More Windows on Arm laptops are hitting the market

Samsung has announced the launch of the 2.5-inch PM1731a - its first solid-state drive that features Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology.

By making use of ZNS technology, the SSD will provide its users improved lifespan in cloud environments, data center, and storage server, and maximum available user capacity. ZNS will enable data to be grouped contingent on its access frequency and usage, and deposited in independent spaces within the SSD.

This storage device is notably capable of mitigating the number of write operations, which, in turn, reduces the writer amplification factor (WAF) of the drive. Samsung claims that this feature will increase the endurance up to fourfold as compared to conventional NVMe SSDs.

Sangyeun Cho, senior vice president of the Memory Software Development Team at Samsung had the following to say:

Samsung’s ZNS SSD reflects our commitment to introducing differentiated storage solutions that can substantially enhance the reliability and lifetime of server SSDs. We plan to leverage quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology in our next-generation ZNS drives to enable higher thresholds for storage performance and capacity in the enterprise systems of tomorrow.

The PM1731a is built on Samsung's sixth-generation V-NAND and will come in 4TB and 2TB models, with dual ports. Although prices and exact launch dates have not been announced yet, Samsung says that it plans to mass-produce ZNS SSDs in the second half of 2021.

Hello Games has been updating its space exploration and adventure game No Man's Sky with fresh content for almost half a decade now, and it is not done yet. The latest update, dubbed Prisms, is aimed towards dramatically increasing the game's visual fidelity while also adding the ability to adopt and ride flying creatures.

The visual improvements come from the addition of screen space reflections for higher quality reflective surfaces, alongside enhanced volumetric lighting, light refractions, as well as rain and weather density improvements, among other effects. There is now even an advanced photo mode to take the new graphics for a spin.

There are also new audio and visual effects for warp travel, more alien looking subterranean biomes, a huge increase to the number of stars that can be seen across the sky, and – as Nvidia announced earlier this week – DLSS support. Fur rendering is also in for the first time, giving appropriate creatures the all-important fuzzy look.

Not all enhancements are available across every platform though. Screen space reflections are only enabled on PC, the new generation consoles, and the Xbox One X, with support for PCVR coming soon. Old-generation consoles are also missing out on the planetary detail improvements this update carries. Meanwhile, Xbox One S and PSVR platforms aren't getting the new fur rendering

The No Man's Sky 3.5 Prisms update has now shipped out across all systems. The official patch notes of the release can be found here.

At Computex today, as the company had promised, Nvidia has announced its newest GeForce RTX offerings, the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 3070 Ti GPUs. The former will be available to purchase worldwide in a couple of days on June 3 and it is priced at $1,199, which is 20% higher than what rumors had earlier suggested.

For this asking price, the new RTX 3080 Ti, Nvidia says, delivers twice the performance of the GTX 1080 Ti even in traditional rasterization situations. The gap naturally extends further when newer technologies like DLSS or real-time ray tracing are added into the mix.

Moving on, the 3080 Ti's smaller sibling the RTX 3070 Ti is a much more affordable product coming in for half the price of the former at $599. It will be available for purchase next week. Similar to the performance claims of the 3080 Ti, Nvidia says that the new RTX 3070 Ti offers double the performance of the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. It is also said to offer around 50% more performance than the RTX 2070 SUPER.

In terms of cooling, both the RTX 3080 Ti and the 3070 Ti seem to be equipped with the same cooler design that came with the RTX 3090 and the RTX 3080. Both the coolers are 2-slot wide. The hardware specifications of the two new GPUs are given below:

Check out some gameplay footage of DOOM Eternal at 4K on the new RTX 3080 Ti provided by Nvidia. (YouTube sign-in required). You can read more about the RTX 3080 Ti and the 3070 Ti here.

Movin' on up

AMD made some news last night during its Computex 2021 keynote address when AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su showed off the company's new 3D chiplet technology, developed in partnership with TSMC.

The long and short of it is that rather than spread itself out over a wider die, CPU components like the logic unit and cache memory are stacked on top of each other, utilizing vertical space rather than growing the total surface area of the chip in a flat wafer.

While the technology is primarily being pioneered by TSMC, AMD looks to be the first chipmaker to take advantage of the new process by introducing new "vertical L3 cache" to its Ryzen series processors. 

Without getting bogged down too much in computer system architecture, cache memory is the part of the processor that stores the most relevant data and program instructions for the processor at any given time. The larger the cache, the more data can be stored there so the processor doesn't have to fetch new data from RAM, which takes longer and slows down performance.

According to Su, by stacking a 64MB SRAM node onto the CCD (the part of the processor that contains a collection of processing cores), AMD is able to triple the available L3 cache on a 16-core processor from a maximum of 64MB to 192MB. 

This change alone gave AMD's prototype, a Ryzen 9 5900X processor using the new 3D v-cache tech, a roughly 12% performance boost during a demo of Gear of War 5. This kind of performance increase is typically what you see between processor generations, so boosting the performance of an existing processor by 12% using just a 3D chiplet design is pretty impressive.

And while this technology hasn't made its way into a consumer processor yet, AMD says that it "is on-track to begin production on future high-end computing products with 3D chiplets by the end of this year."

Are AMD's 3D chiplets the future of processors?

Without getting too deep in the weeds of Moore's Law, the writing has been on the wall for the assumption that our computers would get progressively faster for more than a decade now. We can no longer rely on the brute-force engineering of smaller and smaller transistors to make our computers more and more powerful. We are approaching the literal physical limit of how small these transistors can be before individual silicon atoms start becoming unreliable mediums for electrical current.

So while we've pretty come to the end of the easy way to fabricate increasingly powerful computers, this doesn't mean the end of progress as we know it. We'll continue to shrink transistors for years to come, but the next phase is moving beyond the transistor and innovating new processor technology that we haven't even considered yet – and 3D fabrication is the obvious next step.

We've long realized that when you run out of physical space and you need to squeeze in more of something, whether that means transistors, inventory, or even people, start moving upward rather than outward. All you need to do is look at a city skyline or an IKEA warehouse to see this in practice.

AMD's new 3D V-Cache is just the first implementation of many to move in this direction – literally. Expanding the cache available for existing processor architecture is already giving a serious boost to performance, but there's no reason why we can't just start stacking cores as well. 

This would require all kinds of new engineering solutions to heat management, physical integrity, power consumption, and the like, but those have always been obstacles in processor innovation – and unlike shrinking transistors to the point where you can literally count the number of atoms you're working with, these latter challenges are much more manageable and hold a lot more promise than trying to somehow fab less-than-1nm dies.

It's been a long wait for an Nvidia DLSS competitor - will it be worth it?

After around a year of teasing that it's coming, AMD has finally confirmed that its FidelityFX Super Resolution tech is coming on June 22. 

AMD made the announcement as part of its Computex 2021 keynote, and it looks to deliver a similar performance boost to Nvidia's DLSS (deep learning super sampling) technology. However, unlike Nvidia's upscaling tech, FidelityFX Super Resolution will work on any recent graphics card, as AMD has demonstrated the tech working on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 in GodFall. 

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, based on Team Red's own claims, should provide a up to a whopping 2x performance jump on AMD graphics cards using the Quality mode of Super Resolution, and up to a 2x performance boost in its Performance mode. These numbers come from GodFall at 4K with ray tracing on an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, so it's not clear if these numbers will change at all on other graphics cards. 

AMD does share some brief information about the technology working with its competitor's graphics cards, but not the same breakdown we see for the 6800 XT. Also in Godfall, but at 1440p, AMD claims that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 can go from 27 fps to 38 fps at 1440p, using the Epic Preset and FidelityFX Super Resolution with its Quality mode. That's not the same 2x performance jump that AMD's own card boasts, but that's still a 41% performance jump. 

We'll have to see for ourselves how this technology fares once we can get our hands on it for some more in-depth testing on June 22. But for right now, just based on AMD's own claims, this technology is looking extremely promising. 

Will AMD’s processor dominance extend to its GPUs? 

Today motherboard vendor ASRock has launched its new Phantom Gaming (PG) Riptide Socket AM4 motherboards for the AMD Ryzen platform. The new PG Riptide boards come in two flavors, the new AMD X570S chipset as well as a new variant of the previously launched B550 chipset. For those unaware, the new X570S is set to introduce a fanless, silent flagship chipset for the Ryzen platform, unlike the previous X570.

Among the several features that the new motherboards bring, one of the coolest technologies is the inclusion of ASRock's proprietary graphics card holder that will come bundled with the new PG Riptide X570S and B550 boards. The firm had launched this innovative piece of hardware when it launched its Intel Z590 based motherboards.

As graphics card designs get fancier and heavier, motherboard vendors have started adding sturdier, more metallic PCIe slots from stopping the GPUs from sagging. This new device by ASRock also appears to be solving this issue. Its patent, however, is still pending. Below we have a small demo from the company showing how the graphics card holder works:

Aside from the graphics card holder, the new boards also come with the company's Lightning Gaming Ports which claim to reduce peripheral traffic with the help of dedicated USB signal lanes.

In terms of connectivity, the PG Riptides packs Intel's Killer Ethernet E3100 2.5 Gbps featuring the company's Killer Prioritization Engine capability. For audio, the boards will have onboard Nahimic Audio although specifics about it haven't been mentioned.

You can read about ASRock's new Phantom Gaming X570S and B550 boards here.

Ahead of this year's virtual Computex event, Intel has announced the first 5G product to come from its partnership with MediaTek, which it announced in late 2019. The Intel 5G Solution 5000 is an M.2 5G system for laptops, which allows OEMs to more easily come up with 5G designs, using a standardized interface.

The Intel 5G Solution 5000 comes with support for sub-6GHz 5G, and there's no mmWave support. It can also connect to 4G LTE and 3G WCDMA. The product has been carrier certified in most major regions around the world, so laptops that adopt this solution can be sold in most markets. It's also supported by Windows, Chrome OS, and Linux.

MediaTek had begun sampling the first Intel 5G solution, based on the T700 modem, last summer, and the two companies also worked with Fibocom, which helped with carrier certification and regulatory support. Fibocom also handles manufacturing, sales, and distribution of the 5G M.2 modules.

Of course, while using the M.2 format reduces some of the complexity of implementing 5G in a laptop, it's not as simple as inserting this solution in an M.2 slot on any laptop. The devices still need antennas for cellular reception.

Despite its early announcement of the collaboration with MediaTek all the way back in 2019, Intel ended up being sucker-punched by Qualcomm, which announced its own 5G M.2 reference designs about a week ago, based on the Snapdragon X62 and X65 modems.

The first designs with Intel's 5G Solution 5000 will be available this year with manufacturers such as Acer, ASUS, and HP among the first to use in their designs. Next year, we should see over 30 designs that include the solution.

This year's Computex virtual event officially starts tomorrow, but Intel is getting the ball rolling with a couple of major announcements today. The company is adding two new processors to its Tiger lake family, specifically in the U-series range, meant for thin-and-light laptops.

First and foremost, there's the new Intel Core i7-1195G7, which is Intel's first U-series processor capable of boosting all the way up to 5GHz. In fact, it's the industry's first 5GHz CPU for thin-and-light laptops, according to Intel. We've seen Intel gradually push more of its processors to 5GHz, starting with its first 5GHz desktop CPU in 2018, and laptops got their first 5GHz CPU in 2019 with the Core i9-9980HK.

Naturally, this is a single-core boost clock with Intel Turbo Boost Max technology, but the maximum all-core turbo is 4.6GHz, which is still impressive. Meanwhile, the integrated Iris Xe GPU can also boost slightly higher, at up to 1.4GHz.

As you can see above, Intel compared the Core i7-1195G7 to AMD's Ryzen 7 5800U in both gaming and content creation, showing off higher performance across the board.

The other new CPU is the Core i5-1155G7, which is now the fastest U-series Core i5 model. It can boost up to 4.5GHz on a single CPU core or 4.3GHz on all cores, and the GPU can boost up to 1.35GHz.

You can see what Intel's lineup looks like with these new additions in the table below:

In addition to the higher performance of the CPUs themselves, Intel says it aims to accelerate the adoption of designs with Wi-Fi 6/6E with these additional options. We should see over 60 new consumer PC designs based on these two processors by this holiday season, and the first laptops with them should be coming from Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI this summer.

MSI is set to hold a new event dubbed "Tech meets Aesthetic" in a couple of days on June 1st. The company has unveiled this information with the help of a new event page on its website. The event seems to be coinciding with this year's Computex and will be streamed live on YouTube at 00:00 PDT on its 'MSI Gaming' YouTube channel.

At the event, the company will reportedly be launching, among others, its recently leaked AMD X570S chipset-based motherboards. In fact, today a couple of alleged pictures of two such models have surfaced from a Chinese forum 'NGA'. The two models in question here are the MAG X570S TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI (image on the left) and the MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX (on the right).

Alongside this, MSI is reportedly also preparing an all-new graphics model called the SUPRIM 35th Anniversary Edition. The image of this was apparently listed by MSI previously but has since been removed. The company was founded in the year 1986 so a special 35th Anniversary product in 2021 does make sense. Here's how the new card looks like:

It is apparently a triple-fan model with the middle fan bearing a "35" on it which obviously seems to be indicating the 35th Anniversary of the company.

So far MSI has generally had SUPRIM models only associated with its GeForce-based cards. Hence it is being speculated that the company could be launching the new product as a part of its upcoming RTX 3080 Ti lineup.

via VideoCardz | Motherboard Images via UID10406399 (NGA Forum)

The last full week of May brought us Microsoft’s Build conference, a date for the Xbox and Bethesda E3 event, and a tease for what Satya Nadella calls “one of the most significant updates to Windows of the past decade”. You can find info about that, as well as much more below, in your Microsoft digest for the week of May 23 - 29.

Build 2021

Microsoft held its annual Build conference as usual, at the end of May, and to perhaps nobody’s surprise, it was more focused on Azure and developer tools than Build from say, 2011.

In terms of announcements, there’s the fact that you can run Linux GUI apps on Windows, a feature which isn’t quite GA yet – despite Microsoft’s wording -, and which has been available to Insiders for quite a while. Naturally, it’s still confined to Insider builds for now.

As far as enhancements go, the Microsoft Graph has gotten a boost in capabilities, with new search features for orgs, the introduction of a unified search tool for enterprise called Microsoft Search Federation – which brings together Microsoft Search proper and Azure Cognitive Search -, and much more.

On the Power Platform side, Power Automate and Power Apps have gotten enhancements of their own, from the GA of a new process mining mechanism – dubbed Process Advisor -, to the ability to provide additional insights and even a new stand-alone Power App Developer plan.

Power BI itself gained the ability to embed Power BI analytics reports in Jupyter Notebooks (in preview), Power BI Premium got a set of Automation APIs meant to ease the creation of development pipelines making use of Azure DevOps, Azure Pipeline, and other similar tools.

Going back to the Power Platform for a bit, some low-code updates have been unveiled too, with Power Virtual Agent offering an improved experience when building chatbots, and the introduction of event-driven dynamic dialogs to handle context switching. Sticking to low-code, Power Fx, Microsoft’s low-code programming language is now able to leverage OpenAI’s GPT-3 model.

In terms of other dev-relevant announcements, OpenJDK has now reached its GA phase, and support for Apple Silicon was added to .NET 6 Preview 4.

It wouldn’t be a Microsoft conference without at least some mention of Azure, and that was indeed the case with this year's Build as well. For one, there’s the preview of Azure Machine Learning managed endpoints, the GA of Document Translation (in Azure Cognitive Services), PostgreSQL and MySQL data governance support in Azure Purview via Azure Database, and so much more.

And to expand on its sensitive data storing capabilities, Microsoft also announced Azure Confidential Ledger, a new managed service – currently in preview -, which the company says is the only one on the market powered by confidential computing via a Trusted Execution Environment. Additionally, the Redmond giant states the service is tamper-proof.

To wrap things up with other statements from the Redmond firm, Microsoft says that Edge 91 will be the best-performing browser on Windows 10, thanks to its startup boost feature (which loads some core Edge processes in the background), and sleeping tabs, allowing folks to save up to “82% of memory usage” by putting inactive tabs to sleep. This feature is of course, configurable.

Additionally, there are improvements and new features for Windows Terminal 1.9, namely its preview variant, which now supports something called Quake Mode. By pressing Win + `, you can bring up the quake window on the top half of the screen, bypassing the need to search for Terminal in the Start Menu or click a pinned taskbar icon. You do need to be on a Dev channel build for this to work though.

And speaking of added features, Teams, the company’s ‘chat-based workspace’ solution, added support for new viewing modes, the ability to set break room timers, search support for the participant list, an expansion of calling plans, group chats with up to 250 users from different organizations, and so much more.

Microsoft also announced features like Together mode extensibility, a unified method to build extensions for Outlook and Teams, a new Developer portal for Teams, and other features, either in preview or coming soon.

A combo showcase

Last week, there was confirmation that Xbox and Bethesda will be holding a joint E3 showcase, though no more details were revealed at that point. This week, Xbox Marketing head Aaron Greenberg penned an article on Xbox Wire, revealing that the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase is set for June 13 at 10AM PT (that’s 1PM ET, or 6PM BST). Lasting about 90 minutes (which isn’t too dissimilar from previous years’ runtimes), the event will highlight everything Xbox, ranging from Bethesda’s inclusion in the ecosystem, to new Xbox games, and more Game Pass experiences.

That said, we’re still a couple of weeks away from the event, so it’s worth mentioning that Xbox consoles have gotten Dolby Vision support on Apple TV, video podcasts on Spotify, and other enhancements. The Games with Gold for June have also been announced, with The King’s Bird and NeoGeo Battle Coliseum already being available to claim. Shadows: Awakening and Injustice: Gods Among Us will be claimable later in the month.

If the above titles don’t quite grab your attention, there are always the Deals with Gold to peruse, or maybe even the massive Flight Simulator patch that just dropped to check out. If you own the game, you’ll want to download this, as it brings a laundry list of fixes and improvements to the sim game, dropping the install size from a hefty 170GB, to 83GB.

Next-gen Windows

At its Build conference this year, Microsoft dedicated a tiny sliver of the runtime to one of the more mature products in its portfolio, Windows.

CEO Satya Nadella stated during a brief segment dedicated to the homegrown OS that he’s been self-hosting it for months and that he’s “incredibly excited for the next-generation of Windows”. He may not be pumped - something you’d hear Panos Panay say -, but he did underline that this is ”one of the most significant updates to Windows of the past decade”. All rumors point to an event in June, when the company will likely unveil its UI refresh, currently codenamed Sun Valley.

Until then though, there’s build 21390 from the Dev channel, which now sports new icons for the Task Manager and the .msi installer files, as well as build 19043.1023, which brings the News and interests taskbar feature to everybody. Of course, if you’re not a fan of it, there’s always the option to turn it off.

Dev channel

• Microsoft, Accenture, GitHub, and others have teamed up to announce the Green Software Foundation.
• You will soon be able to see pinned emails in Outlook mobile.
• Edge Canary now has a Desktop Sharing Hub. In the stable channel, Edge 91 is now out, adding new shopping features, better performance, and more.
• The Microsoft Compliance Extension for Chrome is now GA.
• Surface Duo can now display Xbox game controls on the second screen, and very recently got its May update which brings a number of stability improvements.

Logging off

We end with what Microsoft calls the “biggest change” to Outlook for Windows since 1997.

For such a bold statement, you’d expect a groundbreaking new UI, maybe a massive change in the way the client operates, or something else on that level. But no.

Microsoft says that it’s made enhancements to shared calendars, and that the upgrades dramatically improve sync latency and reliability of shared calendars and delegated calendars on Windows. These upgrades have been available to clients on other platforms, as well as in Windows in preview form, but now they’re generally available. At least, generally available with an asterisk, that is.

As with most products these days, the updates will be rolled out gradually, and are currently enabled for 10% of customers using Outlook for Windows in the Current Channel version 2103 (March 2021 update).

Techland's Dying Light sequel is back on the menu following a rather long hiatus, with the studio releasing a brand new gameplay showcase, seen above, aiming to rebuild the hype train. There is also a release date attached to the action game again, finally letting players parkour their way over zombies in Dying Light 2 – now with the tagline Stay Human – on December 7.

The trailer gives a good rundown of the setting, overall storyline, and the tools available for surviving the hostile, post-apocalyptic world. The story is set 20 years after the events of Dying Light, and the developer says playing the original is not a requirement for jumping into the sequel. Cooperative play also returns as a feature, with the upcoming title offering four-player co-op across the full campaign.

Three human factions fight for control over the massive city, which is simply named The City, during the daytime, while at night, the zombies take over the streets looking for a feast. As previously announced, choices will be a big part of the game, letting players dictate how these human settlements end up: thriving or wiped out.

Here's how the developer describes the game:

You are a wanderer with the power to change the fate of The City. But your exceptional abilities come at a price. Haunted by memories you cannot decipher, you set out to learn the truth… and find yourself in a combat zone. Hone your skills, as to defeat your enemies and make allies, you’ll need both fists and wits. Unravel the dark secrets behind the wielders of power, choose sides and decide your destiny. But wherever your actions take you, there's one thing you can never forget—stay human.

The title was originally announced during E3 2018, and a year later – also during E3 – it received a spring 2020 launch window. An indefinite delay hit the project in early 2020, throwing those plans out the window, with the developer saying it needed more time to complete the experience to a high standard.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is launching on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. As with most games, pre-order bonuses are attached to the release as well, offering the "Reload" outfit, as well as weapon and paraglider skins. Techland is planning to host more gameplay showcases focused on specific systems like parkour going forward.

Nvidia is teasing a GeForce event for May 31st, the same day the company is rumored to be launching its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. A mysterious 11-second teaser video has appeared on Twitter today, simply revealing a GeForce event for 10PM PT on May 31st, or 1AM ET on June 1st.

Recent rumors have suggested the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti will be revealed alongside the RTX 3070 Ti on May 31st. The RTX 3080 Ti will reportedly include 12GB of GDDR6X memory, a 2GB increase over what’s found on the existing RTX 3080. A wider 384-bit bus is also rumored, matching the RTX 3090 — and an increase to the memory bandwidth over the RTX 3080.

Get Ready. pic.twitter.com/VuDCcKXrry

— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) May 26, 2021

The new RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti will undoubtedly include a hash limit for Ethereum cryptocurrency mining. Nvidia introduced this limit on newly manufactured RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 cards recently, branding new cards with a “Lite Hash Rate” or “LHR” identifier.

Leaked specs appear to suggest the RTX 3080 Ti will sit between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, offering performance somewhere between the two. Since the RTX 3090 retails (on paper at least) at $1,499, it’s possible we’ll see RTX 3080 Ti pricing at around the $1,000 mark.

Not that retail pricing really matters, as the street prices of new GPUs are utterly out of control. A global chip shortage has pushed GPU prices up, and demand is still incredibly high during ongoing supply constraints. Nvidia has already warned these supply issues will continue throughout 2021, so launching a new RTX 3080 Ti isn’t going to help here.

Source: Nvidia teases GeForce RTX 3080 Ti announcement for May 31st

Microsoft today released a massive Flight Simulator patch, bringing version 1.16.2.0 that contains a ton of fixes, to users. The company had been privately testing the update with select users and has now begun rolling out the patch to everybody. The update addresses a huge number of bugs, issues, and aircraft behavior, making it a welcome one for users who have been experiencing problems.

The company also mentioned that it has performed some optimization on the initial install, allowing the base game to reduce to 83GB in size, down from over 170GB. Additionally, the update brings improvements to navigation, weather, aircraft-related systems, devmode and documentation changes, and much more.

The changes include fixes to icing issues that have been widely reported, live aircraft traffic fixes to improve the reliability, improvements to ATC phrases to match FAA standards, and much more. The firm has also made enhancements to minor aspects such as the FMA displaying CLB when the thrust levers are set to CL in the Airbus A320.

Here is the complete changelog for the patch:

NAVIGATION

• New AIRAC cycle 2105 has been implemented
• FAA data has been implemented to our navdata solution
• Departure gates are now saved in flight plan (.PLN) files
• Fixed a crash and other issues when selecting a parking space as arrival and no set departure
• Fixed some Live Air Traffic aircraft using the wrong model
• Fixed an issue where some Live Air Traffic aircraft had broken callsigns
• Increased the density of Live Air Traffic
• Aircraft that are not on the ground but that have an altitude of zero will now appear at a default altitude of 5000m
• Live traffic stability has been improved
• ATC phraseology improvements to FAA standards (wording only)

WEATHER

• Reduced weather data bandwidth
• Improved precision of live snow coverage
• “Visual Effect Only” in assistance now does properly deactivate other weather effects
• “Visual Icing” has been renamed “Icing” in the devmode because it impacts the whole icing system
• “Icing” in DevMode only changes visual effects if “Visual Effect Only” is activated
• Ice constant decay is no longer ignored outside of frost conditions
• Accelerated pitot icing model while making it slower to defrost
• Fixed pitot icing not scaling with the number of instruments
• Fixed overspeed controller vibrations not affected by pitot icing
• Decrease structural icing rate by a factor of 15 for severe icing (6 for moderate)

PLANES

ALL PLANES:

• Added altitude interception for PITCH HOLD mode
• Increased native induced drag amount and improved induced drag precision
• Autopilot no longer flies toward a Waypoint removed from the FlightPlan
• SimConnect injected traffic (VATSIM, IVAO) should now be displayed in HTML/JS instruments that have traffic displays as well as on the VFR Map
• Fixed simvar acceleration not taking impacts into account and returning wrong values on ground
• Writing back corrected acceleration values after impact resolutions so that they are exact when pulled as a simvar
• Flaps, stall, wing and fuselage updates of flight model
• More cleanup of the flaps system. Support multi systems with different number of levels and max angles
• Increased threshold to avoid trim fight against elevator to 50% (corresponds to disconnect threshold)
• Changed elevator AP with trim to avoid fighting against user input when user input is >50% on elevator
• Allow setting the empty CG position out of limits
• Fixed more audio not playing on large aircraft
• Fixed Autothrottle sometimes disabled by AI

TURBOPROP:

• Improved tools to tune prop drag on constant speed & turbo propellers
• Removed fake and completely wrong ITT simulation when prop is feathered or reverse
• Fixed reverse thrust problem with propeller (no support of negative beta & induced wind)
• Added prop lever debug on engines debug page
• Fixed torque increasing with altitude because of N1 / Corrected N1 confusion in FSX turboprop code
• Fixed crash bug when scrolling Daher TBM 9300 Flight Plan pag
• Torque fine adjustment per POH for the Daher TBM 930
• Updated stability and inertia for the Daher TBM 930
• Adjusted sea level max torque on the Daher TBM 930
• Turbine fine tuning: ITT, Torque, Performance, and Fuel Flow on the Daher TBM 930
• Flight model update for handling on the Daher TBM 930
• Ground level max torque and torque limiter setting updated. 100% max with inertial separator; 112% max, limited to 109% without inertial separator on the Daher TBM 930
• Reduced effect of inertial separator from 25% TQ to 12% TQ for the Daher TBM 930
• Tuned stability and inertia on the Beechcraft King Air 350i
• Tweaked Idle RPM from 1030 to 1060RPM for the Beechcraft King Air 350i
• Adjusted max sea level torque on the Beechcraft King Air 350i
• Tuned Beechcraft King Air 350i turboprop engine: ITT, Torque, Fuel Flow and other minor changes
• Added ITT debug to engine debug and added density on fuel flow table for turboprop engines on the Beechcraft King Air 350i
• Fine tuned fuel consumption per the POH at IDLE, 12000ft cruise and 18000ft cruise on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Fixed ITT, Throttle to Torque Ratio, and Garmin color bands for ITT and TRQ on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Pass on stability and inertia on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Fine tuned Fuel Flow per altitude and adjusted sea level max torque on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Turbine Torque fine tuned per POH on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Control surfaces & handling improvements on the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX
• Prop lever of the Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX can now be set in feathering range

OTHERS:

• Weather radar now displays precipitation instead of cloud coverage
• Fixed contrail behavior on player’s aircraft during windy conditions
• Contrails are now displayed for applicable AI traffic planes
• Reduced rudder authority based on the Cessna 152
• Stability and inertia pass on Cessna 172 Skyhawk and Cessna 152
• Flight model handling update for the Cessna 152
• Fixed Cessna 152’s rear wheels not touching ground
• Pass on engine power & propeller drag. Fine tuned max speed, cruise speed, climb speeds, glide speeds and other minor tweaks on the Cessna 172 Skyhawk
• Flight model tuning of Cessna 172 Skyhawk (handling, induced yaw, roll and stall)
• Fixed water on windows and tail color on LOD5 for the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner
• EICAS now displays “CLB” instead of “CL” when the thrust levers are set to CL in the A320
• Fixed an issue which prevented copilot from autocompleting the Securing Aircraft page on the Diamond DA40 TDI
• Improved propeller drag and engine drag tuning for the Diamond DA62
• Flight model handling update on the Diamond DA62. Made engine effect more important by adjusting rudder surfaces
• Increased rudder stability slightly and fixed engine stall in air at low speeds on the EXTRA 330LT
• Added a notch more dihedral to increase induced roll a little on the EXTRA 330LT
• Fuel Pressure gauges now display correct levels of pressure on the EXTRA 330LT
• Fine tune on the 103Solo Engine and implementation of engine clutch below 2100 RPM
• Fixed FS Livery on Cessna Citation Longitude disappearing too early on LOD6
• Corrected Pipistrel Virus SW121 flaps animation which would not properly play for negative flaps values
• G3000 : Map zoom level is now kept constant between Regular and Weather map
• G1000 : Airspaces are redrawn uppon change in map orientation
• G3000 : Fix PFD display error when a DirectTo is requested
• Fixed aircraft spawning with glasscockpits turned off randomly
• Fixed FlightPlan displaying passed waypoints when canceling a DirectTo
• Fixed FlightPlan guidance not re-engaging properly when DirectTo is canceled or reached
• Fixed G3000 and G3X MFD TopBar displaying True Bearing instead of Magnetic
• Fixed overspeed strip being too low on airspeed tape
• Fixed bug where the flightplan was not displayed properly if the flight was started directly on approach
• Fixed VFRMap not updating approach according to FlightPlan
• Tactile glasscockpits scrollbars are bigger and can be interacted with more easily
• Fixed FlightPlan guidance not re-engaging properly when DirectTo is canceled or reached

INPUT

• Fixed resetting position peripheral input position when user exits the pause menu
• Fixed the unresponsive specific axis on Honeycomb Bravo Throttle
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Eclipse Yoke
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Fighter Stick
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Flight Sim Yoke
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Fighter Stick Pro
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Pro Pedals
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Pro Throttle
• Fixed default mapping for the CH Throttle Quadrant

UI

• Community Folder Addons will now show up as Installed in the Content manager

There are a bunch of SDK/Devmode improvements that the firm has listed in the blog post that you can find here. Lastly, the firm has listed a single known issue that impacts the simulator when in VR mode. There is also a possible workaround listed. Here is the known issue:

• You may crash when exiting VR mode. This issue is being investigated but we suspect OpenXR preview runtime (v106) may be involved. So if you experience this problem, we recommend you revert to the official public runtime (v105).

Lastly, the next world update is expected to be released on June 24, bringing visuals updates to the Nordics region. The company is expected to share an updated Feedback Snapshot with more updates later this week.

Source: Massive Flight Simulator patch brings a ton of fixes and improvements

Now that ARM has unveiled its first new chip architecture in a decade, it's ready to show the CPU designs that will take advantage of those improvements. The company has unveiled a host of new Cortex CPUs (and companion Mali GPUs) that it hopes will power laptops, other computers and wearables in addition to the next wave of smartphones.

The flagship is the ARM Cortex-X2, a CPU core meant to scale from "premium" smartphones to laptops. It reportedly offers a 30 percent performance boost over current high-end Android phones, although ARM didn't provide more details.

You'll also see gains for more mainstream uses. The Cortex-A710 is the first ARMv9 "big" core (meant for big.LITTLE chips) and is about 10 percent faster than the Cortex-A78 while delivering 30 percent greater efficiency. Cortex-A510, meanwhile, is the first new "LITTLE" high-efficiency core in four years and should offer 35 percent better overall performance and triple the speed for machine learning. ARM claims the A510 is nearly as fast as high-performance chips from a few years ago, making it a viable option for watches and smart home tech in addition to lower-end phones.

ARM is finally dragging the rest of the industry into the 64-bit era, too. It's promising that all "big" and "LITTLE" cores will be 64-bit by 2023, and its partners are helping put an end to 32-bit apps before 2021 is over. There's a good chance you've been using 64-bit phones and apps for a while, but this should push stragglers to catch up.

Like the Cortex CPUs, the Mali GPUs are aimed at more than just phones. The flagship Mali-G710 is about 20 percent faster for intensive tasks (35 percent for machine learning) and is aimed at Chromebooks in addition to high-end phones. The Mali-G610 offers similar features at a lower price, while the Mali-G510 gives mid-range phones and smart TVs a 100 percent speed boost (including for machine learning) and 22 percent efficiency gains. At the low end, the Mali-G310 brings ARM's Valhall architecture to basic GPUs for the first time, boosting performance for everything from starter smartphones to wearable devices.

New CoreLink CI-700 and CoreLnk NI-700 interconnects tie together the CPU, GPU and network processing with support for ARMv9 features as well as higher bandwidth and lower latency.

As usual, it will be a while before you see shipping products using ARM's new technology. Chip makers will have to build their own products around these designs, and it'll take a while after that before phones, PCs and other devices use the new processing power. It's already clear what ARM expects, though — it's anticipating a future where its architecture is more pervasive across the computing landscape, with phones just one part of a much larger strategy.

Source: ARM's first v9 CPUs are built for computers, not just phones