Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 customers still represent a large group, as Microsoft has announced an additional year of Extended Security Updates (ESU) with a caveat. Only available for Microsoft Azure customers, the ESU program will allow Windows Server 2008 and R2 users on Azure cloud to get security updates until January 9, 2024. By no means is this not a free program, and Microsoft will bill this extensively as it is available internationally. Many customers are forced to join the ESU program for their Windows Server 2008 and R2 systems, as upgrading the OS to the latest version is not always possible without significant downtime or a hardware update.

The following customer base has legibility to the fourth year of the ESU program:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows Embedded POSReady 7
• Windows Embedded Standard 7
• All Azure virtual machines (VMs) running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems on Azure, Azure Stack, Azure VMWare Solutions, or Azure Nutanix Solution.

If you're running Windows 11 and installed the 22H2 update that was released recently, you might've noticed poor performance in games or some applications that rely on your NVIDIA graphics card. NVIDIA has released a fix that should resolve these issues and you can find a link to it below, where you can find an update for the GeForce Experience, which in turn will apply the patch. Exactly what caused these performance issues is unclear and NVIDIA hasn't provided any explanation as to what their fix resolves. This is currently a beta release, but NVIDIA is expecting to release a proper version later this week.

The latest Community Update 1 patch of "Dying Light: Stay Human" adds support for the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) performance enhancement. This adds several more quality-performance presets that improve visuals over FSR 1.0 at a given frame-rate, or improve frame-rate at a given quality-level. The update also improves the game's memory-management of the GPU's video memory in DirectX 12 mode, which should benefit features such as real-time ray tracing. There are other minor fixes for SSAO and TAA temporal anti-aliasing.

Today ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2022 second-quarter results. Q2 net sales of €5.4 billion, gross margin of 49.1%, net income of €1.4 billion. Record quarterly net bookings in Q2 of €8.5 billion. ASML expects Q3 2022 net sales between €5.1 billion and €5.4 billion and a gross margin between 49% and 50%. Expected sales growth for the full year of around 10%.

The value of fast shipments*in 2022 leading to delayed revenue recognition into 2023 is expected to increase from around €1 billion to around €2.8 billion.
"Our second-quarter net sales came in at €5.4 billion with a gross margin of 49.1%. Demand from our customers remains very strong, as reflected by record net bookings in the second quarter of €8.5 billion, including €5.4 billion from 0.33 NA and 0.55 NA EUV systems as well as strong DUV bookings.

ASRock has released UEFI/BIOS updates for at least 47 of its 600-series chipset based motherboards, which will add support for the next generation of CPUs from Intel. The new CPUs are of course Intel's 13th gen Core CPU's, codenamed Raptor Lake, even though ASRock doesn't specifically mention this anywhere in the text on its portal site. We're expecting to see similar announcements from the other motherboard makers in due time. ASRock doesn't go into any kind of details as to which CPUs are supported and the company doesn't appear to have updated its CPU support lists yet, which is a shame, but not entirely unexpected, since the Raptor Lake CPUs aren't expected to launch until later this year.

However, ASRock has implemented what the company calls Auto Driver Installer or ADI in this UEFI/BIOS update for the boards and this is likely to be an unpopular addition, as it means drivers will be automatically be downloaded and installed if the system is connected to the internet. Presumably there will be an option to disable this feature, but it appears to be enabled by default, which has proven to be an unpopular option when other companies have done it. Admittedly it could be a handy feature during a new build or OS reinstall, but it's also a potential attack vector for malware.

Ten years ago, in 2012, NVIDIA introduced its Kepler series of graphics cards based on the TSMC 28 nm node. Architecture has been supported for quite a while now by NVIDIA's drivers, and the last series to carry support was the 470 driver class. Today, NVIDIA pushed a security update in the form of a 473.47 WHQL driver that brings fixes to various CVE vulnerabilities that can cause anything from issues that may lead to denial of service, information disclosure, or data tampering. This driver version has no fixed matters and doesn't bring any additional features except the fix for vulnerabilities. With CVEs rated from 4.1 to 8.5, NVIDIA has fixed major issues bugging Kepler GPU users. With a high risk for code execution, denial of service, escalation of privileges, information disclosure, and data tampering, the 473.47 WHQL driver is another step for supporting Kepler architecture until 2024, when NVIDIA plans to drop the support for this architecture. Supported cards are GT 600, GT 700, GTX 600, GTX 700, Titan, Titan Black, and Titan Z.

The updated drivers are available for installation on NVIDIA's website and for users of TechPowerUp's NVCleanstall software.

Microsoft is giving final touches to a what it refers to as a groundbreaking new security feature update for the Windows 11 operating system, which should significantly improve application-level security, and safeguard you from malicious apps based on the way they behave. Trouble is, to use the feature, you will have to reinstall your operating system (i.e. a clean reinstall), if you're on the current release of Windows 11, or any build that's older than the one that carries this update.

The Smart App Control feature by default blocks untrusted or uncertified applications from running on your PC, and unlike browser-level protections such as Smart Screen, is baked directly into the OS, and monitors application code at a process level, to detect potentially malicious application behavior. It does this using a combination of code-signing by the application publisher and an AI model for trust within the Microsoft cloud. The OS keeps in touch with the cloud 24x7 (whenever the PC is up), to receive the latest threat intelligence and AI model updates from the cloud. It's very likely that Smart App Control will be part of the next significant version milestone of Windows 11 (such as "22H2"), which means everyone on 22H1 or older will be made to reinstall to use it.

At Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and Intel's business leaders outlined key elements of the company's strategy and path for long-term growth. Intel's long-term plans will capitalize on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors. Among the presentations, Intel announced product roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including: Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics, Intel Foundry Services, Software and Advanced Technology, Network and Edge, Technology Development, More: For more from Intel's Investor Meeting 2022, including the presentations and news, please visit the Intel Newsroom and Intel.com's Investor Meeting site.

Adobe's Premiere Pro, one of the most common video editing tools in the industry, has received a February update today with version 22.2. The new version brings a wide array of features like Adobe Remix, an advanced audio retiming tool. Alongside that, the latest update accelerates offline text-to-speech capabilities by as much as three times. However, this is not the most significant feature, as we are about to see. Adobe also enabled 10-bit 420 HDR HEVC H/W encoding on Window with Intel and NVIDIA graphics. This feature allows the software to use advanced hardware built-in the NVIDIA Quadro RTX and Intel Iris Xe graphics cards.

The company managed to run some preliminary tests, and you can see the charts below. They significantly improve export times with the latest 22.2 software version that enables HEVC 10-Bit hardware encoding. For Intel GPUs, no special drivers need to be installed. However, for NVIDIA GPUs, Adobe is advising official Studio drivers in combination with Quadro RTX GPUs.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of the next version of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM standard: JESD238 HBM3, available for download from the JEDEC website. HBM3 is an innovative approach to raising the data processing rate used in applications where higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and capacity per area are essential to a solution's market success, including graphics processing and high-performance computing and servers.

What seems to be one of the best supported products by NVIDIA, is getting yet another update in the shape of the Shield Software Experience Upgrade 9.0, which brings Android 11 to the NVIDIA Shield devices. The fact that Android 11 is only arriving around the same time Android 12 is landing on most phones is a different matter, but the OS isn't the only update you're getting if you own a Shield device. NVIDIA has added support for aptX, something that should please users of compatible headsets, as it's so far the most common higher-end Bluetooth audio solution, although LDAC was already supported.

NVIDIA has also updated its GeForce Now game streaming software and is pushing its new RTX 3080 to those of us that have been unlucky enough to not be able to get one at MSRP. There are also updates for the Apple TV and Google Play Movies and TV apps, where the latter gets Dolby Vision support. US owners of a Shield TV device are also getting six months of Peacock Premium for free, but a Google account is required to take advantage of this offer. There are several other minor updates and fixes as well, such as an option to automatically disconnect Bluetooth devices when the Shield TV is put to sleep and a new energy saver setting.

The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

Microsoft and AMD on Thursday released software updates that fix the two performance issues affecting AMD Ryzen processors with Windows 11. The two issues were abnormally high L3 cache latency, and a broken "Preferred Cores" system. The companies had assessed that the issues impact performance of Ryzen processors on Windows 11 by as much as 15%.

The two issues are fixed in separate methods. The L3 cache latency bug is improved through a Windows Update patch, which has been released now as an Update Preview (an Update Preview is not a "beta," but a software update released ahead of its designated "patch Tuesday"). The Update Preview is chronicled under KB5006746, and Windows 11 systems updated with this, get their OS build version set as "build 22000.282." The next update restores the Preferred Cores mechanism that leverages UEFI-CPPC2. This update comes in the form of an AMD Chipset Software update. You'll need to download and install both of the following:

DOWNLOAD: Windows 11 October 21, 2021 Update Preview KB5006746 | AMD Chipset Driver Software 3.10.08.506

Microsoft on October 12 put out the first Cumulative Updates for the new Windows 11 operating system, since its October 5 release. The company's monthly update packages for Windows are unofficially dubbed "patch Tuesday" updates, as they're scheduled to come out on the second Tuesday of each month. Shortly after Windows 11 launch, AMD and Microsoft jointly discovered that Windows 11 is poorly optimized for AMD Ryzen processors, which see significantly increased L3 cache latency, and the UEFI-CPPC2 (preferred cores mechanism) rendered not working. In our own testing, a Ryzen 7 2700X "Pinnacle Ridge" processor, which typically posts an L3 cache latency of 10 ns, was tested to show a latency of 17 ns. This was made much worse with the October 12 "patch Tuesday" update, driving up the latency to 31.9 ns.

AMD put out a statement on social media, which surfaced on Reddit. The company stated that patches for the two issues have been developed, and specified dates on which they'll be released. The patch for the Preferred Cores (UEFI-CPPC2) bug will be released on October 21. Customers can request the patch even earlier. By "customers," AMD is probably referring to big enterprise customers running mission-critical applications on Threadripper or EPYC-powered workstations. The L3 cache latency bug will be fixed through the Windows Update channel, its release is scheduled for October 19.

Intel has been working on a technology that will improve the lives of all users that have an Intel-based processor in their system. According to the recent round of patches for the Linux kernel, Intel's engineers have been working on a feature called Intel Seamless Update, which promises to bring updating of system firmware without a need to reboot. First of all, it is important to note that firmware upgrades have been stuck at requiring reboot in order to apply patches. This has caused many systems to be down and to slow down the infrastructure by a wide margin, as these updates can last up to several minutes, where the system is rebooting and can not be used.

Intel has presented an idea of creating a technology that will update system firmware, such as UEFI, in the run time. That means that the system will be able to apply firmware patches, without ever needing a reboot, minimizing downtime. This is especially valuable for customers with very high service level agreements (SLAs) around downtime, meaning that almost 100% uptime (not possible to be 100% generally speaking) is required for these systems. An example of this would be medical server infrastructure, which has to constantly be available for access. Using this technology, systems such as these could update their firmware and be online non-stop, without maybe ever needing to reboot. The said feature is supposed to arrive in time for the launch alongside Intel "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processors.

It's been a long time coming, but Sony is finally ready to allow all of its PS5 customers to get access to the M.2 SSD storage expansion slot, courtesy of the September system update, which lands tomorrow. It's not the only feature that the new update will bring though, as Sony has also worked on some user experience enhancements when it comes to navigating the UI, as well as some improvements to the PlayStation Now UI.

Sony has also added support for 3D audio via the speakers built into TVs, although it's not entirely clear what this brings from the details on Sony's blog post. However, it does appear to use the microphone on the DualSense controllers to measure the acoustics of the room to enhance the audio as much as possible. The Pulse 3D wireless headset is getting access to the built in equalizer settings with this update.

Growth rates remained strong in the enterprise segment of the wireless local area networking (WLAN) market in the second quarter of 2021 (2Q21) as the market increased 22.4% on a year-over-year basis to $1.7 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker. In the consumer segment of the WLAN market, revenues declined 5.7% in the quarter to $2.3 billion, giving the combined enterprise and consumer WLAN markets year-over-year growth of 4.6% in 2Q21.

The growth in the enterprise-class segment of the market builds on a strong first quarter of 2021 when revenues increased 24.6% year over year. For the first half of 2021, the market increased 23.5% compared to first two quarters of 2020. Compared to the second quarter of 2019, 2Q21 revenues increased 10.8%, indicating that demand in the enterprise WLAN is strong.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announced product support for the latest AMD Ryzen 5000G series Cezanne processors. AMD's next-generation Ryzen 5000G series desktop processors codenamed "Cezanne" are ready to invade the global market. The new 5000G series processors are based on Zen 3 architecture, AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of desktop APUs based on the Zen 3 CPU and Vega GPU microarchitectures succeeding the Ryzen 4000 "Renoir" series.

Extreme performance enabled for personal computing with up to 8 cores fueled by the world's most advanced 7 nm processor core technology, the AMD Ryzen 5000 G-series desktop processors with Radeon graphics deliver ultra-fast responsiveness and multi-threaded performance for any use case.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has shared details on the upcoming 1.3 patch, which should be hitting all platforms sooner rather than later. This particular patch is the first one that doesn't specifically focus on only bug and performance fixes, in that it also includes the first pieces of free DLC CD Projekt Red has announced even before the games' release - and towards its spectacularly negative reception between media outlets and gamers alike. These free DLCs are really small things for now, too: there's an alternate appearance for Johnny Silverhand, a couple of jackets (Multi-layered Syn-Leather Deltajock Jacket and Luminescent Punk Jacket). In addition to these two, and the new Archer Quartz "Bandit" vehicle.

General performance improvements are expected to be reached with this particular version due to the addition of Dynamic Resolution Scaling, which enables the game to change rendering resolution on the fly so as to achieve a particular framerate target. No support for AMD's FSR on consoles as of yet, and one has to wonder why: it would be a relatively straightforward way to claw back some performance, particularly in the underpowered, last-gen consoles that have been hit the most by the games' performance issues. A gazillion (it's not a scientific number, only an approximation) of quest and bug fixes have also made it into patch 1.3, and represent the vast majority of the developer-hours it took to develop this particular patch. There are also improvements to performance in Screen Space Reflections, and an increase in the amount of available save slots. "Last", but not least, is an improvement to the minimap - it should now zoom out whenever a player is in a vehicle, so as to allow pilots to actually be able to react to curves as they appear on the map... eight months after the games' release. You can look for the full list of fixes over at CD Projekt Red's blog post.

Rockstar Games, the developer behind plenty of AAA titles, including Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), is preparing an interesting update for all the RDR2 players. Called the "Blood Money" update, it brings new player activities to the Red Dead Online community. As Rockstar describes it, you will "Step into the criminal underworld of Red Dead Online: Blood Money on July 13, and prove you are willing to get your hands dirty in service to notorious and well-connected members of Saint-Denis society." While the update brings interesting content, it also integrates new technologies for visual/graphics improvements. NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is also landing on July 13, allowing you to play the game with better performance and image quality if you have a GeForce RTX graphics card.Check out the Red Dead Online: Blood Money trailer below.

Total Graphics Power, or TGP, is a way of constraining the power of a GPU to a certain level, so it can adjust to the use case. In laptops and other mobile systems, TGP can be dynamically adjusted using technologies such as NVIDIA Dynamic Boost and AMD Smart Shift, which bring unused CPU power envelope to the GPU and allowing it to boost to much higher frequencies. By boosting to higher frequencies, the total power output of GPU increased, and the cooling system of a laptop can only handle a limited amount of heat. That is why these technologies from AMD and NVIDIA allow the CPU to reduce its heat output and offer the GPU more room for boosting and power output.

Acer has today announced that the company will offer a simple firmware update for their Nitro 5, Helios 300, Triton 300, and Triton 300 SE gaming laptops, which is going to boost the TGP of NVIDIA graphics card present in these systems anywhere from 5-30 Watts. There is a nicely compiled list available on the ComputerBase website that highlights the exact power increase for a specific model. If you happen to own one of these models, you can download the latest firmware update from Acer's website here.

The release notes for the latest version of famous system utility HWiNFO have spilled the beans on an update to Intel's XMP. Currently at version 2.0, XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile) is a technology that allows the system-level BIOS to run DDR memory at speeds higher than those allowed by JEDEC, the governing specifications body for all things memory. It extends the performance profiles usually made available via SPD (Serial Presence Detect). An update to Intel's XMP (XMP 3.0) for DDR5 memory is referred to in the release notes for version 7.05 of the software. Not much more to look at here - it remains to be seen what changes are actually a part of XMP 3.0, and if any increased utility will be added to these profiles. Remember, however, that nor Intel nor AMD (via its A-XMP implementation) enable warranty coverage should XMP be enabled in your system.

Other relevant updates for the application include advanced early support for Zen 4 systems (looking at you, AMD), as well as per-core temperature monitoring for Zen-based CPUs. There are other additions to the supported hardware, which you can find in the screenshot below.

USB Implementers Forum, the organization behind the development of the USB standard and its iterations, has today announced the latest revision to the USB-C standard. In the latest 2.1 version of the USB-C specification, we are in for a surprise when it comes to power delivery. With the previous 2.0 standard, USB-C was rated to deliver a minimum of 3 Amps at 20 Volts or carry a high-power 5 A current that is capable of delivering 100 Watts at 20 Volts. However, in the latest specification, the USB-IF has decided to bump up the power delivery target to a whopping 240 Watts.

This means that with the 2.1 specifications, the USB-C standard will be able to output as much as 48 Volts with a 5-Amp current. While this is a somewhat big change, that doesn't mean that you have to throw away your old USB-C cables. In the mode called Extended Power Range (EPR), the USB-C 2.1 will still work with all of the existing plugs. The plug is physically the same, however, for EPR to work it has changed the connector configuration a bit where pins for power delivery and USB 2.0 support can no longer short to ground, to prevent arcing when the cable is unplugged. The EPR cables will carry an electronic mark with them, so all of the devices will ask them how much power they can carry before transferring it over those cables. The 240 Watt bump will enable us to see more mobile devices, like laptops, with the ability to charge over a USB-C cable.

NVIDIA is planning to stop releasing driver updates to the "Kepler" generation of GPUs with the R470 driver series, according to a company driver support roadmap. Updated Software Support Matrix tables for datacenter GPUs, reveal, that the R470 drivers, released in 2021, will be the final driver updates to the "Kepler" architecture, completing 9 (!) years of driver updates since the architecture's 2012 debut. Support for the older "Fermi" ended with R390. A roadmap diagram also explains the various branches under which NVIDIA drivers are developed and released.

Although the roadmap predominantly refers to data-center GPUs, it's very likely that support for the GeForce GTX 600 "Kepler" series will end with GeForce R470 drivers, too, if not sooner. As of this writing, the current GeForce R465 series drivers do support GTX 600 series "Kepler," even if not all day-one game optimizations are applied all the way back to this series.

Today, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, Inc., has announced an update to the Tesla Model S automobile. The new car has seen a design revision for the first time since 2012, and it looks like something straight from the future. The interior has seen a complete revamp, and now it looks very futuristic and minimalistic. The specs of the car are also impressive. It can accelerate from 0-60 mph in just under two seconds. The starting price of the car is 80K USD, and it will be available in March. However, the speed and the price is not the main character found inside the car.

Tesla has announced that the updated Model S design has a new infotainment system that has a Tesla Arcade gaming platform with 10 TeraFLOPs of power. According to Mr. Musk, you will be able to play Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk on the Tesla Arcade, a new gaming platform for Tesla vehicles. Right now, it is undefined what is the exact configuration inside the new Tesla Model S car. However, it is speculated that AMD Radeon Navi 23 GPU is powering the platform. When it comes to the CPU choice, speculations are pointing out that Tesla is most likely using an Intel Atom chip paired with the aforementioned AMD Radeon GPU. All we know is that the GPU is clocked at 2.44 GHz, and possibly has 32 CUs. To play Cyberpunk and Witcher 3, you are would need to own one of these new Model S autos and the whole software stack is running locally. We are expecting to hear more about the final specifications once the car arrives in March.