As part of our effort to make Battle.net more welcoming to more players, we routinely review which currencies we support and what new ones we should add. This can make submitting payments less difficult and may help reduce or eliminate fees you pay to your card issuer for foreign currency transactions. Subscriptions for Argentinian players will be canceled and not automatically renewed to avoid enrolling players into subscriptions that may see a price increase in Argentina after this currency update.

The new currencies we're rolling out include: United Arab Emirates dirham (AED), Colombian peso (COP), Costa Rican colon (CRC), Indonesian rupiah (IDR), Israeli new shekel (ILS), Malaysian ringgit (MYR), Peruvian sol (PEN), Qatari riyal (QAR), Serbian dinar (RSD), Saudi riyal (SAR), Singapore dollar (SGD), Thai baht (THB), and Uruguayan peso (UYU). We've put together a brief FAQ to provide you with more information on the coming changes.

The recent attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea are affecting not only oil shipments, but also cargo ships from Asia to Europe. All major carriers such as CMA CGM, Cosco, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk, MSC and so forth are affected and all have delayed their shipments through the area. A coordinated security action called Operations Prosperity Guardian which includes over half a dozen nations so far, is getting ready to guide shipments through the affected area by Yemen, but it'll lead to slower shipments through the area.

TechPowerUp has already received reports from sources in Taiwan that their products are on some of these ships that are now stuck waiting for naval escorts through the area. However, it appears that there might be shortages of some computer components for the foreseeable future, alongside many other products that are being shipped this route and onwards via the Suez Canal. According to the BBC, it takes 25.5 days on average to ship goods from Taiwan to the Netherlands via the Red Sea and Suez Canal whereas the only alternative route via the Cape of Good Hope takes 34 days and adds extra fuel costs. Regardless of the extra shipping times and costs, it appears some shipping companies are willing to take the longer route to avoid being attacked. This is likely to have a knock on effect on prices for a lot of consumer goods in Europe, so if you haven't bought that hardware you've been holding off getting, now might be as good a time as any.

Sony Group Corporation is reported to be considering a partial spinoff and listing of its financial services division, in order to raise capital for further investments in its entertainment arm and next generation image sensor technologies. Reuters has published details from a corporate strategy meeting that took place last week (on May 18) - executives at the Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation are contemplating the future of Sony Financial Group. This arm of the business is comprised of several subdivisions including a bank and an insurance firm. Sony Corporation managed to gain full control of these finance organizations three years ago, according to Reuters.

Sony is seeking to retain a stake of just below 20%, and posits that its financial businesses will gain the ability (following the suggested partial spinoff and listing) to raise cash independently for sustainable growth. The company hopes to provide extra funds for its entertainment and semiconductor operations that "need an unprecedented amount of investment." The PlayStation group is aiming to ramp up production of its PS5 console - supply chain problems have caused delays and unit shortages in the past, and Sony is keen to build on the gaming platform's success, without restrictions going forward. The company is keen to advance its camera parts division - in order to meet increasing market demand for smartphone and vehicle sensor components. Hiroki Totoki (President of Sony Group Corp) emphasized that greater investments in these sectors will allow the company to stay competitive large global rivals.

Self-described mixed reality nerd, Brad Lynch, has tweeted out several interesting details about Apple's yet-to-be announced VR/AR headset. He has managed to compile information from several sources - mostly reports produced by hardware analysts based in China. His summation of the leaked info states: "The Apple HMD's Bill of Materials (BoM) cost to be about $1500-1600 (USD). This is about double the reported BoM for the (Meta) Quest Pro (which was 800 dollars including the controllers and charging pad)."

Minsheng Electronics's article suggests that 400,000 - 500,000 headset units are set for production in the second half of this year. An operating system with the codename "rOS" is reportedly clashing with Apple's traditional iOS mobile platform, but the author does not provide further information about these compatibility issues. The headset's operating system is supposedly capable of supporting a wide range of games, productivity applications and methods of video communication.

Alongside its facilities in Hillsboro, Oregon, Intel was meant to build a state of the art, $700 million R&D centre, but it appears that the company has decided to slam the brakes on that project, as part of its cost saving measures. The "mega lab" as it has also been referred to, will most likely not get built at all, despite the comparably small cost in relation to building a semiconductor fab, but $700 million saved is still going to make Intel look good in front of its shareholders. In total, Intel is said to be looking at cutting US$3 billion in spending for 2023 and cancelling the construction of the R&D facility contributes almost a quarter of that sum.

The "mega lab" was supposed to cover 18,580 square metres of floor space, largely dedicated towards data centre R&D projects. According to Intel, those projects will still go ahead, just at other facilities, according to a statement sent to Oregon Live. Intel is apparently also scrapping plans for a much smaller, US$200 million R&D facility in Israel, while potentially also pushing back its plans for new fabs in Europe. The latter might come down to what kind of subsidies Intel can get from the German government and the EU.

According to Reuters, Samsung is gearing up to increase the chip production capacity at its P3 factory in Pyeongtaek in South Korea, despite the fact that there's a general slowdown in the semiconductor industry, in addition to the general economic downturn. Samsung is apparently planning on adding 12-inch wafer capacity for DRAM, while also adding more 4 nm chip capacity. The P3 fab kicked off production of Samsung's most cutting-edge NAND flash chips earlier this year and is the company's largest fab overall. According to Reuters, Samsung is aiming to add at least 10 new EUV machines in 2023.

In related news via The Elec, Samsung has seen costs increase significantly when it comes to materials costs relating to the expansion of the P3 fab. So far, the company has racked up extra costs of over a trillion korean Won, or more than US$786 million, largely due to all of its contractors having raised their prices. The report also mentioned that some parts of the expansion of the P3 fab has been delayed by as much as a year, which isn't good news for Samsung and it likely means that the company will see further increases in costs before the expansions are finished.

Even as the price of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general tumbled some 60% in as many months, miners don't seem to be winding down their efforts at all. In fact, in what could be seen as a doubling-down in the value of crypto, miners have been seemingly investing in both more powerful and more power-efficient rigs. While mining rig prices too have tumbled along with crypto prices, these aren't small investments at all. Yet according to JPMorgan, they have allowed miners to decrease the average cost of mining a single Bitcoin down to $13,000 from its $24,000 average just a month ago.

The $13,000 figure is the lowest since September 2021. Remember that Bitcoin mining costs are affected not just by energy prices, but also by the amount of hash power available to the network, which automatically changes its mining difficulty to cater to higher (or lower) miner demand. And as energy prices have increased, miners have been taking less power-efficient rigs offline, which would cut into their profits - explaining the reduction in overall hash rate.

According to an article by DigiTimes, which kind of states the obvious, the foundry industry isn't likely to change much over the next few years, as the cost of building a cutting edge foundry keeps increasing, which means the competition isn't likely to catch up with the market leaders. The costs mentioned are estimates, but seem quite likely and explains why there's so little competition in the foundry business.

It's unclear if the costs have been inflation adjusted or not, but a 90 nm 12-inch fab that could output 50,000 wafers a month, is said to have cost US$2.4 billion to build when it was the cutting edge node. Once things moved on to 28 nm, the equivalent fab would've cost US$6 billion, whereas a cutting edge 5 nm fab today, comes in at as much as US$16 billion. These are obviously long term investments, as even today, 90 nm nodes are used for plenty of chips, but most of the nodes above 28 nm are today used for specialty products rather than commonly used ICs, unless we're talking about 8-bit microcontrollers or some simpler components which companies such as TSMC and Samsung wouldn't even bother making.

Tachyum Inc. today announced that it is signing early adopter customers for the software emulation system for its Prodigy Universal Processor, customers may begin the process of native software development (i.e. using Prodigy Instruction Set Architecture) and porting applications to run on Prodigy. Prodigy software emulation systems will be available at the end of January 2021.

Customers and partners can use Prodigy's software emulation for evaluation, development and debug, and with it, they can begin to transition existing applications that demand high performance and low power to run optimally on Prodigy processors. Pre-built systems include a Prodigy emulator, native Linux, toolchains, compilers, user mode applications, x86, ARM and RISC-V emulators. Software updates will be issued as needed.

According to DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce, PC-ODM shipment figures indicate this year's peak shipment period for PCs has passed. Notebook shipments have shown a downtrend in October, indication that DRAM demand is slipping. As 4 GB modules are now the mainstream specification, price decline was more significant than for the 2 GB modules; average 4 GB price fell by 1.54% to US$16, while the lowest price broke the US$16 mark, arriving at US$15.75, amounting to a mere US$0.83 for 2 Gb chips - nearly the same as spot price. 2 GB module price, on the other hand, stayed the same at US$9.25. As module prices fall to such lows, DRAM suppliers are strategically focusing on high-density 4GB module shipments in hopes of stimulating sales due to content per unit increases.

Today, Intel announced the Intel Ethernet Controller X540, the industry's first fully integrated 10GBASE-T controller. This space-saving single-chip solution delivers outstanding performance for low-cost, low-power LAN on motherboard (LOM) and Converged Network Adapter (CNA) designs. The Intel Ethernet Controller X540 will help drive broader 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adoption by providing connections that are backward-compatible with existing Gigabit Ethernet networks. Like other Intel Ethernet 10 Gigabit products, the Intel Ethernet Controller X540 features advanced I/O virtualization, supports Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and takes advantage of platform I/O enhancements in the Intel Xeon processor E5 family.

LG Electronics (LG) will present the future of TV technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with the unveiling of the world's largest OLED TV with a display size of 55 inches. By incorporating the company's 4-Color Pixels and Color Refiner features with LG Display's advanced OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels, LG OLED TV generates the most natural colors of any TV set at a much lower price point than could have been achieved using the standard manufacturing process.

Well, it seems that the flooding in Thailand has done a lot more than destroy lives, wreck a few factories and cause HDD prices to shoot up. There appears to be a lot of opportunities for changing the terms of business too - to less favourable ones for customers of hard disc drives. First, we had the severe and unwelcome warranty reductions and now we have HDD manufacturers trying to lock branded PC makers into expensive long-term contracts, according to Digitimes. Some PC makers buy hard disk drives on a quarterly basis, at a fixed price, but now that prices have shot up and supplies restricted, HDD manufacturers are trying to coerce them into signing one year contracts at current high prices. However, it looks like it might not be such a good deal for PC makers, because the recovery in supply is continuing, with a full recovery potentially not so far away, which will of course make those prices plummet again. As it is, HDD shipments are projected to be around 140 million units in the first quarter of 2012, while the same quarter last year was 170-180 million units - so the fall isn't really that hugely less than before anyway and should become less severe as 2012 wears on.

One does get the impression that the HDD manufacturers are playing up the difficulty of restoring production volumes in order to give them a better bargaining hand. There's also the fact that recovering from the disaster is hugely expensive for them, so HDD makers will want to charge more to recoup those costs faster, motivating them to use tactics like these.

Prepare for your RAM to cost you a little bit more early next year! According to the chairman and CEO Simon Chen for Taiwan-based memory module maker Adata Technology the previous cuts in DRAM production will begin to take effect in early January thus effecting the consumers bottom line. He is quoted as saying, "The rebound is mainly because cuts in DRAM output will begin to take effect, PC makers will replenish DRAM inventories and so will buyers on the spot market in January.' He also said, 'PC makers are expected to hike inventory level from two weeks to one month."

Mr. Chen went on to say, "The popularity of Ultrabook PCs will reduce demand for DRAM, but total demand for DRAM will not decrease because of large potential demand for server DRAM arising from fast growth in cloud computing-based applications. However, large demand for Ultrabook PCs will take off when prices fall to US$599 and they are equipped with Microsoft Windows 8." In tough economic times this is a bitter pill to swallow but to be expected given the laws of supply and demand.