In October, Washington announced some of the broadest export controls yet - requiring licences for companies exporting chips to China using US tools or software, no matter where they're made in the world.

Washington's measures also prevent US citizens and green card holders from working for certain Chinese chip companies. Green card holders are US permanent residents who have the right to work in the country.

It is cutting off a key pipeline of American talent to China which will affect the development of high-end semiconductors.

Why is the US doing this?

Advanced chips are used to power supercomputers, artificial intelligence and military hardware.

The US says China's use of the technology poses a threat to its own national security.

Alan Estevez, undersecretary at the US Commerce Department announced the rules, saying his intention was to ensure the US was doing everything it could to prevent "sensitive technologies with military applications" from being acquired by China.

"The threat environment is always changing and we are updating our policies today to make sure we're addressing the challenges," he said.

Meanwhile, China has called the controls "technology terrorism".

Countries in Asia that produce chips - such as Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea - have raised concerns about how this bitter battle is affecting the global supply chain.

And there were three significant developments in the chip conflict over the past week.

More Chinese firms on 'entity list'

The Biden administration has added 36 more Chinese companies, including major chipmaker YMTC to Washington's "entity list".

It means American companies will need government permission to sell certain technologies to them, and that permission is difficult to secure.

The US restrictions have broad implications. Last week, UK-based computer chip designer Arm confirmed that it was not selling its most advanced designs to Chinese firms including tech giant Alibaba because of US and UK controls.

Arm said it was "committed to adhering to all applicable export laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates."

China complains to WTO

China has filed a complaint against the US with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over its export controls on semiconductors and other related technology.

This is the first WTO case Beijing has brought against the US since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

In its WTO filing, China alleged that the US is abusing export controls to maintain "its leadership in science, technology, engineering and manufacturing sectors".

It added that US actions threatened "the stability of the global industrial supply chains".

The US said in response that the trade body was "not the appropriate forum" to settle concerns related to national security.

US Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea Kendler said "US national security interests require that we act decisively to deny access to advanced technologies."

The complaint specifies that the US has imposed restrictions on the export of approximately 2,800 Chinese goods, but only 1,800 of these were allowed under international trade rules.

The United States has 60 days to try to resolve the matter. If not, China will be allowed to request for a panel to review its case.

Earlier this month, the WTO ruled that US tariffs on steel and aluminium that were imposed by the US under former President Donald Trump violated global trade rules.

Two-thirds of all the goods China sells to the US are subject to tariffs.

The US said it "strongly rejects" the ruling and has no intention of removing the measures.

Talks with Japan and the Netherlands

Japan and the Netherlands could possibly impose export controls on China - limiting the ability of Japanese and Dutch companies to sell advanced products to the Chinese market.

On Monday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said the US had discussions with the two major suppliers of chip making equipment around adopting similar US controls on Beijing.

"I'm not going to get ahead of any announcements," Mr Sullivan told reporters. "I will just say that we are very pleased with the candour, the substance and the intensity of the discussions."

< View the video at the source page. >

From 2019: How the semiconductor shortage could be a problem for you

The US controls do not only target chipmakers. They also affect manufacturers of chip making equipment.

Big companies in Japan or the Netherlands could lose out on a large and lucrative buyer of their high end machines.

Peter Wennink, the chief executive of Dutch chip equipment maker ASML Holding NV, questioned if the Netherlands should restrict exports to China.

Mr Wennink said that the Dutch government, in response to US pressure, had already stopped ASML from selling its most advanced lithography machines to China since 2019.

"Maybe [the US thinks] we should come across the table, but ASML has already sacrificed," he told Dutch media.

What lies ahead

Chipmakers are also under pressure to make more advanced chips to support new products.

For instance, Apple's new laptop will contain chips from industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company measuring 3 nanometres. To put that into perspective - a human hair measures roughly 50,000 to 100,000 nanometres.

Analysts say US controls could put China further behind other chip producing countries, even though Beijing has openly said it wants to prioritise the manufacture of semiconductors and become a superpower in the sector.

The US has already significantly isolated China's chip industry, even though the latest measures are not as sweeping as those announced in October.

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Although developers and makers of chips are yet to receive grants enabled by the CHIPS and Science act, its announcement and subsequent enactment have already attracted some $200 billion of private investments in the U.S. semiconductor sector, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, a lobbying group for the industry.. The new projects will impact both chip production as well as electronics manufacturing in the USA. 

The CHIPS act was first introduced in the Spring of 2020 and immediately got attention of the semiconductor industry leaders. TSMC was among the first to announce a major new fab project in Arizona in mid-May 2020 and since then over 40 new semiconductor ecosystem projects were announced all across the U.S. Eventually, these fabs and other production facilities will enable some 40,000 direct well-paid jobs.  

When it comes to actual semiconductor fabrication plants, 13 new fabs are being built in the U.S. and nine are expanding, which revives not only American semiconductor industry, but will also impact production of electronics in the USA. Ten more new fab phases have been announced by various makers like Intel, TSMC and Texas Instruments. 

The new fabs will produce everything from simple power management ICs (PMICs) and audio amplifiers to innovative memory to advanced CPUs, GPUs and SoCs for a variety of applications. 

In addition, 20 equipment and materials supplier projects that will source gas, chemicals, tools, and wafers for chip fabs are being built in the USA with 12 of them set to be located in Arizona, where Intel and TSMC are setting up their new production facilities. 

 

 

Producing chips in the U.S. is important from national security, supply chain reliability and economic points of view. But U.S. made chips will also inspire more electronics production in the country. While we hardly expect companies like Apple, Dell or HPE to transfer manufacturing of their PCs and smartphones to the U.S., some other makers can do just that. Of course, because modern production is heavily automated, production facilities still employ people. 

The SIA claims that for each U.S. worker directly employed by the semiconductor industry, an additional 5.7 jobs are created in the wider U.S. economy. 

"SIA looks forward to working with the Commerce Department to ensure the CHIPS Act is implemented in an effective, efficient, and timely manner," a statement by the association reads. "Doing so will help reinvigorate U.S. chip production and innovation and deliver major benefits for America’s economy, job creation, national security, supply chain resilience, and technology leadership."

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“We’ve created the Google Maps of editing the genome,” said co-corresponding author Yong Cheng, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Hematology. “With this tool, we provide a new approach to identify places to safely integrate a gene cassette. We created step-by-step directions, so you can follow the steps and easily find safe harbor sites in specific tissues.”

Gene therapy, in which a patient is given a functioning copy of a dysfunctional gene, has demonstrated success in treating some genetic disorders. However, there have been safety concerns in the field, such as the unintentional activation of an oncogene that caused cancer in some patients.

As a result, scientists have looked for “safe harbor sites” in the genome, or locations where a gene may be introduced without causing cancer or other issues. The researchers developed a pipeline that searches for safe harbor sites using genomic and epigenetic information from specific tissues, such as blood cells.

Co-first author Dewan Shrestha (left), corresponding author Yong Cheng, Ph.D. (center), and co-author Ruiqiong Wu (right). Credit: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

A novel way to find safe harbor sites

The tool compares the DNA sequences that are highly variable between healthy people, using data from the 1000 Genomes Project. The researchers reasoned that if a DNA region is often deleted or inserted in healthy individuals, it could probably also be safely modified by gene therapy.

“Our method is a new way to identify genomic safe harbor sites in a tissue-specific manner,” Cheng said. “Nobody has tried it from this angle. Our first step was to find the genomic loci that show a high frequency of insertion or deletion among healthy individuals.”

If DNA in a single cell was a string, it would be two meters long. But in addition to the linear sequence, DNA can loop into complex 3D structures using chromatin, the proteins associated with DNA, to fit within a cell. Just like a string, DNA can have loops that affect its function. The St. Jude tool considers the presence of these loops and other structures when searching for accessible safe harbor sites.

“Our tool assesses the 3D structure of DNA because human DNA is not a one-dimensional linear structure, it’s actually 3D,” Chen said. “So, parts of DNA may be far away in the linear sequence of DNA but may physically be next to each other because of the looping of the 3D structure. In that case, the 3D proximity is more important than the linear distance.”

Balancing safety and therapeutic gene expression

“Safe gene therapy requires two things,” said Cheng. “Number one, maintaining high expression of the new gene. And number two, the integration needs to have minimal effects on the normal human genome, which is a major concern for people performing gene therapy.”

The scientists found that the genes placed in safe harbor sites identified by their tool maintained their expression over time. The researchers also showed that if they put a gene into one of the safe harbor sites identified by their tool, it affected nearby genes less than a classic safe harbor site.

The tool called the Genomics and Epigenetic Guided Safe Harbor mapper (GEG-SH mapper) is freely available.

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A new all-optical approach for driving multiple highly dense nanolaser arrays has been developed by researchers in Korea. The method could enable chip-based optical communication links that process and move data much faster than current electronic-based devices.

“The development of optical interconnects equipped with high-density nanolasers would improve information processing in the data centers that move information across the internet,” said research team leader Myung-Ki Kim from Korea University. “This could allow streaming of ultra-high-definition movies, enable larger-scale interactive online encounters and games, accelerate the expansion of the Internet of Things and provide the fast connectivity needed for big data analytics.”

In a paper published today (December 15) in Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, the researchers demonstrate that densely integrated nanolaser arrays — in which the lasers are just 18 microns apart — can be fully driven and programmed with light from a single optical fiber.

“Optical devices integrated onto a chip are a promising alternative to electronic integrated devices, which are struggling to keep up with today’s data processing demands,” said Kim. “By eliminating the large and complex electrodes typically used to drive laser arrays, we reduced the overall dimensions of the laser array while also eliminating the heat generation and processing delays that come with electrode-based drivers.”

Replacing electrodes with light

The new nanolasers could be used in optical integrated circuit systems, which detect, generate, transmit, and process information on a microchip via light. Instead of the fine copper wires used in electronic chips, optical circuits use optical waveguides, which allow much higher bandwidths while generating less heat. However, because the size of optical integrated circuits is quickly reaching into the nanometer regime, there is a need for new ways to drive and control their nano-sized light sources efficiently.

To emit light, lasers need to be supplied with energy in a process called pumping. For nanolaser arrays, this is typically accomplished using a pair of electrodes for each laser within an array, which requires significant on-chip space and energy consumption while also causing processing delays. To overcome this critical limitation, the researchers replaced these electrodes with a unique optical driver that creates programmable patterns of light via interference. This pump light travels through an optical fiber onto which nanolasers are printed.

To demonstrate this approach, the researchers used a high-resolution transfer-printing technique to fabricate multiple photonic crystal nanolasers spaced 18 microns apart. These arrays were applied onto the surface of a 2-micron-diameter optical microfiber. This had to be done in a way that precisely aligned the nanolaser arrays with the interference pattern. The interference pattern could also be modified by adjusting the driving beam’s polarization and pulse width.

Laser driving with a single fiber

The experiments showed that the design allowed multiple nanolaser arrays to be driven using light traveling through a single fiber. The results matched well with numerical calculations and showed that the printed nanolaser arrays could be fully controlled by the pump beam interference patterns.

“Our all-optical laser driving and programming technology can also be applied to chip-based silicon photonics systems, which could play a key role in the development of chip-to-chip or on-chip optical interconnects,” said Kim. “However, it would be necessary to prove how independently the modes of a silicon waveguide can be controlled. If this can be done, it would be a huge leap forward in the advancement of on-chip optical interconnects and optical integrated circuits.”

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The U.S. government is set to add China-based 3D NAND maker YMTC to the Department of Commerce's "Entity List" this week, along with dozens of other high-tech companies from the People's Republic, according to a report by DigiTimes. Companies on the Entity List will not be able to procure equipment, software, and other technologies from American companies— unless the latter obtain a special export license from the DoC. 

As a maker of 3D NAND, YMTC already faced problems created by the U.S. government's sweeping sanctions against Chinese semiconductor sector. YMTC is already unable to procure American wafer fab equipment (WFE) to make 3D NAND with 128 or more layers. As a result, four leading U.S. makers of chipmaking tools have already stopped working with YMTC, as they must get appropriate export licenses from the Department of Commerce.  

Being placed on the Entity List creates further difficulties for YMTC, as it will now also lose access to all kinds of wafer fab equipment that is made in the U.S. or that contains American IP (including tools for inspection), software, and other technologies.  

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce added Yangtze Memory Technologies Company along with 30 other entities to the Unverified List (UVL) in early October as it could not identify bona fides (end users) of their products and whether said bona fides were involved in boosting China's military capabilities. 

Once a company is placed on the UVL, it has 60 days to prove its products do not break any export regulation rules. This usually means the company must allow the U.S. DoC to conduct inspections and verifications. If the checks are unable to be completed to the U.S. DoC's satisfaction, the company is then placed on the Entity List.

Although the Chinese government appeared to relent last week, allowing U.S. export control to inspect several entities (including YMTC), these checks take some time. It looks like they haven't been completed yet, and so YMTC and the other companies will be placed on the Entity List for the time being. 

The Entity List is essentially a blacklist, and getting blacklisted is a big deal, because YMTC will lose access to all American technologies subject to regulations. When Huawei and its subsidiaries were placed on the Entity List, they lost access to software and hardware that used any technology designed in the U.S., including (but not limited to) electronic design automation (EDA) software used for chip design, as well as chips produced by TSMC. This significantly constrained Huawei's ability to develop its system-on-chips, and almost eliminated its ability to make them in volume. 

Now, YMTC and 30 other Chinese companies will face the same issues as Huawei — and only time will tell whether all of them will be able to survive without access to American technology. 

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This historic feat took place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, using the National Ignition Facility experiment after decades of planning and research.

The milestone used a process called inertial confinement fusion. It involves bombarding a tiny gold cylinder containing a pellet of hydrogen fuel – about the size of a pencil eraser – with the world’s most powerful laser system comprised of 192 laser beams.

This produces hot plasma and X-rays that trigger an implosion, compressing the fuel pellet and kicking off a fusion reaction that unleashes energy. The team at LLNL reports they delivered “2.05 megajoules of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output.”

The small device containing fuel used at the National Ignition Facility. Photo: LLNL

To quickly review, the goal of fusion energy is exactly that – to heat up and compress fuel particles so they undergo fusion: merging together to create a heavier atomic particle, unleashing energy in the process.

Fusion is what powers stars like our Sun, but it can only occur under specific conditions. Atoms must be subjected to immense heat and pressure to overcome tremendous physical forces and fuse. It is the opposite of nuclear fission used in current nuclear power plants.

The lofty end goal for harnessing fusion for power production is to generate vast amounts of clean, sustainable electricity.

What is ‘net gain’ and why is it a big deal?

Today’s announcement is akin to other historic milestones such as the four-minute mile, or the Wright brothers’ first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft. People had run races before, or experienced temporary flight through gliders, but these milestones had been thought of as impossible pipe dreams. They were eventually made reality through long-term effort – and it feels like this is one of those historic moments for fusion science.

A net gain result in a fusion experiment essentially means producing more energy through fusion reactions than the amount of energy put into the system to start said reaction.

This is usually measured as a Q factor, which is the ratio of energy out to energy in. For decades, the holy grail in fusion science has been achieving Q > 1.

A Q factor of more than 1 means you got out more energy than what you put into the fuel. This is generally known as “scientific breakeven.” The result announced today translates to a Q factor of about 1.5.

The complication around measuring your experiment in this way is that it does not account for energy inefficiencies in how you power the laser from the electricity grid, or how you may generate electricity from the energetic particles created from the fusion reactions. Just like current electricity generation methods, no process is 100% efficient and we lose bits of energy along the way.

When you account for these effects, you then start to talk about an “engineering breakeven.” Practically, most people seem to think higher Q factors of 10, 100 or even 1,000 might be needed to achieve a viable product for electricity generation from fusion. This is what the fusion community will be striving towards with future efforts.

How does this result compare to other fusion experiments?

The most popular global approach for confining fusion reactions is not with lasers – as done at LLNL – but with magnetic fields. This method is called magnetic confinement fusion. In the process, the fuel is heated up to kick out electrons from the atoms to create a plasma of electrons and positively charged nuclei. These nuclei are then fused together.

Since the plasma in these fusion devices is hotter than the core of our Sun, strong magnetic fields are used to control the shape and direction of the plasma so it doesn’t damage the walls of the machine.

Magnetic confinement devices have repeatedly reached plasma temperatures of over 100 million degrees Celsius, but to date, net gain has not been reached in such a device. There are plans afoot to hopefully achieve this with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in France.

ITER is the world’s biggest science experiment and has been designed to reach a Q factor of 10, producing 500 megawatts of fusion power from 50 megawatts of injected power.

Where to from here?

For now, this result means a lot more to the scientific community than it probably does for folks waiting for a new commercial electricity alternative. We’ll need to be a bit more patient for those prospects.

Whether using lasers or magnetic confinement, fusion scientists around the world need to continue along their path if we’re going to achieve commercially viable fusion power production. As we continue on this journey we’ll likely see continued development of the technologies needed and keep climbing up the ladder towards higher values of Q.

In the short term, this result will likely lead to more concrete plans and funding from government and private industry towards inertial confinement fusion experiments, and hopefully other fusion concepts as well.

For example, following today’s LLNL announcement the US has committed over US$600 million towards the inertial fusion program to build upon this result. This is in addition to their commitment to a “Bold Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy” outlined earlier in 2022.

The achievement is a watershed moment, showing the public, governments, and investors that despite this being an incredibly difficult science and engineering problem to solve, we are making real progress.

It took many years and a great deal of work to launch the first commercial airline flight after the Wright brothers first took to the skies. In much the same way, there is a path ahead for commercial fusion, but we have to put the resources and effort in to get there.

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IN 2010, PHYSICISTS at the Large Hadron Collider began producing an exotic form of antimatter known as antihelium. Antimatter is that elusive substance that annihilates upon meeting regular matter, and antihelium is the antimatter twin of the classic helium atom, the stuff you find in party balloons. While no human has ever conclusively found a naturally occurring antihelium particle on Earth, it could be key to answering one of the biggest outstanding mysteries in physics: the nature of dark matter.

While this beast may be rare on Earth, physicists think it could be abundant in our galaxy, according to physicist Ivan Vorobyev, a researcher at CERN. That's because they think antihelium could form in the decay of dark matter, an invisible substance that seems to make up 85 percent of the universe’s matter. On Monday, Vorobyev’s team announced that they’d generated about 18,000 antihelium nuclei—and more notably, that they used their result to calculate the odds that Earth-based detectors could capture antihelium drifting in from space, where it might signify the presence of dark matter. 

Between 2016 and 2018, Vorobyev’s team had smashed more than a billion particles in the LHC’s 16-mile ring, based in Geneva. They performed two types of particle collisions: protons with protons, and lead ions with lead ions, which break apart to reform a myriad of new particles, such as pions, kaons, and more protons. Recording the wreckage required petabytes—that’s thousands of portable hard drives—of data. Then, they began to sift through it. “We filtered out only the part that is interesting to us,” says Vorobyev, a member of the ALICE collaboration, which conducted the project. (The acronym stands for A Large Ion Collider Experiment.) 

Specifically, Vorobyev’s team zeroed in on a version of the antiparticle known as antihelium-3, composed of two antiprotons and one antineutron. Vorobyev’s team isn’t the first to create antihelium-3: Scientists observed the antiparticle for the first time in 1970 by producing it in a collider. Still, nobody has ever conclusively captured it in nature. While antimatter forms naturally on our planet, it usually consists of lightweight particles such as positrons, the antimatter counterpart of electrons, which are thousands of times less massive than antihelium. But antihelium-3 is relatively heavy, and the heavier the antimatter particle, the more rarely it will be produced. “If you collide heavy ions, each additional nucleon will cost you about a factor of 300 or 400,” says Vorobyev. “That means every next nucleus will be produced with a factor 350 less than the previous one.”

Although physicists have inferred the presence of dark matter through its gravitational influence on the rotation of galaxies, they still don’t know what it is made of. Hypotheses include objects as heavy as black holes and as lightweight as 100 millionths of an electron’s mass. Two decades ago, physicists first proposed that certain dark matter particles—known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs—could annihilate with anti-dark matter to produce matter and antimatter in equal amounts. If dark matter throws off antihelium as it annihilates, finding this antiparticle would be a clue that it truly exists. 

In theory, physicists searching for dark matter could actually hunt for either the matter or the antimatter it generates. “In many models, dark matter is its own antiparticle, or there's equal amounts of dark matter and anti-dark matter,” says physicist Tim Linden of Stockholm University in Sweden, who was not involved with the LHC experiment. “Either way, you tend to generate about as many anti-particles as particles from dark matter annihilation.” 

However, stars and other astrophysical objects unrelated to dark matter also produce a lot of extraterrestrial matter particles, says Linden, which makes it difficult to identify their origin. “So we look for antimatter signatures, because astrophysical processes are bad at making them, and the background is smaller,” he says. In this sense, any detected antimatter particles from space are more likely to come from dark matter.

The excitement about antimatter as a dark matter signature has grown because of a tantalizing signal astrophysicists announced in 2016. Researchers in charge of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), an instrument on the International Space Station, told the community that they had probably detected eight antihelium nuclei. They have not formally published the result, and researchers still refer to the signal as “tentative,” but “it’s inspired this effort to figure out—if that signal was true—how could it have come here?” says Linden.

The LHC’s experiment and analysis are significant because they have bolstered the field’s confidence in detecting antihelium from space as a strategy for finding dark matter. After producing the nuclei in their detector, Vorobyev’s team analyzed how likely the antihelium would be to break apart or annihilate with regular matter as it moved through the machine. They used these findings to simulate a model of the Milky Way to estimate how likely it was for antihelium nuclei, originating up to tens of thousands of light years away, to reach Earth. Space is quite empty, but as the antihelium travels through the galaxy toward our planet, these nuclei still have some likelihood of colliding with clouds of gas and breaking apart. 

The results are promising: “We have seen that half of them will survive the trip to the detectors near Earth,” says Vorobyev. And that is a good sign that physicists’ antimatter detectors will eventually catch a traveling antihelium particle. AMS, which detected the probable signals reported in 2016, is still looking. A new instrument, called the General Antiparticle Spectrometer, is scheduled to launch in a balloon into the Antarctic atmosphere in late 2023, where it will look for antihelium along with other particles at an altitude of 25 miles. 

This new work illustrates how convoluted and uncertain the scientific process can be. To tackle a question as big as dark matter, theorists have had to brainstorm how researchers might be able to detect it on Earth. Experimentalists have then had to run tests like Vorobyev’s to verify the theorists’ ideas. Astrophysicists have had to build the instruments to look for antimatter signals. Now, the threads are coming together, at least for antihelium-based dark matter searches. “It's a really good melding of communities to try to come up with answers to these really difficult problems,” says Linden.

But these communities still have a lot of work ahead. For theorists like Linden, they are still figuring out the details of how dark matter might generate antihelium in the first place. Astrophysicists have to watch for antihelium signals from space, and if they see any, they’d have to check that the antiparticles are consistent with theorists’ predictions about dark matter. The ALICE experiment lays the groundwork for a new approach to solve the mystery of dark matter—but physicists still have a lot of the rabbit hole left to explore.

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The decision from ARM comes two months after the U.S. implemented strict export controls to prevent China from obtaining advanced chips or the technology and equipment necessary to manufacture high-end semiconductors domestically. The decision was made by ARM after determining that the performance of its Neoverse V series was too high to be approved for sale to Chinese entities such as Alibaba's T-Head chip unit. This decision will impact other Chinese companies in addition to Alibaba as well.

ARM is known for designing advanced RISC architectures for chips used in a variety of products, including smartwatches and supercomputers. While ARM does not manufacture processors itself, it sells its designs to companies like TSMC and Samsung. The company's latest Neoverse V2 core is its most powerful to date and is believed to have been developed in the United States.

This is the first time that ARM has determined that it cannot export its most advanced designs to China. The Neoverse V falls under the Wassenaar Arrangement, a multilateral agreement involving 42 nations that aims to prevent dual-use technology from being used for military purposes. In order to sell this technology to China, ARM would need to obtain export licenses from both the U.S. and the U.K.

Earlier this week, China filed a dispute with the World Trade Organization regarding the export controls implemented by the US. The US government views YMTC, a Chinese semiconductor company, as a "national champion", so it is likely that the decision by ARM to not sell its most advanced designs to China will be met with strong opposition from the Chinese government.

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With the internal investigation led by Elon Musk identifying censorship-related issues on Twitter, the social platform’s former CEO Jack Dorsey has promoted the idea of a “free and open protocol” for social media.

In a post, Dorsey highlighted some potential solutions to the current problems of the Twitter platform. According to the former Twitter CEO, this includes making it resilient from corporate or government control, giving the right to remove content solely to the original author and implementing moderation through algorithmic choice. He explained that:

“I’m a strong believer that any content produced by someone for the internet should be permanent until the original author chooses to delete it. It should be always available and addressable. Content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible.”

Dorsey believes that the Twitter platform under his leadership and the current Twitter do not meet the three principles that he mentioned and blamed himself for not fighting for the platform. He wrote:

 “This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. [...] I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.”

Dorsey also noted that the biggest mistake was focusing on building tools to manage the public conversation instead of creating ones that let Twitter users manage it for themselves. “This burdened the company with too much power,” he added. With this, the company was also exposed to outside pressure, according to the former CEO.

In a tweet, Dorsey also shared the GitHub link to a censorship-resistant open protocol that is currently being built. The project dubbed “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted” aims to enable the creation of decentralized social networks based on cryptographic keys and signatures.

On Oct. 18, Dorsey also announced new developments regarding Bluesky Social, a decentralized social media project that was started in 2019. With the platform, there will be no company that can decide what becomes published. Rather, there will be a marketplace of companies deciding what to “carry to their audiences.”

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He believes that the company has nothing to hide. "I wish they [the files] were released WikiLeaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider," Dorsey stated.

The Twitter Files discuss moderation "blacklists", how the platform handled the controversy about Hunter Biden's laptop, and the removal of Donald Trump from Twitter following the January 6th riots.

Regarding this removal decision, Dorsey believes that there were "no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time". Still, he believes that "mistakes were made" and if they had focused on more tools for the people instead of tools for the company, and moved much faster towards complete transparency, they wouldn’t be in a situation of needing a "fresh reset."

Dorsey also stated that the online attacks that the company's former employees are getting are "dangerous, and doesn't solve anything." He added, "If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof".

About a week ago, three members of Twitter's now-defunct Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the "safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline". To this, new CEO Elon Musk replied, "It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" More recently, former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth had to leave his home after Musk suggested, in now-deleted tweets, that he advocates for child sexualization.

Dorsey doesn't mention Musk in any way in his post. When the latter took over the company, Dorsey said that "Elon is the singular solution I trust."

Dorsey also mentions that he is working on a decentralized social media protocol called "Bluesky" and floats a few ideas of how social media should work. For one, he believes that when it comes to content moderation, "ranking and relevance algorithms" should be used instead of a centralized system. He also says that there should be a free and open protocol for social media that is not owned by a single company or group of companies, and is also resilient to corporate and government influence.

Finally, he intends to give messaging app Signal $1 million a year as part of an effort to fund companies working on open protocols.

You can read Jack Dorsey's post here.

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The rankings, compiled by the Claremont Graduate University's Drucker Institute for the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) Management Top 250 list, compares America's largest publicly traded companies.

Microsoft led the pack, followed by Apple (2), IBM (3), General Motors (4), and Whirlpool (5). As noted by WSJ, last year, the first five spots were taken by tech companies. This year's top five consist of three firms founded before World War I: IBM and Whirlpool were founded in 1911, while GM was founded in 1908.  GPU computing company Nvidia came in sixth.

Google-parent Alphabet didn't fare well this year, ranking 24th, just behind Walmart and Home Depot, but ahead of chipmakers AMD and Qualcomm (which shared 25th place), and Verizon (27). Facebook-parent Meta ranked a lowly 130, in part because of its slowing revenue growth but also its low customer satisfaction score of 32.5. Meta was ranked 31 in 2021.

With Intel and Amazon.com in seventh and eighth positions, seven of the top 10 were still tech firms. Johnson & Johnson and Mastercard rounded out the top 10.

Other tech companies in the top 20 included HP Inc (12), Cisco (14), and Adobe (15).

WSJ notes that Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Uber, and Salesforce dropped in this year's ranking.    

The Drucker Institute gives each company a total 'effectiveness' score out of 100 based on scores in five categories, including customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility, and financial strength. Data sources include JD Power, Glassdoor, and Clarivate, among others.  

Microsoft scored 48.6 on customer satisfaction, 70.8 for employee engagement and development, 133.7 for innovation, 73.5 for social responsibility, and 91.7 for financial strength, leaving it with an overall 'effectiveness' score of 98.6. Apple's respective scores were 60.7, 61.6, 90.3, 65.9, and 92.7, leaving it with an 'effectiveness' score of 83.2. IBM scored just 51.4 on financial strength but 99 on innovation.

Amazon recorded the biggest decline in overall score of any company in this year's top 250, according to WSJ.

"What you are seeing is some weakness in financials relative to where they've been in past years and also some deterioration in customer satisfaction in the tech industry,'' said Rick Wartzman, head of the the Drucker Institute's KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society.

Elon Musk's companies were dispersed among the list. Tesla ranked 76th this year, behind PayPal, which emerged out of the online bank he co-founded as X.com. Space X isn't publicly traded, so isn't on the list. Twitter, which he took ownership of in October, was outside of WSJ's Top 250, but is ranked 680 in the Drucker Institute's underlying top 1000 list.

The institute's rankings used data through the end of June, before Elon Musk took over Twitter. Telsa had an overall score of 64.6 with a financial strength score of 87.6. 

The WSJ notes that auto makers climbed in this year's rankings because of electric vehicles, which improved their social responsibility and customer satisfaction scores.

GM and Ford have long wait times for new electric models. Ford, which in March said it will spend $50 billion on ramping up electric vehicle production through to 2026, saw its ranking rise from 26th last year to 15th today. GM's ranking rose from 16th last year. Meanwhile, Whirlpool leaped from 39th last year to 5th on the strength of customer satisfaction, social responsibility, and innovation scores. 

Source

Compared to the higher-end SKUs, the 4060 Ti will reportedly come with GDDDR6 memory instead of GDDR6X. Here are the full purported specs of the RTX 4060 Ti as per the leakster:

• RTX 4060 Ti has a very short reference board.
• The PG190 still uses CEM5 connector.
• AD106-350-A1
• 4352FP32
• 8G 18Gbps GDDR6
• 32M L2
• 220W

Here is a table comparing the specs of the entire RTX 40-series lineup including the alleged specifications of the RTX 4070 Ti, 4070, and 4060 Ti:

The alleged specifications of these cards, especially the RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti are really interesting as they appear to be cut down in specific areas in accordance with the performance targets set by Nvidia.

The RTX 4070 has a much lower L2 cache compared to the 4070 Ti but it has the same bandwidth. Meanwhile, the 4060 Ti has almost the same L2 cache amount as the 4070, but its memory bandwidth is far less. However, this spec layout makes a lot of sense since the RTX 4070, with its higher 12GB VRAM, will be more geared towards 1440p gaming where higher memory bandwidth is more important. Meanwhile, the 8GB RTX 4060 will be geared towards 1080p gaming and hence, in this case, the relatively higher L2 cache will come in handier than higher overall bandwidth.

Source: kopite7kimi (Twitter)

After 4070 Ti and 4070, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti alleged specs also leak

China has hit back against sweeping US export controls on chips, filing a dispute with the World Trade Organization and escalating the tech war between the two countries.

China’s commerce ministry said on Monday its WTO complaint was a legal and necessary measure to defend its “legitimate rights and interests,” after the US Department of Commerce introduced sanctions in early October to make it harder for China to buy or develop advanced semiconductors.

“At a minimum, the case is about China pushing back on how it’s perceived as an unfair actor in the global trading world,” said Ben Kostrzewa, an expert on US-China trade relations at Hogan Lovells.

The complaint is the first step in a WTO mediation process, in which the case would normally be put before the Appellate Body. But that body has been suspended due to disagreements among member states, and Kostrzewa said China’s complaint was unlikely to “create any legal effect” unless the group resumed its work.

The move comes just weeks after US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping used their first in-person meeting as leaders to signal a joint desire to improve ties between the world’s two biggest economies after relations plunged to a multi-decade low.

China’s complaint also comes days after a landmark ruling in which a WTO panel backed Beijing against Washington. In a report published on December 9, the WTO said the US was not justified in arguing the Trump administration’s 2018 tariffs—on steel and aluminum from China and other countries—were necessary to protect its national security.

“The Chinese government knew this was coming, and they almost certainly waited for this to strengthen their hand on the export control issue,” said a Western trade official.

The export controls were aimed at hampering China’s ability to use high-end US technology for military applications such as nuclear warhead modeling and hypersonic weapons production.

The measures prevent US companies from exporting technology to Chinese groups engaged in producing high-end chips in almost every modern device, including the latest electric vehicles, smartphones, and artificial intelligence.

A US Trade Representative spokesperson said: “As we have already communicated to the PRC [People’s Republic of China], these targeted actions relate to national security, and the WTO is not the appropriate forum to discuss issues related to national security.”

The export controls rocked the global semiconductor supply chain when they were unveiled, threatening to derail decades of investment in China by the world’s biggest tech groups.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has put freeing China from its dependence on foreign chips at the heart of his economic agenda. Following the announcement of the export controls, Beijing increased spending on research and development to counter what it has described as a “blockade” on its technology industry.

Domestic tech giants Alibaba and Tencent have been enlisted alongside state-backed groups such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences to create semiconductor intellectual property that will bolster the country’s capabilities.

Chinese chipmaking champions such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International, Yangtze Memory Technology, and Hua Hong Semiconductor have also grown rapidly in recent years. However, the groups are dependent on foreign companies for some core elements of underlying chip design and the equipment to make them.

In another sign of the effects of the export controls, Lam Research, the California-based supplier of chipmaking equipment, has begun cutting staff in China, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Teams in the field providing services for Chinese manufacturing facilities were probably the most affected, said one person familiar with the situation.

The US has also been negotiating with Japan and the Netherlands on an export controls agreement that would see the countries bar their companies from selling chipmaking tools for advanced Chinese semiconductors. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Monday that the US had been talking to its partners about a “broad alignment” on China.

Source

Plugable's Bluetooth 5.0 USB adapter in a desktop PC.

Plugable

 

Bluetooth adapters may seem like a dime a dozen with minimal differentiating qualities, but they certainly can come in handy. Whether you want to add wireless capabilities to a prized PC build or have a system running an older version of Bluetooth with less bandwidth or distance coverage, a little dongle goes a long way. If you’re looking for a slightly cheaper option that supports Windows 11 and 10, Plugable today announced yet another Bluetooth 5.0 adapter, the USB-BT5 USB-A.

Bernie Thompson, founder and CTO at the Redmond, Washington-based company told us that the adapter supports link rates of up to 3Mbps. You also get connectivity with up to seven devices and a max distance claim of 131 feet (40 m). Like with any Bluetooth product, max supported distance will vary depending on environmental factors, such as walls and appliances in the area.

 

Plugable's adapter works like a Bluetooth radio for the computer's OS, and the only OSes the dongle supports are Windows 11 and Windows 10. With Microsoft ending support for Windows 7 and 8 next month, the lack of older Windows OSes may not be too surprising.

 

Still, earlier released rivals have differing compatibility. TP-Link's UB500 (on sale for $13 as of writing) supports Windows 8.1 and 7 in addition to Windows 11 and 10. Asus' USB-BT500 ($20 MSRP) doesn't claim to support Windows 11 but lists Windows 10 and 8.1, plus Linux.

 

While some of Plugable's previous Bluetooth adapters have supported Linux, the company told us that Plugable has encountered issues with open source projects handling Bluetooth support in Linux that have created "less than ideal experiences." The adapter might work with Linux, but the OS isn't officially supported, they noted.

 

In regard to skipping macOS support, the company noted that macOS typically ignores other Bluetooth radios attached, since Macs have their own (audio-only adapters appear as an audio, not Bluetooth, device).

 

If you need official Linux support or opt for Asus or TP-Link's adapters over Plugable's for any other reason, you probably won't miss much. Plugable admitted to Ars Technica that the USB-BT5 is "functionally identical" to Asus' USB-BT500. The TP-Link adapter uses a similar driver package to Plugable's and, likely, the same chip. Plus, each adapter has a two-year warranty. If you presume you'll have drastic technical difficulties with your plug-in dongle, though, Plugable claimed that the USB-BT5 adds unique value via "US-based customer support from the engineers who test and bring the adapter to market."

 

The other thing that could win you over is price. Plugable's USB-BT5 Bluetooth 5.0 adapter is currently selling for $13.

 

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

 

Plugable’s USB dongle is yet another cheap way to add Bluetooth 5.0 to your PC

Ubisoft won’t bring its Assassin’s Creed Valhalla achievements to Steam

Digital Rupee (e-Rupee) vs Unified Payment Interface (UPI) : What differences did Indian Central Bank (RBI) tell to Indian Citizens ?

US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment.

Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the Sun, but no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes—a milestone known as net energy gain or target gain, which would help prove the process could provide a reliable, abundant alternative to fossil fuels and conventional nuclear energy.

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which uses a process called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s biggest laser, had achieved net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks, the people said.

Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste, and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years.

The US breakthrough comes as the world wrestles with high energy prices and the need to rapidly move away from burning fossil fuels to stop average global temperatures reaching dangerous levels. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration is plowing almost $370 billion into new subsidies for low-carbon energy in an effort to slash emissions and win a global race for next-generation clean tech.

The fusion reaction at the US government facility produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 percent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analyzed.

The US Department of Energy has said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Under-Secretary for Nuclear Security Jill Hruby will announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday. The department declined to comment further.

The laboratory confirmed that a successful experiment had recently taken place at its National Ignition Facility but said analysis of the results was ongoing.

“Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility. However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time,” it said. “That analysis is in process, so publishing the information... before that process is complete would be inaccurate.”

Two of the people with knowledge of the results said the energy output had been greater than expected, which had damaged some diagnostic equipment, complicating the analysis. The breakthrough was already being widely discussed by scientists, the people added.

“If this is confirmed, we are witnessing a moment of history,” said Dr Arthur Turrell, a plasma physicist whose book The Star Builders charts the effort to achieve fusion power. “Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal.”

The $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility was primarily designed to test nuclear weapons by simulating explosions but has since been used to advance fusion energy research. It came the closest in the world to net-energy gain last year when it produced 1.37 megajoules from a fusion reaction, which was about 70 percent of the energy in the lasers on that occasion.

At the launch of a new White House fusion power strategy this year, Congressman Don Beyer, chair of the bipartisan fusion energy caucus, described the technology as the “holy grail” of clean energy, adding: “Fusion has the potential to lift more citizens of the world out of poverty than anything since the invention of fire.”

Most fusion research is focused on a different approach known as magnetic confinement fusion, in which the hydrogen fuel is held in place by powerful magnets and heated to extreme temperatures so the atomic nuclei fuse.

Historically, that science has been done by large publicly funded laboratories, such as the Joint European Torus in Oxford, but in recent years investment has also flooded into private companies promising to deliver fusion power in the 2030s.

In the 12 months to the end of June, fusion companies raised $2.83 billion in investment, according to the Fusion Industry Association, bringing total private-sector investment to date to almost $4.9 billion.

Nicholas Hawker, chief executive of Oxford-based start-up First Light Fusion, which is developing an approach similar to that used at NIF, described the potential breakthrough as “game-changing.”

“It couldn’t be more profound for fusion power,” he said.

Source

China's Cyberspace Administration has issued guidelines on how to do deepfakes the right way.

Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to create realistic depictions – usually videos – of humans saying and/or doing things they didn't say and/or do. They're controversial outside China for their potential to mislead audiences and create trouble for the people depicted.

Beijing clearly also has worries about the technique as the Cyberspace Administration (CAC) has issued regulations that prohibit their creation without the subject's permission, or to depict or utter anything that could be considered as counter to the national interest. Anything counter to socialist values falls under that description, as does any form of "Illegal and harmful information" or using AI-generated humans in an attempt to deceive or slander.

But the rules also suggest China expects synthetic humans will be widely used. For instance, they allow use of deepfakes in applications such as chatbots. In such scenarios, deepfakes must be flagged as digital creations.

The document also envisages that deepfakes will be used by online publishers, which must take into account China's myriad other rules about acceptable online content.

Including the one that censpored images of Winnie the Pooh online, as the beloved bear - as depicted by illustrator E. H. Shepard - was felt to resemble, and mock, China's president-for-probably-life Xi Jinping.

The Register therefore suggests it will be a very, very, brave Chinese developer that creates a photorealistic ursine chatbot or avatar.

The regulations also spell out how the creators of deepfakes – who are termed "deep synthesis service providers" – must take care that their AI/ML models and algorithms are accurate and regularly revised, and ensure the security of data they collect.

The rules also include a requirement for registration of users – including their real names. Because allowing an unknown person to mess with deepfakes would not do.

The rules are pitched as ensuring that synthesis tech avoids the downsides and delivers benefits to China. Or, as Beijing puts it (albeit in translation), deepfakes must "Promote the healthy development of internet information services and maintain a good ecology of cyberspace."

The regulations come into force on January 10, 2023. ®

Source

There’s a new chatbot in town, OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is a robot researcher with good communication skills; you can ask it to answer questions about various areas of knowledge and it will write short documents in various formats and in excellent English. Or write bad poetry, incomprehensible jokes, and obey a command like “Write Tetris in C.” What comes out looks like it could be, too.

Coders love that sort of thing, and have been stuffing Stack Overflow’s dev query boards with generated snippets. Just one problem – the quality of the code is bad. So bad, Stack Overflow has screamed “STOP!” and is mulling general guidelines to stop it happening again.

What’s going wrong? ChatGPT appears disarmingly frank about its flaws if you ask it outright. Say you’re a lazy journalist who asks it to “produce a column about chatgpt's mistakes when writing code.”:

“As a large language model trained by OpenAI, ChatGPT has the ability to generate human-like text on a wide range of topics. However, like any machine learning model, ChatGPT is not perfect and can sometimes make mistakes when generating text,” it confesses. It goes on to say it’s not been programmed with specific language rules about syntax, types and structures, so it often gets things wrong. Being ChatGPT, it takes 200 words to say this instead of 20: it won’t be getting past El Reg’s quality control any time soon. Darn. But it is very readable if you’re not a professional wordsmith.

The good thing about code is that you can swiftly tell if it's bad. Just try to run it. ChatGPT’s essays, notes and other written output looks equally plausible, but there’s no simple test for correctness. Which is bad, because it desperately needs one.

Ask it how Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is linked to Turing Machines - it being software, it really should know this one - and you get back “Gödel's incompleteness theorem is a fundamental result in mathematical logic [that] has nothing to do with Turing machines, which were invented by Alan Turing as a mathematical model of computation.” You can argue how these ideas are linked, and it’s by no means simple, but “they’re not” is, as Eolfgang Pauli said of one particularly worthless physics paper, “not even wrong”. But it’s firm in its assertions, as is it on every subject it has any training in, and it’s written well enough to be convincing.

Do enough talking to the bot about subjects you know, and curiosity soon deepens to unease. That feeling of talking with someone whose confidence far exceeds their competence grows until ChatGPT's true nature shines out. It’s a Dunning-Kruger effect knowledge simulator par excellence. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about, and it doesn’t care because we haven’t learned how to do that bit yet.

As is apparent to anyone who has hung out with humans, Dunning Kruger is exceedingly dangerous and exceedingly common. Our companies, our religions and our politics offer limitless possibilities to people with DK. If you can persuade people you’re right, they’re very unwilling to accept proof otherwise, and up you go. Old Etonians, populist politicians and Valley tech bros rely on this, with results we are all too familiar with. ChatGBT is Dunning-Kruger As-a-Service (DKaaS). That’s dangerous.

It really is that persuasive, too. A quick squiz online and we can already see ChatGPL being taken very seriously, with cries of “This is the most impressive thing I've ever seen” and “Maybe that Google engineer was right after all, we can’t be far from true AI now”. People have given it IQ tests and pronounced it at the lower end of normal, academics have fed it questions and nervously joked about it knowing more than any of their students, or even their peers. It can pass exams!

That smart people come out with such nonsense is a sign of the seductive power of ChatGBT. IQ tests are pseudoscience so bad even psychologists know it, but attach them to AI and you’ve got a story. And for ChatGBT every exam is an open book exam: if you can’t tell that your candidate has no way of properly conceptualising the subject matter, what are you examining for?

We don’t need our AIs to have DK. That is bad news for people using them either naively or with bad intent. There’s enough plausible misinformation and fraud out there already, and it takes very little to prod the bot into active collusion. DK people make superb con artists, and so does this. Try asking ChatGPT to “write a legal letter saying the house at 4 Acacia Avenue will be foreclosed unless a four hundred dollar fine is paid” and it will cheerfully impersonate a lawyer for you. At no charge. DK is a moral vacuum, a complete disassociation from true and false in favour of the plausible. Now it’s just a click away.

There is no way to tell whether a perfectly written piece of didactic prose is from ChatGPT - or any other AI. Deep fakes in pictures and video are one thing, deep fakes in knowledge presented in a standard format that is written to be believed could be far more insidious.

If OpenAI can’t find a way to watermark ChatGPT’s output as coming from a completely amoral DKaaS, or develop limits on its demonstrably harmful habits, it must question the ethics of making this technology available as an open beta. We’re having enough trouble with its human counterparts; an AI con merchant, no matter how affable, is the very last thing we need. ®

Source

However, those were early numbers possibly using pre-release drivers so the performance at launch could be better. Based on the numbers shared by AMD itself, the $1,199 RTX 4080 should be sandwiched right between the two 7900 seriesGPUs. And if this is indeed the case, then there is good news for potential buyers of the GPU as industry veteran Kyle Benett claims that the upcoming Navi 31 GPUs will have excellent stock levels this Christmas. Apparently, AMD, in total will have over 200,000 7900 XTX and XT units ready for shipment. On launch day itself, there will allegedly be 30,000 reference cards from the various AIB partners. These will be using everything reference except for the stickers which will feature the AIB selling that particular unit, ie, say, Sapphire, Powercolour, or XFX.

The high stock level does make sense as AMD has moved to the chiplet design principle which enables AMD to use the cheaper and more abundant process for its Infinity Cache MCDs (6nm) compared to the newer and more expensive 5nm process used in the RDNA 3 core (GCD) itself.

The excellent stock levels combined with the potentially competitive performance of the 7900 series cards could spell trouble for the Nvidia RTX 4080 as the card is apparently already having a pretty hard time selling at its current $1,199 MSRP.

AMD RX 7900 XTX supply could be the final nail in the coffin for overpriced Nvidia RTX 4080

Infiniti Retail is set to become an Apple franchisee partner and will open these 100 outlets that will be between 500-600 square feet each at malls, as well as high-street and neighborhood locations. These stores will exclusively sell Apple products by becoming Apple Authorized Reseller outlets.

According to the report, the new Apple Authorized Reseller outlets will be smaller than Apple Premium Reseller stores, which typically have an area of more than 1,000 square feet. The smaller stores will mainly sell iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, while the larger stores will offer the full range of Apple products, including MacBooks.

India has consistently been one of Apple's fastest-growing markets for the past few years, and the company's performance in the country has been particularly strong since the beginning of the pandemic as consumers have turned to its products to manage work and study from home.

In the September quarter, Apple's iPhone global revenue reached a record high of $42.6 billion, an increase of 10% compared to the same period the previous year. This growth was driven by strong sales of the new iPhone 14 series in India. According to CyberMedia Research (CMR), iPhone volume in India grew 44% in the July-September period, reaching over 1.7 million units.

In addition to ramping up its production capacity in India to meet the growing demand for its products in the local market, Apple also plans to export Indian-made products to global markets. This will enable the company to reduce its reliance on manufacturing hubs such as China and potentially avoid some of the supply chain disruptions that have affected its operations in the past.

Source: The Economic Times (paywall)

Apple plans to expand its presence in India with 100 new stores

New capabilities in Windows 11

A few days ago, Microsoft began offering Windows 11 to Windows 10 version 22H2 users as part of the out-of-the-box experience (OOBE) for the first time. This process is only visible for eligible devices who receive KB5020683. And talking about upgrading to Windows 11, you should probably consider doing so if you're still on Windows 8.1, as the OS is about to run out of support. In fact, you could still use your older Windows 7 license key (if you still have one) to upgrade for free. If you're uncertain about Microsoft's latest OS, you could even give its updated Windows 11 virtual machines a go.

But before you upgrade, you might want to be aware of some recent bugs that are plaguing the OS. Some Windows 10 and Windows 11 customers may experience database connectivity issues for some apps that utilize ODBC connectors. In fact, Microsoft is even rolling out KB5012170 to Windows 11 version 22H2 even though it has known bugs.

That said, the latest Windows 11 Beta build 22623.108 has fixed a whole bunch of Taskbar issues. On the other hand, Microsoft has confirmed a truckload of known issues in the latest Dev Channel build 25262. It does contain a bug fix for Windows Search along with Auto colour Management (ACM) for more users and the ability to leverage Widgets without a Microsoft Account though.

Speaking of bugs, Microsoft's latest Bug Bash spilled the beans early on screen recording capabilities in tow for Snipping Tool. Shortly after, it became available in the Dev Channel with some limitations and known issues. Similarly, Dev Channel users also netted video folders in Media Player. And it seems like Microsoft has already started enabling other "Moment 3" and "Moment 4" features in Windows 11 too.

Edge upgrades

Earlier in the week, Microsoft rolled out an update to Edge 108, with the latest version being 108.0.1462.42. The highlight of this release is a more secure encryption policy with TLS-encrypted Client Hello (ECH) that helps enhance privacy, but there are other improvements in tow too.

The Redmond tech firm released an Edge 110 build in the Dev Channel and although the changelog is quite lengthy, one thing in particular to remember is that Chromium 110 is dropping support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, which also means that Edge 110 won't support these OSes either. Microsoft has already published a formal blog post on the topic and Google Chrome is also showing prompts about end-of-support for the legacy operating systems while urging users to upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows 11.

In other news, Microsoft will support Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge until at least January 2024, following the footsteps of Google Chrome. The company will continue monitoring feedback on the subject but will eventually stop accepting updates for Manifest V2 extensions eventually.

In terms of some recent enhancements to Edge, you'll be happy to know that the browser has finally gained the ability to open favorites in a new tab by default. The capability is current available for Dev and Canary users only. The Redmond tech giant has also proudly announced that it "froze" 1.38 billion Edge tabs with improved Sleeping Tabs in September 2022 alone, but there is no word yet on how much Petabytes of RAM this saved, unlike last time.

Finally, you may want to keep an eye out for "Project Kodiak". A recent Edge Canary release references it in a flag, saying that the initiative will offer Edge customers a "better browser experience for their personal and work lives" across Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Teams enhancements... and more

Microsoft Teams received some pretty cool news updates this week. For starters, Microsoft is working on a nifty integration between Outlook and Teams that will allows users to quickly access and send messages via Teams Chat in an Outlook meeting invite. This feature will likely land in March 2023. Some customers can also take advantage of instant polls and communities in Teams already.

Other Microsoft apps received some love in the past few days too. PowerToys received version 0.65.0 with a few new features and a huge list of bug fixes while OneNote for Windows is slated to get vertical tabs next year. Moreover, sign-in issues on SwiftKey for iOS were dealt with as well. We also received reports that Microsoft's "Super App" - which is now presumed dead - isn't Microsoft Start after all. But it was something that was supposed to "break Apple and Google's hold on mobile search".

There were several updates to third-party apps on Windows as well. Start11 version 1.36 is now available with lots of fixes and improved WindowsBlinds 11 compatibility. Similarly, StartAllBack received an update to fix a Taskbar conflict between itself and the latest Windows 11 build.

And if you're itching to add acrylic effect to old Windows 10 and Windows 11 context menus, consider giving the open-source TranslucentFlyouts app a go. Or if you just want to spruce up your Spotify listening UX with something different, try out this third-party Spotify client with Windows 11 aesthetics. Finally, Microsoft Forms is getting lots of new features too, check them out here.

Git gud

As has been the case for the past few weeks, there were rumblings from the Microsoft and Sony camps again over the Activision Blizzard acquisition in the past few days. Microsoft signed a 10-year commitment with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to the Switch, whereas Sony won the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) support with the regulator claiming that it does not trust Microsoft with the acquisition.

Another not-so-good news that hit Xbox gamers is that Microsoft is hiking the price of first-party Xbox games from $59.99 to $69.99 starting next year, in line with Sony. Xbox Game Pass seems all the more enticing now...

Speaking of Game Pass, a plethora of Riot titles have arrived on the service including Valorant and League of Legends. There are lots of benefits in store too.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Flight Simulator has hit 10 million players, Halo Infinite's custom game browser is now live, Minecraft has received Avatar Legends DLC, and Sea of Thieves' The Rogue Legacy Adventure can now be played too.

Lastly, if you're on the lookout for some deals, don't forget to check out this week's Deals with Gold and this Weekend's PC Game Deals curated by our resident News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• New drivers for the unofficial implementation of Windows running on Surface Duo have arrived

• Microsoft is preparing an upgraded cartridge unit for the second-gen Surface Hub

   

• Microsoft has released the Developer News extension for Visual Studio after complaints from users

   

• The Redmond tech firm wants to open private-sector data for the public good

   

• The original Surface Duo has received the December 2022 firmware update

   

• Microsoft Authenticator now supports U.S. federal agencies thanks to FIPS 140 compliance

   

• A bug breaking calling on Surface Duo 2 has been swatted

   

• Microsoft has acquired Lumenisity to boost its global cloud infrastructure

   

Under the spotlight

A few days ago, News Reporter Taras Buria wrote a very interesting piece highlighting the top 5 interesting features coming to Windows 11 soon. If this topic tickles your fancy, check out Taras' write-up here.

Taras also wrote a guide on the process to restore the forward button in Microsoft Edge. This particular button disappears from the browser's toolbar in Edge 108 unless there is something to forward to, but some may like it visible at all times just for consistency.

Meanwhile, News Reporter Hemant Saxena's guide was on the topic of using your Google Pixel to check your heart rate, read it here.

And our final guide is from forum member Adam Bottjen's Tech Tip Tuesday column detailed the process of pausing Live TV on Roku TV.

We had a bunch of reviews going out this week too. Robbie Khan reviewed the latest AAA horror title The Callisto Protocol on PC. He has mixed feelings about the game but it could be worth your time. Find out if that's the case here.

Meanwhile, Neowin co-founder Steven Parker reviewed the GEEKOM Mini IT11 Mini PC running Windows 11. This is a pretty decent machine, considering its discounted price point.

And Christopher White reviewed the Monoprice Voxel Pro 3D printer, and it definitely should be on your shortlist if you're searching this particular market.

Finally, I wrote an editorial thinking out loud about when Microsoft is going to kill off Xbox Games with Gold since it's mostly deadweight now anyway, especially compared to Game Pass.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week relates to the discovery that Microsoft apparently started testing tabbed File Explorer - currently a Windows 11-exclusive capability - back with Windows 95, nearly 30 years ago. Screenshots of the implementation have emerged but it's still unclear why the feature was canned way back then. Whether it was due to an unfixable bug, performance issues, or usability concerns is anyone's guess.

Microsoft Weekly: New Windows 11 features, Edge upgrades, and Teams enhancements

Reports suggested that Nvidia was rebranding the 4080 12GB model to an RTX 4070 Ti, and the report has since been confirmed by AIB partner colourful, which listed the specs on its website by mistake before taking it down.

Today, Twitter user and leakster has kopite7kimi has shared the alleged details of the RTX 4070 non Ti. Apparently the car will share the same memory subsystem of the 4070 Ti model but will have fewer CUDA cores. This means it will also pack 12GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps for a bandwidth of 504.2GB/s. The CUDA core count gets down to 5,888 in the 4070, up from 7,680 in the 4070 Ti. As such, the TGP(total graphics power) also gets reduced by 35W down to 250W.

Some updates of RTX 4070:

• PG141-SKU336/337
• AD104-250-A1
• 5888FP32
• 12G 21Gbps GDDR6X
• 36M L2
• 250W

Compared to the Ampere-based RTX 3070 and 3070 Ti, the 4070 Ti should be bigger jump in relation to the alleged RTX 4070. This is because the 4070 is said to have the same core count as last gen's 3070 but the 4070 Ti is seeing a big increase in cores up from 6 ,144 in the 3070 Ti to 7,680.

There is no info on pricing of the RTX 4070 series GPUs but Nvidia may stick the original MSRP of $899 of the 4080 12GB on the 4070 Ti. But this will entirely depend on the competence of the AMD RX 7900 series and how well they do. Speaking of the performance of the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, we now have leaked a few leaked benchmarks of those cards, and they don't paint the prettiest of pictures all the time.

Source: kopite7kimi (Twitter)

Alleged Nvidia RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti specification details are now out

 

Very little about Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 is surprising—especially now that the confusing, scrapped 12GB version is being renamed. In pretty much all of our performance tests, it slots in right where you'd expect it to, comfortably ahead of the RTX 3080 Ti but trailing the $1,500 RTX 4090 by enough to justify the $300 price gap. It's usually capable of hitting or exceeding 60 fps at 4K, and games with DLSS support (or some other kind of upscaling tech) can buy you a solid frame rate increase. And its power requirements aren't as stratospheric as the 4090's, either, so most people with an existing xx70 or xx80-class gaming PC shouldn't need to switch out their power supply.

 

The major downsides, as of this writing? As a group, the cards are often just as huge and cumbersome as the RTX 4090 (the Founders Edition is identical, and partner cards largely follow suit). The $1,200 starting price is historically high—the 3080 Ti launched with a GPU-shortage-inflated MSRP of $1,119 GPU, but the 2080 and 3080 were both a mere $699 at launch. And even if you are willing to pay that price—surprise, surprise—it's basically impossible to find in any form anywhere close to MSRP.

 

Which means, hooray: another GPU review that exists mostly as a theoretical exercise! If you could buy this GPU for the amount of money it's supposed to cost, and if its competitors were also available for what they were supposed to cost, then here's how it would stack up. That world doesn't exist right now, but if you're reading this in a few months, circumstances may have changed. In the meantime, imagine with us, won't you?

About the size—and that power connector

The 4080's physical dimensions are 12.3×5.35×2.13 inches, same as the 4090, and our 4090 review has several images comparing it to various objects so you can get an idea of just how large that is. It's a GPU that's roughly the same size as an entire Xbox Series S.

 

That does have ramifications for upgraders, particularly those using more space-efficient cases. Plenty of gaming-focused mini ITX cases won't fit a 4090 or 4080 at all, and although the case I use for my testbed fits full-size ATX motherboards (a Lian Li O11 Air Mini), I can't put the side panel back on with the card installed because the included power adapter sticks out too much. Once you factor in the front-mounted radiator and tubing for the CPU cooler, it's a tight fit, and it's something to keep in mind when upgrading an existing PC rather than building a new PC specifically designed to accommodate the card.

 

On the subject of that power adapter, the 4080 still uses a 12VHPWR power connector, the same as the RTX 4090—the adapter just wants three 8-pin power adapters plugged into it instead of four. This connector has been the subject of some controversy because of overheating and melting issues that some users have experienced. The bad news is that the 4080's adapter is likely susceptible to the same issue, but the good news is that, in most cases, Nvidia and third-party testers have found that this overheating is created when the cables aren't quite plugged in all the way, something most people should be able to avoid with a little care.

 

The best way to check the firmness of your connection is to give the adapter a couple of firm tugs to make sure it doesn't come unseated—it may pull back a millimeter or two while you're doing this but not enough to cause the heat problems that some people have been seeing. Push the connector back down after you've done this and try to be careful not to pull the cables around too much or bend them at an extreme angle.

 

In terms of power draw, the Founders Edition of the RTX 4080 is rated at around 320 W, the same as the last-generation RTX 3080 and lower than the 4090 (450 W) and the 3080 Ti (350 W). In practice, we found it to be even better behaved, drawing an average of just under 300 W during a Hitman 3 benchmark run and averaging a relatively cool 59.8 degrees Celsius. The hulking heatsink and fans are overkill, but they do their job. Nvidia recommends a 750 W power supply, the same as the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti, and you might be able to get away with less if you've paired it with a modest 6- or 8-core CPU.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 review: Second only to the 4090—for now

Following those Geekbench results, earlier today, we had the scores from Blender, and the performance uplift over previous Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs is pretty underwhelming, compared to what AMD achieved last time. And now, we have the first synthetic gaming benchmarks in the form of 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy scores, courtesy of VideoCardz.

Before we dive into the latest leak, bear in mind that these are still somewhat early drivers, even if they are the ones provided to the press. Hence it is possible that we could see a better showing with future driver updates. Also, this is one sample that is likely to be skewing the benchmark results and more test samples could certainly improve it or even make it worse. But we will still report on it and discuss it as we do with anything tech that is or can be, of interest to our readers. You are of course free to share your opinions below.

In DX11-based Fire Strike, the RX 7900 XTX manages to beat the RTX 4080 on both 1440p and 4K. In fact, even the RX 7900 XT is coming very close to the RTX 4080, which is commendable. This is in line with the performance we estimated using AMD's provided benchmark data.

However, when we come to the DX12-based 3DMark Time Spy scores, they aren't all that great. Bizarrely, in the 4K preset, the XTX is barely even faster than the XT, which again is slightly behind the RTX 4080, according to the figures above. At 1440p, it is a slightly better situation for the XTX compared to the XT, though, the 4080 gets the better of both RDNA 3 cards here. Meanwhile, the RTX 4090 is in a league of its own.

We do not have the ray tracing peformance numbers here from benchmarks like Speed Way or Port Royal, though it is fairly safe to assume Nvidia GPUs would be significantly ahead there. Our own estimated scores using AMD data have also generally put both XTX and XT cards behind the RTX 4080.

Source and images: VideoCardz

AMD RX 7900 XTX 3DMark alleged gaming benchmarks vs Nvidia RTX 4080 are hit and miss