SMIC Details Its N+1 Process Technology: 7nm Performance in China
SMIC first started volume production of chips using its 14 nm FinFET fabrication process in Q4 2019. Since then, the company has been hard at work developing its next generation major node, which it's calling N+1. The technology has certain features that are comparable to competing 7 nm process technologies, but SMIC wants to make it clear that N+1 is not a 7 nm technology.
When compared to SMIC’s 14 nm process technology, N+1 lowers power consumption
Apple Now Offering Standalone Afterburner Cards for Mac Pro Upgrades
Aimed at very specific audiences, Apple’s Mac Pro clearly does not come at a price point that seems reasonable for an average person. Nonetheless, the features it has are not present on an average workstation either. When launched back in December, one such exclusive was Apple’s Afterburner accelerator for video decoding, which was only available with a purchase of a new Mac Pro. Recently, however, the company has made the card available for purchase separately.
The Apple Afterburner Card is a FPGA-based PCIe 3
HTC & Valve Bundle "Half-Life: Alyx" With Vive Cosmos, Valve Index
Being, perhaps, the most anticipated virtual reality game to date, Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx is expected to greatly increase interests towards VR gaming and VR hardware. In a bid to attract attention to their latest hardware, HTC and Valve are both bundling the game with some versions of their headsets.
For a limited time (while supplies last, to be more specific), HTC’s Vive Cosmos Elite bundle for $899/€999 will come with a free digital copy of
NVIDIA Intros DLSS 2.0: Ditches Per-Game Training, Adds Motion Vectors for Better Quality
While NVIDIA’s annual GPU Technology Conference has been extensively dialed back and the bulk of NVIDIA’s announcements tabled for another day, as it turns out, the company still has an announcement up their sleeve this week. And a gaming-related announcement, no less. This morning NVIDIA is finally taking the wraps off of their DLSS 2.0 technology, which the company is shipping as a major update to their earlier AI-upscaling tech.
Responding to both competitive pressure and the realization of their own technology limitations
Samsung Galaxy S20+ & Ultra (Snapdragon & Exynos) Battery Life Preview
Last week we brought you a quick performance preview of the Snapdragon 865-based Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, showcasing that the phone has some outstandingly good performance and power efficiency statistics. Since then, we’ve been able to get our hands on an Exynos 990 based Galaxy S20+ and S20 Ultra, putting the trio of phones through our usual extensive review process.
We’re still working on the full big article which is still a week or more away, but
HMD Debuts First Nokia 5G Smartphone: The Nokia 8.3 5G with 4-Module Camera
HMD Global has announced their first Nokia-branded 5G-enabled smartphone, the Nokia 8.3 5G. Based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G platform, Nokia is assembling a high-end smartphone that is designed to tick all of the required boxes for a good phone, while not driving quite as hard on features and prices as contemporary flagship smartphones. None the less, the large display phone packs a quad-sensor camera module, and in an interesting turn of events, it will support
TerraMaster D5 Thunderbolt 3: A ‘Mega DAS’ with 5 Bays for 80 TB
TerraMaster this week introduced its first DAS featuring a Thunderbolt 3 interface. The D5 Thunderbolt 3 DAS with five bays is aimed at professionals who need a vast storage space attached directly to their PC. Using currently available hard drives, the D5 can store 80 TB of data, with peak sequential read speeds up to 1035 MB/s.
As the name suggests, the TerraMaster D5 Thunderbolt 3 can accommodate five 2.5-inch/3.5-inch hard drives or solid-
Embedded 1.8-inch Zen PC: DFI Unveils Credit Card-Sized AMD Ryzen Board
DFI has announced what they consider the world’s smallest single-board computer (SBC) that uses on AMD’s Ryzen Embedded processor. The highly-integrated credit card-sized GHF51 motherboard can be used for a variety of applications that have to be small, yet offer capabilities as well as performance of a modern PC.
The DFI GHF51 1.8-inch platform carries AMD’s dual-core Ryzen Embedded R1000-series SoC with AMD Radeon Vega GPU featuring
Logitech’s Combo Touch Keyboards, with Trackpad, for the 10.5-Inch iPad, Air and Pro
With Apple’s iPadOS 13.4 bringing trackpad support to the operating system, it was just a matter of time before third-party accessory manufacturers created new keyboards with a touchpad. Logitech with its Combo Touch keyboard cases turned out to be the first.
Quick Note: AMD Shows Off Raytracing on RDNA2
With today’s announcement from Microsoft of DirectX 12 Ultimate, both NVIDIA and AMD are also chiming in to reiterate their support for the new feature set, and to note their involvement in the process. For AMD, DirectX 12 Ultimate goes hand-in-hand with their forthcoming RDNA2 architecture, which will be at the heart of the Xbox Series X console, and will be AMD’s first architecture to support DirectX 12 Ultimate’s new features, such as ray tracing and variable rate shading