The researchers, based in Hungary, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the U.K. and the U.S. report a facial recognition accuracy with their deep-learning approach that is 99.95% accurate for facial recognition even for a person wearing a niqab, which covers most of the face except the eyes. The software is 99.9% accurate for gender recognition and determination of age. It can recognize whether a veiled person or person wearing a COVID mask is or is not smiling, by analyzing the eyes, with 80.9% accuracy. Tests were carried out on an image database of 150 people, 41 male and 109 female subjects aged from 8 to 78 years old.

Ahmad B.A. Hassanat of Mutah University in Karak and Abeer Ahmad Albustanji of the Ministry of Environment in Amman, Jordan, Ahmad S. Tarawneh of Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, Malek Alrashidi, Mansoor Alghamdi, and Ibrahim S. Alkhazi of the University of Tabuk, Hani Alharbi of the Islamic University of Madinah, Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Alanazi of Cranfield University, U.K., and V.B. Surya Prasath of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., used a deep convolutional neural network to develop their recognition system. The neural network has 4,096 features in each layer of the recognition process.

The team points out that their proof of principle—known as DeepVeil—involved the use of an in-house image database, with face-on images of veiled persons taken at close range. The next step will be to work with a more diverse set of images recorded in a range of settings including photos taken from different angles. That said, in the early days of conventional facial recognition systems, a clear face-on image was needed to verify a person's identity, but that is no longer the case as the algorithms and software have evolved. So, the same will, with the right approach and further development, likely become true for DeepVeil.

Source

According to preliminary numbers released by NVIDIA, the company reported $2.04 billion in gaming revenue for the first half of 2022, down from the $3.06 billion it made in 2021. Simply put, NVIDIA's revenues from the sales of graphics cards for gaming have slid 33%.

While founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang, acknowledged the concerning downturn, he blamed the slowdown on component shortages and “ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.”

It is interesting to note that these factors seem to have had no negative effect on AMD. The company’s financial report claims AMD's revenue was $6.6 billion for Q2 2022. With $1.7 billion coming from gaming, the sector is now the company’s second-biggest source of revenue, sitting below computer processors, which earned $2.2 billion.

While its rival's revenues from gaming slid, the CEO of AMD claimed the company is growing steadily:

We delivered our eighth-straight quarter of record revenue based on our strong execution and expanded product portfolio. We see continued growth in the back half of the year highlighted by our next-generation 5nm product shipments.

NVIDIA’s CEO has indicated the company could prioritize its efforts to scale up in the exponentially growing field of Artificial Intelligence (AI):

Our gaming product sell-through projections declined significantly as the quarter progressed. As we navigate these challenges, we remain focused on the once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvent computing for the era of AI.

NVIDIA’s GPUs continue to dominate the high-end GPU market. But the company’s graphics cards still command a hefty premium, despite the recent turmoil in the cryptocurrency market. This often makes AMD’s products a popular choice for budget gaming rig builders. Additionally, AMD’s GPUs are embedded in Microsoft Xbox Series X|S as well as Sony PlayStation 5. These factors could help explain why AMD's revenues, from gaming, are growing.

NVIDIA lost a billion dollars which AMD may have picked up from gaming GPU sales

Micron, which is an industry veteran, has begun the production of its fastest GDDR6X memory yet that reaches 24Gbps. The new memory part was spotted by Twitter user and leakster @harukaze5719. The part number for the chip is "MT61K512M32KPA-24:U", where the "24" at the end denotes the speed of the memory and the letter "U" is meant to denote the revision version.

Nvidia's current flagship, the RTX 3090 Ti, already utilizes Micron's current best 21Gbps GDDR6X. The new 24Gbps variant is 14% faster and will likely be used by the top end cards of the upcoming RTX 4000 series Ada Lovelace GPUs.

AMD's upcoming RX 7000 series GPUs too could be a potential candidate for this 24Gbps memory. However, Team Red currently does not use Micron's faster GDDR6X DRAM and has stuck to the 16Gbps variant on its RX 6000 series. Meanwhile, it uses Samsung's 18Gbps GDDR6 for the refresh RX 6x50 series.

Intel's Arc desktop cards are unlikely to use such fast memory as the company has already confirmed that it is not going to compete at the high end with big boys AMD and Nvidia, at least not immediately.

Samsung recently announced its own 24Gbps GDDR6 memory too, which is always a good thing for GPU-makers as having a single manufacturer can often lead to shortages.

Micron 24Gbps GDDR6X for next-gen AMD RX 7000 and Nvidia RTX 4000 now in production

Rumors, delays, and early testing suggest Intel’s Arc GPUs are on shaky ground

Earlier this summer, at the re:MARS conference—an Amazon-hosted event focusing on machine learning, automation, robotics, and space—Rohit Prasad, head scientist and vice president of Alexa A.I., aimed to wow the audience with a paranormal parlor trick: speaking with the dead. “While A.I. can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last,” he said, before showing a short video that starts with an adorable boy asking Alexa, “Can Grandma finish reading me The Wizard of Oz?”

The woman’s voice that reads a few sentences from the book sounds grandmother-y enough. But without knowing Grandma, it was impossible to evaluate the likeness. And the whole thing struck many observers as more than a little creepy—Ars Technica called the demo “morbid.” But Prasad’s revelation of how the “trick” was performed was truly gasp-worthy: Amazon scientists were able to summon Grandma’s voice based on just a one-minute audio sample. And they can easily do the same with pretty much any voice, a prospect that you may find exciting, terrifying, or a combination of both.

The fear of “deepfake” voices capable of fooling humans or voice-recognition technology is not unfounded—in one 2020 case, thieves used an artificially generated voice to talk a Hong Kong bank manager into releasing $400,000 in funds before the ruse was discovered. At the same time, as voice interactions with technology become more common, brands are eager to be represented by unique voices. And consumers seem to want tech that sounds more human (although a Google voice assistant that imitated the “ums,” “mm-hmms” and other tics of human speech, though, was criticized for being too realistic).

That’s been driving a wave of innovation and investment in A.I.-powered text-to-speech (TTS) technology. A search on Google Scholar shows more than 20,000 research articles on text-to-speech synthesis published since 2021. Globally, the text-to-speech market is projected to reach $7 billion in 2028, up from about $2.3 billion in 2020, according to Emergen Research.

Today, the most widespread use of TTS is in digital assistants and chatbots. But emerging voice-identity applications in gaming, media, personal communication, are easy to imagine: custom voices for your virtual personas, text messages that read out in your voice, voiceovers by absent (or deceased) actors. The metaverse is also changing the way we interact with technology.

“There are going to be a lot more of these virtualized experiences, where the interaction is less and less a keyboard, and more about speech,” says Frank Chang, a founding partner at A.I.-focused venture fund Flying Fish in Seattle. “Everyone thinks of speech recognition as the hot thing, but ultimately if you’re talking to something, don’t you want it to just talk back to you? To the extent that that can be personalized—with your voice or the voice of somebody you want to hear—all the better.” Providing accessibility for people with vision challenges, limited motor function, and other cognitive issues is another factor driving development of voice-tech, notably for e-learning.

Whether or not you like the idea of “Grandma Alexa,” the demo highlights how quickly A.I. has impacted text-to-speech, and suggests that convincingly human fake voices could be a lot closer than we think.

The original Alexa, released with the Echo device in November 2014, is believed to have been based on the voice of Nina Rolle, a voiceover artist based in Boulder (something neither Amazon nor Rolle ever confirmed), and relied on technology developed by Polish text-to-speech company Ivona, acquired by Amazon in 2013. But the early Alexa’s conversational style left a lot to be desired. In 2017, VentureBeat wrote: “Alexa is pretty smart, but no matter what the A.I.-powered assistant talks about, there’s no getting around its relatively flat and monotone voice.”

Early versions of Alexa used a version of “concatenative” text-to speech, which works by compiling a large library of speech fragments recorded from a single speaker, which can be recombined to produce complete words and sounds. Imagine a ransom note, where letters are cut up and pasted back together to form new sentences. This approach generates intelligible audio with an authentic-sounding timbre, but it requires many hours of recorded voice data and lots of fine-tuning—and its reliance on a recorded library of sounds makes it difficult to modify voices. Another technique, known as parametric TTS, doesn’t use recorded speech, but rather starts with statistical models of individual speech sounds, that can be assembled into a sequence of words and sentences and processed through a speech synthesizer called a vocoder. (Google’s “standard” Text-to-Speech voices use a variation of this technology.) It offers more control over speech output, but has a muffled, robotic sound. You wouldn’t want it to read you a bedtime story.

In the effort to create new, more expressive and natural-sounding voices, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, and other major players in text-to-speech have all in recent years adopted some form of “neural TTS.” NTTS systems use deep-learning neural networks trained on human speech to model audio waveforms from scratch, dynamically converting any text input into fluid-sounding speech. Neural systems are capable of learning not just pronunciation but also patterns of rhythm, stress, and intonation that linguists call “prosody.” And they can pick up new speaking styles, or switch speaker “identities,” with relative ease.

Google Cloud’s Text-to-Speech API currently offers developers 100-plus neural voices in languages ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese (plus regional dialects) along with “standard voices” that use older parametric TTS (listen here). Microsoft’s Azure gives developers access to more than 330 neural voices across 110-plus languages and dialects, with a range of speaking styles—including newscast, customer service, shouting, whispering, angry, excited, cheerful, sad, and terrified (try it out). Azure neural voices have also been adopted by companies including ATT, Duolingo, and Progressive. (In March, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nuance, a leader in conversational A.I. and a partner in building Apple’s Siri, whose Vocalizer service offers 120-plus neural chatbot voices in over 50 languages.) Amazon’s Polly text-to-speech API supports roughly three dozen neural voices in 20 languages and dialects, in conversational and “newscaster” speaking styles(listen to an early demo here.

The technology underlying the Grandma voice demo was developed by scientists at Amazon’s text-to-speech lab in Gdansk, Poland. In a research article, the developers describe their novel approach to cloning a new voice from a very limited sample—a “few-shot” problem, in machine-learning parlance. Essentially, they split the task into two parts. First, the system converts text into “generic” speech, using a model that’s been trained on 10 hours of speech from another speaker. Then, a “voice filter”—trained on a one-minute sample of the target speaker’s voice—imparts a new speaker identity, modifying characteristics of the generic voice to sound like the target speaker. Very few training samples are needed to build new voices.

Rather than having to build a new text-to-speech model for each new voice, this modular approach turns the process of creating a new speaker identity into the computationally easier task of changing one voice into another. On objective and subjective measures, the quality of synthetic speech generated in this way was comparable to speech from models trained on 30 times more data. That said, it can’t fully mimic a specific person’s speaking style. In an email to Fast Company, the Alexa researchers explain that the voice filter only changes the timbre of the speaking voice—its basic resonance. The prosody of the voice—its rhythms and intonation—come from the generic voice model. So, it would sound like Grandma’s voice reading, but without the distinctive way she’d stretch out certain words or take a long pause between others.

Amazon won’t say when the new voice cloning capabilities will be available to developers and the public. In an email, a spokesperson writes:

“Personalizing Alexa’s voice is a highly desired feature by our customers, who could use this technology to create many delightful experiences. We are working on improving the fundamental science that we demonstrated at re:MARS and are exploring use cases that will delight our customers, with necessary guardrails to avoid any potential misuse.“

One can imagine offering the ability to customize something like Reading Sidekick—an Alexa feature that lets kids take turns reading with Alexa—with a loved one’s voice. And it’s easy to see how the “Grandma’s voice” demo might presage an expanded cast of more adaptable celebrity voices for virtual assistants. Alexa’s current celebrity voices—Shaquille O’Neal, Melissa McCarthy, and Samuel L. Jackson—required about 60 hours of studio recordings to produce, and they’re somewhat limited in what they can do, answering questions about the weather, telling jokes and stories, and responding to certain questions, but defaulting to the standard Alexa voice for requests outside the system’s comfort zone.

Google Assistant “celebrity voice cameos” by John Legend and Issa Rae—introduced in 2018 and 2019, but not currently supported—similarly combined prerecorded audio with some impromptu responses synthesized with WaveNet technology. The ability to develop more robust celebrity voices that can read out any text input after a short recording session could be a game changer—and might even help boost stagnating sales of smart speakers.

(According to research firm Omdia, the U.S. smart speaker shipments were down nearly 30% last year relative to 2020, including a nearly 51% drop in Amazon Alexa smart speaker shipments.)

As the big tech companies continue to invest in text to speech, one thing is certain: It will be harder and harder to tell if the voice you’re hearing is made by a human, or by a human-made algorithm.

Source

It is said as microchip technology improves, the performance of these chips increase. On the same time, the power usage of these microchips decrease too.

So usually we get to see newer generations of processors either delivering double the performance or consuming half of the power at the same performance, when compared to their predecessors.

This progressive improvements in the performance and power usage is always welcomed. Sometimes both are balanced properly by the companies so that both performance and power efficiency is not compromised. But it looks like one important part of that duo is now being thrown out completely. Going by the reports, in the race for performance supremacy, power efficiency is going to take a hit.

Power Usage Of Next-Gen Graphics Cards To Increase

If reports are to be believed, Nvidia is going to massively increase the power usage of its graphics cards.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti has a TDP (base power usage) of 350 Watts. The max power it draws does not go above 450 Watts in almost all cards.

However, it is said that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 series cards are going to draw power above 800 Watts. Which is a massive jump. Some reports are even suggesting 900W usage. The card which is most likely going to use this much amount of power is going to be RTX 4090 Ti. It is possible that it’s going to be named as the RTX 4090 Titan.

AMD Radeon Joins The Race

In an interview to Tom’s Hardware, AMD has already confirmed that next-gen graphics cards, most likely called Radeon 7000 series, too are going to have an increase in power usage.

It is evident. Why would AMD want to stay behind the game when it’s rival is trying to race away with the performance increase at the cost of power usage.

AMD, however, might be more conservative in its power usage increase.

As reported by Twitter user @Kepler_L2, the AMD Radeon RX 7000 series might be having a max TDP of anywhere between 400 Watts to 450 Watts. With the 450 Watts being reserved for an entirely new card named RX 7970 XT3D. The 3D here is possibly AMD’s GPU version of its 3D stacking found in Ryzen 5800X3D CPUs.

This power usage, it must be mentioned, is TDP, not max power. The max power can be nearer to Nvidia’s offerings, though not as high as it.

Outcomes Of Such Power Usage Increase

This increase of graphics card power consumption has two big problems. Environmental and practical.

As far as the environment is concerned, the world has faced massive fuel and power shortages this year. Many countries were known to have lack of fuel required to generate electricity and were also facing massive power cuts in various places. In Europe too, we are going to see many houses in later part of this year not having access to room heating fuels thanks to the war.

These cards should not become replacement room heaters due to their higher power consumption leading led heat production. Which is bad for the environment and the product itself too.

Across The Board Hike In Power Usage

Coming back to the more practical and technological problem at hand. The outcome of this power usage is not going to be limited to just top level flagship graphics cards, the power usage is going to increase on all the models of the cards. Including mainstream ones, which many people can afford. This is a huge problem most seems to have ignored.

As one can see from the above chart. The power increase has happened across the board.

For example, famous Twitter leaker kopite7kimi had reported that RTX 4060 is going to consume more power than RTX 3070. For the record, RTX 3070 has a TDP of 220 Watts. Compare that too RTX 3060, which has TDP of 170 Watts, we are going to see an increase of 50 Watts.

AMD’s mainstream offering too doesn’t seem behind. While RX 6600 came with a TDP of 132 Watts, RX 7600 is expected to have a TDP of 200W. A massive 68 Watt increase.

Worrying Trend

This trend of increasing power consumption to increase performance has to stop. In recent years, we were starting to see more power efficient cards, but now trends seems to have reversed. Not only this is bad, but the question arises, when will this stop. Even later generation of cards might use even more amount of power. Most users would be least concerned about it as long as they have the latest and fastest performance at hands.

Let’s also not forget, people will need newer, more powerful power supplies to support these cards too. 1200W or 1600W PSUs might not be enough. Flagship cards might require even a 2000W PSU, when pared with a similarly power CPU and other components.

Whether people agree or not, all this is going to cause problems to the users. Maybe not as outright and visible, but still a worrying trend to say the least about it.

Next-Gen GPUs Using Crazy Amounts Of Power Is Worrying

The report comes via YouTuber RedGamingTech (RGT) who says that the Radeon team is increasing the total graphics power (TGP) of the top end Navi 31 chip from 375W to 405W, which is bump of 8%. Meanwhile, apparently there will also be another more efficient SKU based on this that will feature the 375W TGP.

RGT has also provided purported specification details for the flagship SKU as well as others below it. Apparently it will come with 84 Compute Units (CUs) or 42 Workgroup processors (WGPs). However, the flagship is apparently named the 7950 XT this time around instead of the expected 7900 XT.

Meanwhile, previous rumors have alleged that the top SKU could have an even higher core count coming in at 60 WGPs or 120 CUs. Regardless though, the performance is expected to be very impressive as Radeon is expected to move from a two SIMD32 per CU up to four with RDNA 3.

Alongside that, the memory subsystem is also expected to get a big overhaul with V-cache coming into the mix allegedly taking the Infinity Cache amount of the top chip up from 128MB to a massive 384MB.

Overall, the performance of the RX 7000 series is expected to be around double that of the RX 6950 XT, which is the current AMD flagship and should put up a good fight against the Nvidia RTX 4090 which is also expected to be a behemoth.

AMD confirmed recently that the RDNA 3 GPUs are launching in the next quarter and the launch of the Nvidia RTX 4000 series is also not too far away.

Source and image: RGT (YouTube)

Following Nvidia RTX 4000, AMD allegedly bumping up power draw for RX 7000 (RDNA 3) too

SK hynix has developed new 4D NAND flash with a huge 238 layers, paving the way for rapid and capacious new SSDs, the company has announced.

Unveiled on stage at Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, the new memory chip is described as the “world’s first 238-layer 512Gb TLC 4D NAND” and is expected to enter mass production in the first half of 2023. 

Compared with the previous 176-layer model, the new NAND is said to offer 50% faster data transfer speeds (at 2.4Gb/sec), 21% greater energy efficiency for data reads and a 34% increase in overall productivity.

The arrival of the 238-layer product will see SK hynix snatch the record for world’s highest NAND stack from rival manufacturer Micron, whose latest model features a measly 232 layers.

238-layer 4D NAND flash

NAND flash is a type of non-volatile memory that features in all kinds of storage devices, from memory cards, USB sticks and portable drives to SSDs for servers and client devices.

The general trend in NAND flash development is towards a reduction in cost per capacity and an increase storage density, effectively eliminating the last remaining use cases for traditional hard disk drives. The arrival of the 238-layer product from SK hynix marks another step in this journey.

Unlike other NAND products on the market, the latest chips in the company’s range feature a “4D” architecture, whereby the logic circuits are placed beneath the storage cells. SK hynix says this design allows for a “smaller cell area per unit, leading to higher production efficiency”.

“SK hynix secured global top-tier competitiveness in perspective of cost, performance and quality by introducing the 238-layer product based on its 4D NAND technologies,” said Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development at SK hynix. 

Perhaps contrary to expectation, the new 238-layer NAND will first make its way to client devices, which will give content creators and PC gamers cause for excitement. Only later will the new chip come to smartphones and high-capacity servers.

SK hynix also revealed it is developing a 1Tb 238-layer product, which will double the storage density of the latest chip when it arrives next year. “We will continue innovations to find breakthroughs in technological challenges,” added Choi.

Via Blocks and Files (opens in new tab)

New NAND flash paves the way for super cheap, extra large SSDs

Ubisoft and Tencent are two of the biggest gaming companies in the world. One being a family owned French company, another a Chinese conglomerate. Both known for their expertise in the gaming industry. Both are in the news again.

While Ubisoft is known for it’s Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy game series, among others. Tencent is known for owning a lot of gaming companies, especially the ones making mobile and online multiplayer games.

For now, however, they are not being discussed for their games. But it’s the company which is at stake now.

Reuters is reporting that as per its sources, Tencent is trying to buy a big stake in Ubisoft, which will make it a majority shareholder. This comes years after protecting Ubisoft from a hostile takeover.

Previous Ubisoft Takeover Attempts

In 2015-2016, Vivendi, a mass media company, had tried a hostile takeover of Ubisoft from its owners, the Guillemot family.

The Guillemots own about 15% of a stake in Ubisoft, with the rest owned by others, including the majority of shares being owned by the public. Vivendi meanwhile had started owning 20% and intended a big takeover of the company. To help Ubisoft from being taken over by Vivendi, Tencent bought 5% shares and prevented the takeover. In 2018, Vivendi understood that it cannot continue its takeover attempts and decided to share all of it’s Ubisoft shares.

The Guillemots understood the that this was not to be taken lightly. Because they own such a small stake in their own company, it makes the company quite vulnerable for such takeover attempts. So in May this year, as per reports, the Guillemots had started talks with private equity firm to take a complete control over Ubisoft by themselves. This came at the time when there were talks that many firms were trying a yet another takeover of Ubisoft. It looks like Tencent might be in a race too.

Tencent Trying Ubisoft Majority Stake

As reported by Reuters, Tencent is now trying to become the largest shareholder in Ubisoft by buying away a huge amount of shares. Ubisoft’s shares were priced at 44 euros before the news came and Tencent is offering about 100 euros per share, which is more than double of its market price.

For that, Tencent has not only decided to buy the shares from the public shareholders, but two of it’s to officers had also met the Guillemots and offered them a deal, with an agreement and the price.

We don’t know what has Guillemots or other public shareholders have decided. But the price is too big to ignore for now. However, looking at the Guillemot’s recent history, they are unlikely to agree so easily.

Tencent’s History

Tencent has taken over many gaming companies in the past. It now either owns or has a big stake in many gaming companies like:

• Funcom (known for The Longest Journey)
• Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant)
• Sumo Digital (LittleBigPlanet)
• Turtle Rock Studios (co-developer of Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead)
• Epic Games (Unreal Engine, Fortnite, Epic Games Store)
• Frontier Developments (RollerCoaster Tycoon, Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo).
• Miniclip (browser and Android)
• Bohemia Interactive (Arma)
• PlatinumGames (Bayonetta)
• Discord (chat platform)

As one can see, these are not small names in the gaming industry. Tencent is consuming them one after another.

There’s a reason Tencent is aiming for Ubisoft, though. In the domestic market, it’s facing a crackdown from the authorities due to limits being put on gaming hours for the citizens. So Tencent is now aiming global. To increase its profits and assets even further.

Outcome

This is not the first time a major gaming company is being sold. Like Square Enix sold a big number of its studios recently and is possibly being sold (at least a big part of it) to Sony.

While no one knows the outcome of this deal, whether it will go through or not. The problem is Tencent consuming and taking over a huge part of the gaming industry, with some acts of these bought companies not being honorable, to say the least. This comes as a huge worry for the gaming industry and consumers as a whole, that too in a time when the tech industry is facing a post-lock down cut in its sales everywhere.

Title image credit: Assassin’s Creed Crossover Stories. Ubisoft.

Tencent Trying Ubisoft Takeover, Years After Protecting It From One

The return of Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer (IE) is dead and isn't even supposed to be bundled in Windows 11. However, some internet sleuths managed to find it within the depths of Microsoft's latest operating system. It turns out that the GUI for IE still exists in Windows 11 and can be triggered pretty easily. Heck, you can even set a shortcut for it. Interestingly, Microsoft has remained silent on the matter even though there was a clear public perception prior to this week that Windows 11 is the first version of the OS that comes without IE bundled.

But coming over to Microsoft's latest browser, Edge received a few noteworthy updates as well. Edge Dev 105.0.1336.2 introduced Narrator, a new management policy, and a bunch of performance improvements. The company also enabled Enhanced Security mode (previously Super Duper Secure Mode) by default in Edge 104.0.1293.44 Beta and then quickly rolled out the configuration with a new Basic option for everyone in Edge Stable via version 104.0.1293.47.

Talking about browsers in general, Edge is inching closer to 11% of the desktop market share. This is obviously still far behind Chrome's current share of 66.19%, but it's a start. Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo has now committed to blocking Microsoft scripts in its browser and extensions. Microsoft has also stated that it won't profile users from DuckDuckGo on ad clicks, even though advertising on the site is done in partnership with Microsoft.

Windows 11 build 25174

Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 Dev Channel build 25174 this week. Most notably, this build introduces the Game Pass widget so that you can get a sneak peek at new arrivals, imminent departures, and more. There are a bunch of bug fixes for File Explorer, Settings, and Taskbar, as well as a lengthy list of known issues. A servicing build 25174.1010 (KB5017214) was also released yesterday.

There were a couple of interesting things about build 25174 too. While it could be due to a bug but there are hints that Microsoft is changing the icons in the Shut Down dialog box. In a similar vein, some Windows 11 users managed to trigger a floating rounded Taskbar. However, Microsoft later pointed out that this is a bug, much to the disappointment of many.

On the other hand, the Beta Channel received builds 22621.450 and 22622.450. As usual, the former has new features disabled by default while the latter has them on. Some improvements have been made to File Explorer but there are various known issues too. Since we are talking about issues, Microsoft has also resolved a display bug affecting the input indicator and language bar in Windows 10.

Coming over to the security side of Windows, Nvidia has released version 473.81 of its GeForce driver. This is also being made available to unsupported Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems since it patches some important security issues. Meanwhile, Smart App Control (SAC) in Windows 11 can now block LNK, ISO, RAR, IMG, VHD, and VHDX files, among others.

App previews, leaks, and updates

We have a lot of ground to cover in this section so I'll try to keep it brief. We'll start off with Microsoft PowerToys - which still hasn't hit version 1.0 - netting a couple of updates. Version 0.61.0 brought quality of life improvements for Always on Top, FancyZones, and PowerToys Run. Meanwhile, version 0.61.1 was only a small release to patch a couple of issues.

Additionally, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) received version 0.65.1, which introduced a number of changes and is available for all Windows Insiders. On the other hand, Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) August's update brought input compatibility in apps such as games, networking and windowing improvements, and reliability updates. Windows Package Manager (Winget) was updated to version 1.3 too and it was a pretty significant update that added the ability to display installation notes, verbose logs, new settings, and more.

On the Microsoft 365 side, Microsoft has started rolling out a new Teams client that natively runs on Apple Silicon, which is good news for Mac users looking for performance improvements. The collaboration app is also getting a Video clip feature so you can create and send short video messages. Furthermore, Word on the web has received a Review mode which basically gives no editing rights, but allows reviewers to read documents and leave feedback.

Similarly, Office Insiders in the Beta Channel on Windows and the web can now try out dictation in OneNote. Meanwhile, Surface customers will be happy to know that the Surface app has been updated with lots of new features that can be tried out now.

Interestingly, Microsoft started rolling out Outlook Lite for select emerging countries as well. The app just weighs in at 5MB and packs core functionalities of the email client. In a similar vein, the company's cloud-powered video-editing service Clipchamp has ditched its complicated pricing plans in favor of a free plan and a premium one that costs $11.99/month.

Some more details about Microsoft's "Designer" - codenamed "Oasis" - tool have leaked as well. It seems like it will be a successor to Sway and will empower users to create new designs for social media and marketing posts with the help of AI.

Finally, if you use Rufus, you should know that version 3.20 is out. It adds the option for automatic account creation and the ability to copy regional settings from the current Windows installation.

Git gud

We will kick off our gaming section by drawing your attention to Sea of Thieves' highly anticipated Season 7, which is now live. It introduces players to new captaincy and ship-owning features, battle passes, cosmetic items, challenges, and a lot of quality of life improvements.

And if you're wondering how Sony is sitting quietly about the ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, it turns out that this is absolutely not the case. In some recent filings that have been made public, Sony has emphasized the importance of Call of Duty, the potential of it being a Microsoft exclusive, and implied that the latter would cause players to ditch PlayStation. Of course, the jury is still out on whether the acquisition will eventually go through or not.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has other areas of focus though. The company has emphasized that even though its gaming business is rooted in Xbox, its future growth lies beyond the console, and gravitates more towards Xbox Cloud Gaming. To that end, it has also fixed some issues in the Xbox App for Windows which caused some UI freezes during Xbox Cloud Gaming. And since we are talking about platforms, those who keep track of things like this should know that Windows 11's market share on Steam has dipped for the first time since its release.

The Redmond tech giant has also started testing a family plan for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in Ireland and Columbia. It allows people to share the full benefits of the subscription with up to four other users at a price of $25/month. Microsoft's global rollout plans for the new plan are still a bit unclear.

Since we are on to the topic of game subscriptions and the value they bring, it's also time to talk about Ghost Recon Wildlands, Shenzhen IO, Cooking Simulator, and more heading to Xbox Game Pass this month. In a similar vein, Calico and Saints Row 2 are now free through Games with Gold while Batman and Anthem headline this week's Deals with Gold. Don't forget the latest Xbox Free Play Days promotion either, currently sporting Far Cry 6, The Serpent Rogue, and Roguebook.

Coming over to the hardware side, Microsoft has revealed that it has freed up "hundreds of additional megabytes" in the Xbox Series S for developers to play around with, which means that games can now take advantage of more memory. Oh, and there's also a weird "singing" Xbox controller that you can win via a lucky draw of sorts.

Finally, don't forget to take a gander at this weekend's PC game deals, collected in handy lists by our News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• Viva Goals is now generally available
• Teams now has real-time human language translation
• Sabrent has confirmed that its new Rocket 4 Plus G SSD supports DirectStorage
• Microsoft will share the data its in-house cybersecurity experts access with businesses
• Surface Book 3 received stylus improvements in the August 2022 firmware update
• Despite Alder Lake optimization, Windows 11 is struggling to stay ahead of Linux in performance

Under the spotlight

As he does every week, forum member Adam Bottjen - better known as Warwagon - wrote a handy and brief Tech Tip Tuesday guide about how you can print to PDF.

Adam also authored a guide about how you can create a shortcut to launch Internet Explorer in Windows 11 because he likes to watch the world burn.

Next, we have a write-up from News Reporter Taras Buria about which browser is the best in terms of efficiency on Windows. If this is something you are curious about, check out Taras' thoughts here.

Meanwhile, News Editor Paul Hill penned a detailed guide on how you can leverage the obscure download manager in Telegram.

Finally, I wrote a listicle about the top 10 features people are requesting for Microsoft OneNote. Although the list is interesting, it's disappointing to see that Microsoft has not responded to any feedback.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week revolves around God of War on Xbox... kind of. Basically, a game called War Gods Zeus of Child (yes, really) that clearly rips off Sony's beloved franchise was selling on Xbox for $3.99. Although Microsoft eventually removed it, questions were raised about how the game got through the certification process and stayed on the storefront for days. And while War Gods has been pulled, there's another problematic listing from the same developer. It's called Dinasaur Falling Survival (that's not a typo) and it basically "borrows" from Fall Guys. it's unclear why this title hasn't been removed yet.

Microsoft Weekly: The return of IE, Windows 11 build 25174, and app previews

Intel had an incredibly rough quarter, unexpectedly losing half a billion dollars due to a PC purchasing slump, and yesterday seemed like more bad news — a report from TrendForce about manufacturing delays sparked rumors that Intel’s next big flagship processor Meteor Lake would be delayed until 2024, which would put it as much as a year behind schedule. (In a February investor meeting, Intel said that Meteor Lake would be “powering on” this summer before shipping in 2023.)

However, Intel is flatly denying those rumors today, with spokesperson Thomas Hannaford clarifying to The Verge that not only are they untrue, but that Meteor Lake will actually ship, launch, and be available to consumers in 2023.

That’s a good thing for Intel, because Meteor Lake is one of the company’s most important developments in many years. Not only is it the first client processor on the company’s Intel 4 architecture (formerly known as 7nm) and reportedly its first to use extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) in manufacturing, it’s also the first major release from Intel to use a chiplet design where processor components can be combined more like Legos. Intel had already begun moving to hybrid chips with its 12th Gen Alder Lake’s mix of performance and efficiency cores, similar to a smartphone chip, but that’s not the same thing.

The idea that Meteor Lake is still on track won’t be much of a surprise to anyone who listened to Intel’s Q2 2022 earnings call. There, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger straight-up told investors that the company would deliver Meteor Lake in 2023, saying that it was showing “good health in both our and our customers’ labs” and that it had already been “broadly sampled to customers.”

Delivering samples to customers isn’t the same as being ready for a consumer launch, of course — but now, Intel is clarifying that it’ll be ready for consumers in 2023 too.

The TrendForce report suggested that Intel wouldn’t even begin mass production of a key Meteor Lake component until the end of 2023, and that “this incident has greatly affected TSMC’s production expansion plan.” TSMC wouldn’t comment on Intel, but denied that its capacity expansion project had been affected in a statement to China’s Economic Daily.

During its Q2 earnings call, Intel said it had already shipped 35 million units of its 12th Gen Alder Lake processors. Raptor Lake, which will likely be known as Intel 13th Gen Core, should be coming later this year.

Intel denies Meteor Lake is delayed to 2024, says consumer chips will launch in 2023

On July 29, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo met with Japan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi and Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Koichi Hagiuda in Washington, DC. It was the first meeting of the newly established US-Japan Economic Policy Consultative Committee.

A joint statement issued after the meeting said the two sides “seek to advance efforts under the Japan-US Commercial and Industrial Partnership and other frameworks to foster supply chain resilience in strategic sectors, including, in particular, semiconductors…”

They also “Welcome the progress of the Joint Task Force announced by President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida to explore the development of next generation semiconductors…”

The joint statement is short on detail, but according to reports in the Japanese press, a new R&D organization with significant US participation will be established in Japan by the end of this year to develop and prove the 2-nm technology with a goal of starting production by 2025.

TSMC also aims to start 2-nm production in 2025 but has already started building a factory. The US and Japan are playing catch-up, likely driven in part by fear of a Chinese take-over of Taiwan. IBM announced a 2-nm design in May 2021 but it is not ready for mass production.

The US and Japanese are three or more generations behind TSMC. Only Samsung competes with TSMC at 3-nm and 5-nm, the previous two technology nodes. Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD and Intel all rely on TSMC to make their most advanced products.

On the other hand, Intel has its own ambitious technology roadmap and progress toward smaller design rules at TSMC – as well as Intel, Samsung and other semiconductor makers – would not be possible without American, Japanese and European equipment and materials.

Taiwan-based TSMC is, along with South Korea’s Samsung, one of the two leading pillars of the global chipmaking industry. Photo: AFP / Sam Yeh

The American and Japanese governments are not simply providing support for what market competition would deliver anyway. On the contrary, they and industry executives now agree that the development of leading-edge semiconductor production technology must be accelerated and not derailed by corporate inertia or opposition to large manufacturing investments from the financial sector.

It all sounds new, but in fact, the American government is now joining a process that has been making news for a year and a half now, with TSMC itself playing an important role.

In March 2021, TSMC established an R&D center in Japan’s science city of Tsukuba to develop 3D IC packaging materials in cooperation with its Japanese suppliers. Two months later, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and its subsidiary organization, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), announced that more than 20 Japanese companies would take part.

In June of this year, TSMC completed construction of a clean room in the AIST Tsukuba Center. According to the press release:

“The TSMC Japan 3DIC R&D Center, with its brand-new clean room facility, will pursue research into the next generations of three-dimensional silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies in materials science. These technologies will enable system-level innovations to increase computing performance and integrate more functionality, opening a new path for driving semiconductor technology forward in addition to the industry’s conventional path of shrinking transistor size.”

“With the completion of the clean room, the TSMC Japan 3DIC R&D Center will support research and development of state-of-the-art 3D IC packaging material in collaboration with Japanese partners, domestic research institutes and universities possessing strengths in semiconductor materials and equipment.”

In the semiconductor industry, a clean room is a closed and precisely controlled space where dust and other potential contaminants are filtered out and workers wear head-to-foot “bunny suits” to isolate themselves from the manufacturing process.

In November 2021, private companies took the initiative when Japan’s JSR Corporation announced that it had completed the acquisition of America’s Inpria Corporation. JSR is the world’s top maker of polymer-based photoresists, the light-sensitive materials used to form circuit patterns on silicon and other types of semiconductor wafers during the photo-lithographic process of chip production.

Inpria specializes in metal-oxide photoresists developed specifically for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which enables the production of leading-edge semiconductor products with 5-nanometer and smaller design rules. Both companies work closely with Intel.

Intel is hoping for a chip-making revival. Credit: Intel

Inpria’s metal-oxide photoresists are also expected to meet the technical challenges beyond 1-nm toward the end of the decade. 2-nm is a step along the way but not a final destination.

The US government’s efforts are now coming together. A statement issued by the White House on the occasion of Biden’s visit to Tokyo in May this year noted that the two leaders “…concurred on establishing a joint task force to explore the development of next generation semiconductors, based on ‘the Basic Principles on Semiconductor Cooperation’ adopted in the Japan-US Commercial and Industrial Partnership (JUCIP).”

JUCIP was established on November 15, 2021, by Raimondo and Hagiuda. On May 4, 2022, they announced that the new organization had succeeded in:

 “Joint development of Basic Principles on Semiconductor Cooperation, which identify a shared vision, objective and strategy for strengthening the resiliency of semiconductor supply chains. Under the Basic Principles, DOC [Department of Commerce] and METI intend to cooperate on diversifying semiconductor production capacity, increasing transparency, coordinating emergency response on shortages, and strengthening semiconductor R&D and workforce development.”

It remains to be seen what role American and Japanese semiconductor manufacturing companies will play in the new partnership.

Will they simply buy the technology and upgrade their own production facilities? Or will they establish one or more new companies along the lines of TSMC’s joint venture with Sony and Denso on the island of Kyushu?

Given Japan’s lack of foundry capacity, that is a distinct possibility.

Source

Its purchase of iRobot brings Amazon much-needed context for its ambient smart home ambitions. Image: iRobot

When I spoke to iRobot’s Colin Angle earlier this summer, he said iRobot OS — the latest software operating system for its robot vacuums and mops — would provide its household bots with a deeper understanding of your home and your habits. This takes on a whole new meaning with the news today that Amazon has bought iRobot for $1.7 billion.

From a smart home perspective, it seems clear Amazon wants iRobot for the maps it generates to give it that deep understanding of our homes. The vacuum company has detailed knowledge of our floor plans and, crucially, how they change. It knows where your kitchen is, which your kids’ rooms are, where your sofa is (and how new it is), and if you recently turned the guest room into a nursery.

This type of data is digital gold to a company whose primary purpose is to sell you more stuff. While I’m interested to see how Amazon can leverage iRobot’s tech to improve its smart home ambitions, many are right to be concerned with the privacy implications. People want home automation to work better, but they don’t want to give up the intimate details of their lives for more convenience.

This is a conundrum throughout the tech world, but in our homes, it’s far more personal. Amazon’s history of sharing data with police departments through its subsidiary Ring, combined with its “always listening (for the wake word)” Echo smart speakers and now its thorough knowledge of your floor plan, give it a pretty complete picture of your daily life.

Each of iRobot’s connected Roomba vacuums and mops trundles around homes multiple times a week, mapping and remapping the spaces. On its latest model, the j7, iRobot added a front-facing, AI-powered camera that, according to Angle, has detected more than 43 million objects in people’s homes. Other models have a low-resolution camera that points at the ceiling for navigation.

All this makes it likely this purchase isn’t about robotics; if that’s what Amazon wanted, it would have bought iRobot years ago. Instead, it probably picked up the company (for a relative bargain — iRobot just reported a 30 percent revenue decline in the face of increasing competition) to get a detailed look inside our homes. Why? Because knowing your floor plan provides context. And in the smart home that Amazon is making a major play for, context is king.

“We really believe in ambient intelligence — an environment where your devices are woven together by AI so they can offer far more than any device could do on its own,” Marja Koopmans, director of Alexa smart home, told me in an interview last month. Ambient intelligence requires multiple data points to work. With detailed maps of our homes and the ability to communicate directly with more smart home devices once Matter arrives, Amazon’s vision of ambient intelligence in the smart home suddenly becomes a lot more attainable.

Astro — Amazon’s “lovable” home bot — was likely an attempt at getting that data. The robot has good mapping capabilities, powered by sensors and cameras that allow it to know everything from where the fridge is to which room you are currently in. Clearly, Amazon already had the capability to do what iRobot does. But for a thousand dollars and with limited capabilities (it couldn’t vacuum your home) and no general release date, Astro isn’t getting that info for Amazon anytime soon.

Ring’s Always Home Cam has similar mapping capabilities, allowing the flying camera to safely navigate your home. That product has further reach than Astro, as it only costs $250 and has a very clear security focus. But it’s still not available to buy.

So, what iRobot brings to Amazon is context at scale. As Angle told me in May, “The barrier to the next level of AI in robotics isn’t better AI. It’s context,” says Angle. “We’ve been able to understand the utterance ‘go to the kitchen and get me a beer’ for a decade. But if I don’t know where the kitchen is, and I don’t know where the refrigerator is, and I don’t know what a beer looks like, it really doesn’t matter that I understand your words.” iRobot OS provides some of that context and, as it’s cloud-based, can easily share the information with other devices. (Currently, users can opt out of Roomba’s Smart Maps feature, which stores mapping data and shares it between iRobot devices.)

With context, the smart home becomes smarter; devices can work better and work together without the homeowner having to program them or prompt them to do so. Angle used the example of a connected air purifier (iRobot, so now Amazon, owns Aeris air purifiers). The air purifier could automatically know which room it was in using the iRobot OS cloud. “It would [know] ‘I’m in the kitchen. It’s okay to make more noise. And there are a lot of sources of pollutants here.’ Compared to its role in a bedroom, which would be different,” says Angle.

Amazon now owns four smart home brands (in addition to its Alexa platform, anchored by its Echo smart speakers and smart displays): home security company Ring, budget camera company Blink, and mesh Wi-Fi pioneers Eero. Add in iRobot and Amazon has many of the elements needed to create an almost sentient smart home, one that can anticipate what you want it to do and do it without you asking. This is something Amazon has already started to do with its Hunches feature.

But consumer trust is a major roadblock. Amazon will need to do a lot more to prove it’s worthy of this type of unfettered access to your home. Today, for many people, more convenience just doesn’t feel worth the tradeoff.

Photography by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon bought iRobot to see inside your home

iRobot’s CEO, Colin Angle, will stay on in his position following the completion of the deal. As he already knows the company, it allows Amazon to continue running iRobot without major headaches. The acquisition will further cement Amazon’s position in the smart home market too as its product range expands.

Commenting on the deal, Colin Angle, CEO at iRobot, said:

“Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative, practical products that make customers’ lives easier, leading to inventions like the Roomba and iRobot OS. Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I cannot think of a better place for our team to continue our mission. I’m hugely excited to be a part of Amazon and to see what we can build together for customers in the years ahead.”

For its part, Amazon seems to be quite excited by the deal too. The e-commerce giant said it was eager to work with iRobot and find new ways to help make people’s lives easier. It said that iRobot has already tackled a lot of difficult problems including avoid obstacles, automatically emptying the collection bin, and more. Amazon does a good job at offering its Kindles at an affordable price, so it’ll be interesting if it can lower the cost of Roomba vacuums too, which can still be fairly pricey.

Amazon picks up Roomba vacuum maker iRobot for $1.7 billion

This 6-inch board turns a Raspberry Pi module into a DIY router

The Italian government and Intel have both refused to be drawn into commenting on the situation. It was suggested by the sources, however, that the outgoing Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, wants to have an agreement in place by the end of August ready for the next general election due to take place on September 25.

This deal represents just a small part of the $88 billion that Intel plans to invest in European chip capacity. The continent is eager to develop chip producing capacity of its own because the recent supply chain issues have exposed its over-reliance on Asian countries. This is not to say Europe won’t import from Asia in the future, but having its own capacity will make supplies more robust.

According to the sources, Piedmont, Veneto, Lombardy, Apulia, and Sicily had originally been considered as locations for the factory. This list has been whittled down to Piedmont and Veneto, but a final decision still needs to be made.

It’s possible that Italy could fund almost half the cost of the factory, should it go ahead. The country had set aside €4.15 billion until 2030 for investments in projects such as these. If Intel does make an announcement, it will become more clear how many jobs the factory should provide when built.

Intel close to deal with Italy to build chip factory to reduce reliance on Asia

Unfortunately for TSMC, Intel delaying the chipsets until 2023 virtually cancels the outsourcing agreement for the 3nm chip production capacity. Consequently, TSMC has decided to slow down expansion, which would otherwise lead to higher costs with its production assets being idle. TrendForce also suggests that the delay could affect TSMC’s plans for future capital expenditures in 2023.

However, it states that there are prospects to be realized in 2024 worth acknowledging. Although due to disruption of TSMC's expansion Apple has become the forerunning company producing 3nm chipsets, it still is TSMC’s major customer. While launching products like the A-17 Bionic and M-series chips under the 3nm chipsets, Apple further aims to use 3nm processors for its iPhone in 2024; therefore, TSMC could expect revenues to rise.

Apple already has Samsung and LG producing chipsets for its iPhone 14 Pro series and has 3nm chipsets kept aside for the M2 Pro and the possible M3 lineup covered by TSMC. However, it is difficult to assess whether these delays by TSMC and Intel will affect Apple’s schedule.

Source: Trendforce via MacRumors

Delays for 3nm chip production by Intel disrupt TSMC's expansion plans

Wi-Fi 7 PCs should be available by 2025, could surpass 5.8Gbps, Intel says

In his report (translated from German), Igor states:

"I asked some dealers, potential distributors and manufacturers in Europe about Intel's Arc cards and the plans of these companies in this regard. However, for the most part there was little or no interest in embarking on the adventure with this new product. "

This was at a time long before the Arc lineup's benchmarks and tests were leaked. The company has not given any price guarantee either. Furthermore, it isn't offering a competitive enough package for RMAs which makes their GPU lineup, a risky investment. Without the interest from commercial customers, the board partners are left with a decision whether it would be better to pull the plug on the entire project, or keep going.

"At least one of the major board partners has now even completely stopped producing Intel cards (due to quality concerns)" says the report further. This was said for the Alchemist generation of GPUs, which is the first generation of the Arc lineup.

The company is also sitting on a lot of unsold inventory. This includes products such as graphics cards, motherboards, etc. However, this indicates that a lot of capital is tied up holding that inventory, which leaves a little financial room for experiments such as the Arc lineup.

Intel has released only one card so far - the Arc A380. It is a budget GPU and is currently available only in China. This is because it has partnered up with OEMs and system integrators to launch its products.

An increasing number of problems has made it hard for Intel to follow its own timeline. Board members have already cut off marketing, and it looks the Arc series is a dark road ahead for Intel.

Source: Igor's Lab (via Tom's Hardware)

Report suggests Intel Arc has a dark road ahead

The term holographic teleportation, or holoport, is a combination of hologram and teleport: when a hologram of a person or object is transmitted instantaneously to another location.

On the afternoon of July 27, a small group of students from the Western Institute for Space Exploration (Western Space) gathered to witness and take part in the world's first international holoport demonstration.

"We had the incredible opportunity to demonstrate the first international, two-way holographic teleportation," said project leader Leap Biosystem's co-founder, Dr. Adam Sirek, a faculty member at the Schulich School of Medicine Dentistry, and Western Space.

In April, NASA successfully holoported a doctor on to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the first "holonaut," but last Thursday's Western Space demonstration was the first time anyone has crossed international borders through holographic teleportation.

"We transported one person from Alabama to London, Ontario, and then each of the students here on the project were able to instantly holoport themselves in holographic form down to Huntsville, Alabama," Sirek said.

He joked about the team crossing the border without having to pay an airfare, but within the quick quip comes a nugget of truth about the vast potential of such technology.

The team, composed largely of undergraduate and medical students, is exploring the way this futuristic technology can be used in the real world. Whether it is for people communicating or providing assistance and medical care to remote areas, even in the ISS, the possibilities are only just beginning to be understood.

Precipice of opportunity

The technology for holographic teleportation comes from hardware developed by Microsoft and software from Aexa Aerospace, headquartered in Houston.

Aexa has partnered with Western and Canadian company Leap Biosystems to explore medical applications for the technology, which led to the demonstration of the first international holographic teleportation.

The technology involves a special camera that creates a holographic image of a subject, which is then sent to the destination of choice. The user on the other end is wearing a device called a hololens, not unlike virtual reality gaming headsets. Through the hololens the individual can see the subject within their environment. If both are wearing a hololens, they can interact in their environments as if they are actually there.

While the novelty of traveling a great distance instantaneously is fascinating, for medical student and project intern Adam Levschuk the possibilities for medical care are most exciting.

"It's like the best of both worlds between medicine and engineering. The applications I'm particularly looking at is facilitating physical exams that a doctor would normally conduct in an examination room."

Although there is still work to be done to make conducting a virtual medical exam over the hololens a reality, Levschuk said he is excited to get the opportunity to explore the possibilities.

He also has the added bragging right of saying he attempted the first virtual handshake across international borders.

"Every time you put it on and you see the hologram appear in front of you, it's still a little bit shocking… I could reach out and virtually shake the person's hand on the other end of the line."

Medical student and project intern Alex Zhou said the implications of the technology could be huge for access to health care in remote locations.

"This is very much the future of health care in terms of accessing remote communities, remote environments, and providing rural health-care access," said Zhou.

Sirek agreed with Zhou, emphasizing the cost of the technology is currently around $5,000 which, when compared to the cost of medivacs or even traveling for exams, leads one to conclude this kind of technology could have the potential for huge cost savings for the health-care system.

"It can impact a number of factors including physician access to these (remote) areas and physician licensing. I think it is going to be a very big game-changer for rural health care."

But with the promise of new technology there are inevitably limitations and hurdles to overcome—and that is where the engineering side of the project comes in.

Jocelyn Whittal, a third-year engineering student at Western, found herself being part of the team after she was encouraged to apply by one of her professors.

"As far as the hololens goes, I'm sort of looking at what biosensors might be really easy and also really helpful to integrate with it," said Whittal.

"So whether that's like monitoring heart rate, oxygen saturation or even looking at haptics."

Haptics is the science and technology of transmitting and understanding information through touch, which with a hologram is currently a hurdle.

While the technology can transport a person's image across borders it can't yet interact with touch, which is a big part of a medical exam.

However, Whittal said she is hoping to get haptics as part of the hololens in the future, and of the hololens itself. "I feel like Iron Man."

Next steps

Sirek is excited about the possibilities for the technology, which are not limited to the grand scope of space or betterment of medical care.

Perhaps one of the most obtainable possibilities of this technology for the general public is its potential to connect people. Virtual meetings are the norm now, but with hololens and holographic teleportation, the physical, three-dimensional experience could become mainstream.

"We look at that again from a space perspective; wouldn't it be nice if you're on a three-month deployment to the space station, and you could come down and sit in the room (at home) for a family dinner."

Sirek said one of the most exciting parts is seeing this new generation of students taking on the challenges of today for a better, more connected world tomorrow.

"We have three undergraduate students taking advanced technology and potentially demonstrating that to leaders and decisions-makers for the future of Canada. Our students are actively involved in pushing the boundary of what novel technology can do."

Source

At this time, adding these key agreements to your website won’t do a lot because no web browser supports them yet. For the time being, browsers will fall back to the existing encryption schemes, which aren’t quantum-resistant. Cloudflare said that the internet will move to quantum cryptography in the coming years and hopes that this beta will give its customers a head start.

The post-quantum cryptography that Cloudflare is using is called Kyber. Last month, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) decided to standardize Kyber, with the final specifications coming in 2024. By launching this trial, Cloudflare hopes to drive the adoption of post-quantum cryptography.

In terms of characteristics, Kyber doesn’t need as much computing power as existing schemes, but it uses bigger keys and uses more RAM. Cloudflare believes that if Kyber was used on its own, connections to sites could be faster, but in this trial, a hybrid model is used, so connections are a bit slower.

If you want to test this out on one of your domains, check out Cloudflare’s comprehensive steps to set it up. Be warned that Kyber will be receiving backward-incompatible changes in the upcoming months, and Cloudflare’s implementation will change to be compatible with other early adopters. Additionally, if the community finds any issues, then workarounds will be added to Cloudflare’s implementation. Due to the quick pace of changes, Cloudflare can’t guarantee long-term stability or continued support.

Source

In sales data that was published today, Nintendo confirmed that the Switch family of consoles has sold a combined total of 111.08 million units. This is combined data for the original Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch Lite released in 2019, and the Nintendo Switch OLED Model released in 2021.

This is an increase of 3.43 million units this quarter, with the OLED Model taking home the largest portion at 1.52 million, with the standard Switch selling 1.32 million and the Switch Lite selling 0.59 million.

These numbers show that the Switch itself is still a hugely successful console for Nintendo, and the numbers are starting to close in on the Game Boy (at 118.69 million units), and has eclipsed the Wii (at 101.63 million units).

On the software side, the biggest selling game is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at 46.82 million units, followed by Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 39.38 million and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 28.82 million.

With a packed second half to 2022 for exclusive titles, such as the recently released Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and the upcoming Splatoon 3 and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, the Switch may become Nintendo's second most successful console ever behind the Nintendo DS.

Nintendo Switch crosses 111 million units in latest sales data

The research, recently published in Nature, indicates the potential for large-scale production of a 2D field-effect transistor—a device used to control current in electronics. The new material could help overcome the challenges of nanoscale silicon semiconductor production for dependable capacitance (electrical charge stored) and efficient switching behavior.

According to the researchers, this is one of the crucial bottlenecks to solve for the development of a new generation of futuristic electronic devices, from augmented reality, flexible displays and new wearables, as well as many yet-discovered applications.

"Not only does it pave a critical pathway to overcome the fundamental limit of the current silicon semiconductor industry in miniaturization, but it also fills a gap in semiconductor applications due to silicon's opaque and rigid nature," says Professor Sean Li, UNSW Materials and Manufacturing Futures Institute (MMFI) Director and principal investigator on the research. "Simultaneously, the elastic and slim nature could enable the accomplishment of flexible and transparent 2D electronics."

Solving the semiconductor scaling issue

A transistor is a small semiconductive device used as a switch for electronic signals, and they are an essential component of integrated circuits. All electronics, from flashlights to hearing aids to laptops, are made possible by various arrangements and interactions of transistors with other components like resistors and capacitors.

As transistors have become smaller and more powerful over time, so too have electronics. Think your mobile phone—a compact hand-held computer with more processing power than the computers that sent the first astronauts to the moon.

But there's a scaling problem. Developing more powerful future electronics will require transistors with sub-nanometer thickness—a size conventional silicon semiconductors can't reach.

"As microelectronic miniaturization occurs, the materials currently being used are pushed to their limits because of energy loss and dissipation as signals pass from one transistor to the next," says Prof. Li.

Microelectronic devices continue to diminish in size to achieve higher speeds. As this shrinkage occurs, design parameters are impacted in such a way that the materials currently being used are pushed to their limits because of energy loss and dissipation as signals pass from one transistor to the next. The current smallest transistors made of silicon-based semiconductors are 3 nanometers.

To get an idea of just how small these devices need to be—imagine one centimeter on a ruler and then count the 10 millimeters of that centimeter. Now, in one of those millimeters, count another one million tiny segments—each of those is one nanometer or nm.

"With such limits, there has been an enormous drive to radically innovate new materials and technologies to meet the insatiable demands of the global microelectronics market," says Prof. Li.

Dr Jing-Kai Huang, Dr Ji Zhang, Dr Junjie Shi and Professor Sean Li from the UNSW Materials and Manufacturing Futures Institute.

Credit: Robert Largent

Breaking the bottleneck for future electronics

For the research, MMFI engineers fabricated the transparent field-effect transistors using a freestanding single-crystal strontium titanate (STO) membrane as the gate dielectric. They discovered their new miniaturized devices matched the performance of current silicon-semiconductor field-effect transistors.

"The key innovation of this work is that we transformed conventional 3D bulk materials into a quasi-2D form without degrading its properties," says Dr. Jing-Kai Huang, the paper's lead author. "This means it can be freely assembled, like LEGO blocks, with other materials to create high-performance transistors for a variety of emerging and undiscovered applications."

The MMFI academics drew on their diverse expertise to complete the work.

"Fabricating devices involves people from different fields. Through MMFI, we have established connections with academics who are experts in the 2D electric device fields as well as the semiconductor industry," says Dr. Ji Zhang, a co-author of the paper.

"The first project was to fabricate the freestanding STO and to study its electrical properties. As the project progressed, it evolved into fabricating 2D transistors using freestanding STO. With the help from the platform established by MMFI, we were able to work together to finish the project."
The team is now working towards wafer-scale production. In other words, they hope to see whether the material can be used to build all the circuits for an entire computer on one chip.

"Extensive data sets were collected to support the performance of these 2D electronics, indicating the technology's promise for large-size wafer production and industrial adoption," says Dr. Junjie Shi, another co-author of the paper.

"Achieving this will enable us to fabricate more complex circuits with a density closer to commercial products. This is the crucial step to make our technology reach people," says Dr. Huang.

The researchers also say their development is a promising step toward a new era of electronics and local manufacturing resilience.

"From shifting geopolitics and the pandemic, we have seen more disruption in the global semiconductor supply chain, and we believe this is also an opportunity for Australia to join and strengthen this supply chain with our unique technology in the near future," Dr. Huang says.

Currently, the technology is protected by two Australian provisional patent applications, with MMFI and UNSW looking to commercialize the intellectual property and bring it to market.

"We are currently fabricating logic circuits with the transistors," says Prof. Li. "At the same time, we are approaching several leading industries in the Asia-Pacific region to attract investment and establish a semiconductor manufacturing capability in NSW via industrialisation of this technology."

Source

It turns out that breaking an encryption algorithm meant to withstand the most powerful cyberattacks imaginable might not be as tough as we’d been led to believe. In a paper published over the weekend, researchers demonstrated that a PC with a single-core processor (weaker than a decent laptop) could break a “post-quantum” algorithm that had been a contender to be the gold standard for encryption in just one hour.

Last month, The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, announced the winners of a years-long competition to develop new encryption standards, the likes of which have been designed to protect against a hypothetical (for now) threat that hasn’t been invented yet: quantum computers.

Such hardware is projected to someday be so powerful that it will have the ability to easily decrypt our present-day public-key encryption (standards like RSA and Diffie-Hellman). To stave off this future threat, the U.S. government has invested in the creation of new encryption standards that can weather attacks by hardware of the days to come.

NIST selected four encryption algorithms that it said would provide adequate protections and that it plans to standardize, meaning others would be measured against them. The contest took years to unfold and involved droves of contenders from all over the world. After the four finalists were selected, NIST announced another four that were being considered as other potential candidates for standardization.

Unfortunately, one of those additional four algos doesn’t seem so sturdy. SIKE—which stands for Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation—was one of NIST’s secondary finalists, but a recently discovered cyberattack managed to break SIKE relatively easily. Worse, the computer running the attack was about as far from a quantum computer as you could get: instead, it was a single-core PC (meaning that it’s a lot slower than your typical PC, which has a multi-core processor), and it only took an hour for the little machine to unwind SIKE’s supposedly tricksy encryption.

“The newly uncovered weakness is clearly a major blow to SIKE,” David Jao, one of the algorithm’s creators, told Ars Technica. “The attack is really unexpected.”

The attack on SIKE was discovered by a group of security researchers attached to the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography, which is operated by Belgian university KU Leuven. The group published a paper that shows how a simple computer can use high-octane math to unwind SIKE’s encryption and nab the encryption keys that keep the algorithm secure. The attack involves an attack at a protocol called Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman, or SIDH, which is one of the fundamental components of SIKE, Ars Technica reports.

The whole process of decrypting SIKE reportedly took 60 minutes or so, the amount of time it takes for your DoorDasher to arrive. The math, which I will never understand, can be read in the research team’s paper.

Suffice it to say, creating digital protections is no easy task—especially when you’re dealing with new territory. Still, we apparently have a ways to go before all our secrets are safe from the world’s most talented math nerds.

Source

AMD recently released their Q2 2022 earnings report. The report talks a lot about their quarterly earnings, announcements and future products.

It gives specific mention to their year-on-year revenue increasing by a big 70% in the Q2 2022. While sharing a slide full of graphs, it also points to increase in client (CPU) and gaming (graphics cards) revenue, among other things.

AMD Q2 2022 Graph 1. Credit AMD.

AMD Q2 2022 Graph 3. Credit AMD.

AMD Q2 2022 Graph 4. Credit AMD.

AMD Q2 2022 Graph 5. Credit AMD.

However, all that is not the main issue here. The main issue is the thing discussed in the commentary by the AMD chief Lisa Su in the earnings call transcript.

AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Release Date

Lisa Su, in the earnings call transcript (something which we managed to find after a lot of efforts), mentions that AMD is going to release the Ryzen 7000 processors in the Q3 of this year. Quoting her:

Looking ahead, we are on track to launch our all-new 5-nanometer Ryzen 7000 desktop processors and AM5 platforms later this quarter, with leadership performance in gaming and content creation.

– Lisa Su, AMD CEO.

This almost confirms that AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series of processors are going to release in the September (at the earliest we expect). It also adds to the previous rumors about the same. Now, whether it’s going to be a soft release – in limited quantities in limited locations, or a proper one. Whether AMD is going to release all main processors together or in subsequent months. All this we can’t say for sure.

What we do know is that AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 processors are coming in September and it’s going to come a month earlier than Intel’s next-gen Raptor Lake processors.

AMD Radeon RX 7000 Graphics Cards Release Date

Lisa Su discussed one more important thing. She suggested that AMD Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards might be released later this year. Quoting her:

While we expect the gaming graphics market to be down in the third quarter, we remain focused on executing our GPU roadmap, including launching our high-end RDNA three GPUs later this year.

Our next-generation RDNA three architecture is another major step forward for our graphics roadmap, delivering more than a 50% generational improvement in performance per watt by combining our most advanced gaming architecture with 5-nanometer triplet manufacturing.

– Lisa Su.

The RDNA 3 GPUs, she mentions, is the tech behind the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards.

This is actually a delay. As we had mentioned earlier, the RX 7000 series graphics cards were reportedly going to launch in September this year. This suggests that the release of Ryzen 4000 CPUs are a bigger priority right now for AMD. Another possibility is that AMD is sitting on a big stock of graphics cards which it wants to sell away first, due to slump in industry-wide demand, before releasing the newer generation of higher priced cards in the market. Or maybe, an unlikely issue has happened that AMD just does not have enough GPU manufacturing yields right now.

The other problem is her suggesting that only high-end GPUs would be released this year. Means mainstream budget cards will be released next year.

Having said, whatever maybe the reason for the delay, the claim of 50% performance per watt improvement, even if it being a marketing language, is appreciable, as moving to a 5 nm architecture will have a good amount of benefits behind it

AMD Almost Confirms Ryzen 7000 September Release Date