Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 512-gigabyte (GB) eUFS (embedded Universal Flash Storage) 3.1 for use in flagship smartphones. Delivering three times the write speed of the previous 512 GB eUFS 3.0 mobile memory, Samsung's new eUFS 3.1 breaks the 1 GB/s performance threshold in smartphone storage.

"With our introduction of the fastest mobile storage, smartphone users will no longer have to worry about the bottleneck they face with conventional storage cards," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "The new eUFS 3.1 reflects our continuing commitment to supporting the rapidly increasing demands from global smartphone makers this year."

Today Logitech unveils a line of beautifully-crafted wireless chargers to make your charging experience simple and effortless. Introducing the Logitech POWERED family of wireless chargers - Logitech POWERED 3-in-1 Dock, Logitech POWERED Stand and Logitech POWERED Pad. These wireless chargers are designed to be simple, reliable and look great in any room, whether it be your bedroom, kitchen, office or living room.

Intel is rumored to be aligning its future-generation Xe GPU development with TSMC's node development cycle, with the company reportedly negotiating with the Taiwanese foundry for 6 nm and 3 nm allocation for its large Xe GPUs. Intel's first Xe discrete GPUs for the market, however, are reportedly built on the company's own 10 nm+ silicon fabrication process.

While Intel's fascination with TSMC 3 nm is understandable, seeking out TSMC's 6 nm node raises eyebrows. Internally referred to as "N6," the 6 nm silicon fabrication node at TSMC is expected to go live either towards the end of 2020 or early 2021, which is when Intel's 10 nm+ node is expected to pick up volume production, beginning with the company's "Tiger Lake" processors. Perhaps a decision has been made internally to ensure that Xe doesn't eat too much into Intel's own foundry capacities meant for processor manufacturing, and to instead outsource Xe manufacturing to third-party foundries like TSMC and Samsung eventually. Way back in April 2019 it was rumored that Intel was evaluating Samsung as a foundry partner for Xe.

Samsung today introduced the latest T55 series of monitors designed for an office use case. To kick-off the new lineup, Samsung launched three monitors that have similar specifications, but their respective size is the only differentiator. The new models are C24T55, C27T55, and C32T55 which feature 24-inch, 27-inch, and 32-inch display panels respectively. All of them feature 1000R curvature applied to ease the eye strain, making them a very unique choice for an office monitor.

Besides the different screen sizes, all of the monitors feature similar specifications such as a 1080p VA screen clocked at a 75 Hz refresh rate. Besides having support for AMD's FreeSync technology, these monitors have 4 ms GtG response time, so they are not exactly gaming oriented. The displays cover 1.193 of the sRGB color spectrum and 0.884 of Adobe RGB, so despite being a VA panel, it is not bad. The brightness level is a standard 250 nit specification for an office monitor, and the contrast ration is 3000:1. To feed the monitor with image, you can choose anything from HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2, or D-Sub connector. While the 24-inch version doesn't include any in-built speaker, the 27-inch and 32-inch versions have a pair of 5 W stereo speakers. There are no VESA mounting points, so to stand the monitor relies on its own stand which can tilt from -3° to 20°.

According to the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, 4Q19 NAND flash bit shipment increased by nearly 10% QoQ thanks to demand growth from data center clients. On the supply side, contract prices made a successful rebound due to shortages caused by the power outage at Kioxia's Yokkaichi production base in June. In sum, 4Q19 NAND flash revenue reached $12.5 billion, an 8.5% increase QoQ.

The stronger-than-expected 4Q19 performance from the demand side helped improve supplier inventory back to normal levels. In response, NAND suppliers were able to reduce their allocations to the wafer market and instead focus on shipping products with comparatively higher margins.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 16-gigabyte (GB) LPDDR5 mobile DRAM package for next-generation premium smartphones. Following mass production of the industry-first 12 GB LPDDR5 in July, 2019, the new 16 GB advancement will lead the premium mobile memory market with added capacity that enables enhanced 5G and AI features including graphic-rich gaming and smart photography.

"Samsung has been committed to bringing memory technologies to the cutting edge in allowing consumers to enjoy amazing experiences through their mobile devices. We are excited to stay true to that commitment with our new, top-of-the-line mobile solution for global device manufacturers," said Cheol Choi, senior vice president of memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "With the introduction of a new product lineup based on our next-generation process technology later this year, Samsung will be able to fully address future memory demands from global customers."

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that its new cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication line in Hwaseong, Korea, has begun mass production.

The facility, V1, is Samsung's first semiconductor production line dedicated to the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology and produces chips using process node of 7 nanometer (nm) and below. The V1 line broke ground in February 2018, and began test wafer production in the second half of 2019. Its first products will be delivered to customers in the first quarter.

Samsung Electronics is pushing the industry another step forward with an expansion of QLED 8K SMART displays, new applications of The Wall and showcasing the new-and-improved Samsung Flip 2 digital flipchart.

"Samsung is making tomorrow's technology a reality with complete display solutions that are more immersive, collaborative and interactive than ever before. ISE is one of the best opportunities for Samsung to showcase advanced commercial applications of our industry-leading displays," said Hyesung Ha, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. "We're excited to unveil new features and expanded lineups of our digital signage with next-generation technology such as 8K, the new model of The Wall, collaborative displays and more that will provide businesses with opportunities they've never had before."

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the market launch of 'Flashbolt', its third-generation High Bandwidth Memory 2E (HBM2E). The new 16-gigabyte (GB) HBM2E is uniquely suited to maximize high performance computing (HPC) systems and help system manufacturers to advance their supercomputers, AI-driven data analytics and state-of-the-art graphics systems in a timely manner.

"With the introduction of the highest performing DRAM available today, we are taking a critical step to enhance our role as the leading innovator in the fast-growing premium memory market," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to deliver on its commitment to bring truly differentiated solutions as we reinforce our edge in the global memory marketplace."

Fractal Design partnered with Greg Salazar to bring you a chance to win a pre-built gaming PC inspired by the Lamborghini Aventador. Other prizes include 24-hour exotic car rentals so you can turn heads wherever you go. The star attraction is the Aventador-inspired gaming PC, powered by Fractal Design hardware. Nestled in a custom Fractal Design Meshify C chassis, and powered by a Fractal Design Ion+ 860 W Platinum power-supply, this beast has some serious chops: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Super Gaming X graphics card, 16 GB G.Skill RipJaws V memory, and Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB storage. The main giveaway hosted on Gleam lets you win the Aventador-inspired gaming PC, while a bonus giveaway form lets you take a crack at the exotic car rentals. Gleam lets you increase your chances of winning by up to 24 times. Open from now, February 4, 01:00 UTC, until February 18, 05:59 UTC, the main giveaway is open worldwide. Good Luck!

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Intel Core i5-L16G7 is the first commercial SKU that implements Intel's "Lakefield" heterogenous x86 processor architecture. This 5-core chip features one high-performance "Sunny Cove" CPU core, and four smaller "Tremont" low-power cores, with an intelligent scheduler balancing workloads between the two core types. This is essentially similar to ARM big.LITTLE. The idea being that the device idles most of the time, when lower-powered CPU cores can hold the fort; performance cores kick in only when really needed, until which time they remain power-gated. Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK discovered the first public appearance of the i5-L16G7 in an unreleased Samsung device that has the Userbenchmark device ID string "SAMSUNG_NP_767XCL."

Clock speeds of the processor are listed as "1.40 GHz base, with 1.75 GHz turbo," but it's possible that the two core types have different clock-speed bands, just like the cores on big.LITTLE SoCs. Other key components of "Lakefield" include an iGPU based on the Gen11 graphics architecture, and an LPDDR4X memory controller. "Lakefield" implements Foveros packaging, in which high-density component dies based on newer silicon fabrication nodes are integrated with silicon interposers based on older fabrication processes, which facilitate microscopic high-density wiring between the dies. In case of "Lakefield," the Foveros package features a 10 nm "compute field" die sitting atop a 22 nm "base field" interposer.

Some of the recent news from China is the stuff of science fiction, with the Central Government there locking down entire cities to contain the deadly Coronavirus outbreak there. When cities with 10+ million populations are under lock-down, it's only natural for factories to run out of workforce. According to a ZeroHedge report, the government has reportedly shut down factories owned or operated by big names in the technology and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) industries.

Among these are the ubiquitous Foxconn, which has manufacturing contracts with the biggest silicon valley tech firms for contract-manufacturing their hard-product - including the Apple iPhone; and Samsung Electronics, which makes consumer electronics, home appliances, and certain semiconductor products in China. A third big name in the report is the FMCG and pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. The closure of factories could wreck tech stocks in the coming trading sessions, not to mention possible impact on prices of electronics. As of now, the closure is stipulated for the next 1-2 weeks.

NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards codenamed Ampere is set to arrive sometime this year, presumably around GTC 2020 which takes place on March 22nd. Before the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang officially reveals the specifications of these new GPUs, we have the latest round of rumors coming our way. According to VideoCardz, which cites multiple sources, the die configurations of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 have been detailed. Using the latest 7 nm manufacturing process from Samsung, this generation of NVIDIA GPU offers a big improvement from the previous generation.

For starters the two dies which have appeared have codenames like GA103 and GA104, standing for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 respectively. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) count. The smaller GA104 die has as much as 48 SMs, resulting in 3072 CUDA cores, while the bigger, oddly named, GA103 die has as much as 60 SMs that result in 3840 CUDA cores in total. These improvements in SM count should result in a notable performance increase across the board. Alongside the increase in SM count, there is also a new memory bus width. The smaller GA104 die that should end up in RTX 3070 uses a 256-bit memory bus allowing for 8/16 GB of GDDR6 memory, while its bigger brother, the GA103, has a 320-bit wide bus that allows the card to be configured with either 10 or 20 GB of GDDR6 memory. In the images below you can check out the alleged diagrams for yourself and see if this looks fake or not, however, it is recommended to take this rumor with a grain of salt.

It's finally here: a high-end PCI-Express gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD by Samsung, made end-to-end by homebrew components. When it releases sometime later this year with a possible technical reveal in Q2, the SSD 980 will be possibly the only client-segment M.2 NVMe PCIe gen 4 SSD to feature MLC (2 bits per cell) NAND flash memory. This also means that the highest capacity on offer is just 1 TB. The company also put out sequential transfer rates: up to 6,500 MB/s reads, with up to 5,000 MB/s writes. The biggest payoffs of MLC would be sustained write performance and endurance (in its capacity class, compared to TLC and QLC).

Next up, is the Portable SSD T7 Touch, a successor to the T5 from 2017. This drive comes in an in-built fingerprint reader, letting you secure its data with your fingerprints. The drive is also a much needed update to the T5, which still uses 64-layer TLC NAND; and possibly uses the latest generation 96-layer V-NAND. The drive is built with an aluminium case that's drop-resistant up to 2 m. A single USB 3.2 connection handles power and data. The drive includes type-C to type-C and type-C to type-A cables, and will be compatible not just with PCs, but also Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today introduced Galaxy Chromebook, a premium 2-in-1 device that sets a higher standard in mobile computing. This new entrant to the Galaxy Computing portfolio redefines what a Chromebook can be. As the thinnest Samsung Chromebook ever released, it combines the best of Samsung technical innovation - such as an AMOLED display and built-in-pen support, offering users new ways to take advantage of Chrome OS experience that is simple, fast, and seamless.

"The notion that we do everything stationary at a desk is a thing of the past, and people need premium devices built for our new reality," said Alanna Cotton, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Samsung Electronics America. "By offering a seamless, premium user experience, Galaxy Chromebook helps you effortlessly switch between streaming, creative projects, word processing, and more."

AMD in the second half of 2020 could outpace Apple as the biggest foundry customer of TSMC for its 7 nm silicon fabrication nodes (DUV and EUV combined). There are two key factors contributing to this: AMD significantly increasing its orders for the year; and Apple transitioning to TSMC's 5 nm node for its A14 SoC, freeing up some 7 nm allocation, which AMD grabbed. AMD is currently tapping into 7 nm DUV for its "Zen 2" chiplet, "Navi 10," and "Navi 14" GPU dies. The company could continue to order 7 nm DUV until these products reach EOL; while also introducing the new "Renoir" APU die on the process. The foundry's new 7 nm+ (EUV) node will be utilized for "Zen 3" chiplets and "Navi 2#" GPU dies in 2020.

Currently, the top-5 customers for TSMC 7 nm are Apple, HiSilicon, Qualcomm, AMD, and MediaTek. Barring AMD, the others in the top-5 build mobile SoCs or 4G/5G modem chips on the node. AMD is expected to top the list as it scales up orders with TSMC. In the first half of 2020, TSMC's monthly output for 7 nm is expected to grow to 110,000 wafers per month (wpm). Apple's migration to 5 nm in 2H-2020, coupled with capacity-addition could take TSMC's 7 nm output to 140,000 wpm. AMD has reportedly booked the entire capacity-addition for 30,000 wpm, taking its allocation up to 21% in 2H-2020. Qualcomm is switching to Samsung for its next-generation SoCs and modems designed for 7 nm EUV. NVIDIA, too, is expected to built its next-gen 7 nm EUV GPUs on Samsung instead of TSMC. These moves by big players could free up significant foundry allocation at TSMC for AMD's volumes to grow in 2020.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today introduced Galaxy Book Flex α (alpha), a new variant of Galaxy Book Flex that offers long-lasting battery, immersive QLED display, and exquisite design features at a competitive price-point. Today's consumers are constantly striving to blend their personal and work lives - and everything in between. Galaxy Book Flex α is the latest installment in Samsung's new line of Galaxy Computing devices, which combine the productivity and premium experience of a laptop with the mobility and flexibility of a smartphone.

"We all have different routines, and we need technology that works the way we work, and with our new Galaxy Computing line, we're giving consumers the ability to choose a PC that meets their unique needs," said Alanna Cotton, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Samsung Electronics America. "Galaxy Book Flex α is a stellar new variant of the Galaxy Computing line, offering many of the best design, hardware, and display features at an accessible price-point."

According to the sources over at DigiTimes, NAND flash prices are set to rise by up to 40% in 2020. This report is coming from sources over at memory chipmakers, presumably some of the biggest players like SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung. If the prediction realizes, consumers will see a significant price jump for products based on NAND flash memory like most of today's solid-state drives. For reference, earlier today we also reported that a minute long power outage at Samsung created damage worth millions of Dollars in DRAM and NAND flash memory.

This incident alone could help contribute to the price rise of NAND memory in 2020. Other possible reasons may include an inefficient supply of materials used by NAND flash production lines or a simple supply-demand ratio, which would hurt prices of NAND flash long-therm. However, we hope that the underlying problems for this predicted price rise can be worked out and that companies like Samsung, which got power outage accident, can supplement the capacity loss during the unplanned turn of events.

A tiny minute-long power-outage halted production at a Samsung Electronics plant in Hwaseong, South Korea, according to a Reuters report citing Korean news agency Yonhap. This stopped some production lines of DRAM and NAND flash memory. A source with "direct knowledge of the matter" told Reuters that the outage likely caused millions of Dollars in losses to Samsung. Semiconductor manufacturing in general is a very power-sensitive process, and a stoppage at any of its manufacturing stages can result in wasted batches; not to mention the time lost to recovery. For instance, a 30-minute power outage in 2018 inflicted a $43.32 million loss to Samsung.

The cause of the power outage on Tuesday afternoon (31st December), is said to be a fault with a regional transmission cable. It will take Samsung up to two days (mid-Thursday) to get the production line rolling again. On the flipside, the resulting drop in output could help Samsung push out its swelling NAND flash and DRAM inventory, reports Yonhap, citing an analyst.

Baidu, a leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, and Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that Baidu's first cloud-to-edge AI accelerator, Baidu KUNLUN, has completed its development and will be mass-produced early next year. Baidu KUNLUN chip is built on the company's advanced XPU, a home-grown neural processor architecture for cloud, edge, and AI, as well as Samsung's 14-nanometer (nm) process technology with its I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution.

The chip offers 512 gigabytes per second (GBps) memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 Tera operations per second (TOPS) at 150 watts. In addition, the new chip allows Ernie, a pre-training model for natural language processing, to infer three times faster than the conventional GPU/FPGA-accelerating model. Leveraging the chip's limit-pushing computing power and power efficiency, Baidu can effectively support a wide variety of functions including large-scale AI workloads, such as search ranking, speech recognition, image processing, natural language processing, autonomous driving, and deep learning platforms like PaddlePaddle.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited, also known as TSMC shortly became Asia's biggest and the most valuable company with a market cap of over 8.02 trillion New Taiwan Dollars, which roughly translates to 262.75 billion US Dollars. Becoming the biggest Asian company, TSMC's market capitalization has now surpassed Samsung for the first time in the history of company existence.

The underlying reasons for becoming a company that TSMC is today, are plenty. Firstly, they are providing customers with the flexibility of choosing any manufacturing node, whatever it is the latest 7 nm or the older ones like 180 nm. They have a choice whatever they want to use something older and less expensive or something newer for high-performance and lower power. Additionally, TSMC is re-investing a big part of its profits into research and development efforts to stay competitive and deliver only the best technology to its customers, on time.

Samsung has reportedly secured a "PC CPU" manufacturing order from Intel. This would entail Intel using Samsung's fabs to manufacture its processors. "PC CPU" is a broad term, interchangeable with "client CPU," and could include both notebook and desktop processors, spanning the "S," "H," "U," and "Y" silicon variants (mainstream desktop, mainstream notebook, ultrabook, and ultra low-power, respectively). Samsung's bouquet of contract-manufacturing covers not just silicon fabrication across 14 nm, but also sub 10 nm nodes, but also provides other key stages of processor manufacturing, including bumping and packaging. Intel would want minimal expenditure in adapting its chip designs to Samsung's nodes

In her November 20 letter addressed to Intel's customers, executive V-P and GM for sales, marketing, and communications, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, mentioned that in addition to Intel's own manufacturing facilities, the company is roping in "foundries" (third-party silicon fabrication companies) to meet demand. Samsung and TSMC lead the foundry business, followed by the likes of GlobalFoundries, UMC, etc.Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

Intel is set to become the world's largest semiconductor supplier of 2019, according to the research from IC Insights. Intel held a crown for the largest semiconductor supplier since 1992, until 2018 when Samsung overtook it because of the booming DRAM business driven by high demand and not enough supply. Being Samsung's main business, any DRAM price/demand fluctuation was having a massive impact on its business. Due to high demand and high pricing, Samsung saw a massive revenue jump which resulted in a new king of the world's largest semiconductor supplier.

However, having seen predictions for a fall of 34% for this year, the decrease in demand will result in lower revenue for all DRAM market suppliers. SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung are expecting their revenues to decline around 29% on a year-over-year basis given the situation. This is resulting in lower revenue for Samsung than Intel has, and makes Intel the king of semiconductors once more. Intel's revenue is expected to reach around 70 billion USD, which is similar to last year's numbers.

Today, Samsung's foundry division, dedicated to the manufacturing of DRAM chips, is facing challenges from mistakes that happened a few weeks ago. Those mistakes are in the form of contamination of the clean rooms, where all the tools necessary for the manufacturing of DRAM chips on 200 mm wafers got infected, and now Samsung is taking a multi-million dollar loss because the new wafers have to be scrapped.

Clean rooms are essential for the semiconductor manufacturing process, because they keep all the pollutants away from silicon, keeping silicon clean and ready for use. However, Samsung has not managed to keep a clean room for its DRAM manufacturing facility working with 200 mm wafers for 1x nm-class DRAM chips. The tools used for wafer processing have been contaminated and, therefore, the wafers themselves because of their interactions. Samsung has admitted that they have lost around "several billion South Korean won," resulting in millions of US dollars. The re-assuring thing that this will not significantly impact the DRAM market is that production is now going as planned, and the issue is sorted out, so we can hope this doesn't have any big impact on the DRAM prices.

According to the information obtained by Statesman, Samsung Electronics is shutting down its custom CPU design group within the company. Known for the designs of mobile SoCs like Exynos 9110, 9810 and 9820 just to name a few, it seems that there will be no more future developments of custom Exynos SoC for Samsung's mobile devices. Instead of designing its own cores, Samsung is now going to use ARM's reference A7x series of CPUs based on ARM v8 instruction set, with A76 or A77 being chosen as likely candidates for the high-performance workloads.

So far it is still unknown what will be inside new processors like the upcoming Exynos 9830 SoC, meant to power the next generation of mobile devices. But if things are like Samsung states, there should be reference ARM cores like A77 inside the new chip. Already announced chips like Exynos 990 are supposed to use a custom CPU core, while all future revisions of any new Exynos SoC will license a design IP from ARM. This decision is supposedly a by-product of being unable to compete with offers from Qualcomm, which offers faster "Snapdragon" SoCs. Samsung already uses the Snapdragon SoCs in its phones for the US and Chinese markets, while the rest of the world is getting an Exynos equivalent with the purchase of the same mobile device.