Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced the industry's first 2 terabyte (TB) microSDXC memory card working prototypes. Using its innovative BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and an in-house designed controller, basic functions of the KIOXIA 2 TB microSDXC UHS-I memory card working prototypes were confirmed in the microSDXC standard's maximum density.

As the data recording capacity of smartphones, action cameras, and portable game consoles continues to increase, the need for ultra-high capacity SD memory cards to store all of this data has never been higher. The SD Association's SDXC specification has supported memory cards up to 2 TB for more than a decade—but 2 TB cards have not been successfully manufactured until now.

The U.S. Department of Defense, through the NSTXL consortium-based S2MARTS OTA, has awarded Intel an agreement to provide commercial foundry services in the first phase of its multi-phase Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program. The RAMP-C program was created to facilitate the use of a U.S.-based commercial semiconductor foundry ecosystem to fabricate the assured leading-edge custom and integrated circuits and commercial products required for critical Department of Defense systems. Intel Foundry Services, Intel's dedicated foundry business launched this year, will lead the work.

"One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors, and the value to the United States of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry. Intel is the sole American company both designing and manufacturing logic semiconductors at the leading edge of technology. When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the U.S. government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C." -Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.

Following Wednesday's announcement of the Radeon RX 6000 series with product launches on October 28, the rumor mill started rolling full steam ahead. The RX 6000 series GPUs by AMD will be based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture, the same exact architecture powering the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, and will feature DirectX 12 Ultimate support, including hardware raytracing. A PC enthusiast on Chinese microblogging site Bilibili posted a picture of an alleged "Big Navi" prototype. Since its July 2019 debut, there have been rumors of AMD working on a new high-end GPU to take on the upper-segment of NVIDIA, given that the RX 5700 series offered competitive performance to NVIDIA's breadwinning products, such as the RTX 2070 series and RTX 2060 series.

The picture reveals the reverse side of the alleged "Big Navi" prototype's PCB, showing a larger cluster of GPU ancillaries than those behind a "Navi 10," and eight memory pads with the paper labels "Typical XT ASIC" references for a "16 Gb Samsung GDDR6 memory." Over a 256-bit wide memory interface, the chip should hence have 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. Since this is a prototype, several headers are sticking out of the PCB for the design and prototyping of the product. A tower-type CPU cooler has been MacGyvered onto the GPU (which isn't uncommon for VGA prototypes). We'll hear a lot more about this product in the run up to its October 28 launch.

Noctua is reportedly working on a high-performance fanless CPU cooler building on a 2019 prototype that was exhibited at last year's Computex. The final product should launch within 2020, according to an Overclock3D report. As of now there's no word on whether the said cooler will look identical to last year's prototype, but it provides a long list of capabilities that Noctua could build on. For starters, last year's prototype was capable of handling 120 W TDP in PC cases with good natural ventilation, and up to 180 W in cases with quiet fans. The company used a Core i9-9900K in a variety of workloads as a proof of the heatsink's capabilities. The prototype heatsink was also shown offering decent amount of clearance with the motherboard's memory- and VRM areas. Its only downside was the 1.5 kg weight.

European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a Europe's project to kickstart a homegrown development of custom processors tailored towards different usage models that the European Union might need. The first task of EPI is to create a custom processor for high-performance computing applications like machine learning, and the chip prototypes are already on their way. The EPI chairman of the board Jean-Marc Denis recently spoke to the Next Platform and confirmed some information regarding the processor design goals and the timeframe of launch.

Supposed to be manufactured on TSMC's 6 nm EUV (TSMC N6 EUV) technology, the EPI processor will tape-out at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, and it is going to be heterogeneous. That means that on its 2.5D die, many different IPs will be present. The processor will use a custom ARM CPU, based on a "Zeus" iteration of Neoverese server core, meant for general-purpose computation tasks like running the OS. When it comes to the special-purpose chips, EPI will incorporate a chip named Titan - a RISC-V based processor that uses vector and tensor processing units to compute AI tasks. The Titan will use every new standard for AI processing, including FP32, FP64, INT8, and bfloat16. The system will use HBM memory allocated to the Titan processor, have DDR5 links for the CPU, and feature PCIe 5.0 for the inner connection.

Lian Li unveiled a new case under its main brand, and three new models under its LanCool brand extension, besides showing off several unreleased products that could see launch later this year. We begin with the O11D Mini, a miniaturized premium cube case that's a scale-down of the O11D for the Micro-ATX form-factor. It retains the vertically partitioned layout, coupled with key design elements of the O11-series such as a contrast between piano-black tempered glass and brushed aluminium for its two compartments, plenty of room for a serious DIY liquid-cooling setup, With a Mini-ITX motherboard in place, there's room for up to three 280 mm x 140 mm radiators; up to one 280 mm x 140 mm (or smaller) and one 240 mm x 120 mm radiator when using Micro-ATX. Available from May 2020, the O11D Mini is expected to be priced under $100. But wait, there's more: this case features a replaceable rear-panel, which lets you install even ATX motherboards.

During our visit with Silverstone, we had the opportunity to check out their new case lineup which consists of numerous new designs including an all-new Raven prototype. Keeping the unique internal layout established by the previous generations alive, the new Raven has the motherboard I/O pointed towards the top with two 180 mm air penetrator fans located at the bottom operating as intakes with a single 120 mm fan at the top as an exhaust. The design makes use of the simple concept that heat rises to great effect. Drive space is limited to a single 3.5" or 2x 2.5" drives, meaning as of now builders eyeing this new design will want to stock up on M.2 drives. While we don't have official specifications in regards to radiator support, we can say there is plenty of room to set up a water cooling loop multiple mounting points provided near the back and sides of the chassis.

Moving on the side panels are both tempered glass which gives the case a uniform look, however, thanks to that, you can forget about hiding your wire mess behind a solid back panel. Instead, the Raven Prototype will be better suited for those who meticulously route their cables keeping things exceptionally neat and tidy. As for the front panel I/O, it is located on the top left above the side panel and consists of 2x USB 3.0 ports and the usual microphone and headphone jacks. In general, the angular design of the previous Raven cases remains but has been toned down just a bit, giving this latest iteration a sleeker, stealthier appearance.

Reddit user 'dustinbrooks' has posted a photo of a prototype graphics card design that is clearly made by NVIDIA and "tested by a buddy of his that works for a company that tests NVIDIA boards". Dustin asked the community what he was looking at, which of course got tech enthusiasts interested.

The card is clearly made by NVIDIA as indicated by the markings near the PCI-Express x16 slot connector. What's also visible is three PCI-Express 8-pin power inputs and a huge VRM setup with four fans. Unfortunately the GPU in the center of the board is missing, but it should be GV102, the successor to GP102, since GDDR6 support is needed. The twelve GDDR6 memory chips located around the GPU's solder balls are marked as D9WCW, which decodes to MT61K256M32JE-14:A. These chips are Micron-made 8 Gbit GDDR6, specified for 14 Gb/s data rate, operating at 1.35 V. With twelve chips, this board has a 384-bit memory bus and 12 GB VRAM. The memory bandwidth at 14 Gbps data rate is a staggering 672 GB/s, which conclusively beats the 484 GB/s that Vega 64 and GTX 1080 Ti offer.

Phanteks showed off its yet to be named upcoming lineup of fan prototypes with an enhanced "multi-faceted" blade design. These blades, made of fiberglass, work to minimize the bulk of the noise caused by the whiplash. Inspired by vortex-dampening wingtips of modern airplanes, the blades are curved perpendicular toward the edges, and maintain a 0.7 mm gap from the bore of the frame. The fans feature a "6-phase motor," although the company didn't mention what kind of bearing they use. The edges of the frame (near the mounts) feature vibration dampening silicone cladding. The motors feature daisy-chaining cables, so you can chain up to three fans and mount them onto a radiator with minimal clutter. The fans come in 120 mm and 140 mm, each with two thickness-based variants - 25 mm thick, and 30 mm thick. Phanteks doesn't have a concrete launch timeline other than "later this year."

Intel is making progress in its development of a new discrete GPU architecture, after its failed attempt with "Larrabee" that ended up as an HPC accelerator; and ancient attempts such as the i740. This comes in the wake of the company's high-profile hiring of Raja Koduri, AMD's former Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) head. The company unveiled slides pointing to the direction in which its GPU development is headed, at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. That direction is essentially scaling up its existing iGPU architecture, and bolstering it with mechanisms to sustain high clock speeds better.

The company's first 14 nm dGPU prototype, shown as a test-chip at the ISSCC, is a 2-chip solution. The first chip contains two key components, the GPU itself, and a system agent; and the second chip is an FPGA that interfaces with the system bus. The GPU component, as it stands now, is based on Intel's Gen 9 architecture, and features a three execution unit (EU) clusters. Don't derive numbers from this yet, as Intel is only trying to demonstrate a proof of concept. The three clusters are wired to a sophisticated power/clock management mechanism that efficiently manages power and clock-speed of each individual EU. There's also a double-clock mechanism that doubles clock speeds (of the boost state) beyond what today's Gen 9 EUs can handle on Intel iGPUs. Once a suitable level of energy efficiency is achieved, Intel will use newer generations of EUs, and scale up EU counts taking advantage of newer fab processes, to develop bigger discrete GPUs.More slides follow.

Varjo ("shadow" in Finnish, pronounced "Var-yo") Technologies today brought unprecedented levels of Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality (VR/XR) realism a step closer for professional markets through its new development partner program. The company's first public technology demonstration occurred at one of the world's leading startup events - Slush. Global brands including 20th Century Fox, Airbus, Audi, BMW, Technicolor and Volkswagen will now be collaborating with Varjo to optimize the company's human-eye resolution VR/XR Bionic Display for their respective business sectors. The company's recent $8.2m Series A round, led by EQT Ventures (with new, additional funding of $6.7m from Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for innovation) has enabled Varjo to begin the early access program for its partners as well as ramp up R&D capabilities.

Varjo will start shipping Alpha Prototypes to its first technology partners before the end of the year. Beta Prototypes will begin shipping to existing and new partners in the design, engineering, simulation and entertainment sectors during Q1 2018, allowing the next wave of VR/XR innovators to join the 'Resolution Revolution'. The partners will provide feedback on product experience, features and usability, and combine their industry insights and expertise with Varjo's product development.

Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company (NTT) is opening up its prototype quantum computing system for public use over the internet, giving users around the world access to one of the most elusive pieces of tech that this world has yet seem. Maybe we haven't seen it, though; observation does change the outcome, and these quantum physics really are as finicky as they come. Starting Nov. 27, Japan joins China and the U.S. in the race to develop the world's most advanced computers - and Japan has chosen the free, quantum-democratizing approach.

The NTT quantum computing solution is a state-sponsored research project, developed in conjunction with the National Institute of Informatics, Osaka university, and other partners. It has taken a different technical approach from other quantum computing developers, in that this particular computing system is exploiting the properties of light. Widely (un)known as Linear Optics Quantum Computation (LOQC), this particular approach foregoes qubits (which are extremely difficult to keep from decohering, and usually require very exotic cooling techniques to increase the qubits' stability. LOQC abandons qubits and uses photons to represent them as information carriers through linear optical elements (such as beam splitters, phase shifters, and mirrors). This allows the machine to process quantum information, using photon detectors and quantum memories to detect and store quantum information.

Trying to keep our community entertained and distracted from the growing pains and expectations of waiting for the death of AMD's imposed NDAs on Vega reviews is one of our missions. As such, while we know what you want are actual performance numbers, price/performance charts, and an in-depth, independent review, you'll not find such answers in this post. You will find, however, some interesting tidbits on AMD RX Vega designs. In this case, a triple-fan cooling solution for AMD's RX Vega 56 (the smaller Vega).

Noctua showed off protoypes of variants of its various high-end CPU coolers, which come with support for Intel's Core X family socket LGA2066 processors. While LGA2066 has a higher pin-count, it has the same exact CPU cooler mount-hole spacing as LGA2011(v3), and as such, any LGA2011-compatible cooler should run on LGA2066. All Core i7 LGA2011(v3) chips are either 140W or below. Noctua on its part, is confident that that all its LGA2011(v3)-compatible coolers run on LGA2066 by default, and is willing to giveaway LGA2066-supporting SecuFirm 2 retention modules for free, for users of older Noctua heatsinks which can handle such high thermal loads.

The next in the long line of prototype cases at the SilverStone booth is the latest iteration of the SFF prodigy by the company, the Raven Z RVZ04. Its design is bolder than the current Raven Z, and encloses a micro-STX form-factor motherboard. This is a tiny 1U form-factor with DIY boards far a few between, but SilverStone's creation had a Core "Kaby Lake" quad-core processor, and a discrete graphics card. It doesn't have any storage areas of its own, and relies on any M.2 or mSATA slots on the motherboard. The case measures 238 mm x 81 mm x 199 mm (WxHxD), or about the size of a game console.

SilverStone also showed off a prototype of its second-generation Primera series "stylish" ATX mid-tower cases. The case features an all-steel construction, including its front door. The front is characterized by vertical slits and a silvery finish. The side is dominated by a black-tinted tempered glass panel. The case measures 220 mm x 490 mm x 473 mm (WxHxD). Under the hood, you get three 3.5-inch drive bays (which convert to 2.5-inch), three 2.5-inch mounts, and five 140 mm fan mounts, with an included 140 mm fan. A curious-looking IR remote was placed near this case with RGB LED (color/brightness), system power, and fan-speed controls. We're not sure if it's included with the case.

Here are some of the first pictures of SilverStone's Redline RL07 case prototypes. These stylish ATX mid-towers come in black with a dash of red, and white with a dash of blue, and are characterized by the front vertical dividing crease with LED inserts. The case is made almost entirely of SECC steel (including the front), while its side panel is made of tempered glass. The case measures 230 mm x 488 mm x 482 mm (WxHxD).

Under the hood, the SilverStone RL07 features three 3.5-inch HDD bays (which each convert to 2.5-inch), and three 2.5-inch mounts. Cooling system is bolstered by an all-140 mm mount layout. The case features a total of five 140 mm fan mounts, a 140 mm fan comes included with it. Front panel connectivity includes two each of USB 3.1/3.0 type-A, and USB 2.0/1.1 ports, and HDA jacks.

Here are some of the first pictures of Lian Li PC-V3000, the company's upcoming flagship chassis. Characterized by Lian Li's favorite material, aluminium, the case features the company's signature design language, with dark, brushed-aluminium exteriors, and silvery aluminium interiors. The company released pictures of a prototype case, with a final release out later this year. Keeping up with the times (i.e. horizontal partition), the PC-V3000 features a vast twin-compartment layout, only that the motherboard layout is inverted (opens out at the right side, with the motherboard being positioned BTX-style).

The Lian Li PC-V3000 has room for ATX and E-ATX motherboards, with room for graphics cards with lengths in the neighborhood of 40 cm, and coolers with heights around 20 cm. The bottom compartment is further partitioned vertically, with the left-side compartment housing the PSU bay and a 3x 3.5-inch drive-cage; while the right-side compartment either serves up room for your liquid cooling gear (such as a 420 mm x 140 mm radiator), or additional 2.5-inch drives. The motherboard tray has three drive mounts on its reverse side. Cooling includes 3x 140 mm side intake, 120 mm rear exhaust, and 3x 120 mm top exhausts.

Noctua unveiled a prototype fin-stack heatsink for very large CPU socket types, such as Intel Socket P (LGA3647) and AMD SP3, powering chips such as Intel Xeon Phi "Knights Landing," and upcoming AMD Opteron SP3 32-core SoCs. There will be 3U and 4U versions of this heatsink, supporting NF-A9 (92 mm) and NF-F12 (120 mm) fans. The heatsink is just a very large aluminium fin-stack, to which heat drawn from the base is fed by seven 8 mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes.

Noctua unveiled a prototype slim 120 mm fan. The fan is just 15 mm thick (25 mm is the most common thickness for 120 mm fans). The fan features a metal reinforced hub, to make sure the hub and its four support structures don't disfigure over time. The motor features double ball bearing. The frame features a design that minimizes noise from the whiplash of the impeller. The frame further features rubber padding along the mount holes, to dampen vibration. Noctua did not put out fan-speed and air-flow numbers for this fan.

This week on TechPowerUp News: Jim Keller joins Tesla Motors as head of the team working on its self-driving tech; and prototype desktops with dual-GPU "Fiji" graphics cards.

At the Virtual Reality Los Angeles (VRLA) event, AMD along with a few gaming PC manufacturers demonstrated their desktop builds featuring the company's upcoming dual-GPU graphics card driven by a pair of "Fiji" GPUs. Among the desktops demoed include a prototype Falcon Northwest Tiki compact gaming desktop with a dual-Fiji graphics card, and HTC Vive HMD. Falcon Northwest commented that the dual-GPU "Fiji" graphics card is small enough to squeeze into its 4-inch thick Tiki, indicating that the card will be super-compact. AMD is expected to launch the dual-GPU "Fiji" graphics card some time in Q2 2016.

AMD reportedly finished testing some of its first "Zen" micro-architecture CPU prototypes, and concluded that they "meet all expectations," with "no significant bottlenecks found" in its design. This should mean that AMD's "Zen" chips should be as competitive with Intel chips as it set them out to be. The company is planning to launch its first client CPUs based on the "Zen" micro-architecture in 2016, based on its swanky new AM4 socket, with DDR4 memory and integrated PCIe (a la APUs). Zen sees AMD revert to the large, monolithic core design, from its "Bulldozer" multi-core module design with a near doubling of number-crunching machinery per-core, compared to its preceding architecture.

Qualcomm, which holds a ton of ARM SoC patents, and put them to good use with its Snapdragon line of SoCs for smartphones, tablets, and convertible notebooks, is foraying into enterprise computing market. The company is ready with its first prototype of a 24-core high-performance CPU based on the 64-bit ARM machine architecture. ARM-based processors are picking up momentum in the server and micro-server markets owning to their low cost, low cooling requirements, and high energy-efficiency; and Qualcomm wants a slice of that pie. Most enterprise Linux and FreeBSD distributors have versions of their server operating systems for the 64-bit ARM architecture, as do most popular server software providers.

The prototype 24-core CPU is socketed, and ships in a large land-grid array (LGA) package, much like Intel's Xeon chips. The first production chips will have a lot more than 24 CPU cores, said Qualcomm senior vice president Anand Chandrasekhar. As a proof of concept, Qualcomm assembled three server blades using these chips, which were running Linux with a KVM hypervisor, streaming HD video to a PC using a LAMP stack (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) built with OpenStack. Qualcomm's target consumers are big Internet companies like Google and Facebook, which purchase hundreds of thousands of CPUs each year to cope with growing user- and content-traffic.

Crono Labs is a new crowd-funded startup that's on a mission to turn monitors with VESA mounts into AIO-looking, gaming monstrosities. Their contraption is a lightweight micro-ATX chassis that mounts on to the back of your monitor over standard VESA mounts, and houses a micro-ATX or mini-ITX motherboard, a standard ATX PSU (with reasonable length restrictions), two each of 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive bays, and a 2-slot graphics card bay that's arranged along the plane of the motherboard, rather than perpendicular to it, using a PCIe riser. It has room for graphics cards as long as 10.5 inches (26.67 cm).

It comes with its own sturdy stand, so you needn't worry about a >10 lbs object (the case and your build) weighing in on your monitor's frail stand. The case is airy along its sides and is topped off with a groovy brushed-aluminium panel. Then there are nifty bits like the handle. Crono Labs is seeking as little as $2,000 to get build prototypes, on its Indiegogo campaign, it's already halfway through that goal, but your coins could help. Check them out here.