaming PC and the RDY Ouro Kronii limited edition systems are ready to ship. stay tuned for even more!" The RDY Ouro Kronii will boast the latest Intel Core i9 13900K or KF CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti GPU, Z790 motherboard, and the custom Y60 Ouro Kronii PC case. The RDY Ouro Kronii will provide users with maximum performance in virtually any application with reliable components and iBUYPOWER's expert assembly.

EK, the leading liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is announcing the availability of two high-performance liquid cooling solutions for the AMD Ryzen processor family based on the AMD AM5 socket. These single-socket AM5 water blocks are available in both the standard and the 1U-compatible format designed specifically for server racks.

EK-Pro CPU WB AM5 Ni + Inox
Being a dedicated workstation-grade water block for AMD AM5 processors, the EK-Pro CPU WB AM5 Ni + Inox water block features two standard G1/4" threaded ports on its top. Built with performance, reliability, serviceability, and no compromises in mind, this enterprise-grade cooling solution is intended for desktops, workstations, and taller server racks. The water block's top is CNC-machined from durable black POM Acetal, and the hold-down bracket is made of laser-cut stainless steel.

Atos today announces a contract to build and install a new high-performance computer for the Max Planck Society, a world-leading science and technology research organization. The new system will be based on Atos' latest BullSequana XH3000 platform, which is powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct accelerators. In its final configuration, the application performance will be three times higher than the current "Cobra" system, which is also based on Atos technologies.

The new supercomputer, with a total order value of over 20 million euros, will be operated by the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) in Garching near Munich and will provide high-performance computing (HPC) capacity for many institutes of the Max Planck Society. Particularly demanding scientific projects, such as those in astrophysics, life science research, materials research, plasma physics, and AI will benefit from the high-performance capabilities of the new system.

Today, Comcast accelerates the nation's largest and fastest multi-gig deployment and announced that its latest Xfinity 10G network upgrade will be launched to 10 million homes and businesses by the end of this month. These locations now have the foundational network enhancements in place to begin deploying DOCSIS 4.0, setting the stage for the introduction of new symmetrical multi-gigabit Internet options before the end of 2023 that can be delivered across existing networks with less cost.

To date, and ahead of schedule, more than 40 markets across Comcast service areas have implemented network improvements including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and others. The full deployment of these technical capabilities will reach more than 50 million homes and businesses by 2025. In addition to fast speeds, DOCSIS 4.0 technologies will deliver even greater reliability and capacity to power multiple data-intensive applications.

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

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