Since the launch of AMD's Ryzen processors, the CPU market share has been reshaped in AMD's favor. Intel's offerings were matched by team red, and AMD quickly broke into the consumer market. However, according to the latest round of reports, it seems like that is no longer the case. As per the Japanese DIY market analysis from BCNR, sales of Intel processors started rising in mid-2021, and the company is managing to grab some market share from AMD. After nearly two years of dominance in the Japanese market, AMD is now behind Intel in sales, and team blue is getting back to its older setting.

Another source that is generally a pretty good indicator of the market share of Intel and AMD processor is PassMark. As users submit their benchmark runs, the PassMark software developer has updated the CPU market share statistics chart, mainly showing the desktop segment. It also concludes the same thing as BCRN: Intel is again gaining share in the CPU market. As it always goes hand-in-hand, AMD is losing the CPU marker share naturally. This is due to many reasons, and it seems like Intel's marketing and supply tactics are paying off. Intel now sits at 60% share, while AMD is set at 40%.

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

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.

Things are apparently anything but smooth for TSMC when it comes to its US expansion in Arizona, as reports claim that the construction of its new fab in Arizona is going to be late. This is largely due to labour shortages caused by the pandemic, which in turn is set to delay the entire project. As such, it's being suggested that the installation of manufacturing equipment will be delayed from late Q3 this year until Q1 next year. The knock on effect of this is that production is unlikely to start in Q1 2024 and will most likely be delayed to sometime in the second half of 2024. As a comparison, TSMC normally spends two years to build and configure their fabs in Asia, whereas their first expansion outside of Asia is set to take at least two and a half years.

Another issue is said to be related to finding the right staff, since not only TSMC, but also Intel is looking for competent staff in Arizona. Intel might be the winner here, as TSMC is said to already have complaints from some of its employees, especially from western countries. The main complaint is about excessively long meetings that can add several hours to their workdays. Other complaints revolve around long working hours, as the company employs 12 hour shifts for its engineers and they are often on call over weekends. The company has apparently become increasingly demanding when it comes to its workforce, although TSMC has apparently improved in some ways, based on changes to the Taiwanese labour laws.

KS Distribution is very pleased to announce the release of the first full size wireless headphone model from Japanese high-end audio specialists final - the UX3000. The UX3000 is the first wireless overhead headphones from final featuring ANC, with hybrid noise-cancellation technology - adding to the new wireless range from final alongside the ZE3000 true wireless earphones for an impressive line-up of audio focused Bluetooth listening. By fully utilizing the know-how of final's dynamic driver design technology, and thoroughly optimizing the acoustic characteristics of the driver unit itself, the UX3000 delivers sound unlike any other Bluetooth wireless headphone - providing a hi-fi listening experience on the move.

In addition to the common SBC, aptX and AAC codecs, the UX3000 supports aptX LL - a low-latency codec that delivers high-quality sound with minimal interruptions and time delay. Allowing you to enjoy music, games and videos instantly and with ease.The headband can be folded for compact storage, making it easy to carry around, and the soft pouch enclosed provides gentle protection to prevent scratches during transport. Soft-textured Shibo (an old Japanese word meaning a wrinkle on the surface of paper or leather) coating offers a beautiful surface that is superb at dirt resistance and fingerprint resilience - on top of giving an overall premium feel to the UX3000.

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation ("Toshiba") today announced that it will construct a new 300-milimeter wafer fabrication facility for power semiconductors at its main discrete semiconductor production base, Kaga Toshiba Electronics Corporation, in Ishikawa Prefecture. Construction will take place in two phases, allowing the pace of investment to be optimized against market trends, with the production start of Phase 1 scheduled for within fiscal 2024. When Phase 1 reaches full capacity, Toshiba's power semiconductor production capacity will be 2.5 times that of fiscal 2021.

Power devices are essential components for managing and reducing power consumption in every kind of electronic equipment, and for achieving a carbon neutral society. Current demand is expanding on vehicle electrification and the automation of industrial equipment, with very strong demand for low-voltage MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors) and IGBTs (insulated-gate bipolar transistors) and other devices. To date, Toshiba has met this demand growth by increasing production capacity on 200-milimeter lines, and expediting the start of production on 300-milimeter production lines from the first half of fiscal 2023 to the second half of fiscal 2022. Decisions on the new fab's overall capacity and equipment investment, the start of production, production capacity and production plan will reflect market trends.

Due to the pandemic, laptops shipments reached a record high of 240 million units in 2021, according to TrendForce's investigations. However, the market has been abuzz recently and, as the global population of the fully vaccinated has exceeded 50%, relevant demand driven by the pandemic is expected to gradually weaken. Shipment volume will decrease by 3.3% year-on-year, revised down slightly to 238 million units. Chromebooks will account for approximately 12.3% of shipment volume, though it accounted for approximately 15.2% in 2021. The momentum of shipments has slowed down significantly which indicates that demand derived from the economic effect of remote working and teaching has subsided.

As we know, the Japanese government has offered some subsidies for the TSMC/Sony joint venture to build a chip fab in the Kumamoto Prefecture, but now it seems like the Japanese government has decided to ask for assurances. The Japanese government is said to have put aside US$5.2 billion, a relatively small amount even compared to India, to help semiconductor manufacturers that want to build new fabs in Japan. Of that, US$3.49 million is already said to be earmarked for the TSMC/Sony joint venture, in exchange for around 10 years of production in Japan.

The rules are apparently not quite finalised as yet, as the government is said to be getting public comments on the specific rules that should apply to the subsidies. One of the conditions could be that the foundry would have to ramp up production in times of shortages, others might include the protection of key Japanese technologies, or ongoing investment into the fab(s), although the latter is usually something that is done simply out of good business practice. Time will tell how things play out, but it seems like the Japanese government has given a bit more thought to its subsidies than what has been announced by some other nations so far.

It might not have been announced in time for Christmas, but Bauhütte's new MSG-01H-BK might just be what you've been wanting your whole life, without knowing it. What we're looking at is a heated hand massager for gamers, that uses "air bags" to knead your tired hands and fingers after a long gaming session and it can massage both the right and left hand, plus fingers and has a dedicated thumb massage mode.

The manufacturer also suggests that using the heating mode without massage can be great before a gaming session, to help warm up the muscles in your hands and fingers. There are no less than 15 massage zones and you can choose between a general massage mode and a dedicated finger mode, both with three levels of pressure and a 10 minute automatic timer. If you're lucky enough to live in Japan, you can pick one up for US$145, which doesn't exactly sound like a bargain to us.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued to block U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp.'s $40 billion acquisition of U.K. chip design provider Arm Ltd. Semiconductor chips power the computers and technologies that are essential to our modern economy and society. The proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. The FTC's complaint alleges that the combined firm would have the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-assistance systems in cars.

"The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies," said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova. "Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals. The FTC's lawsuit should send a strong signal that we will act aggressively to protect our critical infrastructure markets from illegal vertical mergers that have far-reaching and damaging effects on future innovations."

The two leading companies in the quantum computing industry have combined to create Quantinuum, thereby accelerating the development of quantum computing and innovation of quantum technologies in a platform agnostic manner to deliver real-world quantum-enabled solutions for some of the most intractable problems that classical computers have not been able to solve.

Cambridge Quantum, the pioneer in quantum software, operating systems, and cybersecurity, and Honeywell Quantum Solutions, which has built the highest-performing quantum hardware, based on trapped-ion technologies, today announced they have satisfied all of the conditions required to close the business combination and formed the new company, now called Quantinuum.

IBM today announced its new 127-quantum bit (qubit) 'Eagle' processor at the IBM Quantum Summit 2021, its annual event to showcase milestones in quantum hardware, software, and the growth of the quantum ecosystem. The 'Eagle' processor is a breakthrough in tapping into the massive computing potential of devices based on quantum physics. It heralds the point in hardware development where quantum circuits cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical computer. IBM also previewed plans for IBM Quantum System Two, the next generation of quantum systems.

Quantum computing taps into the fundamental quantum nature of matter at subatomic levels to offer the possibility of vastly increased computing power. The fundamental computational unit of quantum computing is the quantum circuit, an arrangement of qubits into quantum gates and measurements. The more qubits a quantum processor possesses, the more complex and valuable the quantum circuits that it can run.

The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation ("SSS") today jointly announced that TSMC will establish a subsidiary, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. ("JASM"), in Kumamoto, Japan to provide foundry service with initial technology of 22/28-nanometer processes to address strong global market demand for specialty technologies, with SSS participating as a minority shareholder.

Construction of JASM's fab in Japan is scheduled to begin in the 2022 calendar year with production targeted to begin by the end of 2024. The fab is expected to directly create about 1,500 high-tech professional jobs and to have a monthly production capacity of 45,000 12-inch wafers. The initial capital expenditure is estimated to be approximately US$7 billion with strong support from the Japanese government.

Under definitive agreements reached between TSMC and SSS, SSS plans to make an equity investment in JASM of approximately US $0.5 billion, which will represent a less than 20% equity stake in JASM. The closing of the transaction between TSMC and SSS is subject to customary closing conditions.

While the global electronics supply chain experienced a chip shortage, the corresponding shortage of foundry capacities also led various foundries to raise their quotes, resulting in an over 20% YoY increase in the total annual revenues of the top 10 foundries for both 2020 and 2021, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The top 10 foundries' annual revenue for 2021 is now expected to surpass US$100 billion. As TSMC leads yet another round of price hikes across the industry, annual foundry revenue for 2022 will likely reach US$117.69 billion, a 13.3% YoY increase.

TrendForce indicates that the combined CAPEX of the top 10 foundries surpassed US$50 billion in 2021, a 43% YoY increase. As new fab constructions and equipment move-ins gradually conclude next year, their combined CAPEX for 2022 is expected to undergo a 15% YoY increase and fall within the US$50-60 billion range. In addition, now that TSMC has officially announced the establishment of a new fab in Japan, total foundry CAPEX will likely increase further next year. TrendForce expects the foundry industry's total 8-inch and 12-inch wafer capacities to increase by 6% YoY and 14% YoY next year, respectively.

DuckyChannel International Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer dedicated to delivering professional-grade mechanical keyboards and mice, is officially launching a new collaboration with popular Japanese brand SOU・SOU, a creative brand dedicated to innovation while taking cues from Japan's cultural history. Presenting the Ducky X SOU・SOU One 2 full size and One 2 Mini RGB, featuring SOU・SOU's iconic number element design. Vivid colors and dye-sublimation keycaps for users and fans to choose the right keyboard fitted to their needs.

Combining Kyoto tradition with modern innovation to experience Japanese culture, dye-sublimation uses heat to transfer dye onto durable PBT keycaps to apply images hat will never fade away after years of use! These keycaps are stain resistant. Ducky X SOU・SOU limited edition keyboard features a detachable USB Type-C cable, N-Key rollover, per-key RGB lighting, 2 form-factors of 60%, and 100% for users to choose. Ducky X SOU・SOU limited edition keyboard provides a wide range of Cherry MX switches ranging from tactile feedback MX Brown and MX Blue switches and linear feel MX Silver, MX Red, MX Black and MX Silent red switches. Users can experience more choices with multiple switch options! Find out more about the Ducky X SOU・SOU limited edition keyboard on DuckyChannel's website: www.duckychannel.com.tw/tw/Ducky-SOUSOU-One2Mini

Remember that rumour from last week about TSMC potentially building a fab in Japan and partnering up with Sony? Well, the deal is on and the fab is set to start construction in 2022, with production expected to start sometime in 2024. However, as mentioned, the fab isn't going to be using any cutting edge technology when it comes to the process node, since it's intended for imaging sensors and EV components.

The new fab is said to focus on 28 and 22 nm nodes, according to Tim Culpan, who writes for Bloomberg and who has been reporting on TSMC for at least the last decade. This is backed up by the Nikkei that reports that the US$7 billion fab will make chips in the 20-nm range, without going into further details beyond mentioning these nodes are over a decade old. That said, there are still plenty of products made on older nodes than that, as not everything has to be built on a cutting edge node and many components wouldn't benefit from a smaller node. Regardless, this fab won't help with the current shortage of components, but will hopefully lead to better availability of certain components in the future.

There doesn't seem to be a single month where rumours about new TSMC plants around the world are popping up and this time around it looks like there might be a joint venture with Sony in Japan. According to the Nikkei, the Japanese government is likely to be involved and might foot as much as half of the US$7 billion bill.

Another much more unknown player, Japanese auto parts maker Denso is also said to be a potential participant in the new fab. Denso is said to supply Toyota among others and with a shift towards more EVs, this might not be such a strange move. The new fab is expected to be located in Kumamoto Prefecture on land owned by Sony. It should be noted that Sony already manufactures image sensors here and the factory was hit badly by a large earthquake back in 2016, which led to a global shortage of certain image sensors.

If you've been on the lookout for a truly durable keyboard, Filco might have what you've been waiting for in the shape of the Majestouch 2S Metal SUS, a keyboard housed inside a 1.6 to 2 mm thick SUS304HL (HL for hairline finish) stainless steel chassis. The keyboard weighs in at almost 4.4 kg, although this does include the integrated wrist rest.

Besides its sturdy chassis, the Majestouch 2S Metal SUS features screw-in height-adjustable legs and if these aren't tall enough, an optional kit for even more height is available. Filco offers four different Cherry MX switch options for the US ANSI models, brown, blue, red and silver (speed), whereas the Japanese version has to make do without the blue switches.

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.

If you thought that the chip shortage was bad, then the building shortage of passive components, such as capacitors, resistors, inductors and so on, is going to have you in tears. Due to lockdowns in Malaysia and Indonesia, where most of the well known Japanese aluminium capacitors are made, the factories of Chemi-Con, Nichicon and Rubycon have been shut down for most of July and August. The three companies together control some 50 percent of the capacitor market and it's expected that the current situation in Malaysia will lead to a reduction in capacitor shipments by 30 to 60 percent.

At the same time, the increased demand for everything from computer parts to renewable energy technology has ramped up demand for these components. Some of that business has been picked up by Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers, but whereas in the past you could get your order in some four to six weeks, the lead times are now three to six months and that's if you're lucky. DigiTimes is reporting that several Taiwanese component makers have seen a YoY revenue growth of 20 percent or more for the first half of this year.

VR and AR headsets might not have been quite the success they were expected to be, mainly due to cost, but now, a Japanese company has developed what has to be one of the weirdest VR headsets to date, one that's meant to be used in bed.

The HalfDive VR headset, or BMD (Bed-Mounted-Display) from Diver-X is trying to implement a range of new features that have never been seen before in a VR headset, such as "wind feedback. This is simply done by a pair of fans built into the headset that outside of adding a touch of wind in your face effect, can apparently also be used for cooling down the user.

Other more normal features include a 3D audio system that consists of four speakers placed around the head, a force feedback system based on what might best be described as friction bands, vibration feedback via an "audio exciter" and foot controllers in addition to regular hand controllers.

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.

Despite the intensifying COVID-19 pandemic that swept Taiwan in 2Q21, the domestic OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) industry remained largely intact, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Global sales of large-sized TVs were brisk thanks to major sporting events such as the Tokyo Olympics and UEFA Euro 2020. Likewise, the proliferation of WFH and distance learning applications propelled the demand for IT products, while the automotive semiconductor and data center markets also showed upward trajectories. Taking into account the above factors, OSAT companies raised their quotes in response, resulting in a 26.4% YoY increase in the top 10 OSAT companies' revenue to US$7.88 billion for 2Q21.

TrendForce indicates that, in light of the ongoing global chip shortage and the growing production capacities of foundries/IDMs in the upstream semiconductor supply chain, OSAT companies gradually increased their CAPEX and expanded their fabs and equipment in order to meet the persistently growing client demand. However, the OSAT industry still faces an uncertain future in 2H21 due to the Delta variant's global surge and the health crisis taking place in Southeast Asia, home to a significant number of OSAT facilities.

Intel has recently unveiled that their technology powered the 8K 60 FPS Tokyo Olympics broadcast which was available to select customers in Japan. The games were recorded in 8K at 60 FPS with 4:2:2 Chroma subsampling and 10-bit HDR which resulted in a bitrate of 48 Gbps. This uncompressed stream was then encoded on servers each featuring quad 28 core Xeon 8380H processors and 384 GB of ram into two HEVC distribution streams at 250 Mbps and 50-100 Mbps bitrates. These streams were then distributed to users over the internet where the 8K stream could be decoded and displayed on an 8K TV over HDMI 2.1. Intel used a workstation PC with an 18-core Xeon W-2295 and 64 GB of ram to decode and play the video stream on the TV. This 8K service was only made available to select NHK subscribers in Japan while most international broadcasts offered a maximum resolution of 4K.