Apple today announced M1 Pro and M1 Max, the next breakthrough chips for the Mac. Scaling up M1's transformational architecture, M1 Pro offers amazing performance with industry-leading power efficiency, while M1 Max takes these capabilities to new heights. The CPU in M1 Pro and M1 Max delivers up to 70 percent faster CPU performance than M1, so tasks like compiling projects in Xcode are faster than ever. The GPU in M1 Pro is up to 2x faster than M1, while M1 Max is up to an astonishing 4x faster than M1, allowing pro users to fly through the most demanding graphics workflows.

M1 Pro and M1 Max introduce a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture to pro systems for the first time. The chips feature fast unified memory, industry-leading performance per watt, and incredible power efficiency, along with increased memory bandwidth and capacity. M1 Pro offers up to 200 GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 32 GB of unified memory. M1 Max delivers up to 400 GB/s of memory bandwidth—2x that of M1 Pro and nearly 6x that of M1—and support for up to 64 GB of unified memory. And while the latest PC laptops top out at 16 GB of graphics memory, having this huge amount of memory enables graphics-intensive workflows previously unimaginable on a notebook. The efficient architecture of M1 Pro and M1 Max means they deliver the same level of performance whether MacBook Pro is plugged in or using the battery. M1 Pro and M1 Max also feature enhanced media engines with dedicated ProRes accelerators specifically for pro video processing. M1 Pro and M1 Max are by far the most powerful chips Apple has ever built.

Intel's recently appointed CEO wasn't mincing words in a recent interview with CRN, where he claimed that Intel not only "have the best product" but also that "this period of time when people could say, "Hey, [AMD] is leading," that's over." We'd say them are fighting words, regardless of what various leaks have suggested, since Intel still has a lot to prove with its upcoming Alder Lake CPUs.

Gelsinger continues with "We have 80 percent market share. We have the best software assets that are available in the industry. We do the best job supporting our partners and our OEMs with it. We have an incredible brand that our channel partners, customers want and trust. Wow, that's a lot of assets in that. If the channel partner doesn't see value in that, I want to talk to him." It's pretty clear from this that Intel believes that they're doing a bang up job and if their customers don't see it, then they need a talking to.

If you were hoping for relief from the electronics shortages, then we have more bad news for you, as China is now being hit by power outages in various parts of the country. The outages are due to shortage in production, as China is trying to balance pollution vs. production, while at the same time trying to make sure its population doesn't feel the worst of the power shortage.

Factories in at least five provinces have suspended production to try and appease the government, which in turn will lead to delays in shipping whatever part or component they're making that is an important cog in the greater machinery that produces so many of the world's goods. Not all factories are affected and the suspension is obviously temporary, but it seems like we can expect a rolling production suspension over the next few months at the very least, which suggests that not everyone will get their new shiny toy from Santa this Christmas.

What can only be called a long running drama, the EU has once again put its foot down when it comes to chargers for various consumer electronics devices, although it's mostly about smartphones and regular old mobile phones these days. The whole thing took off some time in 2009, although back then, it was a voluntary effort and according to today's press release by the EU Commission, we're down from 30 to three "competing" standards (micro USB, lightning and USB-C), but apparently that is still not good enough.

As such, the EU Commission has now decided that USB-C is the answer to their prayers and it'll now be an enforced standard for a wide range of devices if they're to be allowed to be sold in the EU. We doubt this will go down well with many device manufacturers, Apple being the obvious one here, even though the company has been slowly transitioning to USB-C on its tablets, none of its phones are using USB-C today. The following device categories are affected: smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, portable speakers and handheld video game consoles.

Say what you want about Apple's ARM based SoC's, but the company has been pushing the envelope almost every time they've released a new chip. However, this year it would seem that even Apple isn't particularly excited about its new SoC, as the A15 Bionic is only described as 50 percent faster than the nearest competitor, which doesn't really say much about the actual performance.

Likewise, the improved GPU in the A15 Bionic is being touted as offering 30 percent faster graphics than leading competition, which says nothing about how much of an improvement it is over the previous generation from Apple. This time around, Apple is also binning its chips based on working GPU cores, as the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini only get four GPU cores, whereas the iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max and the iPad mini gets five GPU cores.It's possible that the cost of manufacturing 5 nm chips has something to do with this.

Apple has launched a host of new products, with a pair of new iPads and no less than four new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. Whether you're a fan of Apple products or not, there's no denying that the company has business acumen and delivers products that its target audience likes.

Starting with the new iPad, which is technically the least exciting product announced, we're looking at a 10.2-inch display with a resolution of 2160x1620 pixels and 264 ppi with 500 nits brightness. The iPad also features an Apple A13 SoC, an 8MP wide angle camera with a ƒ/2.4 aperture and 1080p30 video support. Maybe more importantly, at least in current times, the front facing camera has been updated to a 12MP ultra wide camera that can record video at 1080p60.

Despite the intensifying COVID-19 pandemic that swept Taiwan in 2Q21, the domestic OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) industry remained largely intact, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Global sales of large-sized TVs were brisk thanks to major sporting events such as the Tokyo Olympics and UEFA Euro 2020. Likewise, the proliferation of WFH and distance learning applications propelled the demand for IT products, while the automotive semiconductor and data center markets also showed upward trajectories. Taking into account the above factors, OSAT companies raised their quotes in response, resulting in a 26.4% YoY increase in the top 10 OSAT companies' revenue to US$7.88 billion for 2Q21.

TrendForce indicates that, in light of the ongoing global chip shortage and the growing production capacities of foundries/IDMs in the upstream semiconductor supply chain, OSAT companies gradually increased their CAPEX and expanded their fabs and equipment in order to meet the persistently growing client demand. However, the OSAT industry still faces an uncertain future in 2H21 due to the Delta variant's global surge and the health crisis taking place in Southeast Asia, home to a significant number of OSAT facilities.

Having only recently transitioned its Mac ecosystem to the Arm machine architecture, away from x86-64, Apple is finding itself in a position where it must prepare for an eventuality where NVIDIA withholds cutting-edge development of the Arm IP to itself. The democratized nature of the current Arm IP enables licensees like Apple to stay on the cutting-edge; since its holding company SoftBank does not make chips of its own. Apple is turning its attention to open-source machine architectures such as RISC-V, and reported started foundational work on the architecture that could eventually result in its own high-performance SoCs powering the iPhone, other iOS devices, wearables, and future generations of the Mac.

Epic Games Store, one of the many products of the Epic Games company, is the current number one contender of Steam game store, which used to be Valve's monopoly in the gaming market. Having another contender is nice and competition is always welcome, however, it doesn't seem like running a games store is a cheap venture. In the recent legal dispute between Apple and Epic in California state, we have discovered some interesting details about Epic Games Store (EGS) and its financial background. According to the documents appearing in the court, EGS is not considered profitable until 2027, at least.

Apple has told the court that "Epic lost around $181 million on EGS in 2019. Epic is projected to lose around $273 million on EGS in 2020. Indeed, Epic committed $444 million in minimum guarantees for 2020 alone, while projecting, even with 'significant' growth, only $401 million in revenue for that year. Epic acknowledges that trend will continue in the immediate future: Epic projects to lose around $139 million in 2021." This information shows that Epic has sunk a lot of cash in the store, however, the company expects EGS to become profitable at some point, where the original investment will be returned.

NVIDIA at GDC dropped a major hint at where it wants to take PC gaming post the Arm acquisition. The company is demonstrating its RTX real-time raytracing technology, and the DLSS performance enhancement, on an Arm processor by MediaTek. To the PC, this means NVIDIA is laying the foundations of gaming in the post-x86 world where it holds Arm IP; foundations that were dug up by Apple and its mighty M1 chip, based on Arm CPU technology.

Making this unequivocal, was MediaTek. "RTX is the most groundbreaking technology to come to PC gaming in the last two decades," said PC Tseng, general manager of MediaTek's Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit."MediaTek and NVIDIA are laying the foundation for a new category of Arm-based high-performance PCs." The Taiwan-based Arm SoC major has developed a new Arm-based PC processor called Kompanio 1200, which it hopes will power PC platforms much like the Apple M1 or the Qualcomm Compute Platforms.

The recent wave of COVID-19 outbreaks in India has weakened sales of retail storage products such as memory cards and USB drives, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. However, demand remains fairly strong in the main application segments due to the arrival of the traditional peak season and the growth in the procurement related to data centers. Hence, the sufficiency ratio of the entire market has declined further. NAND Flash suppliers have kept their inventories at a healthy level thanks to clients' stock-up activities during the past several quarters. Moreover, the ongoing shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs continues to affect the production of finished storage products. Taking account of these demand-side and supply-side factors, TrendForce forecasts that contract prices of NAND Flash products will rise marginally for 3Q21, with QoQ increases in the range of 5-10%.

While the stay-at-home economy generated high demand for notebook computers from distance learning and WFH applications last year, global notebook shipment for 2020 underwent a nearly 26% YoY increase, which represented a significant departure from the cyclical 3% YoY increase/decrease that had historically taken place each year, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The uptrend in notebook demand is expected to persist in 2021, during which notebook shipment will likely reach 236 million units, a 15% YoY increase. In particular, thanks to the surging demand for education notebooks, Chromebooks will become the primary growth driver in the notebook market. Regarding the shipment performance of various brands, Samsung and Apple will register the highest growths, with the former having Chromebooks account for nearly 50% of its total notebook shipment this year and the latter continuing to release MacBooks equipped with the M1 chip.

Qualcomm is trying to get into the PC space with their mobile Snapdragon chips, which offer great battery and decent performance. However, so far only Apple managed to get the right formula for developing custom low-power, high-performance chips. It is exactly Apple's M1 processor in question that Qualcomm intends to mimic. According to the recent interview with Qualcomm's new CEO Cristiano Amon, we are informed that Qualcomm plans to produce laptop chips that would directly compete with Apple's. That means that, despite the ecosystem differences of Apple M1 (macOS) and Qualcomm Snapdragon (Windows-on-Arm), the company wants to deliver equal if not better performance and great battery life.

With the recent acquisition of Nuvia, Qualcomm has a team of very talented engineers to back up its claims. The company also recently hired some of the developers behind Apple's M1 chip. The company notes that it will be using only the best solutions for its upcoming SoC, which will include a 5G modem. Mr. Amon has also noted the following:

We needed to have the leading performance for a battery-powered device. If Arm, which we've had a relationship with for years, eventually develops a CPU that's better than what we can build ourselves, then we always have the option to license from Arm.

Microsoft has opened the floodgates, and allowed the huge PC and Apple devices market to enter the Xbox ecosystem via Cloud Gaming. Now you don't need to have a gaming PC or Xbox console. Now, you can be a part of Microsoft's ecosystem with whatever device you use - Xbox will always be there with you. This is the vision Microsoft is aiming at with the extension of Cloud Gaming to (almost) anything - with a simple browser, via its (currently Beta) xCloud for PC. Provided you subscribe to the Games Pass Ultimate subscription tier, of course. Which Microsoft is offering at $1 a month, with two extra free months, and then $12.99 a month.

However, there's a catch: if you want to be on the receiving end of Microsoft's franchises via Cloud Gaming, you have to possess a supported controller - Xbox offerings are the surest bets; however, PS4's controller is also supported). This happens because the stream is being originated in custom Xbox Series X consoles on the cloud - Microsoft's best performant hardware to date. However, it seems a way to adapt the stream from Xbox Series X's controller inputs and adapt them to the PC's native mouse and keyboard controller wasn't found. Streams will also be constrained by a less than optimal (but still very respectable) 1080p and 60 FPS limitations. Other than those caveats, if you don't have a gaming-capable PC or Microsoft's latest family of consoles, this is the way to enjoy gaming within Microsoft's franchises and all other partners through the ecosystem. Microsoft had already launched an xCloud app for Android smartphones, thus capturing most of the market in one fell swoop. The press release follows.

NVIDIA's $40 billion takeover of Arm Holdings plc from SoftBank, got a shot in the arm, as three major licensees of the IP came out in support of the bid. These include Broadcom, MediaTek, and Marvell Technology Group. This development is key for NVIDIA to fight the perception built up by a rival faction, that the democratized nature of the Arm IP would get lost if a chipmaker like NVIDIA owns it. This rival faction is primarily led by Qualcomm.

It's interesting to note the individual backers of the NVIDIA takeover. There is nothing but love between Broadcom and Qualcomm, especially after the former's failed bid to acquire the latter. MediaTek is a major smartphone and IoT SoC maker, dominating the low-cost and mainstream smartphone segments. Marvell is big in datacenter and storage IP. Each of the three are results of huge IP consolidation over the past decade.

The M1 chip is usually found at a perception crossroads: fans of Apple tout its desktop CPU-level performance numbers in some workloads while comparatively sipping power (and even allowing for true fanless designs in the Apple Macbook Air), while non-fans are quick to point out that synthetic benchmarks aren't truly representative of performance. Whatever side of the fence you sit on (even if you straddle it by admitting that the M1 chip can actually outperform much more powerful and core-laden Ryzen CPUs in some specific workloads), the M1 has been a running success for the California-based company. So much so, in fact, that Apple more than doubled its shipments (a 111% increase) in 2021 compared to the previous year. The second manufacturer with the highest shipment growth is Acer, with 73% - and a slightly smaller overall shipment volume.

The success of Apple's M1 only served to increase Apple's confidence in its decision to abandon Intel, and the company is expected to announce the M1's successor sometime this year. Furthermore, a new version of MacOS further increases the divide to Intel-based Macs due to some features only working on their M1 counterparts. When you consider all of that, including the accelerating optimization of many applications for the platform (Capture One, Affinity, and most recently Adobe), the platform maturity that has been achieved in such a short while, and the announcement of even more powerful hardware for content creators, it may be the case that Apple actually keeps up its momentum and presents a rather competitive landscape to the Windows + x86 PC ecosystem (I won't use Wintel because that's, well, inaccurate and unfair to AMD). Apple is surely on the way to carve out more than its current 15,84% market share (which still places it in a second-place in the overall OS market).

Ming-Chi Kuo a renowned Apple analyst has recently predicted that we will see at least three new XR products from Facebook, Sony, and Apple in 2022. These predictions come from an analysis of recent lens orders from Taiwanese manufacturer Yujingguang by the three companies. Yujingguang is expected to supply the lenses used in the upcoming Oculus Quest 3, and PlayStation VR 2 along with being a "key-supplier" for Apple's headset. These new lenses will offer an increased field of view and improved image clarity over existing options. The company expects to supply 50% of the demand for Oculus Quest 3 equal to 22 million units while their exact supply for the devices from Sony and Apple is unknown.

When Intel launched its Tiger Lake processors for laptops, the company has foreseen a smooth integration by OEMs and plenty of design wins. While that has turned out to be true, there seems to be a big problem lurking in the OEM component supply chain. In the new Tiger Lake systems, the CPU carries support for Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 technologies. However, these protocols can not work on their own, as they require external power delivery controllers (PDC) to function. These PDCs are used to regulate and control all of the power circulating in the USB specification, and they come in a form of a separate chip. This chip is later integrated into PCBs of various systems implementing these technologies.

Today, we have a report coming from Igor's LAB, in which we are told that the availability of these chips could be very bad. Intel's OEMs are using Texas Instruments (TI) 994AD PDC, however, as the supply of these chips becomes scarce, OEMs are turning to TI 993AC/994AC chips. Intel advises OEMs, carrying these chips in their systems, to only communicate benefits of Thunderbolt 4 and exclude USB 4 mentions, or to communicate benefits of Thunderbolt 4 and reference USB 4 "compatibility." This means that every OEM using the alternative chips will get Intel's Thunderbolt 4 certifications, as the company plans to temporarily issue certifications with these chips included, while the supply chain regulates. TI's 993AC/994AC are assumed to not have the power and regulation capability of the USB 4 as the 994AD PDC can.

According to Bloomberg, which first predicted the arrival of Apple custom processors in MacBooks, we have another piece of information regarding Apple's upcoming MacBook Pro lineup, set to arrive this summer. As you are aware, MacBook Pro right now comes in two different variants. The first is a smaller 13-inch design that is powered by Apple's M1 chip, while the second is a 16-inch design powered by an Intel Core processor. However, it seems like that will no longer be the case when the next-generation lineup arrives. Starting this summer, all of the MacBook Pro models will have Apple's custom silicon powering these devices, which bring Intel's presence to an end.

And the successor to the now-famous M1 chip seems to be very good. As per the report, Apple is upgrading the architecture and the total core count. There are two different chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die. Both are 10-core designs, equipped with two small and eight big cores. The difference between the two is the total number of graphics cores enabled. The smaller version will have 16 graphics cores, while the bigger one will have 32 graphics cores. On the SoC, there will be an updated Neural Engine, for better AI processing. These new processors will come with up to 64 GB of RAM in selected configurations as well. The report also notes the arrival of HDMI port, SD card slot, and MagSafe for charging.

Nintendo Switch is one of the most successful gaming console launches in the past few years. It has seen massive consumer adoption, and Nintendo is even expanding its production. The only logical thing for other companies watching this would be to step in the game and launch their console. That is exactly was the latest rumor suggests about Apple. According to a rumor coming from the South Korean forum, Apple could be preparing a Switch-like design, just with its custom Apple ecosystem surrounding it. As the rumors suggest, the fruit company could get into the console gaming market by launching a product based on custom hardware. Rumors suggest that Apple could use a custom processor to power the console, which wouldn't be like M or A versions the company currently uses. Of course, this is just a rumor and it should be treated as such.

Since lobbying is both legal and regulated in the US (an attempt to bring attempts of influencing political power by corporations under legal boundaries, as opposed to being done in the dark), it feels like it was only a matter of time before big tech attempted to join under one banner. As such, the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC) has now been put together, and boasts of 64 members including Microsoft, Apple, TSMC, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Arm, and Samsung. It seems that all of these companies - which are often at odds with one another when it comes to competing for consumers' choice and money - have found enough similarities to get organized in an attempt to nudge political power in their favor.

SIAC said in a press release that its mission is to "advance federal policies that promote semiconductor manufacturing and research in the U.S. to strengthen America's economy, national security, and critical infrastructure." The first announcement from the SIAC following its foundation was its intention to support the CHIPS for America Act. The Act (supported by The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and President Joe Biden) has already been approved by the House and the Senate as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 but has not yet been funded. It seems that SIAC's first mission is to get the government to open up its $50 billion-deep pockets.

Today, Apple is awarding $45 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to Corning Incorporated, a supplier of precision glass for iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. The funding will expand Corning's manufacturing capacity in the US and drive research and development into innovative new technologies that support durability and long-lasting product life, building on both Apple and Corning's deep commitment to protecting the environment.

Corning has already received $450 million from Apple's $5 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund over the last four years. Apple's investment helps support more than 1,000 jobs across Corning's US operations in Kentucky and other facilities. The investment has also helped facilitate research and development into state-of-the-art glass processes, which led to the creation of Ceramic Shield, a new material that is tougher than any smartphone glass.

Apple's M1 custom processor has been widely adopted among the developer community. However, it is exactly this part of the M1 customer base that wants something different. For months, various developers have been helping with the adoption of the M1 processor for the Linux Kernel, which has today received preliminary support for the processor. The latest 5.13-RC1 release of the Linux Kernel is out, and it adds some basic functionality for the M1 processor. For now, it is some basic stuff like a simple bring up, however, much more has to be added. For example, the GPU support is still not done. Not even half-done. The M1 SoC is now able to boot, however, it takes a lot more work to get the full SoC working correctly.

Mr. Linus Torvalds, the Linux kernel developer, and its creator highlights that "This was - as expected - a fairly big merge window, but things seem to have proceeded fairly smoothly. Famous last words." According to one of the main activists for Linux on M1, Mr. Hector Martin, "This is just basic bring-up, but it lays a solid foundation and is probably the most challenging up-streaming step we'll have to do, at least until the GPU stuff is done." So it is still a long way before the M1 processor takes a full Linux kernel for a spin and the software becomes usable.

Samsung is readying a powerful Arm-based SoC rivaling Apple's groundbreaking M1 silicon, under its Exynos brand. This chip is being designed for thin-and-light notebooks, as well as premium tablets, essentially letting Samsung target Apple's MacBook (M1) and iPad Pro form-factors. Unlike Apple, Samsung won't be burdened with having to rally its ISV partners to develop specifically for its hardware; the company is preparing to launch notebooks in the second half of 2021 that are powered by a Windows 10 on Arm derivative. This would give the notebook access to all of the applications already developed for the OS, including Office and certain Adobe Creativity Suite apps. The M1-rivaling Exynos chip will pack the latest-generation 64-bit Arm CPU cores, as well as an integrated GPU designed by AMD.

TrendForce's investigations find that India has become the second largest market for smartphones since 2019. However, the recent worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country has severely impaired India's domestic economy and subsequently dampened various smartphone brands' production volume and sales (sell-in) performances there. TrendForce is therefore revising the forecasted YoY growth in global smartphone production for 2021 from 9.4% down to 8.5%, with a yearly production volume of 1.36 billion units and potential for further decreases going forward.

TrendForce further indicates that the top five smartphone brands (Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo) have either set up assembly plants in India or sought assistance from EMS providers with operations in the country. Hence, the share of made-in-India smartphones has been on the rise over the years, even though the majority of the domestically manufactured devices are still for meeting the demand of the home market. Judging from the current state of Indian smartphone manufacturing, TrendForce expects the second wave to reduce the country's smartphone production volume for 2Q21 and 3Q21 by a total of 12 million units, in turn resulting in a 7.5% YoY decrease in smartphone production in India for the whole year.