Confirmed by various media figures and independently by IGN, ESA will not be hosting a physical nor a digital E3 showcase this year. While details are scarce as to why the sudden cancellation happened, according to sources close to the organization talking to IGN, the event planner wants to "regroup for a larger comeback in 2023."

The official event itself is no longer being held, but expect quite a few "E3 week" shows to still surface in June by lone publishers and other event holders. For example, Microsoft is sure to hold a massive festival to show off its upcoming Xbox and Bethesda games during that time as it does every year. The same should happen with Nintendo and Ubisoft. Unfortunately, EA is also a company that won't be hosting a dedicated major event this year, with it planning to spread out its announcements more.

At the same time as news broke of the E3 cancellation, The Game Awards' Geoff Keighley took the opportunity to announce another Summer Game Fest. Possibly being the main replacement showcase, the 2022 edition of the event will be returning in June with a live kickoff event.

E3 2022 cancelled, not even an online event incoming

Dell’s new UltraSharp 4K monitors are “IPS Black”—what does that mean?

Dell’s new dock wirelessly charges your phone while supporting two 4K monitors

New Dell laptops use simultaneous Wi-Fi and wired connections to lower latency

Samsung and Western Digital have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will see the two work together to further develop new SSD technology.

As part of the new MOU, both companies will collaborate to standardize and drive broad adoption of next-generation data placement, processing and fabrics (D2PF) storage technologies. However, Samsung and Western Digital will initially focus on creating an ecosystem for Zoned Storage solutions.

For those unfamiliar, Zoned Storage is a class of storage devices which enable both host and storage devices to cooperate in order to achieve higher storage capacities, increased throughput and lower latencies.

EVP and GM of Western Digital's Flash Business Unit, Rod Soderbery provided further details in a press release on how the new MOU will advance the Zoned Storage ecosystem, saying:

“In order for a technology ecosystem to be successful, overall frameworks and general solution models must come together so they do not suffer from fragmentation, which delays adoption and adds unnecessary complexity for software stack developers. For years Western Digital has been laying the foundation for the Zoned Storage ecosystem by contributing to the Linux kernel and open-source software community. We are excited to bring these contributions to this joint initiative with Samsung in facilitating wider adoption of Zoned Storage for users and application developers."

Zoned Storage

In addition to being a win for the storage industry as a whole, the new MOU marks the first time that Samsung and Western Digital have come together to help advance important storage technologies.

The partnership will focus on enterprise and cloud applications with the goal of spurring a range of collaborations around technology standardization and software development for D2PF technologies like Zoned Storage. Through Samsung and Western Digital's partnership, end users can be confident that these emerging storage technologies will have support from multiple device vendors and vertically integrated hardware and software companies.

The two companies has already kickstarted an initiative based around Zoned Storage devices such as ZNS (Zoned Namespaces), SSDs and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs. Samsung and Western Digital will also work with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and the Linux Foundation to define high-level models and frameworks for next-gen Zoned Storage technologies.

In an effort to enable open and scalable data center architectures, the two companies have founded the Zoned Storage TWG (Technical Work Group) which received approval by the SNIA in December of last year.

We'll likely hear more from Samsung and Western Digital on the future of Zoned Storage and other D2PF technologies once their partnership begins bearing fruit.

Samsung, Western Digital join forces on next-gen SSD technology

A couple of days ago, we reported about a leak suggesting that the top AMD Ryzen 7000 processor might come with a TDP of 170W. It looks like that processor might enter the production soon.

A top Twitter based leaker Greymon55, the same person who has revealed the 170W TDP, has said that the mass production of AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs might start soon.

He has revealed that the packaging plant has already started the preparations and the mass production of the processors is expected to start by April or early May.

Mass production does not mean we will get our hands on all the processors soon though. For a start, it takes few months for the processors to start arriving after initialization of mass production. So expect them to come in the market no earlier than September or October.

Additionally, it is unlikely that we might see all the processors in the Ryzen 7000 series soon. New series means top flagship and expensive versions of mid-range processors in the lineup will be given a priority.

For example, Ryzen 9 5950X was released on November 2020, along with Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 9 5900X. However, we did not see other processors in the lineup like Ryzen 5 5500, Ryzen 5 5600 and the innovative Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which were announced to release in a few days on 4th April this year. A whole one and a half year later.

AMD Ryzen 7000 Details and Specs

AMD Ryzen 7000 is based on Zen 4 architecture. It is expected to be based on 5 nm process, manufactured by TSMC.

It is going to be based on an entirely new CPU socket called AM5, which unlike previous AMD processors, is based on LGA and not PGA. Meaning, the CPU will not have any pins, but instead it would be flat and the motherboard will have all the pins, just like Intel processors.

It will require a new motherboard and a new chipset called AMD 600. Ryzen 7000 is expected to support PCI Express 5.0, which doubles the bandwidth of PCI Express 4.0.

AMD Ryzen 7000 is intended to challenge Intel Raptor Lake series of processors, which too are expected to release later this year.

AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs To Start Mass Production Soon: Report

With all this happening, Intel has been quick to respond and the company has become the first such GPU hardware vendor to have full AV1 support on its newly launched Arc GPUs. While AMD and Nvidia both offer AV1 decoding with their newest GPUs, neither have support for AV1 encoding.

Intel says that hardware encoding of AV1 on its new Arc GPUs is 50 times faster than those based on software-only solutions. It also adds that the efficiency of AV1 encode with Arc is 20% better compared to HEVC.

With this feature, Intel hopes to potentially capture at least some of the streaming and video editing market that's based on users who were looking for a more robust AV1 encoding solution compared to CPU-based software approaches.

You can read more about Intel Arc here.

Source: Intel Graphics (YouTube)

Intel beats AMD and Nvidia to become the first with full AV1 support with its new Arc GPUs

The press release notes:

According to the complaints, Samsung Electronics GmbH’s parent Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. was both Licensor and Licensee to MPEG LA’s HEVC Patent Portfolio License from Fall 2014 until terminating in March 2020, but Samsung has continued to offer products including smartphones, tablets and televisions in Germany that use patent protected HEVC methods without license since termination.

HEVC or H.265 was released in 2012 and the codec promised half video file sizes compared to its predecessor, AVC or H.264, without any noticeable loss to fidelity. Since then, HEVC has been succeeded by Versatile Video Coding or VVC / H.266 which once again promises even smaller file sizes.

Interestingly, probably unaware of what's coming, Samsung recently started a new campaign in Poland promoting its QLED TVs that feature the new Digital Video Broadcasting — Second Generation Terrestrial (DVB-T2) standard with HEVC codec support. Samsung says the aim of this campaign is to move Polish people to the new standard by June 30, 2022 as the previous DVB standard won't be applicable anymore.

Source: MPEG LA (pdf file)

Samsung sued for offering H.265 support even after its HEVC license had expired

Here is a teaser image of the upcoming GPD console with the 6800U. At a glance, the device looks like a GPD Pocket.

On paper at least, the internal hardware specifications on this upcoming GPD mini laptop completely blow the Steam Deck away. Here's a quick comparison of the two:

GPD also says that the device will support eGPU or external GPU with the help of next-gen USB 4.0 support.

Valve, though, isn't sitting idle, and work on the next-gen Steam Deck 2 is already underway. But so far we only have minor details.

Source: GPD Game Consoles (Twitter)

A new GPD console with Ryzen 6800U and 680M RDNA 2 graphics could blow the Steam Deck away

This kind of mass casualty event can be particularly daunting for field workers. Hundreds of people need care, the hospitals nearby have limited room, and decisions on who gets care first and who can wait need to be made quickly. Often, the answer isn't clear, and people disagree.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - the innovation arm of the U.S. military - is aiming to answer these thorny questions by outsourcing the decision-making process to artificial intelligence. Through a new program, called In the Moment, it wants to develop technology that would make quick decisions in stressful situations using algorithms and data, arguing that removing human biases may save lives, according to details from the program's launch this month.

Though the program is in its infancy, it comes as other countries try to update a centuries-old system of medical triage, and as the U.S. military increasingly leans on technology to limit human error in war. But the solution raises red flags among some experts and ethicists who wonder if AI should be involved when lives are at stake.

"AI is great at counting things," Sally A. Applin, a research fellow and consultant who studies the intersection between people, algorithms and ethics, said in reference to the DARPA program. "But I think it could set a precedent by which the decision for someone's life is put in the hands of a machine."

Founded in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, DARPA is among the most influential organizations in technology research, spawning projects that have played a role in numerous innovations, including the Internet, GPS, weather satellites and, more recently, Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.

But its history with AI has mirrored the field's ups and downs. In 1960s, the agency made advances in natural language processing, and getting computers to play games such as chess. During the 1970s and 1980s, progress stalled, notably due to the limits in computing power.

Since the 2000s, as graphics cards have improved, computing power has become cheaper and cloud computing has boomed, the agency has seen a resurgence in using artificial intelligence for military applications. In 2018, it dedicated $2 billion, through a program called AI Next, to incorporate AI in over 60 defense projects, signifying how central the science could be for future fighters.

"DARPA envisions a future in which machines are more than just tools," the agency said in announcing the AI Next program. "The machines DARPA envisions will function more as colleagues than as tools."

Source

And while AMD, Intel, or Nvidia haven't said anything related to this recent downward trend, Asus, in a statement to Tom's Hardware, has confirmed that it will be slashing graphics card prices by up to 25% on Nvidia RTX 3000 series GPUs starting April. Asus has attributed this to tariff cuts on U.S. imports from China.

Oddly, the Asus representative, who provided the statement to Tom's Hardware didn't mention AMD Radeon cards at all even though the Taiwanese firm is a vendor partner for both. So right now, we cannot confirm what happens to Radeon or the upcoming Intel Arc GPUs.

The rep has said:

As a result of the latest tariff lift on Chinese imports from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Gamers and PC enthusiasts will see lower prices on ASUS GeForce RTX 30-series graphic cards starting on April 1st, 2022.

Lower prices will affect entry level GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3060, mid-range RTX 3070 and high performance RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards.

Consumers should expect prices to decline up to 25% on different models throughout the springtime.

The latest March pricing data from German retail stores compiled by 3DCenter shows that Nvidia and AMD prices are now at the lowest since the shortage had hit.

Both AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce GPUs are now 25% over MSRP indicating that Nvidia's prices have fallen off a bit more steeply.

Source: Tom's Hardware | Image: 3DCenter

Report: Asus confirms it will officially be slashing graphics card prices come April

Headed up by Kim Swift, best known for their work on Valve’s Portal and at Google Stadia, Microsoft’s new publishing wing aims to “partner with world-class game development teams to develop cloud-native games to bring unprecedented experiences to players that can only be achieved with cloud technology”.

Contrary to what we might think of when we hear ‘cloud gaming’ nowadays, in which console games are streamed via the cloud to be playable on almost any device, it appears that Microsoft’s latest venture is more focused on utilizing the phenomenal power of cloud computing. 

Offering vastly more computing power to developers, “cloud-native” titles allow for some seriously impressive feats on modern hardware, as intensive gameplay aspects, such as physics, lighting, and AI, are able to be processed and rendered in server farms rather than in a small box in a users living room. 

Previously Microsoft has showcased the potential of “cloud-native” gaming in titles such as Crackdown 3, which utilized the performance available through the cloud to process the still impressive destruction physics in its multiplayer mode ‘wrecking zone’.

With Microsoft having only just announced and advertised this new publishing organisation to developers, it will likely be a long time before we see the first games born from this initiative release into the Xbox ecosystem.

Microsoft has announced a new cloud gaming publishing organisation

The unlocked i9-12900KS processor is the ultimate processor for enthusiasts and gamers who want the fastest processor available. With 16 cores (eight Performance-cores and eight Efficient-cores) and 24 threads, and up to 5.5 GHz max turbo frequency, 150W processor base power and 30MB Intel® Smart Cache for even more gaming power and performance.

The Intel Core i9-12900KS is a binned version of the Intel Core i9-12900K. It can operate at higher speeds out of the box without additional overclocking. That also means owners of the original Core i9-12900K should not feel bad because their CPUs can achieve the exact specs on compatible motherboards (assuming the cooling provides enough headroom for higher clocks).

Here are the main differences between the Intel Core i9-12900KS and Core i9-12900K.

Other than higher clocks across all cores and modes, the Intel Core i9-12900KS is identical to its sibling. Buyers will get a processor with 16 cores and 24 threads, 30 MB of L3 cache, DDR4-3200/DDR5-4800 memory support, and PCIe 4.0/5.0 compatibility.

Intel plans to sell the Core i9-12900KS beginning April 5 at $739 MSRP.

Intel announces Core i9-12900KS with higher clocks and $739 price tag

The latest March update adds graphics stability and performance improvements, Surface Dock 2 improvements, battery life improvements. The full official changelog is given below.

Surface Laptop 4 firmware update changelog

Microsoft is rolling out the March 2022 update in phases, so not every Surface Laptop 4 user will get the update today. Owners of the Surface Laptop AMD variants can now go to Settings>Update and Security>Windows Update to download and install the latest firmware update.

It’s worth noting that once you install the update, you cannot go back to the previous version. Updating the latest update will also bring all the previous updates if your Surface doesn’t have them already. You will also need to restart your Surface Laptop 4 to complete the installation.

The March 2022 firmware update is already available for devices like Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop Go, Surface Laptop Studio. The update includes fixes for several security vulnerabilities, unlike what Surface Laptop 4 devices are getting.

Meanwhile, if you’ve already gotten the latest firmware update, you can share your thoughts in the comments section on whether the update went smoothly.

AMD Surface Laptop 4 getting March 2022 firmware update

AMD’s next architecture update, the Zen 4 might have a CPU with a TDP of 170W. That is 65W higher than Zen 3’s Ryzen 9 5950X. The core counts remains the same, though.

Years ago in 1965, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, predicted something what is now famously known as the Moore’s law. The basic idea behind the law is that the transistors inside a chip, or a CPU in this case, would double its density every two years. Simply put, the more transistors a chip or a CPU has, the faster it is expected to be.

How is it done then. Thanks to the technological advancements, the size of these transistors shrink every couple of years, allowing more or almost double the amount of transistors in the same amount of space. Meaning faster CPU speed in same area of silicon. Or alternatively, similarly powerful CPU in reduced amount of power usage.

Transistor sizes are usually counted in nm, that is nanometres, which get smaller with newer generations. For example, when Intel released its 1st generation Core i series processors in 2008, the CPUs in the series were based on 45 nm process. Compare that to recently released 12th generation Core i processors, which are now based on 7 nm process.

Similar is with AMD processors. The latest generation of AMD Ryzen processors are based on 7 nm process.

Ideally, one expects processors to keep the same amount of power usage, usually counted in TDP, while having an increase in the performance.

Years ago, when AMD released its first generation Ryzen CPUs, the most powerful of its consumer CPUs was Ryzen 7 1800X. It had the TDP of 95W. So one would expect the TDP to remain the same while the performance keeps increasing. But that is not always the case. Take rumored AMD Ryzen 7000 processors, for example.

AMD Ryzen 7000

Greymon55, a famous leaker on Twitter, has revealed some information on the upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 processors, set to be released later this year.

He has revealed that the most powerful CPU in the Ryzen 7000 series, which we speculate to be Ryzen 9 7950X, might come with a TDP of 170W. Making it among the most power hungry CPUs out there. Compare that to current generation Ryzen 9 5950X, which comes with a TDP of “just” 105W.

He says that the new series will keep the same core and thread count from the previous generation. The 170W CPU is expected to have 16 cores and 32 threads. While the lesser powerful 105W CPU might come with 12 cores and 24 threads.

There is another processor in the list which comes with 65W TDP. But no other information is available about it.

Performance

As of now, no sufficient information is available about the performance of Ryzen 7000 CPUs. However, current generation of Ryzen 5000 CPUs are struggling against Intel’s current generation Alder Lake CPUs in the benchmarks. So it would be interesting to see whether AMD is able to make any significant improvements in Ryzen 7000 series and whether higher TDP is going to be of any help to it.

AMD Ryzen 9 7000 CPU details leak, power usage might go upto 170W TDP

Acidalie active SSD cooler (via Ubuy)

Intel ushered in, for the most part, the era of PCIe 5.0 with its 12th Gen Alder Lake platform and soon AMD will also have it with its upcoming Zen 4 CPUs and Socket AM5 LGA1718 motherboards. While the progress made by PCIe hasn't had much of an impact on GPUs, storage devices have had a different story to tell as the increased throughput has been a boon for NVMe drives.

And with PCIe 5.0, a 4-lane (x4) motherboard the bandwidth is expected to reach 16GB/s meaning premium high-quality NVMe SSDs could be reaching close to those speeds. With great speed comes great heat and NAND flash is known to be very heat-sensitive.

To keep it all cool, Sebastien Jean, Chief Technical Officer at Phison, believes it could become the norm for the next-gen PCIe 5.0 SSDs to feature active cooling with fans alongside heatsinks, probably similar to the one shown in the image above.

There are lots of things that we’re doing to keep the SSD power within a reasonable envelope, but for sure, the SSDs are going to be hotter, in the same way that CPU and GPU got hotter in the 1990s. As we move to Gen5 and Gen6, we may need to consider active cooling.

As mentioned above, heat is bad for NAND. In fact, not just heat, but cold can be bad too as it could lead to large temperature swings making the NAND chips prone to more error corrections. Jean has explained that the ideal operating temperature for SSDs is 25-50 °C or 77 to 122 F:

The controller and all the other components … are good up to 125 degrees Celsius (257 degrees F), but the NAND isn’t, and the SSD will go into critical shutdown if it detects that the temperature of the NAND is above 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees F) or so.

[..] If most of your data was written really hot and you read it really cold, you have a huge cross-temp swing. The SSD is designed to handle that, but it translates into more error corrections. So lower maximum throughput. The sweet spot for an SSD is between 25 and 50 Celsius (77 to 122 degrees F).

As for what the future holds in terms of cooling SSDs, the Phison blog post also briefly mentions that a successor to M.2 connectors is in development as the current implementation will begin to bottleneck soon. As such, better heat transfer solutions are also expected to follow.

Source: Phison via Blocks and Files

PCIe 5.0 to feature fans alongside heatsinks, next-gen M.2 connectors also in works

Sun Valley(s) on the horizon

The next major, annual update for Windows 11 is just a few months away. It's codenamed "Sun Valley 2" and references to its abbreviation, "SV2", have already started popping up in various Microsoft pages. Although the company has promptly removed these references after people discovered them, it doesn't make much of a difference since it's a well-known fact that Microsoft has transitioned to an annual release cadence for feature updates in Windows.

Perhaps more interestingly, references to Sun Valley 3 (SV3) - next year's major update to Windows 11 - have also started surfacing in Microsoft material and Windows DLL files. Not much is known about it yet but we'll likely start finding more about it after the eventual release of SV2 later this year.

And while we are on the topic of Easter eggs, an enthusiast has discovered an encrypted list of prominent developers in Windows 1.0 RTM. Perhaps the most recognizable name for many today will be that of former Microsoft employee and Valve founder Gabe Newell.

Coming back to the present, Microsoft released Windows 11 build 22581 to both the Beta and Dev Channel this week. There are a few changes and fixes to the Taskbar, Start menu, and Settings app, but the more important thing is that this is a rare, limited time window where you can switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta Channel without having to perform a clean install. If you are unsure about how to do this, check out our guide in the "Under the spotlight" section of this article.

Microsoft also rolled out a couple of servicing updates in the form of build 22579.100 and 22581.100 to the Dev Channel but these are just to validate the update pipeline, they don't contain any changes.

Finally, Windows 10 also received a couple of notable changes. KB5011543 fixes a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) being caused by a critical issue with Bluetooth and also includes Search Highlights for supported Windows 10 builds.

Cybersecurity is not super-fun

Prominent hacking group Lapsus$ infiltrated Microsoft's DevOps accounts this week and then proceeded to leak a lot of source code for over 250 Microsoft projects including Cortana, Bing, and Bing Maps. This is the same group that targeted Samsung, Nvidia, Okta, Vodafone, and Ubisoft in previous weeks.

Microsoft confirmed that it was indeed compromised by Lapsus$ but stated that it has been tracking the group's activities even before the public dumping of its source code. It also shared some details that organizations can use to protect themselves against similar malicious groups. Interestingly, some suspected Lapsus$ hackers led by a teenager have been arrested by City of London Police, but the jury is still out on whether this will permanently put a stop to the collective's activity.

In other news related to cybersecurity, following Microsoft's botched Patch Tuesday updates since August 2021, a third-party has released a fix for a local privilege escalation (LPE) present in Windows User Profile. However, do note that this is an unofficial fix in the sense that it doesn't come directly from Microsoft so install it at your own risk.

Meanwhile, malicious actors are once again disguising their malware in fake Microsoft files. The BitRAT malware hidden in purported Windows key verifier tools can bypass Defender whereas the Vidar malware in apparent Microsoft help and customer support files can steal your data.

Microsoft is also working with Nvidia to build confidential GPUs for AI workloads in the cloud to extend the boundary for trusted execution environments (TEEs).

DirectStorage and other gaming news galore

There was a lot of gaming news this week. We'll start off with the headliner, which is about Microsoft demoing real-world performance gains from its DirectStorage API on Windows. The company used Forspoken as an example and demonstrated how file I/O speeds could improve by up to 70% for some SSDs if they used DirectStorage instead of the existing Win32API. This performance benefit can also be translated to shaving off a few hundred milliseconds for actual loading of a game scene but could vary for different titles.

Microsoft also made a ton of important announcements at Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2022. Among these are the launch of the Azure Game Development Virtual Machine, improvements to the Azure PlayFab multiplayer service, and the global expansion of the ID@Azure program.

The company also released custom editions of the Xbox Series S and game controllers to celebrate the upcoming release of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The controllers actually have a fluffy red and blue surface which are "coatings reminiscent of the bristly texture of hedgehogs in the wild". You can check out the cursed images here. Fortunately, the hardware is not for general sale and there is only a single unit that will be given away in a sweepstakes.

Talking about some relatively smaller gaming news, Dying Light has received its Xbox Series X|S upgrade, Sea of Thieves has another limited-time adventure available, Microsoft Flight Simulator World Update VIII has enhancements for some in-game regions, and former PlayStation console-exclusive Godfall is headed to Xbox with variable refresh rate (VRR) and Dolby Vision support. Meanwhile, the Halo show has enjoyed the biggest debut ever on Paramount+.

In terms of Microsoft's ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the latter has cautioned shareholders that if the deal doesn't go through, they can expect the company stock price to plummet rapidly. Meanwhile, Microsoft has stated that it will honor an Activision Blizzard union, if one does get formed, that is.

Dev Channel

• Apple Boot Camp has received an update to ensure that Studio Display works with Macs running Windows
• AMD-based Surface Laptop 3 has some Windows 11-specific battery optimizations
• PowerToys is causing some issues with PDF previews in Outlook
• A ProtonMail app for Windows is in the works but it's far from ready

Under the spotlight

This week, I wrote an editorial about the need to have app version history in the Microsoft Store. The feature can inform consumer choices about whether they need to invest time and money in an app or if the software is abandonware that should be ignored. Some of our readers reckon that the lack of version history is due to the reason that the storefront is a graveyard of abandoned apps and if this information is shown publicly, it may not shine a good light on Microsoft. You can check out my piece here.

As I mentioned earlier, Windows 11 build 22581 being made available to both the Dev and Beta channels means that there is a rare and limited time window to switch from Dev to Beta without having to perform a clean install. If you are unsure about the process, check out this handy guide by Neowin's co-founder Steven Parker.

And if you are on the lookout for a graphics card that will offer you a great 1080p gaming experience in 2022, be sure to read this detailed guide by Neowin News Reporter Sayan Sen.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of this week comes from China where a government authority has once again placed a temporary suspension on Bing's auto-suggestions feature. Although no public reasoning has been given, exactly the same thing happened in December 2021 and Microsoft provided the same response about how it "remains committed to respecting the rule of law and users' right to access information". Perhaps it is time for Microsoft to consider moving its Bing business out of China à la LinkedIn?

Microsoft Weekly: Sun Valleys on the horizon, Lapsus$ hacks, and DirectStorage

NVIDIA has developed a new approach towards inverse rendering to train AI algorithms and develop a 3D scene from 2D photos taken at various angles in merely a few seconds. This method merges neural network training and rapid rendering, and is one of the first models of its kind to do so.

The company applied this approach to a relatively recent technology known as neural radiance fields (NeRF) and produced "the fastest NeRF technique to date", Instant NeRF, that is capable of achieving over 1,000x speedups in certain cases. This model needs seconds to train on a few dozen still photos coupled with metadata about the camera angles, and can then render the resulting 3D scene within "tens of milliseconds".

Vice President for graphics research at NVIDIA, David Luebke stated:

If traditional 3D representations like polygonal meshes are akin to vector images, NeRFs are like bitmap images: they densely capture the way light radiates from an object or within a scene. In that sense, Instant NeRF could be as important to 3D as digital cameras and JPEG compression have been to 2D photography — vastly increasing the speed, ease and reach of 3D capture and sharing.

The company says that the Instant NeRF could be employed to develop avatars or scenery in virtual worlds, render video conference participants and their environments in 3D, or to reconstruct scenes for 3D digital maps.

Through Instant NeRF, NVIDIA was able to recreate a photo of Andy Warhol taking an instant photo, converting it into a 3D scene to pay tribute to the early days of Polaroid images.

Talking about the new technique, the company mentioned:

While estimating the depth and appearance of an object based on a partial view is a natural skill for humans, it’s a demanding task for AI.

Creating a 3D scene with traditional methods takes hours or longer, depending on the complexity and resolution of the visualization. Bringing AI into the picture speeds things up. Early NeRF models rendered crisp scenes without artifacts in a few minutes, but still took hours to train.

Instant NeRF, however, cuts rendering time by several orders of magnitude. It relies on a technique developed by NVIDIA called multi-resolution hash grid encoding, which is optimized to run efficiently on NVIDIA GPUs. Using a new input encoding method, researchers can achieve high-quality results using a tiny neural network that runs rapidly.

This model was produced by utilizing the NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit and the Tiny CUDA Neural Networks library. Being a lightweight neural network, it can be trained and run on a single NVIDIA GPU, with improved performance on Tensor Cores.

NVIDIA's Instant NeRF technology turns 2D photos into 3D scenes within seconds

Google’s next smart display rumored to be a detachable tablet

The top view of the card (image above) is pretty standard as it doesn't give away the girth of the card, but it's the side view really shines light on that feature. The card is seemingly a 3.5-slot design.

From this side view, along with the thickness of the card, a second noticeable feature is the 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector on the model. According to reports, the 16-pin (12+4) connector will be able to provide 600W of power, which is 150W more than what a 12-pin power connector can do.

And the GPU needs this headroom for a good reason. The Founder's Edition 3090 Ti is rumored to feature a 450W TDP or TGP, and the MSI Suprim X model here apparently takes that up to 480W, as per the report today.

A report from igor'sLab suggests that Nvidia is using the RTX 3090 Ti as a test run for its next-gen RTX 4090 based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. There could certainly be some truth to these reports as rumors put the card as one that gobbles down 600W of power.

Source and images: VideoCardz

MSI RTX 3090 Ti leak shows a thick card with 480W TDP and 16-pin PCIe 5 power connector

Newegg has spilled the beans on the upcoming KS model by listing all the key specs of the CPU. Moreover, the retailer has been accepting preorders for a short time before taking down the page off its website.

The Intel Core i9-12900KS will remain the same 16-core/24-thread CPU with eight performance and efficiency cores (only performance cores have hyperthreading, hence the odd core-to-threads ratio). The main difference is slightly better boost speeds. According to the listing on Newegg, the Intel Core i9-12900KS will offer +100 MHz on E-core turbo clocks and +300MHz on P-core turbo clocks.

Those extra MHz are not free. Besides a hefty price tag of $799 (the Core i9-12900K is $589), the upcoming CPU has a higher base power of 150W compared to 125W in the Core i9-12900K. Turbo power remains unchanged at 241W. Here is how the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900KS compares to its siblings in the 12th gen lineup:

Of course, owners of the regular Intel Core i9-12900K can get the exact specs by overclocking their processors on compatible motherboards. With the new KS model, Intel will guarantee its buyers that the processor can operate at the marketed clocks out of the box with no tuning required.

Intel is yet to confirm the existence of the Core i9-12900KS and its shipping date. Newegg claimed the CPU would be available on March 10, which, as you may guess, is not quite true anymore.

Newegg spilled the beans on upcoming Intel Core i9-12900KS

Apple would be forced to allow users to install apps from outside the App Store under legislation recently unveiled by the EU. This stipulation was included in the initial proposal for the bloc’s sweeping Digital Markets Act, or DMA, which came one step closer to being signed into law this week, and an EU spokesperson confirmed that the provision is still included.

“We believe that the owner of a smartphone should have the freedom to choose how to use it,” said European Commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke in an emailed statement. “This freedom includes being able to opt for alternative sources of apps on your smartphone. With the DMA, a smartphone owner would still be able to enjoy safe and secure services of the default app store on their smart phones. On top of that, if a user so chooses, the DMA would allow a smartphone owner to also opt for other safe app stores.”

In addition to allowing third-party stores on its platform, Apple would also be forced to allow users to install apps from third-party sources (a practice known as sideloading) and to allow developers to use the App Store without using Apple’s payment systems.

The DMA has not yet been voted into law by the European Parliament but is expected to be approved without much trouble. That could mean the DMA coming into force as early as October this year. Members states of the EU will then be able to choose how exactly to interpret the EU act into national law.

In the past, Apple has stringently objected to sideloading on the iPhone, arguing that it would compromise the security of its platform. “Allowing sideloading would degrade the security of the iOS platform and expose users to serious security risks not only on third-party app stores, but also on the App Store,” a report put out by Apple last year said. Tim Cook has argued that sideloading would “destroy the security of the iPhone.”

Although the Mac has long allowed users to download apps from outside of Apple’s official store, Apple has argued this approach isn’t appropriate on the iPhone because these devices carry more sensitive information. Despite this, there are plenty of ways for sufficiently determined users to get apps sideloaded onto an iPhone. AltStore installs an entire third-party app store on an iPhone, and Apple’s own enterprise app program allows businesses to load on custom apps. Developers often use TestFlight to distribute apps that haven’t been fully approved for the App Store, too.

The EU thinks Apple’s security concerns can be mitigated by putting choice in the hands of users, allowing them to select in their device’s settings and select where they’re comfortable installing apps from. Google already offers similar toggles on Android, which a user must manually turn off in order to download apps from third-party sources.

When reached for comment, Apple said it’s concerned that “some provisions of the DMA will create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users while others will prohibit us from charging for intellectual property in which we invest a great deal.”

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