HyperX, the former gaming peripherals brand of Kingston, was acquired by PC OEM giant HP in 2021. It was only natural for HP to use the HyperX brand to ship gaming monitors at some point, as the company has a vast lineup of not just PC and professional displays, but also some gaming displays under its HP OMEN brand. The company announced the HyperX Armada brand of gaming monitors in the 25-inch and 27-inch planar category in September 2022. We spotted it at the 2023 CES. It has prominent HyperX badging, some peel-off stickers on the front bezel detailing its key gamer-friendly features; and an NVIDIA G-SYNC logo. Key specs include WQHD (1440p) resolution, 165 Hz refresh-rate, DisplayHDR 400, and a fast IPS panel with 1 ms response time. HP will probably retain the OMEN brand for ultra-premium gaming monitors, with the HyperX Armada series in the mid-range.

According to the well-known hardware leaker @momomo_us, HP is preparing the launch of its next-generation Omen 17 gaming laptops. And with a new generation of chips coming to consumers, HP accidentally made some information about laptop SKUs public. Four models are listed, and they represent a combination of Intel's 13th-generation Raptor Lake mobile processors with NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace RTX 40 series graphics cards for the mobile/laptop sector. The four SKUs are: CM2007NQ/CM2005NQ with Core i7-13700HX & RTX 4060 8 GB; CM2001NQ with Core i7-13700HX & RTX 4070 8 GB; CK2007NQ/CK2004NQ with Core i7-13700HX & RTX 4080 12 GB; CK2001NQ with Core i7-13700HX & RTX 4090 16 GB.

The most exciting find here is the appearance of the xx90 series in the mobile/laptop form factor, which has not been the case before. The GeForce RTX 4090 laptop edition is supposedly equipped with 16 GB of VRAM, and the GPU SKU should be a cut-down version of AD102 GPU adjusted for power and clock constraints so it can run within a reasonable TDP. With NVIDIA seemingly giving its clients an RTX 4090 SKU option, we have to wait and see what the CUDA core counts are and how clocks scale in a more restricted laptop environment.

Today, C+A Global, an authorized brand licensee of HP, announced the launch of the HP Sprocket Studio Plus Photo Printer, a newly redesigned printer with the ability to print vibrant 4x6" photos. The Studio Plus serves as a personal photo lab, printing bright, glossy photos that can be used in picture frames, to create greeting cards, collages, and more. The launch of the Studio Plus adds to a robust, existing lineup of HP Sprocket printers, ensuring there's one to suit every need.

With efficient Bluetooth capabilities, photos can be snapped on any smartphone (iOS or Android) then edited and printed directly through the HP Sprocket application. The app allows users to get creative and enhance the beauty of their photos with stylish borders, stickers, filters, text, and more. Users can also take advantage of exploring various photo creations within the app - creating a multi-photo collage, taking a professional photo ID, or embracing the fun photo booth feature. Customized photos can be shared on social media directly as well. Following suit with the current line of HP Sprocket printers, the HP Sprocket Studio Plus is also travel-friendly. To take your photo printer on the go, simply disconnect the printing tray and secure it to the top of the printer.

Back in September 2021, reports about Intel working on something called SDSi or software defined silicon, started to appear. Now, over a year later, the company has finally launched its SDSi products under the Intel On Demand branding. Back then, we speculated about what features Intel would put behind a paywall and although we were somewhat off track, Intel has put some specific "instructions" behind the paywall on the supported Xeon processors. Specifically, some CPUs will have Quick Assist, Dynamic Load Balancer and Data Streaming Accelerator available as an On Demand feature. Additionally, Intel is also putting its Software Guard Extensions and In-Memory Analytics Accelerator behind the same pay wall.

It appears that these features will be offered as-a-service offering from some of Intel's service partners, but there's also a "one-time activation of select CPU accelerators and security features" according to the Intel On Demand website. It's unclear which Xeon SKUs will get Intel On Demand, but according to The Register, it'll be the upcoming Sapphire Rapids based Xeon processors which should be the first parts affected. Intel has listed partners like HP, Lenovo and SuperMicro, among others, that are involved with the Intel On Demand program. It will still be possible to buy next gen Xeon CPUs that are fully feature enabled like today, but it's unclear if the Intel On Demand Xeon SKUs will offer some kind of cost benefits to companies that don't need the additional features that are behind the paywall.

HyperX, the gaming peripherals team at HP Inc. and brand leader in gaming and esports, today announced the release of a limited-edition Naruto: Shippuden peripherals collection. The HyperX x Naruto: Shippuden limited-edition collection features design elements inspired by Itachi Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki. The gaming collection includes the HyperX Alloy Origins mechanical gaming keyboard, HyperX Cloud Alpha gaming headset, HyperX Pulsefire Haste gaming mouse, and HyperX Pulsefire Mat gaming mouse pad.

The limited-edition design features bold orange colors inspired by the legendary ninja, Naruto Uzumaki, and a darker red design inspired by Itachi Uchiha, a loyal member of the Akatsuki. The new collection includes the sleek and durable HyperX Alloy Origins mechanical gaming keyboard with character inspired Naruto or Itachi-inspired design elements. Gamers can also enjoy immersive audio while embracing their inner ninja, or breaking new ground in the world of anime with their favorite character-inspired HyperX Cloud Alpha gaming headset. Also available are the ultra-lightweight HyperX Pulsefire Haste gaming mouse and the durable and comfortable HyperX Pulsefire Mat gaming mousepad, the new collection is designed to elevate gaming spaces for the Naruto and Itachi anime community.

Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake (MTL) processor is set to deliver a wide range of exciting solutions, with the first being the Intel 4 manufacturing node. However, today we have some interesting Linux kernel patches that indicate that Meteor Lake will have a dedicated "Standalone Media" Graphics Technology (GT) block to process video/audio. Moving encoding and decoding off GPU to a dedicated media engine will allow MTL to play back video without the GPU, and the GPU can be used as a parallel processing powerhouse. Features like Intel QuickSync will be built into this unit. What is interesting is that this unit will be made on a separate tile, which will be fused with the rest using tile-based manufacturing found in Ponte Vecchio (which has 47 tiles).

Intel Linux PatchesStarting with [Meteor Lake], media functionality has moved into a new, second GT at the hardware level. This new GT, referred to as "standalone media" in the spec, has its own GuC, power management/forcewake, etc. The general non-engine GT registers for standalone media start at 0x380000, but otherwise use the same MMIO offsets as the primary GT.

Standalone media has a lot of similarity to the remote tiles present on platforms like [Xe HP Software Development Vehicle] and [Ponte Vecchio], and our i915 [kernel graphics driver] implementation can share much of the general "multi GT" infrastructure between the two types of platforms.

Today at HP Amplify Executive Forum, HP Inc's annual partner roadshow, the company announced new devices and solutions to help people thrive in their hybrid work environments. "Work habits and the expectations around work-life balance have changed significantly over the past few years. People want the flexibility to collaborate and create wherever they need to be, and the technology they use is fundamental," said Guayente Sanmartin, General Manager and Global Head, Commercial Systems & Displays Solutions, HP Inc. "HP is in an excellent position to deliver innovative experiences through hardware, software, and services to support the work transformation happening today."

With nearly half of workers having at least some flexibility in where they work in 2023, it's critical for people to have the right technology to make personal connections and meaningful contributions while having an equal seat at the table. They want devices with personalized experiences that enable them to securely collaborate, create, and be productive no matter where they get work done. HP continues its commitment to provide the right tools for the ultimate work experience. New PCs include the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 - the hybrid-ready convertible PC for business, and the HP 34" All-in-One Desktop PC - a creative powerhouse that offers users a studio-like experience with support for dual video streams and camera switching. The new HP Z32k G3 4K USB-C Display provides an unprecedented level of detail, while the new HP 965 4K Streaming Webcam delivers crystal clear video. Enhancements to HP Proactive Insights empower IT to optimize the device experience for employees with the power of HP analytics.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced its ongoing commitment in Europe by building its first factory in the region for next-generation high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to accelerate delivery to customers and strengthen the region's supplier ecosystem. The new site will manufacture HPE's industry-leading systems as custom-designed solutions to advance scientific research, mature AL/ML initiatives, and bolster innovation.

The dedicated HPC factory, which will become the fourth of HPE's global HPC sites, will be located in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, next to HPE's existing European site for manufacturing its industry-standard servers and storage solutions. Operations will begin in summer 2022.

AMD has unveiled a host of new laptop processors under its Ryzen PRO branding for corporate notebooks, although this time around, AMD has also tagged on an extra "50" to the model number. As such, the top of the range models are the Ryzen 9 Pro 6950H/HS, which appears to be more or less identical to the Ryzen 9 6900HX/HS. There's also a Ryzen 7 and 5 version in the H-series, as well as a Ryzen 7 and 5 in the U-series. In addition to these models, AMD also announced three new Ryzen PRO 5000 U-series models, which end up with the 75 suffix compared to the 25 suffix of the consumer models. These last three CPUs are based on the Zen 3 rather than the Zen 3+ architecture, just as with the consumer models.

AMD claims in excess of 26 hours of battery life from the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U fitted inside an HP EliteBook 865 G9 with a 76 Wh battery pack. HP and Lenovo appear to be the launch partners for the new PRO series CPUs and HP will offer three different 800-series SKUs with the 6000-series processors and three other notebook series with the 5000-series processors. Lenovo on the other hand has its new Thinkpad Z13 and Z16 notebooks as AMD Ryzen 6000 PRO series exclusive models, as well as the four different Thinkpad models that will come with the same series of CPUs, plus several other models based on the 5000 series CPUs.

Tachyum today announced it has completed validation of its Prodigy Universal Processor and software ecosystem with the operating system FreeBSD, and completed the Prodigy instruction set architecture (ISA) for FreeBSD porting. FreeBSD powers modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms in environments that value performance, stability, and security. It is the platform of choice for many of the busiest websites and the most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices.

The validation of FreeBSD extends Tachyum's support for open-source operating systems and tools, including Linux, Yocto Project, PHP, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Apache, QEMU, Git, RabbitMQ, and more.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 5.1% in the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22) but exceeded earlier forecasts, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The PC market is coming off two years of double-digit growth, so while the first quarter decline is a change in this momentum, it doesn't mean the industry is in a downward spiral. Despite ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges, vendors still shipped 80.5 million PCs during the quarter. The 1Q22 volume marks the seventh consecutive quarter where global shipments surpassed 80 million, a feat not seen since 2012.

"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected. The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges," said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "We have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong. We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future. The result of 1Q22 was PC shipment volumes that were near record levels for a first quarter."

Intel Corporation today announced that Christoph Schell has been appointed executive vice president and chief commercial officer to lead the Sales, Marketing and Communications Group (SMG), starting March 14. Schell will succeed Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who will take on a new role as general manager of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG).

"Christoph has an exceptional track record of driving innovative and disruptive go-to-market strategies around the globe. He brings expertise in understanding business segments, verticals and the solutions and services customers want," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "We are harnessing our core strengths as an advantage to grow in our traditional markets and accelerate our entry into new ones. I'm confident Christoph is the right leader to take on this critical role and guide the talented SMG organization to achieve our growing ambitions."

Schell joins Intel from HP Inc., where he was most recently chief commercial officer. With his go-to-market team, he led customer and partner success, category management and customer support globally. During his 25 years with the company, Schell held various senior management roles across the globe, including president of 3D Printing & Digital Manufacturing. Prior to rejoining HP in 2014, Schell served as executive vice president of Growth Markets for Philips, where he led the lighting business across Asia Pacific, Japan, Africa, Russia, India, Central Asia and the Middle East. He started his career in his family's distribution and industrial solutions company and worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble.

At Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and Intel's business leaders outlined key elements of the company's strategy and path for long-term growth. Intel's long-term plans will capitalize on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors. Among the presentations, Intel announced product roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including: Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics, Intel Foundry Services, Software and Advanced Technology, Network and Edge, Technology Development, More: For more from Intel's Investor Meeting 2022, including the presentations and news, please visit the Intel Newsroom and Intel.com's Investor Meeting site.

congatec - a leading vendor of embedded and edge computing technology - introduces the 12th Generation Intel Core mobile and desktop processors (formerly code named Alder Lake) on 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules. Featuring the latest high performance cores from Intel, the new modules in COM-HPC Size A and C as well as COM Express Type 6 form factors offer major performance gains and improvements for the world of embedded and edge computing systems. Most impressive is the fact that engineers can now leverage Intel's innovative performance hybrid architecture. Offering of up to 14 cores/20 threads on BGA and 16 cores/24 threads on desktop variants (LGA mounted), 12th Gen Intel Core processors provide a quantum leap [1] in multitasking and scalability levels. Next-gen IoT and edge applications benefit from up to 6 or 8 (BGA/LGA) optimized Performance-cores (P-cores) plus up to 8 low power Efficient-cores (E-cores) and DDR5 memory support to accelerate multithreaded applications and execute background tasks more efficiently.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has selected Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build its third-generation, high performance computing (HPC) system, called Kestrel. Named for a falcon with keen eyesight and intelligence, Kestrel's moniker is apropos for its mission—to rapidly advance the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) energy research and development (R&D) efforts to deliver transformative energy solutions to the entire United States.

Installation of the new system will begin in the fall of 2022 in NREL's Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) data center. Kestrel will complement the laboratory's current supercomputer, Eagle, during the transition. When completed—in early 2023—Kestrel will accelerate energy efficiency and renewable energy research at a pace and scale more than five times greater than Eagle, with approximately 44 petaflops of computing power.

The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) traditional PC market, (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) grew 12.7% YoY in 2021Q3, for a total of 24.4 million units, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). A strong commercial performance throughout the region is the main driver of this growth, offsetting a slowdown in consumer, which could not keep up with the unfavorable growth rates seen in 2020Q3.

The Western European PC market enjoyed solid growth (15.8% YoY). Desktops continued their upward trend and increased 21.8% YoY—outgrowing notebooks (+13.1%) for the first time in six quarters. Desktop growth can be attributed to strength on the commercial side, as employers look to equip and refresh their increasingly populated offices. Notebooks also saw solid commercial shipments but were stifled by component shortages, primarily in IC boards and panels.

TSMC today introduced its N4P process, a performance-focused enhancement of the 5-nanometer technology platform. N4P joins the industry's most advanced and extensive portfolio of leading-edge technology processes. With N5, N4, N3 and the latest addition of N4P, TSMC customers will have multiple and compelling choices for power, performance, area, and cost for its products.

As the third major enhancement of TSMC's 5 nm family, N4P will deliver an 11% performance boost over the original N5 technology and a 6% boost over N4. Compared to N5, N4P will also deliver a 22% improvement in power efficiency as well as a 6% improvement in transistor density. In addition, N4P lowers process complexity and improves wafer cycle time by reducing the number of masks. N4P demonstrates TSMC's pursuit and investment in continuous improvement of our process technologies.

Synopsys, Inc. today announced the industry's first complete HBM3 IP solution, including controller, PHY, and verification IP for 2.5D multi-die package systems. HBM3 technology helps designers meet essential high-bandwidth and low-power memory requirements for system-on-chip (SoC) designs targeting high-performance computing, AI and graphics applications. Synopsys' DesignWare HBM3 Controller and PHY IP, built on silicon-proven HBM2E IP, leverage Synopsys' interposer expertise to provide a low-risk solution that enables high memory bandwidth at up to 921 GB/s.

The Synopsys verification solution, including Verification IP with built-in coverage and verification plans, off-the-shelf HBM3 memory models for ZeBu emulation, and HAPS prototyping system, accelerates verification from HBM3 IP to SoCs. To accelerate development of HBM3 system designs, Synopsys' 3DIC Compiler multi-die design platform provides a fully integrated architectural exploration, implementation and system-level analysis solution.

As growing vaccination rates worldwide starting in July lead to a gradual easing of lockdowns, the overall demand for notebook computers has also experienced a corresponding slowdown, with Chromebook demand dropping by as much as 50%, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. However, factors such as a wave of replacement demand for commercial notebooks in Europe and North America due to the return to physical workplaces, as well as brands' aggressive efforts to rush out their 4Q21 shipments ahead of time due to global port congestions, became the primary drivers of notebook demand in 3Q21. Hence, annual notebook shipment for 2021 will likely reach 240 million units, a 16.4% YoY increase.

TrendForce further indicates that 4Q21 will welcome both the gradual release of new models equipped with Intel's next-gen CPUs and a wave of replacement demand for notebooks featuring Windows 11. Even so, overall notebook shipment in 4Q21 will depend on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for commercial notebooks. As vaccinations become even more widespread in 2022, pandemic-related spending is expected to decline as a result. TrendForce therefore expects global notebook shipment to decline by 7-8% YoY next year and reach approximately 220 million units, although this still represents a growth of 60 million units over the shipment volume for 2019, prior to the emergence of the pandemic.

Slowly but surely, USB-C seems to be gaining popularity with the display makers and HP's most recent offerings, the U32 4K HDR monitor and the M34d WQHD curved monitor both feature USB-C ports with DP Alt mode and 65 W power delivery. As the product name implies, the U32 sports a 3840x2160 pixel resolution at 60 Hz and the M34d comes in at 3440x1440 pixels, although here you get a variable refresh rate of 48-100 Hz.

The U32 comes with a 31.5-inch 10-bit (8-bit + FRC) IPS panel with what we presume is a peak brightness of 400 nits and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. Connectivity consists of a DP 1.2 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, the aforementioned USB-C port, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports (aka USB 3.0) and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The U32 uses an external power brick, so there's also a barrel plug type power jack.

As many of you are aware, Microsoft's Windows 10 operating systems have been infected with the recent PrintNightmare vulnerability, where the Windows Print Spooler service would perform improper file operations, and attackers had room to exploit that behaveour. As the vulnerability allowed SYSTEM-level (admin) privileges, the users would be left with a vulnerable PC that an attacker could access remotely and perform malicious code execution. Back on Tuesday of last week, Microsoft has issued the patch that attempts to stop this exploit from happening, however, it seems like the fix has broken the Network Printing functionality of Windows-based machines.

According to the BleepingComputer report, the Tuesday patch for Windows has left a number of PCs with a broken Network Printing functionality, where the OS is reporting different types of errors each time the request for Network Printing occurs. It is important to note that the issue affects only printers that are attached by a USB connector, and mainly HP, Konica Minolta, and Canon models are in trouble. So far, Microsoft has not fixed this issue so users are left to wait for another patch round.

In view of the ongoing production capacity shortage in the semiconductor industry and the resultant price hike of chips, revenue of the top 10 IC design companies for 2Q21 reached US$29.8 billion, a 60.8% YoY increase, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, Taiwanese companies put up remarkable performances during this period, with both MediaTek and Novatek posting YoY growths of more than 95%. AMD, on the other hand, experienced a nearly 100% YoY revenue growth, the highest among the top 10.

TrendForce indicates that the ranking of the top five companies for 2Q21 remained unchanged from the previous quarter, although there were major changes in the 6th to 10th spots. More specifically, after finalizing its acquisition of Inphi, Marvell experienced a major revenue growth and leapfrogged Xilinx and Realtek in the rankings from 9th place in 1Q21 to 7th place in 2Q21.

Growth rates remained strong in the enterprise segment of the wireless local area networking (WLAN) market in the second quarter of 2021 (2Q21) as the market increased 22.4% on a year-over-year basis to $1.7 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker. In the consumer segment of the WLAN market, revenues declined 5.7% in the quarter to $2.3 billion, giving the combined enterprise and consumer WLAN markets year-over-year growth of 4.6% in 2Q21.

The growth in the enterprise-class segment of the market builds on a strong first quarter of 2021 when revenues increased 24.6% year over year. For the first half of 2021, the market increased 23.5% compared to first two quarters of 2020. Compared to the second quarter of 2019, 2Q21 revenues increased 10.8%, indicating that demand in the enterprise WLAN is strong.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported record revenue for the second quarter ended August 1, 2021, of $6.51 billion, up 68 percent from a year earlier and up 15 percent from the previous quarter, with record revenue from the company's Gaming, Data Center and Professional Visualization platforms. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.94, up 276 percent from a year ago and up 24 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.04, up 89 percent from a year ago and up 14 percent from the previous quarter.

"NVIDIA's pioneering work in accelerated computing continues to advance graphics, scientific computing and AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Enabled by the NVIDIA platform, developers are creating the most impactful technologies of our time - from natural language understanding and recommender systems, to autonomous vehicles and logistic centers, to digital biology and climate science, to metaverse worlds that obey the laws of physics.

HP Inc. expanded its robust Chrome OS ecosystem for customers seeking ultimate versatility and mobility in today's hybrid world, with the introduction of the HP Chromebook x2 11 and the HP Chromebase 21.5 inch All-in-One Desktop. HP also announced the new Works With Chromebook certified HP M24fd USB-C Monitor for a seamless user experience when pairing with Chromebooks and other accessories.

Today's Chrome OS users seek technology solutions that support and optimize their lifestyle including hybrid work and family time, according to recent research from HP. They are not only purchasing a device that allows them to work from home (63%), but also buying a device for someone else (27%) within their household. In fact, 52% of respondents have children, which explains why 53% used Chrome OS for both work and school. Both the new HP Chromebook x2 and HP Chromebase AiO address these changes to deliver personalized experiences tailored to each user in the household.