TechPowerUP NEWS

[NextPowerUP]

The Helldivers universe is one of noble soldiers, heroic deeds, and heartfelt, unflinching patriotism in the face of giant acid-spewing bug monsters. Stephen Flowers, Game Writer, Arrowhead Game Studios: "I personally love writing for a game with opportunities for comedy, and that doesn't take itself too seriously. I hope I can find a game like that soon…" If you want to catch up with the story of Super Earth and her valiant defenders before Helldivers 2 launches tomorrow (on February 8), read on. Plus, we share the first news that the story will continue in post-launch Helldivers 2 updates.

Since Helldivers 1…
Helldivers 2 takes place a century after the events of the first game, with Super Earth having emerged victorious against its adversaries - the deadly, bug-like Terminids, the grotesque Cyborgs and the inscrutable Illuminates. With its foes vanquished and the Galactic War won, an era of peace and prosperity ensued. The Helldivers, Super Earth's elite task force, were dismissed. The same faster-than-light travel technology, heroically liberated from the Illuminates, that gave Super Earth access to the galaxy, has since been used to colonize it. This period has come to be known as The Great Democratization. FTL technology is reliant on a steady supply of the precious substance E-710 which, luckily, can be found in decomposing Terminid bodies. So naturally, Super Earth has been farming Terminids on an industrial scale.
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[NextPowerUP]

DigiTimes Asia has reached out to insiders at fabrication toolmakers in an effort to delve deeper into claims made by industry analysts at the start of 2024—both SemiAnalysis and China Renaissance have proposed that TSMC is unlikely to adopt High-NA EUV production techniques within a five year period. The latest news article explores a non-upgrade approach for the next couple of years: "TSMC has not placed orders for high-numerical aperture (High-NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tools and is unlikely to use the technology in 2 nm and 1.4 nm (A14) process manufacturing." Intel Foundry Services (IFS) will be one of the first semiconductor manufacturers to go online with ASML's latest and greatest machinery, although no firm timeframes have been confirmed. Team Blue's Taiwanese rival (and occasional business partner) is seemingly happy with its existing infrastructure, but industry watchdogs propose that cost considerations are key factors behind TSMC's cautious planning for the next decade.

The DigiTimes insider sources believe that TSMC will not budge until at least 2029, possibly coinciding with a 1 nm production node—analysts at China Renaissance reckon that High-NA EUV machines could be delivered in the future when facilities are readied for an "A10" codenamed process. TSMC published a very ambitious "transistor count" product timeline in early January (see below)—the first "1 nm" products are supposedly targeted for a 2030 rollout, but this schedule could change due to unforeseen circumstances. Intel is expected to "phase in" its fanciest ASML gear collection once the 18A process becomes old hat—Tom's Hardware thinks that 2026 - 2027 is a feasible timeframe.

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[NextPowerUP]

Chad Pralle, Principle Technical Program Manager at Microsoft's Windows AI NPU division has introduced the DirectML 1.13.1 and ONNX Runtime 1.17 APIs—this appears to be a collaborative effort—Samsung was roped in to some degree, according to Microsoft's announcement and a recent Team Blue blog entry. Pralle and his team are suitably proud of this joint effort that involved open source models: "we are excited to announce developer preview support for NPU acceleration in DirectML, the machine learning platform API for Windows. This developer preview enables support for a subset of models on new Windows 11 devices with Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel AI boost."

Further on in Microsoft's introductory piece, Samsung Electronics is announced as a key launch partner—Hwang-Yoon Shim, VP and Head of New Computing H/W R&D Group stated that: "NPUs are emerging as a critical resource for broadly delivering efficient machine learning experiences to users, and Windows DirectML is one of the most efficient ways for Samsung's developers to make those experiences for Windows." Microsoft notes that NPU support in DirectML is still "a work in progress," but Pralle and his colleagues are eager to receive user feedback from the testing community. It is currently "only compatible with a subset of machine learning models, some models may not run at all or may have high latency or low accuracy." They hope to implement improvements in the near future. The release is limited to modern Team Blue hardware, so NPU-onboard AMD devices are excluded at this point in time, naturally.

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[NextPowerUP]

AMD FSR 3 comes to Starfield in our latest Steam Beta. Those of you playing on Steam can opt into the Beta to see the improvements brought to the game before this update becomes available to all our PC Starfield players. This new feature allows for a combination of upscaling as well as advanced frame generation, boosting your framerate for better performance. While AMD's FSR 3 works for a wide range of video cards, you will want to verify that your system supports it so that you get the best experience. It is also recommended to use FSR 3 with VSync ON and with a VRR monitor for the best experience.

For those participating, you can enable FSR 3 by heading to Display Settings and accessing the Upscaling options. From there you will be able to cycle through the option best suited for your experience. As with any update, we look forward to reading your feedback and seeing you share your experiences. Thank you for your support and see you in Starfield!

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[NextPowerUP]

An emergency update is being pushed for Surveillance Center in response to a severe vulnerability detected in the software that could potentially allow an attacker to gain control elevated privileges to execute code on ADM to install malware. This update fixes this underlying vulnerability. ASUSTOR strongly urges all users of Surveillance Center for ADM to install the latest version as soon as possible to protect themselves and to minimize the risk of malware infection. ASUSTOR also recommends taking additional security measures to guard against the potential harms of malware in accordance with previously announced protective measures.

ASUSTOR strongly recommends taking the following actions to ensure your data is secure:

• Change your password.
• Use a strong password.
• Change default HTTP and HTTPS ports. Default ports are 8000 and 8001 respectively.
• Turn off Terminal/SSH and SFTP services and other services you do not use.
• Make regular backups and ensure backups are up to date.
• Turn on and update snapshots if available.
• Enable the AbuseIPDB risk detection greylist.

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[NextPowerUP]

Huawei's Ascend 910B AI GPU is reportedly in high demand in China—we last learned that NVIDIA's latest US sanction-busting H20 "Hopper" model is lined up as a main competitor, allegedly in terms of both pricing and performance. A recent Reuters report proposes that Huawei is reacting to native enterprise market trends by shifting its production priorities—in favor of Ascend product ranges, while demoting their Kirin smartphone chipset family. Generative AI industry experts believe that the likes of Alibaba and Tencent have rejected Team Green's latest batch of re-jigged AI chips (H20, L20 and L2)—tastes have gradually shifted to locally developed alternatives.

Huawei leadership is seemingly keen to seize these growth opportunities—their Ascend 910B is supposedly ideal for workloads "that require low-to-mind inferencing power." Reuters has spoken to three anonymous sources—all with insider knowledge of goings-on at a single facility that manufacturers Ascend AI chips and the Kirin smartphone SoCs. Two of the leakers claim that this unnamed fabrication location is facing many "production quality" challenges, namely output being "hamstrung by a low yield rate." The report claims that Huawei has pivoted by deprioritizing Kirin 9000S (7 nm) production, thus creating a knock-on effect for its premium Mate 60 smartphone range.

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[NextPowerUP]

Skull and Bones, launching on February 16, will transport players to the Indian Ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy, where they'll battle ships in fast-paced naval combat, plunder ports, and take on contracts to grow their Infamy and eventually rise to the top as a pirate kingpin. It's a co-op open world pirate action RPG, where players can do everything from hunting crocodiles and harvesting jute fiber to battling ghost ships and sea monsters. In a multiplayer game of this size and scope, it's especially important to make sure that it can be experienced by as many players as possible. To find out more about Skull and Bones' accessibility, we spoke with Project Manager Samuel Soh at Ubisoft Singapore and Production Manager Yurii Martynchyk at Ubisoft Kyiv.

Skull and Bones is a huge PvE open world with PvP activities and lots to do. What kinds of considerations go into ensuring that it's accessible to a broad spectrum of players? Has it presented any specific challenges?
Yurii Martynchyk: In addition to "classic" accessibility features - remapping, colorblind options, subtitles, etc. - Skull and Bones also includes gameplay-related accessibility options, like the ability to disable camera shakes when you're sailing, and to automate the harvesting minigames and QTE sequences. In my opinion, it is very important to keep an eye on possible balancing issues when introducing accessibility features, and our team is working closely with colleagues from Singapore to ensure an equitable playing field for all players.
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[NextPowerUP]

EK, the premium liquid cooling solutions manufacturer, is launching a wide range of EK-Loop OmniLink cables to support its fans, pumps, D-RGB, and 12 V and 5 V power distribution connections. EK's OmniLink solutions allow daisy chaining of multiple fans, reducing cable clutter and greatly easing cable management. These cables perfectly complement EK-Loop FPT and EK-Quantum Impulse fans and all products with standard D-RGB and 4-pin fan connectors. This product series contains splitters, extenders, and cables with specific requirements that act as replacements for PSU cables.

EK-Loop OmniLink 6-Pin Power (Dual PWM) cable is the starting point of the OmniLink cable harness with the necessary 6-Pin power, D-RGB, and dual 4-Pin PWM connectors. The OmniLink cable allows for easy transmission and distribution of +12V and +5V Power, PWM, TACHO, and D-RGB signals. The cable features a black ribbon style for easy build integration and cable management.
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[NextPowerUP]

Zephyr and VK Valkyrie have collaborated on a very high-end custom GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card model, as revealed in a teaser video posted to the former's Bilibili account. VK Valkyrie is a well regarded DIY brand in the Chinese PC gaming market, while Zephyr is a relatively young manufacturer—their unusual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Compact ITX design with a pink PCB was introduced last summer. TPU's June 2023 news report is featured prominently within their website's news section—greatly appreciated! The Zephyr x VK Valkyrie GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER will be a limited edition release—the two partners have been working together since last August, but a specific launch date and pricing were not revealed in Zephyr's teaser trailer.

Zephyr has, so far, only released air-cooled custom graphics cards—their upcoming VK Valkyrie collaborative model will mark a debut entry into liquid cooled territory. Their chunky 3-slot design consists of a substantial heatsink covered by an RGB-adorned silver shroud and metallic backplate, with an AiO liquid cooling solution. A 280 mm radiator (with 2 x 140 mm fans) is hooked up to the card via twin white braided tubes. A rear-firing 12VHPWR connector provides an elegant means of semi-concealing your 90-degree power cable, if need be. The promotional video includes benchmark results generated by 3DMARK Speed Way, Time Spy Extreme, and Fire Strike Ultra suites (check the relevant screenshot below). Zephyr claims that their limited edition GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER model was cool enough to not exceed 52 degrees celcius during a heavy Furmark session. The company recommends that interested parties should check its social media accounts for further announcements. The Zephyr x VK Valkyrie GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER could arrive at some point after the Chinese Spring Celebration.

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[NextPowerUP]

As we enter the year of the dragon according to the Chinese zodiac, we have a week full of new game releases to look forward to, although none of them are unfortunately dragon themed. This week's AAA release has a more caribbean theme and has been a long time coming. As for the remaining releases, we're looking at a dash of phobia, banishment, some insight, dwarves, colonisation and a dark town.

Skull & Bones / This week's AAA release / Friday 16 February
Enter the perilous world of Skull and Bones, a co-op pirate open world action RPG experience, to become the most infamous pirate kingpin. Engage in thrilling naval battles, craft a variety of unique ships, forge unlikely alliances as you overcome the odds, and bring mayhem on the seas. Be part of an immersive world that introduces new challenges and features every season
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[NextPowerUP]

NVIDIA is reportedly working to set up a new business unit focused on designing semi-custom chips for some of its largest data-center customers, Reuters reports. NVIDIA dominates the AI HPC processor market, although even its biggest customers are having to shop from its general lineup of A100 series and H100 series HPC processors. There are reports of some of these customers venturing out of the NVIDIA fold, wanting to develop their own AI processor designs. It is to cater to exactly this segment that NVIDIA is setting up the new unit.

A semi-custom chip isn't just a bespoke chip designed to a customer's specifications. It is co-developed by NVIDIA and its customer, using mainly NVIDIA IP blocks, but also integrating some third-party IP blocks the customer may want; and more importantly, approach semiconductor fabrication companies such as TSMC, Samsung, or Intel Foundry Services as separate entities from NVIDIA for their wafer allocation. For example, a company like Google may have a certain amount of wafer pre-allocation with TSMC (eg: for its Tensor SoCs powering the Pixel smartphones), which it may want to tap into for a semi-custom AI HPC processor for its cloud business. NVIDIA assesses a $30 billion TAM for this specific business unit—that's all its current customers wanting to pursue their own AI processor projects, who will now be motivated to stick to NVIDIA.

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[NextPowerUP]

AMD FSR 3 Is Coming To The Thaumaturge—a Gripping and Dark RPG. The Thaumaturge is a story-driven RPG with morally ambiguous choices, taking place in the culturally diverse world of early 20th century Warsaw. In this world, Salutors exist: esoteric beings that only Thaumaturges can truly perceive and use for their needs. The Thaumaturge launches February 20th, with AMD FSR 3. Watch the brand new story trailer below.

When it launches later this month, The Thaumaturge will feature AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3. FSR 3 transforms gaming experiences with massive and responsive framerates in supported games using a combination of temporal upscaling technology, advanced frame generation, and built-in latency reduction technology.
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[NextPowerUP]

URCDKeys presents the February Super Sale—get genuine software at 30% discounts to the store's original prices, which are already some of the lowest in the industry. Grab Genuine Windows 11 Pro at just $20. Office 2021 Professional Plus can be had at just $86. Check out even bigger discounts on other editions of Windows, Office, and their combos, to save big. The developers among you might want to grab Genuine Visual Studio and SQL Server at special prices!

Please use the coupon code TPUP at checkout to avail the prices you see here.

Buy Windows 10 Pro at $14 | Buy Windows 11 Pro at $20 | Buy Windows 10 Home at $13 | Buy Windows 11 Home at $24 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 2-PC at $26.34 | Buy Office 2016 Professional Plus at $26 | Buy Office 2019 Professional Plus at $47 | Buy Office 2021 Professional Plus at $86 | Buy Office 2019 Home and Student at $49 | Buy Office 2019 Home and Business for Mac at $78

Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2016 Professional Plus at $40 | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2019 Professional Plus at $58

Buy Visual Studio 2022 Enterprise at $95 | Buy SQL Server 2019 Standard 2-core at $87 | Buy SQL Server 2019 Standard 16-core at $158

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[NextPowerUP]

As many of you know, two weeks ago, there were a series of changes made to the Overwatch team, as well as other teams across Blizzard. Writing a public blog is difficult in the wake of these events. I want to express gratitude for the absolutely amazing people who worked on our game that are no longer on our team. I want the community to feel informed, and I want to convey our excitement about what is to come in Season 9. To be honest, it's a lot to balance—but one of the things we've been most proud of is how we've kept lines of communication open between the team and our community, and we intend to continue that.

In that spirit, yesterday, we shared the exciting changes you are going to experience with Competitive starting in Season 9. I'd like to give a bit more insight into why we are making these changes. In our previous Director's Take, we talked about improving the game's core PvP experience. There are different ways that we look at improving the game, but one of the biggest is listening to your feedback. Season 9 starts in less than a week, and the two biggest and best changes coming to the season and a lot of it is driven by feedback from you - our players along with our team's vision to make the game more fun and challenging for everyone.
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[NextPowerUP]

The PC version of Helldivers 2 has shot up the Steam charts since yesterday's launch (also available on PlayStation 5)—according to tracking sites, peak player population sits at 151,927. Games industry watchdogs believe that this is Sony PlayStation's most successful launch title on PC platforms—24-hour peak telemetry has Helldivers 2 attracting 81,840 players versus God of War's 68,000 (January 14, 2022). An abundance of technical issues has prompted the submission of negative feedback—around 12,200 reviews have been left on the game's Steam Profile. Its current status is "Mostly Positive," but launch evening impressions were "Mixed" following 5300 review submissions. Eurogamer has summarized the problematic period: "Chief among criticisms are complaints about persistent crashes, while others have singled out server and matchmaking issues. Then there's ire directed towards PC optimization, and its kernel-level GameGuard anti-cheat software, which some feel is cause for concern, as well as complaints around Helldivers 2's monetization—which includes a battle pass and premium currency in-game shop, despite its £34.99/$39.99 price tag."

The development team at Arrowhead Game Studios implemented day-of-launch matchmaking fixes and addressed the most common crash problems. Helldivers 2 Game Director, Mikael Eriksson, stated that a patch was in the making: "If it's a success, we'll trigger a hotfix and get it out to the Steam community first, then roll it out to PS5 players as quickly as we can. Thank you—seriously—for your patience. We really want you all to have a blast playing this game. Bear with us, we're almost there." Arrowhead have followed up on their promise(s) today with another set of fixes pushed out to PC gamer population—Eriksson shared some good second day news: "We've uploaded a patch to Steam that should improve matchmaking for PC. The patch also includes some other crash fixes we've identified. We know there's more to solve, and we're working our way through it. Nevertheless, we hope this rapid patch goes a long way to making your experience better. Now go smash some bugs (and bots)!"
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