Jon Peddie Research reports that the global PC-based graphics processor units (GPU) market reached 96 million units in Q1'22 and PC GPUs shipments decreased 6.2% due to disturbances in China, Ukraine, and the pullback from the lockdown elsewhere. However, the fundamentals of the GPU and PC market are solid over the long term, JPR predicts GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 6.3% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 3.3 million units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of discrete GPUs (dGPU) in the PC market will grow to reach a level of 46%.

AMD's overall market share percentage from last quarter increased 0.7%, Intel's market share decreased by -2.4%, and Nvidia's market share increased 1.69%, as indicated in the following chart.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

SteelSeries has released a pair of new headsets that builds on its well known Arctis-series, but brings with it a much more modern and premium looking design. Besides the overhaul of the design, SteelSeries has added support for 360 degree spatial audio and the company has also updated its GameDac, which is built around the ESS Sabre 9218PQ40 Quad-DAC. Other new features include an "AI-powered" noise cancelling microphone and a new headband design that's meant to be more comfortable. The wired Arctis Nova Pro comes in a PC and Xbox version, both sporting multi-system connect with dual USB inputs, although 3.5 mm jack input is also supported. A nice touch is that the ear pads are attached with magnets and should as such be easy to replace.

The Arctis Nova Pro Wireless on the other hand comes in three different versions, with a dedicated Xbox and Playstation version, as well as a PC version. Here, SteelSeries has also added active noise cancelling, which is not a feature you find on many gaming headsets. The ANC is using a 4 microphone hybrid system and has support for transparency mode. SteelSeries has replaced the GameDac with a wireless base station for the three wireless versions, which also charges the batteries, as SteelSeries has gone for user swappable battery packs. A 15 minute charge gives you three hours of usage, and a fully charged battery is good for up to 44 hours. Interestingly there's also an eight second power buffer, which allows you to hot swap the batteries, if you're fast. The wireless side of things consists of a proprietary low latency 2.4 GHz radio, as often is the case for wireless gaming headsets, as well as Bluetooth 5.0 support. There's support for simultaneous use of both wireless standards, which is a nice touch and something we've seen from a couple of SteelSeries competitors. The Arctis Nova Pro has an MSRP of US$249.99, with the wireless version costing US$349.99.

Many companies, including Intel and AMD, have stopped product shipments to Russia amidst the war in Ukraine in the past few months. This has left the Russian state without any new processors from the two prominent x86 designers, thus slowing down the country's technological progress. To overcome this issue, it seems like the solution is embedded in the Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs. According to the latest report from Habr, a motherboard designer called Dannie is embedding Chinese Zhaoxin x86 CPUs into motherboards to provide the motherland with an x86-capable processor. More precisely, the company had designed a BX-Z60A micro-ATX motherboard that embeds Zhaoxin's KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC with eight cores based on LuJiaZui microarchitecture. The SoC is clocked at a frequency range of 2.1-2.7 GHz, carries 4 MB of L2 cache, 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0, and has integrated graphics, all in a 25 Watt TDP.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, it supports two DDR4 memory slots, two PCIe x16 connectors, M.2-2280 and M.2-2230 slots, and three SATA III connectors for storage. For I/O you have USB ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA/D-Sub, GbE, 3.5-mm audio, and additional PS/2 ports. This is a pretty decent selection; however, we don't know the pricing structure. A motherboard with KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC like this is certainly not cheap, so we are left to wonder if this will help Russian users deal with the newly imposed restriction on importing US tech.

Intel has allowed the media to get a closer look at the next generation of silicon that will power millions of systems in years to come during its private Vision event. PC Watch, a Japanese tech media, managed to get some shots of the upcoming Meteor Lake, Sapphire Rapids, and Ponte Vecchio processors. Starting with Meteor Lake, Intel has displayed two packages for this processor family. The first one is the ultra-compact, high-density UP9 package used for highly compact mobile systems, and it is made out of silicon with minimal packaging to save space. The second one is a traditional design with more oversized packaging, designed for typical laptop/notebook configurations.

-Leading gaming accessory maker Turtle Beach Corporation today revealed the Company's all-new Turtle Beach Recon Air Wireless Chat Communicator headset is now available at participating retailers worldwide. The Recon Air is designed for gamers who have a killer home entertainment system for game audio and need a headset to hear and talk to other players, and it's perfect for anybody who wants a sleek Bluetooth wireless chat headset that can be used for audio and video conferencing and a variety of daily needs. Turtle Beach's Recon Air delivers high-quality inbound and outbound chat with friends and teammates and is a great tool for congratulating the other team on their epic loss. The Recon Air's microphone is tuned for gaming to pick up voice chat loud and clear and is also noise-cancelling to minimize background distractions. A rechargeable 10-hour battery powers the headset throughout the day, while a reversible ear hook and swappable ear tips ensure comfort. The Designed for Xbox Recon Air delivers crystal-clear chat on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, and there's also a version for PS5 and PS4. Both models are also compatible with Windows PCs, Mac, and Bluetooth-enabled iOS and Android mobile devices. Recon Air is available at www.turtlebeach.com and participating retailers worldwide for a $39.99 MSRP.

"The Recon Air is an affordable chat headset designed for gaming, as well as for staying connected with friends, family, and co-workers and making sure your voice sounds great while you talk," said Juergen Stark, Chairman and CEO, Turtle Beach Corporation. "It's now my go-to headset for meetings on Teams and Zoom when I travel."

System Shock Remake developer Nightside Studios has announced that the modern-graphics rendition of the original immersive sim is "largely complete" - at least when it comes to its PC version. The developer has announced that PC content development of the game is finished, and is considered to be in a pre-Beta stage as the developer aims to bring up development for the games' console releases for a cross-platform launch (PlayStation, Xbox and PC) later this year.

The System Shock Remake being developed by Nightdive Studios has had a relatively troubled development, with the developer previously announcing it had to scale back production on the game due to an unintended "feature creep" as they strove to update the games' mechanics towards our current videogame design expectations and sensibilities.

The Worldstone is shattered, and it now falls to the heroes of Sanctuary to fend off the terrors rising in its wake. Blizzard Entertainment today announced that beginning June 2, players in most regions across the world will take up the call to defend against the Burning Hells in Diablo Immortal, the first Blizzard game designed from the ground up for mobile, with the remaining regions in Asia-Pacific gaining access a few weeks later. n addition to offering an uncompromised AAA experience on mobile, the most ambitious game released in the Diablo franchise's 25-year history will enter into Open Beta on Windows PC at launch. Diablo Immortal supports both cross-play and cross-progression, allowing Sanctuary's heroes to join the fight with each other regardless of platform while being able to seamlessly transition between mobile and PC gameplay. The Open Beta on PC will contain all game features, including cross-play and cross-progression, and upon conclusion all progress will be maintained.

"The demons of the Burning Hells are ready to be slain in the most expansive Diablo game that Blizzard has ever released," said Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "As Blizzard's first game designed from the ground up for mobile, it was important to us to deliver an experience worthy of the franchise, so we did a lot of testing, incorporated a lot of feedback, and created a game that we're very excited to share with players. We're looking forward to unleashing this epic new entry in the Diablo franchise, and we can't wait to join everyone in Sanctuary." With the fate of Sanctuary in their hands, players will choose between six iconic Diablo classes-Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, or Wizard-and embark on a journey through eight unique zones and the great city of Westmarch. They will join up with new and familiar Diablo characters, including the franchise's patriarch Deckard Cain, on an expansive quest to hunt down the shattered pieces of the corrupted Worldstone before the forces of the Burning Hells can gather them for their own sinister plans in an epic all-new story taking place between the events of Diablo II and Diablo III.

With the XMG STUDIO, XMG presents a desktop PC specially tailored to the needs of creative professionals working with audio and video - designed and thoroughly tested for flawless performance with common software and hardware peripherals. Current high-end CPUs from Intel up to the Core i9-12900K and graphics cards up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 may be configured as needed. The PC is optimized for excellent airflow and quiet operation even under high load. To keep the workflow free of any distractions, the XMG STUDIO lacks any additional decorative elements such as RGB LEDs.

At launch, the XMG STUDIO exclusively features Intel 12th gen Core processors, ranging from the Core i5-12600K in the base configuration up to the Core i9-12900K in the high-end version. An Asus Prime Z690-P D4 is used as the motherboard - which was thoroughly tested for compatibility with various hardware and software for audio and video editing.

ASRock Industrial announces the 4X4 BOX-5000 Series Mini PCs 4X4 BOX-5800U, 4X4 BOX-5600U, and 4X4 BOX-5400U, with enhancement powered by AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 U-Series APUs- Ryzen 7 5800U, Ryzen 5 5600U, and Ryzen 3 5400U up to 8 cores/16 threads to energize performance, energy efficiency, and lower latency. Featuring a powerful yet compact design, the 4X4 BOX-5000 Series supports quad display outputs up to 4K with AMD Radeon Graphics for the enhanced visual experience. The Series also includes dual LAN ports up to 2.5 Gigabit with one DASH function and Wi-Fi 6E support of 6 GHz band for real-time connections. Moreover, it can uphold one M.2 Key M, one SATA 3.0 for storage, and five USB ports (three USB 3.2 Gen 2, two USB 2.0) for ultra-connectivity. The energized features make it the world's most advanced core for a wide range of home and business applications such as gaming, content creation, working from home, KIOSK, digital signage, and many more.

With AMD Ryzen 5000U Series Processors- Zen 3 Core Architecture, the 4X4 BOX-5000 Series Mini PCs deliver energized performance and reduced latency with up to 17% single-thread and multi-thread performance compared to Zen 2 along with improved graphics capabilities with AMD Radeon Graphics. Spanning from the flagship 4X4 BOX-5800U, 4X4 BOX-5600U, and 4X4 BOX-5400U, the new Series is powered by AMD Ryzen 7 5800U, Ryzen 5 5600U, Ryzen 3 5400U to increase power efficiency with lower power consumption- 6.7 W at idle. The 4X4 BOX-5000 Series also supports dual-channel DDR4 3200 MHz SO-DIMM memory up to 64 GB for uncompromised multitask computing capabilities.

When NVIDIA announced its Grace CPU Superchip, the company officially showed its efforts of creating an HPC-oriented processor to compete with Intel and AMD. The Grace CPU Superchip combines two Grace CPU modules that use the NVLink-C2C technology to deliver 144 Arm v9 cores and 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth. Each core is Arm Neoverse N2 Perseus design, configured to achieve the highest throughput and bandwidth. As far as performance is concerned, the only detail NVIDIA provides on its website is the estimated SPECrate 2017_int_base score of over 740. Thanks to the colleges over at Tom's Hardware, we have another performance figure to look at.

NVIDIA has made a slide about comparison with Intel's Ice Lake server processors. One Grace CPU Superchip was compared to two Xeon Platinum 8360Y Ice Lake CPUs configured in a dual-socket server node. The Grace CPU Superchip outperformed the Ice Lake configuration by two times and provided 2.3 times the efficiency in WRF simulation. This HPC application is CPU-bound, allowing the new Grace CPU to show off. This is all thanks to the Arm v9 Neoverse N2 cores pairing efficiently with outstanding performance. NVIDIA made a graph showcasing all HPC applications running on Arm today, with many more to come, which you can see below. Remember that NVIDIA provides this information, so we have to wait for the 2023 launch to see it in action.

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

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

Leading gaming accessories provider Turtle Beach Corporation (NASDAQ: HEAR) today announced the Designed for Xbox Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX as an all-new entry to the best-selling brand's Stealth 700 series of premium wireless gaming headsets. By simply flipping a switch, the Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX offers players the ability to connect lag-free via wireless USB or Bluetooth to more gaming systems, including Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, PS5 and PS4, plus Nintendo Switch, Windows PCs and Mac, and compatible iOS and Android mobile devices. Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX also increases battery life to 40+ hours, with 15-minutes of charge delivering over eight hours of playtime.

The Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX continues delivering the superior high-quality audio with powerful 3D spatial surround sound and ultimate comfort that have made it the best-selling and highly acclaimed premium wireless gaming headset. IGN recently included the Stealth 700 Gen 2 in its latest Best Gaming Headsets 2022 story, naming it the Best Xbox Series X|S Gaming Headset. The Stealth 700 Gen 2's premium features like large and powerful 50 mm Nanoclear drivers, Aerofit cooling gel-infused memory foam ear cushions, ProSpecs glasses-friendly comfort, Superhuman Hearing, a metal-reinforced headband, as well as Bluetooth for talking on Discord, taking calls, listening to music, and connecting to the mobile companion app - all make a return with the Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX. The Designed for Xbox Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX is available for pre-order today from www.turtlebeach.com and at participating retailers worldwide. Available in Black or Cobalt Blue, Stealth 700 Gen 2 MAX for Xbox launches globally on May 8, 2022 for a $199.99 MSRP.

According to TrendForce forecasts, average overall DRAM pricing in 2Q22 will drop by approximately 0~5%, due to marginally higher buyer and seller inventories coupled with the demand for products such as PCs, laptops, and smart phones being influenced in the short-term by the Russian-Ukrainian war and high inflation weakening consumer purchasing power. At present, the only remaining source of demand is on the server side, so overall DRAM stocks will remain oversupplied in 2Q22.

In terms of PC DRAM, PC OEMs are adopting a conservative stocking strategy for orders in 2Q22 due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which may continue affecting orders during peak season in 2H22, and revising 2022 shipment targets downwards. Additionally, the overall supply of bits is still growing, so the PC DRAM price slump in 2Q22 will further expand to 3~8% and may continue to deteriorate.

Today, 2K and Gearbox Software announced that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, an all-new, fantasy-fueled looter shooter game from the unpredictable mind of Tiny Tina, is now available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via the Epic Games Store. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands features the journey of the Fatemaker through an extraordinary tabletop realm where rules rarely apply. Joined by an all-star celebrity cast, players can create and customize their own multiclass heroes as they loot, shoot, slash, and cast their way through outlandish monsters and treasure-filled dungeons on a quest to stop the tyrannical Dragon Lord. The chaotic fantasy world is brought to life by the utterly unpredictable Tiny Tina, who makes the rules, changes the world on the fly, and guides players on their respective journeys.

"Since we founded Gearbox in 1999, it's always been a dream of ours to create a video game in a fantasy setting. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is the result of everyone on our team pouring their hearts and souls into making a title like that a reality - it's a love letter to anyone with a passion for role playing games or looter shooters," said Randy Pitchford, founder of the Gearbox Entertainment Company. "I hope you join us and our millions of fans around the world in experiencing this impossible culmination of years and years of pent-up creativity and passion that's finally manifested in this wild, all-new, one-of-a-kind video game, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands."

Intel's Arc discrete lineup of graphics card are set to hit the notebook/laptop segment first, and today's discovery is no different. BHPhotoVideo, one of the largest US tech retailers, has posted a listing of Samsung's Galaxy Book2 Pro laptop, spotting Intel's Arc discrete graphics solution. According to the listing, this model was spotting an undisclosed Intel Arc Graphics, 2.1 GHz 12-core CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory, 512 GB of NVMe PCIe Gen4 storage, 15.6-inch 1080p AMOLED display, WiFi-6E, and came in just 1.13 KG body weight. All of this is packed at 1349.99 USD, which is an early sign of the structure of laptop prices carrying Intel's Arc GPUs.

BHPhotoVideo has now taken down the website listing; however, we still have evidence thanks to the leaker, which you can see below. For more information regarding the exact SKU and more Arc Alchemist data, we have to wait for the March 30th launch.

Elden Ring launched in late February to rave critic and consumer reviews. The game is an excellent showcase of From Software's gaming design ethos, but ultimately proves that the company's rendering engine still requires work after years of installments due to widely-reported stuttering issues - irrespective of hardware configuration. A fix for Elden Ring's stuttering issues has surfaced on late Monday - courtesy of Valve and its Proton wrapper, and only applicable to the Steam Deck. In a way, this turns Steam Deck into the smoothest device to play Elden Ring on.

The issue with Elden Ring's stuttering has been linked to the games' continuous shader loading. Apparently, Elden Ring allows users to enter its vast open-world without pre-compiling the required shaders (something that we've seen other games do through usually lengthy boot-up processes) for the specific hardware. This forces the game to constantly compile shaders as they're required (due to world loading, animation loading, among other triggers), which is responsible for the stuttering issues gamers on PC have been encountering.

Basemark launched today GPUScore, an all-new GPU (graphics processing unit) performance benchmarking suite for a wide device range from smartphones to high-end gaming PCs. GPUScore supports all modern graphics APIs, such as Vulkan, Metal and DirectX, and operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS.

GPUScore will consist of three different testing suites. Today, the first one of these was launched, named Relic of Life. It is available immediately. Basemark will introduce the two other GPUScore testing suites during the following months. Relic of Life is ideal for benchmarking high-end gaming PCs' discrete graphics cards' GPUs. It requires hardware accelerated ray tracing, supports Vulkan and DirectX, and is available for both Windows and Linux. GPUScore: Relic of Life is an ideal benchmark for comparing Vulkan and DirectX accelerated ray tracing performance.

Unless you have been living under a rock, chances are you are following the news about the Russia-Ukraine war disputes. Not to get too political, we are here to report about your favorite rivals—AMD and Intel—officially stopping the delivery of processors to Russia and Belarus. Firstly, an AMD representative told PCWorld that "Based on sanctions placed on Russia by the United States and other nations, at this time AMD is suspending its sales and distribution of our products into Russia and Belarus. It is all AMD products and products we power (PCs, etc) in Russia and Belarus." Additionally, Intel posted an official quote, which you can find below.

IntelIntel condemns the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and we have suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by this war, including the people of Ukraine and the surrounding countries and all those around the world with family, friends and loved ones in the region.

"We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, especially those with close ties to this region. We have launched an employee donation and matching campaign through the Intel Foundation that has already raised over $1.2 million for relief efforts, and we are proud of the work our teams in surrounding areas including Poland, Germany and Romania are doing to aid refugees. We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine and the global community in calling for an immediate end to this war and a swift return to peace.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today announced the industry's first 800 Gbps or 8x 100 Gbps multimode platform solution, that enables data center infrastructure to achieve dramatically higher speeds for short-reach optical modules and Active Optical Cable (AOC) applications. As artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications continue to drive greater bandwidth requirements, cloud-optimized solutions are needed that can bring lower power, latency and cost to short-range data center interconnections. The new 800G platform, which includes Marvell's PAM4 DSP with a multimode transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and Driver, enables faster data center speeds scaling to 800 Gbps, using conventional cost-effective vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) technology while accelerating time-to-market with plug-and-play deployment.

Today's data centers are packed with equipment utilizing optical modules or AOCs connected by multimode optical fiber optimized for communication over short distances within data centers. This 100G per lane multimode fiber provides cost-effective, low-power, short-reach connectivity. To support multi-gigabit transmissions, multimode architectures often use VCSEL transmitters, which offer the cost benefits of reliability, power efficiency and easy deployment.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

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.

When Intel announced the company's first hybrid design, codenamed Alder Lake, we expected to see more of such design philosophies in future products. During Intel's 2022 investor meeting day, the company provided insights into future developments, and a successor to Alder Lake is no different. Codenamed "Raptor Lake," it features a novel Raptor Cove P-core design that is supposed to bring significant IPC uplift from the previous generation of processors. Using Intel 7 processor node, Raptor Lake brings a similar ecosystem of features to Alder Lake, however, with improved performance across the board.

Perhaps one of the most exciting things to note about Raptor Lake is the advancement in core count, specifically the increase in E-cores. Instead of eight P-cores and eight E-cores like Alder Lake, the Raptor Lake design will retain eight P-cores and double the E-core count to 16. It was a weird decision on Intel's end; however, it surely isn't anything terrible. The total number of cores now jumps to 24, and the total number of threads reaches 32. Additionally, Raptor Lake will bring some additional overclocking improvement features and retain socket compatibility with Alder Lake motherboards. That means that, at worst, you would need to perform a BIOS update to get your previous system ready for new hardware. We assume that Intel has been working with software vendors and its engineering team to optimize core utilization for this next-generation processor, even though they have more E-cores present. Below, we can see Intel's demonstration of Raptor Lake running Blender and Adobe Premiere and the CPU core utilization.

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

WDC recently stated that certain materials were contaminated in late January at NAND Flash production lines in Yokkaichi and Kitakami, Japan which are joint ventures with Kioxia, according to TrendForce's investigations. Before this incident, TrendForce had forecast that the NAND Flash market will see a slight oversupply the entire year and average price from Q1 to Q2 will face downward pressure. However, the impact of WDC's material contamination issue is significant and Samsung's experience during the previous lockdown of Xi'an due to the pandemic has also retarded the magnitude of the NAND Flash price slump. Therefore, the Q1 price drop will diminish to 5~10%. In addition, according to TrendForce, the combined WDC/Kioxia NAND Flash market share in the 3Q21 was as high as 32.5%. The consequences of this latest incident may push the price of NAND Flash in Q2 to spike 5~10%.

The contaminated products in this incident are concentrated in 3D NAND (BICS) with an initial estimate of 6.5exabytes (approximately 6,500M GB) affected. According to TrendForce, damaged bits account for 13% of the group's output in 1Q22 and approximately 3% of the total output for the year. The normal production schedule for the entire line has yet to be confirmed. It is worth noting that the damages announced by WDC likely do not account for total losses stemming for this event and the number of damaged Kioxia parts has not been aggregated, so the total number of affected bits may increase further.