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GlobalFoundries this week said that the U.S. authorities had approved its acquisition of IBM’s microelectronics business unit. From now on, GlobalFoundries will make various important semiconductors for the U.S. military and government agencies. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has reviewed the proposed transaction between IBM and …

Nvidia Corp. is working on two new affordable GeForce GTX 900-series products that will replace low-cost graphics cards released last year. The new adapters will be powered by the second-generation “Maxwell” architecture and their performance is expected to be comparable to that of the GeForce GTX 960. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX …

Despite of pressure from investors, Qualcomm has no plans to split the company up and spin off chip business to concentrate on lucrative technology development and licensing, according to the chairman of the company. Qualcomm is not only the world’s biggest supplier of application processors for mobile devices, but is …

Logically, if you start out by creating apparatus and methods to test power supplies, you naturally have a deeper understanding of the product's internals. When Mr Chang started Seasonic in 1975, that was exactly his approach. Now, 40 years on, Seasonic has established itself as the most successful PSU manufacturer …

Advanced Micro Devices is experiencing difficult times because of business decisions made several years ago. At this point AMD is developing its “Zen” and “K12” microprocessors, which are expected to make AMD competitive in the CPU market again. However, many new technologies, which are in the works today, will have an impact …

Nvidia Corp. is developing three new cards for the professional markets: two new Quadro graphics adapters as well as a new Tesla accelerator for high-performance computing applications. The latest drivers from Nvidia add support for Nvidia Quadro M5000, Quadro M4000 as well as Tesla M60 boards, reports VideoCardz web-site. The …

In a bid to revive its chip design operations, Microsoft Corp. may acquire Advanced Micro Devices, according to a source familiar with the matter. The software giant approached AMD several months ago, the source indicated. The result of the talks is unclear. Microsoft Corp. has been selling game consoles for …

Today we take a look at one of the latest graphics cards from Sapphire – the new R9 390X featuring the latest version of their Tri-X cooling system. This top level graphics card ships in an overclocked state and features a custom triple cooler – shipping with 3x 90mm dual …

Micron Technology, the world’s third largest maker of computer memory, plans to close its process technology gap with market leader Samsung Electronics with its next-generation fabrication technology in the coming years. The firm hopes that its new manufacturing process will help it to lower costs and increase performance of its …

Seagate Technology this week demonstrated a NAS packed with hard disk drives that use heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. While the company claims that the NAS worked flawlessly, Seagate again reconsidered the launch timeframe for its HAMR HDDs and delayed them to 2017 – 2018. Nonetheless, the company is already …

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, claims that while virtual reality gaming will make it to the mainstream market in the future, for a couple of years down the road it will remain a prerogative of hardcore and enthusiast gamers. The VR pioneer confirms that high prices of hardware …

Intel Corp. has quietly introduced its highest-performing x86 server microprocessor to date. The chip features a number of unique capabilities, such as on-the-fly reconfiguration of core-count and frequency, and is currently available to Oracle and its server customers. The Intel Xeon E7-8895 v3 “Haswell-EX” central processing unit features 18 cores …

Micron Technology has announced that it had begun commercial shipments of GDDR5 chips made using 20nm process technology. The company did not reveal any details, but it is highly likely that Micron initiated shipments of its 8Gb GDDR5 chips several weeks ago. “We commenced shipments of our first 20 nanometer …

Micron Technology has been rather cautious about using triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND flash in solid-state drives and for a long time only used such memory for various removable storage applications. However, it appears that the company has finally solved all the challenges with such cheap NAND and plans to introduce an …

GlobalFoundries has revealed additional details regarding its 22nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) fabrication technology. The manufacturing process will be ready for tape-outs in early 2016 and will be used for mass production of chips by late next year. While the tech has a number of advantages, the process is designed primarily …

What promised to be a fairly straightforward launch sequence turned into a series of incredibly interesting stories that engaged just about every enthusiast user on the web. Whatever your personal opinions, AMD's latest product launch has certainly generated a lot of attention. We decided to invite Bill Donnelly from Sapphire …

The PCI SIG has been developing external PCI Express interconnection for over three years now, but only later this year the organization will finalize the specification of the technology. The new cable will compete against Intel’s Thunderbolt 3. While the tech makes a lot of sense for various devices, it …

Elitegroup Computer Systems has once again denied plans to stop making own-brand mainboards for the DIY [do-it-yourself] market. This is the second time this year when the company makes such denial. “We [ECS] feel regret to learn the untrue report from DigiTimes,” said Sunny Yang, the president of ECS, in …

PCI Express bus has been evolving for over ten years now. So far the technology has tripled its initial data rate, but the next step is taking a longer time. PCI SIG claims that the fourth generation PCI Express specification will be finalized in 2017 and will materialize this decade. The …

Advanced Micro Devices’ next-generation “Zen” micro-architecture promises to significantly increase performance of the company’s central processing units next year. Even though AMD will introduce high-end microprocessors based on “Zen” in 2016, it will take a long time before a significant share of AMD’s chips will adopt its new architecture. AM4 …

Last night, we got wind of some market rumours suggesting that Nvidia was considering cutting down the price of the GTX 980Ti a bit in light of the release of AMD's Fury X. Now today, Overclockers UK has announced a slew of deals on GTX 980Ti graphics cards, with models …

Intel Corp. has again delayed installation of equipment necessary to produce semiconductors in high volume using 10nm process technology. It is believed that Intel experiences yield ramp issues, just like in case of its 14nm manufacturing tech, which is why it does not make sense for the company to buy …

Antec's new Signature S10 is a big, tall, imposing E-ATX case with a number of interesting features. In a radical departure from the norm the chassis is organised as three chambers. The lower chamber contains the power supply and five 2.5-inch drive bays and is separated from the main chamber …

Nvidia Corp. is mulling to reconsider prices of select high-end graphics cards in order to further strengthen its positions in the market advanced graphics solutions. If the company proceeds with the plan, it will get considerably harder for Advanced Micro Devices to regain market share it lost to Nvidia in …

Elitegroup Computer Systems has reportedly announced that it will not actively promote its own-brand mainboards aimed at the DIY [do-it-yourself] market going forward. The company will continue to produce motherboards for its clients, but will eventually quit the market of platforms for enthusiasts. ECS used to be one of the …

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday officially launched its new flagship graphics processing unit as well as a card based on the GPU. The new graphics processor is the first chip in the world to use all-new high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is a high-profile innovation on its own, to boot, AMD has …

Advanced Micro Devices will release microprocessors based on “Zen” cores only for high-end desktop computers next year. Mainstream PCs will get the company’s new micro-architecture in 2017, when the company rolls-out its “Raven Ridge” accelerated processing units, according to a media report. Next year AMD will offer its “Bristol Ridge” …

It's tempting for senior officials at every company to regurgitate the ‘About Us' section of their web site. Henry Kao is different. Prior to the cameras being switched on, Henry assured us that we could ask ‘Anything we want'. And so we did. Henry gave us his full, frank opinion …

United Microelectronics Corp. said on Tuesday that it has successfully taped out a test chip from ARM using its 14nm FinFET fabrication technology. The company also revealed that the new manufacturing process will be ready for customer tape outs by the end of the year. UMC and ARM recently taped …

Intel Corp. has changed its roadmap once again and delayed its code-named “Cannonlake” processors to an unknown date. Next year the company will introduce “Kaby Lake” processors made using 14nm FinFET process technology. Intel’s “Kaby Lake” processors will feature two or four cores, a new generation integrated graphics engine, a …