Tenstorrent and MosChip Technologies announced today that they are partnering on design for Tenstorrent's cutting-edge RISC-V solutions. In selecting MosChip Technologies, Tenstorrent stands to strongly advance both its own and its customers' development of RISC-V solutions as they work together on Physical Design, DFT, Verification, and RTL Design services.

"MosChip Technologies is special in that they have unparalleled tape out expertise in design services, with more than 200 multi-million gate ASICs under their belt", said David Bennett, CCO of Tenstorrent. "Partnering with MosChip enables us to design the strongest RISC-V solution we can to serve ourselves, our partners, and our customers alike."

It's been almost 30 years since Lara Croft took her first snowy steps in the mountains of Peru. In about 30 days, console and PC players will get to re-experience Lara's first three globe-trotting adventures, with a fresh look and feel in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered on PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Windows PC. How did we get here? That story takes us to Austin, TX in 1998.

Aspyr & Lara go way back
A burgeoning video game company, Aspyr, launches Tomb Raider II on Macintosh computers. Aspyr continued with the Tomb Raider franchise until 2003, launching Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider III, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. We've always wanted to revisit these titles, but we always debated the right approach. For years, we worked through the right balance of preservation and modernization. And once we felt we nailed it, we got in touch with our friends at Crystal Dynamics.

Delays in the construction of its U.S. based semiconductor fab may have just cost the Chairman of TSMC his job, but the Koreans aren't faring any better. BusinessKorea reports that Samsung Electronics has pushed the timeline for mass-production in its upcoming Austin Texas-based fab to 2025. Its construction was originally slated to be complete by now, with risk production and testing through early 2024, and mass production later in the year, which has all been pushed to 2025. The company now hopes to push its first wafer toward the end of 2024, with mass production expected some time in 2025.

Samsung reportedly blames issues with U.S. Government subsidies and regulatory problems behind the delays. A key aspect of getting cutting edge Asian foundries such as TSMC and Samsung to invest in the U.S. had to do with government subsidies to help these fabs overcome the uphill task of doing so Stateside and making the venture profitable. The U.S. had a sense of urgency in bringing these companies over, as it saw a potential conflict across the Taiwan straits, which threatened to disrupt practically the entire global digital economy. The company's first production line in this foundry was expected to be 4 nm EUV FinFET. It remains to be seen just how relevant and cutting edge 4 nm EUV is in 2025, as both TSMC and Intel hope to have Nanosheet transistors and nodes such as the TSMC N2 and Intel 20A taking shape by then.

Gamers Nexus recently visited AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas—a previous video documented company employees discussing the history of Zen CPUs, and the showcasing of historical prototypes including (unreleased) Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D models. The YouTube channel promised that more AMD HQ tour footage would be shared over the next couple of weeks—their latest upload has (host) Steve Burke talking to representatives from various internal labs.

A notable detail extracted from Team Red's thermal laboratory was an old heat spreader concept for Zen 4 processors—the team evaluated whether a concealed vapor chamber would offer improved cooling performance versus conventional metal solutions. Their tests determined that the extra cost (not disclosed) required to integrate a vapor chamber was not worth the resultant 1°C temperature difference, when lined up against a traditional metal design IHS. AMD confirmed that the concept was not developed further since prototype chips were also found to generate heat exceeding expected normal levels, under continuous long-term workload conditions.

Gary McKay, General Manager at BioWare, states: "Hello, it's been a little while since I've checked in, and as you might have heard, there's a lot happening here at BioWare. Almost 12 years after launch, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) remains a fantastic success, continuing to welcome new players to its vast galaxy and entertaining veteran players with its evolving content. It's the longest-running live service Star Wars game ever and we're enormously proud of the work the team has done in creating, expanding, and maintaining this incredible game. We're delighted to have grown such a dedicated and passionate community through all these years. The future of the game and the community continues to be very bright.

I've been working closely with Keith Kanneg, who leads the SWTOR team, to give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve. And so, while EA will remain SWTOR's publisher, development of the game will move to our partner and friends at Broadsword, a boutique studio with expertise in managing online games. Both the Broadsword studio and SWTOR team members will be joining forces and working tirelessly to support "every player, every day," ensuring that these worlds and these communities continue to thrive and grow. Their Founder and President, Rob Denton, even has direct experience with SWTOR, having helped lead the team during the development and launch of the game during his time at EA.

Gamers Nexus has uploaded a video feature dedicated to the history of AMD's Zen CPU architecture—editor-in-chief and founder Stephen Burke ventured to Team Red's Austin, Texas-based test and engineering campus. Longer and more in-depth coverage of his lab tour will be released at a later date, but today's upload included an interesting segment covering unreleased hardware. The Gamers Nexus crew spent some time looking at several examples of current and past generation AMD 3D V-Cache CPUs. Prototype Ryzen 7000-series Zen 4 designs were shown off by principal engineer Amit Mehra and technical team member Bill Alverson. They also brought out older 5000-series Zen 3 units that never reached retail—the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X3D was demonstrated as having a 3.5 GHz base clock, and it can boost up to 4.1 GHz. The 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X3D had 3.5 GHz base and 4.4 GHz boost clocks.

Team Red only sells one AM4 3D V-Cache model at the moment, in the form of its well received Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. It was released over a year ago, but recent price cuts have resulted in increased unit sales—system builders looking to maximize the potential of their older generation Ryzen 5000-series compatible mainboards are snapping up 5800X3Ds. AMD could be readying a cheaper alternative, with previous reports proposing that a "Ryzen 5 5600X3D" is positioned to take on Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 series (with DDR4). The unreleased Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D have 3D V-Cache stacks on both of their CCDs (granting 192 MB of L3 cache), which is unique given that all retail 3D V-Cache CPUs (released so far) restrict this to a single CCD stack. Apparently AMD decided to stick with the latter setup due to it offering the best balance of performance and efficiency, plus gaming benchmarks demonstrated that there was not much of a difference between the configurations.

Bethesda tweeted out an information update directed at Xbox Series console owners - and it has caused a stir within the fanbase - Redfall will be locked to "Quality Mode" upon launch in early May. PC gaming enthusiasts will have plenty to laugh about with these newly announced graphical performance restrictions, set for the green team's pair of current generation consoles. The frame rate will be capped at a maximum of 30 frames per second on both Xbox Series X and S, under the "Quality" performance mode. The version tuned for Series X will be able to output at the 4K UHD resolution standard (3840 x 2160), and the pixel count will be reduced for Microsoft's weaker console offering, at 1440p QHD (2560 x 1440).

Bethesda states that a 60 frames per second "Performance Mode" for Xbox Series X|S will be added at a later (unspecified) date, presumably via an online patch issued through Xbox Live. No further details were provided regarding the decision to cap frame rates, all the more strange given that Redfall is due to launch very soon. Arkane Studios (the Austin, TX branch) declared last month that it was also working on a removal of the always online requirement for the game's single player element - again, no time period for release has been established for this reversal. Redfall has attracted mounds of controversy over the past two months - including Sony's attention through litigation.

Arkane Studios will be working on the removal of the single-player always online restriction from its upcoming Redfall first-person shooter game. This follows significant backlash expressed by gamers, after the presence of this function was brought to light in February 2023. In an interview conducted by Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith has revealed that the Austin, Texas-based branch has taken the negative feedback seriously. The development team is active in making changes to Redfall's underpinnings, so that an offline single-player experience becomes a possibility.

Smith acknowledged that modern games are intrinsically linked to online services, but these should offer functionality when offline circumstances occur. He imagined situations from the perspective of being a potential Redfall player: "They could say: 'Oh, my God, you're always online. If you get on your Steam, and it's not online, you freak out. If you get on your Xbox, and you can't get the latest patch, or see what your friends are doing, you freak out. You want to be always online!' But that response, I think, lacks empathy."

Electronic waste isn't the only environmental concern when it comes to technological manufacturing; toxic byproducts also have to be contended with, with tech companies spending millions of dollars to comply with environmental disposal regulations. Sometimes, however, things don't go as they're supposed to. Such was the case with a toxic spillage from Samsung's Austin, Texas manufacturing facility, which spilled the equivalent of 763,000 gallons of acid waste towards a nearby stormwater pond. This same pond ultimately feeds into a tributary of the Harris Branch Creek in Northeast Austin.

The spillage is estimated to have occurred over 100+ days, and the consequences are severe. According to a report published by an Environmental Officer working for Austin City Council, the spillage left "virtually no surviving aquatic life" due to it lowering the water body's pH down to levels between 2 and 3 (which is deadly toxic even for adult aquatic life). According to Samsung, it stopped the discharges as soon as they were noticed, saying that "a majority of the wastewater was contained on-site; however, a portion was inadvertently released into an unnamed small tributary that is upstream of Harris Branch Creek." The company further stated it has hired a cleanup specialist, with aims to "restore the tributary" and prevent dissemination of the toxic waste throughout the main branch of the Harris Branch Creek.