The global smartphone applications processor (AP) market grew 23 percent to $30.8 billion in 2021, according to Strategy Analytics' Handset Component Technologies (HCT) service report. According to this Strategy Analytics' Handset Component Technologies (HCT) research report, " Smartphone Apps Processor Market Share Tracker Q4 2021: Qualcomm Increases Revenue Share Lead", Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple, Samsung LSI and Unisoc grabbed the top-five revenue share ranking spots in the smartphone applications processor (AP) market in 2021.

Sravan Kundojjala, author of the report and Director of Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics, commented, "For the first time on an annual basis, MediaTek overtook Qualcomm in units and established over 75 million unit-lead in smartphone APs 2021. MediaTek capitalized on Qualcomm's defocus on mid and low tier 4G LTE APs and gained volume share. Despite the loss of unit share crown, Qualcomm exited 2021 with over 43% higher revenue than MediaTek, thanks to an increased mix of higher-priced premium and high-tier APs. Both companies performed well in the 5G AP segment and posted a 13-year high in their AP average selling prices (ASPs)."

Designing Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning hardware accelerators takes effort from hardware engineers in conjunction with scientists working in the AI/ML area itself. A few years ago, we started seeing AI incorporated into parts of electronic design automation (EDA) software tools, helping chip designers speed up the process of creating hardware. What we were "used to" seeing AI do are just a couple of things like placement and routing. And having that automated is a huge deal. However, it looks like the power of AI for chip design is not going to stop there. Researchers at Google and UC Berkeley have made a research project that helps AI design and develop AI-tailored accelerators smaller and faster than anything humans made.

In the published paper, researchers present PRIME - a framework that created AI processors based on a database of blueprints. The PRIME framework feeds off an offline database containing accelerator designs and their corresponding performance metrics (e.g., latency, power, etc.) to design next-generation hardware accelerators. According to Google, PRIME can do so without further hardware simulation and has processors ready for use. As per the paper, PRIME improves performance upon state-of-the-art simulation-driven methods by as much as 1.2x-1.5x. It also reduces the required total simulation time by 93% and 99%, respectively. The framework is also capable of architecting accelerators for unseen applications.

Intel, along with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., have announced the establishment of an industry consortium to promote an open die-to-die interconnect standard called Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe). Building on its work on the open Advanced Interface Bus (AIB), Intel developed the UCIe standard and donated it to the group of founding members as an open specification that defines the interconnect between chiplets within a package, enabling an open chiplet ecosystem and ubiquitous interconnect at the package level.

"Integrating multiple chiplets in a package to deliver product innovation across market segments is the future of the semiconductor industry and a pillar of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy," said Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Artificial Intelligence Group at Intel. "Critical to this future is an open chiplet ecosystem with key industry partners working together under the UCIe Consortium toward a common goal of transforming the way the industry delivers new products and continues to deliver on the promise of Moore's Law."

Samsung Electronics today announced its new Galaxy Tab S8 series, the Galaxy Tab S8 and S8+, and the first-ever Tab S8 Ultra tablet in the lineup with the biggest, boldest display and most powerful performance Galaxy Tab S has ever offered. Sophisticated hardware, premium productivity features and the seamless ecosystem Galaxy users count on are combined in a single portable productivity powerhouse, designed to be your perfect companion in an always-on, video-first world. The Galaxy Tab S8 series offers you the freedom and flexibility you deserve to work and play anywhere like never before.

More than ever, we rely on tablets for video calling and streaming. Each Galaxy Tab S8 offers an improved video conferencing experience with ultra-wide front cameras, a three-microphone setup and intelligent auto-framing technology for a truly professional video call experience. It offers revolutionary multitasking capabilities with enhanced Multi-Active Windows and Samsung DeX, safe and easy file sharing with password-protected Quick Share, and powerful productivity with the new, super-fast 4 nm processor and a smoother than ever S Pen in the box. All this is packed into the thinnest and toughest Armor aluminium body for greater portability, and to enhance your mobile experience further, Galaxy Tab S8 series works hand-in-hand with your full ecosystem of Galaxy devices, with features like Second Screen and Buds Auto Switch.

Today Lenovo announced new additions to its broad education portfolio designed to enhance learning efficiencies in a new age for education. The new devices are purpose-built to meet the needs of modern in-person and distance-learning. The all-new Lenovo 10w Tablet running Windows 11 is powered by the Snapdragon 7c compute platform to enable an Always On, Always Connected computing experience, balancing the power and performance students expect and the mobile computing experiences they need to help them succeed in modernized learning. The new Lenovo 13w Yoga offers the flexibility of a convertible device with AMD Ryzen 5000 U-Series processors for mobile up to an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, and can include options to boost teacher and student engagement, device protection and improved connectivity.

According to UNESCO, more than 1.5 billion students have been impacted by the pandemic and many countries have been affected by extended school closures. Although classes are thankfully reopening, many continue to endure disrupted agendas and at the time of writing more than 35 million learners are still unable to benefit from classroom instruction. The longer-term focus needs to be on learning recovery and returning the trajectory beyond pre-Covid levels. A recent UNESCO report points out that we collectively have an opportunity to reinvent education to be more resilient, equitable and efficient in delivering learning for all. Institutions need to invest in structured learning programs that provide access to technology that can amplify classroom-based experiences. The tools need to be dynamic to support distance learning solutions and computer-assisted learning to help maximize education continuity. As a technology provider, Lenovo is committed to partnering with customers to develop and deliver innovative solutions to enhance learning today and into the future.

Historically, AMD was working with two semiconductor manufacturing companies: TSMC and GlobalFoundries. According to the latest report coming from Gokul Hariharan, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, AMD could soon tap another semiconductor manufacturer to produce the company's growing list of processors. As the report indicates, AMD could start working with the South Korean giant Samsung and utilize the firm's 4LPP process that represents a second generation of the low-power 4 nm silicon node. This specific node is allegedly the choice for AMD APUs designed to fit inside Google's Chromebook devices, which require low-power designs to achieve excellent battery life.

AMD could realize this move in late 2022, as Samsung's 4LPP node goes into mass production at that point. It means that we could see the first Samsung-made AMD APUs in late 2022 or the beginning of 2023. And apparently, the two company's collaboration could be much more significant as AMD is evaluating Samsung's 3 nm nodes for other products spanning more segments in 2023/2024. There are no official, definitive agreements between the two, so we have to wait for more information and official responses from these parties. Anyways, if AMD decides to produce a part of its lineup at Samsung, the remaining TSMC capacity would ensure that the supply of every incoming chip remains sufficient.

Today, Adobe kicked off Adobe MAX 2021, the largest creativity conference in the world. The company delivered innovation across Creative Cloud flagship applications and introduced new collaboration capabilities to fuel new levels of creativity for millions of customers worldwide, from students to social media creators to creative professionals.

At Adobe MAX, the company announced major updates across Creative Cloud flagship applications powered by Adobe Sensei, accelerated the video creation process with the addition of Frame.io and advanced 3D and immersive authoring abilities. Adobe also previewed new collaboration capabilities with the introduction of Creative Cloud Canvas, Creative Cloud Spaces and betas of Photoshop and Illustrator on the web.

BAPCo, a non-profit consortium of leading PC hardware manufacturers, today added support for the Android OS for CrossMark. Released in March, CrossMark has rapidly established itself as a cross-architecture performance benchmark that simplifies system performance and responsiveness measurement using common and relevant workloads for Windows, iOS, macOS and Android. CrossMark is based on widely used open-source applications to assess system performance scores in the areas of Productivity, Creativity and Responsiveness.

Adding Android support to the ecosystem allows CrossMark to accurately and objectively measure both system performance and responsiveness, which has traditionally been a time-consuming, difficult process to billions of new devices. CrossMark allows users to quickly install the software natively on their system and be up and running in a matter of minutes - with measurement runs as quick as 5 minutes to complete. At its conclusion, CrossMark reports an overall system performance and responsiveness score, as well as several key sub-scores indicative of typical day-to-day system performance. With over 2,200+ submitted and published results on BAPCo's online database users can compare their scores to a wide range of systems across multiple architectures.

Acer today debuted four new Chromebooks that meet a range of customer needs, ranging from home and business users to hybrid workers and students. Equipped with the latest processors and sought-after features such as reliable Wi-Fi 6, video conferencing technology and durable designs, the new Acer Chromebooks keep customers connected, productive and entertained.

"Acer's expansive line of Chromebooks means that we're well-equipped to meet any sort of customer need—from display size, processors, durability, connectivity and more," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "Whether a customer needs a device for work, school or entertainment, we've got a Chromebook with exactly the features they're looking for."

Tile, the pioneer in finding technology, introduces a new lineup that builds on the superior features consumers around the world rely on to keep track of their things. Available today, the lineup includes sleek new designs for a wide range of uses, increased finding range, louder ring and a new way for lost items to be found and returned. The company will also be introducing highly accurate Point and Locate finding with the launch of the Ultra-Wideband enabled Tile Ultra as well as a new Scan and Secure safety feature early next year.

Tile is built for everyone and everything, with a platform agnostic app and multiple form factors that attach to just about anything right out of the box. At a time when consumers are faced with even more choice within the category, Tile continues to see significant growth, a testament to its wide appeal. In the first half of 2021, Tile has grown revenue over 50 percent, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Atari announced today another step into establishing the all-new Atari VCS Videogame Computer System as a capable and fully-featured small form-factor PC for the living room. Paired with a robust modern indie and retro video game selection and streaming applications, the Atari VCS now provides users with the ultimate productivity powerhouse: Google Workspace.

Atari VCS owners can take advantage of the system's desk-to-living room versatility with easy access to Gmail, Calendar, Slides, Sheets, Docs, and Drive—all accessible right from the Atari VCS dashboard—and controllable with the Atari VCS Companion app or a traditional mouse and keyboard.

As business professionals continue to navigate new work environments - in an office, at home, or a mix of both - having proper technology and display tools are essential for maintaining team productivity and collaboration. Dedicated to delivering top-quality projection that is also versatile for a range of professional environments, today Epson introduced the new Epson 880X 3LCD 1080p smart portable projector. Compact and equipped with a convenient carrying case, the 880X meets a variety of on-the-go business display needs. Additionally, with Android TV and built-in Chromecast, users can easily switch it into a streaming machine for epic entertainment virtually anywhere.

"As the dynamics of work environments continue to shift, it's important that business professionals have the proper tools to set them up for success in any space," said Kenny Tang, product manager, projectors, Epson America, Inc. "The demand for bigger displays has continued throughout the pandemic for both business and home entertainment. The 880X smart projector is ideal for video conferencing and presentations with the added versatility to transform spaces into entertainment hubs."

Denon isn't the first brand most people think of when it comes to in-ear headphones, nor wireless headphones for that matter, but the company has a range of very high-end over-ear headphones in its lineup of products. This might be set to change though, with the company introducing two new sets of TWS earbuds in the shape of the AH-C630W and the AH-C830NCW.

The design appears very similar between the two models and apart from the little silver accent on the bottom of the AH-C830NCW, it's hard to tell the two apart from just looking at them. The main difference between the two is that the AH-C830NCW comes with active noise cancelling, insert detection and Google Fast Pair. Both models use standard dynamic drivers, with the AH-C830NCW having an unusual oval shape that measures 11x10 mm and the AH-C630W using a regular driver with a 10 mm diameter.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported record revenue for the second quarter ended August 1, 2021, of $6.51 billion, up 68 percent from a year earlier and up 15 percent from the previous quarter, with record revenue from the company's Gaming, Data Center and Professional Visualization platforms. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.94, up 276 percent from a year ago and up 24 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.04, up 89 percent from a year ago and up 14 percent from the previous quarter.

"NVIDIA's pioneering work in accelerated computing continues to advance graphics, scientific computing and AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Enabled by the NVIDIA platform, developers are creating the most impactful technologies of our time - from natural language understanding and recommender systems, to autonomous vehicles and logistic centers, to digital biology and climate science, to metaverse worlds that obey the laws of physics.

While the server industry transitions to the latest generation of processors based on the x86 platform, the Intel Ice Lake and AMD Milan CPUs entered mass production earlier this year and were shipped to certain customers, such as North American CSPs and telecommunication companies, at a low volume in 1Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. These processors are expected to begin seeing widespread adoption in the server market in 3Q21. TrendForce believes that Ice Lake represents a step-up in computing performance from the previous generation due to its higher scalability and support for more memory channels. On the other hand, the new normal that emerged in the post-pandemic era is expected to drive clients in the server sector to partially migrate to the Ice Lake platform, whose share in the server market is expected to surpass 30% in 4Q21.

In 2016, we launched the first Pixel. Our goal was to give people a more helpful, smarter phone. Over the years, we introduced features like HDR+ and Night Sight, which used artificial intelligence (AI) to create beautiful images with computational photography. In later years, we applied powerful speech recognition models to build Recorder, which can record, transcribe and search for audio clips, all on device.

AI is the future of our innovation work, but the problem is we've run into computing limitations that prevented us from fully pursuing our mission. So we set about building a technology platform built for mobile that enabled us to bring our most innovative AI and machine learning (ML) to our Pixel users. We set out to make our own System on a Chip (SoC) to power Pixel 6. And now, years later, it's almost here. Tensor is our first custom-built SoC specifically for Pixel phones, and it will power the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro later this fall.

AMD and Google Cloud today announced T2D, the first instance in the new family of Tau Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors. According to Google Cloud, the T2D instance offers 56% higher absolute performance and more than 40% higher price performance for scale-out workloads. The Tau VM family provides customers with a leading combination of performance, price, and easy integration. The T2D instances, using the leadership performance of 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, excels at workloads including web servers, containerized micro-services, data logging-processing, large scale Java applications and more.

"At Google Cloud, our customers' compute needs are evolving," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. "By collaborating with AMD, Google Cloud customers can now leverage amazing performance for scale-out applications, with great price-performance, all without compromising x86 compatibility." "We designed 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors to meet the growing demand from cloud and enterprise customers for high-performance, cost-effective solutions with optimal TCO," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We work closely with Google Cloud and are proud they selected AMD to exclusively power the new Tau VM T2D instance which provides customers with powerful new options to run their most demanding scale-out workloads."

A recent Google study led by Mirhoseini et al. and published in Nature details how AI can be leveraged to improve upon semiconductor design practices currently employed - and which are the result of more than 60 years of engineering and physics studies. The paper describes a trained machine-learning 'agent' that can successfully place macro blocks, one by one, into a chip layout. This agent has a brain-inspired architecture known as a deep neural network, and is trained using a paradigm called reinforcement learning - where positive changes to a design are committed to memory as possible solutions, while negative changes are discarded, effectively allowing the neural network to build a decision-tree of sorts that's optimized every step of the way.

The AI isn't applied to every stage of microchip design as of yet, but that will surely change in years to come. For now, the AI is only being employed in the chip floorplanning stage of microchip production, which is actually one of the more painstaking ones. Essentially, microchip designers have to place macro blocks on their semiconductor designs - pre-made arrangements of transistors whose placement relative to one another and to the rest of the chips' components are of seminal importance for performance and efficiency targets. Remember that electric signals have to traverse different chip components to achieve a working semiconductor, and the way these are arranged in the floorplanning stage can have tremendous impact on performance characteristics of a given chip. Image A, below, showcases the tidy design a human engineer would favor - while image B showcases the apparently chaotic nature of the AI's planning.

Video streaming is looking a bit like magic. The uploader sends a video to one platform in one resolution and encoding format, while the viewer requests a video in a specific resolution and encoding format used by the device the video is streamed on. YouTube knows this best, as it represents the world's largest video platform with over 2 billion users visiting the platform each month. That takes a massive load on the server infrastructure over at Google's data centers that host the service. There is about 500 hours worth of video content uploaded to the platform every minute, and regular hardware isn't being enough anymore to handle everything.

That is why YouTube has developed custom chips, ASICs, that are called VCUs or Video (trans)Coding Units. In Google data centers, there is a large problem with transcoding. Each video needs to adapt to the streaming platform and desired specifications, and doing that on regular hardware is a problem. By using ASIC devices, such as VCUs, Google can keep up with the demand and deliver the best possible quality. Codenamed Argos, the chip can deliver 20-33x improvement in efficiency compared to the regular server platform. In data centers, the VCU is implemented as a regular PCIe card, with two chips under the heatsinks.

Thanks to their flexible pricing schemes and diverse service offerings, CSPs have been a direct, major driver of enterprise demand for cloud services, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As such, the rise of CSPs have in turn brought about a gradual shift in the prevailing business model of server supply chains from sales of traditional branded servers (that is, server OEMs) to ODM Direct sales instead. Incidentally, the global public cloud market operates as an oligopoly dominated by North American companies including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which collectively possess an above-50% share in this market. More specifically, GCP and AWS are the most aggressive in their data center build-outs. Each of these two companies is expected to increase its server procurement by 25-30% YoY this year, followed closely by Azure.

ASUS today announced ASUS Chrome Enterprise devices, an exciting offering that combines the benefits of top-notch ASUS hardware with the business capabilities of Chrome OS. ASUS Chrome Enterprise devices are specifically built for business—enabled with Chrome Enterprise and housed in versatile, lightweight and robust ASUS Chrome devices to provide professionals with the tools they need to be effective and productive.

The lineup of ASUS Chrome Enterprise devices spans Chromebooks with clamshell and convertible designs and various form factors, as well as Chromebox models tailored to different business needs. With this offering, businesses can enjoy features such as zero-touch enrollment and Parallels Desktop for Chrome OS to optimize workflows for cloud-first devices.

Google has recently hired Intel veteran Uri Frank as VP of Engineering for the newly created server chip design division. The new division will develop custom Systems on Chip for use in Google datacenters to gain higher performance and to use less power by integrating hardware and software. Google has considerable experience in hardware development starting with its Tensor Processing Unit in 2015, its Video Processing Units in 2018, and in 2019 he first open-source silicon root-of-trust project. Google has also developed custom hardware solutions for SSDs, HDDs, network switches, and network interface cards in collaboration with external partners.

Google hopes to reduce the latency and bandwidth between different components by integrating them all into custom SoCs to improve power consumption and cost compared to individual ASICs on a motherboard. The development of these custom SoCs will be a long one with Google planning to hire hundreds of SoC engineers so we will be waiting a few years before we begin to see these deployed. This move is consistent with rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure who are both also developing custom server chips for their datacenters. Google will continue to purchase existing productions where it is more practical to do so and hopes to create an ecosystem that will benefit the entire industry.

Lenovo has teamed up with Google to offer three months of free access to Stadia Pro, the cloud gaming subscription service offered by Google, on new Lenovo Legion and IdeaPad gaming PCs. By collaborating with Stadia, Lenovo continues a long-standing strategy of offering gamers worldwide more choice in how and where they play.

The collaboration means anyone who purchases a new Lenovo Legion or IdeaPad gaming PC will receive three free months of access to the Stadia Pro gaming experience. Customers will be able to redeem the optional offer via Lenovo Vantage, the "My Software" page on Lenovo devices, using a URL with a special redemption code. The offer will also be available via our Legion Gaming community in select markets. The offer will roll out starting this month in 22 markets across North America and Europe.

Google and the broader Chrome ecosystem continue to deliver innovative, cloud-first PC experiences with Chromebooks powered by Intel—from use in classrooms to go-anywhere connectivity for work and gaming.

"This past year has reminded us that the PC is an integral part of our lives," said Chris Walker, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Mobile Client Platforms. "Intel and Google share a vision for delivering the computing experiences that matter most to people. Together, we have enabled the incredible growth and evolution of the Chrome ecosystem over the last decade to reach amazing levels of capability and performance. We're excited to build on this collaboration as we continue to drive innovation forward." Since the first device was introduced in 2011, an entire ecosystem has evolved and more than 100 million Chromebooks have made their way into the world for students and educators, general consumers and businesses. Over those 10 years, Intel has worked closely with Google and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to enable more than 100 Intel-based Chromebook designs and drive new areas of innovation.

Intel and Google Cloud today announced a collaboration to develop telco cloud reference architectures and integrated solutions for communication service providers to accelerate 5G deployment across multiple network and edge locations.

"Communications service providers can adopt cloud-native technologies to harness the potential of 5G both as a connectivity solution and as a business services platform to deliver applications to the network edge," said Shailesh Shukla, vice president and general manager of networking at Google Cloud. "Expanding on our work with the telecommunications industry, we are excited to work with Intel to help customers plan, test and deploy the technology and infrastructure needed to accelerate the delivery of cloud-native 5G for consumer and enterprise use cases."