TechPowerUP NEWS

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Konstantin Seurer, a Mesa developer, has spent the past couple of months working on CPU-based Vulkan ray tracing—naturally, some folks will express scepticism about this project's practicality. Seurer has already set expectations with a brief message: "don't ask about performance." His GitLab merge request page attracted Michael Larabel's attention—the Phoronix founder and principal author was suitably impressed with Seurer's coding wizardry. He: "managed to implement support for VK_KHR_acceleration_structure, VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations, and VK_KHR_ray_query for Lavapipe. This Lavapipe Vulkan ray tracing support is based in part on porting code from the emulated ray tracing worked on for RADV with older Radeon GPUs." A lone screenshot provided evidence of Quake II running at 1 FPS with Vulkan ray tracing enabled—this "atrocious" performance was achieved thanks to a Mesa Lavapipe driver "implementing the Vulkan API for CPU-based execution."

VideoCardz has highlighted an older example of CPU-based rendering techniques: "this is not the first time we heard about ray tracing on the CPU in Quake. In 2008, Intel demonstrated Enemy Territory: Quake Wars running at 720p resolution at 14 to 29 FPS on 16 core and 20-35 FPS at 24 core CPUs (quad-socket). The basic implementation of ray tracing in 2008 is not comparable to complex ray tracing techniques designed for GPUs, thus the performance on modern system is actually much lower. Beyond that, that game was specifically designed for the Intel architecture and used a specific API to achieve that. Sadly, the original ET demo is no longer available, it would be interesting to see how it performs today." CPU-based Vulkan ray tracing is expected to hit public distribution channels with the rollout of Mesa 24.1. Several members of the Phoronix community reckon that modern AMD Threadripper PRO processors have the potential to post double-digit in-game frame rates.

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As part of our effort to make Battle.net more welcoming to more players, we routinely review which currencies we support and what new ones we should add. This can make submitting payments less difficult and may help reduce or eliminate fees you pay to your card issuer for foreign currency transactions. Subscriptions for Argentinian players will be canceled and not automatically renewed to avoid enrolling players into subscriptions that may see a price increase in Argentina after this currency update.

The new currencies we're rolling out include: United Arab Emirates dirham (AED), Colombian peso (COP), Costa Rican colon (CRC), Indonesian rupiah (IDR), Israeli new shekel (ILS), Malaysian ringgit (MYR), Peruvian sol (PEN), Qatari riyal (QAR), Serbian dinar (RSD), Saudi riyal (SAR), Singapore dollar (SGD), Thai baht (THB), and Uruguayan peso (UYU). We've put together a brief FAQ to provide you with more information on the coming changes.
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The US government is reported to be preparing a very healthy $3.5 billion investment in Intel Corporation—a mid-week published Bloomberg article proposes that the White House has authored a new "fast-moving spending bill." Congressional aides believe that Team Blue—upon official approval/signing off of funds—will be tasked with the production of advanced semiconductors for military and intelligence programs. Bloomberg posits that the resources will be sourced from a "Secure Enclave" project, seemingly linking to a wider tranche of funds within the US government's CHIPS and Science Act. The agreement/contract is expected to run over a period of three years. According to Bloomberg: "the Senate is expected to pass the legislation by a Saturday (March 9) deadline."

Reports from last November suggested that Intel leadership and US government representatives had engaged in negotiations regarding funds for military and intelligence chip applications—the construction costs for new manufacturing facilities were estimated to be in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. A Commerce Department statement was submitted to Bloomberg, but they only commented on an overall $10 billion budget: "We are still reviewing the effect of the appropriations text on the program...(we look) forward to continuing to work with Congress on implementing the Chips and Science Act in a manner the promotes our economic and national security." TSMC, Micron and Samsung are expected to receive "multi-billion-dollar awards" in the near future—these multinational corporations will assist in a bolstering of North American chip manufacturing capabilities.

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MSI's official North American online store has started to sell their brand-new Claw A1M handheld portable gaming PC—earlier in the week media outlets spotted a premature Newegg store listing, perhaps foreshadowing a widespread US launch on March 8 (today). MSI appears to be staggering the Claw's rollout across the global markets—late last month, German customers were treated to "early" pre-order access thanks to de-store.msi.com listing the basic model (Handheld CLAW A1M-036), with units declared as being "in stock." US customers are similarly limited to the entry level "052US" SKU—the region's MSI store official launch day price sits at $699.00. This model sports an Intel Core 5 135H "Meteor Lake" processor, and 512 GB of internal storage.

Newegg has relisted the three MSI Claw A1M variants, albeit with a revised release date of March 15—interested parties can pre-order the Core Ultra 7 + 1 TB SSD version for $799, or MSI's middle-of-the-pack Core Ultra 7 + 512 GB model for $749. Newegg's product page for the basic Core Ultra 5 + 512 GB SSD configuration bears the same $699 price tag as seen on MSI's official store listing. We are not entirely sure whether Western embargoes have been lifted to coincide with today's North American launch—a trickle out of English language evaluations could occur next week. Chinese review outlets have been experimenting with press samples since mid-February.

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ZALMAN today introduced the P30 Air line of Micro-ATX mini-tower cases with a design focus on high airflow. The case comes in two color variants—black and white. Its design is characterized by panel perforations along not just the entire front-panel, but also the sides of the bottom half. The left side-panel only covers the upper compartment, the bottom compartment opens from the right side-panel that covers both compartments. ZALMAN included three ARGB-illuminated fans with this case, the front mesh intake has two pre-installed 140 mm spinners, while the rear exhaust is handled by a 140 mm fan. This presence of 140 mm rear exhaust also means that the motherboard tray has a high amount of clearance for tall graphics cards and CPU coolers.

A star attraction with the ZALMAN P30 Air is its motherboard tray, which has strategically located cutouts for motherboards with reverse-facing connectors, such as the ASUS BTF series, and MSI Project Zero series. The motherboard tray has room for graphics cards up to 39.2 cm in length, and CPU coolers up to 181 mm in height. The bottom compartment has a single 3.5-inch drive tray, with an additional 2.5-inch mount on top. There are two additional 2.5-inch mounts along the motherboard tray. Besides the two 140 mm front intakes and 120 mm rear exhaust, the case features three 120 mm top exhausts, along which you can mount a 360 mm radiator. Due to its design, a radiator cannot be mounted along the front panel. Measuring 235 mm x 452 mm x 420 mm (WxDxH), the case dry weighs 7.6 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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TerraMaster today rolled out the D4-320, a 4-bay USB DAS enclosure. This is essentially a 4-bay sibling of the D2-320 enclosure that the company released in January. The enclosure features four 3.5-inch caddies with SATA 6 Gbps backplanes, and hotplugging capability. These are connected to a SATA AHCI controller, with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 upstream link that has 10 Gbps bandwidth, and support for UASP (USB-attached SCSI). A type-C cable is included with the DAS. The drive cage is cooled by a 120 mm fan that draws air through the caddies, and exhausts from a vent at the back. TerraMaster says that it put a design focus on optimizing this fan, and reducing the noise and vibration of the device with a full-house. It's important to note here, that the DAS has no RAID function, so each of the four disks and their volumes are individually mounted by the host. There are link/activity LEDs for each drive. TerraMaster includes a first-party data backup software. Available now, the TerraMaster D4-320 is priced at $190.

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Sabrent today introduced the NT-25GA, a portable 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet adapter featuring a USB type-C connector. The adapter comes in a premium-looking aluminium body. On its business end is a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port with separate link/activity LEDs; on the other is a short cable with a USB type-C connection. The Ethernet port supports Cat5E cables with cable lengths of up to 100 meters. The adapter is tested by Sabrent to work with not just Windows and Linux PCs, but also macOS, MacBooks from after 2018, and iPad Pro after 2018. As a network adapter, the Sabrent NT-25GA also supports WoL and UEFI boot functions thanks to its PXE driver. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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The sub-$400 desktop processor segment is heating up, with the recent arrival of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12-core/24-thread processor in this segment, at $389. The 7900X3D boasts of 3D V-cache technology, and is tested to offer gaming performance comparable to the Core i9-13900K. Did you know which other chip offered the same performance as the i9-13900K at a much lower price? The Core i7-14700K. Pricing of this chip is on a downward trend, and Newegg is selling it for $389. The chip is listed for $399, with a coupon shaving off $10. At $389, the i7-14700K should offer comparable gaming performance to the i9-13900K, and by extension, the 7900X3D.

The Core i7-14700K "Raptor Lake Refresh" processor features an interesting 8P+12E core-configuration, with 8 "Raptor Cove" performance cores, and 12 "Gracemont" efficiency cores. Each P-core has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache, each of the three E-core clusters shares a 4 MB L2 cache among its four cores; while the eight P-cores and three E-core clusters share a 33 MB L3 cache. The i7-14700K is compatible with all Intel 600-series and 700-series chipset motherboards, with some of them requring a UEFI firmware update. An interesting point to note here, is that while the i7-14700K is selling at $389, its sibling without the iGPU, the i7-14700KF, remains at $399.

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It looks like cryptocurrency mining is back in craze, as miners are firing up their old mining hardware from 2022 to cash in. Bitcoin is now north of $72,000, and is dragging up the value of several other cryptocurrencies, one such being Qubic (QBIC). Profitability calculators put 24 hours of Qubic mining on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor at around $3, after subtracting energy costs involved in running the chip at its default 170 W TDP. "Zen 4" processors such as the 7950X tend to retain much of their performance with slight underclocking, and reducing their power limits; which is bound to hold or increase profitability, while also prolonging the life of the hardware.

And thus, the inevitable has happened—stocks of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X have disappeared overnight across online retail. With the market presence of the 7950X3D and the Intel Core i9-14900K, the 7950X was typically found between $550-600, which would have added great value considering its low input costs. CPU-based cryptocurrency miners, including the QBIC miner, appear to be taking advantage of the AVX-512 instruction set. AMD "Zen 4" microarchitecture supports AVX-512 through its dual-pumped 256-bit FPU, and the upcoming "Zen 5" microarchitecture is rumored to double AVX-512 performance over "Zen 4." Meanwhile, Intel has deprecated what few client-relevant AVX-512 instructions its Core processors had since 12th Gen "Alder Lake," as it reportedly affected sales of Xeon processors. What about the 7950X3D? It's pricier, but mining doesn't benefit from the 3D V-cache, and the chip doesn't sustain the kind of CPU clocks the 7950X manages to do across all its 16 cores. It's only a matter of time before the 7950X3D disappears, too; followed by 12-core models such as the 65 W 7900, the 170 W 7900X, and the 7900X3D.

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[NextPowerUP]

Helldivers 2 has exploded onto the gaming scene in a massive way. This co-operative third-person shooter packed with danger, action, humor, and surprises has already become one of this year's most talked-about games. What some people may be less familiar with though is its progenitor. The original Helldivers, which debuted in 2015 (and is still active) is a co-op, multiplayer overhead twin-stick shooter packed with action, intensity, and plenty of challenging situations that a player might find themselves in.

We asked Johan Pilestedt, CEO & Creative Director at Arrowhead Studios about the process of adapting the original overhead-view gameplay of Helldivers into the third-person format-after first congratulating him for the rip-roaring success of the game. We asked how the team felt about the positive reception. "Overwhelmed and ecstatic! Over the last 15 years, we've seen a keen interest in the types of games we make and it was great to see our work recognized at this scale."
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A 2019-signed export license has allowed Intel to supply laptop processors to Huawei, under an exclusive deal—this US Government approved arrangement was not viewed favorably by AMD. The rival chipmaker apparently missed out on the securing of a similar trade license back in 2021. According to a new Reuters report, Team Red and a handful of supporters have attempted to revoke Intel's license—worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Two anonymous sources allege that: "Intel has survived an effort to halt chip sales to Huawei...giving one of the world's largest chipmakers more time to sell to the heavily sanctioned Chinese telecoms company." Intel and Huawei's symbiosis is set to end later this year—folks on the inside reckon that the current US administration will not approve a renewal. Reports suggest that Qualcomm is not anticipating a renewal either—Huawei is an approved buyer of Snapdragon chips, but industry whispers indicate an eventual shift to in-house fare.

Intel, Huawei, US Commerce Department and the White House have declined to comment on the aforementioned scenario. Reuters also sent a query to AMD, but the publication did not receive a response. Earlier last year, a government official revealed that "Huawei's licensing policy" was under review, alongside a general push to scrap a number of trade deals. According to insiders, the same government official allegedly told companies—in private—that the US Commerce Department would fix "the licensing discrepancy." Another anonymous source believes that the agency shelved these plans late last year, for reasons unknown—they stressed that there is potential for a revival. Given the upcoming expiry of Intel and Huawei's arrangement—within the year—it makes little sense to implement a drastic change.

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It's been three-and-a-half years since Reflector Entertainment and Bandai Namco Europe unveiled Unknown 9: Awakening with a teaser trailer at Gamescom 2020. Well, we're back and ready to share the fruits of our labor with the world! We are thrilled to unveil Unknown 9: Awakening's Announcement Trailer, which reveals our tough-as-nails protagonist Haroona, a first look at the gameplay, and a Summer 2024 release. We'd love to get you up to speed on the game, share what we've been up to behind the scenes, and explain why you should join the quest to uncover humanity's best-kept secrets, so let's dive in!

Your Unknown 9: Awakening Refresher
The third-person action-adventure title centers on Haroona, a truth seeker with a troubled past whose connection to a shadowy dimension known as the Fold has blessed her with powerful abilities. The last time the world caught a glimpse of the game's heroine, she was just a child left to fend for herself on the streets of Chamiri, India, unsure of what to make of her unearthly gifts. Fast-forward to today, and Haroona is all grown up. She's embraced her unique talents and continues to learn the ways of the Fold.
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CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk development team expected to conclude work on 2077 around autumn of last year—following the release of their v2.0 Content Update, and Phantom Liberty DLC campaign expansion. Game director, Gabe Amatangelo, declared in a September 2023 interview with PC Gamer, that his team was ready to move onto the development of a sequel, but some members continued to deliver updates. December's upgrade to v2.1 added a functional metro transport system, while January's Patch 2.11 expanded vehicle customization options. Game File's Stephen Totilo interviewed Amatangelo during last month's DICE Summit—his recently published article included a discussion regarding CD Projekt RED's surprising extended support schedule for Cyberpunk 2077.

Amatangelo okayed the addition of a Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) system, after absorbing news coverage and fan feedback: "my team had a plan on how to accomplish it in a reasonable way, sort of in a timely way." Cyberpunk 2077's game director confirmed that work has finally concluded on his team's open world magnum opus: "Yes. We're done." The temptation does remain to tinker with the current game: "It's possible that there are some other little things that comes in here or there, just because, as you're kind of messing around with stuff, sometimes you discover something that is not a high risk. Or it's easy to integrate. Or, you know, some developers have some bandwidth...Then they bring it to me." Amatangelo indicates that he could approve further updates, but "Cyberpunk Part Deux" takes priority: "Well, I trust you that it isn't going to mess with your other work…So let's give it a go."
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MICLEDI Microdisplays today announced a first closing of its Series A funding round with participation from imec.xpand, PMV, imec, KBC and SFPIM demonstrating strong support for the company's value proposition and commercial and technological progress achieved in the seed round. Series A follows a significant seed round award and additional non-dilutive funding in the form of grants and other vehicles from VLAIO. This brings the company's total funding to date to nearly $30 million.

"The company's achievements during this seed round have been astounding," said Sean Lord, CEO of MICLEDI. "Our door is open to engagements with some of the world's largest and most innovative electronic product manufacturing companies, most of whom are working on their own internal development projects for augmented reality (AR) displays in such diverse use cases as smart-wearable devices and automotive HUDs. This level of total funding to date is almost unheard of for a four-year-old startup."
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Optoma, a world-leading manufacturer of large display solutions and the No.1 4K UHD brand and the No.1 DLP brand worldwide and in the Americas, announces its new N-Series Professional Displays with intuitive, user-friendly software for business professionals to connect, present, and collaborate globally, both in-person and remotely. Featuring portrait and landscape orientation, Optoma's N-Series is built for use in corporate lobbies, reception areas, conference rooms, lecture halls, digital signage, and other professional environments.

In response to the growing demand for commercial display solutions, Optoma designed the N-Series Professional Displays to enhance the current conferencing setups of corporate and education settings and accommodate hybrid work and distance-learning scenarios. Engineered for simplified connectivity and heightened engagement.
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