Tenstorrent is currently working on the Grayskull AI processor, which has already been sampling with select early customers. The Grayskull architecture uses proprietary Tensix cores, with each core using a programmable single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processor, a high utilization packet processor, and five single-issue RISC cores. Grayskull is slated to hit the market in the back half of 2021.

“Our goal is to continue creating AI focused hardware for developers. Having a great investor like Fidelity is going to help us build a sustainable company for the long term,” said Ljubisa Bajic, Tenstorrent’s CEO, of the recent funding.

The funding round was led by Fidelity Management, and also included capital injections from Eclipse Ventures, Epic CG, and Moore Capital. Tenstorrent is currently backed by Eclipse Ventures and Real Ventures.

Tenstorrent is led by processor architects Ljubisa Bajic and Jim Keller, the latter of whom left Intel in 2020 after a short two-year stint. Keller's decades of experience come from working at DEC, AMD, Tesla and Apple, where he worked among other things on the Athlon processors, Zen architecture, as well as iPhone's A4 and A5 mobile chips.

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Bang & Olufsen, the Danish audio giant famed for its high-end, pricey products, has added to its portfolio of portable Bluetooth speakers with the Beosound Explore, which is rugged enough to take on all your outdoor pursuits.

The B&O Beosound Explore appears tough enough to survive the likes of hiking and the beach while offering a sound quality that can satisfy audiophiles' tastes. It's protected by a type 2 anodised aluminum exterior that’s scratch resistant, so you don’t have to worry about cosmetic damage when it's clipped to a rucksack (or something else) using the aluminum carabiner. It’s also IP67 rated water- and dust-proof.

The internal specs are impressive, too. The Beosound Explore packs two 1.8-inch full range drivers, powered by two 30W Class D amplifiers, tuned for outdoor use. These deliver 360-degrees of sound through the True360 omnidirectional performance and circular speaker grille while pumping out 59dB of bass. Bang & Olufsen says the frequency range is 56Hz – 22.7kHz, and the speaker can reach 91dB.

Elsewhere, battery life comes in at an impressive 27 hours as long you stick to typical listening volumes, which B&O lists as 70dB. It also features Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, is compatible with Apple Fast Pair, Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair, and you can use two of them for a stereo setup.

The Beosound Explore is available now from Bang & Olufsen online and retail stores for $199. It comes in in Black Anthracite or Green finishes, with Grey Mist arriving in summer.

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HP’s new Omen 16 and Omen 17 feature 16.1-inch and 17.3-inch displays, respectively, with QHD and 165Hz panels available. The smaller machine can be equipped with up to a Core i7-11800H or Ryzen 9 5900HX processors and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics or "AMD RDNA 2 architecture-based graphics," alongside up to 32GB of DDR4 memory and two 1TB PCIe SSDs in a RAID 0 array.

The Omen 17 can accommodate up to an Intel i9-11900H processor and a GeForce RTX 3080. The same max RAM and storage configurations apply here, too.

Both machines can be equipped with either a 4-cell, 70Wh or a 6-cell, 83Wh battery. Runtime on the Omen 16 is rated at up to 9 hours, but HP didn't mention how long the Omen 17 could last.

The new HP Victus is being positioned as the younger "mainstream" sibling of the Omen, with pricing starting well below $1,000. The Victus packs a 16.1-inch display driven by up to an Intel Core i7-11800H / AMD Ryzen 7 5800M CPU, RTX 3060 / AMD Radeon RX 5500M graphics and up to 32GB of DDR4.

Like the Omen, the Victus can also accommodate single or dual SSDs in RAID 0, and can even support Intel Optane memory.

The Omen 16 and Omen 17 are slated to launch in June starting at $1,049.99 and $1,369.99, respectively. The 16-inch Victus also goes on sale in June, but with a lower starting price of $799.99.

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With the use of silicon in semiconductor manufacturing approaching its limits in recent years, chipmakers are constantly looking for new materials that will allow them to keep shrinking their manufacturing processes, which in turn will enable them to pack more transistors in the same area.

Not to be outdone by IBM’s recent announcement of its 2-nanometer nanosheet technology, TSMC, the world's largest contract semiconductor manufacturer, in conjunction with the National University of Taiwan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have announced the development of such a material called semi-metal bismuth, which they hope will enable the production of 1-nanometer chips in the coming years.

As fabrication processes get smaller, chipmakers face the problem of higher resistance and lower currents at transistor contact electrodes, which are responsible for bringing power to transistors. According to the research results published in the journal Nature (paywall) accessed by TomsHardware, by using semi-metal bismuth as the transistor’s contact electrode, the company and its partners claim they can significantly reduce the resistance while simultaneously increasing the current that can be transferred.

The technology is still at the experimental stage though and high-volume production of 1-nanometer chips is many years away. TSMC’s current top-of-the-line volume manufacturing process is its 5-nanometre node, while the company has also stated that it will begin risk production of 3-nanometer chips sometime this year.

Source: TSMC claims breakthrough in the development of 1-nanometer chips

Ampere has had a big year with the launch of two Altra server processors that have outgunned rivals Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in some key server features. Now the company plans to race ahead with even more powerful chips in the next couple of years, CEO Renee James told VentureBeat in an interview.

Such Arm-based chips are a key part of the datacenter ecosystem, as the world needs ever bigger and more powerful datacenters that consume less power than the PC-based processors rivals sell.

Ampere’s Altra processor shipping now has 80 cores and operates on much less power per core than rival Intel and AMD chips, Ampere chief product officer Jeff Wittich said in an interview with VentureBeat. The Altra Max processor has 128 cores and is going to ship later this year. And Wittich said Ampere’s next-generation processor will be sampling on a 5-nanometer manufacturing process (where the width between circuits is 5 billionths of a meter) in the first half of 2022.

An ambitious roadmap

Above: Ampere’s roadmap

That processor will be based on Ampere’s own uniquely designed core, as will another next-generation chip scheduled for 2023, James said. Ampere has collected more than 100 patents since it was founded a few years ago.

“For a lot of people, what they’ve been waiting to hear from us is our long-term roadmap and who are the customers for all of this,” James said. “We’ll have Tencent and Oracle and Microsoft, and then many, many others are also going to be public. So it’s a very exciting day for us. Because I would say that after three and a half years since we started the company, it’s our real showing of the vision for Ampere and the caliber of customers that are working with our products.”

Ampere’s earlier chips used the Arm-designed Neoverse N1 core. But Ampere’s own core is a big deal, as it’s the equivalent of Apple offering its Arm-based M1 processor. Ampere is an Arm architecture licensee, which means it can develop its own instructions and unique features for its Arm-based processors. The 2022 and 2023 processors will use Ampere’s unique cores, which will help those devices become even more power-efficient and can handle specific customer requests, like better telemetry.

“We’re developing a CPU from the ground up that’s built for the cloud,” Wittich said. “The infrastructure demands a new CPU. And for us, that means predictable high-performance platform scalability and power efficiency. As we walk through the product roadmap, it becomes more clear how we’re uniquely delivering these things.”

James added, “If you want leading-edge performance, you have to use the leading-edge manufacturing.”

Big customers

Above: Ampere’s list of key customers.

Microsoft will talk today at Ampere’s event about how it uses Ampere in datacenters and why power efficiency really matters, as Ampere Altra will help Microsoft hit its carbon-neutral goals by 2030.

Major internet infrastructure company Equinix is another customer trying to lower its carbon footprint, with customers coming in asking for more power efficiency.

“We have a really rapid cadence,” Wittich said. “We can move at the speed we need to with our customers. From a customer perspective, this is not that complex. We have big ambitions every year to deliver the leading-edge processors for the cloud and deliver them horizontally across the entire market. Having our own core really allows us to do that.”

Above: Ampere claims better performance than Intel and AMD.

If you’re struggling to buy a graphics card, relief may be on the horizon as cryptocurrency Ethereum is preparing to phase out GPU-intensive mining in the coming months.

The news was contained in a blog post from the Ethereum Foundation. For years now, the nonprofit has been working to move Ethereum away from traditional mining to what’s called a “Proof-of-Stake” protocol, which promises to streamline the cryptocurrency. 

On Tuesday, the foundation provided an update. “Ethereum will be completing the transition to Proof-of-Stake in the upcoming months, which brings a myriad of improvements that have been theorized for years,” the group wrote. 

Ethereum mining has been among the factors blamed for the ongoing GPU shortage. To generate the cryptocurrency, miners have been buying up desktop graphics cards, taking away supplies from consumers. In the meantime, the value of Ethereum has shot up from $700 in December to almost $3,000 now, adding more incentive for people to get into mining.

Credit: Pixabay

The situation is so bad that Nvidia is even installing Ethereum mining-restriction software on its graphics card to discourage miners from hoarding them. However, the cryptocurrency’s coming migration to Proof-of-Stake is expected to kill off the need for powerful GPUs to maintain the Ethereum blockchain. Instead, hardware requirements should dramatically fall, enabling a regular PC to help validate the blockchain. 

The blog post from the Ethereum Foundation goes on to say Proof-of-Stake could end up cutting down the cryptocurrency’s electricity usage by 99.95%. The foundation didn’t offer a specific date for when the transition will be completed, but it did say this: 

“While Ethereum continues to use PoW (Proof-of-Work) for now, that won’t be the case for much longer. In the past few weeks, we have seen the emergence of the first testnets for The Merge, the name given to the moment Ethereum switches to from PoW to PoS. Several teams of engineers are working overtime to ensure that The Merge arrives as soon as possible, and without compromising on safety.”

In the meantime, Ethereum miners can continue to generate the cryptocurrency using their GPUs. But once Proof-of-Stake kicks in, many PC users are hoping miners will quit the market and begin reselling their graphics cards on third-party marketplaces. Others say don't get your hopes up—the mining community might simply migrate to another cryptocurrency.

Source: Hope for Prospective GPU Buyers? Ethereum Prepares to Phase Out Mining

Although Intel's Iris Xe DG1 GPU was never designed to be released as a consumer-ended desktop graphics card, it looks like CyberPowerPC is shipping its pre-built gaming PCs with the said graphics card.

Intel Iris Xe DG1 GPU Powered Graphics Card Featured Inside CyberPowerPC's Pre-Built Gaming PC, Starting at $749.99 US

Intel has on several occasions clarified that the Iris Xe DG1 GPU is designed for mobility and the only desktop variants we will see is the SDV (Software Development Vehicle) which was shipped to the developer community. Aside from that, the GPU wasn't meant for a consumer release, however, a few months back, we saw the graphics cards show up in OEM flavors from ASUS and Colorful.

Now as spotted by Videocardz, the Intel Iris Xe DG1 graphics card is shipping within CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme Gaming Desktop PCs which features a price of $749.99 US. The base variant of this system features an Intel Core i5-11400F (Rocket Lake) CPU, 8 GB DDR4-3000 memory, 500 GB SSD & accompanied by a PSU, Casing, and gaming peripherals. The most interesting component is the graphics card itself.

The pictures of the system aren't well-lit but we can see that the card features a single-slot design and comes with either a passively cooling design or a small heatsink fan. There's no external power connector required since the Intel Xe DG1 GPUs are entry-level designs with TDP under 75W. As for the specifications, the Intel Iris Xe DG1 GPU is based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture that features 80 Execution Units or 640 cores. It comes with 4 GB of LPDDR4X memory which offers a bandwidth of 68 GB/s.

This isn't even the full iris Xe DG1 configuration as that rocks 96 EUs or 768 cores. It is likely that Intel is supplying OEMs with some DG1 chips for entry-level gaming PCs. While the performance they have on offer is good compared to built-in (integrated) graphics, it will still be a better option to look for discrete graphics solutions. Intel's proper DG2 (Xe-HPG GPU) discrete graphics cards are pitted for a launch later this year and will be aiming at the mainstream and high-end gaming segment, more on those here.

Source: Intel Iris Xe DG1 GPU Powered Graphics Cards Shipping With CyberPowerPC’s Pre-Built Gaming PCs

Tuesday marked the return of Google’s annual developer conference. The 2020 edition of the event was canceled because of the pandemic, but today Google IO returned as a virtual event. The three-day conference began with an opening keynote address, where Google executives and project managers took turns showing off new software features, new AI-powered tools, and a zany prototype video booth made for hyperrealistic teleconferencing.

 

Here’s everything Google announced.

 

A New Look for Android

Android 12 brings many visual changes that make the next version of the mobile operating system a little more personal and playful. Pick up your phone and the lock screen will light up from the bottom, but tap the power button instead and the pixels will illuminate from the side of the phone. If there are no notifications on the lock screen, the clock will take up more space. Small touches like this even apply to the system’s design—the color tones of widgets and the notification drop-down menu can adjust to match your wallpaper.

 

Many of these changes fall under a new design language Google calls Material You. It’s coming first to Google hardware and software this fall, and it lets you change the color palette of all your apps, though you’ll be confined to the colors Google has chosen for its “Material palette.”

 

Android’s interface has also been given an overall redesign with new widgets, a fresh look for larger and bolder quick settings tiles, and a simpler settings menu. You’ll find new types of tiles in the quick settings menu too, such as Google Pay and smart-home control options. Thanks to under-the-hood improvements, the OS is smoother and animations are more responsive. Everything about the interface is a little faster and more efficient. The first beta version is available now, and the official release will likely roll out in August or September.

 

New Android 12 Privacy Features

Perhaps in response to Apple’s recent announcement that it would disable ad tracking between apps by default, Google has emphasized newfangled privacy features of its own.

 

You can read a detailed rundown Android’s new privacy features by our own Lily Hay Newman. There’s a new privacy dashboard that allows users to view app permission settings, see which data is being accessed by which apps, and revoke app tracking privileges all from one screen. Also, an indicator will now pop up in the top corner to let you know if an app is using your mic or camera. More nuanced “approximate location” features allow you to give an app a general sense of where you are, rather than being able to pinpoint exactly which bathroom stall you’re in.

 

Project Starline’s ‘Video Booth’

It’s the Zoom of the future! Kind of. Maybe the Google Meet of the future. While still a prototype, Google’s Project Starline is a virtual meeting booth with holograms. (Don’t miss our exclusive first look at the tech.) Two people sit in their respective booths in different locations, and your chat companion beams right in using tech that makes them look like they’re sitting across the table from you. Thanks to depth sensors, multiple cameras, and spatial audio, Starline makes you feel like you’re really there with the other person, as opposed to staring at yet another talking head on a video screen. It’s currently just a proof of concept, and we might see it in the real world within five years, according to Google.

 

Wear OS Updates

 

Google is revamping its smartwatch operating system, with some help from Samsung. You can read our exclusive deep dive on the changes coming to Wear this year, but here are some highlights.

 

The next version of Wear OS—for now, just called Wear—will include some features pulled right from Samsung’s current wearable OS, Tizen. (Samsung’s forthcoming wearables will also use the Wear operating system.) Google says this and other optimizations will offer better battery life and up to 30 percent faster performance. Some Google apps will work directly on the Wear platform without requiring a constant phone connection, including turn-by-turn directions on Google Maps and offline music listening on streaming services like YouTube Music and (eventually) Spotify. Google is also putting its acquisition of Fitbit to use, imbuing the tech with standard Fitbit features like health tracking and workout progress.

 

Improved Photo Discovery

 

Google gives all of its users a free place to upload all of their pictures, and that policy affords the company a huge benefit: a massive dataset it can use to hone its computer vision prowess. Today, we saw some enhancements coming to Google Photos that are powered by these machine intelligence experiments. First is a feature that automatically collects photos into albums using visual patterns in the images to identify photos that probably belong together. The AI engine looks at all your photos to find similar shapes and colors, and it can spot patterns the human eye might miss. As an example, Google showed pictures from one of its engineers. The Photos AI was able to assemble a gallery of photos from a specific backpacking trip he took by pulling in all the pictures where his orange backpack appears. Another example: The AI can spot all of your shots with a menorah in them, and put together a collection of Hanukkah memories.

 

Importantly, Photos users can control which photos show up in these collections. You can remove specific photos from memories, rename the memories, or prevent specific photos from ever showing up. This is a boon for anyone who’s lived through a heavily photographed life experience they’d rather forget.

 

On the creepier end of things, the company showed a new tool that can turn two static images into one animated image. It looks at the objects in the two images, then inserts interpolated frames to make animations that were never actually captured by the camera. Yes, it makes two still photos come to life. The effect is very unsettling.

 

A Better Password Manager

 

Google is enhancing Chrome’s built-in password manager to aid users in keeping better track of their various account credentials across desktop and mobile. First, there’s a new password import tool that helps new users aggregate their many passwords into Google’s manager. Once the passwords are stored in Google’s password manager, users will have an easier time deploying them outside of Chrome; better integrations between Chrome and Android will store passwords and auto-fill information for apps as well as websites in a way that feels more seamless. Google’s password manager currently alerts you to security breaches on the web that may have compromised your passwords. Now, there’s a new feature in the password manager that adds one helpful step to that alert: a quick-fix tool that guides you through the process of changing any passwords that have been compromised.

 

Of course, Google isn’t the only company that wants to manage your passwords for you. We have a list of excellent options in our password manager guide—including some advice about why in-browser options like Google’s are more limited.

 

New Tools for Remote Work

If you’ve been lucky enough to have a job that’s allowed you to work from home for the past 14 months, you’re probably used to living your work life in the cloud. Google’s new remote working tools aim to make that a little easier. Smart Canvas is a project management tool that lets multiple users work together across different document types. They can keep track of progress with checklist items tagged to specific dates and people, and brainstorm ideas live in one place.

 

Google Meet, the video chat platform, will soon be integrated directly into Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. You’ll be able to click the little Meet button in the top corner, and collaborators can pop up on video in a column alongside the doc to argue about what gets edited. A new Companion Mode in Meet is meant to display members of a team in more equally placed tiles, along with better noise cancelation and automatic visual tweaks to zoom and lighting to make all participant videos more visually consistent. For anyone watching who needs captions, those can be turned on using live transcription, or even translated into one of Google’s supported languages.

 

Improved Natural Language Skills

 

Google showed off some new AI-powered conversational capabilities that will eventually turn up in products that use Google Assistant. First, it’s developed a new conversational model called LaMDA that can hold a conversation with you, either typed or spoken, about any topic you’re curious about. The AI will look up information about the topic while you’re talking, and then enhance the conversation in a natural way by weaving facts and contextual info into its answers. What we saw on Tuesday was just a controlled demo, but the LaMDA model really does look like it could make conversations with a computer feel even more human.

 

There’s another natural-language processing model headed to Google’s Search tools. Dubbed the Multitask Unified Model, or MUM, Google says the feature is intended to make sense of longer, multi-pronged questions submitted by users. In theory, you could ask it to compare different vacation locations, or tell you what kind of gear you’ll need to bring on a hike. It can gather information from websites in other languages, then use what it finds to uncover even more relevant information published in your native language. That way, what may be the most pertinent info on the web is not locked behind a language barrier.

 

These enhancements are part of Google’s larger effort to understand the meaning and context of questions in the way a human might. Still, Google says the features are still in the experimental phase, so it’ll be a while before the Assistant starts making decisions about any pod bay doors.

 

More Detailed Maps

 

Google is tweaking bits of its Maps app in an effort to offer users more real-time information. When you’re asking for directions, Google will present an option for “eco-friendly routes” that factor in distance and road or traffic conditions to find a more fuel-efficient way to get where you’re going. A “safer routing” feature in Maps can analyze road lanes and traffic patterns to help you avoid what it calls “hard braking moments,” when traffic slows down unexpectedly.

 

If you’re walking around, there are also improvements to Google’s AR mode, Live View, that help contextualize where you are by analyzing streets signs and providing information like “busyness” levels for whole neighborhoods instead of just specific restaurants and shops. Live View also now works indoors, so you can see that contextual info inside a train station or a mall. The main Maps tool will also tailor what it shows you to the time of day and your location. Open Maps in the morning and you’ll see pins for breakfast options. Open Maps in a city you’ve never visited and you’ll see tourist spots and popular attractions.

 

Don’t Forget About Shopping

 

In an effort to make you even more likely to buy stuff on the internet, Google has tweaked some of its shopping tools. Now users can use Google Lens to search images in screenshots taken on their phone and link third-party memberships directly to their Google account. Also, the days where you could idly add a 5-pound bag of gummy bears to your shopping cart and then forget about it are gone. Now, whenever you open up a new tab in Chrome, Google will show you all of the pending purchases you have sitting in shopping carts around the web.

 

Google also announced a Shopify integration feature, which will let sellers who use Shopify make their products appear across search, Maps, images, Google Lens, and YouTube.

 

Update, Tuesday May 18 at 6:20 pm: This story was updated to further clarify the way the Multitask Unified Model gathers information across websites published in different languages. 

Everything Google Announced Today: Android, AI, Holograms (may require free registration)