Earlier today, reports pointed to an intriguingly discounted Intel "Battlemage" GPU-based graphics card on the Mindfactory.de webstore—ASRock's Arc B570 Challenger OC 10 GB model was priced at €249. European retailers would normally charge €279 for this specific SKU, but the Germany-headquartered PC hardware retail outlet offered a discount of €30, albeit briefly. VideoCardz noted that the fairly new Arc B570 Challenger OC model has been listed on Mindfactory's site since late last year—following Team Blue's early December unveiling of second wave Battlemage GPUs.

The timing of this special offer is a tad surprising, given that Arc B570-based graphics cards only reached global markets late last week. A compelling discount could have been implemented to entice buyers away from more expensive (€299 MSRP) Arc B580-equipped products, but Team Blue and its board partners have struggled—as-of-late—to keep these items in stock. Budget-minded gamers have seemingly embraced the slightly less potent B570 GPU family, and German customers surely had a great opportunity to save some Euros (over the past day or two). Mindfactory's time-limited sale produced a €50 gulf between the ASRock custom design and Intel's Limited Edition B580 model.

We recently reported on the Good Old Games's Game Preservation Program's success, with the storefront preserving two 30-year-old Warcraft games. Now, however, GOG is partnering with the European Federation of Game Archives, Museums, and Preservation Projects (EFGAMP) for future preservation efforts. EFGAMP is "the largest organization in Europe dedicated to preserving video games as cultural heritage," giving GOG's commitment to game preservation a lot more weight than previously. The partnership could also help GOG work within and with European governmental and non-governmental institutions, like museums and other organizations, in order to further the game preservation cause.

Perhaps more interestingly, as a game distribution platform with some development talent behind it, GOG actually brings something to the table that was previously missing from EFGAMP as a foundation. In the announcement, the foundation and GOG claim that 2024 was something of a tipping point for consumers when it comes to both the erosion of game ownership and game preservation as a whole. The subject of game ownership was a recurring theme in 2024, with games like The Crew joining the aforementioned Warcraft games in being delisted from stores—at least with the GOG delisting, the games are still maintained for existing owners. The goal of both GOG and EFGAMP is to preserve the history of gaming culture, allowing future generations to experience and learn about important moments in gaming history.

Finland's Proshop has listed eight GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5080 custom design graphics card models, complete with prices in Euros—please note that value added tax (VAT) is included. Team Green's CES 2025 "Blackwell" announcement revealed an MSRP of €1229 (without VAT: €979) for the GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition (for Finland, and other European countries). Board partners usually tack on extra charges for their custom interpretations—fancier variants commonly demand a premium upcharge. The VideoCardz sleuthing network has discovered that GIGABYTE's launch selection errs more towards the upper-end—Proshop's premature listing reveals only a single model coming in at Team Green's baseline MSRP. As always, these figures are subject to change—we are still in a pre-launch holding pattern.

The GIGABYTE RTX 5080 WINDFORCE OC card is the only listed model that adheres to NVIDIA's standard MSRP—VideoCardz has kindly crunched the numbers (refer to their diagram below) and reckons that the seven other options demand premiums across a range of 15% to 35%. Recent GIGABYTE press material places every model in a premium tier, even the entry-point SFF-Ready WINDFORCE OC model. An upcharge of 440 Euros is applicable with GIGABYTE's range-topping AORUS Xtreme WaterForce option. One step above Team Green MSRP baseline bags you the GeForce RTX 5080 GAMING OC model—an extra investment of 190 Euros goes into a larger cooling solution and shroud design (featuring RGB lighting). TechPowerUp anticipates further price leaks to emerge—from other manufacturers—as we close in on launch day: January 30.

The semiconductor industry is expected to start 18 new fab construction projects in 2025, according to SEMI's latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. The new projects include three 200 mm and fifteen 300 mm facilities, the majority of which are expected to begin operations from 2026 to 2027.

In 2025, the Americas and Japan are the leading regions with four projects each. The China and Europe & Middle East regions are each tied for third place with three planned construction projects. Taiwan has two planned projects, while Korea and Southeast Asia have one project each for 2025.

European tech brand ENDORFY is making its first official appearance at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Running through January 9, the company will showcase its latest PC components and peripherals to a global audience at the world's most influential tech event.

ENDORFY is expanding to the US market with a portfolio of high-quality PC components and accessories. This expansion supports the company's goal of reaching all modern technology enthusiasts with a range of products praised for combining advanced technology with reliability, efficiency, and great value for gamers, content creators, and tech enthusiasts.

Silicon Box, a global leader in advanced semiconductor packaging and system integration, welcomes the European Commission's approval of approximately €1.3 billion for its new manufacturing facility in Italy. The project, representing a total investment of €3.2 billion, will create 1,600 high-skilled jobs and establish Europe's most advanced semiconductor packaging facilities.

The investment supports the EU's strategic goal to produce 20% of the world's semiconductors by 2030 and marks Silicon Box's first expansion beyond Singapore. With its proprietary large format panel-level process lines, the factory can scale up the packaging of chips 6 to 8 times more than traditional wafer-level packaging.

The pilot line for "Advanced Packaging and Heterogeneous Integration for Electronic Components and Systems" (APECS) marks a major leap forward in strengthening Europe's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities and chiplet innovation as part of the EU Chips Act. By providing large industry players, SMEs, and start-ups with a facilitated access to cutting-edge technology, the APECS pilot line will establish a strong foundation for resilient and robust European semiconductor supply chains. Within APECS, the institutes collaborating in the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (FMD) will work closely with European partners, to make a significant contribution to the European Union's goals of increasing technological resilience, strengthening cross-border collaboration and enhancing its global competitiveness in semiconductor technologies. APECS is co-funded by the Chips Joint Undertaking and national funding authorities of Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, through the "Chips for Europe" initiative. The overall funding for APECS amounts to €730 million over 4.5 years.

Europe is home to a vibrant ecosystem of (hidden) champions, from traditional enterprises in vertical markets, to SMEs and start-ups the competitive advantages of which lie in superior semiconductor-based solutions. Nevertheless, many of these companies are currently confronted with limited access to advanced semiconductor technologies, while at the same time these technologies are increasingly becoming the most important factor for innovation and market growth.

IonQ, a leader in the quantum computing and networking industry, today announced the delivery of IonQ Forte Enterprise to its first European Innovation Center at the uptownBasel campus in Arlesheim, Switzerland. Achieved in partnership with QuantumBasel, this major milestone marks the first datacenter-ready quantum computer IonQ has delivered that will operate outside the United States and the first quantum system for commercial use in Switzerland.

Forte Enterprise is now online servicing compute jobs while performing at a record algorithmic qubit count of #AQ36, which is significantly more powerful than the promised #AQ35. With each additional #AQ, the useful computational space for running quantum algorithms doubles. A system with #AQ36 is capable of considering more than 68 billion different possibilities simultaneously. With this milestone, IonQ once again leads the industry in delivering production-ready systems to customers.

Germany is set to invest €2 billion in the semiconductor industry after recent setbacks, according to TrendForce via Liberty Times citing Bloomberg. The German government's new funding is in response to the chip sector's problems, including Intel's delay of the Magdeburg factory and global disruptions in the semiconductor supply chain. The investment will support 10 to 15 projects from wafer production to microchip assembly to strengthen Germany's and Europe's microelectronics ecosystem. This is in line with the European Chips Act which aims to increase the EU's global production capacity to 20% by 2030.

Intel's €30 billion Magdeburg factory delay and other cancelled chip projects from Wolfspeed and ZF Friedrichshafen AG have created uncertainty in the German market. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is now calling for new applications for funding, with up to €3 billion available. The timing of the semiconductor investment follows the global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and the increasing geopolitical tensions between the US, China and Taiwan. Germany is following a broader trend of governments investing in local semiconductor production to increase technological independence and economic resilience. The funding is subject to budget reallocation with the new government after February 2025 elections. In the first round of subsidies from the European Chips Act, Germany allocated resources to two key initiatives: Intel's investment and a collaborative project between Infineon and TSMC in Dresden.

We are excited to announce the European release of the TRYX LUCA L70. Continuing with the launch of our highly anticipated products showcased at Computex, European PC enthusiasts can finally join the revolution, customers from Germany and UK can place the order on caseking.de and overclockers UK now, pre-orders are available for other regions in Europe.

Product Lineup for Europe
The European release of the TRYX LUCA L70 will feature two color options of black and white.

RISC-V is an industry standard instruction set architecture (ISA) born in UC Berkeley. RISC-V is the fifth iteration in the lineage of historic RISC processors. The core value of the RISC-V ISA is the freedom of usage it offers. Any organization can leverage the ISA to design the best possible core for their specific needs, with no regional restrictions or licensing costs. It attracts a massive ecosystem of developers and companies building systems using the RISC-V ISA. To support these efforts and grow the ecosystem, the brains behind RISC decided to form RISC-V International—a non-profit foundation that governs the ISA and guides the ecosystem.

We had the privilege of talking with Andrea Gallo, Vice President of Technology at RISC-V International. Andrea oversees the technological advancement of RISC-V, collaborating with vendors and institutions to overcome challenges and expand its global presence. Andrea's career in technology spans several influential roles at major companies. Before joining RISC-V International, he worked at Linaro, where he pioneered Arm data center engineering initiatives, later overseeing diverse technological sectors as Vice President of Segment Groups, and ultimately managing crucial business development activities as executive Vice President. During his earlier tenure as a Fellow at ST-Ericsson, he focused on smartphone and application processor technology, and at STMicroelectronics he optimized hardware-software architectures and established international development teams.

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has signed a purchase agreement with IQM Quantum Computers (IQM), a global leader in designing, building, and selling superconducting quantum computers. Under the agreement, IQM will deliver two advanced Radiance quantum systems of 54 qubits and 150 qubits in the second half of 2025 and by the end of 2026, respectively.

The two distinct systems, featuring high-quality qubits and industry-leading fidelities will play a pivotal role in executing quantum algorithms across a range of application domains.

Today, ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2024 third-quarter results.

• Q3 total net sales of €7.5 billion, gross margin of 50.8%, net income of €2.1 billion
• Quarterly net bookings in Q3 of €2.6 billion of which €1.4 billion is EUV
• ASML expects Q4 2024 total net sales between €8.8 billion and €9.2 billion, and a gross margin between 49% and 50%
• ASML expects 2024 total net sales of around €28 billion
• ASML expects 2025 total net sales to be between €30 billion and €35 billion, with a gross margin between 51% and 53%

CEO statement and outlook
"Our third-quarter total net sales came in at €7.5 billion, above our guidance, driven by more DUV and Installed Base Management sales. The gross margin came in at 50.8%, within guidance. While there continue to be strong developments and upside potential in AI, other market segments are taking longer to recover. It now appears the recovery is more gradual than previously expected. This is expected to continue in 2025, which is leading to customer cautiousness. Regarding Logic, the competitive foundry dynamics have resulted in a slower ramp of new nodes at certain customers, leading to several fab push outs and resulting changes in litho demand timing, in particular EUV. In Memory, we see limited capacity additions, with the focus still on technology transitions supporting the HBM and DDR5 AI-related demand."

Alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, senior European government officials and European-based global enterprises, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the first IBM Quantum Data Center located outside of the United States. It is the company's second quantum data center in the world and marks a significant expansion of its fleet of advanced, utility-scale quantum systems available to global users via the cloud.

Now online in Ehningen, Germany, Europe's first IBM Quantum Data Center includes two new utility-scale, IBM Quantum Eagle-based systems, and will soon feature a new IBM Quantum Heron-based system. These systems are capable of performing computations beyond the brute-force simulation capabilities of classical computers.

A new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shows shipments of personal computing devices are expected to grow 2.6% year over year in 2024 to 398.9 million units. The traditional PC market will remain flat in 2024 with 261 million units shipped while the tablet market is forecast to grow 7.2% year over year as a refresh cycle and project investments are expected to drive the market.

For traditional PCs, the global market excluding China is expected to grow 2.8% in 2024 as China continues to suffer through a confluence of macroeconomic challenges, including high youth employment, deflation, and a tumultuous real estate market. However, China's economic concerns have largely impacted just the PC market as tablet demand has proven to be more resilient thanks to Huawei's efforts.

After a successful product introduction during Computex 2024, Sea Sonic is now launching the sales of the new PRIME PX-2200 power supply. The Seasonic PRIME Series represents Sea Sonic's pinnacle of engineering, blending cutting-edge design with premium materials and advanced production processes. The latest models showcase digital fan control, modern interleaved PFC (Power Factor Correction), and a patented dual-transformer design running in parallel.

Seasonic's Latest Power Milestone Unveiled
The PRIME PX-2200 stands out above all PRIME units by capable of delivering an impressive 2200 watts of power at 80 Plus Platinum EU 230 V levels. Catering to a wide range of power users, this ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 compatible powerhouse delivers top-quality power combined with long-term reliability for various high-performance applications.

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Intel is in talks with investment banks about a possible spin-out of its foundry business, as well as scraping some existing expansion plans to cut losses. As the report highlights, sources close to Intel noted that the company is exploring various ways to deal with the recent Q2 2024 earnings report. While Intel's revenues are in decline, they are still high. However, the profitability of running its business has declined so much that the company is now operating on a net loss, with an astonishing $1.61 billion in the red. CEO Pat Gelsinger is now exploring various ways to control these losses and make the 56-year-old giant profitable again. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are reportedly advising Intel about its future moves regarding the foundry business and overall operations.

The Intel Foundry unit represents the biggest consumer of the company's funds, as the expansion plans across the US and Europe are costing Intel billions of US Dollars. Even though the company receives various state subsidies to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities, it still has to put much of its capital to work. Given that the company is running tight on funds, some of these expansion plans that are not business-critical may get scraped. Additionally, running the foundry business is also turning out to be rather costly, with Q2 2024 recording a negative 65.5% operating margin. Separating Intel Product and Intel Foundry may be an option, or even selling the foundry business as a whole is on the table. Whatever happens next is yet to be cleared up. During the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on Thursday, Pat Gelsinger also noted that "It's been a difficult few weeks" for Intel, with many employees getting laid off to try to establish new cost-saving measures.

AMD today announced the completion of its acquisition of Silo AI, the largest private AI lab in Europe. The all-cash transaction valued at approximately $665 million furthers the company's commitment to deliver end-to-end AI solutions based on open standards and in strong partnership with the global AI ecosystem. Silo AI brings a team of world-class AI scientists and engineers to AMD experienced in developing cutting-edge AI models, platforms and solutions for large enterprise customers including Allianz, Philips, Rolls-Royce and Unilever. Their expertise spans diverse markets and they have created state-of-the-art open source multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) including Poro and Viking on AMD platforms. The Silo AI team will join the AMD Artificial Intelligence Group (AIG), led by AMD Senior Vice President Vamsi Boppana.

"AI is our number one strategic priority, and we continue to invest in both the talent and software capabilities to support our growing customer deployments and roadmaps," said Vamsi Boppana, AMD senior vice president, AIG. "The Silo AI team has developed state-of-the-art language models that have been trained at scale on AMD Instinct accelerators and they have broad experience developing and integrating AI models to solve critical problems for end customers. We expect their expertise and software capabilities will directly improve the experience for customers in delivering the best performing AI solutions on AMD platforms."

After many back and forths, it now appears that TSMC is finally getting ready to start construction of its fab in Dresden, Germany. Multiple news outlets are reporting that TSMC is getting ready to start production on its new fab within the next few weeks, which is ahead of the expected Q4 groundbreaking. That said, TSMC has yet to announce an official date for a groundbreaking ceremony or a date when construction will start, but according to media reports TSMC's Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei will be in Germany at the end of August to sign documents with the German government and during this trip, the groundbreaking ceremony is expected to take place.

Assuming everything goes according to plan, the Dresden fab is expected to start production sometime in late 2027, but it's far from a cutting edge fab, as it'll mainly be supplying the European automotive industry with components. The new fab should start its life with two different process technologies, namely a 28 or 22 nm planar CMOS node as well as a 16 or 12 nm FinFET node. The Dresden fab is said to have a production capacity of around 40,000 12-inch wafers monthly. The new fab is expected to be an investment in excess of €10 billion for TSMC, with the city of Dresden spending an additional €250 million for a special water supply system and enhancements to the power grid. Unlike similar projects, TSMC will not be the sole owner of the new fab, as Infineon, Robert Bosch and NXP are each taking a 10 percent stake in the fab.

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), TU Chemnitz, TU Dresden and Forschungszentrum Jülich have been the first to demonstrate that not just individual bits, but entire bit sequences can be stored in cylindrical domains: tiny, cylindrical areas measuring just around 100 nanometers. As the team reports in the journal Advanced Electronic Materials, these findings could pave the way for novel types of data storage and sensors, including even magnetic variants of neural networks.

"A cylindrical domain, which we physicists also call a bubble domain, is a tiny, cylindrical area in a thin magnetic layer. Its spins, the electrons' intrinsic angular momentum that generates the magnetic moment in the material, point in a specific direction. This creates a magnetization that differs from the rest of the environment. Imagine a small, cylinder-shaped magnetic bubble floating in a sea of opposite magnetization," says Prof. Olav Hellwig from HZDR's Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, describing the subject of his research. He and his team are confident that such magnetic structures possess a great potential for spintronic applications.

On July 1st, Reuters reported that the French antitrust authority plans to file charges against NVIDIA for alleged anti-competitive practices, marking France as the first country to take such action against the tech giant. This follows a raid on NVIDIA's local offices in September 2023, as we reported here, which was part of a broader investigation into the graphics card and cloud computing sectors. A recent report released by French authorities regarding competition in generative AI highlighted concerns about potential abuses of power by chip suppliers, specifically noting the industry reliance on NVIDIA. If NVIDIA is to be found guilty of charges made by French authorities it can be facing fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue. However, NVIDIA may have the option to make concessions to avoid such penalties.

As the world's largest manufacturer of AI chips and computer graphics cards, NVIDIA is under intense scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Europe and the United States. The European Commission is gathering informal feedback to assess whether NVIDIA had breached its antitrust rules, though it has not yet launched a formal investigation. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are reportedly conducting joint investigations into NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI, reflecting growing regulatory concern in the United States over these tech giants' market influence.

As we're getting close to the launch of AMD's 9000-series Ryzen processors, local retailers have already started to put the new CPUs up for pre-order and this gives us a first glimpse into the pricing we can expect. The first company to do so in Europe is Slovenian retailer Funtech, which has put up all four SKUs on its site. For those not familiar with European pricing, Slovenia has a VAT or sales tax rate of 22 percent, which obviously makes the pricing higher than in the US and some other countries. As Funtech also sells AMD's current CPUs, we can also get an idea of how much more the new CPUs will cost, at least compared to what the online retailer sells the equivalent 7000-series models for.

Starting from the bottom, the Ryzen 5 9600X goes for €310 (US$332) and the shop has the Ryzen 7 7600X up for sale at €212. The Ryzen 7 9700X goes for €400 (US$429), whereas the Ryzen 7 7700X is sold for €305. The Ryzen 9 9900X is listed at €500 (US$536) with the Ryzen 9 7900X at €392. Finally the Ryzen 9 9950X is listed at €660 (US$707), compared to €510 for the Ryzen 9 7950X. This is in line with earlier leaked pricing from the Philippines and with the VAT removed, we end up close to proposed MSRP pricing by various leakers over the past couple of months, or even somewhat lower. If anything, it doesn't look like AMD is going to increase the MSRP over the 7000-series of Ryzen processors.

The European Commission has preliminarily concluded that Microsoft breached EU antitrust rules by tying its Teams communication product to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites. The Commission considers Microsoft dominant in the global SaaS productivity applications market and is concerned that since at least April 2019, the company has been unfairly promoting Teams by bundling it with core productivity applications.

This practice allegedly restricts competition in the communication and collaboration products market, prevents customers from choosing whether to acquire Teams, and may limit interoperability with competitors' products. The Commission fears this could hinder innovation and harm customers in the European Economic Area, potentially violating Article 102 of the TFEU, which prohibits abuse of a dominant position.

On June 5th, Vanguard and NXP announced plans to jointly establish VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC) in Singapore to build a 12-inch wafer plant. TrendForce posits that this move reflects the trend of global supply chains shifting "Out of China, Out of Taiwan"(OOC/OOT), with Taiwanese companies accelerating their overseas expansion to improve regional capacity flexibility and competitiveness.

TrendForce noted that the semiconductor supply chain has been diversifying over the past two years to mitigate geopolitical and pandemic-related risks, forming two major segments: China's domestic supply chain and a non-China supply chain. Recent US tariff increases have accelerated this shift, leading to increased orders from American customers.

Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) and Apollo (NYSE: APO) today announced a definitive agreement under which Apollo-managed funds and affiliates will lead an investment of $11 billion to acquire from Intel a 49% equity interest in a joint venture entity related to Intel's Fab 34. The transaction represents Intel's second Semiconductor Co-Investment Program (SCIP) arrangement. SCIP is an element of Intel's Smart Capital strategy, a funding approach designed to create financial flexibility to accelerate the company's strategy, including investing in its global manufacturing operations, while maintaining a strong balance sheet.

Located in Leixlip, Ireland, Fab 34 is Intel's leading-edge high-volume manufacturing (HVM) facility designed for wafers using the Intel 4 and Intel 3 process technologies. To date, Intel has invested $18.4 billion in Fab 34. This transaction allows Intel to unlock and redeploy to other parts of its business a portion of this investment while continuing the build-out of Fab 34. As part of its transformation strategy, Intel has committed billions of dollars of investments to regaining process leadership and building out leading-edge wafer fabrication and advanced packaging capacity globally.