The latest version of AMD's open-source GPU compute stack, ROCm, is due for launch soon according to a Phoronix article—chief author, Michael Larabel, has been poring over Team Red's public GitHub repositories over the past couple of days. AMD ROCm version 6.0 was released last December—bringing official support for the AMD Instinct MI300A/MI300X, alongside PyTorch improvements, expanded AI libraries, and many other upgrades and optimizations. The v6.0 milestone placed Team Red in a more competitive position next to NVIDIA's very mature CUDA software layer. A mid-February 2024 update added support for Radeon PRO W7800 and RX 7900 GRE GPUs, as well as ONNX Runtime.

Larabel believes that "ROCm 6.1" is in for an imminent release, given his tracking of increased activity on publicly visible developer platforms: "For MIPOpen 3.1 with ROCm 6.1 there's been many additions including new solvers, an AI-based parameter prediction model for the conv_hip_igemm_group_fwd_xdlops solver, numerous fixes, and other updates. AMD MIGraphX will see an important update with ROCm 6.1. For the next ROCm release, MIGraphX 2.9 brings FP8 support, support for more operators, documentation examples for Whisper / Llama-2 / Stable Diffusion 2.1, new ONNX examples, BLAS auto-tuning for GEMMs, and initial code for MIGraphX running on Microsoft Windows." The change-logs/documentation updates also point to several HIPIFY for ROCm 6.1 improvements—including the addition of CUDA 12.3.2 support.

Sony Electronics Inc. today announced that it will release LinkBuds S noise canceling truly wireless headphones in a new color variation. Following the white, black, and ecru color versions that have been available since May 2022, a new stylish color, "Earth Blue," has been added to the line-up, created using recycled water bottle materials. Multi-point connection is also being brought to LinkBuds and LinkBuds S for seamless connection between devices will be available. Additionally, a new model "LinkBuds UC for Microsoft Teams" will be released with new features that are compatible with Microsoft Teams.

The comfortable LinkBuds S will be available in the new "Earth Blue" color. Parts of the body and case of LinkBuds S in Earth Blue are made from recycled water bottle materials which creates a unique, one-of-a-kind marble pattern. It was originally developed by Sony in pursuit of a new design expression with the aim of expanding the potential use of recycled materials.

HighPoint Launches the Industry's first 8-Port PCIe 4.0 x16 M.2 NVMe RAID Controller -the SSD7540. Powered by a cutting-edge Gen4 switch chipset and the latest iteration of HighPoint's blazing fast NVMe RAID engine, the SSD7540 is capable of delivering unbeatable Gen4 transfer performance while supporting up to 64 TB of storage.

The SSD7540 boasts the highest port-count and performance capability of any single-controller M.2 NVMe RAID solution in today's marketplace. Each of the eight independent M.2 ports can support any off-the-shelf Gen4 or Gen3 NVMe SSD, up to 8 TB in size. The SSD7540's NVMe RAID engine and has been fine-tuned for native PCIe Gen4 hardware platforms, and can take full advantage of the dedicated PCIe Gen 4 x16 host connectivity to deliver 28,000 MB/s of transfer performance.

Apple released today a highly recommended security update 2009-001 for all versions of MacOS X. This updated improves the security of Mac OS X and fixes various operating system flaws. The security update is available for MacOS X Leopard, Leopard Server, Tiger for Intel Macs, Tiger for PowerPC-based Macs, Tiger Server for PowerPC-based Macs and Server Universal. In addition Apple has released two Java security updates that improve the security and compatibility of Java on MacOS X. All updates can be located and installed via Software Update or directly from Apple Downloads here. More information about the updates can be found here.

HP has fixed flaws in a patch-management program bundled with its computers, printers and other hardware that could be used by hackers to 'brick' HP or Compaq PCs. In an alert sent to customers who subscribe to its security warning service, HP said users should run Software Update to patch the flaws disclosed last week by a Polish researcher known only by his alias, 'porkythepig'. A pair of bugs in the update service's ActiveX control can be used to execute remote code or gain additional access rights, porkythepig said then. He also posted proof-of-concept exploit code that showed how to use one of the vulnerabilities to overwrite and corrupt crucial Windows' system files, an attack that would leave any affected PC unbootable. That would essentially 'brick' the system, since many HP and Compaq PCs do not include a restore CD or DVD, but instead place operating system and application restore files on the hard drive. HP's advisory on Friday instructed users to run Software Update on any machine that has the application, even if the update service is never used. Running Update presumably disables the flawed ActiveX control by fixing the Windows registry.