A researcher team operating out of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago are developing a special type of material that is simultaneously capable of emitting fluorescent pattern and undergoing deformation via forced stretches or bends. This thin piece of experimental elastic can function as a digital display, even under conditions of great force - its creators claim that their screen technology material can be stretched to twice the original length without any deterioration or failures.

Sihong Wang (assistant professor of molecular engineering) has lead this research project, with Juan de Pablo (Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering) providing senior supervision. The team predicts that the polymer-based display will offer a wide range of applications including usage foldable computer screens, UI-driven wearables and health monitoring equipment. Solid OLED displays are featured in many modern devices that we use on a daily basis, but the traditional nature of that technology is not suitable for material flexibility due to inherent properties of "tight chemical bonds and stiff structures". Wang hopes to address these problems with his new polymer-type: "The materials currently used in these state-of-the-art OLED displays are very brittle; they don't have any stretchability. Our goal was to create something that maintained the electroluminescence of OLED but with stretchable polymers."

Apple's yet to be announced hybrid VR/AR headset is facing another setback and industry insiders are reckoning that the first iteration of the device will not be unveiled at the WWDC 2023 keynote - starting June 5. An industry analyst has been posting their theories via social media, and based on insider information believes that Apple is delaying production of the hybrid headset to late 2023. Ming-Chi Kuo's proposes this situation: "Apple isn't very optimistic about the AR/MR headset announcement recreating the astounding "iPhone moment," the mass production schedule for assembly has been pushed back by another 1-2 months to mid-to-late 3Q23. The delay also adds uncertainty to whether the new device will appear at WWDC 2023, as the market widely expects. Furthermore, due to the delay in mass production for assembly, the shipment forecast this year is only 200,000 to 300,000 units, lower than the market consensus of 500,000 units or more."

Internal hands-on sessions at Apple HQ have apparently brought to light major user issues with the mixed reality headset, and that feedback has caused a loss in confidence in launching the product in a "ready enough" state, especially in time for summer. Kuo concludes his theory: "The main concerns for Apple not being very optimistic regarding the market feedback to the AR/MR headset announcement include the economic downturn, compromises on some hardware specifications for mass production (such as weight), the readiness of the ecosystem and applications, a high selling price (USD 3,000-4,000 or even higher)."

Benchmark results for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 SoC appeared on Geekbench Browser early yesterday morning, under the designation Snapdragon 8cx Next Gen. This chipset is tipped to be a successor to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, which was launched at the end of 2021 as the world's first 5 nm Arm-based SoC for Windows laptops. A tipster on Twitter has highlighted the very underwhelming results posted by the next gen chipset, and these figures would indicate that an engineering sample was the test subject, not final silicon. The 8-core Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is shown to outperform its supposed successor, and the clock frequencies for the latter appear to be lower than anticipated.

The Geekbench 5 database entry for Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 also reveals details about its specifications - a 12-core configuration that is split into eight performance cores and four power-efficiency ones. The base core frequency is listed as being 2.38 GHz, and the benchmark was completed under a Balanced Power plan in Windows 11 Home Insider Preview. 16 GB of RAM was used in the test kit, although earlier leaks have indicated that the chipset can support up to a maximum of 64 GB LPDDR5 RAM.

Axel Grell was a guest speaker at the New York edition of CanJam 2023, and delivered a talk that expounded on the geometrical design of a headphone in relation to a listener's spatial perception of audio. Attendees of the expo were surprised to find that the ex-Sennheiser engineer had a new gizmo to show off on the show floor. The prototype headphone's origins are clearly linked to his research into the shape and directivity of sound fields, with the result being an unusual front-mounted driver orientation.

The super angled driver design will emphasize soundstage, which is an aspect vaunted by gamers in the search of the ideal headphone for competitive multiplayer sessions. Grell told attendees that the open-back prototype is 'version 1' and that it was constructed via a 3D printing process, he also added that the drivers are made from a biocellulose membrane. The chosen collaboration partner seems to be Drop (formerly Massdrop) and that a launch price of around $300 is being discussed.

Kyocera Corporation today announced it has developed an On-Board Optics Module that achieves world-record bandwidth of 512 Gbps. The module is expected to support high-speed network applications, such as data centers. Additionally, by converting electrical signals into optical signals, the module uses much less power than conventional alternatives and will also help decrease power consumption and promote sustainability.

Kyocera's prototype module is miniaturized for installation on a printed circuit board near the processor, allowing electronic data to be converted into optical signals instantaneously. In addition, the product is designed to create unprecedented improvements in signal-to-noise ratio, virtually eliminating the signal loss caused by conventional electrical conductors. As a result of these technological advances, Kyocera's On-Board Optics Module has achieved world-record bandwidth of 512 gigabits per second (Gbps) and is expected to help data centers and supercomputers save power while increasing bandwidth and data transfer rates.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced the industry's first 2 terabyte (TB) microSDXC memory card working prototypes. Using its innovative BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and an in-house designed controller, basic functions of the KIOXIA 2 TB microSDXC UHS-I memory card working prototypes were confirmed in the microSDXC standard's maximum density.

As the data recording capacity of smartphones, action cameras, and portable game consoles continues to increase, the need for ultra-high capacity SD memory cards to store all of this data has never been higher. The SD Association's SDXC specification has supported memory cards up to 2 TB for more than a decade—but 2 TB cards have not been successfully manufactured until now.

The U.S. Department of Defense, through the NSTXL consortium-based S2MARTS OTA, has awarded Intel an agreement to provide commercial foundry services in the first phase of its multi-phase Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program. The RAMP-C program was created to facilitate the use of a U.S.-based commercial semiconductor foundry ecosystem to fabricate the assured leading-edge custom and integrated circuits and commercial products required for critical Department of Defense systems. Intel Foundry Services, Intel's dedicated foundry business launched this year, will lead the work.

"One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors, and the value to the United States of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry. Intel is the sole American company both designing and manufacturing logic semiconductors at the leading edge of technology. When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the U.S. government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C." -Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.

Following Wednesday's announcement of the Radeon RX 6000 series with product launches on October 28, the rumor mill started rolling full steam ahead. The RX 6000 series GPUs by AMD will be based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture, the same exact architecture powering the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, and will feature DirectX 12 Ultimate support, including hardware raytracing. A PC enthusiast on Chinese microblogging site Bilibili posted a picture of an alleged "Big Navi" prototype. Since its July 2019 debut, there have been rumors of AMD working on a new high-end GPU to take on the upper-segment of NVIDIA, given that the RX 5700 series offered competitive performance to NVIDIA's breadwinning products, such as the RTX 2070 series and RTX 2060 series.

The picture reveals the reverse side of the alleged "Big Navi" prototype's PCB, showing a larger cluster of GPU ancillaries than those behind a "Navi 10," and eight memory pads with the paper labels "Typical XT ASIC" references for a "16 Gb Samsung GDDR6 memory." Over a 256-bit wide memory interface, the chip should hence have 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. Since this is a prototype, several headers are sticking out of the PCB for the design and prototyping of the product. A tower-type CPU cooler has been MacGyvered onto the GPU (which isn't uncommon for VGA prototypes). We'll hear a lot more about this product in the run up to its October 28 launch.

Noctua is reportedly working on a high-performance fanless CPU cooler building on a 2019 prototype that was exhibited at last year's Computex. The final product should launch within 2020, according to an Overclock3D report. As of now there's no word on whether the said cooler will look identical to last year's prototype, but it provides a long list of capabilities that Noctua could build on. For starters, last year's prototype was capable of handling 120 W TDP in PC cases with good natural ventilation, and up to 180 W in cases with quiet fans. The company used a Core i9-9900K in a variety of workloads as a proof of the heatsink's capabilities. The prototype heatsink was also shown offering decent amount of clearance with the motherboard's memory- and VRM areas. Its only downside was the 1.5 kg weight.

European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a Europe's project to kickstart a homegrown development of custom processors tailored towards different usage models that the European Union might need. The first task of EPI is to create a custom processor for high-performance computing applications like machine learning, and the chip prototypes are already on their way. The EPI chairman of the board Jean-Marc Denis recently spoke to the Next Platform and confirmed some information regarding the processor design goals and the timeframe of launch.

Supposed to be manufactured on TSMC's 6 nm EUV (TSMC N6 EUV) technology, the EPI processor will tape-out at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, and it is going to be heterogeneous. That means that on its 2.5D die, many different IPs will be present. The processor will use a custom ARM CPU, based on a "Zeus" iteration of Neoverese server core, meant for general-purpose computation tasks like running the OS. When it comes to the special-purpose chips, EPI will incorporate a chip named Titan - a RISC-V based processor that uses vector and tensor processing units to compute AI tasks. The Titan will use every new standard for AI processing, including FP32, FP64, INT8, and bfloat16. The system will use HBM memory allocated to the Titan processor, have DDR5 links for the CPU, and feature PCIe 5.0 for the inner connection.

Lian Li unveiled a new case under its main brand, and three new models under its LanCool brand extension, besides showing off several unreleased products that could see launch later this year. We begin with the O11D Mini, a miniaturized premium cube case that's a scale-down of the O11D for the Micro-ATX form-factor. It retains the vertically partitioned layout, coupled with key design elements of the O11-series such as a contrast between piano-black tempered glass and brushed aluminium for its two compartments, plenty of room for a serious DIY liquid-cooling setup, With a Mini-ITX motherboard in place, there's room for up to three 280 mm x 140 mm radiators; up to one 280 mm x 140 mm (or smaller) and one 240 mm x 120 mm radiator when using Micro-ATX. Available from May 2020, the O11D Mini is expected to be priced under $100. But wait, there's more: this case features a replaceable rear-panel, which lets you install even ATX motherboards.

During our visit with Silverstone, we had the opportunity to check out their new case lineup which consists of numerous new designs including an all-new Raven prototype. Keeping the unique internal layout established by the previous generations alive, the new Raven has the motherboard I/O pointed towards the top with two 180 mm air penetrator fans located at the bottom operating as intakes with a single 120 mm fan at the top as an exhaust. The design makes use of the simple concept that heat rises to great effect. Drive space is limited to a single 3.5" or 2x 2.5" drives, meaning as of now builders eyeing this new design will want to stock up on M.2 drives. While we don't have official specifications in regards to radiator support, we can say there is plenty of room to set up a water cooling loop multiple mounting points provided near the back and sides of the chassis.

Moving on the side panels are both tempered glass which gives the case a uniform look, however, thanks to that, you can forget about hiding your wire mess behind a solid back panel. Instead, the Raven Prototype will be better suited for those who meticulously route their cables keeping things exceptionally neat and tidy. As for the front panel I/O, it is located on the top left above the side panel and consists of 2x USB 3.0 ports and the usual microphone and headphone jacks. In general, the angular design of the previous Raven cases remains but has been toned down just a bit, giving this latest iteration a sleeker, stealthier appearance.

Reddit user 'dustinbrooks' has posted a photo of a prototype graphics card design that is clearly made by NVIDIA and "tested by a buddy of his that works for a company that tests NVIDIA boards". Dustin asked the community what he was looking at, which of course got tech enthusiasts interested.

The card is clearly made by NVIDIA as indicated by the markings near the PCI-Express x16 slot connector. What's also visible is three PCI-Express 8-pin power inputs and a huge VRM setup with four fans. Unfortunately the GPU in the center of the board is missing, but it should be GV102, the successor to GP102, since GDDR6 support is needed. The twelve GDDR6 memory chips located around the GPU's solder balls are marked as D9WCW, which decodes to MT61K256M32JE-14:A. These chips are Micron-made 8 Gbit GDDR6, specified for 14 Gb/s data rate, operating at 1.35 V. With twelve chips, this board has a 384-bit memory bus and 12 GB VRAM. The memory bandwidth at 14 Gbps data rate is a staggering 672 GB/s, which conclusively beats the 484 GB/s that Vega 64 and GTX 1080 Ti offer.

Phanteks showed off its yet to be named upcoming lineup of fan prototypes with an enhanced "multi-faceted" blade design. These blades, made of fiberglass, work to minimize the bulk of the noise caused by the whiplash. Inspired by vortex-dampening wingtips of modern airplanes, the blades are curved perpendicular toward the edges, and maintain a 0.7 mm gap from the bore of the frame. The fans feature a "6-phase motor," although the company didn't mention what kind of bearing they use. The edges of the frame (near the mounts) feature vibration dampening silicone cladding. The motors feature daisy-chaining cables, so you can chain up to three fans and mount them onto a radiator with minimal clutter. The fans come in 120 mm and 140 mm, each with two thickness-based variants - 25 mm thick, and 30 mm thick. Phanteks doesn't have a concrete launch timeline other than "later this year."

Intel is making progress in its development of a new discrete GPU architecture, after its failed attempt with "Larrabee" that ended up as an HPC accelerator; and ancient attempts such as the i740. This comes in the wake of the company's high-profile hiring of Raja Koduri, AMD's former Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) head. The company unveiled slides pointing to the direction in which its GPU development is headed, at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. That direction is essentially scaling up its existing iGPU architecture, and bolstering it with mechanisms to sustain high clock speeds better.

The company's first 14 nm dGPU prototype, shown as a test-chip at the ISSCC, is a 2-chip solution. The first chip contains two key components, the GPU itself, and a system agent; and the second chip is an FPGA that interfaces with the system bus. The GPU component, as it stands now, is based on Intel's Gen 9 architecture, and features a three execution unit (EU) clusters. Don't derive numbers from this yet, as Intel is only trying to demonstrate a proof of concept. The three clusters are wired to a sophisticated power/clock management mechanism that efficiently manages power and clock-speed of each individual EU. There's also a double-clock mechanism that doubles clock speeds (of the boost state) beyond what today's Gen 9 EUs can handle on Intel iGPUs. Once a suitable level of energy efficiency is achieved, Intel will use newer generations of EUs, and scale up EU counts taking advantage of newer fab processes, to develop bigger discrete GPUs.More slides follow.

Varjo ("shadow" in Finnish, pronounced "Var-yo") Technologies today brought unprecedented levels of Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality (VR/XR) realism a step closer for professional markets through its new development partner program. The company's first public technology demonstration occurred at one of the world's leading startup events - Slush. Global brands including 20th Century Fox, Airbus, Audi, BMW, Technicolor and Volkswagen will now be collaborating with Varjo to optimize the company's human-eye resolution VR/XR Bionic Display for their respective business sectors. The company's recent $8.2m Series A round, led by EQT Ventures (with new, additional funding of $6.7m from Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for innovation) has enabled Varjo to begin the early access program for its partners as well as ramp up R&D capabilities.

Varjo will start shipping Alpha Prototypes to its first technology partners before the end of the year. Beta Prototypes will begin shipping to existing and new partners in the design, engineering, simulation and entertainment sectors during Q1 2018, allowing the next wave of VR/XR innovators to join the 'Resolution Revolution'. The partners will provide feedback on product experience, features and usability, and combine their industry insights and expertise with Varjo's product development.

Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company (NTT) is opening up its prototype quantum computing system for public use over the internet, giving users around the world access to one of the most elusive pieces of tech that this world has yet seem. Maybe we haven't seen it, though; observation does change the outcome, and these quantum physics really are as finicky as they come. Starting Nov. 27, Japan joins China and the U.S. in the race to develop the world's most advanced computers - and Japan has chosen the free, quantum-democratizing approach.

The NTT quantum computing solution is a state-sponsored research project, developed in conjunction with the National Institute of Informatics, Osaka university, and other partners. It has taken a different technical approach from other quantum computing developers, in that this particular computing system is exploiting the properties of light. Widely (un)known as Linear Optics Quantum Computation (LOQC), this particular approach foregoes qubits (which are extremely difficult to keep from decohering, and usually require very exotic cooling techniques to increase the qubits' stability. LOQC abandons qubits and uses photons to represent them as information carriers through linear optical elements (such as beam splitters, phase shifters, and mirrors). This allows the machine to process quantum information, using photon detectors and quantum memories to detect and store quantum information.

Trying to keep our community entertained and distracted from the growing pains and expectations of waiting for the death of AMD's imposed NDAs on Vega reviews is one of our missions. As such, while we know what you want are actual performance numbers, price/performance charts, and an in-depth, independent review, you'll not find such answers in this post. You will find, however, some interesting tidbits on AMD RX Vega designs. In this case, a triple-fan cooling solution for AMD's RX Vega 56 (the smaller Vega).

Noctua showed off protoypes of variants of its various high-end CPU coolers, which come with support for Intel's Core X family socket LGA2066 processors. While LGA2066 has a higher pin-count, it has the same exact CPU cooler mount-hole spacing as LGA2011(v3), and as such, any LGA2011-compatible cooler should run on LGA2066. All Core i7 LGA2011(v3) chips are either 140W or below. Noctua on its part, is confident that that all its LGA2011(v3)-compatible coolers run on LGA2066 by default, and is willing to giveaway LGA2066-supporting SecuFirm 2 retention modules for free, for users of older Noctua heatsinks which can handle such high thermal loads.

The next in the long line of prototype cases at the SilverStone booth is the latest iteration of the SFF prodigy by the company, the Raven Z RVZ04. Its design is bolder than the current Raven Z, and encloses a micro-STX form-factor motherboard. This is a tiny 1U form-factor with DIY boards far a few between, but SilverStone's creation had a Core "Kaby Lake" quad-core processor, and a discrete graphics card. It doesn't have any storage areas of its own, and relies on any M.2 or mSATA slots on the motherboard. The case measures 238 mm x 81 mm x 199 mm (WxHxD), or about the size of a game console.

SilverStone also showed off a prototype of its second-generation Primera series "stylish" ATX mid-tower cases. The case features an all-steel construction, including its front door. The front is characterized by vertical slits and a silvery finish. The side is dominated by a black-tinted tempered glass panel. The case measures 220 mm x 490 mm x 473 mm (WxHxD). Under the hood, you get three 3.5-inch drive bays (which convert to 2.5-inch), three 2.5-inch mounts, and five 140 mm fan mounts, with an included 140 mm fan. A curious-looking IR remote was placed near this case with RGB LED (color/brightness), system power, and fan-speed controls. We're not sure if it's included with the case.

Here are some of the first pictures of SilverStone's Redline RL07 case prototypes. These stylish ATX mid-towers come in black with a dash of red, and white with a dash of blue, and are characterized by the front vertical dividing crease with LED inserts. The case is made almost entirely of SECC steel (including the front), while its side panel is made of tempered glass. The case measures 230 mm x 488 mm x 482 mm (WxHxD).

Under the hood, the SilverStone RL07 features three 3.5-inch HDD bays (which each convert to 2.5-inch), and three 2.5-inch mounts. Cooling system is bolstered by an all-140 mm mount layout. The case features a total of five 140 mm fan mounts, a 140 mm fan comes included with it. Front panel connectivity includes two each of USB 3.1/3.0 type-A, and USB 2.0/1.1 ports, and HDA jacks.

Here are some of the first pictures of Lian Li PC-V3000, the company's upcoming flagship chassis. Characterized by Lian Li's favorite material, aluminium, the case features the company's signature design language, with dark, brushed-aluminium exteriors, and silvery aluminium interiors. The company released pictures of a prototype case, with a final release out later this year. Keeping up with the times (i.e. horizontal partition), the PC-V3000 features a vast twin-compartment layout, only that the motherboard layout is inverted (opens out at the right side, with the motherboard being positioned BTX-style).

The Lian Li PC-V3000 has room for ATX and E-ATX motherboards, with room for graphics cards with lengths in the neighborhood of 40 cm, and coolers with heights around 20 cm. The bottom compartment is further partitioned vertically, with the left-side compartment housing the PSU bay and a 3x 3.5-inch drive-cage; while the right-side compartment either serves up room for your liquid cooling gear (such as a 420 mm x 140 mm radiator), or additional 2.5-inch drives. The motherboard tray has three drive mounts on its reverse side. Cooling includes 3x 140 mm side intake, 120 mm rear exhaust, and 3x 120 mm top exhausts.

Noctua unveiled a prototype fin-stack heatsink for very large CPU socket types, such as Intel Socket P (LGA3647) and AMD SP3, powering chips such as Intel Xeon Phi "Knights Landing," and upcoming AMD Opteron SP3 32-core SoCs. There will be 3U and 4U versions of this heatsink, supporting NF-A9 (92 mm) and NF-F12 (120 mm) fans. The heatsink is just a very large aluminium fin-stack, to which heat drawn from the base is fed by seven 8 mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes.

Noctua unveiled a prototype slim 120 mm fan. The fan is just 15 mm thick (25 mm is the most common thickness for 120 mm fans). The fan features a metal reinforced hub, to make sure the hub and its four support structures don't disfigure over time. The motor features double ball bearing. The frame features a design that minimizes noise from the whiplash of the impeller. The frame further features rubber padding along the mount holes, to dampen vibration. Noctua did not put out fan-speed and air-flow numbers for this fan.