As an industry leader in the premium display market, Samsung Display today announced that its QD (Quantum Dot)-Display, a display suited for a variety of consumer needs, received two additional certifications for Pro Gaming Verified and Eye Care Display. Awarded by SGS, the world-leading certification company, QD-Display received high marks for its outstanding image quality and viewing experience for games and high-definition content, while simultaneously reducing eye stress and fatigue. Previously, the QD-Display received three certifications for its True Color Tones, Pure RGB Luminance and Ultrawide Viewing Angle.

Through the SGS evaluation, the QD-Display received the highest rating level, Platinum, in Pro Gaming Verified in reflectance, refresh rate, viewing angle, Halo (light leakage) and color. QD-Display offers a fast 0.1 ms response speed (Gray to Gray). Additionally, through the certification processes, the QD-Display was proven to achieve a 0.01 ms response speed (Black to White), and a refresh rate of 175 Hz for monitors and 144 Hz for TVs. Unlike conventional LCD displays, QD-Displays do not have a delay time due to the movement of liquid crystals, since each pixel can be individually adjusted to provide the sharpest image quality possible. Therefore, the QD-Display offers faster screen transitions and clearer picture quality, allowing users to fully immerse themselves in high-resolution games.

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.

Intel and AMD will be releasing new CPUs that support DDR5 DRAM solutions for PCs and servers this year. In response, the DRAM industry led by South Korean suppliers is developing solutions to complement the arrival of the new CPUs. In the midst of the gradual shift to DDR5, DRAM suppliers will also scale back the supply of DDR3 solutions, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. With Korean suppliers accelerating their withdrawal from DDR3 production, Taiwanese suppliers yet to kick off mass production using newly installed capacities, and Chinese suppliers falling short of their expected yield rate, the global supply of DDR3 solutions will undergo an impending decline. With respect to the demand side, however, not only has the supply of networking chips been ramping up, but material shortage issues are also gradually easing. As such, buyers are now procuring DDR3 solutions ahead of time, resulting in a tight supply and demand situation in the DDR3 market. TrendForce therefore expects DDR3 DRAM prices to recover from a bearish first quarter and undergo a 0-5% QoQ increase in 2Q22.

Samsung has reportedly been hacked by the LAPSUS$ hacker group who were responsible for the recent NVIDIA hack and source code releases. The group has previously stolen approximately 1 TB of data from NVIDIA servers and are currently demanding that NVIDIA release open-source GPU drivers and a bypass for the LHR GPU hash rate limiter. The stolen Samsung data is reportedly 190 GB in size containing the source code for Trusted Applets, bootloader, and account authentication in addition to biometric unlock algorithms and confidential source code from Qualcomm. This breach could have serious security ramifications for both Samsung & Qualcomm is these claims are substantiated.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. has validated Samsung's 14-nanometer (nm) based 16-gigabit (Gb) Low Power Double Data Rate 5X (LPDDR5X) DRAM for use on Qualcomm Technologies' Snapdragon mobile platforms.

Since developing the industry's first 14 nm-based LPDDR5X DRAM last November, Samsung has worked closely with Qualcomm Technologies to optimize its 7.5 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) LPDDR5X for use with Snapdragon mobile platforms. Delivering about 1.2 times faster speed than the 6.4 Gbps LPDDR5 deployed in today's premium smartphones, Samsung's LPDDR5X is expected to boost the performance of ultra-high-resolution video recording as well as AI features such as voice recognition, image recognition and natural language processing in next-generation smartphones. Furthermore, by adopting advanced circuit designs as well as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), LPDDR5X power consumption can be reduced by approximately 20%.

Intel, along with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., have announced the establishment of an industry consortium to promote an open die-to-die interconnect standard called Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe). Building on its work on the open Advanced Interface Bus (AIB), Intel developed the UCIe standard and donated it to the group of founding members as an open specification that defines the interconnect between chiplets within a package, enabling an open chiplet ecosystem and ubiquitous interconnect at the package level.

"Integrating multiple chiplets in a package to deliver product innovation across market segments is the future of the semiconductor industry and a pillar of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy," said Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Artificial Intelligence Group at Intel. "Critical to this future is an open chiplet ecosystem with key industry partners working together under the UCIe Consortium toward a common goal of transforming the way the industry delivers new products and continues to deliver on the promise of Moore's Law."

Based on details posted by the Commercial Times in Taiwan, it would appear that Samsung Foundry is working on ways to win over customers from TSMC. The backstory is that fabless chip makers have had to change foundries over time, due to the fact that from a foundry side, it's expensive to be on the cutting edge and many foundries have stepped out of the race. This has left the fabless chip makers with fewer options and with TSMC as the de facto industry leader today. That said, as we've seen, NVIDIA and Qualcomm picked Samsung Foundry for some of their latest chips, but based on industry rumours, the yields aren't great.

Samsung Foundry has been trying to win over customers by offering attractive pricing compared to TSMC, but far from everyone has been interested. Some companies, like Apple, have tried to work with Samsung, but abandoned them in the end in favour of TSMC. Samsung is said to be courting both AMD and NVIDIA, as well as others, although only time will tell if we'll see any future product from either company being manufactured by Samsung Foundry. The fact that there are investigations into the yields at Samsung Foundry should be a concern for any future customer and isn't a good sign of where the company is heading.

Samsung Electronics today announced the Galaxy Book2 Pro series, a flagship PC lineup featuring the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 with S Pen functionality and Galaxy Book2 Pro with 5G. Both form factors combine the flexibility and versatility needed for today's evolving work and learning lifestyles and are built with Samsung's mobile DNA. The result is a PC experience that is equally productive and portable.

As more students and professionals enjoy remote or hybrid working environments, safeguarding their data, identity and privacy continue to be a top priority for Samsung. To further protect users, the Galaxy Book2 Pro series is the first consumer PC lineup meeting Microsoft's secured-core PC requirements. Previously designed for enterprise PCs in high-security industries such as finance, healthcare and government, the Galaxy Book2 Pro series' secured-core PC designation delivers an enhanced level of protection on Windows 11 and features deeply integrated hardware, firmware and software to boost protection against potential cyber-attacks. Now, everyone can enjoy advanced security for enhanced peace of mind.

Although nothing has been officially confirmed by Qualcomm, it looks like the company will be moving away from Samsung for its 3 nm based chips, in favour of TSMC. The Elec also mentions that Qualcomm has moved some of its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 production to TSMC, something that has already been hitting the rumour mill. The first batch of 4 nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips are said to already have entered the early stages of production. The main reason for the move is said to be poor yields by Samsung Foundry on its 4 nm node.

The yield rates are said to be a measly 35 percent for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, with Samsung's Exynos 2200 having even lower yields. This also helps explain why Samsung's mobile division has decided to limit the availability of its Exynos 2200 based phones to only a few regions. Apparently Qualcomm had to send staff over to Korea to help get the yields up to their current rate, but it's not hard to see why the company is shifting back to TSMC, as a 35 percent yield rate is simply not acceptable. Samsung is said to be auditing Samsung Foundry to find out what has gone wrong, as anything below 80-90 percent in terms of yield rate is simply not acceptable for mass production. Qualcomm will apparently continue to use Samsung Foundry for its 7 nm RF chips, where the yields must be within industry norms.

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.

Samsung Electronics is hit by a major scandal involving current and former employees. It's being alleged that these employees are involved in falsifying information about the semiconductor fabrication yields of the company's 3/4/5 nanometer nodes to clear them for commercial activity. This came to light when Samsung was observing lower than expected yields after the nodes were approved for mass-production of logic chips for Samsung, as well as third-party chip-designers. A falsified yield figure can have a cascading impact across the supply-chain, as wafer orders and pricing are decided on the basis of yields. Samsung however, has downplayed the severity of the matter. The group has initiated an investigation into Samsung Device Solutions, the business responsible for the foundry arm of the company. This includes a thorough financial audit of the foundry to investigate if the investments made to improve yields were properly used.

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.

The Exynos 2200 SoC powering the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra in some regions such as the EU, posts some less-than-stellar graphics performance numbers, for all the hype around its AMD-sourced RDNA2 graphics solution, according to an investigative report by Erdi Özüağ, aka "FX57." Samsung brands this RDNA2-based GPU as the Samsung Xclipse 920. Further, Özüağ's testing found that the Exynos 2200 is considerably slower than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powering the S22 Ultra in certain other regions, including the US and India. He has access to both kinds of the S22 Ultra.

In the UL Benchmarks 3DMark Wildlife test, the Exynos 2200 posted a score of 6684 points, compared to 9548 points by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (a difference of 42 percent). What's even more interesting, is that the Exynos 2200 is barely 7 percent faster than the previous-gen Exynos 2100 (Arm Mali GPU) powering the S21 Ultra, which scored 6256 points. The story repeats with the GFXBench "Manhattan" off-screen render benchmark. Here, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is 30 percent faster than the Exynos 2200, which performs on-par with the Exynos 2100. Find a plethora of other results in the complete review comparing the two flavors of the S22 Ultra.

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.

Samsung Electronics today announced its new Galaxy Tab S8 series, the Galaxy Tab S8 and S8+, and the first-ever Tab S8 Ultra tablet in the lineup with the biggest, boldest display and most powerful performance Galaxy Tab S has ever offered. Sophisticated hardware, premium productivity features and the seamless ecosystem Galaxy users count on are combined in a single portable productivity powerhouse, designed to be your perfect companion in an always-on, video-first world. The Galaxy Tab S8 series offers you the freedom and flexibility you deserve to work and play anywhere like never before.

More than ever, we rely on tablets for video calling and streaming. Each Galaxy Tab S8 offers an improved video conferencing experience with ultra-wide front cameras, a three-microphone setup and intelligent auto-framing technology for a truly professional video call experience. It offers revolutionary multitasking capabilities with enhanced Multi-Active Windows and Samsung DeX, safe and easy file sharing with password-protected Quick Share, and powerful productivity with the new, super-fast 4 nm processor and a smoother than ever S Pen in the box. All this is packed into the thinnest and toughest Armor aluminium body for greater portability, and to enhance your mobile experience further, Galaxy Tab S8 series works hand-in-hand with your full ecosystem of Galaxy devices, with features like Second Screen and Buds Auto Switch.

Samsung Electronics appears to have ended up in a pricing dispute with Samsung Display over the cost of QD-OLED panels, which could have the knock-on effect that Samsung branded QD-OLED displays might end up in retail later than anticipated. Samsung Electronics was set to launch its first QD-OLED TVs towards the middle of this year, but it seems like that might no longer be the case, unless the dispute can be resolved. The reason behind it, seems to be that LG Display's W-OLED panels are cheaper than Samsung Display's QD-OLED panels and Samsung Electronics doesn't want to pay a higher panel price.

It's unknown how much of a price difference there is, but The Elec is guessing it's around US$100 per panel. Considering Samsung Electronics appears to have bet heavily on QD-OLED, at least based on their CES 2022 announcements and that we're talking about premium TV's here, it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a difference. However, without knowing how competitive Samsung intended to be, it's possible that they wouldn't be able to compete with companies using W-OLED panels from LG Display. Maybe the most interesting part of this story is the fact that it mentions that Samsung Display is working on a 30-inch QD-OLED panel that they will supply Dell with, which is targeted towards computer monitors. So even if we might not see QD-OLED TV's when initially expected, we can at least hope for some high-end computer monitors with the tech later this year. Samsung Display is said to be producing QD-OLED substrates at a size of 2.2 x 2.5 metres at a rate of 30,000 units per month at the moment.

Global semiconductor sales revenue grew by a more than comfortable 25% in 2021, hitting a new record above $500 Billion for the first time. The data, part of Gartner's preliminary report on the state of the industry in 2021, bookends yet another year plagued with shortages and too little supply for the thirst of the consumer and business sectors. Naturally, supply constraints have led to higher ASP (Average Selling Prices) for the hardware that does get manufactured and distributed, as we've seen all too well in the graphics card market.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

Electronic waste isn't the only environmental concern when it comes to technological manufacturing; toxic byproducts also have to be contended with, with tech companies spending millions of dollars to comply with environmental disposal regulations. Sometimes, however, things don't go as they're supposed to. Such was the case with a toxic spillage from Samsung's Austin, Texas manufacturing facility, which spilled the equivalent of 763,000 gallons of acid waste towards a nearby stormwater pond. This same pond ultimately feeds into a tributary of the Harris Branch Creek in Northeast Austin.

The spillage is estimated to have occurred over 100+ days, and the consequences are severe. According to a report published by an Environmental Officer working for Austin City Council, the spillage left "virtually no surviving aquatic life" due to it lowering the water body's pH down to levels between 2 and 3 (which is deadly toxic even for adult aquatic life). According to Samsung, it stopped the discharges as soon as they were noticed, saying that "a majority of the wastewater was contained on-site; however, a portion was inadvertently released into an unnamed small tributary that is upstream of Harris Branch Creek." The company further stated it has hired a cleanup specialist, with aims to "restore the tributary" and prevent dissemination of the toxic waste throughout the main branch of the Harris Branch Creek.

NAND Flash prices for 1Q22 are expected to decline by 8-13% QoQ, compared to TrendForce's previous forecast of 10-15% QoQ, primarily due to PC OEMs' increased orders for PCIe 3.0 products and the impact of the lockdown in Xi'an on PC OEMs' price negotiation approaches. To mitigate potential risks in logistics, NAND Flash buyers are now more willing to accept a narrower decline in contract prices in order to obtain their products sooner. However, as the Xi'an lockdown has not noticeably affected the local fabs' manufacturing operations, the movement of NAND Flash contract prices going forward will likely remain relatively unaffected by the lockdown.

In addition, TrendForce finds that the daily number of new COVID-19 cases in Xi'an has recently undergone a noticeable drop, and the local government has also announced that that the emergency level has been downgraded. As such, Samsung's and Micron's local production facilities are returning to normal with respect to workforce and operational capacity. Samsung's local production base manufactures NAND Flash products, whereas Micron's local production base is responsible for the testing and packaging of DRAM chips as well as the assembly of DRAM modules. The impacts of the lockdown mainly relate to delays in the deliveries of memory products to customers. On the other hand, the event has not caused a tangible loss in memory production.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total $583.5 billion, crossing the $500 billion threshold for the first time, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced its new premium mobile processor, the Exynos 2200. The Exynos 2200 is a freshly designed mobile processor with a powerful AMD RDNA 2 architecture based Samsung Xclipse graphics processing unit (GPU). With the most cutting-edge Arm -based CPU cores available in the market today and an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU), the Exynos 2200 will enable the ultimate mobile phone gaming experience, as well as enhancing the overall experience in social media apps and photography.

"Built on the most advanced 4-nanometer (nm) EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process, and combined with cutting-edge mobile, GPU, and NPU technology, Samsung has crafted the Exynos 2200 to provide the finest experience for smartphone users. With the Xclipse, our new mobile GPU built with RDNA 2 graphics technology from the industry leader AMD, the Exynos 2200 will redefine mobile gaming experience, aided by enhanced graphics and AI performance," said Yongin Park, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics. "As well as bringing the best mobile experience to the users, Samsung will continue its efforts to lead the journey in logic chip innovation."

A disturbing trend among entry-level M.2 NVMe SSDs is a complete disregard from manufacturers for consistency in the brands and types of the various key components of the drives. The companies simply advertise a certain set of performance and endurance numbers, which serve as ends to reach by whatever means (of controller or NAND flash combos). This was recently illustrated with the Kingston NV1, which presents an extreme case of "hardware lottery." You can get either a SMI or Phison controller, and either a TLC or QLC NAND flash (combinations thereof).

Cutting through all this, ADATA is making a reassuring guarantee with regards to its recently announced entry-level NVMe product, the XPG Atom 50. In an exclusive comment to TechPowerUp, the company said that all XPG Atom 50 drives in the market will come with a consistent combination of controller and NAND flash. The drive combines an Innogrit IG5220 RainierQX controller with Micron "B47R" 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash chips, a combo ADATA guarantees it will never break. We recently reviewed the 1 TB variant of this drive, and found it to offer excellent performance leveraging PCIe Gen4, at a price you'd typically find PCIe Gen3 drives at.

AMD is preparing a round of updates to its desktop Radeon RX 6000 series in the wake of RTX 30-series models by NVIDIA, according to Greymon55, a reliable source with GPU rumors. The company could be leveraging faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips for the task. This wouldn't be the first RX 6000 series products with 18 Gbps memory, as the liquid-cooled MBA (made-by-AMD) RX 6900 XT that's exclusive to OEMs, already comes with 18 Gbps memory clocks.

Mass-production of JEDEC-standard GDDR6 memory chips with data-rates as high as 20 Gbps and 24 Gbps by Samsung is expected to get underway later this year. The company is already sampling these chips, and it's likely that they may feature in the next round of product-stack updates by AMD and NVIDIA. In the run up to its next-gen RDNA3 graphics architecture, AMD is rumored to be working on a refresh of RDNA2 on the new TSMC N6 (6 nm) foundry node that it already leverages for the entry-level "Navi 24" ASIC. This is expected to open up headroom to dial up engine clocks, and possibly support faster memory. As for this latest refresh with 18 Gbps memory, if AMD's naming convention for its mobile RX 6850M is anything to go by, the new SKUs could feature a similar "xx50" model numbering.

Samsung Electronics, today announced its demonstration of the world's first in-memory computing based on MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory). The paper on this innovation was published online by Nature on January 12, and is set to be published in the upcoming print edition of Nature. Titled 'A crossbar array of magnetoresistive memory devices for in-memory computing', this paper showcases Samsung's leadership in memory technology and its effort to merge memory and system semiconductors for next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

The research was led by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in close collaboration with Samsung Electronics Foundry Business and Semiconductor R&D Center. The first author of the paper, Dr. Seungchul Jung, Staff Researcher at SAIT, and the co-corresponding authors Dr. Donhee Ham, Fellow of SAIT and Professor of Harvard University and Dr. Sang Joon Kim, Vice President of Technology at SAIT, spearheaded the research.

ASML, makers of vital semiconductor fabrication machinery powering the world's leading fabs, including TSMC, provided its first damage-assessment of the fire incident at one of its component plants near Berlin, on January 3. This plant manufactures several mechanical and optical components of semiconductor fabrication machinery, such as wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks.

ASML, in a press-release, disclosed that production of components used in DUV (deep-ultraviolet) machines, has been restarted, as that area of the plant is unaffected by the fire. A region of the plant that manufactures wafer clamps for use in its EUV (extreme ultraviolet) machines, however, has been affected by the fire. The company is still in the process of coming up with a recovery plan for this area, and will come up with a tentative date for restart of production only after that. EUV lithography is leveraged for 5 nm and upcoming 3 nm silicon fabrication nodes at TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. TSMC is known to be ASML's largest customer. ASML stated that it will release its Q4-2021 and full-year 2021 financial results on January 19, and it may provide more updates on the matter.The press-release follows.