Speculated lower-end Intel second generation Arc GPUs popped up via SiSoftware Sandra database entries around mid-March—evaluation samples are likely in the hands of trusted hardware partners. Yesterday, momomo_us happened upon another interesting shipping manifest, following a series of AMD-related leaks. The latest list reveals five "Battlemage" products—three utilizing the BMG-21 GPU, and the remaining two being based on the BMG-10 design. These identifiers have appeared in older leaks, although the latter has been viewed in place sight—chez Intel Malaysia's Failure Analysis Lab.

Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.

Last week SK Hynix revealed ambitious plans for its next wave of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) products—their SEMICON Korea 2024 presentation included an announcement about cutting-edge HBM3E entering mass production within the first quarter of this year. True next-gen HBM development has already kicked off—TPU's previous report outlines an HBM4 sampling phase in 2025, followed by full production in 2026. South Korea's Pulse News believes that TSMC has been roped into a joint venture (with SK Hynix). An alleged "One Team" strategic alliance has been formed according to reports emerging from Asia—this joint effort could focus on the development of HBM4 solutions for AI fields.

Reports from last November pointed to a possible SK Hynix and NVIDIA HBM4 partnership, with TSMC involved as the designated fabricator. We are not sure if the emerging "One Team" progressive partnership will have any impact on previously agreed upon deals, but South Korean news outlets reckon that the TSMC + SK Hynix alliance will attempt to outdo Samsung's development of "new-generation AI semiconductor packaging." Team Green's upcoming roster of—"Hopper" H200 and "Blackwell" B100—AI GPUs are linked to a massive pre-paid shipment of SK Hynix HMB3E parts. HBM4 products could be fitted on a second iteration of NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU, and the mysterious "Vera Rubin" family. Notorious silicon industry tipster, kopite7kimi, believes that "R100 and GR200" GPUs are next up in Team Green's AI-cruncher queue.

Supply chain insiders have claimed that Intel is working on extending the lifespan of its LGA 1700 platform—a BenchLife report proposes that the "Bartlett Lake-S" processor family is due soon, courtesy of Team Blue's Network and Edge (NEX) business group. Only a few days ago, the rumor mill had placed "Bartlett Lake-S" CPUs in a mainstream desktop category, due to alleged connections with the Raptor Lake-S Refresh series—the former is also (supposedly) based on the Intel 7 processor process. BenchLife believes that DDR4 and DDR5 memory will be supported, but with no mention of possible ECC functionality. Confusingly, chip industry tipsters believe that the unannounced processors could be launched as 15th Gen Core parts.

BenchLife has a history of discovering and reporting on Intel product roadmaps—apparently Bartlett Lake-S can leverage the same core configurations as seen on Raptor Lake-S; namely 8 Raptor Cove P-Cores and 16 Gracemont E-Cores. An insider source claims that a new pure P-Core-only design could exist, sporting up to twelve Raptor Cove units. According to a leaked Bartlett Lake-S series specification sheet: "the iGPU part will use (existing) Intel Xe architecture, up to Intel UHD Graphics 770." The publication alludes to some type of AI performance enhancement as a distinguishing feature for Bartlett Lake-S, when lined up against 14th Gen Core desktop SKUs. Folks salivating at the prospect of a mainstream DIY launch will have to wait and see (according to BenchLife's supply chain insider): "judging from various specifications, this product belonging to the Intel NEX business group may also be decentralized to the consumer market, but the source did not make this part too clear and reserved some room for maneuver."

AMD's December 2023 launch of new Instinct series accelerators has generated a lot of tech news buzz and excitement within the financial world, but not many folks are privy to Team Red's MSRP for the CDNA 3.0 powered MI300X and MI300A models. A Citi report has pulled back the curtain, albeit with "projected" figures—an inside source claims that Microsoft has purchased the Instinct MI300X 192 GB model for ~$10,000 a piece. North American enterprise customers appear to have taken delivery of the latest MI300 products around mid-January time—inevitably, top secret information has leaked out to news investigators. SeekingAlpha's article (based on Citi's findings) alleges that the Microsoft data center division is AMD's top buyer of MI300X hardware—GPT-4 is reportedly up and running on these brand new accelerators.

The leakers claim that businesses further down the (AI and HPC) food chain are having to shell out $15,000 per MI300X unit, but this is a bargain when compared to NVIDIA's closest competing package—the venerable H100 SXM5 80 GB professional card. Team Green, similarly, does not reveal its enterprise pricing to the wider public—Tom's Hardware has kept tabs on H100 insider info and market leaks: "over the recent quarters, we have seen NVIDIA's H100 80 GB HBM2E add-in-card available for $30,000, $40,000, and even much more at eBay. Meanwhile, the more powerful H100 80 GB SXM with 80 GB of HBM3 memory tends to cost more than an H100 80 GB AIB." Citi's projection has Team Green charging up to four times more for its H100 product, when compared to Team Red MI300X pricing. NVIDIA's dominant AI GPU market position could be challenged by cheaper yet still very performant alternatives—additionally chip shortages have caused Jensen & Co. to step outside their comfort zone. Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD for comment on the Citi pricing claims—a company representative declined this invitation.

Qualcomm and its smartphone manufacturer partners are reported to be in a rush to get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset released later this year—Digital Chat Station believes that a pioneering mobile device could enter a mass production phase around September of this year. Prototype devices are allegedly up and running—the tipster's insider sources have alluded to engineering samples being capable of reaching 4.0 GHz clocks on a high-powered Big Core (Nuvia's Oryon or Phoenix). Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC was revealed last October, and working hardware is slowly trickling out via retail avenues in early 2024—Digital Chat Station does not provide any reasoning behind the race to get the successor across the finish line within the same year.

An unnamed smartphone manufacturer is said to have outfitted a "dual-curved screen" model with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset—Wccftech's report suggests that Xiaomi usually gets first dibs on cutting edge Qualcomm processor tech. The Nuvia engineering team has likely got their custom Oryon cores running to more than satisfactory levels—the article points out that: "a previous Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core leak revealed that the (3 nm) Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 competes with Apple's M3 and is 46 percent faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in multi-threaded workloads." Qualcomm is facing fierce flagship chip competition in 2024—MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 SoC could arrive at a cheaper price point, while offering comparable performance and efficiency.

A Taiwan Economic Daily news article proposes that a couple of high profile clients are considering TSMC's 2 nanometer process—Apple is widely believed to be the first customer to join the foundry's queue for cutting edge services. The report posits that Intel is also signed up on the Taiwanese firm's 2 nm reservation list—TSMC is expected to start production in 2025—insiders reckon that Team Blue's "Nova Lake" CPU family is the prime candidate here. Its CPU tile is alleged to utilize TSMC 2 nm node. Intel's recent "Core" processor roadmaps do not display any technologies beyond 2025—many believe that "Nova Lake" is pencilled in for a loose 2026 launch window, perhaps within the second half of the year.

The existence of "Nova Lake" was revealed late last year by HWiNFO patch notes—a short entry mentioned preliminary support for the family's integrated GPU. Intel is engaged in hyping up of its own foundry's 20A and 18A processes, but remain reliant on TSMC plants for various bits of silicon. Industry tipsters reckon that aspects of "Lunar Lake" CPUs are based on the Taiwanese foundry's N3B node. Team Blue Corporation and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) announced a new development partnership last week, but initial offerings will arrive on a relatively passé "12-nanometer semiconductor process platform." TSMC's very advanced foundry services seem to be unmatched at this juncture.

AMD is preparing the launch of the Radeon RX 7900 series of graphics cards for December 13th. And, of course, with recent launches being coated in uncertainty regarding availability, we are getting more rumors about what the availability could look like. According to Kyle Bennett, founder of HardOCP, we have information that AMD is allegedly preparing 200,000 Radeon RX 7900 SKUs for launch day. If the information is truthful, among the 200,000 launch-day SKUs, there should be 30,000 Made-by-AMD (MBA) cards, while the rest are AIB partner cards. This number indicates that AMD's market research has shown that there will be a great demand for these new GPUs and that the scarcity problem should be long gone.

A few days ago, we reported that the availability of the new AMD Radeon generation is reportedly scarce, with Germany receiving only 3,000 MBA designs and the rest of the EMEA region getting only 7,000 MBA SKUs as well. With today's rumor going around, we would like to know if this is correct and if more SKUs will circulate. America's region could receive most of the MBA designs, and AIB partners will take care of other regions. Of course, we must wait for tomorrow's launch and see how AMD plans to execute its strategy.

Origin is the fledgling online download account-based DRM service from Electronic Arts launched last June, that is home to Battlefield 3. To compete effectively against other similar services, the industry-leading Steam in particular, it must offer more content. To this end, Origin has added 11 publishers to its portfolio, reports CVG. These are Trion Worlds, Robot Entertainment, Freebird Games, Recoil Games, Autumn Games, 1C Company, inXile entertainment, Paradox Interactive, Core Learning Ltd, N3V Games and CD Projekt RED. That last one is interesting, because CD Projekt RED owns and runs www.gog.com, the website dedicated to selling DRM-free games.

That Dodgy Intel Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo' at CES 2012 (UPDATED)

Word has been flying round the internet about Intel's dodgy Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo'. Intel's Mooly Eden, VP, PC Client Group was attempting to demonstrate a racing game on a prototype laptop - 'ultrabook' - fitted with an upcoming 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor with a racing wheel attached and allegedly rendering DX11 graphics. However, as is very apparent at the start, it's actually a video, because the control panel for the free VLC video player pops up for a few seconds. Eden then 'drives' a car and after a few seconds puts up one hand and then the other, because as he says "they are driving it from backstage". However, there was no one driving the game "backstage", as it was just a video and Eden doesn't say anything about this at any point in the presentation.

This gives conspiracy theorists lots of ammunition, as perhaps the game was actually played on a high powered desktop PC with NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics cards? What game was it? Eden doesn't say. "IB can't really do these graphics!" they cry and so on. Sure, man 'didn't' go to the moon, either... However, we believe that while yes, there was a bit of deception going on, it was nothing more than a white(ish) lie. Why? Because Ivy Bridge comes out in April and people aren't going to forget this demo. They will immediately put IBs DX11 graphics to the test with similar games and if it doesn't deliver, Intel will have a lot of egg on its face. Here's what Intel had to say about this demo in an official statement:

Voltage Pictures, producers of movie Hurt Locker attempted to use a reverse class action tactic to extort hundreds of millions in 'settlement' claims aka extortion demands over alleged 'losses' due to 'piracy' - something that has never and can never, be quantified and proved. However, their attempt has failed miserably - plus read on for how Voltage Pictures did a little content 'theft' of their very own to make the movie.

The idea was to use the services of the US Copyright Group (USCG) to extract personal subscriber information from ISP's via subpoenas and then send demand letters averaging US $2,000 to hapless victims, with the hope of racking in a grand total of around US $94 million - way more than the film ever made, about US $12.6 million.

The USCG quickly unloaded lawsuit claims against 47K members of the unwitting American public, even as Voltage Picture spewed a stream of vitriol suggesting that the children and families of file sharers would hopefully "end up in jail".

explained DailyTech, putting it very well. Yes, let's get the kiddies in the name of corporate copyright and profit...

Just over a week ago, we brought you frustrating news that the brand new Call of Duty Elite social network was going to be delayed for the PC, once again leaving the PC gaming crowd feeling like second class citizens compared to their console counterparts. Now, in a bitter blow, it appears that the Elite service may shut out loyal PC gamers altogether. Plus, as is typical of big companies, the message was delivered in the most terse and disrespectful way possible, via a short Twitter tweet:

@thejuggz We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC.

So, that's it then, PC gamers may never get it and there's no explanation why. One can only surmise that it's due to the alleged "security issues" previously alluded to. Therefore, hopefuls will just have to wait on tenterhooks for an undefined period of time. So, the biggest sales launch in history isn't enough to convince the company to support the PC platform? It looks like detractors of the Call of Duty franchise have a very legitimate axe to grind this time, doesn't it? Probably the best way to view this unfortunate news is that the benefits weren't worth it anyway.