Intel's Arc Alchemist lineup of graphics cards, based on Xe-HPG GPU configuration, is nearing the launch. With the current situation with AMD and NVIDIA GPUs outputting graphics card prices over the default MSRP, we wonder how Intel would place pricing of its upcoming GPUs and fit inside the market. And today, we got the first round of speculations based on Intel's Arc Alchemist GPU giveaway called Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt. There are two principal bundles: one worth $900 that includes Intel Arc merchandise, Xbox Game Pass PC for six months, Intel Premium Arc Alchemist graphics card, and one worth $700 that consists of three months of Xbox Game Pass PC, Intel Arc merchandise, and Intel Performance Arc Alchemist graphics card.

According to some preliminary calculations from Tom's Hardware, we assume that with the $900 bundle containing one Premium Arc Alchemist GPU and other prizes, the card will cost as much as $825 when all things get removed. Going down the ladder, Intel has paired a bundle worth $700 with a Performance Arc GPU, which is roughly worth $650 on its own. It indicates that the two Intel Performance and Premium Arch Alchemist graphics cards are respectfully worth $650 and $825. What will the final pricing look like? We don't know. However, we assume that it could be very similar to this. For more information we have to wait for the official launch.

Apple today announced M1 Pro and M1 Max, the next breakthrough chips for the Mac. Scaling up M1's transformational architecture, M1 Pro offers amazing performance with industry-leading power efficiency, while M1 Max takes these capabilities to new heights. The CPU in M1 Pro and M1 Max delivers up to 70 percent faster CPU performance than M1, so tasks like compiling projects in Xcode are faster than ever. The GPU in M1 Pro is up to 2x faster than M1, while M1 Max is up to an astonishing 4x faster than M1, allowing pro users to fly through the most demanding graphics workflows.

M1 Pro and M1 Max introduce a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture to pro systems for the first time. The chips feature fast unified memory, industry-leading performance per watt, and incredible power efficiency, along with increased memory bandwidth and capacity. M1 Pro offers up to 200 GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 32 GB of unified memory. M1 Max delivers up to 400 GB/s of memory bandwidth—2x that of M1 Pro and nearly 6x that of M1—and support for up to 64 GB of unified memory. And while the latest PC laptops top out at 16 GB of graphics memory, having this huge amount of memory enables graphics-intensive workflows previously unimaginable on a notebook. The efficient architecture of M1 Pro and M1 Max means they deliver the same level of performance whether MacBook Pro is plugged in or using the battery. M1 Pro and M1 Max also feature enhanced media engines with dedicated ProRes accelerators specifically for pro video processing. M1 Pro and M1 Max are by far the most powerful chips Apple has ever built.

The x86 instruction set architecture has experienced many issues, and today's announcement is no exception. Yesterday morning, the Linux kernel received an urgent set of patches that are supposed to fix "yet another hardware trainwreck," as Thomas Gleixner, the kernel developer, describes. This time, the problem occurs with the high precision event timer (HPET) that stops once x86 processors reach PC10 idle state. In that event, the timer stops even when the OS/kernel uses it and could potentially cause a vulnerability inside a processor that an attacker can exploit. The problem has been known for quite a while since, in 2019, the Linux kernel started removing HPET functionality from some Intel processors.

The priority of this patch for Linux Kernel version 5.15-rc5 is high and marked as an urgent update. A reliable hardware timer and an interrupt are a must for the proper function of a processor. The hardware fix for this will not happen soon, so the Linux kernel has to adapt to it and create a solution at the software level. According to Mr. Gleixner, "The probability that this problem is going to be solved in the forseeable future is close to zero, so the kernel has to be cluttered with heuristics to keep up with the ever growing amount of hardware and firmware trainwrecks. Hopefully some day hardware people will understand that the approach of "This can be fixed in software" is not sustainable. Hope dies last..."

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC-based Graphics Processor Units (GPU) market reached 123 million units in Q2'21 and PC CPU shipments increased by 42% year-over-year. Overall, the installed base of GPUs will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3.5% during 2020-2025 to reach a total of 3,318 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 25%.

AMD's overall market share percentage from last quarter decreased by -0.2%, Intel's market share increased 0.1%, and Nvidia's market share increased 0.06%, as indicated in the following chart. Overall GPU unit shipments increased by 3.4% from last quarter, AMD shipments increased 2.3%, Intel's shipments rose 3.6%, and Nvidia's shipments increased 3.8%.

At the annual Hot Chips conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled details of the upcoming new IBM Telum Processor, designed to bring deep learning inference to enterprise workloads to help address fraud in real-time. Telum is IBM's first processor that contains on-chip acceleration for AI inferencing while a transaction is taking place. Three years in development, the breakthrough of this new on-chip hardware acceleration is designed to help customers achieve business insights at scale across banking, finance, trading, insurance applications and customer interactions. A Telum-based system is planned for the first half of 2022.

Today, businesses typically apply detection techniques to catch fraud after it occurs, a process that can be time consuming and compute-intensive due to the limitations of today's technology, particularly when fraud analysis and detection is conducted far away from mission critical transactions and data. Due to latency requirements, complex fraud detection often cannot be completed in real-time - meaning a bad actor could have already successfully purchased goods with a stolen credit card before the retailer is aware fraud has taken place.

Worldwide revenues for the artificial intelligence (AI) market, including software, hardware, and services, is estimated to grow 15.2% year over year in 2021 to $341.8 billion, according to the latest release of the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Artificial Intelligence Tracker. The market is forecast to accelerate further in 2022 with 18.8% growth and remain on track to break the $500 billion mark by 2024. Among the three technology categories, AI Software occupied 88% of the overall AI market. However, in terms of growth, AI Hardware is estimated to grow the fastest in the next several years. From 2023 onwards, AI Services is forecast to become the fastest growing category.

Within the AI Software category, AI Applications has the lion's share at nearly 50% of revenues. In terms of growth, AI Platforms is the strongest with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.2%. The slowest will be AI System Infrastructure Software with a five-year CAGR of 14.4% while accounting for roughly 35% of all AI Software revenues. Within the AI Applications market, AI ERM is expected to grow slightly stronger than AI CRM over the next five years. Meanwhile, AI Lifecycle Software is forecast to grow the fastest among the markets within AI Platforms.

When Valve made a debut of Proton for Steam on Linux, the company committed to enabling Linux gamers from across the globe to play all of the latest games available for the Windows platform, on their Linux distributions. Since the announcement, the market share of people who game on Linux has been rather stagnating for a while. When Proton was announced, the Linux gaming market share jumped to 2%, according to a Valve survey. However, later on, it dropped and remained at the stagnating 0.8~0.9% mark. Today, according to the latest data obtained from Steam Hardware Survey, we see that the Linux gaming market share has reached 1.0% in July, making for a +0.14% increase. What drove the spike in usage is unknown, however, it is interesting to see the new trend. You can check out the Steam Hardware Survey data here.

According to NPD data, Xbox just set a new hardware sales record the past month of June in the U.S., outselling PlayStation to the tune of a cool $200 million. The Xbox division cumulatively brought in a total $401 million dollars in the past month of June, marking a year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth to the tune of 112%. That large, $401 million number also marks a new record for Xbox and its Microsoft parent - the previous revenue record for the Xbox division was set way back in 2011. ten years later, it can be said that Xbox is better than ever before.

That same $401 million revenue from Xbox hardware clearly puts Sony's PlayStation in the rear-view mirror, as the company "only" achieved a $207 million revenue for June 2021 - a 1% decline YoY. That Microsoft managed to pull this off in the hardware shortage scenario we currently live in is impressive; and it does speak to the amount of pent-up demand that's still vying to enter the company's coffers. The record comes a month after Microsoft announced the deployment of Xbox Series X server blades to its xCloud programme, which occurred on June 26th. It appears likely that the company was distributing its Series X production capabilities between the retail sector and its own xCloud service before June 26th (with the additional time required for installation and all that entails), which would explain the sudden record in June. As Microsoft freed xCloud-bound capacity to the retail sector, the record thus ensued.

Valve has released its Steam Hardware Survey results for the month of June, and as always, it is a pretty good indication of the gaming market and market trends, showing us just how well the companies providing hardware are doing. On the CPU front, there are two companies constantly fighting for market domination: Intel and AMD. A bit over a month ago, we reported that AMD made serious progress in taking the market share away from Intel, using its latest Ryzen 5000 series of processors. However, this time, the effect seems to be reversed by its competitor, Intel.

All the gains AMD has made in the past few months have been sort of "erased" by Intel, as team blue managed to get back to a point where AMD now holds 28.41% of the CPU market, while Intel is back to over 70% share, more specifically 71.58%. What this means is that there are some fluctuations happening right now, and we are eager to see more reports to analyze in what direction is the market moving and how the two competing companies are performing. AMD seems to be held back by their ability to produce enough CPUs, while Intel is happily filling that void, fueled by a more aggressive pricing strategy.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of high-performance, quality PC components and peripherals. With the REV300, Sharkoon now presents a PC case of a different kind. Besides seven pre-installed PWM RGB fans for optimal cooling, the case also comes with addressable fan LEDs for customized lighting. In addition, since the tempered glass side panel is placed on the right-hand side of the case, the REV300 offers the possibility for a better presentation of the illuminated hardware components.

With seven pre-installed, addressable PWM fans, the REV300 is equipped with maximum cooling capacity as standard: There are three 140-millimeter fans behind the front panel and three 120-millimeter models at the rear of the case, as well as one more with 120 millimeters under the top panel. These RGB fans are supported by the front panel's mesh grille which facilitates the airflow. Water cooling can also be built into the REV300: A radiator of up to 360 millimeters can be installed at the rear, and there is even space for a radiator of up to 420 millimeters at the front, provided that it does not exceed 3.2 centimeters in height. Furthermore, it should not be longer than 46.5 centimeters and no wider than 14.1 centimeters.

Today, Valve has updated its Steam Hardware Survey with the latest information about the market share of different processors. Steam Hardware Survey is a very good indicator of market movements, as it surveys users that are spread across millions of gaming systems that use Valve's Steam gaming platform. As Valve processes information, it reports it back to the public in a form of market share of different processors. Today, in the Steam Hardware Survey for May 2021, we got some interesting data to look at. Most notably, AMD has gained 0.65% CPU market share, increasing it from the previous 29.48% to 30.13%. This represents a major move for the company, which didn't own more than 30% market share with its CPUs on Steam Survey in years.

As the Steam Survey tracks even the market share of graphics cards, we got to see a slight change there as well. As far as GPUs go, AMD now holds 16.2% of the market share, which is a decrease from the previous 16.3%. For more details about Steam Hardware Survey for May 2021, please check out Steam's website here.

We've all been beating dead consumer horses for a while now in most product areas that require semiconductors to operate - and that applies to almost anything, really. Whether CPU shortages from the AMD camp, GPU shortages from both AMD and NVIDIA, increasing prices of storage due to a new cryptocurrency boom, scalpers left and right on the most recent PC and console hardware, shortages on semiconductors for car manufacturers and technological companies like Bosch... It's a wild ride in the semiconductor world right now. And if you were looking at upgrading your media-consumption living room with a fancy new TV, you will also have to cope with increased pricing now, and perhaps further price climbs and shortages in the future.


Market research company NPD has said as much in its most recent market analysis; they've concluded that Smart TV prices have already increased 30% comparatively to the first months of 2020. The price increases are expected to hit anything with a screen - whether smartphones, TVs, laptops, or any other product that has to take up a portion of the world's panel output. This is the market correcting itself when it comes to the supply/demand equation - increased demand post-COVID-19 and global supply chain issues have set up a series of network effects that have led manufacturers to increase product pricing according to demand, passing on additional supply costs on to the customer, and simultaneously attaching the highest possible profits on the existing (and insufficient) supply. It's highly unlikely that this semiconductor supply shortage will see a turnaround throughout 2021.

Uniko's Hardware, a usual spot for leaks and information on upcoming hardware, has put forward that NVIDIA could be looking to introduce two versions of its upcoming RTX 3070 Ti graphics card. The difference would be dual-sided GDDR6X memory or not, which would make available memory capacities for this card in the league of either 8 GB (the same as the RTX 3070) or 16 GB running at 19 Gbps.

The intention with the RTX 3070 Ti is to bring the fight back to AMD, who released a pretty good offering to the market in the form of the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics cards - both featuring 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. NVIDIA is looking to improve its market position compared to AMD by offering both the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti on the market. It could also be a time for NVIDIA to release another cryptomining-crippled graphics card - and this time to try and do it right by not releasing a driver that unlocks that particular effort. The card is rumored for launch come May, though we've already seen an unprecedented number of delays for NVIDIA's new SKUs - a sign that there is indeed a problem in the upstream semiconductor offering field.

ADATA has recently been in a spot of controversy when it comes to their XPG SX8200 Pro solid-state drive (SSD). The company has reportedly shipped many different configurations of the SSD with different drive controller clock speeds and different NAND flash. According to the original report, ADATA has first shipped the SX8200 Pro SSD with Silicon Motion SM2262ENG SSD controller, running at 650 MHz with IMFT 64-layer TLC NAND Flash. However, it was later reported that the SSD was updated to use the Silicon Motion SM2262G SSD controller, clocked at 575 MHz. With this report, many users have gotten concerned and started to question the company's practices. However, ADATA later ensured everyone that performance is within the specifications and there is no need to worry.

Today, we have another report about the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro SSD. According to a Redditor, ADATA has once again updated its SSD with a different kind of NAND Flash, however, this time the report indicated that performance was impacted. Tom's Hardware has made a table of changes showing as many as five revisions of the SSD, all with different configurations of SSD controllers and NAND Flash memory. We have contacted ADATA to clarify the issues that have emerged, and this is the official response that the company gave us.

Addressing the demands of the modern data center, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced a range of new data center products and solutions, including a new family of Alveo SmartNICs, smart world AI video analytics applications, an accelerated algorithmic trading reference design for sub-microsecond trading, and the Xilinx App Store.

Today's most demanding and complex applications, from networking and AI analytics to financial trading, require low-latency and real-time performance. Achieving this level of performance has been limited to expensive and lengthy hardware development. With these new products and solutions, Xilinx is eliminating the barriers for software developers to quickly create and deploy software-defined, hardware accelerated applications on Alveo accelerator cards.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products including direct-attached storage (DAS) devices, introduces the upgraded D8 Thunderbolt 3 (D8-331) 8-bay professional-grade RAID storage. The new D8 Thunderbolt 3 model features an upgraded RAID controller that delivers faster data transmission by up to 30% over the previous model. The new model delivers speeds of up to 2100 MB/s in RAID 0 using eight SSDs (old model 1600 MB/s). The D8 Thunderbolt 3 RAID storage is designed for professional creators such as video editors, animators, photographers, and others. Now, creators can enjoy even faster data transmission speeds to get work done faster.

The TerraMaster D8 Thunderbolt 3 is ideal for small- and medium-sized enterprises in need of high-speed, large-capacity storage for content creation, perfect for creators working on applications like Apple Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, and others. The RAID storage also comes with two 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 ports that are fully compatible with the latest macOS Big Sur system version.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

Michael Driscoll, an Oracle data engineer, has written a data scraper that runs through eBay listings for the latest hardware, comparing products with their sale price. The objective was to see just how pervasive scalping actually is, and to get a (flawed and incomplete, but still extremely interesting) outlook at the scalping ecosystem and their gains with the current hardware and console shortages. Driscoll analyzed sales for the Xbox Series X|S, the PS5 (discless and disc-based) as well as NVIDIA's RTX 30-series, AMD's RX 6000 series, and Zen 3 processors. There are some assumptions on the gathering and analysis of this data, but that is part of the beast.

The results are potentially desperation-inducing. AMD's Zen 3 CPUs have sold for sometimes 240% of their MSRP (looking at the biggest offender, the Ryzen 9 5950X. The RX 6800 XT graphics card has been selling for within an inch of 200% of its MSRP as well, with a median price over the past week set at $1247 (compare that to the $649 MSRP). The RTX 3080 has been selling at 180% of its MSRP for the past week, but it has been moved at 220% of its MSRP before. The case repeats with several degrees of severity for the Xbox family and PS5 consoles.

At an Intel Labs virtual event today, Intel unveiled Horse Ridge II, its second-generation cryogenic control chip, marking another milestone in the company's progress toward overcoming scalability, one of quantum computing's biggest hurdles. Building on innovations in the first-generation Horse Ridge controller introduced in 2019, Horse Ridge II supports enhanced capabilities and higher levels of integration for elegant control of the quantum system. New features include the ability to manipulate and read qubit states and control the potential of several gates required to entangle multiple qubits.

"With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a 'traffic-free' integrated quantum circuit."-Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel.

When AMD introduced its Smart Access Memory technology, everyone was wondering will other GPU and CPU providers, namely Intel and NVIDIA, develop a similar solution to complement their offerings. The SAM technology is just AMD's way of naming PCIe resizable Base Address Register (BAR) technology, which has been present in PCI specifications for years as an optional feature. Why it's emerging now you might wonder. Well, the currently used PCIe revision has reached enough bandwidth on the bus to complement the complex data movement that GPU requires and now supports the use of the wider VRAM frame buffer.

It appears that not only AMD has this technology in its portfolio. ASUS has updated its BIOS firmware for its ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard based on the Intel Z490 chipset, with some pretty interesting features. According to Tom's Hardware, we have information that the next release of BIOS firmware update 1003 for the ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard will bring support for resizable BAR, making it a first on an Intel platform. For now, the beta 1002 BIOS supports it, however, a stable version will roll out in BIOS 1003. With the motherboard using PCIe 3.0 standard, a lower-bandwidth revision compared to AMD's platform, it will be interesting to see how resizable BAR is performing once the first tests come.

Update 09:45 am UTC: Chris Wefers, ASUS PR Germany, has announced that resizable BAR will be coming to all ASUS motherboards with Intel Z490/H470/B460 chipset, with alleged 13.37% performance increase in Forza Horizon 4, per ASUSes testing. You can see the test configuration in the image below.

When NVIDIA announced its contest on Twitter for users to win a GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card, by simply re-tweeting the post tagging a friend, there was something strange in the tweet. The concept art of the RTX 3070 card used in the post was a bit off. Instead of it featuring a regular design and connectors, the RTX 3070 picture used had an 8-pin PCIe power connector to power the card. That leads many to wonder what is going on with NVIDIA's new 12-pin power connector and has the company decided to abandon it so soon. However, we got the first response to those rumors from NVIDIA spokesman for Tom's Hardware. The company has responded that "tweet used concept art only, which is being replaced." So it was a marketing mistake, which NVIDIA is aware of and is fixing, and no, the 12-pin connector is not going away anytime soon it seems.

iStorage, the award-winning and trusted global leader of hardware encrypted data storage and cloud encryption devices, is proud to announce the launch of the diskAshur M2. The diskAshur M2 is iStorage's smallest, lightest, fastest and most rugged FIPS compliant encrypted portable SSD and includes connectivity for both USB type A and C ports. The new diskAshur M2 SSD encrypts data using FIPS PUB 197 validated, AES-XTS 256-bit hardware encryption and uniquely incorporates a Common Criteria EAL4+ ready secure microprocessor, which employs built-in physical protection mechanisms designed to defend against external tamper, bypass physical attacks and more.

The drive features ultra-fast backwards compatible USB 3.2 data transfer speeds and is available in capacities ranging from 120 GB to 2 TB. The diskAshur M2 is lightweight, dust and waterproof (IP68 certified), shock proof (survives a drop of 4 m on to a concrete surface) and crush-proof (withstands the weight of a 2.7 ton vehicle), making it extremely rugged and ultra-portable.

In a report by Phoronix, we have the latest information about Intel's efforts to prepare the next generation of hardware for launch sometime in the future. In the latest Linux kernel patches prepared to go mainline soon, Intel has been adding support for its "Meteor Lake" processor architecture manufactured on Intel's most advanced 7 nm node. While there are no official patches in the mainline kernel yet, the first signs of Meteor Lake are expected to show up in the version 5.10, where we will be seeing the mentions of it. This way Intel is ensuring that the Meteor Lake platform will see the best software support, even though it is a few years away from the launch.

Meteor Lake is expected to debut in late 2022 or 2023, which will replace the Alder Lake platform coming soon. In a similar way to Alder Lake, Meteor Lake will use a hybrid core technology where it will combine small and big cores. The Meteor Lake platform will use the new big "Ocean Cove" design paired with small "Gracemont" cores that will be powering the CPU. This processor is going to be manufactured on Intel's 7 nm node that will be the first 7 nm design from Intel. With all the delays to the node, we are in for an interesting period to see how the company copes with it and how the design IPs turn out.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is powering better-than-ever virtual reality (VR) gameplay and experiences with the launch of Oculus Quest 2, the first-to-launch VR device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform. Oculus Quest 2 is a culmination of years of collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies and Facebook to create the most advanced and immersive gaming VR experiences for consumers to-date.

Purpose-built for extended reality (XR), the Snapdragon XR2 Platform unlocks staggering improvements including twice the CPU and GPU performance compared to its predecessor which powers the original Oculus Quest headset. The Snapdragon XR2 Platform delivers significant performance enhancements in Oculus Quest 2 including:

In a recent report from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) they estimate that $2.6 billion will be spent on PC gaming hardware in the next three years thanks to the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator. This $2.6 billion will be split across Entry-Level, Mid-Range, and High-End PC gamers with the High-End category contributing the most. JPR estimates that 2.27 million copies of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 will sell over the next three years. JPR predicts that these sales numbers will result in $2.6 billion being spent on hardware with the specific intent of improving the game's experience while much more will be spent over the title's complete life cycle.

This estimation includes new computer builds, processor upgrades, display upgrades, flight sticks and throttles, flight system control units, rudder pedals, simulation pit components such as seats and frames, and VR sales. This will benefit all computer components and accessory manufacturers as hardware upgrades are required across the board in most cases. With the introduction of 8K and VR support the game will continue to drive computer upgrades in the years to come.