China is reacting to new outbreaks of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus with partial lockdowns. This could further delay the availability of laptops with 12th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA's Ti graphics cards, which debuted at the beginning of the year. The first factories have already been closed in Suzhou in the east of the country. Supply chain and logistics bottlenecks, a shortage of certain chip types and price increases are already on the horizon.

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC-based Graphics Processor Units (GPU) market reached 101 million units in Q3'21 and PC CPUs shipments increased by 9% year over year. Overall, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of -1.1% during 2020-2025 and reach an installed base of 3,249 million units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of discrete GPUs (dGPU) in the PC will grow to reach a level of 31%.

AMD's overall market share percentage from last quarter increased 1.4%, Intel's market share decreased by -6.2%, and Nvidia's market share increased 4.86%, as indicated in the following chart.

TrendForce's investigations find that India has become the second largest market for smartphones since 2019. However, the recent worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country has severely impaired India's domestic economy and subsequently dampened various smartphone brands' production volume and sales (sell-in) performances there. TrendForce is therefore revising the forecasted YoY growth in global smartphone production for 2021 from 9.4% down to 8.5%, with a yearly production volume of 1.36 billion units and potential for further decreases going forward.

TrendForce further indicates that the top five smartphone brands (Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo) have either set up assembly plants in India or sought assistance from EMS providers with operations in the country. Hence, the share of made-in-India smartphones has been on the rise over the years, even though the majority of the domestically manufactured devices are still for meeting the demand of the home market. Judging from the current state of Indian smartphone manufacturing, TrendForce expects the second wave to reduce the country's smartphone production volume for 2Q21 and 3Q21 by a total of 12 million units, in turn resulting in a 7.5% YoY decrease in smartphone production in India for the whole year.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed the installation of a next-generation high performance computing platform, with aim to enhance its ongoing R&D efforts in support of the nation's response to COVID-19. Named Chicoma, the new platform is poised to demonstrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise's new HPE Cray EX supercomputer architecture for solving complex scientific problems.

"As extensive social and economic impacts from COVID-19 continue to grip the nation, Los Alamos scientists are actively engaged in a number of critical research efforts ranging from therapeutics design to epidemiological modeling," said Irene Qualters, Associate Laboratory Director for Simulation and Computing at Los Alamos. "High Performance Computing is playing a critical role by allowing scientists to model the complex phenomena involved in viral evolution and propagation."

Due to the impact of the coronavirus on semiconductor supply and demand, worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to decline 0.9% in 2020, according to Gartner, Inc. This is down from the previous quarter's forecast of 12.5% growth.

"The wide spread of COVID-19 across the world and the resulting strong actions by governments to contain the spread will have a far more severe impact on demand than initially predicted," said Richard Gordon, research practice vice president at Gartner. "This year's forecast could have been worse, but growth in memory could prevent a steep decline."

If there is one thing that the internet has done well, and well indeed, is bridging gaps in geography. That globalization is a well-studied phenomenon is a lapalissian truth; however, as humans, we sometimes tend to take what achievements have been made through technology for granted. Whether to bridge social distancing between parents or lovers through this quarantine, or enabling companies to remain with a semblance of (and sometimes higher than before) productivity, technology has once again come to the rescue. Physical distancing and seclusion does not equate to social distancing, after all.

This has been evidenced by the most recent market studies conducted by both the NPD and IDC, where sales of technologies such as webcams, headsets, mics, and other camera-integrated products have seen a steep rise. Webcams, for one, have increased their sales by 179%; laptops and desktops have seen 40% increases; headsets tip the scales once again at 134% and a 138% increase in PC monitors. I wager many people (some of our readers included) may have even removed the post-it or electrical tape from their laptop webcams. When physical presence isn't possible, technologies can render distances slightly smaller.

NVIDIA today announced that their yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) will be held online, instead of locally at the San Jose Convention Center as previously planned. The company cites Covid-19 (colloquially called Coronavirus) concerns as the root cause - the health of both its professionals and attendees is paramount for the company, and as such, an online event seems more inline with the state of the world.

In the press note, NVIDIA also said that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote address, which will be available exclusively by livestream. All those who registered for a GTC pass will receive a full refund. This is yet another event that has been impacted by the recent virus outbreak that has the world's economies teetering, but for the more cynical among us, it could be the beginning of a new way of doing this sorts of events: online, rather than locally, thus reducing the required investment and logistics usually associated with such.

Game Developers Conference is perhaps one of the biggest organizations in the gaming industry, covering everything from gaming hardware to games themselves. This year's GDC event was planned to happen on March 16th, however, due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 concerns, the GDC organization has decided to postpone the event. This doesn't mean that the conference will not happen at all. Instead, the GDC organizers plan to host the event sometime "later in the summer", when hopefully the COVID-19 concerns will settle. To add, Facebook also canceled its F8 Developer Conference, along with Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit which also got canceled due to virus outbreak fears.

Being that Computex is happening within three months, there are growing concerns that the event may not happen at all, however, we can hope that the situation will be resolved soon and that we can bring you live coverage of the event.

The European PC case and cooling manufacturer SilentiumPC, expands its ring-type RGB fan series by adding the bigger 140 mm version. The Corona HP RGB series offers a very delicate and smooth RGB illumination thanks to the embedded LEDs in the ring. Features like the HBS (Hydraulic) bearing and the built-in anti-vibration rubber grommets, allow the Corona HP RGB 140 to be used as a versatile case fan and to be the perfect match for air coolers and radiators of water-cooling systems. SilentiumPC supports such larger fan setups by offers the Corona HP RGB 140 as a 3-pack bundle in addition to the regular single fan package.

Following the recent release of the stylish value-oriented Signum SG1/SG1M cases, SilentiumPC introduces the new top-of-the-line variant, Signum SG1X TG RGB. Compact and efficient, these value-oriented cases are designed to bring ODD-less designs to the lower price points. Combining pure functionality with a pinch of style, the Signum SG1X TG RGB is an excellent mainline case choice for any budget-conscious system builder and DIY user.

Inspired by automotive design, the distinctive, hexagonal side-vents are not only functional, providing ample airflow, but also a vital design element giving the Signum SG1X TG RGB its unique personality. The main highlight for the SG1X are two tempered-glass panels, covering the front and side, revealing four beautiful, ring-type Corona HP 120 RGB fans inside. Built-in Illumination and speed hub allows all the fans to be connected to a single RGB and PWM connector on the motherboard. Alternatively a simply Nano-Reset device is included, which turns the factory reset switch into an illumination controller.

The European PC case and cooling manufacturer SilentiumPC, introduces the new Sigma HP Corona RGB 120 Kit, a product that will instantly bring any PC system up to speed with the RGB revolution! The kit includes three 120 mm Sigma HP Corona RGB fans and the tiny, yet powerful Nano RGB controller. Built-in inside the ring-shaped casing are 18 bright RGB LEDs, that enable the users to choose from any colour to create stunning lightning effects. There are three methods of controlling these effects.

First, manually, using the included Nano RGB controller which has several pre-defined modes, from constant lightning, through slow, gradual color change and breathing to aggressive strobe. Additional button speeds or slows down each of the effects and can also turn the illumination off completely. Next option is using the proprietary SilentiumPC Aurora Sync and Sync PRO controllers pre-installed in selected Armis cases.
Last option is simply connecting the fans to the RGB-capable motherboard and using the software such as ASRock RGB LED, Asus Aura, EVGA RGB or MSI Mystic Light.

Introducing SilentiumPC Sigma Pro Corona RGB 120 Kit, a product that will instantly bring any PC system up to speed with the RGB revolution! The kit includes three 120 mm Sigma Pro Corona RGB fans and a tiny yet powerful Nano RGB controller. Built-in inside the ring-shaped casing there are 18 bright RGB LEDs that enable the user to choose from any color to create stunning lightning effects. Three methods of controlling these effects are available.