news technologie: أبريل 2021

الجمعة، 30 أبريل 2021

NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Today you can save $312 on one of Dell’s powerful 15.6-inch gaming laptops that comes equipped with an Intel Core i7-10750H processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU.

Dell G5 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 16GB RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD ($1,231.99)

Dell’s newly redesigned G5 15 gaming laptop comes equipped to run games with high graphics settings. The system’s Intel Core i7 processor has six cores that can hit speeds as high as 5GHz, and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics chip can handle advanced graphics techniques including ray-tracing. Add to that a 144Hz 1080p display and it becomes clear that this system is well equipped for gaming. Right now, you can get this system with a steep $444 discount from Dell that drops its price from $1,544.98 to $1,231.99 with promo code SAVE12.

Dell XPS 13 9300 Intel Core i7-1065G7 13.4-Inch 4K Laptop w/ Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD ($949.99)

Dell’s new XPS 13 laptop features a top-notch 3,840×2,400 resolution display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The display is calibrated to cover 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, which makes it fitting for professional grade image editing work. The system also has stylish carbon-fiber inspired palm rests, and it comes equipped with a capable quad-core Core i7 processor that can hit clock speeds as high as 3.9GHz. To make things even better the system is able to last for up to nearly 19 hours on a single charge, making it an excellent option for working on the go. The XPS 13 9300 retails for $1,699.99, but you can get it now from Dell marked down to just $949.99.

Samsung Galaxy Buds+ Wireless Earbuds ($109.99)

Samsung’s Galaxy Buds+ were made to compete with Apple’s AirPods headphones and they have many similar features, including a fully wireless design and Bluetooth support. The Galaxy Buds+ also features up to 11 hours of battery life on a single charge and they can charge enough to play for an entire hour in just three minutes. Right now you can buy these high-end earbuds from Amazon marked down from $149.99 to just $109.99.

Apple iPad Pro 11-Inch Tablet 2021 Version ($799.99)

Apple’s newest 11-inch iPad Pro comes equipped with the company’s powerful M1 processor that gives it performance that’s far ahead of its predecessor. The tablet also has a high-end display that’s perfect for watching videos, and it has built-in features such as a LiDAR scanner for use in immersive AR games. This tablet is set to launch on May 24, but you can pre-order it today for just $799.99.

Featured Deals

Dell G5 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for $1,231.99 from Dell with promo code SAVE12 (List price $1,544.98)
Dell XPS 13 9300 Intel Core i7-1065G7 13.4-Inch 4K Laptop w/ Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD for $949.99 from Dell (List price $1,699.99)
Samsung Galaxy Buds+ Wireless Earbuds for $109.99 from Amazon (List price $149.99)
Apple iPad Pro 11-Inch Tablet 2021 Version ($799.99)
Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 144Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for $1,749.99 from Amazon (List price $1,999.99)
Apple MacBook Pro M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1,149.00 from Amazon (List price $1,299.00)
Dell S2721HGF 27-Inch 1080p 144Hz VA Curved Gaming Monitor for $229.99 from Dell (List price $279.99)
SanDisk Ultra 200GB MicroSDXC for $22.49 from Amazon (List price $34.99)
Dell Alienware M15 R4 Intel Core i7-10870H 15.6-Inch 1080p 144Hz G-Sync Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI-E SSD for $1,861.99 from Dell (List price $2,129.99)
Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro Intel Core i5-10500T Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 128GB NVMe SSD for $593.09 from Dell with promo code STAND4SMALL (List price $1,084.29)
Amazon 3rd Gen Echo Dot for $24.99 from Amazon (List price $39.99)
Samsung Galaxy S21 5G 256GB Unlocked Smartphone for $699.99 from Amazon (List price $849.99)
Toshiba Canvio 4TB External HDD for $75.99 from Dell (List price $115.99)
iRobot Roomba i7+ 7550 Robot Vacuum for $599.00 from Amazon (List price $999.99)
Apple Watch Series 6 40mm GPS + Cellular Smartwatch for $425.96 from Amazon (List price $499.00)
Roborock S6 Robot Vacuum and Mop for $379.99 from Amazon (List price $649.99)
Dell Vostro 14 5402 Intel Core i7-1165G7 14-inch 1080p Laptop w/ Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB NVMe SSD for $729.00 from Dell (List price $1,327.14)
New Apple MacBook Air M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop with 256GB SSD for $949.00 from Amazon (List price $999.99)
Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 120Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1,199.99 from Amazon (List price $1,499.99)

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

As something we use every day, the internet seems simple on the surface. Open a web browser or app on any device and away you go. But this simplicity is deceptive – the internet is a vastly complex, almost indefinable thing, but also a thing with practically unlimited potential. It’s an exciting realm to operate in, whether for work or for your own personal pursuits and knowing how to use it properly can enhance everything you do online. And it can also keep you safer. Knowing how to store data without leaving the door open for nefarious interests, and how to protect yourself and your loved ones while they’re using the internet is vitally important.

Right now, The 2021 Complete Virtual Private Cloud Training Bundle with a lifetime subscription to VPN Unlimited is on sale for just $59.99, a huge discount of 96 percent off the full purchase price of $1791. Learn how to use cloud computing to your advantage and protect your data while browsing.

The included course bundle features 28 hours of online instruction across eight courses in 309 lessons. Start with the beginner course in cloud computing and learn everything about database technologies, and continue with learning about infrastructure as a service, including private, public, hybrid, and multi clouds. Build on your growing knowledge with the course focusing on Amazon Web Services and its components such as VPC, subnets, route tables, and internet gateways. The courses are coached by highly-rated instructors like Maher Haddad, rated 4.6 stars out of five, who has a long experience in training for certification in a range of topics.

The bundle also includes lifetime access to VPN Unlimited, which will protect you and your data on private and public WiFi connections. The VPN service provides access to more than 400 servers in over 80 locations around the world – including the USA, UK, Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia – unlocking geo-blocked content, and also puts no limits on browsing speed or bandwidth.

The 2021 Complete Virtual Private Cloud Training Bundle with a lifetime subscription to VPN Unlimited is now on sale for $59.99, a significant saving of $1,731.01 off the full purchase price of $1,791.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

New die shots of Intel’s Sapphire Rapids are suggesting the CPU’s maximum core count could be higher than the 56 cores we’ve previously reported on. The core count could be as high as 72-80 CPU cores — significantly higher than anything AMD currently fields, though that could change by the time Zen 4-based CPUs and Sapphire Rapids both hit market.

These leaks are from Yuuki_AnS via THG, and show the exact same CPU we discussed some months ago, only with its heatspreader removed and each individual tile removed from the substrate.

Image by Yuuki_AnS.

There are five rows of four CPU clusters visible, for a total of 20 CPU cores. We’re looking at one “tile” of Sapphire Rapids (Intel refers to tiles, instead of chiplets). This implies that a full-fat Sapphire Rapids would pack up to 80 cores. Intel might disable some cores for yield, in which case we could end up with a 72-80 core part.

Begun, The Core War Has

We don’t know exactly how many CPU cores Intel will enable for Sapphire Rapids — we’d heard 56 earlier this year, which implies 14 active cores per chip. If there are 80 CPUs on the die, a 56-core chip represents a yield of just 70 percent, so we figure Intel could easily have a higher maximum target. Shooting for 72-80 cores suggests Intel wants to overtake AMD in raw core count. Call it the Core Count War, or Core War if you prefer the Star Wars reference.

Higher die densities would mean Intel is coming for AMD’s core advantage in the server market. It’s high time the company did. AMD’s performance advantage over Intel has been largest at the top of the market for several years now, due to limits in how many Xeon cores Intel could stuff into a single socket. With Intel topping out at 28 and AMD hitting 64, Xeon has been badly beaten in a number of areas. Even Ice Lake-SP, which pushes Intel up to the 40-core mark, doesn’t completely close the competitive gap with AMD’s third-generation Epyc servers.

The 56-core Sapphire Rapids CPU is said to have a 350W TDP, but that doesn’t automatically mean higher core counts would push above this point. 350-400W is probably the maximum, based on the CPUs Intel has previously launched. A 72-core / 80-core CPU with a 400W TDP would reach lower clocks and expend less energy per core than a 56-core CPU in the same power envelope. Intel has launched 400W CPUs before and there are rumors that AMD’s Zen 4 Epyc CPU, Genoa, will offer up to 96 cores in a 400W TDP envelope. We don’t know yet if a core count increase in servers would spark a similar shift in consumer products.

According to the Steam Hardware Survey, only 1.68 percent of end-users have more than eight CPU cores. Quad-core (41.61 percent), six-core (30.01 percent) dual-core (13.38 percent), and eight-core (12.23 percent) hold 97.23 percent of the market, in total. There’s plenty of room to push eight-core and 12-core chips into market at lower price points than they currently occupy, but whether a higher core-count CPU is a better option than a lower core-count chip for the median desktop user depends a lot on what you intend to do with it. If you’re running video and audio processing workloads, the extra cores tend to pay for themselves. If you’re gaming or using applications that don’t scale well, raw frequency and IPC tend to be better at boosting performance.

If Intel intends to reach for 72-80 cores, however, you can bet that AMD will have an answer to it. With a relatively small IPC difference between AMD versus Intel microarchitectures outside of AVX-512, performance will come down to who can pack the most cores into the smallest space and clock them more efficiently.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter was supposed to complete its fourth flight early yesterday, but data beamed back to Earth indicates that did not happen. NASA isn’t worried, though. This appears to be the same issue that caused the delay in Ingenuity’s first flight timeline. NASA says it’s planning to try this one again today, and we should know in a few hours whether or not it was successful.

Because Mars is so far away, NASA doesn’t control Ingenuity or Perseverance in real-time. Instead, it sends commands and allows the robots to execute them autonomously. Earlier this month, NASA had to postpone the helicopter’s historic first flight because of a software issue. A component known as the watchdog timer was running down and preventing the robot from transitioning into flight mode. As you probably remember, the fix worked, and Ingenuity has now taken to the Martian skies three times, but the watchdog timer has again gotten in the way.

So, why is this happening again? NASA identified two possible solutions prior to the helicopter’s maiden flight: Transmit new software or rearrange some commands. It went with the second because it was simpler and not likely to cause other issues. The drawback, however, is that the watchdog timer would still kick in about 15 percent of the time. NASA rolled the dice three times without issue, but lady luck was not on Ingenuity’s side yesterday. The timer ran down, and the helicopter did not transition to flight mode.

#MarsHelicopter is safe and healthy. Data indicate the rotorcraft didn’t transition to flight mode, which had been a possible outcome. We'll attempt the 4th flight again on April 30. First data expected the same day around 10:39a PT (1:39p ET/5:39p GMT). https://t.co/X3fdIbbHyM pic.twitter.com/UQCOD0csQk

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 29, 2021

NASA transmitted new commands for the helicopter to take off at 10:46 AM EDT today (April 30th). As of now, we don’t know that the helicopter worked, but there’s an 85 percent chance that it did. NASA will get data back from the robot this afternoon, at which time we’ll know more.

Ingenuity was a late addition to the Perseverance mission. This first-of-its-kind drone was built with off-the-shelf hardware such as a Snapdragon 801 smartphone system-on-a-chip. This allows it to be small and light enough to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere. It’s also much more powerful than Perseverance with its ancient, radiation-hardened processor. This kind of approach could make future robotic explorers more capable, but Ingenuity itself doesn’t have much time left. NASA does not expect it to survive even a single winter on Mars, and it plans to shift focus to Perseverance in the coming weeks. That robot should last years on Mars — the Curiosity rover, on which Perseverance is based, has been chugging along since 2012.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

For scientists who study climate change, it’s no longer a question of whether or not human activity is affecting the planet. It’s a question of how much we’re wrecking the only place we call home. According to a new study from a French-led team, things aren’t going great. The researchers found that the rate of ice loss from glaciers has accelerated for the first two decades of the 21st century, and there’s every reason to expect that trend will continue.

The team is confident in its measurements because it was able to use the same methodology to analyze every significant glacial ice stream. In 1999, NASA launched the Terra climate satellite, and it’s been up there taking pictures ever since. Using powerful computers, the team was able to interpret Terra’s images to measure yearly changes in glacial elevation and mass. The researchers believe the numbers reported in the study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, are accurate to within five percent.

There are currently 217,175 ice streams associated with the world’s glaciers. Some are the size of a city block, and others cover many square miles. The one thing they all have in common is the volume of water is increasing. The results of this analysis are grim—the world’s glaciers are losing 267 gigatonnes (metric) or 297 gigatons (imperial). No matter your preferred measurement scale, that’s a lot of ice melt.

The overall ice loss is staggering, but that’s not even the worst news. The team reports that the rate of loss has accelerated during the last 20 years. From 2000 to 2004, the Earth’s glaciers collectively lost 227 gigatonnes of ice each year. By 2015, that number had jumped to about 298 gigatonnes (billions of tonnes). A single gigatonne of ice would cover more than 50 city blocks to a depth of about 1,100 feet. And 300 of those are melting every year now.

Glaciers have faster response times to climate change compared with the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Currently, the accelerated melting of glaciers is contributing more to sea level rise than ice sheets, but that may not be true forever. Even small changes in ice sheets, which we have already started to see, can lead to much greater sea level increases.

The study was not focused on the causes of climate change. Plenty of papers have expounded on the various ways in which humans are to blame, though. As emissions increase across the globe, the trend of faster melting will most likely continue. Even radical shifts in human activity will take time to bring climate change under control. By some measurements, it’s already too late to avoid major consequences of climate change.

Top image credit: Luca Galuzzi/CC BY-SA 2.5

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Motherboard manufacturers in China are getting in on the cryptomining craze surrounding Chia, a new cryptocurrency available to mine in May. We’ve talked about Chia several times now, including rumors that hard drive demand has spiked artificially because buyers in certain areas are hoarding drives, hoping to drive up prices.

Drive hoarding may be partially responsible for high prices, but clearly, motherboard manufacturers expect storage mining to catch on. A new platform from motherboard manufacturer Onda, the Chia D32H-D4, offers no fewer than 32 SATA ports.

These aren’t standard SATA ports; they’re mSATA connectors. This confused me at first, because you wouldn’t normally slap mSATA directly on a motherboard this way. At a guess, however, these plugs are designed for converter cables with mSATA at one end and possibly SATA + power at the other end of the cable. The motherboard uses mSATA to provide power and electricity simultaneously. The manufacturer behind this motherboard, Onda, is reportedly offering it with a custom chassis and an 800W power supply. The board is based on a B365 chipset and offers two six-pin connectors to provide additional power. B365 is a Coffee Lake-era chipset, so CPUs from Intel’s 8th and 9th Gen will be supported. There were two revisions of B365, but this board appears to only support Coffee Lake, not the older Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs.

Be advised that this motherboard is not ATX. Standard ATX boards are 305mm x 244mm. This board is 530mm by 310mm. While the motherboard does offer an x16 PCIe slot, the chassis Onda is selling doesn’t support an external graphics card.

This motherboard won’t fit in any standard chassis. EATX is capable of meeting the width requirement but isn’t tall enough to fit the board. The dimensions are larger than even the theoretical WTX standard at 356mm x 425mm.

Bullshit Is Coming

If you had a vague plan to buy storage in the next few months, we recommend buying it now. It’s possible that all of the hype around Chia is smoke and mirrors intended to scare up rumors of shortages to promote the cryptocurrency itself. Even writing disparagingly about the cryptocurrency arguably feeds the hype cycle by improving Chia’s brand awareness.

The problem is, ongoing cryptocurrency shortages continue to break things. GPU prices and availability may not come down until the end of the year, though we’re hoping that new mining limits on future Nvidia cards will help improve availability for gamers, reducing the impact of ongoing shortages. Storage is another problem altogether. It may be possible to stop a GPU from mining, but good luck preventing a hard drive from storing data.

That’s where Chia is such a potential issue. Other cryptocurrencies based on storage solutions use a solution called proof of capacity. Proof of capacity allows a user to re-use the same hard drive space. Chia uses proof of spacetime, which requires that an end-user maintain or add capacity over time in order to increase payout rates. Your payout is calculated based on the percentage of the total storage pool that belongs to you. Should Chia take off, it could drive shortages in storage the way Ethereum mining has caused shortages in GPUs.

It’s possible that all of this will still come to nothing. Problem is, if it doesn’t, storage could be pricey for months, even a year or more. We’re one month short of Pascal’s 5th anniversary. GPU prices have been elevated, to one degree or another, for 28 of the past 59 months. If this same pattern hits storage, the window for buying components may be much smaller than in the past, and much harder to predict.

OEMs should remain insulated from this problem for now, since they buy on contract. Should Chia prove successful, the PC retail channel will be further harmed as another critical system component becomes impossible for most to afford. If you have storage upgrades you want to make, and you can afford to make them now, we recommend you do so, as a precautionary measure against future near-term price increases that could stick around for 6-12 months, depending on how everything shakes out.

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الخميس، 29 أبريل 2021

NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Gaming is at an all time high in terms of popularity right now. Today you can save hundreds on select gaming devices including a Razer Blade 15 laptop that’s on sale with a $500 discount.

Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 144Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for $1,499.99 from Amazon (List price $1,999.99)
Apple MacBook Pro M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1,149.00 from Amazon (List price $1,299.00)
Dell S2721HGF 27-Inch 1080p 144Hz VA Curved Gaming Monitor for $229.99 from Dell (List price $279.99)
SanDisk Ultra 200GB MicroSDXC for $22.49 from Amazon (List price $34.99)
Dell Alienware M15 R4 Intel Core i7-10870H 15.6-Inch 1080p 144Hz G-Sync Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI-E SSD for $1,899.99 from Dell (List price $2,129.99)
Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro Intel Core i5-10500T Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 128GB NVMe SSD for $593.09 from Dell with promo code STAND4SMALL (List price $1,084.29)

Apple MacBook Pro M1 Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD ($1,149.00)

Apple’s latest MacBook Pro comes equipped with Apple’s new M1 SoC, which contains an 8-core processor that’s reportedly 3.5 times faster than the hardware inside of the preceding model. Apple said the system can also last for up to 20 hours on a single charge, giving you all the power you need to work from sunrise to sunset. Now for a limited time you can get one of these systems from Amazon marked down from $1,299.99 to just $1,149.99.

Razer Blade 15 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 144Hz 1080p Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD ($1,499.99)

Razer’s Blade 15 is a gaming laptop that has a relatively compact build that measures just 0.81-inches thin. For such a small system this system packs strong processing hardware including an Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics processor. This hardware is able to run games at 1080p resolutions well, and the 1080p monitor built in the laptop supports a fast 144Hz refresh rate to give you an even better gaming experience. Currently, you can get one of these systems from Amazon marked down from $1,999.99 to just $1,499.99.

Dell S2721HGF 27-Inch 1080p 144Hz VA Curved Gaming Monitor ($229.99)

Dell’s S2721HGF gaming monitor was built with an ultra fast 144hz 1080p display panel that provides for a highly responsive gaming experience. The monitor is also curved, which helps to make games feel more immersive. Currently Dell is selling these monitors marked down from $299.99 to $229.99.

SanDisk Ultra 200GB MicroSDXC ($22.49)

If you are lucky enough to have a microSDXC slot on your smartphone, this tiny chip can give you more storage space on your mobile device than you will know what to do with. In addition to its large 200GB capacity, this microSDXC can also transfer data fairly quickly at a rate of up to 100MB/s. It’s currently marked down from $34.99 to just $22.49 at Amazon.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

As the internet becomes more applicable to gaming, most consoles and gaming companies have begun to offer clubs and memberships which give gamers a whole lot of value and added functionality. If you’re a PlayStation gamer, it just makes sense to join something like PlayStation Plus – it just makes your gaming experience better in a whole range of ways. While the cost might seem like something you can forgo, as consoles and gaming become more sophisticated, it will be something you can’t ignore for much longer.

Right now, you can get the PlayStation Plus: Three-Year Subscription Stackable Code Bundle for the low price of $85.99, a huge discount of over 50 percent off the full purchase price of $179.97 when you use code PLAYSTATION2021 at checkout. Augment your gaming experience on PlayStation in the best way by adding a PlayStation Plus membership to your gaming array.

This PlayStation Plus three-year subscription bundle includes three one-year stackable codes. Simply redeem each of the three membership codes in the bundle and you’re good for three years of membership with PlayStation Plus. The membership lets you tap into a huge online community of gamers for competitive and cooperative play. Take your games online for a whole new world of online play and compete in classics like Star Wars: Battlefront and Uncharted. You can also access a huge range of games monthly for free – and there are new titles being constantly added to the collection so you’ll never get bored of playing the same old games. Users rate the membership at a very high 4.8 stars out of five on Amazon for its two free games per month and exclusive included discounts and deals. You can also use the membership to save your games and profiles to the cloud and access them anywhere.

The PlayStation Plus: Three-Year Subscription Stackable Code Bundle is now on sale for just $85.99, a huge saving of $93.98 off the full purchase price of $179.97. Just make sure to use coupon code PLAYSTATION2021 at checkout.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

NASA’s long-delayed Space Launch System (SLS) is finally beginning to take shape. Following a number of impressive engine tests, the various components of the first full spacecraft have all arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, including the newly arrived core stage. That part of the mega-rocked floated up to the spaceport on a 310-foot barge earlier this week.

The Space Launch System was envisioned as a replacement for the aging Space Shuttle, and one that could help humanity move beyond low-Earth orbit once again. Since the end of the Apollo program, we’ve been limited to hovering over our little blue marble, but the SLS has enough power to send crewed spacecraft back to the moon. That’s why it’s at the heart of the Artemis program. In the coming years, Artemis will deliver the first human explorers to the moon’s surface in half a century, and among them will be the first woman and person of color to walk on the lunar surface.

Before arriving at KSC on the agency’s Pegasus barge, the 212-foot core stage was at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. That’s where NASA ran the recent Green Run tests. The first static fire test in January ended early, after approximately one minute. NASA later confirmed this was the result of a failsafe system being triggered. In the subsequent March test, the rocket’s RS-25 engines ran for more than eight minutes, matching what they’ll have to do when the rocket launches for real.

Artemis I Core Stage Arrival at KSC

The core stage was the last part of Artemis I to arrive at NASA’s Florida launch facility—you can think of it as the main body of the rocket. The Orion capsule (which goes on top) and the enormous solid rocket boosters (mounted to the side of the core) are already there. When fully assembled, the SLS will be the most powerful rocket in human history, capable of sending large payloads to the outer solar system. However, it’s a non-reusable vehicle, and that means Artemis I has exactly one shot at making history.

Currently, NASA plans to launch Artemis I later this year. This uncrewed flight will send the Orion capsule on a lunar orbit trajectory lasting about 25 days. NASA will have to build a whole SLS for Artemis II, Artemis III, and so on. Artemis II will include a crew of four on its lunar orbit mission. Artemis III is the big one: the first human moon landing in decades. It’s currently scheduled for late 2024, but that timeline is based on a directive from the Trump administration. It’s possible NASA will push that date back.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Microsoft has announced it will follow Epic’s lead and reduce the cut it takes on game sales from 30 percent to 12 percent. It’s a shift intended to boost interest in the Windows Store as a Steam alternative and to put pressure on Valve to reduce its own 30 percent cut.

Microsoft writes:

As part of our commitment to empower every PC game creator to achieve more, starting on August 1 the developer share of Microsoft Store PC games sales net revenue will increase to 88%, from 70%. A clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so.

The Windows manufacturer also provided some stats on Game Pass and its popularity:

With Game Pass, players spend 20% more time playing games, play 30% more genres of games and play 40% more games overall, including games outside of the subscription. Based on a recent survey, we found that more than 90% of members said they played a game that they would not have tried without Game Pass.

I can personally confirm this last point. I’ve played multiple games I wouldn’t have purchased, including Control and Quantum Break. It’s also enabled me to run some interesting comparisons, like playing Fallout 4 and Fallout New Vegas back-to-back to compare and contrast them. Game-switching, incidentally, is one place where PCs could learn a thing or two from modern consoles — it’s much faster to switch between games on the Xbox now than it is on the PC. PC games, generally speaking, do not share the video card very well. It is not clear if Microsoft’s DirectStorage API supports the kind of quick resume the Xbox Series offers, or what it would take to bring an equivalent feature to the PC.

Cutting its revenue share to 12 percent puts additional pressure on Steam to lower its own share, but it won’t necessarily help Microsoft build brand presence for its own storefront. Steam holds an overwhelming market and mind share among PC enthusiasts. When Epic wanted to build its brand, it did so by giving away free games, but Microsoft hasn’t shown any particular plan to do the same thing.

The Microsoft Store now supports game mods, on at least some titles, so that particular barrier has been lifted. There’s also rumor of a new app store in development, one that would allow Win32 applications to be offered alongside UWP applications. This change would allow Microsoft to sell a much wider range of software.

One way for Microsoft to build its own market share would be to offer free Game Pass time with game subscriptions. Buy a Windows Store title, get a time-limited subscription code you can redeem for game time. The company has done this before with specific titles; it just hasn’t tied the promotion to the Windows Store itself.

Feature image by Microsoft

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Talk of building leading-edge foundry capacity has accelerated in Europe, but Taiwan’s Economy Minister thinks the business case for such efforts is weak. “TSMC has said repeatedly that the most advanced technology will definitely be (produced) mainly in Taiwan,” Minister Wang said. “As for how Taiwan and the EU can cooperate, companies have their arrangements and considerations, and it can be further discussed.”

TMSC’s CEO said this week that the company “currently have no further fab expansion plan in other areas such as Europe. But we did not rule out any possibility.” That could be interpreted as a bit of a rebuff to EU officials, who were supposed to sit down to talk about fab expansion plans with both Intel and TSMC later this week.

Does a Leading-Edge Foundry in Europe Make Any Sense?

Europe once held more leading-edge manufacturing than it does today. There’s no single reason for this. GlobalFoundries has several manufacturing plants in Dresden, but these are older factories producing on legacy nodes. Companies such as STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and NXP are still major industry players, but they fab on older nodes or outsource to TSMC for leading-edge capability.

According to a recent report from a German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (New Responsibility Foundation), the EU’s efforts to build a 2nm leading-edge fab is likely to fail for several reasons. First, electricity prices are typically much higher in Europe than in Asia. Second, there isn’t enough EU-based demand to justify the investment. SNV thinks there’s little chance of US companies signing up to be EU customers given existing relationships with both Samsung and TSMC, as well as Intel’s efforts to ramp up its foundry business.

Image by Stiftung Neue Verantwortung via EENewsEurope. There are no European companies known to be building at 7nm or 5nm. The chart shows the estimated share of 5nm and 7nm wafer starts by customer.

The fact that Europe has just two major fabless chip manufacturers left, with one of them, Dialog, about to be sold to Renesas, undercuts the idea of an independent European market. SNV argues that working with Intel is to be preferred, not because Intel will automatically deliver leading-edge manufacturing, but because the capacity Intel does build will be useful for automotive and industrial applications.

Intel is already installing 7nm equipment at Leixlip, Ireland. That node won’t be leading edge by the time it comes online, but just as Intel’s 10nm is considered a match for TSMC’s 7nm, Intel’s 7nm should be comparable to TSMC 5nm. Intel claims it wants to return to the leading edge and to build a robust foundry business as part of its IDM 2.0 strategy. Europe claims it wants to account for 20 percent of the high-end chip manufacturing business by 2030. Taiwan and TSMC both claim Europe’s plan is a bad idea, and Samsung’s opinion on all of these events is unknown.

It’s easy to see the European Union working with Intel in some capacity to expand x86 manufacturing at its existing plant. What would be more radical would be a deal between Intel and the EU to build new client foundry facilities somewhere in Europe. Intel would be betting that the EU was serious enough about boosting its semiconductor capacity to invest in it, and the EU would be betting Intel could deliver enough customers to fill the foundry.

Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has called for the United States and Europe to redevelop their semiconductor supply chains and reduce our dependence on China for chip manufacturing. A major European deal would be a way for Intel to signal how serious it is about IDM 2.0, regaining the leading edge, or both depending on the particulars of the hypothetical agreement.

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It’s been just over a year since Microsoft announced it had hit its goal of 1 billion monthly active Windows 10 devices. It took a while to get there, but Microsoft now says Windows 10 is growing even faster, reaching a whopping 1.3 billion active installs in the last quarter. Like a number of other technology firms, Microsoft has the global pandemic to thank for its windfall. It turns out people buy more computers when they’re stuck at home.

“Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning,” said CEO Satya Nadella. The latest device count comes from Microsoft’s earnings report, which featured a stunning $41.7 billion in revenue for the quarter.

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 in 2015, it said it expected to reach a billion active monthly devices in summer 2018, but it missed that target by about 18 months. A big piece of Windows 10’s dominance was supposed to be smartphones, and Microsoft decided to abandon its Windows Phone program a few years later. It now makes Android phones, well, one phone so far. The Surface brand, which includes Windows laptops and the Duo Android phone, saw a 12 percent revenue lift in the last quarter.

Windows 10 also runs on laptops, tablets, game consoles, enterprise conferencing systems, and more. These devices together pushed the OS to the one billion mark. According to Microsoft, the addition of 300 million devices in the past year is due to the PC sales boom. Even in the midst of chip shortages, people are buying more computers than ever to support working from home, and most of those computers are running Windows 10.

In the last quarter, Microsoft reports that Windows OEM revenue jumped 10 percent. Compared with a year ago, revenue for non-Pro OEM Windows 10 licenses rose by a staggering 44 percent. Despite all the interest around Apple’s new ARM-based laptop chips and Google’s increasingly powerful (and cheap) Chrome OS devices, Windows is still cruising along. Microsoft’s overall financial state is great, too. The company’s profit in the last quarter clocked in at $15.5 billion.

So, where does Microsoft go from here? A sizable chunk of Microsoft’s revenue comes from cloud services, and Windows 10 is the ideal way to push those products to consumers and enterprise alike. The jump in OEM licenses might not last beyond the pandemic, but Office 365 and Azure are seeing more modest, and possibly sustainable, revenue growth.

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You’ve probably seen plenty of photos of the Curiosity Mars rover and its successor Perseverance. However, those photos were all taken here on Earth or by the rovers themselves on the red planet. For the first time, we now have an aerial shot of NASA’s robotic explorer, courtesy of the Ingenuity helicopter.

Ingenuity rode to Mars attached to the Perseverance rover, but NASA deployed the drone a few weeks ago after finding an acceptable makeshift airfield. That location is now known as Wright Brothers Field in recognition of this monumental feat of engineering. Ingenuity has completed three test flights on Mars so far, including one on April 25th that featured a higher altitude and side-to-side movement.

NASA is still going through the data collected during the most recent flight, and it shared the incredible aerial shot on April 27th. You might not notice at first, but the Perseverance rover is visible in the upper left corner of the frame. According to NASA, this photo was taken when Ingenuity was 279 feet (85 meters) from Perseverance. It was able to see the rover because this third test saw the drone ascend to an altitude of 16.5 feet (5 meters). While the helicopter traveled 330 feet (100 meters) during the test, NASA didn’t let it get too close to the rover.

A cropped version of the full image showing Perseverance watching from a safe distance.

Ingenuity doesn’t carry any important scientific instruments, and its camera hardware is limited. This is a technology demonstration, a late addition to the Perseverance mission. However, future Mars missions could benefit from this first step toward powered flight on the red planet. Not only has Ingenuity shown that flight is possible, but it’s also running off-the-shelf hardware such as a Snapdragon 801 smartphone processor.

Oh hey, there I am! Never thought I’d be the subject of another photographer on Mars. Great capture by the #MarsHelicopter team.

📷: https://t.co/HS53o5kU3y https://t.co/5HUdagWxw4

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 28, 2021

As a piece of demo hardware running non-hardened components, NASA doesn’t expect Ingenuity to last long on the red planet. In fact, the drone’s flight window is rapidly closing. NASA hopes to complete two more tests before May when the team will shift its focus to Perseverance. In the final tests, Ingenuity could fly as far as 2,000 feet (600 meters), which would take a rover like Perseverance more than four hours if it drove it all in one go. Of course, NASA would never tell it to do that. Hopefully, the helicopter’s final flights provide some imagery at least as cool as this aerial shot of its robotic companion.

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الأربعاء، 28 أبريل 2021

NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Gaming is at an all time high in terms of popularity right now with gaming hardware becoming increasingly hard to find. Today for just $1,899 you can buy one of Dell’s new Alienware M15 R4 that has all the hardware you need to run games with blistering speed and with high quality graphics settings.

Dell Alienware M15 R4 Intel Core i7-10870H 15.6-Inch 1080p 144Hz G-Sync Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI-E SSD for $1,899.99 from Dell (List price $2,129.99)
Apple Watch Series 6 40mm GPS Smartwatch for $299.00 from Amazon (List price $399.00)
Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro Intel Core i5-10500T Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 128GB NVMe SSD for $593.09 from Dell with promo code STAND4SMALL (List price $1,084.29)
Amazon 3rd Gen Echo Dot for $24.99 from Amazon (List price $39.99)
Samsung Galaxy S21 5G 256GB Unlocked Smartphone for $699.99 from Amazon (List price $849.99)
Dell XPS 13 9300 Intel Core i7-1065G7 13.4-Inch 4K Laptop w/ Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD for $999.99 from Dell (List price $1,699.99)

Dell Alienware M15 R4 Intel Core i7-10870H 15.6-Inch 1080p 144Hz G-Sync Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI-E SSD ($1,899.99)

If you want a fast notebook with plenty of performance for running the latest games, you may want to consider Dell’s Alienware M15 R4. This system was literally built for gaming and it features a fast six-core processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, and a high-quality 1080p that can operate at a fast 144Hz and it has G-Sync support. The system also has a 512GB NVMe SSD along with 16GB of RAM to help it boot quickly. You can get this system from Dell marked down from $2,129.99 to just $1,899.99.

Apple Watch Series 6 40mm GPS Smartwatch ($299.00)

Apple’s Series 6 smartwatch has built-in hardware for tracking your blood oxygen level and heart rate. These features as well as a built-in fitness tracker make the Watch Series 6 an excellent accessory for any exercise routine. This model is also up to 20 percent faster than its predecessor, the Watch Series 5. You can now get one of these watches from Amazon marked down from $399.00 to $299.00.

Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro Intel Core i5-10500T Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 128GB NVMe SSD ($593.09)

This compact desktop features solid performance thanks to a six-core Intel Core i5-10500T processor that can hit clock speeds of 3.8GHz. It’s also easy to hide out of the way to leave your work area looking clean and organized. Today you can get this system from Dell marked down from $1,084.29 to $593.09.

Amazon 3rd Gen Echo Dot ($24.99)

Amazon’s Echo Dot smart speaker comes with the company’s Alexa virtual personal assistant, which is able to hear and obey numerous voice commands. In addition to being a speaker for listening to music, it also works as a hands-free device for making phone calls and it can control other devices that support Alexa as well. Right now, you can get a 3rd generation Echo Dot from Woot marked down from $39.99 to just $24.99.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Sony sold 7.8 million PlayStation 5s through the end of March, narrowly beating the PS4’s 7.6 million sold through the same period in 2013-2014. PlayStation 5s remain difficult to find on store shelves, both in the US and across the world, and the situation hasn’t necessarily improved much in recent months. According to Sony, it shipped 4.5 million consoles through the end of 2020 (meaning, November and December), but just 3.3 million for January, February, and March.

This aligns well with AMD’s remarks from yesterday that enterprise, embedded, and semicustom revenue was up by $61M on higher Epyc spending, offset by lower console sales. Sony was obviously stockpiling systems to kick them out the door in the back half of the year, and shipments have slowed in Q1. Microsoft sales have also presumably slowed in Q1, though keep in mind that AMD reports revenue when Sony and Microsoft buy the SoCs, while the two console manufacturers report revenue when they ship the systems.

The company plans to redouble production, with plans to sell 14.8 million units “in the second year after the launch of the PlayStation 4.” This appears to be a mistake; historical data shows the PS4 moved roughly 15 million units in its first 12 months in-market. What Sony appears to be saying here is that they want to ship 7 million additional PlayStation 5’s from April 1 through November 11, 2021. This would exceed, if just barely, the first-year sales record for the PlayStation 4.

“Can we drastically increase the supply? No, that’s not likely,” PCMag reports executives saying on a translated conference call. “So the shortage of semiconductors is one factor. But there are other factors which will impact on production volume. So that at present we would like to aim at second [fiscal] year sales at 14.8 million units.”

Sony said player engagement on the PlayStation Network has increased by 20 percent on average, an indication that people have moved inside and played more during the pandemic. The company expects demand to be robust and that it will continue to see elevated levels of player engagement throughout 2021. Sony doesn’t expect to see the same uptick in subscribers that it observed at the beginning of the pandemic, but it believes existing customers will remain active at higher than historical levels of engagement.

Interestingly, Sony has acknowledged that some PlayStation 5 consoles are being sold below cost. In the past, we’ve theorized that the digital console might be below the price of manufacture while the full edition might be slightly above it. Hardware sales revenue for the first three months of 2021 grew by 2.81x compared with the first three months of 2020. Microsoft has already reported a 2.32x increase in hardware spending for the first three months of the year, implying that Sony sales boomed a bit more worldwide than Redmond did, relative to where each company was at the beginning of the pandemic. Microsoft doesn’t release hardware shipments for the Xbox Series X, but data suggests Sony is holding its PS4-era shipment advantage over its console rival.

Sony expects software sales to fall for its Q1 2021 fiscal quarter, which ends June 30, 2021, compared with year-ago levels. The company believes the pandemic inflated sales a year ago when lockdowns were going into effect. It expects software sales to improve and match or exceed the year-ago period from September 30 through the end of its fiscal year 2021 a year from now, in April 2022.

Note: ExtremeTech acknowledges that, statistically, Sony probably sold PS5s to some of you during the past three months. Happy gaming!

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

The disagreement between Apple Mac devotees and Microsoft PC acolytes is long and storied – so much so that Apple based a famous advertising campaign on the split, which played up the fun and easy side of Apple products compared to the stuffy and old persona of the PC. But it’s a fact of modern computing that there are programs you need to use on a Mac which will only work on PC/Microsoft-compatible computers. And it’s not easy to make it work! Microsoft emulators on Mac are renowned for being clunky and often unusable, making it harder to do your job.

But now, you can get a ‘One’ License to CrossOver for Mac for the significantly discounted price of $19.99, a huge discount of 49 percent off the full purchase price of $39. Make using Microsoft on Mac much, much easier with a license to CrossOver for Mac.

CrossOver is not a Microsoft emulator. Instead, it does the heavy lifting of translating Windows commands into Mac commands, meaning you can run the Windows software you need, and use it like it were originally designed for Mac. Compatible with all types of software, including programs in the productivity genre, utilities, and even games, CrossOver makes using Microsoft on Mac simple.

It’s also easy to install, working in just one click and running in a few minutes. You also don’t need to purchase licenses to Windows OS, meaning your CrossOver software is all you need to get your MS apps running better on Mac. Unlike many emulators, there’s no lag with this program, which integrates straight into your desktop environment.

‘One’ Licenses to CrossOver for Mac are now on sale for just $19.99, a huge saving $19.01 off the full purchase price of $39.

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Acer has decided to chuck its hat into the branded SSD and DRAM business as part of a deal with Chinese manufacturer Biwin Storage Technology Limited. Hardware will reportedly be released in the US, UK, China, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Founded in 1995, Biwin Storage Technology Limited initially made its name in USB drive production before expanding and handling some manufacturing for HP in the last few years. The company has recently been building facilities in Huizhou, China. Biwin does not appear to fab its own NAND but offers its own packaged designs and custom firmware. It also offers a chip packaging and test service.

Acer is planning to launch new products based on the Predator brand, as well as its own, mainstream Acer storage brand. The company is planning a range of 2.5-inch SSDs, M.2 drives, and NVMe products, as well as laptop and desktop memory modules at clock speeds ranging from DDR4-2666 to DDR4-3200. The company is flashing its Acer FA100 M.2 PCIe NVMe drives as the new hotness of storage solutions, provided that “new hotness” refers to an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 drive. There is, in fairness, absolutely nothing wrong with such a drive. I literally bought an NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD for my own machine a few months back. But it’s a little funny to see Acer advertising such drives as “chock-full of the latest technology for serious performance” when AMD introduced PCIe 4.0 in 2019 and Intel just launched support for the standard with Rocket Lake.

Image by Acer.

The Predator brand looks to be made of slightly stronger stuff, at least on the DRAM side. We’re promised Apollo-branded DRAM at clocks of up to DDR4-5000 supposedly built with Samsung B-die — which might be a surprise to overclockers because Samsung supposedly stopped production on that RAM two years ago. It also wasn’t widely sold at such high clocks. “Talos” memory supposedly features ultra-low timings and will only be available at up to DDR4-4400. Storage-wise, the Predator GM3500 SSD M.2 family will top out at PCIe 3.0 with an x4 connection.

Performance on this hardware isn’t all that impressive, but Acer has been known to offer solid performance at reasonable prices in other hardware categories before, so the company might aim for a similar position on these parts as well. The company recently reported preliminary revenue for Q1, with robust growth in gaming (87.6 percent), Chromebooks (141.1 percent), commercial notebooks (87.6 percent). Overall, the market is going about as swimmingly for Acer as everyone else in PCs these days.

Feature Image by Acer

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