Marvell just flexed some seriously efficient SRAM tech at their analyst day, and the numbers make standard solutions look pretty rough. Their 2nm IP burns 80% less power than typical 256K implementations, takes up 37% less space, and cycles 22% quicker. The layout is more rectangular, which apparently makes it way easier to cram into packed SoCs without everything turning into a nightmare.
When stacked against competitors, the custom design uses half the area at matching bandwidth levels, cuts standby drain by two-thirds, and pumps out 17 times more bandwidth per square millimeter. This matters because memory scaling has been lagging behind logic improvements for years. TSMC's N3 SRAM cells are basically identical to N5 despite logic...
HDMI LA is bringing three cable types to CES to show off gaming performance, with the new Ultra96 from the 2.2 spec making its debut alongside Ultra High Speed and Premium High Speed variants. The booth will feature a 500Hz monitor hooked up to an Xbox Series X and a tricked-out gaming PC, plus demos of portable consoles like the Nintendo Switch 2 and Atari Gamestation Go, pumping video to big screens.
They're also flexing retro gaming systems running through HDMI with UltraHD output and highlighting features like Variable Refresh Rate, Auto Low Latency Mode, and Quick Frame Transport for smoother gameplay. The whole setup is supposed to prove that cable choice matters for next-gen gaming experiences.
HKC just dropped what they claim is the first RGB Mini-LED gaming monitor on the planet, and it sounds pretty sick on paper. The M10 Ultra rocks 4,788 dimming zones with separate red-green-blue channel control instead of the usual white backlight setup, which supposedly nukes the halo effect that plagues most Mini-LED screens. The 32-inch 4K panel hits 165Hz normally but can crank up to 330Hz if you drop down to 1080p, and it covers 100% of the BT.2020 color space.
The company says its tech puts them in professional-grade territory since only massive TVs from Hisense and Samsung have pulled off RGB Mini-LED before. DisplayPort 2.1 is onboard for bandwidth, but they weirdly didn't mention whether it's IPS or VA.
No firm release date...
Samsung's foundry division is apparently trying to lock down AMD as a customer for its second-gen 2nm process called SF2P, and word is they might ink something by next month. The chipmaker would test AMD designs through a multi-project wafer run first to check yields before committing to full production, with the Venice server CPU supposedly being the guinea pig here.
If things work out, AMD could split manufacturing between Samsung and TSMC for future stuff like Olympic Ridge consumer chips. Samsung already supplies HBM3E memory for AMD's MI350 accelerators and looks set for HBM4 when the MI450 drops, so the relationship runs deeper than just foundry talk.
Samsung's been picking up steam after landing Tesla and Apple orders, while...
Some dude named Loïc Desjardins dropped a Mac app called Logic Articulation Set Editor that gives Logic Pro users way better control over their articulation sets than the stock DAW tools. The software lets people build new sets from nothing or tweak existing ones with features like batch editing, color swaps, and reordering stuff without wasting forever on tedious setup work.
The latest version throws in Excel and CSV imports, MIDI learn for mapping controllers, and an undo that goes back 50 steps. They also squashed bugs around MIDI channel saving, overlap errors in switches, and output type changes across multiple selections.
It runs on any Mac with 10.13 or newer and costs about 25 euros.
NVIDIA just flexed on everyone by hitting 410 trillion traversed edges per second on the Graph500 benchmark using 8,192 H100 GPUs in a CoreWeave datacenter in Dallas. That crushed the competition by more than double and used way fewer nodes than other top entries, making it three times more cost-efficient. The system chewed through a graph with 2.2 trillion vertices and 35 trillion edges, which would be like searching every friendship connection on Earth in about three milliseconds.
The secret sauce was a custom GPU-only setup that lets H100s talk directly through InfiniBand without bothering the CPU, handling hundreds of thousands of threads sending active messages at once instead of the few hundred a CPU manages. This matters because...
Sapphire is basically begging AMD to loosen up and let AIB partners cook with their GPU designs, according to Ed Crisler from the company. The chipmaker apparently has strict rules that stop them from going wild with stuff like hardcore overclocking models or dead-silent cards that enthusiasts actually want. Crisler said he wishes AMD would just hand over the chip and memory specs, then step back and let partners differentiate their products instead of everything feeling samey.
The AIB used to make a sick Toxic edition of the Radeon RX 6900 XT that was expensive but had better binned dies and serious overclocking headroom. They want to bring that tier back every generation, but tighter restrictions from the chipmaker, plus higher costs...
Samsung might axe its consumer SATA III SSD lines because NAND flash is getting scarce across the board, and most of it is going to datacenter giants and AI labs instead of regular folks buying drives for their gaming rigs. The company is also apparently switching some of its NAND facilities in Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong over to DRAM production since demand for standard memory chips has blown up while NAND looks less profitable. This probably only affects older SATA drives, not the M.2 NVMe sticks people actually care about these days.
NAND prices have gotten stupid expensive, more than doubling in a few months, and the supply crunch could drag on for years as AI infrastructure keeps eating up inventory. Transcend got hit hard and hasn't...
ZANU-PF wrapped up the year feeling pretty good about itself, with President Mnangagwa and the party brass talking up what they called big wins on infrastructure, membership growth, and keeping everyone in line. The ruling party pushed hard on dams, power projects, and housing schemes while running a massive cleanup of its grassroots cells and pulling in enough new members to hit over four million people. They also held their 22nd National People's Conference in Mutare, where they doubled down on Vision 2030 and backed extending Mnangagwa's term to see it through.
The whole vibe was about linking modern development to their liberation movement roots and showing they're still the most organized political machine around. Party leaders...
