HP Inc. and its subsidiaries ("HP") announced fiscal 2020 third quarter net revenue of $14.3 billion, down 2.1% (down 0.2% in constant currency) from the prior-year period. Third quarter GAAP diluted net EPS was $0.52, down from $0.78 in the prior-year period and above the previously provided outlook of $0.35 to $0.41. Third quarter non-GAAP diluted net EPS was $0.49, down from $0.58 in the prior-year period and above the previously provided outlook of $0.39 to $0.45. Third quarter non-GAAP net earnings and non-GAAP diluted net EPS exclude after-tax adjustments of $32 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, related to restructuring and other charges, acquisition-related charges (credits), amortization of intangible assets, non-operating retirement-related (credits)/charges, debt extinguishment costs and tax adjustments.

"Our strong Q3 results and solid beat for the quarter, in the face of unprecedented uncertainty, reflects the agility of our teams and the strength of our portfolio," said Enrique Lores, HP's President and CEO. "We're leveraging our leadership across consumer and commercial markets to capitalize on opportunities - from the essential role of the PC in an era of remote work and school to the rise of subscription-based business models to enable greater flexibility. Our diverse portfolio and disciplined execution are powering our performance and we're well positioned to drive continued value creation."

Raja Koduri, Intel's chief architect and senior vice president of Intel's discrete graphics division, has today held a talk at HotChips 32, the latest online conference of 2020, that shows off the latest architectural advancements in the semiconductor industry. So Intel has prepared two talks, one about Ice Lake-SP server CPUs and one about Intel's efforts in the upcoming graphics card launch. So what has Intel been working on the whole time? Raja Koduri took over the talk and has benchmarked the upcoming GPU and recorded how much raw power the GPUs posses, possibly counting in PetaFLOPs.

When Mr. Koduri got to talk, he pulled the 4-tile Xe HP GPU out of his pocket and showed for the first time how the chip looks. And it is one big chip. Featuring 4 tiles, the GPU represents Intel's fastest and biggest variant of Xe HP GPUs. The benchmark Intel ran was made to show off scaling on the Xe architecture and how the increase in the number of tiles results in a scalable increase in performance. Running on a single tile, the GPU managed to develop the performance of 10588 GFLOPs or around 10.588 TeraFLOPs. When there are two tiles, the performance scales almost perfectly at 21161 GFLOPS (21.161 TeraFLOPs) for 1.999X improvement. At four tiles the GPU achieves 3.993 times scaling and scores 41908 GFLOPs resulting in 41.908 TeraFLOPS, all measured in single-precision FP32.

HP today announced the S750 line of client-segment SSDs in the 2.5-inch form-factor that take advantage of the SATA 6 Gbps interface. Available in capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, the drives combine an SMI-sourced controller with 96-layer 3D NAND flash memory. All three variants are rated to offer sequential transfer speeds of up to 560 MB/s reads, with up to 520 MB/s writes. The 256 GB variant offers random access performance of up to 55,000/79,000 IOPS (reads/writes); the 512 GB variant up to 90,000/89,000 IOPS, and the 1 TB variant up to 74,000/80,000 IOPS. Endurance of the three variants are rated at 160 TBW, 320 TBW, and 650 TBW, respectively. The company didn't reveal pricing as it vastly varies between regions.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 64.8 million units in the second quarter of 2020, a 2.8% increase from the second quarter of 2019, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. After a significant decline in the first quarter of the year due to COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions, the PC market returned to growth as vendors restocked their channels and mobile PC demand increased.

"The second quarter of 2020 represented a short-term recovery for the worldwide PC market, led by exceptionally strong growth in EMEA," said Mikako Kitagawa, research director at Gartner. "After the PC supply chain was severely disrupted in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the growth this quarter was due to distributors and retail channels restocking their supplies back to near-normal levels.

Xilinx, Inc., the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today introduced two real-time computing video appliances for easy-to-scale, ultra-high-density video transcoding applications. Based on the new Xilinx Real-Time (RT) Server reference architecture, these new appliances will enable service providers delivering applications such as eSports and game streaming platforms, social and video conferencing, live distance learning, telemedicine and live broadcast video to optimize video quality and bitrate at the lowest cost per channel for significant TCO savings over both software-based and fixed-architecture approaches.

Designed for edge and on-premise compute-intensive workloads where video channel density, throughput and latency are critical requirements, the new Xilinx Real-Time Video Appliances feature optimized hardware architectures and software to deliver the industry's highest channel density and lowest latency performance. The appliances are available in two pre-configured options integrating Xilinx Alveo data center accelerator cards - the High Channel Density Video Appliance and the Ultra-Low Bitrate Video Appliance.

HP today unveiled the Portable SSD P500. These drives come in capacities of 1 TB, and feature a USB 3.2 gen 1 interface, with a single connection handling both power and host connectivity. A USB type-C to type-A male-to-male capable, and a type-C to type-A adapter are included. The drive measures 79.1 mm x 53.9 mm x 10 mm (WxDxH), weighing 45.4 g, and features a solid aluminium body that comes in four color options - aquamarine, cherry red, gray, and silver; all with diamond-cut edges. As for performance, its OEM Biwin claims sequential read speeds of up to 420 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 255 MB/s sequential writes. The company didn't mention pricing.Update 08:32 UTC: The HP P500 is currently retailing for 699 RMB - 899 RMB in China, which converts to $98 - $126, so 10-12 cents per GB.

Today HP unveiled new OMEN hardware and accessories, updates to OMEN Command Center, and introduced the first 16" Pavilion Gaming laptop - all designed for today's gamer to play their best while pushing the limits of what their devices can do.

Gaming benefits are being unlocked as people are spending more time at home, uncovering new avenues for both entertainment and general well-being. 80% of people in the United States agree that playing video games provides an escape during these unprecedented times and 73% cite "relaxation" as one reason they game. According to tests with the Adult Hope Scale, Americans who started playing games during the COVID-19 quarantine feel 64% more hopeful and 39% state a reduction in stress.

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its latest virtual reality (VR) headset, the HP Reverb G2, in collaboration with industry leaders Valve and Microsoft. The HP Reverb G2 is the world's highest resolution VR headset among major vendorsi, delivering cutting-edge optics, inside-out tracking, spatial 3D audio, natural gestures, long-wearing comfort, and plug and play support for Windows Mixed Reality and SteamVR.

"The power of collaboration is on full display with the HP Reverb G2, and alongside Valve and Microsoft, we engineered a no-compromises VR headset that's immersive, comfortable, and compatible across Windows Mixed Reality and SteamVR," said Spike Huang, vice president and global lead of VR, HP Inc. "The time is now for VR and the HP Reverb G2 brings high-quality VR to the masses with more immersion for gamers, interactive experiences for creators, increased engagement for collaboration, and higher retention rates for education and training."

Ayute Co Ltd, is set to launch a series of five new HP gaming headsets and earphones this Friday May 29, 2020. The five new models include the H150, H320GS, H360GS, H500GS BLACK, and H500GS GOLD. The five new models feature prices between 20 - 60 USD and are set to be released in Japan. The H150 are budget earphones with an adjustable boom mic, the H320GS and H360GS are both entry-level gaming headsets with LED lighting while the H500GS BLACK and H500GS GOLD offer a more premium design and features.

HP unveiled its V8 RGB line of DDR4 memory modules targeted at the DIY market. The full-height UDIMM module is characterized by dark aluminium heatspreaders and an RGB LED silicone diffuser crown. The module comes in 8 GB single-rank, and 16 GB dual-rank densities, and speeds of DDR4-3000, DDR4-3200, DDR4-3466, and DDR4-3600. The lighting supports ARGB control through popular apps such as ASUS Aura, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light, and ASRock Polychrome. HP intends to sell the V8 RGB in single-module kits. The company didn't reveal pricing.

HP is reportedly looking to releases a next-generation storage device in the form of the EX900 pro SSD. Next-generation because this SSD will ship with the NVMe 1.3 protocol over a PCIe 3.0 interface (4x). HP is quoting maximum sequential read and write speeds set at 2095 MB/s and 1965 MB/s for the 1 TB version, which will obviously be the best-performing among offered capacities (256 GB and 512 GB). Random read and write IOPS are quoted at 283 K and 286 K, respectively. Apparently, the EX900 Pro features an independent cache design, though the original report is extremely scarce on details; for this to be relevant, it should be something different from the usual DRAM and SLC-caching that is usually employed by the best-performing SSD drives.

The EX900 Pro will ship with 3D NAND of unspecified layer topology, though the 5 year warranty given across the board is a welcome sight; TBW ratings are set at 650 TBW for the 1 TB version, 320 TBW for the 512 GB, and 160 TBW for the 256 GB one. The NVMe-based SSD will also offer support for NANDXtend error correction code (ECC) technology, SRAM ECC and end-to-end data path protection technology. No word on pricing or availability was available at time of writing.

HP Inc. today announced new laptops and solutions designed to address the evolving needs of business users everywhere, demonstrating the company's effort to help businesses and remote workers stay productive wherever they may be.

While businesses have been adopting cloud-centric solutions and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to increase security and save costs, the recent pandemic has escalated the need for devices that empower those who primarily work with web applications and virtual desktop tools. In a recent survey, HP discovered that nearly 60% of users working from home during quarantine are doing so with personal machines, presenting significant security risk from unmanaged devices. The average employee is also using 22 cloud-based apps to do their job.

HP today announced the Omen 27i monitor, which promises to deliver a well-rounded amount of features for a not bank-breaking price. The Omen 27i packs a 27" panel (as the name implies) of the Nano IPS type. HP says this means the panel covers a wider color gamut (the company claims a 98% DCI-P3 coverage. This Nano IPS panel is able to achieve 165 Hz refresh rates with a 1 ms response time. That, paired with Adaptive Sync (HP markets it simply as G-Sync compatible), means this is a pretty well-rounded gaming monitor. The 1000:1 contrast ratio, while not particularly impressive, isn't all that bad either. A maximum brightness set at 350 nits, however, means you can lay your HDR dreams to rest.

I/O-wise, we're looking at 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 2x USB 3.0 (upstream) and 1x USB 3.0 (downstream). There's an RGB-lighting diamond on the back of the unit, providing you with some amount of bling. The Omen 27i will be available for $499.

Debuting a new OMEN look and feel, today HP unveiled the OMEN 25L and 30L Desktops, engineered for gaming performance, designed for immersion, and crafted for gaming expansion. Both desktops perfectly pair with the latest immersive OMEN 27i Gaming Monitor with powerful specs to enhance gaming experiences and let the action take center stage.

With people spending more time at home, gaming has increased dramatically as players look to find social connections and outlets for stress relief and entertainment. In late March 2020, Steam set a record with over 23.5 million concurrent active users, an increase of more than three million people compared to the then record number of users just two weeks prior. The latest OMEN devices are built with powerful premium components and technology that addresses the mounting needs of all gamers, veterans and newcomers alike.

HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., today announced it is the high-performance base memory provider for HP's new OMEN Desktops and upgrades. HyperX FURY DDR4 RGB or FURY DDR4 memory will be integrated into the OMEN 25L and OMEN 30L Desktops and are fully upgradable.

"HyperX is excited to provide high performance gaming grade memory for the new OMEN Desktops," said Larry Gonzales, sales and marketing VP, HyperX. "Gaming enthusiasts expect the best, and OMEN exemplifies a collaborative attitude to provide quality and reliable memory to satisfy gamers' performance needs."

A refresh of HP's OMEN 15 seems to be about to hit the market, as HP UK has already put up a page for the revised laptop. The most appealing changes are, as usual, under the hood: the updated model now features AMD's Ryzen 7 4800H CPU, an 8-core, 16-thread solution that features a 45 W TDP and basically beats anything Intel has on the market against it. However, it seems that the scarcity of high-end mobile GPUs for any AMD-based platform continues, as the most powerful graphics solution available for this particular version of the OMEN is an NVIDIA RTX 2060 graphics card. Perhaps OEMs don't want to spoil us with both the best CPU and GPU solutions available on the mobile market? Go figure.

The OMEN 15 has seen a redesign from its previous version, now featuring thinner bezels, a different hinge system, no number pad, and the panel supports Adaptive Sync, though the refresh rate hasn't been detailed. It also features a Bang & Olufsen sound system, as well as RGB-backlit keys. The product page for the product has since been taken down and can now only be accessed via a cached version, so there's that. But the laptop was priced at 1,199 GBP (1,370 EUR).

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its newest Z by HP mobile workstation and HP ENVY portfolio - designed for creators who push the envelope of what's possible. The HP ZBook Studio, HP ZBook Create, and the HP ENVY 15 are the latest additions to the HP Create Ecosystem, which launched at Adobe MAX in 2019.

The powerful line-up enables all levels of creators, including consumers, prosumers and professionals, to capture, create, and bring to life digital concepts and ideas that can be shared, enjoyed, and experienced. In the past, creators had to choose between heavy workstations or bulky gaming devices to get the power they require for work and play. Today, HP is pushing the boundaries of engineering and creative productivity by allowing photographers, vloggers, graphic designers, architects, film makers, and everyone in between, to achieve what was never thought possible.

Xerox is "aggressively pursuing" acquisition on PC giant HP by buying out all its public shareholding at $24 per share, according to a formal tender offer. HP has repeatedly refused to be acquired on Xerox's terms, and so Xerox is proposing to replace HP's entire board of directors with an independent board that it hopes will see the value of its offer. "Our proposal offers progress over entrenchment," Xerox CEO John Visentin states. "HP shareholders will receive $27 billion in immediate, upfront cash while retaining significant, long-term upside through equity ownership in a combined company with greater free cash flow to invest in growth and return to shareholders." Xerox claims to have secured financing of $24 billion from a consortium of financial institutions to help its efforts. Did Xerox just invent something as groundbreaking as the mouse?Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

HP issued a warning to its customers that some of its SAS SSDs come with a bug that causes them to fail at exactly 32,768 hours of use. For an always-on or high-uptime server, this translates to 3 years, 270 days and 8 hours of usage. The affected models of SSDs are shipped in many of HP's flagship server and storage products, spanning its HPE ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo, JBOD D3xxx, D6xxx, D8xxx, MSA, StoreVirtual 4335 and StoreVirtual 3200 product-lines.

HP has released an SSD firmware update that fixes this bug and cannot stress the importance of deploying the update enough. This is because once a drive hits the 32,768-hour literal deadline and breaks down, both the drive and the data on it become unrecoverable. There is no other mitigation to this bug than the firmware update. HP released easy to use online firmware update tools that let admins update firmware of their drivers from within their OS. The online firmware update tools support Linux, Windows, and VMWare. Below is a list of affected drives. Get the appropriate firmware update from this page.

Intel is partnering with MediaTek on the development, certification and support of 5G modem solutions for the next generation of PC experiences. As part of the partnership, Intel will define a 5G solution specification, including a 5G modem to be developed and delivered by MediaTek. Intel will also provide optimization and validation across the platform and lend system integration and co-engineering support to further enable its OEM partners.

"5G is poised to unleash a new level of computing and connectivity that will transform the way we interact with the world. This partnership with MediaTek brings together industry leaders with deep engineering, system integration and connectivity expertise to deliver 5G experiences on the next generation of the world's best PCs." -Gregory Bryant, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group.

On Sunday, HP Inc. released a letter from its board of directors stating that it rejects acquisition offer from Xerox Corporation pointing out that: "We have great confidence in our strategy and our ability to execute to continue driving sustainable long-term value at HP. In addition, the Board and management team continue to take actions to enhance shareholder value including the deployment of our strong balance sheet for increased repurchases of our significantly undervalued stock and for value-creating M&A."

This decision shows a strong will from the folks over at HP to continue their business in the way they usually done for many years. Additionally, HP stated the following: "We recognize the potential benefits of consolidation, and we are open to exploring whether there is value to be created for HP shareholders through a potential combination with Xerox. However, as we have previously shared in connection with our prior requests for diligence, we have fundamental questions that need to be addressed in our diligence of Xerox. We note the decline of Xerox's revenue from $10.2 billion to $9.2 billion (on a trailing 12-month basis) since June 2018, which raises significant questions for us regarding the trajectory of your business and future prospects.", showing the downsides of the potential merger and questioning abilities of Xerox to manage two companies.

A Geekbench database submission from an HP "17-ca2xxx" laptop (likely a prototype), spilled the beans on an upcoming AMD Athlon Gold 3150U processor, with nomenclature that looks inspired from the Pentium Gold. Intel uses the "Gold" and "Silver" brand extensions to distinguish processors based on its performance microarchitectures from those based on its low-power microarchitectures (eg: a "Skylake" based Pentium Gold, and a "Goldmont" based Pentium Silver). The addition of "Gold" to the Athlon brand could denote performance rivaling mobile versions of Pentium Gold found in entry-level full-size notebooks.

Moving on to the test itself, and we see the Athlon Gold 3150U being listed as a "Raven Ridge" derivative featuring a 2-core/4-thread CPU and Radeon graphics (likely "Vega 3" as with its desktop counterpart). The CPU is shown having a 2.40 GHz base frequency, and 3.30 GHz boost, 512 KB L2 cache per core, and 4 MB shared L3 cache. The chip scores 3,559 single-core points, and 7,336 points multi-core, comparable to entry-level dual-core processors from this generation. This makes us wonder what the Athlon "Silver" could be, and whether AMD is working on a new low-power microarchitecture in the near future.

Xerox Holdings Corporation, a maker of print and digital document products and services, has reportedly made an offer to buy HP - a maker of wide variety of PCs and printers, for as much as 30 billion USD. The decision for HP takeover came after negotiations between HP Inc. and Xerox Corp. that had a topic of "our multi-year strategy and our ability to position the company for continued success in an evolving industry"

Comparing the two companies, HP Inc. has a much larger market capitalization of over 28 billion USD, while Xerox Corp. has a bit over 8 billion USD. However the underlying reasons for this takeover could be that HP possesses a debt valued at around 20 billion USD, which is quite a lot comparing to market cap. Even with good revenue numbers, HP will remove up to 16% of its workforce by 2022, due to the declining business of selling printers. Xerox plans to take over HP in hope to combine the workforce of two companies and lower their combined expenses by as much as 2 billion USD, that Xerox estimates.

Today, AMD announced the Radeon RX 5500 series graphics products, harnessing groundbreaking RDNA gaming architecture to deliver the ultimate in high-performance, high-fidelity 1080p gaming. The AMD Radeon RX 5500 series includes the Radeon RX 5500 graphics card that will be available in desktop PCs from leading manufacturers and graphics cards from board partners, as well as the Radeon RX 5500M GPU for notebook PCs. Top system providers worldwide are embracing the new products, with HP and Lenovo planning to offer Radeon RX 5500 graphics cards in their high performance desktop gaming PCs beginning this November, and Acer planning to offer systems with the cards beginning this December. In addition, later this month MSI is expected to launch the world's first gaming notebook powered by AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon RX 5500M GPUs.

"Based on feedback and insights from global gaming communities, gamers rank graphics as the most critical component for speed and performance," said Johnson Jia, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Business of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. "That's why the Lenovo Legion T730 and T530 gaming towers and the IdeaCentre T540 Gaming desktop pack in AMD's latest Radeon RX graphics - satisfying players' need for high-fidelity visuals and lightning-fast frame-rates to fully immerse into their gameplay." "MSI Alpha 15 is a new chapter for us, and we're excited to partner with AMD to combine the latest 7 nm technology found in the Radeon RX 5500M GPU and MSI's gaming DNA for our gamers," said Charles Chiang, CEO of MSI.

HP has listed new desktop consumer prebuilts that use previously unannounced hardware from AMD, namely the Radeon RX 5300 XT graphics card and the B550 chipset. B550 has been expected for a while — it's a lower-cost chipset for Ryzen 3000 "Zen 2" processors with reduced feature set. HP calls the chipset "AMD Promontory B550A" in their sheets which seems to be designed and produced by ASMedia (unlike X570, which is a fully AMD in-house design). One of the major differences between X570 and B550 is that the latter has no support for PCI-Express 4.0, which won't matter one bit in its target segment. This move not only reduces chipset cost, it also drives down the cost of motherboards significantly, as the more stringent signal integrity requirements for PCIe 4.0 won't apply here.

While we have heard rumors that AMD is working on a smaller chip for their "Navi" architecture (Navi 12 and Navi 14), it's uncertain whether RX 5300 XT is really based on Navi, or whether it will be yet another rebrand — we wouldn't be surprised if Polaris is making a comeback yet again. Both systems are listed for € 699 and € 899, with shelf availability expected for October 8th.