Ubisoft has today updated the PC system requirements for its Watch Dogs: Legion game. Set to release on October 29th this year, we are just a few weeks away from its release. With the arrival of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere graphics cards, Ubisoft has decided to update the official PC system requirements with RTX-on capabilities. The inclusion of raytracing in the game requires a faster CPU, as well as an RTX-capable GPU. At 1080p resolution, you need at least an RTX 2060 GPU to play with high settings, and raytracing turned to the medium, including DLSS. Going up to 1440p, Ubisoft recommends gamers to use at least an RTX 3070 GPU for very high preset, raytracing on high, and DLSS set to quality. If you want to max everything out and play with the highest settings at 4K resolution, you will need an RTX 3080 GPU.

AMD Project Quantum has been quite a mysterious product. While we knew that is was an ITX sized, water-cooled case that would feature an Intel CPU with AMD GPU, we never knew if it was coming or not. Featuring a unique, two-chamber design, AMD managed to develop two sections, where one is used for all the compute components, and the other one contains the radiator and fan for dissipating the heat produced by the compute chamber. Four years ago, we got the news that the project isn't dead and that it will get an update with AMD's upcoming Zen CPU and Vega GPU back then. However, since that announcement, there was no word on it.

Until today. Thanks to a Twitter user PeteB(@Pete_2097) who found a newly listed patent, the hope of Project Quantum is not yet dead it seems. On September 15th, AMD filed a patent for the Project Quantum, now protecting the unique design and possibly saving it for some time in the future. It is almost certain that the company has not abandoned the project, and it could be just waiting for the right time to launch it.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today introduced the industry's first native NVMe RAID 1 accelerator, a state-of-the-art technology for virtualized, multi-tenant cloud and enterprise data center environments which demand optimized reliability, efficiency, and performance. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first of Marvell's partners to support the new accelerator in the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device offered on select HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Apollo systems.

As the industry transitions from legacy SAS and SATA to NVMe SSDs, Marvell's offering helps data centers fast-track the move to higher performance flash storage. The innovative accelerator lowers data center total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading RAID 1 processing from costly and precious server CPU resources, maximizing application processing performance. IT organizations can now deploy a "plug-and-play," NVMe-based OS boot solution, like the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device, that protects the integrity of flash data storage while delivering an optimized, application-level user experience.

Editor's Note: This is written by Arm vice president and general manager Paul Williamson.

Over the last year, I have been inspired by the innovators who are dreaming up solutions to improve and enrich our daily lives. Tomorrow's mobile applications will be even more imaginative, immersive, and intelligent. To that point, the industry has come such a long way in making this happen. Take app stores for instance - we had the choice of roughly 500 apps when smartphones first began shipping in volume in 2007 and today there are 8.9 million apps available to choose from.

Mobile has transformed from a simple utility to the most powerful, pervasive device we engage with daily, much like Arm-based chips have progressed to more powerful but still energy-efficient SoCs. Although the chip-level innovation has already evolved significantly, more is still required as use cases become more complex, with more AI and ML workloads being processed locally on our devices.

Intel and Heidelberg University Computing Center (URZ) today announced that they have established oneAPI Academic Center of Excellence (CoE) at UZR. The newly established CoE has a goal to further develop Intel's oneAPI standard and enable it to work on AMD GPUs. This information is a bit shocking, however, Intel believes that the technology should work on a wide range of processors, no matter the vendor. The heterogeneous hardware programming is the main goal here. In a Twitter thread, an Intel employee specifies that Intel has also been working with Arm and NVIDIA to bring Data-Parallel C++ (DPC++), a core of oneAPI, to those vendors as well. That should bring this universal programming model to every device and adapt to every platform, which is a goal of heterogeneous programming - whatever you need to program a CPU, GPU, or some other ASIC, it is covered by a single API, specifically oneAPI.

UZRURZ's work as a oneAPI CoE will add advanced DPC++ capabilities into hipSYCL, which supports systems based on AMD GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, and CPUs. New DPC++ extensions are part of the SYCL 2020 provisional specification that brings features such as unified shared memory to hipSYCL and the platforms it supports - furthering the promise of oneAPI application support across system architectures and vendors.

Today, Arm unveiled new computing solutions to accelerate autonomous decision-making with safety capability across automotive and industrial applications. The new suite of IP includes the Arm Cortex -A78AE CPU, Arm Mali -G78AE GPU, and Arm Mali-C71AE ISP, engineered to work together in combination with supporting software, tools and system IP to enable silicon providers and OEMs to design for autonomous workloads. These products will be deployed in a range of applications, from enabling more intelligence and configurability in smart manufacturing to enhancing ADAS and digital cockpit applications in automotive.

"Autonomy has the potential to improve every aspect of our lives, but only if built on a safe and secure computing foundation," said Chet Babla, vice president, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm. "As autonomous decision-making becomes more pervasive, Arm has designed a unique suite of technology that prioritizes safety while delivering highly scalable, power efficient compute to enable autonomous decision-making across new automotive and industrial opportunities."

TechN unveils the most powerful CPU water coolers for three platforms at once. AMD's AM4 sockets and the Intel sockets LGA 1200 and 2066 will each receive their own high-end water block with the most advanced cooling technology and sophisticated manufacturing - Made in Germany.

Superior performance and build quality
A compact, reduced design language, the high-quality material mix and hidden mounting elements form the puristic character of the high-performance cooling blocks. Both the mirror-polished acrylic and matte anodized surfaces demonstrate the highest level of care. The perfection in manufacturing achieves a flush composition for a modern industrial look, which incorporates the extensive technological innovations of the TechN CPU water coolers.

GELID Solutions have recently unveiled a new 1U low profile cooler for the AMD AM4 socket. The SLIM SILENCE AM4 is a product of GELID Solutions SILENT product line. The SLIM SILENCE AM4 is designed for HTPC, Panel PC, Car PC and 1U Server. The heatsink measures 28 mm tall and should suit most slim-type chassis. The SLIM SILENCE AM4 also comes with the double heatpipe integrated into the heatsink base and features multiple heatsink optimizations to achieve high cooling efficiency in the compact size. The cooler weighs 206 g to support enhanced compatibility with lightweight Panel PC and Car PC applications. The new silent 65 mm frameless fan with the intelligent GELID PWM (Pulse Width Module) compliments the heat sink. The intelligent PWM Curve technique constantly keeps it silent but accelerates speed whenever higher airflow is required. The SLIM SILENCE AM4 is compatible to AMD Ryzen 3/5/7 CPU with TDP up to 85 W and supports AM4 CPU Socket.

NUVIA, a leading-edge silicon design company, today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $240M. The funding round was led by Mithril Capital in partnership with Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai (founders of Marvell Technology Group), funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC., and Temasek, with additional participation from Atlantic Bridge, Redline Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital, Mayfield, Nepenthe LLC and WRVI Capital. The closure of NUVIA's Series B round builds on a $53M Series A round, raised in November 2019. NUVIA was founded in February 2019 by John Bruno, Manu Gulati and Gerard Williams, with the vision to create the world's leading server processor.

Ten years ago, Arm set its sights on deploying its compute-efficient technology in the data center with a vision towards a changing landscape that would require a new approach to infrastructure compute.

That decade-long effort to lay the groundwork for a more efficient infrastructure was realized when we announced Arm Neoverse, a new compute platform that would deliver 30% year-over-year performance improvements through 2021. The unveiling of our first two platforms, Neoverse N1 and E1, was significant and important. Not only because Neoverse N1 shattered our performance target by nearly 2x to deliver 60% more performance when compared to Arm's Cortex-A72 CPU, but because we were beginning to see real demand for more choice and flexibility in this rapidly evolving space.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced a new 5G mobile platform in the 7-series, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G 5G Mobile Platform, which enables truly global 5G with brilliant HDR gaming and amazing on-device AI. To date, there have been more than 275 designs announced or in development based on Snapdragon 7-series mobile platforms, including 140 5G designs.

"We continue to see great traction with our high-tier Snapdragon 7-series 5G mobile platforms," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "As we continue to build out this relatively new tier of our mobile roadmap, we're always looking for ways to support the growing needs of our OEM customers. Snapdragon 750G delivers a selection of premium mobile features to an even wider audience."

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is powering better-than-ever virtual reality (VR) gameplay and experiences with the launch of Oculus Quest 2, the first-to-launch VR device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform. Oculus Quest 2 is a culmination of years of collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies and Facebook to create the most advanced and immersive gaming VR experiences for consumers to-date.

Purpose-built for extended reality (XR), the Snapdragon XR2 Platform unlocks staggering improvements including twice the CPU and GPU performance compared to its predecessor which powers the original Oculus Quest headset. The Snapdragon XR2 Platform delivers significant performance enhancements in Oculus Quest 2 including:

CORSAIR announces more new products each year than most companies, and this often means that marketing resources get devoted to the high-ticket items more often than not. Their custom watercooling line, the Hydro X Series, is not always one of them and so we end up seeing quiet updates without a press release or even a direct note from their representatives to the media. With the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000-series cards coming in three different categories as far as custom watercooling goes (reference, Founders Edition, AIC-variants), we took the weekend to briefly check what the usual custom watercooling suspects were up to. A page on the CORSAIR website confirms, among other things, that Hydro X GPU blocks are on the way for at least the reference PCB, if not more.

More interestingly, we noted that the Hydro XC7 and XC9 CPU blocks had been updated in more ways than one. We have detailed reviews of both (XC7, XC9) for those who want to see, and our review of the iCUE Nexus also showed a rebranding in the making for the company. The updated CPU blocks carry the new wordmark design for the logo on all 5 SKUs and, more importantly, change the mounting mechanism to allow for a captive system with new thumb screws that should make installation even easier on all Intel and AMD CPU sockets. This should bring with it increased compatibility with crowded m-ITX motherboards as well, and we see it reflected in the additional 719 motherboards in the compatibility list relative to before. Finally, a motherboard ARGB LED adapter is now included in the packaging, so you can use the integrated lighting with motherboard LED headers and control software, should you not want to pony extra for CORSAIR's ecosystem. Pricing for the Hydro XC7 is now $5 higher and the same as the XC9, which is confusing given it uses fewer fins on the cold plate and, the launch versions at least, employed a plastic trim compared to the metal on the XC9. We have contacted the company for clarification on this, and will update the post as we receive more information.

[Update, September 16: CORSAIR has a new photo for their example GPU block that looks suspiciously like it is meant for the FE RTX 3000-series cards. Note also the revised I/O port terminal which should help address some concerns people had about the previous design.]

It was just yesterday that we have received the news of NVIDIA's latest move - acquiring Arm Ltd. from Softbank Group for $40 billion. However, it seems like there are more reasons for the deal than what meets the eye. In the briefing regarding the acquisition, NVIDIA's CEO was asked a question, by Timothy Prickett Morgan, from TheNextPlatform, about NVIDIA's plans for a possible implementation of Arm's Neoverse core in an NVIDIA-branded CPU design and start selling them to data centers. To that question, Mr. Huang gave a prolonged answer indirectly saying that the company can build the CPU if there is a market for it.

He explains that there is an entire network surrounding the Arm ecosystem and that there may be customers interested in contracting NVIDIA to build them semi-custom or completely custom chip based on Arm ISA on NVIDIA's own interest. Any of these options are available and Mr. Haung says that they are there for the best interest of the ecosystem to enrich it enhance it even further. This means that it is just a matter of time before we see NVIDIA-branded CPU make its way to data-center or some other areas of technology, so we have to wait and see for ourselves.

NVIDIA and SoftBank Group Corp. (SBG) today announced a definitive agreement under which NVIDIA will acquire Arm Limited from SBG and the SoftBank Vision Fund (together, "SoftBank") in a transaction valued at $40 billion. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to NVIDIA's non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP earnings per share.

The combination brings together NVIDIA's leading AI computing platform with Arm's vast ecosystem to create the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence, accelerating innovation while expanding into large, high-growth markets. SoftBank will remain committed to Arm's long-term success through its ownership stake in NVIDIA, expected to be under 10 percent.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the Snapdragon 730G. Snapdragon 732G is designed to deliver immersive gameplay backed by smarter, faster artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated performance, including an upgraded GPU and CPU compared to the previous generation.

"Snapdragon 732G will deliver a powerful gaming experience, sophisticated on-device AI, and superior performance," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We're excited to work with POCO on the new POCO smartphone powered by the enhanced Snapdragon 732G globally."

When Apple announced their transition form Intel processors to Apple Silicon, we were left wondering how the silicon will perform and what characteristics will it bring with it. According to the latest report from The China Times, the Apple custom GPU found inside the new Apple Silicon will bring better performance and energy efficiency compared to Intel iGPU it replaces. The 5 nm GPU manufactured on TSMC's N5 semiconductor manufacturing node is supposedly codenamed "Lifuka" and it brings Apple's best to the table. Planned to power a 12-inch MacBook, the GPU will be paired with a custom CPU based on Arm ISA as well. The same chips powering iPhone and iPad devices will go into MacBook devices, with the TDP increased as MacBook will probably have much higher cooling capacity. The first Apple Silicon MacBook will come in H2 of 2021.Here is the copy of a full report from The China Times below:

The Eisbaer LT 92 is the little sister of the classic Eisbaer LT. It is without quick release fasteners and is delivered with only 25 cm long hoses. This ensures it fits perfectly into SFF cases. SFF stands for "Small Form Factor" and describes extremely compact housings. Despite its small dimensions, the 92 mm copper radiator offers enough cooling power for powerful processors. Alphacool uses hoses and fittings from the Enterprise Solution series for the Eisbaer LT 92. The TPV hoses are particularly robust and do not kink as easily as the usual PVC hoses. Bend protection is therefore not necessary. The Eisbaer LT 92 is compatible to all mainstream sockets, the appropriate mounting material for various Intel and AMD sockets is included, also a set of fan screws for 25 mm fans. Fans are not included with this unit and must be purchased separately. The Eisbaer LT 92 costs €73.09 (inc. VAT) from the Alphacool web shop.

The Apple A14X Bionic is an upcoming processor from Apple which is expected to feature in the upcoming iPad Pro models and should be manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm node. Tech YouTuber Luke Miani has recently provided a performance graph for the A14X chip based on "leaked/suspected A14 info + average performance gains from previous X chips". In these graphs, the Apple A14X can be seen matching the Intel Core i9-9880H in Geekbench 5 with a score of 7480. The Intel Intel Core i9-9880H is a 45 W eight-core mobile CPU found in high-end notebooks such as the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro and requires significant cooling to keep thermals under control.

If these performance estimates are correct or even close then Apple will have a serious productivity device and will serve as a strong basis for Apple's transition to custom CPU's for it's MacBook's in 2021. Apple may use a custom version of the A14X with slightly higher clocks in their upcoming ARM MacBooks according to Luke Miani. These results are estimations at best so take them with a pinch of salt until Apple officially unveils the chip.

IBM today revealed the next generation of its IBM POWER central processing unit (CPU) family: IBM POWER10. Designed to offer a platform to meet the unique needs of enterprise hybrid cloud computing, the IBM POWER10 processor uses a design focused on energy efficiency and performance in a 7 nm form factor with an expected improvement of up to 3x greater processor energy efficiency, workload capacity, and container density than the IBM POWER9 processor.

Designed over five years with hundreds of new and pending patents, the IBM POWER10 processor is an important evolution in IBM's roadmap for POWER. Systems taking advantage of IBM POWER10 are expected to be available in the second half of 2021. Some of the new processor innovations include:

Samsung Electronics has reportedly laid out a plan to become the number one Android application processor (AP) vendor in the industry with its plan to join forces with AMD and Arm. The report of Business Korea indicates that Samsung wants to use both company's knowledge and IP to produce the best possible silicon. In early November of last year, Samsung has decided to shut down its division responsible for making custom CPU designs, and to start licensing IP from Arm. Also last year, Samsung has announced a strategic partnership with AMD to use its RDNA graphics processors in smartphones.

So Samsung plans to license IPs from both companies and just put them in SoC that will be up to the task to deliver the best performance, as the company predicts. The CPU is reportedly going to be based on Arm's Cortex-X custom design that should deliver high-performance Samsung wants. In the past, the company had some problems with the heat-management of its CPUs as they were designed a bit inefficiently. To cover everything, Samsung also plans to increase the number of employees working on a neural processing unit (NPU) and make a good performing NPUs as well, to combine with the rest of IPs.

TechPowerUp has today released an update to widely popular ThrottleStop software made by Kevin Glynn. Used as a tool to "monitor for and correct the three main types of CPU throttling", the new ThrottleStop software received a major update that brings a heap of new features and improvements. Starting off, one of the biggest changes in the new version 9.2, is that the tool finally restores Windows 7 compatibility, which was unavailable for that OS in the previous version 9.0. Now, the tool also brings a few more options to the table like a new TS Bench feature that allows for random MHz testing, adds support for devices that use connected standby, and fixes base clock MHz reporting when using Core Isolation.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp ThrottleStop 9.2The change-log follows.

Intel's 12th Gen Core EVO "Alder Lake" processors in the LGA1700 package could introduce the company's hybrid core technology to the desktop platform. Coreboot code leaked to the web by Coelacanth's Dream sheds fascinating insights to the way Intel is segmenting these chips. The 10 nm chip will see Intel combine high-performance "Golden Cove" CPU cores with energy-efficient "Gracemont" CPU cores, and up to three tiers of the company's Gen12 Xe integrated graphics. The "Alder Lake" desktop processor has up to eight big cores, up to eight small ones, and up to three tiers of the iGPU (GT0 being disabled iGPU, GT1 being the lower tier, and GT2 being the higher tier).

Segmentation between the various brand extensions appears to be primarily determined by the number of big cores. The topmost SKU has all 8 big and 8 small cores enabled, along with GT1 (lower) tier of the iGPU (possibly to free up power headroom for those many cores). The slightly lower SKU has 8 big cores, 6 small cores, and GT1 graphics. Next up, is 8 big cores, 4 small cores, and GT1 graphics. Then 8+2+GT1, and lastly, 8+0+GT1. The next brand extension is based around 6 big cores, being led by 6+8+GT2, and progressively lower number of small cores and their various iGPU tiers. The lower brand extension is based around 4 big cores with similar segmentation of small cores, and the entry-level parts have 2 big cores, and up to 8 small cores.

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation Ryzen 4000 series of desktop processors based on Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. Thanks to the sources over at Igor's Lab, we have some new information about the clock speeds of a rumored Ryzen 9 4950X Vermeer model. Featuring 16 cores and 32 threads, the Ryzen 9 4950X is reportedly going to feature boost frequency of at least 4.8 GHz. Given that this is only an engineering sample, the final frequencies could be higher. In the report, the base frequency of the CPU is said to be 3.5 GHz. This is a very good frequency for a CPU that has that many cores. All of this information is coming from decoding the OPN code which states "100-000000059-52_ 48/35 _ Y". The 48 number indicates the boost, and 35 the base frequency. In the previous reports, we got OPN codes "100-000000059-14_46/37_Y" and "100-000000059-15_46/37_N" which suggested 4.6 GHz boost and base of 3.5 GHz, indicating that this is a new stepping.

The Korean NoFan Computer company has released a variety of cooling products that targeted quiet operations such as passive coolers, liquid coolers, and "silent" fans. Their CR-95C series of passive CPU coolers were released in 2012 for the enthusiast market and carried a significant price tag. The NoFan CR-80EH was released in 2013 and brought the technology used in the CR-95C to a cheaper product. The company hasn't released any new passive coolers since and has faced increased competition from the likes of Noctua and SilverStone. A new report from FanlessTech claims the company has ceased operations which is very likely given their site has been taken down and only limited stock remains. If you want a NoFan CR-80EH now might be your last chance as remaining stock sells out.