Today, Lenovo announced the introduction of ThinkShield Firmware Assurance as part of its portfolio of enterprise-grade cybersecurity solutions. ThinkShield Firmware Assurance is one of the only computer OEM solutions to enable deep visibility and protection below the operating system (OS) by embracing Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) component-level visibility to generate more accurate and actionable risk management insights.

As a security paradigm, ZTA explicitly identifies users and devices to grant appropriate levels of access so a business can operate with less risk and minimal friction. ZTA is a critical framework to reduce risk as organizations endeavor to complete Zero-Trust implementations.

Following the successful release of the X'TRA GO (GC515), AVerMedia is proud to announce its additions to the GO series: the VERSATI go (AM310G2), a USB cardioid microphone, and the FLEXI go (BA311L), a multi-angle mic arm. Besides embodying the GO series's mobility and versatility design concept, the VERSATI go and FLEXI go further excel in their ease of use.

VERSATI go: Exceptional Clarity, Versatile Application
The VERSATI go (AM310G2) microphone is designed for creators seeking exceptional sound quality. With an enhanced 96 kHz/24-bit sample rate, it captures richer, more natural audio, ensuring every word is delivered with clarity for recording. The cardioid pickup pattern focuses on capturing users' voices while minimizing background noise, so users can be heard clearly in any environment. The USB Type-C connection provides convenience, allowing users to seamlessly integrate it into their setups.

Intel today announced that its lead products on Intel 18A, Panther Lake (AI PC client processor) and Clearwater Forest (server processor), are out of the fab and have powered-on and booted operating systems. These milestones were achieved less than two quarters after tape-out, with both products on track to start production in 2025. The company also announced that the first external customer is expected to tape out on Intel 18A in the first half of next year.

"We are pioneering multiple systems foundry technologies for the AI era and delivering a full stack of innovation that's essential to the next generation of products for Intel and our foundry customers. We are encouraged by our progress and are working closely with customers to bring Intel 18A to market in 2025." -Kevin O'Buckley, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services

TerraMaster, a professional brand focused on providing innovative storage products for homes and businesses, recently introduced the TPC Backupper, a free Windows backup and synchronization software for TDAS users. It allows easy backup of the operating system, settings, applications, and any data on a Windows PC. The tool facilitates the quick synchronization of files to another location, meeting users' comprehensive data protection needs.

TPC Backupper Key Features

Simple and Efficient
With its diverse backup features and user-friendly interface, TPC Backupper ensures the constant protection of your system and data security, performing quick recovery when needed. Most importantly, it is completely free for personal use.

Today we are thrilled to announce the latest innovation that promises to transform your gaming experience: Razer Cortex: Add-Ons. Our commitment at Razer has always been to push the boundaries of gaming technology and provide our users with the tools they need to succeed, whether they're casual gamers or competitive athletes. Today, we're taking another giant leap forward in fulfilling that promise, with the introduction of Cortex: Add-Ons - a new feature, crafted with the aim of maximizing your gaming experience.

What is Razer Cortex: Add-Ons?
Cortex: Add-Ons is your one-stop destination for all your gaming plug-in needs. We understand that gaming is not one-size-fits-all, which is why we're bringing you a platform that caters to your individual needs. Whether it's optimizing your performance, sharing your gaming highlights, or enriching your gaming sessions with unique tools, we've got you covered.

Today, Intel announced it surpassed 500 AI models running optimized on new Intel Core Ultra processors - the industry's premier AI PC processor available in the market today, featuring new AI experiences, immersive graphics and optimal battery life. This significant milestone is a result of Intel's investment in client AI, the AI PC transformation, framework optimizations and AI tools including OpenVINO toolkit. The 500 models, which can be deployed across the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU), are available across popular industry sources, including OpenVINO Model Zoo, Hugging Face, ONNX Model Zoo and PyTorch. The models draw from categories of local AI inferencing, including large language, diffusion, super resolution, object detection, image classification/segmentation, computer vision and others.

"Intel has a rich history of working with the ecosystem to bring AI applications to client devices, and today we celebrate another strong chapter in the heritage of client AI by surpassing 500 pre-trained AI models running optimized on Intel Core Ultra processors. This unmatched selection reflects our commitment to building not only the PC industry's most robust toolchain for AI developers, but a rock-solid foundation AI software users can implicitly trust."
-Robert Hallock, Intel vice president and general manager of AI and technical marketing in the Client Computing Group

According to Bloomberg's latest investigation, Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) have submitted patents on the self-aligned quadruple patterning (SAQP) pattern etching technique to enable SMIC to achieve 5 nm semiconductor production. The two Chinese giants have been working with the Deep Ultra Violet (DUV) machinery to develop a pattern etching technique allowing SMIC to produce a node compliant with the US exporting rules while maintaining the density improvements from the previously announced 7 nm node. In the 7 nm process, SMIC most likely used self-aligned dual patterning (SADP) with DUV tools, but for the increased density of the 5 nm node, a doubling to SAQP is required. In semiconductor manufacturing, lithography tools take multiple turns to etch the design of the silicon wafer.

Especially with smaller nodes getting ever-increasing density requirements, it is becoming challenging to etch sub-10 nm designs using DUV tools. That is where Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) tools from ASML come into play. With EUV, the wavelengths of the lithography printers are 14 times smaller than DUV, at only 13.5 nm, compared to 193 nm of ArF immersion DUV systems. This means that without EUV, SMIC has to look into alternatives like SAQP to increase the density of its nodes and, as a result, include more complications and possibly lower yields. As an example, Intel tried to use SAQP in its first 10 nm nodes to reduce reliance on EUV, which resulted in a series of delays and complications, eventually pushing Intel into EUV. While Huawei and SMIC may develop a more efficient solution for SAQP, the use of EUV is imminent as the regular DUV can not keep up with the increasing density of semiconductor nodes. Given that ASML can't ship its EUV machinery to China, Huawei is supposedly developing its own EUV machines, but will likely take a few more years to show.

Dell Technologies is strengthening its collaboration with NVIDIA to help enterprises adopt AI technologies. By expanding the Dell Generative AI Solutions portfolio, including with the new Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, organizations can accelerate integration of their data, AI tools and on-premises infrastructure to maximize their generative AI (GenAI) investments. "Our enterprise customers are looking for an easy way to implement AI solutions—that is exactly what Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are delivering," said Michael Dell, founder and CEO, Dell Technologies. "Through our combined efforts, organizations can seamlessly integrate data with their own use cases and streamline the development of customized GenAI models."

"AI factories are central to creating intelligence on an industrial scale," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "Together, NVIDIA and Dell are helping enterprises create AI factories to turn their proprietary data into powerful insights."

With Mods (short for modifications), you can tailor your gaming experience to your unique preferences. Uploaded by creators all over the world, you can pick between anything to create the city of your dreams. Along with Beach Properties, the first wave of Cities: Skylines II Modding will be available. The Beta release of Modding will initially support Map and Code mods. With the Map Editor, you can make maps with the Terraforming Tools you're used to, import hightmaps to create highly accurate depictions of your hometown, and upload your creations to Paradox Mods.

With the Code Tools, you can show off your coding skills and create Code Mods to meet your heart's desire! Future updates will improve on these tools and come to include support for Asset Mods. As we've talked about before, there will be updates to these tools that we are currently working on, and we will see some updates before the 1.0 release. We will be taking your opinion into consideration when we continue to work on the editor and are looking forward to seeing the feedback that you might have. If you're curious on what the process of Modding will look like you can already check it out on the Cities: Skylines II Wiki here.

2024 will be the year generative AI gets personal, the CEOs of NVIDIA and HP said today in a fireside chat, unveiling new laptops that can build, test and run large language models. "This is a renaissance of the personal computer," said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at HP Amplify, a gathering in Las Vegas of about 1,500 resellers and distributors. "The work of creators, designers and data scientists is going to be revolutionized by these new workstations."

Greater Speed and Security
"AI is the biggest thing to come to the PC in decades," said HP's Enrique Lores, in the runup to the announcement of what his company billed as "the industry's largest portfolio of AI PCs and workstations." Compared to running their AI work in the cloud, the new systems will provide increased speed and security while reducing costs and energy, Lores said in a keynote at the event. New HP ZBooks provide a portfolio of mobile AI workstations powered by a full range of NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation GPUs. Entry-level systems with the NVIDIA RTX 500 Ada Generation Laptop GPU let users run generative AI apps and tools wherever they go. High-end models pack the RTX 5000 to deliver up to 682 TOPS, so they can create and run LLMs locally, using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to connect to their content for results that are both personalized and private.

Cyberattacks are an existential risk, with 89% of organizations ranking ransomware as one of the top five threats to their viability, according to a November 2023 report from TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, a leading analyst firm. And this is just one of many risks to corporate data—insider threats, data exfiltration, hardware failures, and natural disasters also pose significant danger. Moreover, as the just-released 2024 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index states, as the generative AI market becomes more established, it could trigger the maturity of AI as an attack surface, mobilizing even further investment in new tools from cybercriminals. The report notes that enterprises should also recognize that their existing underlying infrastructure is a gateway to their AI models that doesn't require novel tactics from attackers to target.

To help clients counter these threats with earlier and more accurate detection, we're announcing new AI-enhanced versions of the IBM FlashCore Module technology available inside new IBM Storage FlashSystem products and a new version of IBM Storage Defender software to help organizations improve their ability to detect and respond to ransomware and other cyberattacks that threaten their data. The newly available fourth generation of FlashCore Module (FCM) technology enables artificial intelligence capabilities within the IBM Storage FlashSystem family. FCM works with Storage Defender to provide end-to-end data resilience across primary and secondary workloads with AI-powered sensors designed for earlier notification of cyber threats to help enterprises recover faster.

HWiNFO v7.73-5370 Beta was released yesterday—the newly updated version includes a fully integrated On-Screen Display (OSD) feature. In the past, users have had to rely on external tools—for example; RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS)—to get vital information displayed on their monitor(s) of choice. Martin, HWiNFO's main author, revealed that this new addition is based on a Team Blue toolset—his February 13 official forum post stated: "(this) feature is based on Intel PresentMon and allows showing any value as a text or graph (with multiple values). Position, text font, size, weight and colors can be individually defined. It should work with any engine like DirectX 11, 12, OpenGL, Vulkan. The OSD is automatically placed over the most graphics intensive application currently running but it can also be manually targeted." Five days later he followed up with further information—HWInfo64's new OSD is "available in HWiNFO64 only," therefore making it incompatible with Windows XP. Similarly, MSI's Afterburner 4.6.6 Beta landed a week and a bit ago, without support for Microsoft's 2001-vintage operating system.

Martin reckons that the change could affect Windows Vista users: "Use legacy HWiNFO32 on these systems. We don't anticipate that these systems will benefit from 64-bit applications, nor require support of latest HWiNFO64 versions. So the impact of this (sad) limitation should be minimal. In case there will be a reasonable demand for new versions of HWiNFO64 on XP64 it's still possible to build such versions (without OSD support), but currently we don't expect to make such extra effort." Additionally, the popular monitoring application's latest upgrade brings enhanced sensor monitoring for ASUS NUC systems, improved health monitoring on a selection of NVMe drives (connected via Intel RST), and enhanced sensor monitoring on the ASUS TUF GAMING Z790-PRO WIFI motherboard model.

Game streaming and content creation is continuously expanding with new tools. Gamers desire products that push the boundaries of play and allow for more customization options than ever. Customizable lighting has been one of the most effective ways to add a unique personality to devices and experiences. It's also a powerful force for immersion, creativity and learning, and sets your game stream apart from the others. LIGHTSYNC RGB empowers users with endless lighting customization. Now, with the addition of Dynamic Windows, LIGHTSYNC just got bigger, better, and brighter. Shine on!"

Dynamic Lighting empowers users to get the most out of their RGB devices with one consistent experience across all compatible devices. This new standard provides a new way for Logitech G users to configure their LIGHTSYNC capable devices by leveraging Windows 11 to directly send lighting to their devices. Dynamic Lighting allows for third party applications on Windows to directly address RGB-enabled LEDs on connected devices. Any compatible device can receive lighting events, and any developer can build applications using this standard to control their lighting environment.

A research paper released this week describes ways generative AI can assist one of the most complex engineering efforts: designing semiconductors. The work demonstrates how companies in highly specialized fields can train large language models (LLMs) on their internal data to build assistants that increase productivity.

Few pursuits are as challenging as semiconductor design. Under a microscope, a state-of-the-art chip like an NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU (above) looks like a well-planned metropolis, built with tens of billions of transistors, connected on streets 10,000x thinner than a human hair. Multiple engineering teams coordinate for as long as two years to construct one of these digital mega cities. Some groups define the chip's overall architecture, some craft and place a variety of ultra-small circuits, and others test their work. Each job requires specialized methods, software programs and computer languages.

Synopsys today announced it has expanded its collaboration with Arm to provide optimized IP and EDA solutions for the newest Arm technology, including the Arm Neoverse V2 platform and Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystem (CSS). Synopsys has joined Arm Total Design where Synopsys will leverage their deep design expertise, the Synopsys.ai full-stack AI-driven EDA suite, and Synopsys Interface, Security, and Silicon Lifecycle Management IP to help mutual customers speed development of their Arm-based CSS solutions. The expanded partnership builds on three decades of collaboration to enable mutual customers to quickly develop specialized silicon at lower cost, with less risk and faster time to market.

"With Arm Total Design, our aim is to enable rapid innovation on Arm Neoverse CSS and engage critical ecosystem expertise at every stage of SoC development," said Mohamed Awad, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm. "Our deep technical collaboration with Synopsys to deliver pre-integrated and validated IP and EDA tools will help our mutual customers address the industry's most complex computing challenges with specialized compute."

Hardware cybersecurity pioneer and industrial NAND storage specialist, Flexxon, today announced the launch of its latest security product, Xsign. Now available globally, the Xsign provides enhanced security through an innovative approach to unlocking sensitive data reserved only for authorized personnel.

With the use of the Xsign hardware security key, organisations will be provided with a tailored software platform that syncs only with the Xsign key, thereby granting access to pre-defined users. Beyond its function as a security key, the Xsign also operates as a traditional storage card, equipped with Flexxon's industry leading reliability and performance. Key beneficiaries of the solution include industries that handle personal and sensitive data like the healthcare, finance, and government and defense sectors.

TSMC today announced the new 3Dblox 2.0 open standard and major achievements of its Open Innovation Platform (OIP) 3DFabric Alliance at the TSMC 2023 OIP Ecosystem Forum. The 3Dblox 2.0 features early 3D IC design capability that aims to significantly boost design efficiency, while the 3DFabric Alliance continues to drive memory, substrate, testing, manufacturing, and packaging integration. TSMC continues to push the envelope of 3D IC innovation, making its comprehensive 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies more accessible to every customer.

"As the industry shifted toward embracing 3D IC and system-level innovation, the need for industry-wide collaboration has become even more essential than it was when we launched OIP 15 years ago," said Dr. L.C. Lu, TSMC fellow and vice president of Design and Technology Platform. "As our sustained collaboration with OIP ecosystem partners continues to flourish, we're enabling customers to harness TSMC's leading process and 3DFabric technologies to reach an entirely new level of performance and power efficiency for the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and mobile applications."

The introduction of Generative AI (GAI) has significantly increased the demand for advanced semiconductor chips, drawing increased attention to the development of complex calculations for large-scale AI models and high-speed transmission interfaces. To assist the industry in grasping the key to high-end semiconductor manufacturing and integration capabilities, the Heterogeneous Integrated Chiplet System Package (Hi-CHIP) Alliance brings together leading semiconductor companies from Taiwan and around the world to provide comprehensive services, spanning from packaging design, testing and verification, to pilot production. Since its establishment in 2021, the alliance has accumulated important industry players as its members, including EVG, Kulicke and Soffa (K&S), USI, Raytek Semiconductor, Unimicron, DuPont, and Brewer Science. Looking forward, the alliance is set to actively explore its global market potential.

Dr. Shih-Chieh Chang, General Director of Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories at ITRI and Chairman of the Hi-CHIP Alliance, indicated that advanced manufacturing processes have led to a considerable increase in IC design cycles and costs. Multi-dimensional chip design and heterogeneous integrated packaging architecture are key tools to tackle this demand in semiconductors. On top of that, the advent of GAI such as ChatGPT, which demands substantial computing power and transmission speed, requires even higher levels of integration capacity in chip manufacturing. ITRI has been committed to developing manufacturing technologies and upgrading materials and equipment to enhance heterogeneous integration technologies. Achievements include the fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP), 2.5 and 3D chips, embedded interposer connections (EIC), and programmable packages. With both local and foreign semiconductor manufacturer members, the Hi-CHIP Alliance is establishing an advanced packaging process production line to provide an integrated one-stop service platform.

ASML's CEO, Peter Wennink, has announced that his team will be shipping out the first pilot tool (a high-NA EUV system) in its next product line before the end of this year. Reuters reports that supply chain problems have caused hold-ups along the way, but the Dutch multinational corporation is confident in delivering its next-gen opening salvo—these high numerical aperture EUV machines are large enough to warrant transportation via truck, and their per unit cost is over €300 million (~$322 million). The most demanding of chipmakers will be snapping up ASML's behemoth apparatuses in order to produce improved (i.e. smaller) chips over the next ten years.

Wennink spoke to Reuters at an industry event (that took place in Eindhoven): "A few suppliers had some difficulties in actually ramping up and also giving us the right level of technological quality, so that led to some delay. But in fact the first shipment is still this year." The CEO expects to see a growth in revenue thanks to burgeoning interest in AI-oriented silicon—new manufacturing facilities in Arizona and Taiwan are primed to adopt high-NA EUV machines in 2024. Key clients will be experimenting with these new machines (EXE:5200), before a full push into commercial production—logic chip makers have demanded that they get priority access over memory manufacturers. Intel has made declarations, in the recent past, that its foundries are first in line to receive ASML's latest and greatest tools.

Today, McAfee Corp., a global leader in online protection, announced the launch of its new McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard product available at Staples stores nationwide. McAfee's Privacy & Identity Guard will help Staples customers safeguard their identity and privacy online. In the U.S. 70% of adults are concerned about their ability to keep their information private. And more than half (52%) of U.S. adults want to be more in control of personal information and data online. Therefore, regaining control of personal data, and the data often most sought after by cybercriminals, has never been more important.

Staples customers will have access to McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard and will be able to proactively monitor and remove data online to help prevent potential identity theft and fraud. With an industry-leading set of features, McAfee Privacy & Identity Guard provides visibility into the risky places personal information is available, including the dark web, data broker sites, and sites that hold data tied to unused or old accounts. Customers can then take action to reduce the amount of personal data online and, in turn, lower the risk of identity theft.

China has sharply increased imports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment in recent months, customs data reveals. The country's purchases of chip production tools surged to record highs of nearly $5 billion in June and July, a 70% increase versus the same period last year, which amounted to $2.9 billion. The spike comes right before export restrictions on advanced chipmaking equipment are implemented by the U.S. and its allies. The moves aim to slow China's technological advancement, but Chinese chipmakers are stockpiling to avoid disruptions. Much of the equipment comes from the Netherlands and Japan, which have imposed licensing requirements on certain tool exports. While it's unclear how many are affected, the rush suggests China wants to expand production capacity and buffer against supply chain issues.

Chinese firms like SMIC and YMTC rely heavily on U.S., Dutch, and Japanese suppliers for cutting-edge manufacturing equipment. They are utilizing imported tools to boost the output of mature chips not subject to controls, particularly for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and industrial applications. Significantly, imports from the Netherlands doubled as lithography machines were delivered to Chinese foundries. Purchases from Japan also rose as companies procured etching tools and wafer coaters after 2020 U.S. restrictions. Newly established foundries backed by local governments contributed as Beijing pushed chip production expansions. Despite export control challenges, China aims to keep advancing its semiconductor capabilities. The import spike highlights intensified efforts to build self-sufficiency using older technology not covered by current limits.

Microsoft today announced that Python integration is happening, and it is coming to the latest Excel version. Through a new partnership with Anaconda, Excel will natively support executing Python code and accessing popular Python data science libraries like Pandas, Matplotlib, and Statsmodels. This integration will empower Excel users to leverage the full capabilities of Python for data transformation, analysis, and visualization without switching between separate tools. The Python integration will be available starting today in preview form for Microsoft 365 Insider beta channel members. It is being added as part of Excel's Power Query data preparation feature.

To access it, Insiders must install the latest Excel preview build, then look under the Formulas tab for the new "Insert Python" option. This will allow them to write and execute Python scripts directly in Excel worksheets. The limited-time integration preview will revert to reduced functionality once it expires. At that point, users must purchase a license to regain full access. This reflects Microsoft's strategic move to position Python as an alternative to VBA for programming and automation in Excel. With this new level of Python integration, Excel continues to evolve as a versatile hub for data analysis tasks, reducing the need to switch between separate Python and Excel workflows. Anaconda provides documentation and training resources to help users take full advantage of the new capabilities.Update 10:58 UTC: Just to clarify: only the "Office 365" cloud version receives Python integration—no improvements for the classic offline version.

Many of you are most likely familiar with iFixit's various toolkits, even if you don't happen to own one, as they've become quite famous all around the world as affordable, yet good quality tools. Now Corsair has decided to jump into the toolkit marketspace with its PC DIY Precision Toolkit, which is very similar to iFixit's Mako Driver Kit. Both kits come with a flexible extension rod, but where Corsair bests iFixit is when it comes to the actual driver handle, as it has a much better grip and the top cap appears to be made of aluminium rather than plastic. The box is also very similar, as both kits are kept closed with magnets and both have a magnetic insert in the lid which will hold your screws in place while you disassemble whatever it is you're trying to fix or upgrade.

The two toolkits also differ in terms of the kind of bits you get, with Corsair providing some extremely fine tool sizes, especially for Philips and pentalobe compared to iFixit, although iFixit has smaller Torx sizes in their kit. Corsair also offers more socket bits than iFixit, but loses some other bits like the SIM ejection bit and a magnetic pick-up bit. Overall Corsair provides 65 bits vs 64 for iFixit, so it really comes down to which bits make the most sense for you. Corsair also charges US$5 less for their kit compared to iFixit, with an MSRP of US$34.99.

We are constantly improving our safety measures and bringing more systems and tools in place that empower players to respectfully interact with one another - because everyone deserves a place to comfortably be themselves online, free from harassment and bullying. One of the most common questions we get from players through feedback, posts, and appeals is how repeated enforcements impact their gameplay, how they escalate, what they escalate to, and how they know when their account is back in good standing. To help address this, we are introducing a new enforcement strike system.

The new system attaches strikes to every enforcement, ranging in severity based on inappropriate activity. Each player will now have a view of their enforcement history including strikes and the overall impact these have on their player record. This revised system gives players a better understanding of enforcement severity and the cumulative effect of multiple enforcements. Enforcement transparency is about giving players clarity into how their behavior impacts their experience. Our content moderation efforts are not changing as a result of the new enforcement strike system.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solutions, unveils the next generation of ColorPro Wheel - an innovative multi-functional color calibrator. Bundled with the VP2776 and VP2786-4K Professional Monitors, the ColorPro Wheel's color calibration and OSD control features are complemented by integrated access to Pantone's digital libraries with hotkey control of compatible creative editing software. This harmonization of hardware and software provides ultimate color control and empowers seamless creative workflows for professionals.

"Precise color management is of utmost importance to creators and therefore remains a top priority for ColorPro, our professional monitor solutions," said Oscar Lin, General Manager of the Monitor Business Unit at ViewSonic. "We are delighted to further strengthen our partnership with Pantone, providing creators with the freedom and convenience of accessing digital color data to elevate their creative endeavors. The updated ColorPro Wheel empowers creators to achieve unparalleled color excellence and enhance their workflows through its human-centered design."