Intel's Arc graphics solutions initially had a rough start to life on the Linux side of things, but it seems as though the tide is changing. Phoronix recently tested the new Panther Lake Intel Arc B390 iGPU in the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, comparing the new iGPU to the venerable Radeon 890M in the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and Intel's iGPU consistently outpaces the Radeon iGPU, which isn't a surprise if you've been keeping track of early benchmarks on Windows. The publication tested the new Xe3 integrated graphics in an MSI Prestige 14 running the latest Mesa 26.0 drivers on Linux Kernel version 6.19 on Ubuntu 26.04.

When it comes to gaming, the only games in which the Xe3 iGPU was bested by the AMD competition were Counterstrike 2, running at 1920×1200, and Quake II RTX. In every other game, the Intel Arc B390 beat both the AMD competition and the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Core Ultra 7 258V significantly. Depending on the game and in-game settings, the Arc B390 was anywhere between 15% and upwards of 50%. Hitman 3 was a particularly impressive outlier, with the B390 managing to get over 50% more FPS than the nearest competitor and 64% more FPS than the Radeon 890M at 1920×1200 and low settings, with similar gains at medium quality settings, and a slightly less impressive performance improvement when bumping up to ultra settings.

Pocketpair, which recently found itself in hot water over Palworld's striking similarity to Nintendo's Pokemon games, has announced its next game release with an official Steam page. One of the biggest points of contention in the Nintendo v. Pocketpair lawsuit has been the creature collecting mechanics that Palworld employs with regard to its Pals, and those exact same Pals will now be able to accompany you in Palfarm, which bears a not-insignificant resemblance to the popular indie game, Stardew Valley. Palfarm is, unsurprisingly, a spin-off of Palworld, taking place on the Palpagos Islands, where humans and Pals live and work side-by-side.

The Pals seem like more than just visual dressing for Palfarm. The Steam store page makes mention of the Pals' different abilities to help accomplish tasks, farm the land, cook, work, and grow shop. Unlike Palworld, it seems as though Palfarm will be treating Pals more like people than animals, since they will reportedly be able to run their own stores and form relationships with players. Officially, violence towards your companions and eating Pals are both off the table—another divergence from the original Palworld philosophy, which more or less gives players free rein over their actions in-game. However, there is a darker side to Palfarm, like fighting wild Pals who come to raid your crops, and an underground black market where you can buy all manner of illicit materials, like guns and contraband. Palfarm will be playable in both single-player and online co-op multiplayer modes, although an exact launch date has not yet been announced.

Applied Materials, Inc. today announced a landmark investment to build the world's largest and most advanced facility for collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment research and development (R&D). The new Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center is planned as the heart of a high-velocity innovation platform designed to accelerate development and commercialization of the foundational technologies needed by the global semiconductor and computing industries.

To be located at an Applied campus in Silicon Valley, the multibillion-dollar facility is designed to provide a breadth and scale of capabilities that is unique in the industry, including more than 180,000 square feet - more than three American football fields - of state-of-the-art cleanroom for collaborative innovation with chipmakers, universities and ecosystem partners. Designed from the ground up to accelerate the pace of introducing new manufacturing innovations, the new EPIC Center is expected to reduce the time it takes the industry to bring a technology from concept to commercialization by several years, while simultaneously increasing the commercial success rate of new innovations and the return on R&D investments for the entire semiconductor ecosystem.

AMD for long has been perceived as lagging behind NVIDIA in OpenGL API graphics performance, as is evident in synthetic benchmarks that let you choose between various APIs, such as DirectX 11, DirectX 12, Vulkan, and OpenGL. It's being reported that the company has made a technical breakthrough that could significantly improve OpenGL application performance, bringing Radeon GPUs on par with GeForce in GL applications. Besides a few old games, several productivity applications continue to use OpenGL, such as Adobe Creative Cloud suite; as well as certain 3D renderers.

AMD is incorporating its OpenGL performance enhancement in drivers bound for Windows 11 22H2 (the major release bound for the second half of 2022). With this release, Microsoft is debuting WDDM 3.1, and AMD is already out with a Preview driver meant for Windows Insiders, bearing version 31.0.12000.20010. A quick Unigine Valley benchmark run with the OpenGL renderer reveals an incredible 49.5% increase in frame-rates, bringing the RX 6800 XT sample to performance-levels you'd expect from the RTX 3080. An identical 49.5% frame-rate increase was seen in Unigine Superposition.

The United States tech industry has overnight dealt a potentially fatal blow to Chinese electronics giant Huawei, by boycotting the company. The companies are establishing compliance with a recent Executive Order passed by President Donald Trump designed to "stop the import, sale, and use of equipment and services by foreign companies based in countries that are potential adversaries to U.S. interests," particularly information technology security. Google has announced that it will no longer allow Huawei to license Android, and will stop updates and Google Play access to Huawei smartphones. Huawei can still equip its phones with open-source Android, but it cannot use Google's proprietary software, including Google Play Store, Chrome, and all the other Google apps. Intel decided to no longer supply processors and other hardware to Huawei, for use in its laptops and server products. Sales of AMD processors will stop, too. Qualcomm-Broadcom have decided to stop supply of mobile SoCs and network PHYs, respectively. Microsoft decided to stop licensing Huawei to use Windows and Office products.

The ban is a consequence of the U.S. Government placing Huawei on a list of banned entities, forcing all U.S. companies to abandon all trade with it, without prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Trade cuts both ways, and not only are U.S. firms banned from buying from Huawei, they're also banned from selling to it. Huawei "buys from" over 30 U.S. companies, (for example, Windows licenses from Microsoft). CNN reports that U.S. firms could lose up to $11 billion in revenues.

FinalWire announced AIDA64 v2.85, the popular system diagnostic and benchmarking suite is updated with 64-bit benchmarks optimized for AMD's "Richland" APUs, improved support for "Kaveri," "Kabini," and "Temash" APUs; and Intel "Haswell" and "Valleyview" CPUs; early support for AMD "Beema" APU, Intel "Avoton" SoC, "Crystalwell," "Ivy Bridge-E," and "Haswell-E" CPU, "Haswell-ULT" SoC; preliminary support for DDR4 and GDDR5 system memory types; and GPU support for AMD Radeon HD 8000 series and NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 v2.85 Installer (EXE), Archive (ZIP)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird's-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Offering a rare chance to experience a breath of untapped, crystal clear air, Valley Benchmark allows you to encounter a morning high up in the mountains when the snow-capped peaks are just barely glittering in the rising sun. Be it flying over the vast green expanses or hiking along rocky slopes, this journey continues as long you wish. Unique in every corner, this open-space world provides a wonderfully relaxing experience under the tranquil music and sounds of nature.DOWNLOAD: Unigine Valley for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux