Expreview has caught the sighting of an apparently upcoming AMD graphics card based around the RX 590 SKU. The new revision, being named the RX 590 GME, apparently features lower clocks than the base Polaris 30 RX 590 ~around 1,385 MHz boost compared to the vanilla RX590's 1545 MHz. That clockspeed puts the RX 590 GME slightly above the RX 580 in terms of specs, but way below the RX 590, which should lead to a distinct performance variation between the two.

It's unclear as to what GPU die this new Polaris-based graphics card will be using. If I were a betting man, I'd say these are being harvested from 12 nm Polaris 30 dies that haven't been able to sustain the 1545 MHz clockspeeds rated for RX 590 chips - but still being put to use and very likely with a better power/performance ratio than the RX 590. For now, the model is only available for pre-order through a Chinese e-tailer, which could mean this is a China-only release.

US Government, precisely the Trump administration, is considering placing a ban on chip export from TSMC to Huawei. With Huawei being in the middle between the US and China fight for global technology dominance, the Trump administration is seeking to limit the progress of foreign forces trying to match or beat US technology. There were previous efforts by the US government to influence Huawei's fate, with them claiming that Huawei 5G equipment is capable of supplying China with intelligence, meaning that China tries to spy on US citizens. While those claims were later disregarded by Huawei, the Trump administration managed to do some damage to the face of the company.

The TSMC representative who spoke to Reuters about the potential ban said that the company (TSMC) does not answer hypothetical questions and that they don't talk about their customers. To achieve more control over the China semiconductor manufacturing, the US government plans to place a licensing model on all of their US-made semiconductor equipment, meaning that all the production lines are possibly in danger if the US doesn't approve shipments of their machines to other countries.

Zhaoxin is a brand that makes multi-core 64-bit x86 processors primarily for use in Chinese state IT infrastructure. It's part of the Chinese Government's ambitious plan to make its IT hardware completely indigenous. Zhaoxin's x86-64 CPU cores are co-developed by licensee VIA, specifically its CenTaur subsidiary that's making NCORE AI-enabled x86 processors. The company's KaiXian KX-6780A processor is now commercially available in China to the DIY market in the form of motherboards with embedded processors.

The KaiXian KX-6780A features an 8-core/8-thread x86-64 CPU clocked up to 2.70 GHz, 8 MB of last-level cache, a dual-channel DDR4-3200 integrated memory controller, a PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex, and an iGPU possibly designed by VIA's S3 Graphics division, which supports basic display and DirectX 11.1 readiness. The CPU features modern ISA, with instruction sets that include AVX, AES-NI, SHA-NI, and VT-x comparable virtualization extensions. The chip has been fabricated on TSMC 16 nm FinFET process.

China announced that it will reduce import tariffs on several U.S. commodities, including certain kinds of technology. This is a sign of easing tensions between the United States and China on its devastating trade-war waged between 2017-19 that wiped billions of Dollars of value from the capital markets and saw increases in prices of goods around the world. The exhaustive list of 859 commodities covers raw materials for a variety of polymers and plastics found in consumer durables, raw materials for energy storage devices, certain kinds of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, photo and video imaging equipment (camera components), LCD and OLED display components. There are hundreds of other commodities from other industries, covering food, industrial automation, and agriculture.

The items on China's updated import tariffs list amounts to some USD $389 billion in annual trade, or about 18 percent of China's annual imports. The cuts in import tariffs are expected to not just benefit U.S. exporters to China, but also stimulate similar import tariff cuts from the U.S. in response. China has an insatiable appetite for camera equipment, and has eased imports of OLED and certain semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which could have a trickle-down effect on the tech industry. Find the complete schedule of goods with updated import tariffs here. We've machine translated relevant pages in the screenshots below.

Intel marketing is at it again, making sweeping performance claims about its embattled 9th generation Core processors against AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen. In a recent press conference in China, the company was shown claiming that its mid-tier 6-core/6-thread Core i5-9600KF is a "better" processor than AMD's 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3800X. This claim is hard to defend with gaming, when even the "slower" 3700X is seen performing within 1% of the i5-9600K (identical CPU specs to the i5-9600KF) at gaming, and 22 percent faster at CPU tests, beating the i9-9900K in quite a few multi-threaded tests.

The marketing slide makes four key claims: 1. that Intel processors are faster in "real-world" use-cases (gaming, home/office, light content-creation), ; 2. that with boost-frequencies reaching 4.60 GHz, the higher IPC of these chips benefit gaming; 3. that the K-series chips easily overclock to 5.00 GHz yielding even more performance; and 4. that Intel processors have "smooth and stable drivers" compared to AMD. As if that wasn't bad enough, the slide claims that the 4-core/4-thread Core i3-9350KF is "better" than the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 3600X, and the entry-level i3-9100F being better than the 6-core/6-thread Ryzen 5 3500. This incident closely follows its September gaffe that sought to sourgrape AMD's HEDT creator performance leadership by discrediting its lead in certain applications by claiming they don't reflect "real world usage." Making Intel's test relevance claims comically wrong was the fact that it used app usage data gathered exclusively from notebooks.

ChangXin Memory Technologies, a Chinese startup founded in 2016 that was formerly known as "Innotron Memory", now claims that it has become China's first and only domestic DRAM supplier. Following the announcement that it started production of domestic DRAM chips, ChangXin is now reportedly shipping its first DRAM wafers. With an output of around 20000 wafers per month, the company is currently building LPDDR4, DDR4 8Gbit chips using the "10-nanometer class" node, which is supposed to be 18 or 19 nm size in reality.

The company expects to double its wafer output to 40000 wafers per month sometime around Q2 of 2020 when additional expansion facilities will start production. ChangXin plans to soon open two more manufacturing facilities to start manufacturing even more wafers, in addition to its Fab 1. So far ChangXin has laid-out plans to start manufacturing DRAM technology based on stack capacitor, which is different from the usual trench capacitor technology few companies are pursuing.

Three Congresspersons and two Senators, in a letter to Activision-Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick, came down hard on the company's decision to ban and withdraw prize winnings of Hong Kong gamer Ng Wai Chung aka "Blitzchung." In the letter, the legislators unleashed scathing criticism of the company's decision to place its market-access to China above its expectations as an American business to spread the core American values of freedom and liberty around the world. Among these legislators are Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congressmen Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski; and Senators Marco Rubio and Ron Wyden.

"Your company benefits from China's growing market for e-sports, along with an investment from Tencent, one of China's largest technology firms. As you and your company are no doubt aware, the Chinese government uses the size and strength of its economy to suppress opinion with which it disagrees. Last week alone, the Chinese government targeted Apple for hosting an app to help peaceful demonstrators evade repression and the NBA because one team's general manager tweeted in support of Hong Kong protests," the letter reads.

China's semiconductor industry is seeking independence in every sector of its industry, with an emphasis of homemade products for domestic use, especially government facilities, where usage of homegrown products is most desirable. According to the report of China Securities Journal, Chinese firm has started production of DRAM memory.

A company named ChangXin Memory Technology, founded in 2016 to boost domestic silicon production, on Monday started production of DRAM memory, aiming to directly replace the current supply of foreign memory from companies like Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung. Being build using 18 nm technology which ChangXin calls "10-nanometer class" node, this DRAM chip isn't too far behind offers from competitors it tries to replace. Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix use 12, 14, and 16 nm nodes for production of their DRAM chips, so Chinese efforts so far are very good. The company promises to produce around 120.000 wafers per month and plans to deliver first chips by the end of this year.

The US Trade Representative on Friday granted a reprieve to the increased tariffs being levied at China-imported electronic goods. The exemption, valid for one year until 20th August 2020, includes some products that will be welcome to PC hardware enthusiasts, including motherboards, graphics cards, desktop cases, "mouse input devices" valued over $70, "trackpad input units" valued at over $100, and power supply units that output more than 500 W.

The exempts have come as fruits of requests from US stakeholders in the hardware space; should imports be available only from China (meaning there are no alternate sources of said materials) or if the tariff could cause "severe economic harm", a temporary reprieve on the levies could be sought. And so the exempts were requested, and now granted. Prices paid before the announcement of the reprieve that included the added tax penalties are final; the exemption is only valid for orders after September 20th. This means the 25% increased rates (itself an increase on the initial 10%) on the tax basis are now frozen when it comes to the aforementioned hardware. This means companies no longer have to scramble to source their manufacturing to countries other than China, and that prices increased for end consumers on the basis of the tax increase are now meritless.

Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), a Chinese state-backed semiconductor company founded in 2016 as part of the Chinese Government's tech-independence push, has commenced mass-production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips, at a rate of 100,000 to 150,000 wafers per month leading into 2020. The 64-layer 3D NAND chips are based on YMTC's "in-house" Xtracking architecture. The company is already developing a 128-layer 3D NAND flash chip, and is skipping 96-layer along the way.

YMTC's capacity will be augmented by a new fab being built by its parent company, Tsinghua Unigroup. Tsinghua is a state-owned company which holds a controlling 51 percent stake in YMTC, and is a beneficiary of China's National Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund. When it goes online in 2021-22, the new Tsinghua fab, located in Chengdu, will augment YMTC's capacity by an additional 100,000 12-inch wafers per month. Its existing fab in Nanjing will also receive a capacity expansion.

Yeston have revealed an addition to their AMD graphics-card lineup in the form of the "CUTE PET" RX 580. The name implies exactly what this card is all about: a colorful, teenage theme in blue and pink with PCB cutouts that resemble a... well... Cute pet. There are RGB elements in the cut-outs for the eyes, ears and mouth of the "CUTE PET", the eyes are confused spirals built from the dual-fan cooling design, there's a blue backplate with cloudy cut-outs...

There have been spectacular rumors flying around on Reddit that PC cooling components major Cryorig has shut down, with telltale signs being their telephone-support number going dead, their Newegg store being out-of-stock for months, and their Twitter account falling silent. We've reviewed close to a dozen Cryorig products, and our last review was dated October 2018. We reached out to Cryorig and one of their representatives was kind enough to respond to us with an update on what has happened at the company. Cryorig is impacted by the U.S.-China trade-war, as the high import tariffs affected the viability of its products. The company would earlier directly access the U.S. market through exclusive stores on Amazon and Newegg.

The company continues to have active market-presence elsewhere, including Asia and Europe. Cryorig clarified in unequivocal terms that it has not, and will not, exit the U.S. market. The company stated that it is merely waiting for respite from the crippling import tariff. In the meantime, it has sought out a new U.S.-based distributor who will import Cryorig products, and resell them. This distributor will also take over other aspects of the U.S. business, including aftersales support, RMA, etc.

Previously, we have reported that major OEMs are looking and exploring for ways of moving production outside of China, into other Asian countries, because of tariffs imposed by US-China trade war and rising labor costs. The original report from Nikkei specifically indicated that Microsoft will move its Xbox and Surface manufacturing to Thailand and Indonesia, while the production in China would stop.

However, Tom's Hardware had a conversation with Microsoft regarding the situation and the outcome was contradictory to the report of Nikkei. Microsoft told Tom's Hardware "that there currently aren't any plans to do so", which means that current manufacturing facilities are there to stay. We still don't know how will the rest of OEMs react or comment, but HP also said to Tom's that it shares industry concerns and will not comment any further to the rumors, adding that tariffs are hurting consumers.

Apparently, AMD isn't celebrating its 50th anniversary in all parts of the globe, judging from recent reports regarding its AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition. Apparently, the exclusive, limited-edition graphics card will only be available for US and China customers - two of the biggest worldwide markets, for sure. This is a strange decision from AMD, since a sold unit is a sold unit; however, this may be a sign of really limited availability of the graphics card and the hardware powering it.

Trendforce, via its market analysis division DRAMeXchange, announced yesterday that it expected DRAM pricing to fall even more than previously estimated. The motive behind this is Huawei's ban following the US-China trade war, which will limit Huawei's ability to deliver its server and, especially, smartphone products. With companies being banned from trading with the Chinese firm, a voracious consumer of the US-tied DRAM production has just evaporated without a trace. This means increasing inventories amidst a freeze in demand due to uncertainty in the overall markets, which will obviously tip the supply-demand balance.

This has led TrendForce to officially adjust its outlook for 3Q DRAM prices from its original prediction of a 10% decline to a widened 10-15% decline, with an additional 10% decline in the fourth quarter. And of course, after prices hit rock bottom, they can only go up, which is why DRAMeXchange expects prices can only increase - and DRAM manufacturers' outlook improve - come 2020. Gear up for those DRAM upgrades this year, folks.

AMD Lisa Su at Computex 2019 confirmed to Tom's hardware that the company wasn't licensing anymore of its x86 IP portfolio to China-based companies. AMD entered a technology license agreement with China's Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd. (THATIC) in 2016. As part of the agreement to license its x86 and SoC IP for chip development, AMD received a cash infusion worth $293 million (plus royalties).

As a result, Chinese chipmaker Hygon started delivering their "Dhyana" CPUs, which looked like copies of AMD's Zen-based Epyc chips with added, Chinese-government approved cryptographic capabilities. AMD had to go through some hoops to get this deal done, but it did. However, now the technology refinement pipe is draining for the Chinese companies, as AMD won't be delivering its post-Zen updates to the core design. It remains to be seen if AMD's intellectual property was enough for Chinese companies to ignite their own in-country CPU development, or if the ongoing US-China trade war will keep on draining the company of CPU independence.

As the trade war between the US and China continues to unfold, we are seeing major US companies ban or stop providing service to China's technology giant Huawei. Now, it looks like the trade war has crossed the ocean and reached the UK. This time, UK based ARM Holdings, the provider of mobile chip IP for nearly all smartphones and tablets, has revoked the license it has given Huawei.

According to the BBC, ARM Holdings employees were instructed to suspend all interactions with Huawei, and to send a note informing Huawei that "due to an unfortunate situation, they were not allowed to provide support, deliver technology (whether software, code, or other updates), engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with Huawei, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities." The news came from an internal ARM document the BBC has obtained.

The United States tech industry has overnight dealt a potentially fatal blow to Chinese electronics giant Huawei, by boycotting the company. The companies are establishing compliance with a recent Executive Order passed by President Donald Trump designed to "stop the import, sale, and use of equipment and services by foreign companies based in countries that are potential adversaries to U.S. interests," particularly information technology security. Google has announced that it will no longer allow Huawei to license Android, and will stop updates and Google Play access to Huawei smartphones. Huawei can still equip its phones with open-source Android, but it cannot use Google's proprietary software, including Google Play Store, Chrome, and all the other Google apps. Intel decided to no longer supply processors and other hardware to Huawei, for use in its laptops and server products. Sales of AMD processors will stop, too. Qualcomm-Broadcom have decided to stop supply of mobile SoCs and network PHYs, respectively. Microsoft decided to stop licensing Huawei to use Windows and Office products.

The ban is a consequence of the U.S. Government placing Huawei on a list of banned entities, forcing all U.S. companies to abandon all trade with it, without prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Trade cuts both ways, and not only are U.S. firms banned from buying from Huawei, they're also banned from selling to it. Huawei "buys from" over 30 U.S. companies, (for example, Windows licenses from Microsoft). CNN reports that U.S. firms could lose up to $11 billion in revenues.

With its IMFlash Technology joint-venture with Micron coming to an end, Intel is finding itself with manufacturing challenges for its memory businesses. The company holds IP to both 3D NAND flash and its own invention 3D XPoint memory, which it believes will succeed NAND flash in performance and endurance. The company is now mulling to move manufacturing of 3D XPoint to a foundry in China. Intel currently manufactures this exotic new memory at an IMFlash Technology facility in Utah. Intel's $1.3 billion stake-sale to Micron pushes it out of this facility.

Under the terms of the stake-sale, Micron allows Intel to continue to manufacture 3D XPoint at IMFlash for a year, after which it must manufacture it elsewhere. The transfer of stake is scheduled for October 31st, which means Intel's manufacturing in Utah will continue till October 2020. In the meantime, Intel is planning to move manufacturing to its Fab 68, located in Dalian, China. Intel is now manufacturing 1st and 2nd generation 3D Xpoint, while its 3rd generation is under development, and was earlier slated for initial manufacturing at Intel's Fab 11X in New Mexico, USA. It's not known if Intel has changed these plans. 3rd generation 3D XPoint hits mass-production in 2021.

Motherboard manufacturer Super Micro is moving manufacturing completely outside China to allay fears from customers on spyware implanted by China. Bloomberg in October 2018 put out a sensational article alleging that Super Micro, which specializes in server motherboards bought in bulk by data-centers and cloud companies, contain spyware by the Chinese government designed to spy on US enterprises. Super Micro was quick to refute the article as baseless, but by then the damage to its reputation was done. Faced with declining sales by as much as 10 percent despite rapid industrial CAGR growth, the company is now forced to relocate manufacturing outside China not just to allay these fears, but perhaps also to reduce its import tariff burden imposed by the US government on a spectrum of electronics goods manufactured in China.

China had a manufacturing strangehold on server motherboard manufacturing, amounting to 90 percent of server motherboards shipped in 2017. In 2018, however, with the the US-China trade-war underway, that figure dropped like a rock to just 50 percent, a dramatic fall for just one year. Server component manufacturers are relocating to other countries, such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Super Micro is relocating to Taiwan, with a new factory set up in Taoyuan at a cost of $65 million.

President Donald Trump Sunday announced a fresh round of import tariffs affecting $200 billion worth electronics goods from China, starting next Friday. President Trump in a Tweet said that his administration would raise import tariffs to a staggering 25 percent from the existing 10 percent, a 2.5 times change, a move that could increase prices of consumer-electronics and computer hardware by at least 14 percent unless retailers are willing to take a hit on their margins. Tech stocks took a beating to this news as Dow Jones Industrial index fell 1.5 percent, and Nikkei shrunk 0.2 percent.

In the short term, as we mentioned, the new tariffs can increase end-user prices by at least 14 percent. In the medium-term, electronics companies could move their manufacturing out of China, transferring the costs of doing so to the consumer. In the long term, prices could remain high as the countries companies are relocating to may not have the labor or logistics cost advantages of China.

SK Hynix Inc. today announced that it held a ceremony celebrating the completion of an expanded fabrication plant (or 'C2F') in Wuxi, China, on April 18th. C2F is an expansion of the existing DRAM production line, C2, in Wuxi. The Company decided to expand its production line in 2016 in order to solve the shortage of production space due to technology migration. About 500 people attended the ceremony, including Li Xiaomin, Party Secretary of Wuxi, Guo Yuanqiang, Vice Governor of Jiangsu, Choi Youngsam, Consul-General in Shanghai, Lee Seok-hee, Chief Executive Officer of SK Hynix, and representatives of clients and business partners.

SK Hynix signed a contract with Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, China, in 2004 to establish a local factory and completed the production line (C2) in 2006 to start producing DRAM. C2 is the Company's first 300mm FAB and has played a major role in SK Hynix's growth to date. However, with technology scaling, the number of processes has increased and the equipment has become larger, which led to the shortage of the cleanroom space. SK Hynix, therefore, has invested a total of 950 billion KRW from June 2017 to April 2019 to secure additional production space.

In a move that's certain to make forays into the Chinese gaming market (worth $30bn) for game developers and publishers, country regulators have launched a new wave requirements for game release approvals. Besides more and more information now being required to be submitted by developers for any game that they want to launch in China (which may include scripts, mechanisms to curb game addiction implemented into the code, and other).

While the Chinese gaming market is an extremely significant one, the previously existing (and now updated) regulations mandate that every single game be single-handedly inspected and curated before its approval into the Chinese domestic market. A freeze in the process of games approval that lasted for 8 months (from February 2018 through to December) has already created a backlog of thousands of games pending approval - not to mention all of those that have undoubtedly been submitted since. It's expected that fewer than 5,000 games will be greenlighted for launch this year, so a lot of companies will likely have to review their revenue forecast - depending on how heavily they banked on the Chinese market.

As R&D costs for new, smaller manufacturing nodes grow at unprecedented rates across the industry, a new player is set to enter the 14 nm process manufacture competition: China-based SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation). The company is looking to throw its hat on the lucrative 14 nm process, filling its offerings portfolio under the 28 nm it currently offers as its denser process.

The company expects its 95% yield rate to offer its customers a trusted platform that might help it increase revenue for further investment on its 10 nm and 7 nm EUV nodes, which the company is pursuing (despite other industry veterans, such as former AMD-manufacturing arm GLOBALFOUNDRIES having ceased development on). Manufacturing technology that's competitive with the western world's, and that's developed in-country, is paramount for China's intention of reducing its dependence of foreign technology, which is why this is such a big step for the company and the company's aspirations.

Hot on the heels of our earlier report of there being just 100 Radeon VII graphics cards in stock to sell in the UK, we're hearing from French tech publication Cowcotland of an even worse situation in the Old Continent. Apparently, there are only 20 cards allocated to France and Spain, each. The price Cowcotland reports for the card is 739€ (including VAT), although paucity of cards could allow retailers to price the card just about anything, if there is demand for them. AMD has not given retailers in Europe inventory replenishment dates. Factories in China are down for the Lunar New Year holiday there, and depending on demand, another production run could be underway only by mid-thru-Late February, with fresh stocks reaching Europe only a month after.