Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 and is now its CEO and controlling shareholder, announced that the company has changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc. (doing business as Meta), reflecting its pursuit of growth opportunities in the VR and AR realms known as the metaverse. As of December 1, the company will trade as MVRS on the Nasdaq exchange, retiring the FB ticker symbol that took a long ride from a first-day close of $38.23 per share on May 18, 2012, to close at $316 on October 28, the day Zuckerberg announced the new name at the Facebook Connect developer’s conference. Continue reading Meta: Facebook Blasts Off for the Metaverse with New Name

Nvidia is introducing its next-generation cloud gaming platform, GeForce NOW, which offers GeForce RTX 3080-class gaming online. GeForce NOW RTX 3080 will make available to users what Nvidia describes as “the most powerful gaming supercomputer ever built,” ready to take on Google Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming’s xCloud. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said the company has spent the past decade improving GeForce NOW cloud gaming “to bring the best gaming platform to anyone with a computer,” thanks to second-generation GeForce NOW SuperPOD servers. Continue reading Cloud Gaming: Nvidia Rolls Out Its GeForce NOW RTX 3080

On the heels of several successful tests that included Tokyo 2020 Olympics telecasts in Brazil and Japan, Intel is moving full steam ahead to bring live, end-to-end 8K HDR streaming to audiences across the globe. The company sees the future of 8K HDR as revolutionizing the worlds of sports, entertainment and gaming by delivering spectacular, immersive events at stadium scale, augmented by 3D, VR, AR and UHD audio. The key to this brave new broadcast world is Intel’s Xeon Scalable processors for local encoding and delivery over-the-top. And of course, the slickest compression algorithms. Continue reading Intel’s 8K HDR Live Streams ‘Way Beyond Proof of Concept’

Microsoft and Nvidia have trained what they describe as the most powerful AI-driven language model to date, the Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model (MT-NLG), which has “set the new standard for large-scale language models in both model scale and quality,” the firms say. As the successor to the companies’ Turing NLG 17B and Megatron-LM, the new MT-NLG has 530 billion parameters, or “3x the number of parameters compared to the existing largest model of this type” and demonstrates unmatched accuracy in a broad set of natural language tasks. Continue reading Microsoft and Nvidia Debut World’s Largest Language Model

The chip shortage has highlighted the role of substrates that connect chips to circuit boards and the companies that make them. Substrate manufacturing offers low profit margins, so investment in this sector has also been low. Now, the lack of substrates has added to the problems of churning out enough chips to serve the global market. Substrates — panels of resin embedded with wiring onto which chips are affixed — connects the die at the heart of a chip to the motherboard, delivering power and data. Continue reading Substrate Shortage Is Adding to Problem of Producing Chips

California-based data technology company Western Digital is purportedly in “advanced merger talks” with Japan’s computer memory firm Kioxia Holdings, according to sources who added that a deal could be inked as soon as mid-September. Western Digital’s shares rose 8 percent in reaction to the Wednesday news and continued to rise on Thursday. Sources said Western Digital would complete the deal with stock and that its chief executive David Goeckeler would run the combined company. According to Barron’s, the deal would be valued at about $20 billion. Continue reading Western Digital and Kioxia Merger Could Impact Chip Market

Deep learning requires a complicated neural network composed of computers wired together into clusters at data centers, with cross-chip communication using a lot of energy and slowing down the process. Cerebras has a different approach. Instead of making chips by printing dozens of them onto a large silicon wafer and then cutting them out and wiring them to each other, it is making the largest computer chip in the world, the size of a dinner plate. Texas Instruments tried this approach in the 1960s but ran into problems. Continue reading Cerebras Chip Tech to Advance Neural Networks, AI Models

Samsung is using Synopsys’ DSO.ai tool to design some of its next-gen Exynos mobile processors for 5G and AI, which will be used in smartphones including its own and other devices. Synopsys chair and co-chief executive Aart de Geus said this is the first example of a “real commercial processor design with AI.” Google, IBM and Nvidia are among the other companies that have discussed designing chips with AI. Synopsys, which works with dozens of companies, also has years of expertise in creating advanced designs to train an AI algorithm. Continue reading Samsung First to Design Commercial Semiconductor with AI

Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger and board members met with the Biden administration to promote his company’s plan to build more semiconductor factories with subsidies from the U.S. government. Currently, Asian-owned chip factories, which receive hefty incentives, dominate chip production. There’s also an “unprecedented” global shortage of chips, which is impacting the auto and consumer appliance industries. Gelsinger was hired this year to improve the fortunes of the beleaguered Intel. Continue reading Intel Chief Promotes Chipmaking Plan to U.S., Global Leaders

At this week’s SIGGRAPH 2021, Amazon Web Services (AWS) chief technology officer for media & entertainment Eric Iverson spoke with some top technologists and artists about future trends in content production. With COVID-19, the media industry was forced to find ways to work remotely, which jumpstarted the move to the cloud for production and CG pipelines. Now, he said, “we’re seeing three big trends: the rise of remote production, the acceleration of production pipelines and the need to keep costs under control.” Continue reading SIGGRAPH 2021: AWS on Next Steps for Content Production

In Q2 2021, social giant Facebook’s profit doubled from a year earlier to $10.39 billion and revenue rose 56 percent to $29.08 billion, both numbers beating Wall Street expectations. Shares fell 3+ percent in after-hours trading, however, when Facebook predicted that revenue growth will slow for the rest of the year. Through the end of Q2, its stock has grown 22 percent. The company also said that Apple’s privacy changes in the new iOS will have a stronger impact in the current quarter as more users update their iOS devices. Meanwhile, Facebook continues to eye its metaverse future. Continue reading Facebook Posts Strong Earnings, Plans Its Metaverse Future

Experts have warned that the semiconductor shortage will endure, and now Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger has added his voice with the prediction that the shortage could stretch into 2023. Volkswagen also cautioned that the shortage may get worse in the next six months. The chip shortage is not only causing production delays in the auto industry but raising prices for consumer electronics. Gelsinger said it could take one or two years to achieve a “reasonable supply-and-demand balance.” “We have a long way to go yet,” he suggested. Continue reading Intel Chief Warns the Chip Shortage Could Last Through 2023

On October 8, Nintendo will debut a new $350 Switch, the first major hardware upgrade to the console originally introduced in 2017 for $299. Available in time for holiday season sales, the new Switch will feature a larger 7-inch OLED screen and 64GB of onboard storage, double the original, as well as improved audio and an adjustable stand and dock. What consumers will not find, however, is an upgrade to a 4K display, a highly anticipated feature that would match the console offerings from Microsoft and Sony. Continue reading Nintendo’s New Switch Features OLED Display, More Storage

Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger revealed it may take two years to ramp up chip production, while Advanced Micro Devices chief executive Lisa Su noted that her company is prioritizing high-end chips found in a PlayStation 5 game console or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card over “lower-powered parts.” The auto manufacturing sector has been hit hard by the semiconductor shortage — with some indicating no end in sight. At John Deere, chief technology officer Jahmy Hindman said that he expects “we’re into this for the next 12 to 18 months.”  Continue reading Chip Shortage Continues to Have an Impact Across Industries

With its chips in billions of products, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s most dominant chipmaker and, with a market cap of about $550 billion, is also the world’s 11th most valuable company. According to research firm TrendForce, Taiwan generated about 65 percent of global revenues for outsourced chipmaking, with TSMC accounting for 56 percent of that figure. Capital Economics — and other analysts — opined that the world’s dependence on Taiwanese chips is “a threat to the global economy.” Continue reading TSMC Semiconductor Dominance Imperils Global Electronics