NVIDIA is preparing to launch an ultimate solution for high-end laptops and gamers that could benefit from the high-performance graphics card integration in mobile systems like gaming laptops. Rumored to launch sometime in January, NVIDIA is preparing a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPU SKU that supposedly offers the highest performance in the Ampere mobile family. According to sources close to VideoCardz, team green has prepared to announce RTX 3080 Ti mobile design with faster memory and higher total graphics power (TGP). The memory speed will get an upgrade to 16 Gbps, compared to the 14 Gbps speed in RTX 3080 mobile SKU.

Similarly, the total overall TGP will also receive a bump to 175 Watts. This is just a tad higher than the 165 Watt TGP of RTX 3080 mobile. The Ti version will upgrade the CUDA core count and other things like TMUs to undetermined specifications. Currently, it is rumored that the Ti version could carry 7424 CUDA cores, which is an upgrade from 6144 of the regular RTX 3080 version.

Unlike Intel and Qualcomm, Samsung seems to be far more pessimistic about the current chip supply issues, as the company isn't expecting the chip shortage to be resolved next year. Admittedly this information comes via a meeting of its mobile divisions top brass, but considering that the mobile division is using a significant amount of various chips for its products, it would seem that the information is reliable.

The two biggest shortages for Samsung's mobile division will continue to be application processors (also known as SoCs) and radio frequency (RF) components. Considering that these are key components of any modern smartphone, it's not hard to see why Samsung would be concerned. What we don't know is how much of an advantage Samsung's various business units have when they work with Samsung's foundries and we might have reached a point where the highest bidder wins the allocation.

Intel's upcoming lineup of mobile processors with the novel hybrid core technology are codenamed Alder Lake-P. Contrary to the desktop Alder Lake-S, the P variant was envisioned with a lower power budget in mind to fit various form factors. Today, we get to see some of the first benchmarks of the Alder Lake-P processors and get to compare them to AMD's competing products. In the Geekbench 5 listing discovered by BechLeaks, Intel's Core i7-12800H processor with six performance and eight efficiency cores appear. The CPU ran at a base frequency of 2.8 GHz, while Geekbench didn't show boosting clocks in the submission.

The CPU managed to score 1654 points in single-core results and 9618 points in multi-core runs. If we compare this to AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, a direct competitor, the CPU is faster by 25% and 35% in single-core and multi-core results, respectively. If the previous Tiger Lake-H generation is a reference, the Alder Lake-P chip manages 12% and 20% higher single-core and multi-core scores. This specific processor is part of the GIGABYTE AORUS 15 YE4 laptop used for the Geekbench 5 benchmark test run.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. introduced four new mobile platforms - Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G, 695 5G, 480 Plus 5G, and 680 4G - to enable increased performance and capabilities across our high-, mid-, and entry-tiers. These 5G and 4G mobile platforms enable increased performance and capabilities to provide OEMs with additional options to help meet the existing demand.

There is significant traction and momentum across all Snapdragon tiers. By bringing cutting-edge features from the Snapdragon 8-series into the 7-, 6-, and 4-series, it is contributing to the growing demand across each Snapdragon series. The Snapdragon 7-series has grown by 44% in the last year alone due to tremendous high-tier demand. In the 6-series, consumer trends are emerging that show mid-tier smartphones will be the main driver for 5G adoption especially in emerging regions. Additionally, after less than one year, there have been more than 85 devices announced or in development based on the Snapdragon 480.

Following the peak period of production in 3Q21, the supply of DRAM will likely begin to outpace demand in 4Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations (the surplus of DRAM supply is henceforth referred to as "sufficiency ratio", expressed as a percentage). In addition, while DRAM suppliers are generally carrying a healthy level of inventory, most of their clients in the end-product markets are carrying a higher level of DRAM inventory than what is considered healthy, meaning these clients will be less willing to procure additional DRAM going forward. TrendForce therefore forecasts a downward trajectory for DRAM ASP in 4Q21. More specifically, DRAM products that are currently in oversupply may experience price drops of more than 5% QoQ, and the overall DRAM ASP will likely decline by about 3-8% QoQ in 4Q21.

Although WFH and distance learning applications previously generated high demand for notebook computers, increasingly widespread vaccinations in Europe and North America have now weakened this demand, particularly for Chromebooks. As a result, global production of notebooks is expected to decline in 4Q21, in turn propelling the sufficiency ratio of PC DRAM to 1.38%, which indicates that PC DRAM will no longer be in short supply in 4Q21. However, PC DRAM accounts for a relatively low share of DRAM manufacturers' DRAM supply bits, since these suppliers have allocated more production capacities to server DRAM, which is in relatively high demand. Hence, there will unlikely be a severe surplus of PC DRAM in 4Q21. It should also be pointed out that, on average, the current spot prices of PC DRAM modules are far lower than their contract prices for 3Q21. TrendForce therefore expects an imminent 5-10% QoQ decline in PC DRAM contract prices for 4Q21, with potential for declines that are even greater than 10% for certain transactions, as PC OEMs anticipate further price drops in PC DRAM prices in the future.

According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, worldwide shipments of PCs are expected to grow 14.2% to 347 million units in 2021. This is down from IDC's May forecast of 18% growth with continued supply chain and logistical challenges cited as the main reasons. The Tablet market is also expected to grow in 2021 but at a much slower pace of 3.4%.

"We continue to believe the PC and tablet markets are supply constrained and that demand is still there," said Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "The lengthening of the supply shortages combined with on-going logistical issues are presenting the industry with some big challenges. However, we believe the vast majority of PC demand is non-perishable, especially from the business and education sectors."

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021. Total consolidated revenue was KRW 63.67 trillion, a 20% increase from the previous year and a record for the second quarter. Operating profit increased 34% from the previous quarter to KRW 12.57 trillion as market conditions improved in the memory market, operations normalized at the Austin foundry fab, and as effective global supply chain management (SCM) helped maintain solid profitability for the finished product businesses.

The Semiconductor business saw a significant improvement in earnings as memory shipments exceeded previous guidance and price increases were higher than expected, while the Company strengthened its cost competitiveness. For the Display Panel Business, a one-off gain and an increase in overall prices boosted profits.

MSI, a world-leading gaming brand, announces the all-new AMD-powered gaming laptop, Delta 15 and the revamped Alpha 15/17, equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5000 H Series Mobile Processors and the up to latest AMD Radeon RX6700M Series Mobile Graphics. MSI continues to fulfill the diverse demand of gaming and leverage the strength in the AMD product line.

Delta 15 and Alpha 15/17 all come with the latest Radeon RX6000M Series Mobile Graphics, 1.5x faster performance compared to previous generations AMD graphics. * Powered by the AMD Radeon RX 6700M, Delta 15 provides ultra-high frame rates, while the Alpha 15/17, equipped with the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, delivers 1080p gaming at max settings.

Armed with up to 8 "Golden Cove" high-performance CPU cores and up to 8 "Gracemont" low-power cores in a hybrid x86 processor setup, the "Alder Lake" silicon enables Intel to carve out some interesting SKUs in the mobile space, by creating numerous combinations of the big and small CPU core counts, and more importantly, by adjusting the ratio of big cores to small ones. The two core types operate at significantly different performance/Watt bands, which allows Intel to target the various TDP-defined mobile processor SKU categories with just the right big:small core ratios, as revealed by a leaked "Alder Lake" mobile SKU roadmap, leaked to the web by HXL.

Intel is looking to spread the silicon across six mobile segments defined by TDP—the 5 W tablet/handheld; the 9 W ultra-thin, the 15 W mainstream tablet/laptop, the 28 W performance tablet/laptop, the 35-45 W thin enthusiast laptop, and the 45-55 W "muscle" laptop. With Intel recently announcing the discontinuation of its 1+4 (big+small) core "Lakefield" hybrid processor, its mantle in the 5 W segment will be picked up by "Alder Lake-M5," with 1 "Golden Cove" and 4 "Gracemont" cores. There will be two product tiers segmented by iGPU execution units (EUs), one with 48 EU, and the other with 64.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the expansion of its 5G RAN Platforms portfolio with the addition of the Qualcomm 5G DU X100 Accelerator Card. The Qualcomm 5G DU X100 is designed to enable operators and infrastructure vendors the ability to readily reap the benefits of high performance, low latency, and power efficient 5G, while accelerating the cellular ecosystem's transition towards virtualized radio access networks.

The Qualcomm 5G DU X100 is a PCIe inline accelerator card with concurrent Sub-6 GHz and mmWave baseband support which is designed to simplify 5G deployments by offering a turnkey solution for ease of deployment with O-RAN fronthaul and 5G NR layer 1 High (L1 High) processing. The PCIe card is designed to seamlessly plug into standard Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers to offload CPUs from latency-sensitive and compute-intensive 5G baseband functions such as demodulation, beamforming, channel coding, and Massive MIMO computation needed for high-capacity deployments. For use in public or private networks, this accelerator card aims to give carriers the ability to increase overall network capacity and fully realize the transformative potential of 5G.

Total NAND Flash revenue for 1Q21 increased by 5.1% QoQ to US$14.82 billion, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In particular, bit shipments rose by 11% QoQ, while the overall ASP dropped by 5% QoQ; hence, bit shipment growth offset the decline in the overall ASP. Although NAND Flash demand from notebook computer and smartphone manufacturers remained high, clients from the data center segment exhibited relatively weak demand, since this segment had yet to leave the state of NAND Flash oversupply. Contract prices for this quarter therefore still mostly showed a considerable QoQ drop. On the other hand, OEMs/ODMs of end products began to increase procurement of NAND Flash products from the second half of January onward because they noticed that the shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs was affecting the production of medium- and low-density storage products. Besides avoiding a possible supply crunch in the future, OEMs/ODMs were placing additional orders because they were preparing for a push to expand market share. On account of these developments, the overall NAND Flash demand surpassed expectations in 1Q21.

The pandemic has changed people's way of life. Changes in the consumption habits of the general public have led to rapid e-commerce and shipping market growth. Logistic processing efficiency has become one of the key capabilities of competing business owners. In addition, in the era of Industrial 4.0, smart factories extensively adopt machinery to replace manpower, thereby enhancing production efficiency and accuracy. Therefore, demands for unmanned Automatic Guide Vehicle-Unmanned Handling (AGV) and Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) will significantly increase in line with market expectations.

In order to ensure the smooth operation of AGV and AMR, battery and charger stability play an essential role. The FSP has developed a 600 W charger (FSP600-1UAC01) acceptable to a full range of input voltages, with an output voltage of 50.4 V-58.8 V and an output current of 10.0 A. The product has a streamlined appearance and a compact size of only 202*132*69 mm/2.2Kg.

The current supply of graphics cards has been very tight all over the world. Starting with the launch of the latest Radeon RX 6000 series of GPUs based on RDNA 2 architecture, AMD has found itself in big trouble when it comes to supply of the silicon, compared to the demand that exists for these new GPUs. We have discussed that many times in the past and saw that it represents a problem spanning everyone involved in getting the silicon chips to the hands of consumers. On Tuesday, April 27th, AMD held its Q1 2021 earnings call and webcast, where the company executives talked about the company's future, underlying problems, and ways of addressing them.

Among many topics covered in the call, AMD's President and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, has talked about the GPU supply. According to Dr. Su, the company is ramping the production of its Radeon graphics cards, adding that the mobile Radeon GPU lineup is lurking. Here is a full quote from the earnings call.

Dr. Lisa Su—AMD Q1 2021 Earning CallAnd we're well-positioned for further growth as we have tripled our commercial notebook design wins with the largest OEMs this year. In graphics, revenue increased by a strong double-digit percentage year over year and sequentially, led by channel sales growth as revenue from our high-end Radeon 6000 GPUs more than doubled from the prior quarter. We introduced our Radeon 6700 XT desktop GPU with leadership 1440p gaming performance in March and are on track for the first notebooks featuring our leading-edge mobile RDNA 2 architecture to launch later this quarter. We expect Radeon 6000 Series GPU sales to grow significantly over the coming quarters as we ramp production.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew 55.2% year over year during the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. While PCs remain in extremely high demand, the growth rate benefitted from the shortages faced in the first quarter of 2020 when the global pandemic began, resulting in an unusually favorable year-over-year comparison. PC shipments reached 84 million worldwide in 1Q21, a modest 8% decline from the fourth quarter of 2020. While sequential declines are typical for the first quarter, a decline this small has not been seen since the first quarter of 2012 when the PC market declined 7.5% sequentially.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the latest addition to its 7-series portfolio, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform. Snapdragon 780G is designed to deliver powerful AI performance and brilliant camera capture backed by the Qualcomm Spectra 570 triple ISP and 6th generation Qualcomm AI Engine, allowing users to capture, enhance, and share their favorite moments seamlessly. This platform enables a selection of premium-tier features for the first time in the 7-series, making next generation experiences more broadly accessible.

"Since introducing the Snapdragon 7-series three years ago, more than 350 devices have launched based on 7-series mobile platforms. Today, we are continuing this momentum by introducing the Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform," said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Snapdragon 780G was designed to bring in-demand, premium experiences to more users around the world."

AMD's CPU offerings are generally considered to best Intel's competition, especially since the company's Zen 3, Ryzen-5000 series of CPUs launched to great critical and customer acclaim. However, silicon performance can only get you so far - one other issue impacting market penetration is availability of said processors. As AMD fights for constrained wafer supply from TSMC - in no small part due to their focusing of their entire portfolio on the company's highly-sought 7 nm process - users worldwide are generally seeing insufficient stocks of AMD silicon to satisfy their needs. And as such, it seems that at least some users are going with Intel solutions, due to their higher availability in the market.

According to a report from Mercury Research, AMD's constrained chip supply has led the company to a market share loss QoQ. AMD's desktop penetration fell from 20.1% to 19.3% in a single quarter, and its mobile market share saw a similar decrease, going from a 20.1% share down to 19.1%. Of course, not only from market share and shipments are a company's financials made of; AMD ushered in higher ASP (Average Selling Price) for its products, leading the company to a 50% increase in YoY revenue. This doesn't mean AMD is selling less CPUs, however; the x86 CPU market grew a massive 20.1% YoY, so AMD is actually shipping more product than in previous years - it just couldn't account for the entirety of that x86 market increase. Overall, and considering AMD's desktop, mobile, and server markets, the company's x86 market share decreased by 0.7% in Q4 2020 to 21.7% - still a very significant increase, YoY, from its previous 15.5% of the market pie.

NVIDIA has recently introduced its 3000 series of Ampere graphics cards designed for mobile/laptop devices. And usually, these GPUs in the past few years have been divided into two configurations: Max-P and Max-Q. The Max-P variant was a maximum performance configuration meant for more power usage and higher temperatures, representing a standard GPU configuration. The Max-Q design was, according to NVIDIA, "a system-wide approach to deliver high performance in thin and light gaming laptops. Every aspect of the laptop, chip, software, PCB design, power delivery, and thermals, are optimized for power and performance." Meaning that the Max-Q variants are more TGP limited compared to the Max-P configuration.


Update 23rd of January 11:35 UTC: NVIDIA spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that: "No, Max-Q branding is not going away. When we originally introduced Max-Q back in 2017, the brand was initially used in GPU naming since Max-Q referred to the GPU TGP only. Today, 3rd Generation Max-Q is broader, and is a holistic set of platform technologies and design approach to building powerful and thin laptops. In addition, to be more transparent about a laptop's exact capabilities, RTX 30 Series laptops now show more information than ever, listing exact TGP, clocks and features supported. You will find this in the control panel which now reports maximum power (TGP+Boost), and support for key features including Dynamic Boost 2, WhisperMode 2, Advanced Optimus, and others, all of which fall under the Max-Q umbrella. We strongly encourage OEMs to list clocks and other technologies a laptop supports, including Advanced Optimus, Dynamic Boost 2, and more. Ultimately, like all laptop features and specs, it is up to the OEM to market what their particular laptop configuration supports.)"

Qualcomm Incorporated today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously selected Cristiano Amon to succeed Steve Mollenkopf as CEO, effective June 30, 2021. Mollenkopf informed the Board of his decision to retire as CEO following 26 years with the Company. Amon, who has worked at Qualcomm since 1995, is currently President of the Company. Mollenkopf will continue his employment with the Company as a strategic advisor for a period of time.

Mollenkopf, 52, became CEO in March of 2014. He began his career as an engineer and, for nearly three decades, has helped define and lead Qualcomm's strategy and technology roadmap. His work helped propel smartphones into the mainstream and made Qualcomm a leader in 3G, 4G and now 5G, and he also oversaw the expansion into new industry segments such as the Internet of Things (IoT), RF Front End and Automotive. He was also instrumental in the Company's rise as a smartphone technology supplier. In addition, Mollenkopf successfully guided the Company through a number of extraordinary circumstances and challenges and begins the CEO transition process with the Company stabilized and well-positioned to continue to grow and drive value.

Apparently, specifications for NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 30-series mobile solutions have been made public. According to Videocardz via Notebookcheck, NVIDIA will introduce three mobile versions of their RTX 30-series graphics cards in the form of the RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. Like past NVIDIA mobile solutions, these won't directly correspond, hardware-wise, to their desktop counterparts; NVIDIA has the habit of downgrading their mobile solutions' chips compared to their desktop counterparts. According to the leaked specifications, this means the mobile RTX 3080 will maker use of the company's GA-104 chip, instead of the GA-102 silicon found on desktop versions of the card.

The mobile RTX 3080 should thus feature a total of 6,144 CUDA cores, as present in the fully-enabled GA-104 chip (compare that to the 5,888 CUDA cores available on the desktop RTX 3070, and the 8,704 CUDA cores available on the RTX 3080). These CUDA cores would be clocked at up to 1.7 GHz. The memory bus should also see a cut down to 256-bit, which would allow NVIDIA to distribute as many as 4 versions of the RTX 3080 mobile: Max-Q (TGP 80-90 W), Max-P (TGP 115-150 W), with either 8 GB or 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. The RTX 3070 mobile keeps the GA-104 chip, 256-bit bus and GDDR6 memory subsystem (apparently with only 8 GB memory pool available), but further cuts down CUDA cores to 5,120 (Max-Q TGP 80-90 W, Max-P TGP 115-150 W). Finally, the RTX 3060 mobile should make use of the GA106 chip, set up with 3,072 available CUDA cores and a 192-bit memory bus across its 6 GB of GDDR6 VRAM pool (Max-Q TGP 60-70 W), Max-P (TGP 80-115 W). Expect these specs to be confirmed (or not) come January 12th.

During the first day of the Snapdragon Tech Summit Digital, Qualcomm Incorporated President, Cristiano Amon took the virtual stage with global industry leaders to highlight the critical role Qualcomm Snapdragon 8-Series mobile platforms have played to drive experiences forward for the next generation of devices. Qualcomm Technologies' innovation in the premium tier, coupled with the evolution of 5G, is accelerating and continuing to redefine immersive consumer experiences. The proliferation of these premium tier experiences has and will continue to enrich the lives of billions of smartphone users around the world.

"Creating premium experiences takes a relentless focus on innovation. It takes long term commitment, even in the face of immense uncertainty," said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. "It takes an organization that's focused on tomorrow, to continue to deliver the technologies that redefine premium experiences."

AMD has attempted to fix their mobile processor naming situation with the launch of Ryzen 5000 desktop processors, by skipping Ryzen 4000 on desktop AMD has brought their mobile and desktop processor generations under the one naming scheme. However, it seems this naming scheme simplification hasn't gone as well as expected with leaked specifications for the upcoming Ryzen 5000 mobile series showing a mix of Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors. The leaked processors include the AMD Ryzen 3 5300U (Zen 2), Ryzen 3 5400U (Zen 3), Ryzen 5 5500U (Zen 2), Ryzen 5 5600U (Zen 3), Ryzen 7 5700U (Zen 2), and the Ryzen 7 5800U (Zen 3).

These new processors will maintain the core counts of their Ryzen 4000 predecessors while gaining a modest bump to base and boost speeds. These clock speed improvements will be accompanied by the claimed 19% IPC uplift on the Zen 3 based processors. The processors will also benefit from increased Vega iGPU cores and iGPU clock speed boosts. This combination should offer significantly improved performance over previous generation Ryzen 4000 mobile processors which already offered strong performance against Intel's offerings. AMD is expected to officially announce these processors at an event in January with prices slightly above previous generations.

Editor's Note: This is written by Arm vice president and general manager Paul Williamson.

Over the last year, I have been inspired by the innovators who are dreaming up solutions to improve and enrich our daily lives. Tomorrow's mobile applications will be even more imaginative, immersive, and intelligent. To that point, the industry has come such a long way in making this happen. Take app stores for instance - we had the choice of roughly 500 apps when smartphones first began shipping in volume in 2007 and today there are 8.9 million apps available to choose from.

Mobile has transformed from a simple utility to the most powerful, pervasive device we engage with daily, much like Arm-based chips have progressed to more powerful but still energy-efficient SoCs. Although the chip-level innovation has already evolved significantly, more is still required as use cases become more complex, with more AI and ML workloads being processed locally on our devices.

The idea of working and learning from home, which at one point felt temporary, has for many of us started to feel more permanent. Even as some people in cities around the world return to work and schools in person, many others have found themselves reorganizing homes to create makeshift offices and classrooms. Whether your commute is across the house or across town, the PC continues to play an integral role in keeping all of us connected to our work, school, and lives - and each person in the household needs one.

As we continue to expand our Surface family of devices with the new Surface Laptop Go and updates to Surface Pro X, our goal is to design a Surface for every person, work style and location. To give every person in your household or organization a laptop that's not just something you need to use, but something you want to use. A virtual office you want to be in, a virtual classroom that engages you to learn, a place you can play your favorite game or watch a movie - with a bright vibrant screen, a fluid and comfortable keyboard, high quality cameras and mics, and the versatility of touch screens.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the Snapdragon 730G. Snapdragon 732G is designed to deliver immersive gameplay backed by smarter, faster artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated performance, including an upgraded GPU and CPU compared to the previous generation.

"Snapdragon 732G will deliver a powerful gaming experience, sophisticated on-device AI, and superior performance," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We're excited to work with POCO on the new POCO smartphone powered by the enhanced Snapdragon 732G globally."

Anker has recently unveiled the PowerCore Play 6K mobile gaming controller with support for Android and IOS devices. The PowerCore Play 6K features an integrated 6,700 mAh battery bank which can charge devices at up to 15 W via the USB Type-A or USB Type-C ports. The battery bank can be fully recharged in just 3 hours and should offer a significant boost to phone battery life while gaming. The controller also features an integrated fan to keep your device cool along with a built-in kickstand and grips. The PowerCore Play 6K supports phones ranging from 5.7 to 6.45 inches long and is now available on Amazon for 35 USD with an 18-month manufacturer warranty.