Jim Ryan, the current President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has once again confirmed his company's committal to staggering the launch of PlayStation ports onto the PC platform. Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu published an interview last week, and western news outlets have spent time over the past weekend translating and analyzing this article. The contents/discussion focuses mostly on Sony Corporation's strategies for its PlayStation 5 console in their native market. Ryan addresses the interviewer's question about the growing popularity of gaming on PCs in Japan (the nation has historically favored home console platforms): "I think that's a very good thing. When considering the multifaceted development of game IP, PCs are indispensable for allowing more people to enjoy games in a variety of ways. I think (that) more is better."

Ryan was asked about the possibility of simultaneous first-party game launches on PS5 and PC platforms in the future - his answer points to the company not deviating from its normal operating strategy: "We also fully understand the importance of PS5 exclusive titles. As I mentioned earlier, PlayStation Studios' main responsibility is to make games for the latest PlayStation hardware that players will enjoy. We are increasing the number of PS5 exclusive games, and staggering the release of the PC versions." Ryan claims to have received positive feedback from gamers about this matter: "I often have the opportunity to ask game fans for their opinions, and when I ask them how they feel about the time lag, they often say they feel the release of a PC version two or three years after the release of the PlayStation version is acceptable. It's a community that we should cherish the most. We will continue to listen to the voices of game fans and develop various titles in a multifaceted manner."

In its recent Second Quarter of the Fiscal Year 2023 conference, Synopsys issued interesting information about the recent moves of chip developers and their usage of artificial intelligence. As the call notes, over 200+ chips have been taped out using Synopsys DSO.ai place-and-route (PnR) tool, making it a successful commercially proven AI chip design tool. The DSO.ai uses AI to optimize the placement and routing of the chip's transistors so that the layout is compact and efficient with regard to the strict timing constraints of the modern chip. According to Aart J. de Geus, CEO of Synopsys, "By the end of 2022, adoption, including 9 of the top 10 semiconductor vendors have moved forward at great speed with 100 AI-driven commercial tape-outs. Today, the tally is well over 200 and continues to increase at a very fast clip as the industry broadly adopts AI for design from Synopsys."

This is an interesting fact that means that customers are seeing the benefits of AI-assisted tools like DSO.ai. However, the company is not stopping there, and a whole suite of tools is getting an AI makeover. "We unveiled the industry's first full-stack AI-driven EDA suite, sydnopsys.ai," noted the CEO, adding that "Specifically, in parallel to second-generation advances in DSO.ai we announced VSO.ai, which stands for verification space optimization; and TSO.ai, test space optimization. In addition, we are extending AI across the design stack to include analog design and manufacturing." Synopsys' partners in this include NVIDIA, TSMC, MediaTek, Renesas, and IBM Research, all of which used AI-assisted tools for chip design efforts. A much wider range of industry players is expected to adopt these tools as chip design costs continue to soar as we scale the nodes down. With future 3 nm GPU costing an estimated $1.5 billion, 40% of that will account for software, and Synopsys plans to take a cut in that percentage.

Ampere Computing today announced a new AmpereOne Family of processors with up to 192 single threaded Ampere cores - the highest core count in the industry. This is the first product from Ampere based on the company's new custom core, built from the ground up and leveraging the company's internal IP. CEO Renée James, who founded Ampere Computing to offer a modern alternative to the industry with processors designed specifically for both efficiency and performance in the Cloud, said there was a fundamental shift happening that required a new approach.

"Every few decades of compute there has emerged a driving application or use of performance that sets a new bar of what is required of performance," James said. "The current driving uses are AI and connected everything combined with our continued use and desire for streaming media. We cannot continue to use power as a proxy for performance in the data center. At Ampere, we design our products to maximize performance at a sustainable power, so we can continue to drive the future of the industry."

Sega Sammy Holdings CEO Haruki Satomi and CFO Koichi Fukazawa were took part in a Q&A session last month, as a follow-on to the company releasing its financial reports for the past fiscal year. An English translation of the event's notes has only just become available this week, with news outlets picking up on a key item - computer game pricing. General life costs have been climbing in recent times, and games publishers have been adjusting MSRPs due to the rising expense of developing new content, especially in the AAA sector.

The Sega executive team has noticed this industry trend and is pondering over the options - the session notes state: "In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year...We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases, while also keeping an eye on market conditions." Nintendo has recently joined the likes of Sony, Activision, 2K and Ubisoft in bumping up MSRP to $70, but this pricing decision has only affected the latest Legend of Zelda title - Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo of America's CEO Doug Bowser defended the move (prior to the game's release) - he argued that the direct sequel to Breath of the Wild would offer fantastic value for money.

NVIDIA's co-founder and current CEO Jensen Huang will be receiving a slightly reduced salary this year, due to his company not meeting some financial goals. Team Green has published their report for the financial year of 2023, and several tech news outlets have been poring over the details - The Register was the first to spot that the intrepid leather jacketed leader was not being as handsomely compensated (when cross-referenced with previous FY results). Huang's pay has been cut by almost $2.5 million, so a 10% fall from before - given that he is already a billionaire, going into double digits, this verdict is a minor sting to the proverbial (matching leather?) wallet.

The company's annual review (for FY 2023) document provides a reason for select executive pay cuts: "Fiscal 2023 was a challenging year, with macroeconomic headwinds, channel inventory corrections, COVID-19 and product architecture transitions affecting several of our businesses. As a result, our Fiscal 2023 revenue and non-GAAP Operating Income performance fell short of the CC's (compensation committee's) pre-established goals for executive compensation." Huang will not be hurting too much from the small pay cut since he is set to earn $21.356 million in total, thanks to generous stock awards and miscellaneous benefits outside of his base salary (now a mere $996,216). NVIDIA is expected to rake in even more cash across the coming year, or two, due to growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) processing. Tech companies are snapping up NVIDIA's enterprise-grade H100 GPUs in anticipation of an AI-powered future.

Barron's Magazine has been on a technology industry kick this week and published their interview with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su on May 3. The interviewer asks Su about her views on Moore's Law and it becomes apparent that she remains a believer of Gordon Moore's (more than half-century old) prediction - Moore, an Intel co-founder passed away in late March. Su explains that her company's engineers will need to innovate in order to carry on with that legacy: "I would certainly say I don't think Moore's Law is dead. I think Moore's Law has slowed down. We have to do different things to continue to get that performance and that energy efficiency. We've done chiplets - that's been one big step. We've now done 3-D packaging. We think there are a number of other innovations, as well." Expertise in other areas is also key in hitting technological goals: "Software and algorithms are also quite important. I think you need all of these pieces for us to continue this performance trajectory that we've all been on."

When asked about the challenges involved in advancing CPU designs within limitations, Su responds with: "Yes. The transistor costs and the amount of improvement you're getting from density and overall energy reduction is less from each generation. But we're still moving (forward) generation to generation. We're doing plenty of work in 3 nanometer today, and we're looking beyond that to 2 nm as well. But we'll continue to use chiplets and these type of constructions to try to get around some of the Moore's Law challenges." AMD and Intel continue to hold firm with Moore's Law, even though slightly younger upstarts disagree (see NVIDIA). Dr. Lisa Su's latest thoughts stay consistent with her colleague's past statements - AMD CTO Mark Papermaster reckoned that the theory is pertinent for another six to eight years, although it could be a costly endeavor for AMD - the company believes that it cannot double transistor density every 18 to 24 months without incurring extra expenses.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox Game Studios, appeared on the popular (Xbox-themed) Kinda Funny Games podcast earlier this week for a video interview (Xcast Episode 137). The almost 45-minute long conversation touched upon several topics relating to gaming matters at Microsoft, with the hosts managing to corner Spencer about the recent (not so good) launch of Bethesda and Arkane's horror FPS Redfall. Gaming community feedback has not exactly been encouraging in the wake of the game's release two days ago, and Spencer admits that he shares similar sentiments: "I'll just say all up, there's nothing that's more difficult for me than disappointing the Xbox community. I've been a part of it for a long time. I obviously work on Xbox, head of the business, have a lot of friends, get a lot of feedback. And just to watch the community lose confidence, be disappointed, I'm disappointed. I'm upset with myself. I revisit our process - I think back to the announcement of 60 FPS and then we weren't shipping 60 FPS, that was our punch in the chin, rightfully, a couple of weeks ago. And then seeing the game come out and the critical response was not what we wanted, and it's disappointing."

He continues his thought about reacting to feedback this early on in the process: "What can we learn? What can we get better? One thing I'll fight is what went wrong. There's clearly quality and execution things we can do, but one thing I won't do is push against creative aspirations of our teams. Then a lot of people will say, hey, you've got teams, teams know how to do one kind of game, just force them to go do the one kind of game they have a proven track record for. I'm just not a believer in that. Maybe that means I'll under deliver for some of our fans out there. But when a team like Rare wants to do Sea of Thieves, when a team like Obsidian wants to do Grounded, when Tango wants to go do Hi-Fi (Rush) when everybody probably thought they were doing The Evil Within 3, I want to give the teams the creative platform to go and push their ability, push their aspirations."

TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Development Council) today announced that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the keynote address in person at COMPUTEX 2023. The keynote will take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Hall 2 on Monday, May 29, at 11:00 AM (UTC+8), and cover advanced developments in the fields of accelerated computing and artificial intelligence. Welcome to join and Register Now. A livestream and replay of the keynote will be available here.

NVIDIA, the pioneer in accelerated computing that enabled the AI revolution, announced at its most recent GTC conference a series of breakthroughs in generative AI, simulation and collaboration that are boosting productivity and efficiency for leading companies around the world. At this year's COMPUTEX Forum, NVIDIA's Greg Estes, VP of Corporate Marketing and Developer Programs, will deliver a talk entitled "Racing Towards the Industrial Metaverse", sharing how NVIDIA and its partners are using Omniverse, generative AI, and accelerated computing to enable an exciting new era of 3D workflows. His talk will take place on Tuesday, May 30, from 2:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Respawn Entertainment boss Vince Zampella has been engaged in press duties for the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor marketing cycle this week, and is likely having to field questions about the sci-fi action adventure's poor technical performance on PC and consoles alike. In an interview conducted by Barron's Magazine a few days ago, Zampella was probably relieved to have the focus shift to a happier topic - the Titanfall franchise. He seemed to be quite open to the prospect of making a third game: "I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn't come. But I would love to see it happen is the real answer." His studio was founded in order to develop the (multiplayer only) first-person shooter Titanfall (2014), a platform exclusive on PC/Origin and Xbox One. Prior to starting Respawn Entertainment in 2010, Zampella and colleague Jason West were lead designers on the mainline Call of Duty series at Infinity Ward/Activision.

A sequel to the original Titanfall arrived in late 2016 to rave reviews from the press and hardcore fans of the series - the inclusion of a single player campaign was considered to be a highlight - this story campaign borrowed gameplay ideas (to the surprise of many) from Valve's Half Life series, and added time traveling elements to an already mind-bending mobility system. In an unfortunate move for Zampella and Respawn, publisher Electronic Arts decided to launch Titanfall 2 during a very busy release window - the main competition at the time being Activision's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and (EA's own) Battlefield 1. A mainstream crowd proceeded to ignore the Titanfall sequel thanks to poor marketing on EA's part and a crowded games market - sales figures were underwhelming, even with a PS4 version, and the game was heavily discounted within a couple of months of release. Respawn moved on to create a spin-off multiplayer shooter - the smash hit free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends, and the Star Wars Jedi series.

Google has announced that the company is officially merging its subsidiaries focused on artificial intelligence to form a single group. More specifically, Google Brain and DeepMind companies are now joining forces to become a single unit called Google DeepMind. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai notes: "This group, called Google DeepMind, will bring together two leading research groups in the AI field: the Brain team from Google Research, and DeepMind. Their collective accomplishments in AI over the last decade span AlphaGo, Transformers, word2vec, WaveNet, AlphaFold, sequence to sequence models, distillation, deep reinforcement learning, and distributed systems and software frameworks like TensorFlow and JAX for expressing, training and deploying large scale ML models."

As a CEO of this group, Demis Hassabis, a previous CEO of DeepMind, will work together with Jeff Dean, now promoted to Google's Chief Scientist, where he will report to the Sundar. In the spirit of a new role, Jeff Dean will work as a Chief Scientist at Google Research and Google DeepMind, where he will set the goal for AI research at both units. This corporate restructuring will help the two previously separate teams work together on a single plan and help advance AI capabilities faster. We are eager to see the upcoming developments these teams accomplish.

Elon Musk has formed a new AI-focused company, as reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. The entity registered under the name X.AI was incorporated via a filing in Nevada last month, and Musk appears to be listed as the company's only director with Jared Birchall joining him under the role of secretary. Birchall heads the Musk family office, Excession LLC, and he serves as CEO of Neuralink - a neurotechnology company that was co-founded by Musk back in 2016. It is widely speculated that Birchall serves as a type of fixer - go watch the TV series "Ray Donovan" if you would like to observe a crude (and obviously fictional) example - in corporate affairs.

Reports emerged earlier this week, with Musk being at the forefront of a massive purchase of GPUs destined to arrive shortly at his data centers - this impressive chunk of hardware is speculated to power AI-related number crunching at Twitter in the near future. The founding of X.AI could provide another home for a portion of the 10,000 GPU order, but industry insiders firmly believe that Twitter will need to tool up quickly for its new AI-driven endeavor - the GPUs will likely be set to work on a ChatBot system to underpin the social media platform. Musk has already recruited researchers from DeepMind and setup a lab for them at one of his operations. It remains to be seen how the X.AI startup will run alongside efforts at other Musk-owned companies - it is theorized that he wants to beat OpenAI at their own game, and compete with similar undertakings at Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

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.

Nintendo ceased selling products and wound down its operations in Russia last March, soon after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces. Other notable games software and hardware companies also announced their withdrawal at a similar time. Microsoft/Xbox, Sony/PlayStation, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt, Sega, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive are among a group that discontinued the sale and distribution of games products in Russian territory markets. Lawmakers within Russia have taken a fairly lax stance on the import of consumer and industrial goods - it is legal to do so, even minus a rightsholder's approval. It seems that a couple of Nintendo of Russia employees have taken advantage of loose import regulations in the past few months.

According to a news piece published online by Kommersant (a Russian politics and business newspaper) a relatively new operation registered under the company name "Achivka LLC" is involved in the sale and distribution of Nintendo games in Russian territories. Nintendo Russia CEO Yasha Haddaji is reported to be the leader and majority owner of Achivka LLC, and former corporate events manager Ksenia Kachalova is listed as being a minority stakeholder in the company. The operation's premises appear to match the exact address for Nintendo of Russia. The firm is involved in the importing (from an unknown source) and selling of Nintendo games - the Kommersant article includes photographic evidence - a physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered is demonstrated as bearing an Achivka stick-on label. The English translation of the company name is Achievement, which is an appropriate word association in the world of high score driven computer games.

Update Apr 18th: Nintendo has confirmed that Yasha Haddazhi, CEO of the Russian Office, remains as a current employee of the international company - but only on a temporary basis. Nintendo continues to distance itself from Achivka LLC and the selling of rebadged products in Russian territories. See below for more details.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Arm today announced a multigeneration agreement to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chips (SoCs) on the Intel 18A process. The collaboration will focus on mobile SoC designs first, but allow for potential design expansion into automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), data center, aerospace and government applications. Arm customers designing their next-generation mobile SoCs will benefit from leading-edge Intel 18A process technology, which delivers new breakthrough transistor technologies for improved power and performance, and from IFS's robust manufacturing footprint that includes U.S.- and EU-based capacity.

"There is growing demand for computing power driven by the digitization of everything, but until now fabless customers have had limited options for designing around the most advanced mobile technology," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation. "Intel's collaboration with Arm will expand the market opportunity for IFS and open up new options and approaches for any fabless company that wants to access best-in-class CPU IP and the power of an open system foundry with leading-edge process technology."

Electronic Arts is getting ready to lay off upwards of six percent of its workforce, as the company restructures its game portfolio. The company had some 12,900 employees globally in March 2022 according to Games Industry.biz and should as such be laying off some 775 employees. This is far less than we've seen from other companies and it won't affect all of EA's subsidiaries equally. The EA CEO—Andew Wilson—sent out a memo to the company employees that have been posted publicly on EA's website. It seems like EA will make the cuts fairly quickly, as the company is expected to be done informing affected employees sometime early in its next fiscal year, which starts on April first.

It's unclear exactly where EA will be making the cuts and according to Games Industry.biz the company has already trimmed some 200 employees that were working in support, most of them specifically supporting Apex Legends. That said, Apex Legends, EA Sports FIFA 23 and The Sims are the only games mentioned in the announcement, so presumably those titles are safer than others. At the same time, TPU spoke to a contact at a different EA subsidiary and there had been no mention of any redundancies there and the person in question works on another successful series of games. We'll have to wait and see if EA drops any projects the company is working on or if some titles end up being discontinued earlier than expected, due to lack of support from the teams that built the games. Regardless, EA is about to re-focus on what should be its more successful titles, which may or may not be a successful strategy for the company.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has issued the news, via a tweet, of Raja Koduri's departure from the silicon giant. Koduri, who currently sits as Executive Vice President and Chief Architect, will be leaving the company at the end of this month. This ends a five year long tenure at Intel, where he started as Chief Architect back in 2017. He intends to form a brand new startup operation that will focus on AI-generative software for computer games. His tweeted reply to Gelsinger reads: "Thank you Pat and Intel for many cherished memories and incredible learning over the past 5 years. Will be embarking on a new chapter in my life, doing a software startup as noted below. Will have more to share in coming weeks."

Intel has been undergoing numerous internal restructures, and Koduri's AXG Graphics Unit was dissolved late last year. He was the general manager of the graphic chips division prior to its split, and returned to his previous role as Chief Architect at Intel. The company stated at the time that Koduri's new focus would be on: "growing efforts across CPU, GPU and AI, and accelerating high-priority technical programmes."

Reykjavík, Iceland - 21 March 2023 - CCP Games, creators of sci-fi spacefaring MMO EVE Online, announced today that $40M in financing has been secured from external partners. This financing will allow CCP Games to build upon the discoveries of its research & development team to enable the full-scale development of a new AAA title utilizing blockchain technology, set within the EVE Universe.

"Since its inception, CCP Games' vision has been to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life. Now, with advancements made within blockchain, we can forge a new universe deeply imbued with our expertise in player agency and autonomy, empowering players to engage in new ways. This financing has marked an exciting frontier in our studio history as we begin our third decade of virtual world operations. We are humbled by the confidence from our partners in the development of this new title," said CCP Games CEO, Hilmar V. Pétursson.

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has declared that he is resigning from his position effectively immediately. In his statement, posted via a Twitch Blog and his personal Twitter page on Thursday March 16, a decision to spend more time with his family is given as the main reason for quitting his executive role: "With my first child just born, I've been reflecting on my future with Twitch." Shear writes. "Twitch often feels to me like a child I've been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone."

Shear was a co-founding partner of a humble entity that would eventually evolve into Twitch.tv, he is stepping down after serving as leader since the company's inception: "My work on Twitch began in October 2006, when Justin, Michael, and I drove across the country from New York to San Francisco. Kyle would join us three short months later, when we got him a one way ticket to fly out to San Francisco during MIT's externship week." He continues the story: "Justin.tv, Inc. turned into Twitch Inc., Twitch Inc. became a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon, and along the way we have grown to more than 8 million streamers a month."

Nintendo of America CEO Doug Bowser granted a rare interview to Associated Press, presumably as part of promotional duties prior to the February 17 opening of its Super Nintendo World theme park at Universal Studios Hollywood. In an article published on March 13, AP News journalist Greg Keller threw in a surprise query about the $70 asking price for Nintendo's upcoming sequel to 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Fan backlash to Nintendo of America's price hiking reached fever pitch earlier in 2023, and the company has not been very communicative with reasons for increasing the pricing of certain flagship Switch titles, until now.

Bowser's response was suitably neutral, but plenty can be read into it: "We look at what the game has to offer. I think fans will find this is an incredibly full, deeply immersive experience. The price point reflects the type of experience that fans can expect when it comes to playing this particular game. This isn't a price point that we'll necessarily have on all our titles. It's actually a fairly common pricing model either here or in Europe or other parts of the world, where the pricing may vary depending on the game itself." It is clear that he thinks that Tears of the Kingdom presents good value for money, given the standard of content being offered to the prospective player. It is possible that he is hinting that upcoming remakes of legacy Legend of Zelda games will be offered at sub-$70 prices. The recently released Metroid Prime Remastered debuted digitally at $39.99 on the Nintendo eShop, and physical copies have been sold for less at retailers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly set an ambitious end of the year launch window for the company's mixed reality headset. Operations Chief Jeff Williams has also pushed in favor of a late 2023 debut of the much delayed VR/AR hybrid product. According to anonymous insider sources who have divulged juicy details to the Financial Times, the decision to launch in 2023 has caused an internal clash with the Apple Design team at its Cupertino, California headquarters.

The Apple Park design team has called for additional development time, this would push the headset's launch back by several years. Insiders claim that the design team would prefer to have more time to refine the product's aesthetics and functionality, with emphasis on creating a sleek and more lightweight visor. Doubts about the efficacy of the headset's proposed internal technology were also expressed, the designers would prefer to delay until Augmented Reality development reaches a satisfying level of maturity.

IQM Quantum Computers (IQM), the European leader in quantum computers, announced today it has been selected to deliver quantum processing units for the first Spanish quantum computer to be installed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and integrated into the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, the most powerful in Spain. "This is another example of our European leadership, demonstrating our commitment to advancing the Spanish quantum ecosystem in collaboration with both public and private institutions. Through our office in Madrid, we are also able to provide the necessary support for this project."

IQM is a member of the consortium led by Spanish companies Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech and GMV that was selected by Quantum Spain, an initiative promoted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation through the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA) in December 2022, to build the first quantum computer for public use in Southern Europe.

NVIDIA has recently reported its Q4 earnings, and the earnings call following the report contains exciting details about the company and its plans to open up to new possibilities. NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has stated that the company is on track to become an AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) provider, which technically makes it a cloud service provider (CSP). "Today, I want to share with you the next level of our business model to help put AI within reach of every enterprise customer. We are partnering with major service -- cloud service providers to offer NVIDIA AI cloud services, offered directly by NVIDIA and through our network of go-to-market partners, and hosted within the world's largest clouds." Said Mr. Huang, adding that "NVIDIA AI as a service offers enterprises easy access to the world's most advanced AI platform, while remaining close to the storage, networking, security and cloud services offered by the world's most advanced clouds. Customers can engage NVIDIA AI cloud services at the AI supercomputer, acceleration library software, or pretrained AI model layers."

In addition to enrolling other CSPs into the race, NVIDIA is also going to offer DGX machines on demand in the cloud. Using select CSPs, you can get access to an entire DGX and harness the computing power for AI research purposes. Mr. Huang noted "NVIDIA DGX is an AI supercomputer, and the blueprint of AI factories being built around the world. AI supercomputers are hard and time-consuming to build. Today, we are announcing the NVIDIA DGX Cloud, the fastest and easiest way to have your own DGX AI supercomputer, just open your browser. NVIDIA DGX Cloud is already available through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, and others on the way."

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.

Back in December, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra announced that the company would be laying off around 10 percent of its staff and according to the Idaho Statesman, Micron will start at its Boise, Idaho fab. This is despite the company investing US$15 billion in a new leading-edge fab there. That said, it doesn't look like Boise will see any huge cuts in staff, as Micron hasn't issued a WARN notice, which is required when a company is planning on laying off more than 500 people within a 30-day period.

Micron issued a statement earlier this week, saying that its layoffs are a combination of "voluntary attrition, workforce reductions and reduced external hiring," which tends to mean that third party contractors will bear the brunt of the layoffs. Micron is also said to be cutting executive salaries, while also suspending bonuses for employees across the board. Further cost reductions include a halted share buyback program and a reduced production output, the latter due to lower demand. Micron has some 49,000 employees globally, with some 6,000 located in Idaho. The company expects to have completed its job cuts by the end of this month.

OpenAI's ChatGTP has reportedly reached an astonishing 100 million monthly active users in the heating wars of AI. This figure is achieved after a few months of availability, and big tech companies are pressured to respond. Today, we have information that Google will release a model similar to ChatGTP called Bard AI. Based on Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) that Google introduced over two years ago, the Bard AI solution will integrate with Google search to access the latest information around the web. Currently in preview for private testers, Bard AI will roll out to the public in the coming weeks as the demand for Large Language Models that are in chat format soars.

Google CEO Sundar PichaiBard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.