MaxLinear, Inc., a global leader in wired network solutions, today announced it is deepening its commitment to expanding its next-gen Ethernet portfolio with a new line of 2.5G Ethernet products. The family is comprised of new 2.5G Ethernet switches and eight port 2.5G Enterprise PHYs. The chipsets will anchor MaxLinear's already robust Ethernet portfolio - which includes 10/100, 1G, and 2.5G bridges, PHYs and switches. MaxLinear will demonstrate the new 2.5G solutions at Computex 2023, May 30 - June 2, 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan.

The demand for more robust Ethernet products is growing as 2.5G speeds expand into enterprise, retail, and industrial single and multiport applications, and more PCs offer 2.5G Ethernet ports. With new access technologies like xGPON and new Wi-Fi standards increasing the demand for higher LAN bandwidth, gigabit Ethernet is giving way to 2.5G Ethernet which can extend the bandwidth over existing CAT5e cable infrastructure by a factor of 2.5 comparatively. According to 2022 research by Allied Market Research, the global ethernet switch market was valued at $17.2 billion in 2021, and is projected to reach $26.1 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 4.4% from 2022 to 2031. The rising demand for effective network infrastructure for varied application requirements is expected to contribute to this growth.

ZOTAC returns to COMPUTEX 2023 to showcase new innovations, from the world's first Mini-PC to feature Frore Systems' AirJet solid-state active-cooling chip, to various B2B solutions aimed at AI edge computing.

Event Highlights:

• ZBOX PI430AJ with AirJet, the world's first solid-state active-cooled Mini-PC
• ZBOX MAGNUS ONE and MAGNUS EN, with GeForce RTX 40 series and additional refreshed hardware
• ZBOX C-Series Mini PC with an Intel Alder-Lake N processor
• A full-range of B2B solutions, including NVIDIA JETSON systems, ZOTAC ZBOX PRO line-up, and NVIDIA Embedded GPU products
• A showcase of ZOTAC's partnership with Sony Animation's SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, including a movie-inspired booth, graphics cards and custom PC casemods

Streacom have announced that they'll be hosting a booth at Computex with CALYOS, where they'll be showing the fruits of their labors on the long awaited SG10 passive-cooled chassis. If you're unfamiliar with the story of the SG10: back in late 2016 CALYOS made waves in the tech sphere with a novel new passively cooled ATX chassis prototype called the NSG S0. Their passive design relied on phase-change evaporator blocks and 'Loop Heat Pipe' runs out to condenser-finstack cooling zones that consumed the entire rear and front panels of the chassis to cool the GPU and CPU. The total thermal dissipation of this design was estimated at the time to allow for up to 600 W of heat, with final numbers to be determined after the design had been finalized. CALYOS opened a Kickstarter for the NSG S0 in early 2017 which attracted 461 backers and a quarter million Euro to fund the project goal of €150K. Many of the top contributors were told they would be receiving the finished NSG S0 by the end of 2017. A promise that fell immediately flat as the chassis never materialized for backers of the project. Dozens of project updates, excuses, executive changeovers, private funding campaigns, and empty promises finally led to Streacom being involved as the experienced party to redesign and deliver a product on the initial NSG S0 premise.

AMD is expected to debut its performance-segment Radeon RX 7600 RDNA3 graphics card in May-June 2023, with board partners expected to show off their custom-design cards in the 2023 Computex (June). Moore's Law is Dead reports that they've spoken to a source with access to an early graphics card sample running the 5 nm "Navi 33" silicon that powers the RX 7600. This card, with development drivers (which are sure to be riddled with performance limiters); offers a 11% performance uplift over the Radeon RX 6650 XT, and a gaming power draw of 175 W (the RX 6650 XT pulls around 185-190 W).

This is still an early sample running development drivers, but a 11% performance boost puts it in the league of the Radeon RX 6700 XT. Should a production RX 7600 with launch-day drivers put on another 5-7% performance over this, the RX 7600 could end up with performance roughly matching the RX 6750 XT (a slim performance lead over the RTX 3070 in 1080p gaming). Should its power draw also hold, one can expect custom-design graphics cards to ship with single 8-pin PCIe power connectors. A couple of nifty specs of the RX 7600 also leaked out in the MLID report: Firstly, that 8 GB will remain the standard memory size for the RX 7600, as it is for the current RX 6650 XT. Secondly, the RX 7600 engine clock is reported to boost "above" 2.60 GHz.

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.

Taiwan welcomes visitors back and you will no longer be required to quarantine on arrival. Don't miss out on the opportunity to network face-to-face with leading ICT, IoT, computing, CE, gaming, tech related companies, etc. from Taiwan at COMPUTEX TAIPEI. The show will have over 1,100 exhibitors from 16 countries with more coming soon in 3,000 booths. There will be over 30,000 visitors attending the show. Within the COMPUTEX show, we have a start-ups tradeshow focused on tech innovation called InnoVEX in which last year there were 195 startups from 14 countries and 500 VCs (Venture Capitalist), accelerators, and partners.

Gigabyte has tried its luck at building compact gaming systems in the past, mainly part of its BRIX family of mini PCs, but none really took off. Last year the company introduced the Aorus Model S, although it didn't seem to garner much traction either, but it seems like Gigabyte is ready to give it another try, as the Model S 12th was introduced at Computex last week. Unfortunately there was no-one at the Gigabyte booth at the time that could tell us anything about it, so we had to go and dig up some details on our own. The base model appears to come with an Intel Core i7-12700K processor, which is fitted to a Z690 based Mini-ITX motherboard, paired with 32 GB of DDR5 4800 MHz memory. There's also a GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card with 8 GB of memory and a 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

However, what makes this system a bit special, is that it has a massive combined CPU and GPU cooler, with the entire system being cooled by one 120 mm and one 140 mm fan. The design is reminiscent of the Corsair One, albeit a bit more square and not quite as refined. The Model S 12th comes with all the features you'd expect from a higher-end PC these days, such as 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) port and a 750 W 80 Plus gold rated PSU. The system measures 190 x 189 x 400 mm (WxDxH) and has a volume of 14 litres. A decent, if not spectacular specification, although as we don't know the pricing, it's hard to say if it'll be good value or not.

Although Micron is a predominantly US company, it also has some fabs in Japan, Singapore, the PRC and Taiwan, many of which became part of Micron after it bought other companies. Based on Micron's Computex presentation, it's getting ready to upgrade one of its three fabs in Taichung with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology later this year. This is in preparation for the company to move to what it calls its 1-gamma process node for DRAM. Initially this seems to be a R&D node to help the company prepare for a wider rollout of EUV technology. Micron's current DRAM is based on its 1-alpha node and it's planning to move its 1-beta node into volume production next year, in its Taiwan fabs.

Micron's current 1-alpha node is based on DUV technology and was introduced last year, with the company claiming it had a 40 percent improvement in memory density over its previous 1Z node. Micron no longer mentions its die size in the commonly used nanometer measurement, but its 1Z node is said to have been around 11 to 13 nm, so it's likely that the 1-beta node will end up below 10 nm, if its 1-alpha node isn't already below 10 nm. Micron's longer term roadmap also includes a 1-delta node, which was meant to be its first EUV product, but this now seems to have been moved forward to its 1-gamma node. It's likely that Micron will be moving its other fabs to EUV in due time as well, but DRAM has so far not benefitted as much from node shrinks compared to most other types of integrated circuits, so it'll be interesting to see what gains EUV might bring.

MEMS or microelectromechanical systems have been around for some time and the technology has allowed for the miniaturisation of a wide range of things. If you're not familiar with MEMS, then the quick version is that it's a way of making movable parts out of the same type silicon used to make semiconductors out of, in the same kind of fabs. xMEMS is a company that has specialised in making what the company calls microspeakers using MEMS technology and the first headphones based on its microspeakers should arrive later this year. The company was demoing a 3D printed mockup together with an OEM manufacturer called Vencer at Computex and we got some hands and ear on time with them.

The 3D printed units aren't what you'd call amazing looking and the fit was far from perfect, especially as the foam eartips that were installed didn't form a proper seal for yours truly. As such it was impossible to make any kind of sound quality judgement on the show floor, but it would appear that MEMS earphones share a lot with balanced armatures, in that a good seal is needed for them to sound good. The demo unit connected via USB-C and what's not in the picture, was a rather big and unsightly three button control unit on the cord, which also contained a CX31988 audio codec from Synaptics. One interesting aspect of MEMS speakers is that they can be used in both open and closed modes, where the open mode would be used for things like having phone calls or instead of enabling ambient mode on ANC type earbuds. The closed mode would work like a normal pair of driver units inside your earbuds. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for a final product to arrive and put it through its paces, but we weren't given any indication on when retail products could be available, beyond sometime later this year.

Somewhat unexpectedly, there were a handful of exhibitors from the PRC at Computex and walking around the mostly empty show, we spotted a company called Wii Power (no relation to Nintendo) that had a range of rather interesting Gallium Nitride or GaN chargers on display. The headline product wasn't even the most interesting model on display, but at 340 W, it's by far the most powerful GaN based charger we've seen to date. Although it wasn't a final product based on the looks of the housing, it gives us some insight into what to expect from future laptop chargers. It's still a rather large power brick at 150 x 86 x 34 mm, but it can deliver 20 V at up to 17 A over the fixed power cable. In addition to that, it also has a USB-C port with support for USB PD and a range of other charging standards that can deliver up to 45 W.

The company showed off another charger that has a combined output of 240 W and the primary USB-C port supports revision 3.1 of the USB PD standard and can deliver 140 W on its own. The secondary USB-C port can deliver another 100 W, but what makes this product interesting outside of this, is that Wii Power offers an adapter that can combine both of these outputs into a single 240 W output for charging more demanding laptops. There's even a third USB-C port and a USB-A for peripheral or phone charging, although each port is limited to 30 W and the total output can never exceed 240 W. A built-in display shows the Voltage, Amperage and Wattage that's being put out. It's still rather chunky at 130 x 80 x 32 mm, but considering the power it can put out, it's more compact than most similar non GaN chargers. Finally the company had a compact USB PD 3.1 travel charger that can again deliver up to 140 W, which is the equivalent of 28 V at 5 A. We're not expecting to see any of these products in their current guise in retail, but it's a clear sign of what to expect in terms of future charging products.

Although there was a leak with a partial picture of the ASRock X670E Taichi board just days before Computex 2022 kicked off, it was hard to draw any real conclusions from it. The company has revealed more details about it, alongside the X670E Taichi Carrara, X670E Steel Legend and the X670E Pro RS. Let's start with the plain X670E Taichi, since this was the board that leaked. As is obvious now, the board doesn't feature a fan on the chipset heatsink, but rather a set of cogs, something we've seen before from ASRock. The board has very limited expansion options when it comes to PCIe slots, with a pair of x16 slots, which are sharing the 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the CPU and that's it. ASRock has gone for four M.2 slots, of which one is PCIe 5.0, most likely the one next to the memory slots. Interestingly, ASRock has kitted out the X670E Taichi with Thunderbolt 4, which means we're looking at an Intel chip here and there should also be support for USB4 and the two ports are located around the back of the board.

Rather unexpectedly, MSI has become the third company to reveal a QD-OLED based display, after Alienware and Samsung. The MEG 342C QD-OLED as the monitor is called, uses—just like the Alienware—a curved 34-inch QD-OLED panel. However, MSI has gone for FreeSync Premium Pro over G-Sync Ultimate, which should hopefully result in a lower retail price. The resolution is also the same as on the Alienware, 3440x1440 and the two also share the same 175 Hz refresh rate, 1800R curvature, 1000 nits peak HDR brightness and DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. MSI claims the same DCI-P3 colour gamut of 99.3 percent, but the MEG 342C has a lower sRGB colour gamut of 139.1 percent versus 149 percent for the Alienware.

MSI has added a few features that the Alienware lack, such as a USB Type-C input with DisplayPort Alt Mode, KVM functionality and some MSI specific features such as a low blue-light mode and what the company calls "gaming intelligence". MSI also supports Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture, something that it's unclear if the Alienware supports or not. The MEG 342C is said to ship factory calibrated with a dE <2, which might not matter to most gamers, but should be important to anyone planning to use the display for video or photo editing work. MSI didn't disclose any pricing, nor any availability date.

Last week, Acer unveiled its first two consumer implementations of its SpatialLabs 3D displays and the company is demoing its SpatialLabs technology at Computex this week, which gave TPU a chance to get some hands, or rather eyes on time. At the time Acer released the press release, it wasn't really clear how these displays work and we can now provide a lot more details on what makes these displays so special. The displays rely on a special lenticular lens, a pair of eye-tracking cameras and some very clever software algorithms. When the 3D mode is disabled, it looks just as sharp as any other display and there weren't any visible distortions or other distractions on the panel. Acer had multiple demos at its booth, of which one was an interactive demo with hand tracking, where you could pick items out of a treasure chest. Another demo showed various 3D renders and in both cases, the objects were protruding out of the display, as well as extending inwards and it was very convincing 3D demos, especially considering no glasses were involved.

The demos that matter more to the TPU readership should be the game demos, of which the main one was God of War running on a desktop PC. Acer claims to support some 500 game titles today and although a custom launcher is required to get the 3D effect in games, Acer told us that games from Steam, Epic etc. should work just fine via its launcher. Here the 3D effect is more of a depth effect, since unless the game in question incorporates support for the display, there's no way to get objects in the game to protrude out of the display. The game did get that extra 3D dimension that older solutions that rely on glasses had, but the overall feeling was very different. Sadly there's no way of presenting what it was like using the display, but it was very much an impressive experience.

Computex 2022 is what's being referred to as a hybrid show and although most of the motherboard manufacturers chose not to exhibit this year, Gigabyte was at the show and we got to take a closer look at its new AM5 motherboards. Gigabyte was only showing four models, but on the plus side, the staff at the booth was more than happy to share details about the boards with us. The four boards on display were the X670E Aorus Xtreme, the X670E Aorus Master, the X670E Aero D and the X670 Aorus Pro AX. Note that these were early board revision and the E is missing in the model name from three of the models, which suggests that AMD hadn't informed the board makers about this distinction between its chipsets until earlier this month when rumours about it started to appear online.

Gigabyte will have a full lineup of boards coming later this year when AMD launches its AM5 platform, although based on the information we were given, the majority of its boards will be based on the B650 chipset. We should point out that there will be high-end B650 motherboards that will be priced similar to lower-end X670 models, which means that buying AM5 motherboards will be highly dependent on what features you favour. Unfortunately no B650 motherboards were on display and we won't be sharing any details of these models at this time. As for the X670E versus X670 chipsets, as there are of course two per board, it seems like the difference comes down to PCIe 5.0 or PCIe 4.0 for the x16 PCIe slot as the major differentiator between Gigabyte's different SKUs.

NVIDIA today announced that Taiwan's leading computer makers are set to release the first wave of systems powered by the NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip and Grace Hopper Superchip for a wide range of workloads spanning digital twins, AI, high performance computing, cloud graphics and gaming. Dozens of server models from ASUS, Foxconn Industrial Internet, GIGABYTE, QCT, Supermicro and Wiwynn are expected starting in the first half of 2023. The Grace-powered systems will join x86 and other Arm-based servers to offer customers a broad range of choice for achieving high performance and efficiency in their data centers.

"A new type of data center is emerging—AI factories that process and refine mountains of data to produce intelligence—and NVIDIA is working closely with our Taiwan partners to build the systems that enable this transformation," said Ian Buck, vice president of Hyperscale and HPC at NVIDIA. "These new systems from our partners, powered by our Grace Superchips, will bring the power of accelerated computing to new markets and industries globally."

Although AMD didn't provide too many details during its Computex 2022 keynote speech about the upcoming AM5 platform, the company did announce that there will be at least three chipsets for the platform and showed pictures of some upcoming motherboards. ASUS has kindly filled in some more details about its upcoming ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, which will be one of its higher-end models. Sadly the pictures posted are kind of tiny and the company didn't provide a shot of the rear I/O. That said, ASUS did point out some of its new features that we can expect to find on the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme.

For starters, the board will have a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, although each slot is likely to only have eight lanes each, when both slots are in use, but ASUS doesn't mention any details here. The board has support for up to five M.2 NVMe SSDs, four of which support PCIe 5.0. Only two are onboard, with the other three being via ASUS' proprietary ROG PCIe 5.0 M.2 card and ROG GEN-Z.2 card. ASUS also promises USB4 support, as well as a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 header with Quick Charge 4+ as well as up to 60 W charging support, for cases with a front USB-C port. On top of the rear I/O is an AniMe Matrix LED display that can be user customised.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced to present the latest gaming products at COMPUTEX 2022. The innovations include its flagship gaming solutions powered by Intel 12th gen processors. The perfect combination of the IF Design Awarded Z690 AORUS XTREME motherboard, high-end key components, and big size monitors provide remarkable gaming experience. The Project Stealth kit enables an easy and simple assembly experience with special interface and cables hidden design while further enhances the system airflow for optimized cooling effect. Meanwhile, the new gaming PC, Model S delivers powerful, cool, and silent operation even on 3A games with its slick and neat aesthetics.

Moreover, the latest AMD Socket AM5 motherboards including gaming series of X670 AORUS XTREME, MASTER, PRO AX and X670 AERO D for designers will be first exposed in this exhibition as well. Users can take a sneak peek at the advanced design and extensive features of PCIe 5.0 graphics slot, M.2 Gen5 interface, exclusive PCIe/M.2 EZ-latch on GIGABYTE motherboards.

Phison Electronics Corp., a leading provider of NAND controller and flash storage solutions, announced today a strategic collaboration with AMD and Micron to build a cooperative PCIe Gen5 ecosystem of compatible products that elevate the gaming and creator experience. Phison's role includes delivering a class-leading PCie Gen5 SSD controller - PS5026-E26 - that features nearly a 2x performance increase over the previous generation flagship while adhering to the same power limitations of the M.2 form factor.

"We are pleased to announce our cooperative effort with Micron and AMD to advance the technological development of PCIe Gen5 storage offerings, as this validates Phison's commitment to upholding customer-centric values," said Leo Huang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Phison. "The E26 controller enables gamers to compete at the highest level and helps content creators to maximize the overall system performance to increase productivity." The need for high-speed storage has increased with the popularity of 5G Wireless availability worldwide. Global markets including desktop PC, notebooks, gaming consoles, cloud servers and even mobile devices will benefit from increased data transfer rates and the bandwidth available for multitask purposes. The ecosystem consisting of AMD's AM5 platform, Phison's PS5026-E26 controller, Micron's DDR5 DRAM and Replacement Gate 3D NAND allow for platform acceleration across the entire system to meet the requirements for today's always-connected lifestyle.

We're expecting to see a wide range of AM5 motherboards next week during Computex, but we're already being treated to some early leaks ahead of the show. The most recent leak was picked up by @9550pro on Twitter, but was originally posted on Baidu. What we're looking at here though, isn't actually a picture of a motherboard, but rather the placement map for the SMD components used during motherboard assembly. These pictures are often used to make sure things like the solder mask and components were applied properly during production. However, it does give us a good look at the overall layout of the ASUS X670 Prime-P WiFi and the fact that the X670 chipset does indeed consist of two parts. What is also clear is that we're looking at a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot here, as these slots are SMD components rather than through hole.

Other things that are clearly visible, includes support for three M.2 slots, of which the one closest to the CPU might be PCIe 5.0, but there's really no way of telling by just looking at the connector placement. There's also a space for a WiFi module at the bottom of the rear I/O, but beyond that, it's hard to make out the proper port layout. However, there appears to be at least one USB-C port at the rear, as well as a header for another one at the front of the motherboard, next to a USB 3.0 header. The board also appears to feature 14 power phases and obviously four DDR5 DIMM slots. The chip between the two chipsets are either a Super I/O chip or possibly a PCIe redriver. In addition to the x16 PCIe 5.0 slot, the X670 Prime-P appears to be getting a single PCIe x1 slot and two PCIe x4 slots, both which appear to get physical x16 slots. Finally the board should have two SATA ports mounted at a 90-degree angle, as well as four ports at the bottom edge of the PCB. ASUS seems to have gone for a solar system pattern on the PCB itself, so it'll be interesting to see what the actual boards will look like.

It appears that ASRock got a little bit too excited and posted a Computex video earlier today that contained a brief glimpse of its upcoming X670E Taichi motherboard. The screenshot that was captured by Wccftech doesn't give away too much details, but the board appears to have at least three M.2 slots and a pair of PCIe x16 slots, of which at least one is meant to be of the PCIe 5.0 variety. The rest of the board is covered in heatsinks and various shrouds. The board will feature Realtek's ALC4082 USB attached audio codec, as well as a ESS ES9218 DAC. It is also said to sport a 26-phase VRM setup. The board is also expected to have Thunderbolt 4 support. The video has unfortunately been taken down, so we'll have to wait until next week to find out more details.

In related news, @momomo_us has leaked details of several upcoming AM5 motherboards, of which four models are from ASRock and two from ASUS. The ASRock models are the X670E Taichi mentioned above, the X670 PG Riptide, X670 Phantom Gaming 4 and the X670 Steel Legend. The two ASUS models are the ProArt X670E-Creator WiFi and the ProArt B650-Creator. Finally Gigabyte has revealed that the company will be displaying its X670 Aorus Xtreme, X670 Master, X670 Pro AX and X670 AERO D at Computex next week. The company mentions PCIe 5.0 for both graphics and the M.2 interface, which pretty much cements the earlier rumors about AMD offering PCIe 5.0 support for the M.2 interface on the AM5 platform.

A physical show of COMPUTEX 2022 will be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall from May 24 to 27, 2022. In addition, TAITRA will simultaneously hold an online exhibition called COMPUTEX DigitalGo (May 24 to June 6). This year, exhibitors and visitors are invited to participate in COMPUTEX both online and offline. The online registration is now open to buyers worldwide. COMPUTEX is one of the world-leading ICT exhibitions. This year, the show focuses on six trendy themes: Accelerating Intelligence, Connected X-Experience, Digital Resilience, Innovative Computing, Innovations & Startups, and Sustainability. In addition, a number of top ICT leaders, including Acer, AMD, Apacer, Arm, ASUS, ATEN, Delta, GIGABYTE, IBM, Infineon, KIOXIA, Microsoft Corp., MSI, NVIDIA, NXP, Qualcomm, Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT), Supermicro, Texas Instruments, ZOTAC and more, will participate in hybrid events.

COMPUTEX will hold many events during the show this year. Some highlights include five COMPUTEX CEO Keynotes by the global tech giants. They will deliver hot topics and the latest trends that attendees could walk away with informative and insightful views. The COMPUTEX Forum will revolve around the theme "Create the New Normal", consisting of two technological innovation and application sessions. The first session will focus on technology innovation, with the topic of "Technology Empowerment, Building Industry Chains", dissecting computing, 5G, IoT to drive the opportunities in AI. The second session will cover technology application with the topic of "Application Advancements - Realizing Future Scenarios", which focuses on virtual reality, smart life, remote work, and ESG management by using digital technology.

COMPUTEX 2022 is set to kick off from May 24 to 27 in the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Hall 1 & 2, featuring Innovative Computing, Accelerating Intelligence, Digital Resilience, Connected X-Experience, Innovations and Startups, and Sustainability. This annual tech event will continue to lead in the discovery of the latest technology trends. Due to the pandemic, the annual physical show was cancelled for two years, but COMPUTEX 2022 is back, and it is open for international exhibitor registration starting from October 6. In addition, the global warm-up tour, #COMPUTEXisEverywhere, will begin on November 18.

As a co-organizer of COMPUTEX, TAITRA indicated that technology has demonstrated its importance in enabling business resilience in the past year, as society experienced challenges and witnessed accelerated digital transformation in various industries. As a leading ICT trade show, COMPUTEX has embraced digital transformation and will return anew to bring better exhibition experience to attendees.

Senior Technology Fellow Yuzo Fukuzaki shed light on the elusive new CPU technology AMD unveiled at its Computex 2021 keynote, 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache). The company had then detailed it as an additional 64 MB last-level cache stacked on top of a CCD (CPU core complex die), which significantly improves performance, including a claimed 15% average gain in gaming performance, which accounts for a generational performance gain over "Zen 3." The prototype AMD unveiled in its keynote was based on a Socket AM4 processor with "Zen 3" CCDs that have the 3DV Cache components in place. With two such CCDs, a 16-core processor would end up with 192 MB of L3 cache.

Yuzo Fukuzaki's theory sheds light on the most plausible position of 3DV Cache in the processor's cache hierarchy. Apparently, it expands the CCD's L3 cache, and doesn't serve as an "L4" victim cache to the L3. This way, the cache setup remains transparent to the OS, which sees it as a contiguous 96 MB block of L3 cache (per CCD). The 3DV Cache die is an SRAM chip fabricated on the same 7 nm process as the "Zen 3" CCD. It measures 6 mm x 6 mm (36 mm²), and is located above the region of the CCD that typically has the 32 MB L3 SRAM. Fukuzaki estimates that roughly 23,000 TSVs (through-silicon vias), each about 17 µm in size, connect the 3DV Cache die to the main CCD.

EK Water Blocks, or simply EK as the company refers to itself now, had a decent showing at the virtual Computex 2021 event including new AIO CPU coolers, additions to its Fluid Gaming and Fluid Works portfolio, and more water blocks based on current designs and supporting newer hardware, including one we reported on just a few hours ago. These all interested me, but then there was a nearly two hour private conversation followed by a live stream that ended minutes ago which shed more light on future updates and products in its mainstream Quantum DIY liquid cooling lineup.There were renders of the upcoming Velocity² CPU blocks shared before, but seeing them actually manufactured is a whole other thing. Velocity² is the update to EK's popular Velocity CPU blocks, with a complete redesign that evokes more comparisons to monoblocks than other CPU blocks. Taking cues from the flagship EK-Quantum Magnitude, you will see different cooling engines to better cool different CPU sockets. There is also a concealed aesthetic theme here, especially for the acetal top version where you can't see any screws in use, thanks to a patent-pending mounting mechanism from the back- again taking cues from monoblocks. EK says the new system uses "pre-tensioned springs concealed in the water block top, so with just a few turns on the thumb-nuts, the installation is finished". We look forward to checking these out in person when they release in the Sept 2021 timeframe. Read past the break for more from EK!

Micron, the US-based manufacturer of various kinds of memory technologies, has today announced some quite interesting products at its Computex 2021 keynote. For starters, the company has announced a new portfolio of products based on 176-layer NAND. There are currently two products listed that use this new technology and those are the Micron 3400 and 2450 M.2 NVMe SSDs. Based on the PCIe 4.0 interface, the 2450 SSD lineup is designed as a value-oriented solution that comes in M.2-2280, M.2-2242, and M.2-2230 sizes. It ranges from 256 GB to 1 TB in capacities, which are supposed to be priced as a value purchase.

In a contrast, the 3400 SSD is M.2-2280 design, meant for only the highest performance. The sequential read speeds go up to 6600 MB/s, while the sequential writes go up to 5000 MB/s (in the case of the 2 TB model). Capacities range from 512 GB to 2 TB and only the 1 TB and 2 TB variants have the 5000 MB/s write speeds, while the 512 GB version is capped at 3600 MB/s speed. Both SSD models are featuring a heat spreader on top of NAND chips and spot an in-house and Micron-developed NVMe 1.4 SSD controller. However, Micron does note that the company is free to use any 3rd party SSD controller as we are deep in component shortages with high demand for SSDs. You can get an in-depth look at the 2450 and 3400 M.2 SSDs from Micron's website.